Fairfield inn and suites cedar rapids

The Iowa State Subreddit!

2008.09.30 15:34 The Iowa State Subreddit!

Welcome to the subreddit for the state of Iowa.
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2022.02.02 08:30 Exciting_Work_551 fossepms

Front Office Select Service Extended Stay (Fosse) PMS is Marriott's propriety PMS system developed in 1974 by David Berkus and licensed to Marriott in 1982. It is primarily used at select service properties such as Fairfield Inn, Residence Inn, Courtyard, Townplace Suites, Springhill Suites, etc.
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2023.06.09 16:31 Express-Employment62 Finding Purchase Episode 1: A Sliver of Chaos - Recap

The story starts, as so many seem to, in an inn. But this is not just any inn, but the cleanest, friendliest inn in all of Emon - The Bright Vagabond - owned and operated by a halfling named Tarlan Hillspark. As he prepared to open for the day, a young baker's apprentice named Sliver entered nervously and was gestured to a seat at a large round table marked 'Reserved'. Soon, others gathered; a tall half-elf named Garrick with a symbol of the Raven Queen on his shield, a cheerful gnome named Ashrina dressed in bright colors, and a lanky humanoid called Kid, who wanted nothing more than a fresh cup of bean juice. All had received a mysterious summons from an organization known as The Clasp; though Sliver was concerned about this development, the others all seemed unsurprised to be there.
As they gathered, a woman entered who seemed far too frightened for the bright surroundings and was introduced as Dr. Dannell, who they had been instructed to meet. The group excused themselves upstairs to less spacious, but more private, surroundings - Ashrina's room at the Vagabond. There, the doctor admitted to being terrified of her benefactors, but with no other place to turn for help. A disgraced researcher in antiquities, she recently found a large stone on a dig - an egg, she claims, spawned by an eldrich horror. No one believed her, of course, and the egg was set to go on display at the Natural History Museum tomorrow. With one catch: tonight, it will hatch, and hundreds, if not thousands, would die. Conveniently, there was a gala opening for the exhibit that very evening, and the good doctor managed to procure tickets. She also offered to pay for new outfits so the group will fit in at the party. Not one to let a good deed go unrewarded, Ashrina also gave Dr. Dannell the opportunity to donate her bag of holding to the cause (of Ashrina having a sweet new interdimensional purse).
Spurred on mostly by curiosity and the Clasp's instructions, not to mention the promise of a swanky shopping spree, the group decided they will go ahead and save Emon after all, though they're not all convinced the egg is real. Sliver, for his part, isn't keen on the idea of killing a hatchling, even a freshly hatched eldrich horror. The professor's plan, as described, involved stealing the egg and then imprisoning it in a crystal that she just happens to have in her rooms. This will spare Sliver the moral quandary involved in killing something that has just hatched. He's also quite gratified that he's been summoned to steal something - he thought it was going to be something difficult.
After not deciding on a plan, the group headed for the Erudite Quarter to spend the good professor's hard earned money at Aura, a bespoke clothier. There they were greeted by the owner, the most fabulous kobold to walk the streets of Emon, and the group outfitted themselves with party attire after some haggling and paying a small fortune of someone else's gold for same-day service. All outfitted themselves well, but Sliver outdid himself in a purple jacket and green flared pants, intending to dress himself as a waiter for the gala and save the finery for another day.
On the way, the team decided that they were not going to steal the egg at the gala unless the perfect opportunity presented itself, and so Sliver's hopes of sneaking in as a waiter and walking out with the egg were dashed. After a quick walk around the block to find the museums' entrances and exits, they entered the museum and began admiring the exhibits on the ground floor. Garrick chatted up a bored museum employee in hopes of getting an in with the staff, learning of her side gig as a horror poet, while Kid found the staff entrances remarkably unsecure and Ashrina discovered a janitor exiting a secret room in one of the exhibit halls. Sliver purchased a museum badge from the gift shop, and promptly began bossing around the staff and escorting wealthy-looking patrons upstairs, not really listening to them except to glean information about the exhibit or any valuables on their persons. Tarlan, bemused, stayed behind to keep an eye on Sliver.
Finally, the group headed upstairs to where the exhibit would take place. Garrick headed directly for the privy-rooms to try and find a way to break the wall to get into the exhibit room with the egg. Tarlan examined the Allosaurus exhibit, found a panel, and asked Kid to take a look. Stealthily as can be, Kid opened the panel and found dials and levers, seemingly to control the dinosaur exhibit. Ashrina spotted a conveniently-placed and completely unsecured vent on the exhibit room wall. Not content with merely being extremely useful, she then snuck into the attic and unlocked the museum's skylight while Kid kept watch on...something else entirely.
The party began, with the curator opening the exhibit room and slipping the key into her clutch, which Kid noted she keeps to hand at all times. The group kept watch for signs of any party-goers under the influence of the egg's eldrich occupant, but saw nothing. Kid sidled up to the egg, finding the magical defenses on its pedestal. Garrick concerned himself with the doors, satisfied that the security mechanisms could be blocked with the furniture if need be. While Ashrina ate and drank merrily, Tarlan began speaking with a down-on-her luck noblewoman attending the party to find a suitable suitor. Noting Tarlan's suit from Aura, she seemed newly interested in his company, until Tarlan admitted that he doesn't regularly shop there and that parties makes him nervous. Sliver circulated, serving food and drinks to the patrons he'd scammed earlier and learning that the basement of the museum is full of valuable riches that no one does anything with. Ashrina, having seen the museum curator leave the room upon receiving a mysterious note, snuck after her, confirming both that the curator is a creepy doll enthusiast, and that she keeps the key to her office in her clutch.
At some point during all of this, Sliver left the party and wrote a vaguely threatening note to the curator on a bar napkin, reminding her that she's been warned of the consequences of putting the egg on display. He instructed a server to deliver the note, then removed his jacket and makeup and headed downstairs, away from the aftermath. As requested, the note was delivered, which the rest of the group saw the curator read and crumple up angrily. Tarlan then approached the curator, asking about the stone on display and insinuating that he'd seen something similar in a book. A book about eggs. Angrily refuting this assertion, the curator placed both hands on the stone, and a wave of energy rocked the room. Many party-goers became ill, including Ashrina, who broke out in a sheen and felt dizzy and weak momentarily. The chaos passed quickly, but it was enough for the curator to decide that in fact a gala opening for an eldrich horror was not a good idea and usher everyone out.
Back on the street, the group reassembled to ready themselves for the heist. But before anyone could say anything, Tarlan, staunch cleric of the Dawnfather and firm moral center of the group, held up the clutch he stole from the museum's curator during the commotion, and asked if anyone had forgotten their purse.
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2023.06.09 15:10 ecigone_ The Impact of E-Liquid Storage and Steeping on Flavor Development

The Impact of E-Liquid Storage and Steeping on Flavor Development
As vaping continues to gain popularity, the market for e-liquids has expanded rapidly. Vape enthusiasts are always on the lookout for the best vape mod kits and the best vape juice to enhance their vaping experience. However, one often overlooked aspect that significantly impacts flavour development is the proper storage and steeping of e-liquids. In this article, we will explore the importance of e-liquid storage and steeping and how they can enhance the flavour profile of your vaping experience.
Understanding E-Liquid Storage
When you purchase e-liquids from a vape shop online or a brick-and-mortar store, it is crucial to store them properly. E-liquids are typically composed of a mixture of propylene glycol (PG), vegetable glycerin (VG), nicotine, and flavourings. Exposure to heat, light, and air can alter the composition of these ingredients and impact the overall taste of the e-liquid.
To ensure the longevity and flavour quality of your e-liquids, it is recommended to store them in a cool, dark place. Direct exposure to sunlight or high temperatures can cause the e-liquid to degrade and lose its flavour. Moreover, it is essential to keep the e-liquid bottles tightly sealed to prevent air exposure, which can lead to oxidation.

https://preview.redd.it/0qeeuktqrz4b1.jpg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=46f8ad83080910a979820fe1b029701c566dc13e
Steeping: Unveiling the Hidden Flavours
Steeping is a process that allows the e-liquid to mature and develop its full flavour potential. Similar to ageing a fine wine, steeping involves letting the e-liquid sit for a period of time, allowing the ingredients to blend and meld together. During this process, any harsh or overpowering flavours can mellow out, resulting in a smoother and more enjoyable vaping experience.
Different e-liquids have varying steeping requirements. Some e-liquids are pre-steeped by the manufacturers and are ready to vape right out of the bottle. However, many e-liquids benefit from additional steeping time to reach their optimal flavour. It is important to note that steeping is not mandatory, but it can enhance the taste and overall vaping satisfaction.
Methods of Steeping
There are several methods you can employ to steep your e-liquids effectively:
Time Steeping: This is the most basic method, where you simply let the e-liquid sit in a cool, dark place for a specific period of time. The duration can vary depending on the e-liquid, typically ranging from a few days to several weeks.

https://preview.redd.it/lya2xnorrz4b1.jpg?width=518&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b747921b8e12050c38ba81c0c4a8e44ed8effef
Breathing: Some vapers prefer to "breathe" their e-liquids by removing the cap and letting the e-liquid breathe for a short period of time. This allows any alcohol or volatile compounds to evaporate, resulting in a smoother taste.
Warm Bath: Placing the tightly sealed e-liquid bottles in warm water can speed up the steeping process. Be cautious not to expose the e-liquid to excessively high temperatures, as it may degrade the quality.
Ultrasonic Steeping: Using an ultrasonic cleaner, you can speed up the steeping process by subjecting the e-liquid bottles to ultrasonic vibrations. This method aids in the blending of flavours and can significantly reduce the steeping time.
Experimentation and personalization
Steeping is a highly subjective process, and the optimal steeping time for an e-liquid can vary from person to person. Some vapers prefer a stronger, more intense flavour, while others may prefer a smoother, milder taste. It is essential to experiment with different steeping methods and durations to find the flavour profile that suits your preferences.
Disposable Vape Pens: A Note on Steeping
Disposable vape pens, although convenient, are not designed for steeping. These pens are typically pre-filled with e-liquid and sealed to maintain freshness. Since the e-liquid cannot be accessed or altered, steeping is not applicable in this case. Disposable vape pens are meant to be used and discarded once the e-liquid is depleted.
Conclusion
In the world of vaping, the flavour of e-liquids plays a significant role in the overall satisfaction of the vaping experience. Proper storage and steeping techniques can enhance the taste profile of e-liquids, allowing you to enjoy a more refined and enjoyable vape. Remember to store your e-liquids in a cool, dark place, and consider experimenting with different steeping methods and durations to find the perfect balance of flavours. Whether you're a seasoned vapour or just starting out, understanding the impact of e-liquid storage and steeping is key to unlocking a world of exquisite vaping flavours.
submitted by ecigone_ to u/ecigone_ [link] [comments]


2023.06.09 14:55 kiplet1 [City of Roses] no. 27.3: “Quite distressing” – well as She might – taking Any hand – Something falls

[City of Roses] no. 27.3: “Quite distressing” – well as She might – taking Any hand – Something falls
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tends to crumble
“Quite distressing,” says the older man, there in the wingback chair. “Though one does not wish to play the churl. A certain degree of disarray must certainly be allowed, given the shocks – the challenge, the duel – ”
“Allowed?” says Agravante, there by the yellow stone fireplace, an elbow up on the mantel, and the older man takes a sip of milky tea from a thin bone china cup. “How is the King’s champion, by the way?” he says.
“Death’s door,” says Agravante. There on the mantel by his elbow a fiendish little basket-box, carved from a chunk of dark red wood. “Shame,” says the older man, shaking his head, stiff grey curls swept back, and the collar of his shirt undone, a blue scarf knotted tidily about his throat. “Though it is distasteful, how they might linger, on that threshold? Neither here, nor there,” and another sip of tea.
“What is it that distresses you, Medardus,” says Agravante. White-gold locks tied neatly black, his grey suit shot with blue.
“It’s a delicate question I’d have answered, Pinabel,” says the older man, setting the cup in the saucer on his lap, clink. “Does the King yet mean to pursue his bold vision?”
Agravante’s brow pinches. “Of course,” he says. “Insofar as I know.”
Medardus smiles. “Delicately put,” he says. “It’s been two days.”
“These things take time.”
“Two days,” says Medardus, “since he took from me mine offer,” knobbled fingers closing in a fist, drawn up by his yet-mild smile. “And not a word said since.”
“There’s much to be considered,” says Agravante. “Four of you do vie for her hand.”
“Please, Pinabel,” says Medardus, dropping his hand, and a clatter of cup and saucer. “It’s an indulgence to pretend the choice isn’t manifestly clear – that mine is not the best offering.”
“The best, perhaps,” says Agravante. “But sufficient?” A slatey shoulder shrugs.
“The King would demand more?”
“How can I answer that,” says Agravante, “when I know nothing of what you’ve promised, or he might require.”
“Nothing,” says Medardus, still smiling. “Such a delicate word.” Setting cup and saucer on the low table between them. “I would hope,” he says, “it could always be said that the Hound has done well by Medardus,” and he knots those knobby fingers in his lap. “Much as it can be said, to a surety, that Medardus has done well by the Hound.”
Rather carefully, Agravante does not smile at that, or nod, his shoulders do not move, nor does his arm, there by the basket-box. “Of course,” he says.
“But it’s also said,” says Medardus, “that a fear grips your court: that the line is not unbroken. That the Queen, despite her, prodigious recovery, has no Bride of her own. That your King’s hand, howsomever reluctantly, is forced. That he means,” and here Medardus leans forward, elbows on knees, “to take the Princess for himself, and that is why our offers go unanswered.” Sitting back, a dismissive fillip of his fingers. “Or so it’s said.”
“By some,” says Agravante.
“Indeed,” says Medardus.
“But not to me,” says Agravante.
“Ah.” Medardus pushes himself to his feet. “Tell me,” he says, as Agravante leads him out of the little drawing room, “how fares the Count?”
“Grandfather?” says Agravante, pushing open the sliding wood-paneled door. “He sleeps.” Beyond, a narrow hall, in the shadow of a long straight staircase.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s you.” A glass of wine in his hand, something dark. “She isn’t here.”
“She will be, soon enough,” says Marfisa, muddy boot up on the side porch step. “Jason, can I just, wait inside?” The collar of her sheepskin coat turned up, loose white hair stirred by a gust. He steps back, the door held open, his lips a sour purse between his mustache and his dull red beard.
Up the steps into a mud room, painted blue, forgotten coats and a tangle of umbrellas, a scooter, a chalkboard palimpsested with to-dos and shopping lists, “Ah ah,” he’s saying, pointing, thick-lensed glasses blanked out by the ceiling light, and she scrubs her boots against a mat before stepping up into a kitchen to the left there, ruddy stove and a steaming pot of something, stainless steel refrigerator hung about with coupons and note cards, a calendar, a math test festooned with red checks and gold stars, past a breakfast bar sloppily piled with newspapers and a box of soda cans, into a narrow sitting room, a low brown couch, a girl tucked at one end of it, under a red and yellow blanket, and pink headphones startling against her dark hair, watching something on the tablet on her lap. “Grace,” says Jason, still in the kitchen, but she’s already snatching off the headphones, a burst of chirpy music, as Marfisa steps about the low coffee table. “Hey, Mar,” says the girl on the couch, and “Grace,” says Jason again, “upstairs,” as Marfisa sits herself at the other end. Something bulky’s tucked in her coat, she leans over the table, pulling it out, a flat paper sack that spills out a sheaf of handbills, goldenrod pages splashed with black lines, a dancer rendered in calligraphy, and each marked by the green dot of an eye. “Oh, hey,” says the girl, springing from under the blanket, all elbows and knees and clattering headphones, “is that,” says Jason says “Grace!” again, but she’s already scooped up a handbill, turning it over and back again, nothing else to it but little pull-tabs at the bottom, each printed with an elaborately arabesqued question mark. “You’re putting these up?”
Marfisa shrugs. “You’ve seen them?”
“Yesterday, at Mississippi Pizza?” says Grace. “Did you hang ’em there?” Marfisa shrugs again. “The Mercury just had a thing about these things, like how nobody knows what they are, or who’s, it’s, it’s you! You’re doing it! Is it like, are you putting the band back together?”
“Grace,” says Jason.
“What,” snaps Grace, rolling her eyes away.
“Upstairs,” he says, “now. Flashcards till dinner.”
“Jason,” she says, but she’s kicking off the couch, scooping up the tablet, stomping around the table when back that way there’s a clatter and a squeak of hinges from that side porch, “I’m home!” cries someone, and “Carol!” cries Grace, turning on a dime, scampering off past Jason, through the kitchen, “Guess who’s here!”
Marfisa leans forward, slipping the handbills back in the sack, not looking up at Jason looking down at her.
And there’s Carol, by the breakfast bar, setting a brown leather book bag on the carpet. Draped in a brown and yellow striped serape, her dark hair neatly short. “Mar,” she says. “How are you.”
“Well as I might,” says Marfisa, looking up, pushing back a wave of white-gold hair. “What would you say to a chance to sing again, together?”

A hallway narrow, dim, dark doors to either side, silvery numerals set in the walls by each, slender 1s, a wiry 7, great round-bellied 6es, an 8, a 9. Iona in her yellow track suit leads the way around a corner, stops before the door at the end of the hall. 620, the numerals beside it. She plucks a white card from a pocket, holds it up before slipping it into the slot above the knob. “I miss keys,” she says, as the lock chunks, a green light flicking on. “These may be better, but not in any way that matters.” She opens the door. “Go on,” she says.
Within brown walls and gold, bathed in daylight hazed by yellow curtains drawn over corner windows. A comfortable yellow chair, a reading table and a lamp, unlit. A wide bed draped in blue and brown and at the foot of it, sat tailor-fashion, Ysabel, in a white chemise, and soft white leg-warmers thickly rumpled. “Starling,” she says, with a smile.
“My Queen,” says the Starling, a shadow there by yellow Iona, black jeans, black sweatshirt, the hood of it up. “This is not our usual Thursday,” she says, in not much more than a whisper.
“This isn’t a Thursday,” says Ysabel, nodding to Iona, who steps out, closing the door behind her. “This is a whole weekend, if you’d like.”
“But I must dance, ma’am,” says the Starling. “Today and tonight, at the club, and Saturday – ”
“It has been cleared, with your, manager,” says Ysabel. “You’re free, till Monday.”
“Free to be here, with you,” says the Starling. And then, “If it’s just to be the two of us?” Her words worn thin.
“If you’d like,” says Ysabel. “Or, step back through that door. The Chariot will happily take you anywhere in the city you may wish to go.”
The Starling reaches for the strap of the black gym bag slung from her shoulder. “I don’t mind,” she says, “being with you. I’ll just go change,” but “No,” says Ysabel, quickly, “Starling, no. Put that down. Sit with me.”
“My Queen,” says the Starling. “I am not who I am, when I’m with you.”
“Please,” says Ysabel. “Sit.”
The gym bag slumps to the speckled brown carpet. Stepping over, the Starling stands a moment before the foot of that bed, and Ysabel sat there, smiling up, but then she turns, the Starling, and finds the yellow chair behind her, and sits, a darkness in that weak light.
“I’m glad you came,” says Ysabel.
“My Queen desired it,” says the Starling.
“I thought,” says Ysabel, looking away. “I’d thought today that I might dance for you. I have danced, you know. At a party. She said I was quite good.”
“Of course,” says the Starling.
“I settled on an outfit,” says Ysabel, looking down at herself, “nothing too elaborate,” and “Good,” says the Starling, “but,” says Ysabel, “I’ve been flummoxed by my lips. What should the color be?” A hand, lifted to her mouth, her hair, “White?” she says. “To go with the ensemble? Or would that be too much? Would a simple red be enough?”
“No one pays attention to the lipstick,” says the Starling.
“You do,” says Ysabel, quickly, even sharply, and then, “You take such care, with yours.”
That hood shifts, down, to one side, dim light passing over her chin, the tip of her nose. “White’s better for the stage,” she says. “Too bold for such close quarters.”
“A simple red it is.”
“Your majesty is sad,” says the Starling, then. “Why should that be?”
“I,” says Ysabel, shoulders lifting, and her chin, a retort swelling but then suddenly pricked, deflating, and she looks away. “Affairs of the city,” she says.
“Not the heart, then?” says the Starling. “Nor the hips?”
Ysabel untucks herself, a bare foot lowered to the carpet, and her hands on the edge of the bed. “Tell me,” she says. “Do you know the smell, of blood?”
That shadow sits up. “I do, ma’am,” says the Starling.
“She sleeps,” Ysabel’s saying. “Peacefully. Her wound is poulticed with a fief’s portion. The bleeding’s long since stopped, but,” and she takes in a deep breath, shivering at the top of it, a sigh, “wherever I go in those rooms I still can smell it, that – tang, like an armor hot from the sun, and I,” but the Starling’s standing, stepping over, she kneels at the foot of the bed, reaches for a hand that Ysabel lifts away, “here I am,” she says, “holed up in a hotel across town.”
The Starling sits back on her heels. “Would you rather go to her?” but Ysabel’s shaking her head, “The Mason,” she says, “watches over her. She wants for nothing. I am,” but then she stops, and the Starling catches her hand, draws it down, covers it with her own. Ysabel says, “My brother once told me,” but then she stops again, blinking rapidly, looking down at the Starling looking up from under her black hood. “He was once a little boy,” says Ysabel. “Did you know that?”
“The King,” says the Starling, “yes, ma’am, of course. I remember those days.”
“Not even a Prince, just an infant, he came to me, in the little garden, and took my hand, and asked me, sister, why are you crying?” Turning her hand in the Starling’s hand, taking hold of it, squeezing. “And I said, because I do not wish to wed. But I am the Bride, I said, and one day a King will come, and I must take his hand. Whether I will or no, I must, but he,” looking away, “he swore to me, then and there, most earnestly, that he would one day be the King, that I might never need take anyone’s hand.”
The Starling says, “And he did just that.”
“My brother,” says Ysabel, “the King, this,” and her eyes close, the lashes of them shining, “city,” she says, and her mouth closes about another, unsaid word, she swallows, and a lick at her lips. “Jo,” she says.
“My Queen,” says the Starling. “I will go, and change, and dance for you, to take your mind,” but “No,” says Ysabel, leaning forward, her hands on the Starling’s shoulders, “do not change, do not dress, do not perform,” lifting a hand, right to the very hem of that hood, but then pulled back, withdrawn. “I would see you just as you are,” she says, her hands once more in her lap.
“But, my lady,” says the Starling, and she reaches up to draw back that hood. “I am always as I am.” Black hair uncurled, slicked back, clipped down to stubble along her temples, about those ears. Her cheeks, the line of that jaw. The nose. Those eyes, only a hazeled hint of green. Thin lips unpainted, upturned, parting as Ysabel leans close to say, “And you are with me,” and then a feathery kiss, tugging at the Starling’s hands, lifting, the Starling who stands up before her, and her hands fall to the Starling’s hips, rough black denim, the belt loops, her thumb, the wide leather belt, looking up, those green eyes. She yanks at the bulky black sweatshirt, “Get this off,” she says, and the Starling lifts it up and off and tosses it aside. Bare now from the waist up, and the torso of her lean and long, and her long arms sinewy lowering, curling, Ysabel’s darkly hands caught up against the smooth pale chest of her by those wide white hands, and the backs of them snarled with thick blue veins.
“Now would you have me go and change?” murmurs the Starling.
“But you are beautiful,” says Ysabel, slipping her hands free, reaching for the tongue of the belt. The buckle jangles. “Majesty,” says the Starling, “I am many things, but,” and a gasp, at the kiss pressed there below her shadowed navel, as those black jeans loosen, lop, as Ysabel’s fingers dip within to uncurl a palely slender cock, and a stroke for the lengthening lift of it, “oh,” says the Starling, “my Queen, you needn’t,” as her hand cups Ysabel’s face.
“But do you want me to,” says Ysabel, and the Starling, shivering, nods. “The principles, I should think,” says Ysabel, “are essentially the same?” And a lick of a kiss for the tip of it, there on her palm.

Pinned to the pole a mulching bark of posters, flyers, handbills, postcards, lapped and shingled one over another, rain-dimpled, sun-faded, twisted, torn, defaced, Thrash or Die, April Showers Burlesque, Snap! at the Holocene, Anodyne Presents, Missing Dog, Laughing Horse, Drum Circle Saturday Rain or Shine, Cinco de Mayo on the Waterfront, big black letters on an enormous sheet, Grupo Samurjay, Grupo Maravilla, Los Supremos de Los Hermanos Flores, Woodburn Rocks. As the bus pulls away she’s pushing back her black hair looking up toward the top of that slithery bristling treeline, there where handfuls of old notices have been ripped away leaving crowded dozens of denuded staples, glinting, by a metal sign that says No Parking This Block, a relatively fresh sheet of goldenrod paper, mad black scribbles limning a dancer, a single eye of bright green ink. She reaches up, to the pull-tabs fluttering the bottom of it, each printed with only an elaborately arabesqued question mark. Her other hand holds fast a black leather knapsack slung from the shoulder of her slick black jacket. Her glasses with thick black frames. With a sudden yank she rips the handbill down.
A broad porch with four front doors set one right next to another, and she unlocks, slips through the third of them, and up an immediate steep staircase, narrow between dark walls, unlit, that yellow page bright in her hand. Around the wall at the top of the stairs through an open room a couch the floor before it piled with cardboard boxes into a long hall once painted white, some time ago, lit by daylight seeping in from somewhere else. At the end of it a dark room, curtains drawn, and she closes the door behind her, a shadow in the shadows. Flump of the knapsack, dropped to the floor, creaking footstep, the thick click of a switch. Light blares from naked bulbs in the fixture in the middle of the ceiling, pink springs from the walls all whorled curlicues and faded bouquets, the bed there, skewed bedclothes striped dull brown and beige, and on the floor at the foot of it a great conical pile knee-high or more of gleaming golden dust.
She steps around it, jacket half-unzipped. A ridge of the pile has settled, slumped, dust trailed over the floor away from it, and the goldenrod poster drops, crumpled, from the hand she’s lifting to her throat, to the bit of black lace tied there. Steps back, around the bed. She grabs a little hand broom from the nightstand. Kneels down by the pile. Begins to sweep up the goldstuff, careful with each thread and grain.

Eyelids a-twitch, lips parting just to say not even a whisper, maybe a number, counting, nine or ten, eleven, those lids blink open over mud-colored eyes that swivel, narrow, try to focus, a gleaming edge there, mirror-bright, shifting as she blinks the length of it flat and smooth and slender, somehow deep within it coiling whorls of light and dark chased up and down a shallow groove that cleanly stretches up and up to a glittering net there on the pillow, wiry strands that knot a cage about a simple hilt she jerks away, kicks back sitting up, “Shit,” she says, as the sword’s tangled in the sheets, teetering at the edge of the futon. She’s bent over, thin white T-shirt, wine-red hair, rubbing her shin, a thin dark line of blood beading down by her ankle, “Shit,” she says, again. Snatching the hilt she whips the blade free from the sheets, “this fucking,” but it turns in her hand, a wrench and away it flies across the room to crack and a wibble it’s stabbed the white wall there by the plain black scabbard, hung from a nail, and the painted skull-mask also, the mane of it stirred by that thrust. Jo blinks. “Okay,” she says, to herself.
Without, the hallway’s dark, the little lights strung along the ceiling unlit. The kitchen beyond is empty, only glancing daylight and shadows. Jo leans over to knock at the door across the hall, “Ysabel?” she says, turning the knob. The room within all yellow and white, gauzy curtains, big bed neatly made, the armoire shut, and nothing draped over the dressing screen in the corner. “Ysabel?” says Jo again, but something, she looks down. Something lightly, barely there, faintly wisps, like down, like ash, falling from, brushing her foot, past her knee, caught there in the hem of her T-shirt, falling from, she lifts it, peering down at her belly beneath, and the line that climbs it packed with an ashen crust and a last few spangles of gold and, she touches it crumbling, flaking away, the pink skin taut beneath.
Back against the jamb. Dropping the hem of the shirt her hand to her breast, and quick wincing shallow breaths. Lurching up across and over to the dresser, a bouquet of heavy-headed peonies pink and yellow, she grabs a small brass box and pries it open, frees a cigarette, and a ragged book of matches.
The hall, the back room, dark, the back door and out, outside, out in the grass, under the sky, sunlight and blue sky, and glowering clouds behind, white and blue and grey and blue and greenly black, swollen with the coming rain. Fitting the cigarette to her lips but even as she opens the matchbook she’s falling to her knees in the lushly green, soft grass out to the parapets to either side, and she coughs up a sob, another, doubled over on her shaking shuddering self, her hand a fist to her chest.
The cigarette falls white to the grass before her. Feathers of grey-white ash caught about it, and sparks of gold.
A call behind her, muffled by walls and doors. Sitting up she catches, holds her breath. Swallows. A slam back there, distant, bump of a footfall, she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and leans forward getting her feet under herself but the back door bangs open boot-thump someone shouting and she springs up turns her arm flung out the sword
The sword in her hand –
Her hand, her arm extended shoulder dropped her torso sidelong and her front foot planted, off leg leaned back straight and true, off hand slung back to balance the thrust that’s ended sword-tip snagged in a corner of his unzipped shortwaisted jacket yanked up one side he’s twisted, turned away from it, both arms flung up and alarm gently folding his face.
“Oh God,” says Jo, dropping the blade, the ring of it soft on the grass.
“You’re awake,” says Luys, lowering his arms. Brushing the front of his soft brown jacket, his finger finding the hole punched there. “Your coat,” says Jo, “I’m so, sorry,” but “No sin espinas,” he’s saying, almost to himself, holding out a hand, “You are awake,” he says, but she rushes past that hand to crash into him tumbling her arms about him there on the rooftop under the clouds, she’s kissing his throat and then as he lowers his head she looks up to kiss his mouth, his mouth.
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2023.06.09 14:00 Vishwakarmainteriors Luxury Home Design in 2023 luxury home design

Luxury Home Design in 2023 luxury home design
luxury home design
Luxury homes are no longer just a status symbol; they have evolved into personal sanctuaries that reflect our style and offer a haven of relaxation in today's fast-paced world. As we enter 2023, the world of luxury interior design is set to embrace opulent bedroom designs that embody grandeur, elegance, and tranquillity. Vishwakarma Architects and Interior Designers, a leading interior design firm in Delhi, presents a curated collection of awe-inspiring bedrooms that will define the epitome of luxury and sophistication in the coming year.
The hallmark of opulent bedroom designs lies in the seamless blend of grandeur and elegance. From ornate chandeliers to luxurious fabrics and intricate detailing, every element exudes sophistication. Picture a sumptuous four-poster bed adorned with plush velvet drapes, complemented by a statement-making crystal chandelier that casts a soft, ethereal glow. These opulent touches create a sense of grandeur and set the stage for an indulgent sleep sanctuary. In India, where luxury home design is thriving, incorporating such elements will elevate your bedroom into a truly opulent space.
Impeccable craftsmanship and discerning materials are synonymous with luxury. In 2023, we expect to witness a surge in the use of rich natural materials like marble, gold accents, and exotic woods. These materials add depth, texture, and exclusivity to the bedroom. By integrating exquisite bespoke furniture pieces, meticulously crafted custom-built wardrobes, and intricately carved headboards, a one-of-a-kind ambiance that resonates with your exquisite taste is curated. Luxury home design in India can be elevated by incorporating these elements, showcasing impeccable craftsmanship and creating a space that exudes luxury.

Luxury Appartment Kundli, Haryana
While opulence takes center stage, creating a tranquil retreat within the bedroom remains essential. Balancing lavishness with serenity is crucial for promoting relaxation and rejuvenation. Soothing color palettes, soft lighting, and carefully curated decor are utilized to cultivate a sense of calmness. Integrating natural elements like indoor plants, cascading water features, and panoramic views blurs the boundaries between the indoors and outdoors, bringing a sense of tranquility to the space. The serenity offered by luxury home design in India ensures a restful and peaceful atmosphere in your bedroom.
The rapid advancements in technology have revolutionized the luxury bedroom experience. Smart and integrated technology seamlessly blends with opulent designs to enhance convenience and comfort. Imagine controlling your entire bedroom environment with a simple voice command – adjusting the lighting, temperature, and even playing your favorite music. Automated window treatments, hidden television screens, and wireless charging stations are seamlessly integrated into the design, elevating the overall experience to new heights of opulence and convenience. Embracing technology in luxury home design in India creates a futuristic and sophisticated bedroom.
Personalization is at the heart of luxury, and it is no different when it comes to bedroom design. Your luxury bedroom should reflect your unique preferences and desires, creating a truly bespoke retreat. By closely collaborating with our clients, Vishwakarma Architects and Interior Designers take the time to understand your lifestyle, aspirations, and aesthetic preferences. Whether you envision a contemporary and minimalist approach or a classic and timeless ambiance, every aspect is meticulously tailored to resonate with your soul. Hand-selecting the finest materials and curating custom details, no effort is spared in creating a personalized haven that brings your vision to life. In India, luxury home design is elevated when it showcases impeccable craftsmanship and attention to detail, reflecting your distinct style and taste.

Commercial Office Art n Glass Office, Delhi
While walls and floors often take the spotlight in bedroom design, the power of a stunning statement ceiling should not be overlooked. Elevate your luxury bedroom by adorning the ceiling with intricate moldings, decorative plasterwork, or captivating wallpaper designs. Metallic finishes or reflective surfaces create a sense of opulence and depth in the space. A visually striking ceiling draws the eyes upward, adding a sense of drama and grandeur to the overall design. Incorporating statement ceilings in luxury home design in India adds a unique touch to the bedroom, making it a focal point of elegance and sophistication.
Take luxury to the next level by incorporating a spa-like ensuite bathroom into your bedroom design. Transform your master suite into a private oasis of relaxation and indulgence. Install a freestanding soaking tub, a rain shower with multiple jets, and luxurious fixtures and finishes. Consider features like heated floors, ambient lighting, and smart-tech controls for the ultimate pampering experience. Blurring the boundaries between the bedroom and ensuite bathroom creates a seamless flow and adds an extra layer of luxury to your retreat. Luxury home design in India can be elevated by merging the bedroom and ensuite bathroom into a cohesive and opulent space.
At Vishwakarma Architects and Interior Designers, luxury is regarded as an art form. The expertise lies in transforming spaces into extraordinary experiences that inspire and delight. From conceptualization to execution, our talented designers work meticulously to bring your vision to life, surpassing your expectations. If you are ready to embark on a journey of opulence and create your dream luxury bedroom design in 2023, Vishwakarma Architects and Interior Designers are here to assist you. Indulge in the allure of opulent bedroom designs and elevate your lifestyle to new heights. Unveil the essence of luxury in 2023 with Vishwakarma Architects and Interior Designers.
To learn more about luxury home design in India and how Vishwakarma Architects and Interior Designers can transform your space into a breathtaking sanctuary, visit our website: https://www.vishwakarmainteriors.com or call us. Discover the world of opulent bedroom designs and experience the epitome of luxury and sophistication in 2023.
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2023.06.09 12:43 MathematicianSea9857 Chandak Nostalgia is proposing Luxury Flats in Malad

Chandak Nostalgia is proposing Luxury Flats in Malad
Chandak Nostalgia Malad
Chandak Nostalgia, situated in the bustling suburb of Malad in Mumbai, is a residential project that encapsulates the essence of old-world charm while offering modern amenities. The project, developed by Chandak Group, aims to create a haven where residents can relive their cherished memories while enjoying the comforts of contemporary living. With its thoughtful design, strategic location, and focus on community, Chandak Nostalgia has become a sought-after destination for those seeking a nostalgic yet vibrant lifestyle. In this article, we will delve into the details of this unique residential project, exploring its features, amenities, and the overall experience it offers. Codename Nostalgia enjoys a prime location in Malad, one of Mumbai's rapidly developing suburbs. With its proximity to essential facilities like schools, hospitals, shopping malls, and entertainment centers, the project ensures convenience for its residents. The well-connected transport network allows easy access to various parts of the city, making commuting hassle-free. Whether it's the commercial hubs of Andheri or the pristine beaches of Juhu, everything is within reach of Chandak Nostalgia. The architectural design of Chandak Nostalgia is a blend of classic aesthetics and contemporary sensibilities. The exteriors of the buildings exude an old-world charm, reminiscent of the colonial era, with ornate balconies, large windows, and elegant façades. The interiors are thoughtfully crafted, combining spaciousness and functionality. Each apartment is designed to maximize natural light and ventilation, creating a warm and welcoming ambiance. Chandak Nostalgia offers a range of residential options to suit different preferences and requirements. From compact yet cozy 1 BHK apartments to spacious 2 BHK and 3 BHK units, there's something for everyone. The apartments are meticulously designed to optimize space utilization and provide a comfortable living experience. The project boasts a wide range of amenities that cater to the needs of all age groups. Residents can enjoy a refreshing dip in the swimming pool or engage in a workout session at the well-equipped fitness center. For those seeking relaxation, there are landscaped gardens and jogging tracks where one can unwind amidst nature. Additionally, a dedicated children's play area, indoor games room, and multipurpose hall ensure that every resident's recreational needs are met. One of the standout features of Codename Nostalgia is its focus on fostering a sense of community among its residents.

https://preview.redd.it/xtutae1n1z4b1.png?width=1160&format=png&auto=webp&s=3c2e286541809e951110ab952e72aa6e5d6850e4
The project provides various communal spaces where neighbors can interact, creating a vibrant social fabric. Whether it's the community hall for celebrations or the landscaped seating areas for casual conversations, the project encourages residents to connect and build lasting relationships. Regular community events and activities are organized, ranging from cultural festivals to sports tournaments, creating opportunities for residents to come together and celebrate. The project also features 24x7 security and a dedicated management team that ensures the well-being and comfort of all residents. Chandak Nostalgia Malad recognizes the importance of sustainable living and incorporates eco-friendly features into its design. The buildings are designed to maximize natural light and ventilation, reducing the dependence on artificial lighting and air conditioning. Rainwater harvesting systems are installed to conserve water, and solar panels are utilized to generate renewable energy. These initiatives not only reduce the environmental impact but also contribute to cost savings for the residents.
Visit us:- https://chandak-nostalgia.newlaunchproject.in/
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2023.06.09 12:22 tareekpetareek Byju's got sued by its lenders in the US. Then it sued its lenders in the US. Here's a fun read about what happened

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders (my newsletter Boring Money -- please visit the link if you'd like to subscribe and receive similar posts in your inbox)
--
Four years ago I read an article in The Ken titled The making of a loan crisis at Byju’s. The gist of the story was that Byju’s was an edtech doing phenomenally well selling its digital courses to parents of young students. But these courses were expensive and these parents were poor. So it was also selling them loans to buy these courses. Only, without telling them. Parents would expect a course (which could be cancelled) but would end up with a loan (which couldn’t be cancelled).
Three days ago, Byju’s went to court in New York. Here’s the headline from TechCrunch: Byju’s sues ‘predatory’ lenders on $1.2B term loan, won’t make further payments.
Byju’s is a company that, arguably, made a business out of giving out predatory loans. Now it’s sued its own lenders and accused them of being predatory. I’m not saying that this is poetic justice but.. okay, scratch that. This is poetic justice! If Shakespeare were a finance writer this is the kind of stuff he would come up with.
Everyone wants to lend to Byju’s
In 2021, interest rates were low, loans were cheap. Tech startups were doing great, edtech startups were crushing it. Byju’s, not one to be left behind, had raised a lot of money but money was cheap so it also wanted to borrow. It wanted a $500 million loan from lenders in the US, which it wanted to use to acquire companies there. Instead, it ended up borrowing more than double—$1.2 billion—because lenders practically wanted to throw money at this overachieving edtech startup from India. [1]
The way a term loan such as this works is:
  1. A company goes to an investment bank and asks for a loan
  2. The bank syndicates this loan to investors, who become the lenders. Everyone comes together in a room and negotiates the specifics of the loan (which can be quite complex, as we’ll see)
  3. The loan goes through and everyone’s happy. Presumably, the company likes its lenders, the lenders like the company
  4. The original investors might sell the loans they own to other investors. The company’s only talking to an administrative agent representing the lenders, so over time it might not even know who its lenders are
In November 2021, prominent investment managers such as Blackstone, Fidelity and GIC had gone overboard to lend money to Byju’s. By September 2022, Byju’s lenders were desperately selling [2] their loans at a 36% discount on the principal. (Today, Byju’s debt is at a 20% discount, which is also bad.)
It’s likely that Blackstone, Fidelity and other of the OG lenders aren’t Byju’s’ lenders any more. They’ve almost certainly sold off their loans at a loss. Better get paid something than get paid nothing.
Dealers of the dead
If a company’s debt is being sold at a 36% discount, it’s because investors think that the company is unlikely to repay its loans. If you buy such a loan, you potentially stand to gain a lot—because of the discount—but well, you might also just lose everything.
If you’re a regular investment management company, like Blackstone, you don’t want to invest in such a loan. Your investors gave you this money to get predictable returns. If they wanted risk, they’d ask you to buy stocks. You don’t want to get into a fight with your borrower. If you feel they will not pay you back, you take a loss, sell the loans, move on.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, your entire business is to buy such distressed loans from regular investment managers like Blackstone. You’re going to get nasty borrowers who are unlikely to want to repay their loans but that’s okay. Because you’re nasty too. You spend less time on financial models, more in courts and around lawyers. You like to fight to get your money back. Sometimes you might lose, but the times you win, you win big. The wins cover your losses and some more.
Blackstone and the others sold Byju’s’ loans in desperation, and they were almost certainly bought by distressed debt investors. We don’t know who they are exactly, but Byju’s has indicated that one of them is Redwood Capital, a New York-based distressed debt investor.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, this is how it works:
  1. You get a loan for super cheap
  2. If the company repays its loan, great! You make a lot of money
  3. But the company isn’t likely to repay, which is why you got the loan for cheap in the first place
  4. So it’s in your best interest to not let the company die a slow death. Instead, you want to kill the company quick. You take the company to court ASAP and take all the money you’re owed while it’s still there
If the new investors waited, say, for a year, and took Byju’s to court after it had actually defaulted on its repayments—there might not be any money left! Byju’s may have given all the money to Lionel Messi or maybe laundered it away someplace the lenders wouldn’t find it. If you’re a distressed debt investor, you want to get Byju’s to court and get the court to force it to do whatever it takes to pay you back.
Last month, Byju’s’ new lenders sued Byju’s in the Delaware Court of Chancery [3]. We’ll get to the official reasons for this lawsuit in a bit, but what’s important is that Byju’s was not being sued because it defaulted on a payment. It hadn’t. It was being sued because the distressed debt investors expect it to default sooner or later, and they would prefer dealing with it sooner rather than later.
Lenders go for the kill
Usually, the finer details of corporate loans such as Byju’s’ aren’t public. But thanks to the multiple lawsuits we know quite a bit here.
The loan was made to Byju’s’ US entity and it was secured with guarantees from multiple Byju’s companies. From Byju’s’ lawsuit this week against its creditors (which I will get to), here are the guarantors:
  1. Byju’s entities in India and Singapore
  2. Byju’s’ US and Singapore acquisitions; companies including Oros, Epic, Great Learning, and Neuron
  3. Whitehat India, Byju’s’ famous Indian acquisition
That’s a lot of companies guaranteeing a loan! Byju’s’ Indian entity is the parent of all the other guarantor companies, so having it as a guarantor should’ve been enough. I guess the rationale here was that it would be nice to have some non-Indian companies in the mix too, we do know how efficiently Indian courts work.
Apart from Byju’s the parent company itself, Whitehat was the only other Indian company guaranteeing this loan. The problem was that Whitehat itself, on paper, had negative net worth. It had probably taken loans of its own and did not have enough assets to cover them. In practice, this would be irrelevant, because Whitehat was owned by Byju’s and it would cover any of Whitehat’s liabilities. But, apparently, RBI regulations require Indian companies with negative net worth to take its approval before guaranteeing a loan. So even though Whitehat was a guarantor, the guarantee was meaningless until RBI granted its approval.
Yeah, well, RBI didn’t grant its approval. From the lawsuit:
Plaintiffs, Borrower, and Lenders had a call on or around October 6, 2022, to discuss the Whitehat Guarantee. In a good faith effort to negate any impact of the new regulations, Plaintiffs and the Borrower offered to move all assets out of Whitehat India into other subsidiaries of the Parent Guarantor that are Guarantors to the Credit Agreement, or are owned by Guarantors of the Credit Agreement. Lenders rejected this proposal without justification.
In October 2022, after Byju’s’ debt was already sold to the distressed debt investors, the company spoke to its lenders and informed them that it was unable to get RBI’s approval for Whitehat to be a guarantor. Instead, it offered to move Whitehat’s assets into other companies and then use those companies to guarantee the loan. Which would really have been the same thing. But the lenders refused! Why?!
Continuing from the lawsuit:
Lenders subsequently asserted that an event of default under Section 8.1(e) of the Credit Agreement (an “Event of Default”) had occurred due to the failure to procure the Whitehat Guarantee.
Oh, that’s why. Byju’s’ lenders—distressed debt investors that wanted Byju’s dead ASAP—used the fact that Whitehat couldn’t be a guarantor of this loan to claim a default and use it as a reason to take Byju’s to court in the US. Honestly, I’m impressed. The Whitehat guarantee was redundant to begin with, but the lenders had found an out and their official reason #1 to take Byju’s to court.
Oh, there’s another thing. In June 2022, The Ken reported that Byju’s’ financials for 2021 had been held up by its auditors because of certain, umm, creative accounting. By this time, Byju’s should have ideally filed even its 2022 financials. It was very late! From the lawsuit:
The FY’21 Audit was delivered to the Lenders on August 30, 2022. It did not contain a “going concern” qualification or any similar qualifications about the Parent Guarantor’s ability to continue into the future. However, the FY’22 Audit could not begin until the FY’21 Audit had been completed, and the Parent Guarantor’s business has continued to grow rapidly
Byju’s’ 2021 financials were held up because auditors weren’t giving the company their go ahead, so of course its 2022 financials were held up as well.
On or around August 29, 2022, Shearman & Sterling, LLP (“S&S”), counsel for GLAS, sent a letter to Byju’s Alpha and Think & Learn requesting certain financial disclosures from Plaintiffs and Borrower, and asserting that the failure to deliver this financial information was a breach of the Credit Agreement. ... Rather than actually suffering any damage from the delayed FY’22 audit, Lenders opportunistically used this unintentional and non-material delay to exert pressure on Plaintiffs and the Borrower to extract onerous economic concessions.
I love it! Byju’s’ financials were delayed. Its agreement with the original lenders said that the company must share its audited financials with them. Byju’s wasn’t able to do that. The lenders found their official reason #2 to take Byju’s to court.
Byju’s sets up an offence
Before the lenders sued Byju’s last month, Byju’s tried its best to negotiate a deal. It gave the lenders an assurance of the company’s financial health, gave them concessions worth “tens of millions of dollars” and requested (pleaded) to take back their claims of Byju’s defaulting.
The lenders refused. They asked for either the full principal back or two-thirds of it, with an increment of 7% (!!) in the interest rate. Byju’s, of course, said no.
At this point, Byju’s knew that the lenders weren’t going to negotiate realistically. So it prepared its own offence. From the lawsuit:
The Credit Agreement prohibits transfers or assignments of the Lenders’ interests in the Term Loans to “Disqualified Lenders.” The Credit Agreement includes in its definition of Disqualified Lender “[a]ny [] Person (including an Affiliate or Approved Fund of a Lender) whose primary activity is the trading or acquisition of distressed debt,” and “those banks, financial institutions and other Persons separately identified by name . . . on or before the syndication . . . (which may be updated . . . from time to time . . .)”
In its agreement with the original lenders, Byju’s had put in a clause restricting its loan from being transferred to distressed debt investors. This is a risky clause to agree with, because it’s only these folks that buy loans that turn sour, but the original lenders had gone with it.
On information and belief, the entire course of Lenders’, and Defendant’s, bad-faith conduct has been driven by these distressed-debt lenders, who were never meant to have been lenders in the first place, and who acted with the intent of causing harm to Borrower and Plaintiffs. Meanwhile, Borrowers and Plaintiffs were initially unaware that the lenders were in fact being controlled by distressed debt dealers, and were therefore unable to take action to prevent their bad-faith plan from being implemented.
In its lawsuit this week, the crux of Byju’s’ argument is based on the fact that its loan is owned by distressed debt investors who were not eligible to be owning its debt in the first place. Also interesting is that Byju’s doesn’t seem to know who these lenders are. In its post-lawsuit statement, Byju’s named Redwood as one of the lenders, but it’s not named anywhere in the lawsuit.
Now what?
If push comes to shove, does Byju’s have the cash to pay off its lenders?
Last month, Byju’s transferred $500 million out of its US entity. The lenders had filed their lawsuit and there was a chance the court would freeze Byju’s’ US entity’s assets, so this was a precautionary move. So Byju’s has this $500 million. But that seems about it. Byju’s has been in the news saying that it’s trying to raise $700 million to pay off its debt. Yeah, between the horrible edtech market and the colourful lawsuits Byju’s is in, good luck with getting investors to donate their money to Byju’s.
But of course, Byju’s is now suing its lenders too. It does have an agreement that says that its debt can’t be held by distressed debt investors. So it’s not a frivolous suit.
Can Byju’s win? Sure. It would still have to pay its debt eventually. And it’s not straightforward. There are probably tens or even hundreds of lenders. It’s apparent that the distressed debt investors are the guiding force behind the lenders’ lawsuit, but it’s definitely not necessary that they form the majority of the lenders. In which case, Byju’s’ whole lawsuit falls apart.
The lenders are saying Byju’s defaulted by not keeping its part of the agreement, even though it had technically paid its dues. [4] Byju’s is saying that the lenders shouldn’t be the lenders in the first place and must be disqualified. We’ll see who’s right.
Footnotes
[1] It was a 5-year loan with a floating interest rate of 6% over Libor. Think of it as 6% over this magical interest-rate called Libor that some fancy-pants banks set amongst themselves everyday. Back in November 2021, Libor was at 0.25% and this was a 6.86% interest loan for Byju’s (the floor for Libor was 0.75%). Today, Libor is at about 5.64% and it’s an 11.6% loan.
[2] Multiple reasons for the investors to sell. One, interest rates went up and cash became more dear. If they had money stuck with Byju’s, it was money not being lent out to someone else. Second, edtech all around the world was in trouble. Kids were back in school and people didn’t think much of them anymore. Third, Byju’s as a company was showing its red flags.
[3] What a cool name!
[4] Until now, that is. Byju’s filed its lawsuit this week the same day it was supposed to make a $40 million interest payment.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders
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2023.06.09 12:22 tareekpetareek Byju's got sued by its lenders in the US. Then it sued its lenders in the US. Here's a fun read about what happened

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders (my newsletter Boring Money -- please visit the link if you'd like to subscribe and receive similar posts in your inbox)
--
Four years ago I read an article in The Ken titled The making of a loan crisis at Byju’s. The gist of the story was that Byju’s was an edtech doing phenomenally well selling its digital courses to parents of young students. But these courses were expensive and these parents were poor. So it was also selling them loans to buy these courses. Only, without telling them. Parents would expect a course (which could be cancelled) but would end up with a loan (which couldn’t be cancelled).
Three days ago, Byju’s went to court in New York. Here’s the headline from TechCrunch: Byju’s sues ‘predatory’ lenders on $1.2B term loan, won’t make further payments.
Byju’s is a company that, arguably, made a business out of giving out predatory loans. Now it’s sued its own lenders and accused them of being predatory. I’m not saying that this is poetic justice but.. okay, scratch that. This is poetic justice! If Shakespeare were a finance writer this is the kind of stuff he would come up with.
Everyone wants to lend to Byju’s
In 2021, interest rates were low, loans were cheap. Tech startups were doing great, edtech startups were crushing it. Byju’s, not one to be left behind, had raised a lot of money but money was cheap so it also wanted to borrow. It wanted a $500 million loan from lenders in the US, which it wanted to use to acquire companies there. Instead, it ended up borrowing more than double—$1.2 billion—because lenders practically wanted to throw money at this overachieving edtech startup from India. [1]
The way a term loan such as this works is:
  1. A company goes to an investment bank and asks for a loan
  2. The bank syndicates this loan to investors, who become the lenders. Everyone comes together in a room and negotiates the specifics of the loan (which can be quite complex, as we’ll see)
  3. The loan goes through and everyone’s happy. Presumably, the company likes its lenders, the lenders like the company
  4. The original investors might sell the loans they own to other investors. The company’s only talking to an administrative agent representing the lenders, so over time it might not even know who its lenders are
In November 2021, prominent investment managers such as Blackstone, Fidelity and GIC had gone overboard to lend money to Byju’s. By September 2022, Byju’s lenders were desperately selling [2] their loans at a 36% discount on the principal. (Today, Byju’s debt is at a 20% discount, which is also bad.)
It’s likely that Blackstone, Fidelity and other of the OG lenders aren’t Byju’s’ lenders any more. They’ve almost certainly sold off their loans at a loss. Better get paid something than get paid nothing.
Dealers of the dead
If a company’s debt is being sold at a 36% discount, it’s because investors think that the company is unlikely to repay its loans. If you buy such a loan, you potentially stand to gain a lot—because of the discount—but well, you might also just lose everything.
If you’re a regular investment management company, like Blackstone, you don’t want to invest in such a loan. Your investors gave you this money to get predictable returns. If they wanted risk, they’d ask you to buy stocks. You don’t want to get into a fight with your borrower. If you feel they will not pay you back, you take a loss, sell the loans, move on.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, your entire business is to buy such distressed loans from regular investment managers like Blackstone. You’re going to get nasty borrowers who are unlikely to want to repay their loans but that’s okay. Because you’re nasty too. You spend less time on financial models, more in courts and around lawyers. You like to fight to get your money back. Sometimes you might lose, but the times you win, you win big. The wins cover your losses and some more.
Blackstone and the others sold Byju’s’ loans in desperation, and they were almost certainly bought by distressed debt investors. We don’t know who they are exactly, but Byju’s has indicated that one of them is Redwood Capital, a New York-based distressed debt investor.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, this is how it works:
  1. You get a loan for super cheap
  2. If the company repays its loan, great! You make a lot of money
  3. But the company isn’t likely to repay, which is why you got the loan for cheap in the first place
  4. So it’s in your best interest to not let the company die a slow death. Instead, you want to kill the company quick. You take the company to court ASAP and take all the money you’re owed while it’s still there
If the new investors waited, say, for a year, and took Byju’s to court after it had actually defaulted on its repayments—there might not be any money left! Byju’s may have given all the money to Lionel Messi or maybe laundered it away someplace the lenders wouldn’t find it. If you’re a distressed debt investor, you want to get Byju’s to court and get the court to force it to do whatever it takes to pay you back.
Last month, Byju’s’ new lenders sued Byju’s in the Delaware Court of Chancery [3]. We’ll get to the official reasons for this lawsuit in a bit, but what’s important is that Byju’s was not being sued because it defaulted on a payment. It hadn’t. It was being sued because the distressed debt investors expect it to default sooner or later, and they would prefer dealing with it sooner rather than later.
Lenders go for the kill
Usually, the finer details of corporate loans such as Byju’s’ aren’t public. But thanks to the multiple lawsuits we know quite a bit here.
The loan was made to Byju’s’ US entity and it was secured with guarantees from multiple Byju’s companies. From Byju’s’ lawsuit this week against its creditors (which I will get to), here are the guarantors:
  1. Byju’s entities in India and Singapore
  2. Byju’s’ US and Singapore acquisitions; companies including Oros, Epic, Great Learning, and Neuron
  3. Whitehat India, Byju’s’ famous Indian acquisition
That’s a lot of companies guaranteeing a loan! Byju’s’ Indian entity is the parent of all the other guarantor companies, so having it as a guarantor should’ve been enough. I guess the rationale here was that it would be nice to have some non-Indian companies in the mix too, we do know how efficiently Indian courts work.
Apart from Byju’s the parent company itself, Whitehat was the only other Indian company guaranteeing this loan. The problem was that Whitehat itself, on paper, had negative net worth. It had probably taken loans of its own and did not have enough assets to cover them. In practice, this would be irrelevant, because Whitehat was owned by Byju’s and it would cover any of Whitehat’s liabilities. But, apparently, RBI regulations require Indian companies with negative net worth to take its approval before guaranteeing a loan. So even though Whitehat was a guarantor, the guarantee was meaningless until RBI granted its approval.
Yeah, well, RBI didn’t grant its approval. From the lawsuit:
Plaintiffs, Borrower, and Lenders had a call on or around October 6, 2022, to discuss the Whitehat Guarantee. In a good faith effort to negate any impact of the new regulations, Plaintiffs and the Borrower offered to move all assets out of Whitehat India into other subsidiaries of the Parent Guarantor that are Guarantors to the Credit Agreement, or are owned by Guarantors of the Credit Agreement. Lenders rejected this proposal without justification.
In October 2022, after Byju’s’ debt was already sold to the distressed debt investors, the company spoke to its lenders and informed them that it was unable to get RBI’s approval for Whitehat to be a guarantor. Instead, it offered to move Whitehat’s assets into other companies and then use those companies to guarantee the loan. Which would really have been the same thing. But the lenders refused! Why?!
Continuing from the lawsuit:
Lenders subsequently asserted that an event of default under Section 8.1(e) of the Credit Agreement (an “Event of Default”) had occurred due to the failure to procure the Whitehat Guarantee.
Oh, that’s why. Byju’s’ lenders—distressed debt investors that wanted Byju’s dead ASAP—used the fact that Whitehat couldn’t be a guarantor of this loan to claim a default and use it as a reason to take Byju’s to court in the US. Honestly, I’m impressed. The Whitehat guarantee was redundant to begin with, but the lenders had found an out and their official reason #1 to take Byju’s to court.
Oh, there’s another thing. In June 2022, The Ken reported that Byju’s’ financials for 2021 had been held up by its auditors because of certain, umm, creative accounting. By this time, Byju’s should have ideally filed even its 2022 financials. It was very late! From the lawsuit:
The FY’21 Audit was delivered to the Lenders on August 30, 2022. It did not contain a “going concern” qualification or any similar qualifications about the Parent Guarantor’s ability to continue into the future. However, the FY’22 Audit could not begin until the FY’21 Audit had been completed, and the Parent Guarantor’s business has continued to grow rapidly
Byju’s’ 2021 financials were held up because auditors weren’t giving the company their go ahead, so of course its 2022 financials were held up as well.
On or around August 29, 2022, Shearman & Sterling, LLP (“S&S”), counsel for GLAS, sent a letter to Byju’s Alpha and Think & Learn requesting certain financial disclosures from Plaintiffs and Borrower, and asserting that the failure to deliver this financial information was a breach of the Credit Agreement. ... Rather than actually suffering any damage from the delayed FY’22 audit, Lenders opportunistically used this unintentional and non-material delay to exert pressure on Plaintiffs and the Borrower to extract onerous economic concessions.
I love it! Byju’s’ financials were delayed. Its agreement with the original lenders said that the company must share its audited financials with them. Byju’s wasn’t able to do that. The lenders found their official reason #2 to take Byju’s to court.
Byju’s sets up an offence
Before the lenders sued Byju’s last month, Byju’s tried its best to negotiate a deal. It gave the lenders an assurance of the company’s financial health, gave them concessions worth “tens of millions of dollars” and requested (pleaded) to take back their claims of Byju’s defaulting.
The lenders refused. They asked for either the full principal back or two-thirds of it, with an increment of 7% (!!) in the interest rate. Byju’s, of course, said no.
At this point, Byju’s knew that the lenders weren’t going to negotiate realistically. So it prepared its own offence. From the lawsuit:
The Credit Agreement prohibits transfers or assignments of the Lenders’ interests in the Term Loans to “Disqualified Lenders.” The Credit Agreement includes in its definition of Disqualified Lender “[a]ny [] Person (including an Affiliate or Approved Fund of a Lender) whose primary activity is the trading or acquisition of distressed debt,” and “those banks, financial institutions and other Persons separately identified by name . . . on or before the syndication . . . (which may be updated . . . from time to time . . .)”
In its agreement with the original lenders, Byju’s had put in a clause restricting its loan from being transferred to distressed debt investors. This is a risky clause to agree with, because it’s only these folks that buy loans that turn sour, but the original lenders had gone with it.
On information and belief, the entire course of Lenders’, and Defendant’s, bad-faith conduct has been driven by these distressed-debt lenders, who were never meant to have been lenders in the first place, and who acted with the intent of causing harm to Borrower and Plaintiffs. Meanwhile, Borrowers and Plaintiffs were initially unaware that the lenders were in fact being controlled by distressed debt dealers, and were therefore unable to take action to prevent their bad-faith plan from being implemented.
In its lawsuit this week, the crux of Byju’s’ argument is based on the fact that its loan is owned by distressed debt investors who were not eligible to be owning its debt in the first place. Also interesting is that Byju’s doesn’t seem to know who these lenders are. In its post-lawsuit statement, Byju’s named Redwood as one of the lenders, but it’s not named anywhere in the lawsuit.
Now what?
If push comes to shove, does Byju’s have the cash to pay off its lenders?
Last month, Byju’s transferred $500 million out of its US entity. The lenders had filed their lawsuit and there was a chance the court would freeze Byju’s’ US entity’s assets, so this was a precautionary move. So Byju’s has this $500 million. But that seems about it. Byju’s has been in the news saying that it’s trying to raise $700 million to pay off its debt. Yeah, between the horrible edtech market and the colourful lawsuits Byju’s is in, good luck with getting investors to donate their money to Byju’s.
But of course, Byju’s is now suing its lenders too. It does have an agreement that says that its debt can’t be held by distressed debt investors. So it’s not a frivolous suit.
Can Byju’s win? Sure. It would still have to pay its debt eventually. And it’s not straightforward. There are probably tens or even hundreds of lenders. It’s apparent that the distressed debt investors are the guiding force behind the lenders’ lawsuit, but it’s definitely not necessary that they form the majority of the lenders. In which case, Byju’s’ whole lawsuit falls apart.
The lenders are saying Byju’s defaulted by not keeping its part of the agreement, even though it had technically paid its dues. [4] Byju’s is saying that the lenders shouldn’t be the lenders in the first place and must be disqualified. We’ll see who’s right.
Footnotes
[1] It was a 5-year loan with a floating interest rate of 6% over Libor. Think of it as 6% over this magical interest-rate called Libor that some fancy-pants banks set amongst themselves everyday. Back in November 2021, Libor was at 0.25% and this was a 6.86% interest loan for Byju’s (the floor for Libor was 0.75%). Today, Libor is at about 5.64% and it’s an 11.6% loan.
[2] Multiple reasons for the investors to sell. One, interest rates went up and cash became more dear. If they had money stuck with Byju’s, it was money not being lent out to someone else. Second, edtech all around the world was in trouble. Kids were back in school and people didn’t think much of them anymore. Third, Byju’s as a company was showing its red flags.
[3] What a cool name!
[4] Until now, that is. Byju’s filed its lawsuit this week the same day it was supposed to make a $40 million interest payment.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders
submitted by tareekpetareek to IndianStreetBets [link] [comments]


2023.06.09 12:20 tareekpetareek Byju's got sued by its lenders in the US. Then it sued its lenders in the US. Here's a fun read about what happened

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders (my newsletter Boring Money -- please visit the link if you'd like to subscribe and receive similar posts in your inbox)
--
Four years ago I read an article in The Ken titled The making of a loan crisis at Byju’s. The gist of the story was that Byju’s was an edtech doing phenomenally well selling its digital courses to parents of young students. But these courses were expensive and these parents were poor. So it was also selling them loans to buy these courses. Only, without telling them. Parents would expect a course (which could be cancelled) but would end up with a loan (which couldn’t be cancelled).
Three days ago, Byju’s went to court in New York. Here’s the headline from TechCrunch: Byju’s sues ‘predatory’ lenders on $1.2B term loan, won’t make further payments.
Byju’s is a company that, arguably, made a business out of giving out predatory loans. Now it’s sued its own lenders and accused them of being predatory. I’m not saying that this is poetic justice but.. okay, scratch that. This is poetic justice! If Shakespeare were a finance writer this is the kind of stuff he would come up with.
Everyone wants to lend to Byju’s
In 2021, interest rates were low, loans were cheap. Tech startups were doing great, edtech startups were crushing it. Byju’s, not one to be left behind, had raised a lot of money but money was cheap so it also wanted to borrow. It wanted a $500 million loan from lenders in the US, which it wanted to use to acquire companies there. Instead, it ended up borrowing more than double—$1.2 billion—because lenders practically wanted to throw money at this overachieving edtech startup from India. [1]
The way a term loan such as this works is:
  1. A company goes to an investment bank and asks for a loan
  2. The bank syndicates this loan to investors, who become the lenders. Everyone comes together in a room and negotiates the specifics of the loan (which can be quite complex, as we’ll see)
  3. The loan goes through and everyone’s happy. Presumably, the company likes its lenders, the lenders like the company
  4. The original investors might sell the loans they own to other investors. The company’s only talking to an administrative agent representing the lenders, so over time it might not even know who its lenders are
In November 2021, prominent investment managers such as Blackstone, Fidelity and GIC had gone overboard to lend money to Byju’s. By September 2022, Byju’s lenders were desperately selling [2] their loans at a 36% discount on the principal. (Today, Byju’s debt is at a 20% discount, which is also bad.)
It’s likely that Blackstone, Fidelity and other of the OG lenders aren’t Byju’s’ lenders any more. They’ve almost certainly sold off their loans at a loss. Better get paid something than get paid nothing.
Dealers of the dead
If a company’s debt is being sold at a 36% discount, it’s because investors think that the company is unlikely to repay its loans. If you buy such a loan, you potentially stand to gain a lot—because of the discount—but well, you might also just lose everything.
If you’re a regular investment management company, like Blackstone, you don’t want to invest in such a loan. Your investors gave you this money to get predictable returns. If they wanted risk, they’d ask you to buy stocks. You don’t want to get into a fight with your borrower. If you feel they will not pay you back, you take a loss, sell the loans, move on.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, your entire business is to buy such distressed loans from regular investment managers like Blackstone. You’re going to get nasty borrowers who are unlikely to want to repay their loans but that’s okay. Because you’re nasty too. You spend less time on financial models, more in courts and around lawyers. You like to fight to get your money back. Sometimes you might lose, but the times you win, you win big. The wins cover your losses and some more.
Blackstone and the others sold Byju’s’ loans in desperation, and they were almost certainly bought by distressed debt investors. We don’t know who they are exactly, but Byju’s has indicated that one of them is Redwood Capital, a New York-based distressed debt investor.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, this is how it works:
  1. You get a loan for super cheap
  2. If the company repays its loan, great! You make a lot of money
  3. But the company isn’t likely to repay, which is why you got the loan for cheap in the first place
  4. So it’s in your best interest to not let the company die a slow death. Instead, you want to kill the company quick. You take the company to court ASAP and take all the money you’re owed while it’s still there
If the new investors waited, say, for a year, and took Byju’s to court after it had actually defaulted on its repayments—there might not be any money left! Byju’s may have given all the money to Lionel Messi or maybe laundered it away someplace the lenders wouldn’t find it. If you’re a distressed debt investor, you want to get Byju’s to court and get the court to force it to do whatever it takes to pay you back.
Last month, Byju’s’ new lenders sued Byju’s in the Delaware Court of Chancery [3]. We’ll get to the official reasons for this lawsuit in a bit, but what’s important is that Byju’s was not being sued because it defaulted on a payment. It hadn’t. It was being sued because the distressed debt investors expect it to default sooner or later, and they would prefer dealing with it sooner rather than later.
Lenders go for the kill
Usually, the finer details of corporate loans such as Byju’s’ aren’t public. But thanks to the multiple lawsuits we know quite a bit here.
The loan was made to Byju’s’ US entity and it was secured with guarantees from multiple Byju’s companies. From Byju’s’ lawsuit this week against its creditors (which I will get to), here are the guarantors:
  1. Byju’s entities in India and Singapore
  2. Byju’s’ US and Singapore acquisitions; companies including Oros, Epic, Great Learning, and Neuron
  3. Whitehat India, Byju’s’ famous Indian acquisition
That’s a lot of companies guaranteeing a loan! Byju’s’ Indian entity is the parent of all the other guarantor companies, so having it as a guarantor should’ve been enough. I guess the rationale here was that it would be nice to have some non-Indian companies in the mix too, we do know how efficiently Indian courts work.
Apart from Byju’s the parent company itself, Whitehat was the only other Indian company guaranteeing this loan. The problem was that Whitehat itself, on paper, had negative net worth. It had probably taken loans of its own and did not have enough assets to cover them. In practice, this would be irrelevant, because Whitehat was owned by Byju’s and it would cover any of Whitehat’s liabilities. But, apparently, RBI regulations require Indian companies with negative net worth to take its approval before guaranteeing a loan. So even though Whitehat was a guarantor, the guarantee was meaningless until RBI granted its approval.
Yeah, well, RBI didn’t grant its approval. From the lawsuit:
Plaintiffs, Borrower, and Lenders had a call on or around October 6, 2022, to discuss the Whitehat Guarantee. In a good faith effort to negate any impact of the new regulations, Plaintiffs and the Borrower offered to move all assets out of Whitehat India into other subsidiaries of the Parent Guarantor that are Guarantors to the Credit Agreement, or are owned by Guarantors of the Credit Agreement. Lenders rejected this proposal without justification.
In October 2022, after Byju’s’ debt was already sold to the distressed debt investors, the company spoke to its lenders and informed them that it was unable to get RBI’s approval for Whitehat to be a guarantor. Instead, it offered to move Whitehat’s assets into other companies and then use those companies to guarantee the loan. Which would really have been the same thing. But the lenders refused! Why?!
Continuing from the lawsuit:
Lenders subsequently asserted that an event of default under Section 8.1(e) of the Credit Agreement (an “Event of Default”) had occurred due to the failure to procure the Whitehat Guarantee.
Oh, that’s why. Byju’s’ lenders—distressed debt investors that wanted Byju’s dead ASAP—used the fact that Whitehat couldn’t be a guarantor of this loan to claim a default and use it as a reason to take Byju’s to court in the US. Honestly, I’m impressed. The Whitehat guarantee was redundant to begin with, but the lenders had found an out and their official reason #1 to take Byju’s to court.
Oh, there’s another thing. In June 2022, The Ken reported that Byju’s’ financials for 2021 had been held up by its auditors because of certain, umm, creative accounting. By this time, Byju’s should have ideally filed even its 2022 financials. It was very late! From the lawsuit:
The FY’21 Audit was delivered to the Lenders on August 30, 2022. It did not contain a “going concern” qualification or any similar qualifications about the Parent Guarantor’s ability to continue into the future. However, the FY’22 Audit could not begin until the FY’21 Audit had been completed, and the Parent Guarantor’s business has continued to grow rapidly
Byju’s’ 2021 financials were held up because auditors weren’t giving the company their go ahead, so of course its 2022 financials were held up as well.
On or around August 29, 2022, Shearman & Sterling, LLP (“S&S”), counsel for GLAS, sent a letter to Byju’s Alpha and Think & Learn requesting certain financial disclosures from Plaintiffs and Borrower, and asserting that the failure to deliver this financial information was a breach of the Credit Agreement. ... Rather than actually suffering any damage from the delayed FY’22 audit, Lenders opportunistically used this unintentional and non-material delay to exert pressure on Plaintiffs and the Borrower to extract onerous economic concessions.
I love it! Byju’s’ financials were delayed. Its agreement with the original lenders said that the company must share its audited financials with them. Byju’s wasn’t able to do that. The lenders found their official reason #2 to take Byju’s to court.
Byju’s sets up an offence
Before the lenders sued Byju’s last month, Byju’s tried its best to negotiate a deal. It gave the lenders an assurance of the company’s financial health, gave them concessions worth “tens of millions of dollars” and requested (pleaded) to take back their claims of Byju’s defaulting.
The lenders refused. They asked for either the full principal back or two-thirds of it, with an increment of 7% (!!) in the interest rate. Byju’s, of course, said no.
At this point, Byju’s knew that the lenders weren’t going to negotiate realistically. So it prepared its own offence. From the lawsuit:
The Credit Agreement prohibits transfers or assignments of the Lenders’ interests in the Term Loans to “Disqualified Lenders.” The Credit Agreement includes in its definition of Disqualified Lender “[a]ny [] Person (including an Affiliate or Approved Fund of a Lender) whose primary activity is the trading or acquisition of distressed debt,” and “those banks, financial institutions and other Persons separately identified by name . . . on or before the syndication . . . (which may be updated . . . from time to time . . .)”
In its agreement with the original lenders, Byju’s had put in a clause restricting its loan from being transferred to distressed debt investors. This is a risky clause to agree with, because it’s only these folks that buy loans that turn sour, but the original lenders had gone with it.
On information and belief, the entire course of Lenders’, and Defendant’s, bad-faith conduct has been driven by these distressed-debt lenders, who were never meant to have been lenders in the first place, and who acted with the intent of causing harm to Borrower and Plaintiffs. Meanwhile, Borrowers and Plaintiffs were initially unaware that the lenders were in fact being controlled by distressed debt dealers, and were therefore unable to take action to prevent their bad-faith plan from being implemented.
In its lawsuit this week, the crux of Byju’s’ argument is based on the fact that its loan is owned by distressed debt investors who were not eligible to be owning its debt in the first place. Also interesting is that Byju’s doesn’t seem to know who these lenders are. In its post-lawsuit statement, Byju’s named Redwood as one of the lenders, but it’s not named anywhere in the lawsuit.
Now what?
If push comes to shove, does Byju’s have the cash to pay off its lenders?
Last month, Byju’s transferred $500 million out of its US entity. The lenders had filed their lawsuit and there was a chance the court would freeze Byju’s’ US entity’s assets, so this was a precautionary move. So Byju’s has this $500 million. But that seems about it. Byju’s has been in the news saying that it’s trying to raise $700 million to pay off its debt. Yeah, between the horrible edtech market and the colourful lawsuits Byju’s is in, good luck with getting investors to donate their money to Byju’s.
But of course, Byju’s is now suing its lenders too. It does have an agreement that says that its debt can’t be held by distressed debt investors. So it’s not a frivolous suit.
Can Byju’s win? Sure. It would still have to pay its debt eventually. And it’s not straightforward. There are probably tens or even hundreds of lenders. It’s apparent that the distressed debt investors are the guiding force behind the lenders’ lawsuit, but it’s definitely not necessary that they form the majority of the lenders. In which case, Byju’s’ whole lawsuit falls apart.
The lenders are saying Byju’s defaulted by not keeping its part of the agreement, even though it had technically paid its dues. [4] Byju’s is saying that the lenders shouldn’t be the lenders in the first place and must be disqualified. We’ll see who’s right.
Footnotes
[1] It was a 5-year loan with a floating interest rate of 6% over Libor. Think of it as 6% over this magical interest-rate called Libor that some fancy-pants banks set amongst themselves everyday. Back in November 2021, Libor was at 0.25% and this was a 6.86% interest loan for Byju’s (the floor for Libor was 0.75%). Today, Libor is at about 5.64% and it’s an 11.6% loan.
[2] Multiple reasons for the investors to sell. One, interest rates went up and cash became more dear. If they had money stuck with Byju’s, it was money not being lent out to someone else. Second, edtech all around the world was in trouble. Kids were back in school and people didn’t think much of them anymore. Third, Byju’s as a company was showing its red flags.
[3] What a cool name!
[4] Until now, that is. Byju’s filed its lawsuit this week the same day it was supposed to make a $40 million interest payment.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders
submitted by tareekpetareek to IndianBlogs [link] [comments]


2023.06.09 12:08 tareekpetareek Byju's got sued by its lenders in the US. Then it sued its lenders in the US. Here's a fun read about what happened

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders (my newsletter Boring Money -- please visit the link if you'd like to subscribe and receive similar posts in your inbox)
--
Four years ago I read an article in The Ken titled The making of a loan crisis at Byju’s. The gist of the story was that Byju’s was an edtech doing phenomenally well selling its digital courses to parents of young students. But these courses were expensive and these parents were poor. So it was also selling them loans to buy these courses. Only, without telling them. Parents would expect a course (which could be cancelled) but would end up with a loan (which couldn’t be cancelled).
Three days ago, Byju’s went to court in New York. Here’s the headline from TechCrunch: Byju’s sues ‘predatory’ lenders on $1.2B term loan, won’t make further payments.
Byju’s is a company that, arguably, made a business out of giving out predatory loans. Now it’s sued its own lenders and accused them of being predatory. I’m not saying that this is poetic justice but.. okay, scratch that. This is poetic justice! If Shakespeare were a finance writer this is the kind of stuff he would come up with.
Everyone wants to lend to Byju’s
In 2021, interest rates were low, loans were cheap. Tech startups were doing great, edtech startups were crushing it. Byju’s, not one to be left behind, had raised a lot of money but money was cheap so it also wanted to borrow. It wanted a $500 million loan from lenders in the US, which it wanted to use to acquire companies there. Instead, it ended up borrowing more than double—$1.2 billion—because lenders practically wanted to throw money at this overachieving edtech startup from India. [1]
The way a term loan such as this works is:
  1. A company goes to an investment bank and asks for a loan
  2. The bank syndicates this loan to investors, who become the lenders. Everyone comes together in a room and negotiates the specifics of the loan (which can be quite complex, as we’ll see)
  3. The loan goes through and everyone’s happy. Presumably, the company likes its lenders, the lenders like the company
  4. The original investors might sell the loans they own to other investors. The company’s only talking to an administrative agent representing the lenders, so over time it might not even know who its lenders are
In November 2021, prominent investment managers such as Blackstone, Fidelity and GIC had gone overboard to lend money to Byju’s. By September 2022, Byju’s lenders were desperately selling [2] their loans at a 36% discount on the principal. (Today, Byju’s debt is at a 20% discount, which is also bad.)
It’s likely that Blackstone, Fidelity and other of the OG lenders aren’t Byju’s’ lenders any more. They’ve almost certainly sold off their loans at a loss. Better get paid something than get paid nothing.
Dealers of the dead
If a company’s debt is being sold at a 36% discount, it’s because investors think that the company is unlikely to repay its loans. If you buy such a loan, you potentially stand to gain a lot—because of the discount—but well, you might also just lose everything.
If you’re a regular investment management company, like Blackstone, you don’t want to invest in such a loan. Your investors gave you this money to get predictable returns. If they wanted risk, they’d ask you to buy stocks. You don’t want to get into a fight with your borrower. If you feel they will not pay you back, you take a loss, sell the loans, move on.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, your entire business is to buy such distressed loans from regular investment managers like Blackstone. You’re going to get nasty borrowers who are unlikely to want to repay their loans but that’s okay. Because you’re nasty too. You spend less time on financial models, more in courts and around lawyers. You like to fight to get your money back. Sometimes you might lose, but the times you win, you win big. The wins cover your losses and some more.
Blackstone and the others sold Byju’s’ loans in desperation, and they were almost certainly bought by distressed debt investors. We don’t know who they are exactly, but Byju’s has indicated that one of them is Redwood Capital, a New York-based distressed debt investor.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, this is how it works:
  1. You get a loan for super cheap
  2. If the company repays its loan, great! You make a lot of money
  3. But the company isn’t likely to repay, which is why you got the loan for cheap in the first place
  4. So it’s in your best interest to not let the company die a slow death. Instead, you want to kill the company quick. You take the company to court ASAP and take all the money you’re owed while it’s still there
If the new investors waited, say, for a year, and took Byju’s to court after it had actually defaulted on its repayments—there might not be any money left! Byju’s may have given all the money to Lionel Messi or maybe laundered it away someplace the lenders wouldn’t find it. If you’re a distressed debt investor, you want to get Byju’s to court and get the court to force it to do whatever it takes to pay you back.
Last month, Byju’s’ new lenders sued Byju’s in the Delaware Court of Chancery [3]. We’ll get to the official reasons for this lawsuit in a bit, but what’s important is that Byju’s was not being sued because it defaulted on a payment. It hadn’t. It was being sued because the distressed debt investors expect it to default sooner or later, and they would prefer dealing with it sooner rather than later.
Lenders go for the kill
Usually, the finer details of corporate loans such as Byju’s’ aren’t public. But thanks to the multiple lawsuits we know quite a bit here.
The loan was made to Byju’s’ US entity and it was secured with guarantees from multiple Byju’s companies. From Byju’s’ lawsuit this week against its creditors (which I will get to), here are the guarantors:
  1. Byju’s entities in India and Singapore
  2. Byju’s’ US and Singapore acquisitions; companies including Oros, Epic, Great Learning, and Neuron
  3. Whitehat India, Byju’s’ famous Indian acquisition
That’s a lot of companies guaranteeing a loan! Byju’s’ Indian entity is the parent of all the other guarantor companies, so having it as a guarantor should’ve been enough. I guess the rationale here was that it would be nice to have some non-Indian companies in the mix too, we do know how efficiently Indian courts work.
Apart from Byju’s the parent company itself, Whitehat was the only other Indian company guaranteeing this loan. The problem was that Whitehat itself, on paper, had negative net worth. It had probably taken loans of its own and did not have enough assets to cover them. In practice, this would be irrelevant, because Whitehat was owned by Byju’s and it would cover any of Whitehat’s liabilities. But, apparently, RBI regulations require Indian companies with negative net worth to take its approval before guaranteeing a loan. So even though Whitehat was a guarantor, the guarantee was meaningless until RBI granted its approval.
Yeah, well, RBI didn’t grant its approval. From the lawsuit:
Plaintiffs, Borrower, and Lenders had a call on or around October 6, 2022, to discuss the Whitehat Guarantee. In a good faith effort to negate any impact of the new regulations, Plaintiffs and the Borrower offered to move all assets out of Whitehat India into other subsidiaries of the Parent Guarantor that are Guarantors to the Credit Agreement, or are owned by Guarantors of the Credit Agreement. Lenders rejected this proposal without justification.
In October 2022, after Byju’s’ debt was already sold to the distressed debt investors, the company spoke to its lenders and informed them that it was unable to get RBI’s approval for Whitehat to be a guarantor. Instead, it offered to move Whitehat’s assets into other companies and then use those companies to guarantee the loan. Which would really have been the same thing. But the lenders refused! Why?!
Continuing from the lawsuit:
Lenders subsequently asserted that an event of default under Section 8.1(e) of the Credit Agreement (an “Event of Default”) had occurred due to the failure to procure the Whitehat Guarantee.
Oh, that’s why. Byju’s’ lenders—distressed debt investors that wanted Byju’s dead ASAP—used the fact that Whitehat couldn’t be a guarantor of this loan to claim a default and use it as a reason to take Byju’s to court in the US. Honestly, I’m impressed. The Whitehat guarantee was redundant to begin with, but the lenders had found an out and their official reason #1 to take Byju’s to court.
Oh, there’s another thing. In June 2022, The Ken reported that Byju’s’ financials for 2021 had been held up by its auditors because of certain, umm, creative accounting. By this time, Byju’s should have ideally filed even its 2022 financials. It was very late! From the lawsuit:
The FY’21 Audit was delivered to the Lenders on August 30, 2022. It did not contain a “going concern” qualification or any similar qualifications about the Parent Guarantor’s ability to continue into the future. However, the FY’22 Audit could not begin until the FY’21 Audit had been completed, and the Parent Guarantor’s business has continued to grow rapidly
Byju’s’ 2021 financials were held up because auditors weren’t giving the company their go ahead, so of course its 2022 financials were held up as well.
On or around August 29, 2022, Shearman & Sterling, LLP (“S&S”), counsel for GLAS, sent a letter to Byju’s Alpha and Think & Learn requesting certain financial disclosures from Plaintiffs and Borrower, and asserting that the failure to deliver this financial information was a breach of the Credit Agreement. ... Rather than actually suffering any damage from the delayed FY’22 audit, Lenders opportunistically used this unintentional and non-material delay to exert pressure on Plaintiffs and the Borrower to extract onerous economic concessions.
I love it! Byju’s’ financials were delayed. Its agreement with the original lenders said that the company must share its audited financials with them. Byju’s wasn’t able to do that. The lenders found their official reason #2 to take Byju’s to court.
Byju’s sets up an offence
Before the lenders sued Byju’s last month, Byju’s tried its best to negotiate a deal. It gave the lenders an assurance of the company’s financial health, gave them concessions worth “tens of millions of dollars” and requested (pleaded) to take back their claims of Byju’s defaulting.
The lenders refused. They asked for either the full principal back or two-thirds of it, with an increment of 7% (!!) in the interest rate. Byju’s, of course, said no.
At this point, Byju’s knew that the lenders weren’t going to negotiate realistically. So it prepared its own offence. From the lawsuit:
The Credit Agreement prohibits transfers or assignments of the Lenders’ interests in the Term Loans to “Disqualified Lenders.” The Credit Agreement includes in its definition of Disqualified Lender “[a]ny [] Person (including an Affiliate or Approved Fund of a Lender) whose primary activity is the trading or acquisition of distressed debt,” and “those banks, financial institutions and other Persons separately identified by name . . . on or before the syndication . . . (which may be updated . . . from time to time . . .)”
In its agreement with the original lenders, Byju’s had put in a clause restricting its loan from being transferred to distressed debt investors. This is a risky clause to agree with, because it’s only these folks that buy loans that turn sour, but the original lenders had gone with it.
On information and belief, the entire course of Lenders’, and Defendant’s, bad-faith conduct has been driven by these distressed-debt lenders, who were never meant to have been lenders in the first place, and who acted with the intent of causing harm to Borrower and Plaintiffs. Meanwhile, Borrowers and Plaintiffs were initially unaware that the lenders were in fact being controlled by distressed debt dealers, and were therefore unable to take action to prevent their bad-faith plan from being implemented.
In its lawsuit this week, the crux of Byju’s’ argument is based on the fact that its loan is owned by distressed debt investors who were not eligible to be owning its debt in the first place. Also interesting is that Byju’s doesn’t seem to know who these lenders are. In its post-lawsuit statement, Byju’s named Redwood as one of the lenders, but it’s not named anywhere in the lawsuit.
Now what?
If push comes to shove, does Byju’s have the cash to pay off its lenders?
Last month, Byju’s transferred $500 million out of its US entity. The lenders had filed their lawsuit and there was a chance the court would freeze Byju’s’ US entity’s assets, so this was a precautionary move. So Byju’s has this $500 million. But that seems about it. Byju’s has been in the news saying that it’s trying to raise $700 million to pay off its debt. Yeah, between the horrible edtech market and the colourful lawsuits Byju’s is in, good luck with getting investors to donate their money to Byju’s.
But of course, Byju’s is now suing its lenders too. It does have an agreement that says that its debt can’t be held by distressed debt investors. So it’s not a frivolous suit.
Can Byju’s win? Sure. It would still have to pay its debt eventually. And it’s not straightforward. There are probably tens or even hundreds of lenders. It’s apparent that the distressed debt investors are the guiding force behind the lenders’ lawsuit, but it’s definitely not necessary that they form the majority of the lenders. In which case, Byju’s’ whole lawsuit falls apart.
The lenders are saying Byju’s defaulted by not keeping its part of the agreement, even though it had technically paid its dues. [4] Byju’s is saying that the lenders shouldn’t be the lenders in the first place and must be disqualified. We’ll see who’s right.
Footnotes
[1] It was a 5-year loan with a floating interest rate of 6% over Libor. Think of it as 6% over this magical interest-rate called Libor that some fancy-pants banks set amongst themselves everyday. Back in November 2021, Libor was at 0.25% and this was a 6.86% interest loan for Byju’s (the floor for Libor was 0.75%). Today, Libor is at about 5.64% and it’s an 11.6% loan.
[2] Multiple reasons for the investors to sell. One, interest rates went up and cash became more dear. If they had money stuck with Byju’s, it was money not being lent out to someone else. Second, edtech all around the world was in trouble. Kids were back in school and people didn’t think much of them anymore. Third, Byju’s as a company was showing its red flags.
[3] What a cool name!
[4] Until now, that is. Byju’s filed its lawsuit this week the same day it was supposed to make a $40 million interest payment.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders
submitted by tareekpetareek to IndiaSpeaks [link] [comments]


2023.06.09 12:05 tareekpetareek Byju's got sued by its lenders in the US. Then it sued its lenders in the US. Here's a fun read about what happened

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders (my newsletter Boring Money -- please visit the link if you'd like to subscribe and receive similar posts in your inbox)
Spotify for voiceover
--
Four years ago I read an article in The Ken titled The making of a loan crisis at Byju’s. The gist of the story was that Byju’s was an edtech doing phenomenally well selling its digital courses to parents of young students. But these courses were expensive and these parents were poor. So it was also selling them loans to buy these courses. Only, without telling them. Parents would expect a course (which could be cancelled) but would end up with a loan (which couldn’t be cancelled).
Three days ago, Byju’s went to court in New York. Here’s the headline from TechCrunch: Byju’s sues ‘predatory’ lenders on $1.2B term loan, won’t make further payments.
Byju’s is a company that, arguably, made a business out of giving out predatory loans. Now it’s sued its own lenders and accused them of being predatory. I’m not saying that this is poetic justice but.. okay, scratch that. This is poetic justice! If Shakespeare were a finance writer this is the kind of stuff he would come up with.
Everyone wants to lend to Byju’s
In 2021, interest rates were low, loans were cheap. Tech startups were doing great, edtech startups were crushing it. Byju’s, not one to be left behind, had raised a lot of money but money was cheap so it also wanted to borrow. It wanted a $500 million loan from lenders in the US, which it wanted to use to acquire companies there. Instead, it ended up borrowing more than double—$1.2 billion—because lenders practically wanted to throw money at this overachieving edtech startup from India. [1]
The way a term loan such as this works is:
  1. A company goes to an investment bank and asks for a loan
  2. The bank syndicates this loan to investors, who become the lenders. Everyone comes together in a room and negotiates the specifics of the loan (which can be quite complex, as we’ll see)
  3. The loan goes through and everyone’s happy. Presumably, the company likes its lenders, the lenders like the company
  4. The original investors might sell the loans they own to other investors. The company’s only talking to an administrative agent representing the lenders, so over time it might not even know who its lenders are
In November 2021, prominent investment managers such as Blackstone, Fidelity and GIC had gone overboard to lend money to Byju’s. By September 2022, Byju’s lenders were desperately selling [2] their loans at a 36% discount on the principal. (Today, Byju’s debt is at a 20% discount, which is also bad.)
It’s likely that Blackstone, Fidelity and other of the OG lenders aren’t Byju’s’ lenders any more. They’ve almost certainly sold off their loans at a loss. Better get paid something than get paid nothing.
Dealers of the dead
If a company’s debt is being sold at a 36% discount, it’s because investors think that the company is unlikely to repay its loans. If you buy such a loan, you potentially stand to gain a lot—because of the discount—but well, you might also just lose everything.
If you’re a regular investment management company, like Blackstone, you don’t want to invest in such a loan. Your investors gave you this money to get predictable returns. If they wanted risk, they’d ask you to buy stocks. You don’t want to get into a fight with your borrower. If you feel they will not pay you back, you take a loss, sell the loans, move on.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, your entire business is to buy such distressed loans from regular investment managers like Blackstone. You’re going to get nasty borrowers who are unlikely to want to repay their loans but that’s okay. Because you’re nasty too. You spend less time on financial models, more in courts and around lawyers. You like to fight to get your money back. Sometimes you might lose, but the times you win, you win big. The wins cover your losses and some more.
Blackstone and the others sold Byju’s’ loans in desperation, and they were almost certainly bought by distressed debt investors. We don’t know who they are exactly, but Byju’s has indicated that one of them is Redwood Capital, a New York-based distressed debt investor.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, this is how it works:
  1. You get a loan for super cheap
  2. If the company repays its loan, great! You make a lot of money
  3. But the company isn’t likely to repay, which is why you got the loan for cheap in the first place
  4. So it’s in your best interest to not let the company die a slow death. Instead, you want to kill the company quick. You take the company to court ASAP and take all the money you’re owed while it’s still there
If the new investors waited, say, for a year, and took Byju’s to court after it had actually defaulted on its repayments—there might not be any money left! Byju’s may have given all the money to Lionel Messi or maybe laundered it away someplace the lenders wouldn’t find it. If you’re a distressed debt investor, you want to get Byju’s to court and get the court to force it to do whatever it takes to pay you back.
Last month, Byju’s’ new lenders sued Byju’s in the Delaware Court of Chancery [3]. We’ll get to the official reasons for this lawsuit in a bit, but what’s important is that Byju’s was not being sued because it defaulted on a payment. It hadn’t. It was being sued because the distressed debt investors expect it to default sooner or later, and they would prefer dealing with it sooner rather than later.
Lenders go for the kill
Usually, the finer details of corporate loans such as Byju’s’ aren’t public. But thanks to the multiple lawsuits we know quite a bit here.
The loan was made to Byju’s’ US entity and it was secured with guarantees from multiple Byju’s companies. From Byju’s’ lawsuit this week against its creditors (which I will get to), here are the guarantors:
  1. Byju’s entities in India and Singapore
  2. Byju’s’ US and Singapore acquisitions; companies including Oros, Epic, Great Learning, and Neuron
  3. Whitehat India, Byju’s’ famous Indian acquisition
That’s a lot of companies guaranteeing a loan! Byju’s’ Indian entity is the parent of all the other guarantor companies, so having it as a guarantor should’ve been enough. I guess the rationale here was that it would be nice to have some non-Indian companies in the mix too, we do know how efficiently Indian courts work.
Apart from Byju’s the parent company itself, Whitehat was the only other Indian company guaranteeing this loan. The problem was that Whitehat itself, on paper, had negative net worth. It had probably taken loans of its own and did not have enough assets to cover them. In practice, this would be irrelevant, because Whitehat was owned by Byju’s and it would cover any of Whitehat’s liabilities. But, apparently, RBI regulations require Indian companies with negative net worth to take its approval before guaranteeing a loan. So even though Whitehat was a guarantor, the guarantee was meaningless until RBI granted its approval.
Yeah, well, RBI didn’t grant its approval. From the lawsuit:
Plaintiffs, Borrower, and Lenders had a call on or around October 6, 2022, to discuss the Whitehat Guarantee. In a good faith effort to negate any impact of the new regulations, Plaintiffs and the Borrower offered to move all assets out of Whitehat India into other subsidiaries of the Parent Guarantor that are Guarantors to the Credit Agreement, or are owned by Guarantors of the Credit Agreement. Lenders rejected this proposal without justification.
In October 2022, after Byju’s’ debt was already sold to the distressed debt investors, the company spoke to its lenders and informed them that it was unable to get RBI’s approval for Whitehat to be a guarantor. Instead, it offered to move Whitehat’s assets into other companies and then use those companies to guarantee the loan. Which would really have been the same thing. But the lenders refused! Why?!
Continuing from the lawsuit:
Lenders subsequently asserted that an event of default under Section 8.1(e) of the Credit Agreement (an “Event of Default”) had occurred due to the failure to procure the Whitehat Guarantee.
Oh, that’s why. Byju’s’ lenders—distressed debt investors that wanted Byju’s dead ASAP—used the fact that Whitehat couldn’t be a guarantor of this loan to claim a default and use it as a reason to take Byju’s to court in the US. Honestly, I’m impressed. The Whitehat guarantee was redundant to begin with, but the lenders had found an out and their official reason #1 to take Byju’s to court.
Oh, there’s another thing. In June 2022, The Ken reported that Byju’s’ financials for 2021 had been held up by its auditors because of certain, umm, creative accounting. By this time, Byju’s should have ideally filed even its 2022 financials. It was very late! From the lawsuit:
The FY’21 Audit was delivered to the Lenders on August 30, 2022. It did not contain a “going concern” qualification or any similar qualifications about the Parent Guarantor’s ability to continue into the future. However, the FY’22 Audit could not begin until the FY’21 Audit had been completed, and the Parent Guarantor’s business has continued to grow rapidly
Byju’s’ 2021 financials were held up because auditors weren’t giving the company their go ahead, so of course its 2022 financials were held up as well.
On or around August 29, 2022, Shearman & Sterling, LLP (“S&S”), counsel for GLAS, sent a letter to Byju’s Alpha and Think & Learn requesting certain financial disclosures from Plaintiffs and Borrower, and asserting that the failure to deliver this financial information was a breach of the Credit Agreement. ... Rather than actually suffering any damage from the delayed FY’22 audit, Lenders opportunistically used this unintentional and non-material delay to exert pressure on Plaintiffs and the Borrower to extract onerous economic concessions.
I love it! Byju’s’ financials were delayed. Its agreement with the original lenders said that the company must share its audited financials with them. Byju’s wasn’t able to do that. The lenders found their official reason #2 to take Byju’s to court.
Byju’s sets up an offence
Before the lenders sued Byju’s last month, Byju’s tried its best to negotiate a deal. It gave the lenders an assurance of the company’s financial health, gave them concessions worth “tens of millions of dollars” and requested (pleaded) to take back their claims of Byju’s defaulting.
The lenders refused. They asked for either the full principal back or two-thirds of it, with an increment of 7% (!!) in the interest rate. Byju’s, of course, said no.
At this point, Byju’s knew that the lenders weren’t going to negotiate realistically. So it prepared its own offence. From the lawsuit:
The Credit Agreement prohibits transfers or assignments of the Lenders’ interests in the Term Loans to “Disqualified Lenders.” The Credit Agreement includes in its definition of Disqualified Lender “[a]ny [] Person (including an Affiliate or Approved Fund of a Lender) whose primary activity is the trading or acquisition of distressed debt,” and “those banks, financial institutions and other Persons separately identified by name . . . on or before the syndication . . . (which may be updated . . . from time to time . . .)”
In its agreement with the original lenders, Byju’s had put in a clause restricting its loan from being transferred to distressed debt investors. This is a risky clause to agree with, because it’s only these folks that buy loans that turn sour, but the original lenders had gone with it.
On information and belief, the entire course of Lenders’, and Defendant’s, bad-faith conduct has been driven by these distressed-debt lenders, who were never meant to have been lenders in the first place, and who acted with the intent of causing harm to Borrower and Plaintiffs. Meanwhile, Borrowers and Plaintiffs were initially unaware that the lenders were in fact being controlled by distressed debt dealers, and were therefore unable to take action to prevent their bad-faith plan from being implemented.
In its lawsuit this week, the crux of Byju’s’ argument is based on the fact that its loan is owned by distressed debt investors who were not eligible to be owning its debt in the first place. Also interesting is that Byju’s doesn’t seem to know who these lenders are. In its post-lawsuit statement, Byju’s named Redwood as one of the lenders, but it’s not named anywhere in the lawsuit.
Now what?
If push comes to shove, does Byju’s have the cash to pay off its lenders?
Last month, Byju’s transferred $500 million out of its US entity. The lenders had filed their lawsuit and there was a chance the court would freeze Byju’s’ US entity’s assets, so this was a precautionary move. So Byju’s has this $500 million. But that seems about it. Byju’s has been in the news saying that it’s trying to raise $700 million to pay off its debt. Yeah, between the horrible edtech market and the colourful lawsuits Byju’s is in, good luck with getting investors to donate their money to Byju’s.
But of course, Byju’s is now suing its lenders too. It does have an agreement that says that its debt can’t be held by distressed debt investors. So it’s not a frivolous suit.
Can Byju’s win? Sure. It would still have to pay its debt eventually. And it’s not straightforward. There are probably tens or even hundreds of lenders. It’s apparent that the distressed debt investors are the guiding force behind the lenders’ lawsuit, but it’s definitely not necessary that they form the majority of the lenders. In which case, Byju’s’ whole lawsuit falls apart.
The lenders are saying Byju’s defaulted by not keeping its part of the agreement, even though it had technically paid its dues. [4] Byju’s is saying that the lenders shouldn’t be the lenders in the first place and must be disqualified. We’ll see who’s right.
Footnotes
[1] It was a 5-year loan with a floating interest rate of 6% over Libor. Think of it as 6% over this magical interest-rate called Libor that some fancy-pants banks set amongst themselves everyday. Back in November 2021, Libor was at 0.25% and this was a 6.86% interest loan for Byju’s (the floor for Libor was 0.75%). Today, Libor is at about 5.64% and it’s an 11.6% loan.
[2] Multiple reasons for the investors to sell. One, interest rates went up and cash became more dear. If they had money stuck with Byju’s, it was money not being lent out to someone else. Second, edtech all around the world was in trouble. Kids were back in school and people didn’t think much of them anymore. Third, Byju’s as a company was showing its red flags.
[3] What a cool name!
[4] Until now, that is. Byju’s filed its lawsuit this week the same day it was supposed to make a $40 million interest payment.
Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders
submitted by tareekpetareek to u/tareekpetareek [link] [comments]


2023.06.09 11:15 JackWallner2 Automatic Tube Cleaning System Market worth $143 Mn by 2028

The report "Automatic Tube Cleaning System Market by Type (Automatic Ball Tube Cleaning System, Automatic Brush Tube Cleaning System), Industry (Power Generation, Oil & Gas, Commercial Spaces, and Hospitality), Application and Region - Global Forecast to 2028" The global automatic tube cleaning system market size is estimated to be USD 117 million in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 143 million by 2028, at a CAGR of 4.0%. Automatic tube cleaning systems reduce the frequency of costly maintenance shutdowns while optimizing equipment function and increasing energy savings. Automated tube cleaning systems frequently work to eliminate the formation of deposits, thereby decreasing the frequency of costly maintenance shutdowns while optimizing equipment function.
• Informational PDF Brochure :-https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=151822184
Browse 178 market data Tables and 47 Figures spread through 185 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Automatic Tube Cleaning System Market by Type (Automatic Ball Tube Cleaning System, Automatic Brush Tube Cleaning System), Industry (Power Generation, Oil & Gas, Commercial Spaces, and Hospitality), Application and Region - Global Forecast to 2028" View detailed Table of Content here - https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automatic-tube-cleaning-system-market-151822184.html
Automatic ball tube cleaning system to grow at the highest CAGR during the review period
Automatic ball tube cleaning system is an inline cleaning system, which means that there is no need to shut down the plant for periodic cleaning of heat exchanger tubes or interrupt the plant operation. The cleaning can be done without interrupting the process. The key players which provide automatic ball tube cleaning systems are Taprogge Gmbh (Germany), Beaudrey (France), and Westech Engineering, Inc (U.S)
Power generation industry to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period
Power generation industry is likely to grow at a higher CAGR during the forecast period. The automatic tube cleaning system is used to increase the cooling capacity and energy savings in heat exchangers. It is cost-effective, which reduces carbon footprint and helps heat exchangers operate at peak efficiency.
Asia Pacific to be the fastest growing market during the forecast period
The increasing population and rapidly growing industrialization have made China and India the largest electricity producers in the world. Also, the APAC region has a booming commercial space industry. The growing need for energy saving and improving operational efficiency in refineries and commercial spaces drives the market for automatic tube cleaning systems in APAC. Moreover, the increase in demand for electricity due to growing urbanization and population increases the need for power plants to generate sufficient electricity for usage. These factors are driving the growth of automatic tube cleaning systems in Asia Pacific.
Major companies operating in the automatic tube cleaning system market include Taprogge Gmbh (Germany) BEAUDREY (France), WesTech Engineering, LLC (U.S.), Ovivo (Canada), Balltech Energy Ltd.(Israel) and among others
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submitted by JackWallner2 to MnMResearchStudies [link] [comments]


2023.06.09 09:58 tareekpetareek Byju's got sued by its lenders in the US. Then it sued its lenders in the US. Here's a fun read about what happened

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders (my newsletter Boring Money -- please visit the link if you'd like to subscribe and receive similar posts in your inbox)
--
Four years ago I read an article in The Ken titled The making of a loan crisis at Byju’s. The gist of the story was that Byju’s was an edtech doing phenomenally well selling its digital courses to parents of young students. But these courses were expensive and these parents were poor. So it was also selling them loans to buy these courses. Only, without telling them. Parents would expect a course (which could be cancelled) but would end up with a loan (which couldn’t be cancelled).
Three days ago, Byju’s went to court in New York. Here’s the headline from TechCrunch: Byju’s sues ‘predatory’ lenders on $1.2B term loan, won’t make further payments.
Byju’s is a company that, arguably, made a business out of giving out predatory loans. Now it’s sued its own lenders and accused them of being predatory. I’m not saying that this is poetic justice but.. okay, scratch that. This is poetic justice! If Shakespeare were a finance writer this is the kind of stuff he would come up with.

Everyone wants to lend to Byju’s

In 2021, interest rates were low, loans were cheap. Tech startups were doing great, edtech startups were crushing it. Byju’s, not one to be left behind, had raised a lot of money but money was cheap so it also wanted to borrow. It wanted a $500 million loan from lenders in the US, which it wanted to use to acquire companies there. Instead, it ended up borrowing more than double—$1.2 billion—because lenders practically wanted to throw money at this overachieving edtech startup from India. [1]
The way a term loan such as this works is:
  1. A company goes to an investment bank and asks for a loan
  2. The bank syndicates this loan to investors, who become the lenders. Everyone comes together in a room and negotiates the specifics of the loan (which can be quite complex, as we’ll see)
  3. The loan goes through and everyone’s happy. Presumably, the company likes its lenders, the lenders like the company
  4. The original investors might sell the loans they own to other investors. The company’s only talking to an administrative agent representing the lenders, so over time it might not even know who its lenders are
In November 2021, prominent investment managers such as Blackstone, Fidelity and GIC had gone overboard to lend money to Byju’s. By September 2022, Byju’s lenders were desperately selling [2] their loans at a 36% discount on the principal. (Today, Byju’s debt is at a 20% discount, which is also bad.)
It’s likely that Blackstone, Fidelity and other of the OG lenders aren’t Byju’s’ lenders any more. They’ve almost certainly sold off their loans at a loss. Better get paid something than get paid nothing.

Dealers of the dead

If a company’s debt is being sold at a 36% discount, it’s because investors think that the company is unlikely to repay its loans. If you buy such a loan, you potentially stand to gain a lot—because of the discount—but well, you might also just lose everything.
If you’re a regular investment management company, like Blackstone, you don’t want to invest in such a loan. Your investors gave you this money to get predictable returns. If they wanted risk, they’d ask you to buy stocks. You don’t want to get into a fight with your borrower. If you feel they will not pay you back, you take a loss, sell the loans, move on.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, your entire business is to buy such distressed loans from regular investment managers like Blackstone. You’re going to get nasty borrowers who are unlikely to want to repay their loans but that’s okay. Because you’re nasty too. You spend less time on financial models, more in courts and around lawyers. You like to fight to get your money back. Sometimes you might lose, but the times you win, you win big. The wins cover your losses and some more.
Blackstone and the others sold Byju’s’ loans in desperation, and they were almost certainly bought by distressed debt investors. We don’t know who they are exactly, but Byju’s has indicated that one of them is Redwood Capital, a New York-based distressed debt investor.
If you’re a distressed debt investor, this is how it works:
  1. You get a loan for super cheap
  2. If the company repays its loan, great! You make a lot of money
  3. But the company isn’t likely to repay, which is why you got the loan for cheap in the first place
  4. So it’s in your best interest to not let the company die a slow death. Instead, you want to kill the company quick. You take the company to court ASAP and take all the money you’re owed while it’s still there
If the new investors waited, say, for a year, and took Byju’s to court after it had actually defaulted on its repayments—there might not be any money left! Byju’s may have given all the money to Lionel Messi or maybe laundered it away someplace the lenders wouldn’t find it. If you’re a distressed debt investor, you want to get Byju’s to court and get the court to force it to do whatever it takes to pay you back.
Last month, Byju’s’ new lenders sued Byju’s in the Delaware Court of Chancery [3]. We’ll get to the official reasons for this lawsuit in a bit, but what’s important is that Byju’s was not being sued because it defaulted on a payment. It hadn’t. It was being sued because the distressed debt investors expect it to default sooner or later, and they would prefer dealing with it sooner rather than later.

Lenders go for the kill

Usually, the finer details of corporate loans such as Byju’s’ aren’t public. But thanks to the multiple lawsuits we know quite a bit here.
The loan was made to Byju’s’ US entity and it was secured with guarantees from multiple Byju’s companies. From Byju’s’ lawsuit this week against its creditors (which I will get to), here are the guarantors:
  1. Byju’s entities in India and Singapore
  2. Byju’s’ US and Singapore acquisitions; companies including Oros, Epic, Great Learning, and Neuron
  3. Whitehat India, Byju’s’ famous Indian acquisition
That’s a lot of companies guaranteeing a loan! Byju’s’ Indian entity is the parent of all the other guarantor companies, so having it as a guarantor should’ve been enough. I guess the rationale here was that it would be nice to have some non-Indian companies in the mix too, we do know how efficiently Indian courts work.
Apart from Byju’s the parent company itself, Whitehat was the only other Indian company guaranteeing this loan. The problem was that Whitehat itself, on paper, had negative net worth. It had probably taken loans of its own and did not have enough assets to cover them. In practice, this would be irrelevant, because Whitehat was owned by Byju’s and it would cover any of Whitehat’s liabilities. But, apparently, RBI regulations require Indian companies with negative net worth to take its approval before guaranteeing a loan. So even though Whitehat was a guarantor, the guarantee was meaningless until RBI granted its approval.
Yeah, well, RBI didn’t grant its approval. From the lawsuit:
Plaintiffs, Borrower, and Lenders had a call on or around October 6, 2022, to discuss the Whitehat Guarantee. In a good faith effort to negate any impact of the new regulations, Plaintiffs and the Borrower offered to move all assets out of Whitehat India into other subsidiaries of the Parent Guarantor that are Guarantors to the Credit Agreement, or are owned by Guarantors of the Credit Agreement.
Lenders rejected this proposal without justification.
In October 2022, after Byju’s’ debt was already sold to the distressed debt investors, the company spoke to its lenders and informed them that it was unable to get RBI’s approval for Whitehat to be a guarantor. Instead, it offered to move Whitehat’s assets into other companies and then use those companies to guarantee the loan. Which would really have been the same thing. But the lenders refused! Why?!
Continuing from the lawsuit:
Lenders subsequently asserted that an event of default under Section 8.1(e) of the Credit Agreement (an “Event of Default”) had occurred due to the failure to procure the Whitehat Guarantee.
Oh, that’s why. Byju’s’ lenders—distressed debt investors that wanted Byju’s dead ASAP—used the fact that Whitehat couldn’t be a guarantor of this loan to claim a default and use it as a reason to take Byju’s to court in the US. Honestly, I’m impressed. The Whitehat guarantee was redundant to begin with, but the lenders had found an out and their official reason #1 to take Byju’s to court.
Oh, there’s another thing. In June 2022, The Ken reported that Byju’s’ financials for 2021 had been held up by its auditors because of certain, umm, creative accounting. By this time, Byju’s should have ideally filed even its 2022 financials. It was very late! From the lawsuit:
The FY’21 Audit was delivered to the Lenders on August 30, 2022. It did not contain a “going concern” qualification or any similar qualifications about the Parent Guarantor’s ability to continue into the future.
However, the FY’22 Audit could not begin until the FY’21 Audit had been completed, and the Parent Guarantor’s business has continued to grow rapidly
Byju’s’ 2021 financials were held up because auditors weren’t giving the company their go ahead, so of course its 2022 financials were held up as well.
On or around August 29, 2022, Shearman & Sterling, LLP (“S&S”), counsel for GLAS, sent a letter to Byju’s Alpha and Think & Learn requesting certain financial disclosures from Plaintiffs and Borrower, and asserting that the failure to deliver this financial information was a breach of the Credit Agreement.
...
Rather than actually suffering any damage from the delayed FY’22 audit, Lenders opportunistically used this unintentional and non-material delay to exert pressure on Plaintiffs and the Borrower to extract onerous economic concessions.
I love it! Byju’s’ financials were delayed. Its agreement with the original lenders said that the company must share its audited financials with them. Byju’s wasn’t able to do that. The lenders found their official reason #2 to take Byju’s to court.

Byju’s sets up an offence

Before the lenders sued Byju’s last month, Byju’s tried its best to negotiate a deal. It gave the lenders an assurance of the company’s financial health, gave them concessions worth “tens of millions of dollars” and requested (pleaded) to take back their claims of Byju’s defaulting.
The lenders refused. They asked for either the full principal back or two-thirds of it, with an increment of 7% (!!) in the interest rate. Byju’s, of course, said no.
At this point, Byju’s knew that the lenders weren’t going to negotiate realistically. So it prepared its own offence. From the lawsuit:
The Credit Agreement prohibits transfers or assignments of the Lenders’ interests in the Term Loans to “Disqualified Lenders.”
The Credit Agreement includes in its definition of Disqualified Lender “[a]ny [] Person (including an Affiliate or Approved Fund of a Lender) whose primary activity is the trading or acquisition of distressed debt,” and “those banks, financial institutions and other Persons separately identified by name . . . on or before the syndication . . . (which may be updated . . . from time to time . . .)”
In its agreement with the original lenders, Byju’s had put in a clause restricting its loan from being transferred to distressed debt investors. This is a risky clause to agree with, because it’s only these folks that buy loans that turn sour, but the original lenders had gone with it.
On information and belief, the entire course of Lenders’, and Defendant’s, bad-faith conduct has been driven by these distressed-debt lenders, who were never meant to have been lenders in the first place, and who acted with the intent of causing harm to Borrower and Plaintiffs. Meanwhile, Borrowers and Plaintiffs were initially unaware that the lenders were in fact being controlled by distressed debt dealers, and were therefore unable to take action to prevent their bad-faith plan from being implemented.
In its lawsuit this week, the crux of Byju’s’ argument is based on the fact that its loan is owned by distressed debt investors who were not eligible to be owning its debt in the first place. Also interesting is that Byju’s doesn’t seem to know who these lenders are. In its post-lawsuit statement, Byju’s named Redwood as one of the lenders, but it’s not named anywhere in the lawsuit.

Now what?

If push comes to shove, does Byju’s have the cash to pay off its lenders?
Last month, Byju’s transferred $500 million out of its US entity. The lenders had filed their lawsuit and there was a chance the court would freeze Byju’s’ US entity’s assets, so this was a precautionary move. So Byju’s has this $500 million. But that seems about it. Byju’s has been in the news saying that it’s trying to raise $700 million to pay off its debt. Yeah, between the horrible edtech market and the colourful lawsuits Byju’s is in, good luck with getting investors to donate their money to Byju’s.
But of course, Byju’s is now suing its lenders too. It does have an agreement that says that its debt can’t be held by distressed debt investors. So it’s not a frivolous suit.
Can Byju’s win? Sure. It would still have to pay its debt eventually. And it’s not straightforward. There are probably tens or even hundreds of lenders. It’s apparent that the distressed debt investors are the guiding force behind the lenders’ lawsuit, but it’s definitely not necessary that they form the majority of the lenders. In which case, Byju’s’ whole lawsuit falls apart.
The lenders are saying Byju’s defaulted by not keeping its part of the agreement, even though it had technically paid its dues. [4] Byju’s is saying that the lenders shouldn’t be the lenders in the first place and must be disqualified. We’ll see who’s right.

Footnotes
[1] It was a 5-year loan with a floating interest rate of 6% over Libor. Think of it as 6% over this magical interest-rate called Libor that some fancy-pants banks set amongst themselves everyday. Back in November 2021, Libor was at 0.25% and this was a 6.86% interest loan for Byju’s (the floor for Libor was 0.75%). Today, Libor is at about 5.64% and it’s an 11.6% loan.
[2] Multiple reasons for the investors to sell. One, interest rates went up and cash became more dear. If they had money stuck with Byju’s, it was money not being lent out to someone else. Second, edtech all around the world was in trouble. Kids were back in school and people didn’t think much of them anymore. Third, Byju’s as a company was showing its red flags.
[3] What a cool name!
[4] Until now, that is. Byju’s filed its lawsuit this week the same day it was supposed to make a $40 million interest payment.

Original Source: https://boringmoney.in/p/byjus-is-sued-by-its-lenders
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2023.06.09 09:58 cglogistic Different modes of transportation in logistics and when to use each

Transportation is considered an essential component in the logistics sector because it assures the timely delivery of products from one place to another. Though there are several modes of transportation available, it is important to select the right one for your logistics requirements. This blog contains a discussion regarding distinct modes of transportation and when to use each, with an emphasis on CG Logistics' innovative logistics solutions.

Air transportation

In the logistics sector, air transportation is a significant mode of transportation, particularly for goods that must be transported rapidly and over long distances. CGL provides air transportation services through its collaboration with numerous aircraft charter companies and air charter companies in India.
In the context of air transportation, there are distinct types of aircraft that could be used, based on the size and weight of the cargo and the destination and urgency of delivery. For example, smaller cargo might be transported through light aircraft, while heavier and larger cargo might require the use of cargo planes and even commercial airlines.
CGL India has entered into partnerships with some of the best air charter companies that support it in delivering clients with a number of transportation services, including air freight, air cargo, and air charter services. Through these partnerships, CG Logistics is able to offer clients access to a large fleet of aircraft that could be used for numerous forms of cargo, from small packages to oversized and heavy cargo.
One of the primary benefits of air transportation is that it provides faster delivery times in comparison to other modes of transportation, like sea or road transport. For example, products that will take numerous weeks to transport by sea can be transported by air in a matter of hours or days, depending on the destination. This makes air transportation a preferred mode of transportation for urgent and time-sensitive cargo.
CGL also offers air transportation services for project cargo movement that include the transportation of complex and significant cargo for industrial projects. Such cargo may involve heavy equipment, machinery, and other oversized items. CGL India has the expertise to handle project cargo transportation through the air, ensuring that the cargo reaches its destination safely and efficiently.
Along with the air transportation services, CGL also provides customs clearance services for air cargo and air freight, ensuring that all relevant rules and regulations are complied with and the cargo is cleared for export or import.
Overall, the role of air transportation is vital in the logistics industry, and CGL offers a range of air transportation services through its partnerships with aircraft charter companies and air charter companies in India. With its capabilities in project cargo transportation and customs clearance services, CGL is capable of ensuring that customers’ cargo is safely and efficiently transported to its destination through air transportation.

Road transportation

Road transportation is a significant element of logistics and plays a major role in the timely delivery of products. It is normally the most simple and cost-effective mechanism for transportation for domestic shipments, particularly for short distances. CGL is one of the leading logistics service providers in India and provides a wide range of road transportation services to satisfy the different requirements of customers.
CG Logistics runs a large fleet of vehicles ranging from small vans to heavy-duty trucks. The vehicles are equipped with modern tracking systems, supporting real-time monitoring of the location and status of shipments. This assures that clients can track the movement of their goods at any time, giving them complete visibility and peace of mind.
One of the significant benefits of road transportation is its flexibility. Unlike other methods of transportation, road transportation permits the transportation of goods to almost any place, even those that are not accessible through other modes of transportation. This makes road transportation an ideal mode for the transportation of products to remote areas or places with poor connectivity.
Another benefit of road transportation is its speed. It is normally faster than other methods of transportation, particularly for short distances. This makes it an ideal selection for time-sensitive shipments that must be delivered rapidly.
CGL India provides a range of road transportation services, including full truckload and less-than-truckload transportation. FTL is appropriate for clients who need to transport a large number of goods, while LTL is appropriate for clients who need to transport smaller quantities of goods.
Along with traditional road transportation, CGL also provides other value-added services like warehousing, distribution, and customs clearance. This permits clients to benefit from end-to-end logistics solutions, saving them both cost and time.
Overall, road transportation is a significant element of logistics, and CGL is committed to offering reliable and efficient road transportation services to its clients. With a significant emphasis on innovation and technology, CGL is well-positioned to satisfy the evolving requirements of customers and the logistics sector as a whole.

Rail Transportation

It is a method of transportation that uses trains for the purpose of moving goods from one place to another. Rail transportation is considered an efficient and cost-effective method of moving large volumes of cargo over significant distances. In the logistics sector, rail transportation is a vital element of the supply chain, particularly for the movement of bulk goods.
CGL understands the significance of rail transportation and provides a comprehensive range of rail freight services to its clients. The rail transportation services of the company are designed to cater to the particular requirements of each customer, and they provide a cost-effective and efficient manner of moving goods across the nation. Moreover, CG Logistics is engaged in providing effective rail logistics solutions for customers in places lacking alternate modes of connectivity.
The following are the main benefits of rail transportation:
CGL’s rail transportation services include the following aspects:
Rail freight forwarding: CGL provides rail freight forwarding services to move goods around the nation.
Overall, in the logistics sector, the role of rail transportation is vital, and CGL recognizes its significance by providing a range of rail transportation services to its clients. With its reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly rail transportation solutions, CGL is capable of satisfying the requirements of clients across the country.

Integrated solutions for CGL India

CGL has over 20 years of experience carrying tailor-made end-to-end solutions for integrated freight logistics for all scales of organizations around industry verticals. Through analyzing the prerequisites, experts at the company work to optimize the best solutions that save time and money for safe deliveries around the world.
Moreover, CGL India provides a range of integrated solutions that support clients in selecting the correct mode of transportation for their logistics requirements. As one of the best logistics companies in India, CGL provides customized solutions that include project cargo management, international warehousing services, project cargo handling services, and cargo transportation.
One of the main characteristics of the integrated solution offered by CGL India is its ability to integrate with other systems. The platform could be integrated with a variety of business systems, like an ERP system and an order management system, to offer businesses an overall view of their operations.
CGL’s integrated solutions also provide a range of value-added services like packaging, customs clearance, labeling, and many more. This could support businesses in simplification of their logistics operations and decrease the administrative pressure connected with the management of logistics.
Overall, the integrated solution of CG Logistics provides a comprehensive range of logistics solutions that can support businesses in streamlining their supply chain activities, optimizing their logistics procedures, and decreasing costs. CGL’s integrated solutions can help businesses stay competitive in the current fast-paced business environment.
In a nutshell, selecting the right mode of transportation for your logistics requirements is crucial to ensure the timely delivery of products. By providing a comprehensive range of logistics solutions that involve air, sea, surface, and rail transportation, CGL assures that clients have access to the correct mode of transportation for their logistics requirements. With an emphasis on innovation and technology, CG Logistics offers integrated solutions that support the optimization of supply chain efficiency and help clients stay ahead of the competition. In order to know more, connect with us.
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2023.06.09 09:15 swetharani123 Pyspark Training in Hyderabad

Pyspark Training in Hyderabad
PySpark is the Python library for Apache Spark, a powerful open-source cluster computing framework. Spark is designed for fast and efficient processing of large-scale data and enables distributed processing for big data applications. PySpark provides a high-level API for programming Spark with Python, making it easier to develop data-intensive applications. RS Trainings is a Best Place for learning Pyspark Training in Hyderabad
PySpark combines the simplicity and ease of use of Python with the scalability and speed of Spark. It allows data scientists and developers to write Spark applications using Python, taking advantage of Spark's distributed computing capabilities. PySpark provides support for various data processing tasks such as data ingestion, transformation, querying, and machine learning.
RS Trainings, located in Hyderabad, is recognized as one of the best PySpark training institute. They offer comprehensive training programs focused on teaching the concepts and practical implementation of PySpark. Here are some key features of RS Trainings' PySpark training:

https://preview.redd.it/8ca4a78m0y4b1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=6cb74f2f94c97d06c58ed307e499c57a1d34695c

  1. Experienced Trainers: RS Trainings has a team of highly skilled and experienced trainers who have expertise in PySpark and its applications in big data processing. They provide in-depth knowledge and hands-on experience to the participants.
  2. Comprehensive Curriculum: The training program covers all the essential aspects of PySpark, including Spark architecture, RDDs (Resilient Distributed Datasets), DataFrame API, Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, MLlib (machine learning library), and integration with other Python libraries.
  3. Hands-on Projects and Assignments: RS Trainings emphasizes practical learning by providing hands-on projects and assignments. Participants get the opportunity to work on real-world use cases and gain practical experience in implementing PySpark applications.
  4. Industry-Relevant Training: The training program at RS Trainings is designed to meet the industry requirements and trends. They focus on imparting skills that are in high demand in the job market, ensuring that participants are well-prepared for their professional careers.
  5. Flexible Learning Options: RS Trainings offers flexible learning options to accommodate different schedules. They provide both classroom-based training and online training, allowing participants to choose the mode that suits them best.
  6. Placement Assistance: RS Trainings provides placement assistance to participants, helping them connect with potential employers and secure job opportunities in the field of PySpark and big data processing.

Overall, RS Trainings is known for its quality PySpark training, experienced trainers, hands-on approach, and industry relevance. It aims to empower individuals with the necessary skills to excel in the field of big data processing using PySpark.
The PySpark job market is rapidly growing, with increasing demand for professionals skilled in PySpark and big data processing. PySpark offers a powerful and efficient solution for processing and analyzing large-scale data, making it a valuable skill in various industries such as finance, healthcare, e-commerce, telecommunications, and more.
Here are some key factors that contribute to the favorable PySpark job market:

  1. Big Data Industry Growth: The proliferation of big data has created a massive demand for professionals who can effectively manage and process large volumes of data. PySpark, with its distributed computing capabilities and scalability, has become a popular choice for handling big data workloads.
  2. Apache Spark Adoption: Apache Spark, the underlying framework for PySpark, has gained significant adoption across industries due to its versatility and speed. As a result, organizations are seeking professionals who can leverage PySpark to harness the power of Spark for data processing, analytics, and machine learning.
  3. Data Science and Machine Learning: PySpark provides robust support for data science and machine learning tasks through its MLlib library. As these fields continue to grow, the demand for professionals proficient in PySpark's machine learning capabilities is on the rise.
  4. Competitive Advantage: Organizations are increasingly realizing the potential of leveraging big data to gain a competitive edge. They are looking for skilled PySpark professionals who can unlock insights from large datasets, optimize data pipelines, and drive data-driven decision-making.

RS Trainings, as a leading PySpark training institute in Hyderabad, recognizes the growing job opportunities in the field. They provide comprehensive training programs designed to equip participants with the skills and knowledge required to excel in the PySpark job market. Here are some key features of RS Trainings' placement assistance:

  1. Resume Preparation: RS Trainings assists participants in creating professional resumes tailored to the PySpark job market, highlighting their skills and achievements in the field.
  2. Interview Preparation: They conduct mock interviews and provide interview guidance to help participants enhance their interview skills and boost their confidence.
  3. Job Placement Support: RS Trainings connects participants with their network of industry contacts and potential employers, facilitating job placement opportunities in PySpark and big data processing roles.
  4. Industry Partnerships: RS Trainings maintains strong relationships with companies and organizations in the industry. They collaborate with these partners to identify job openings and recommend suitable candidates from their pool of trained PySpark professionals.

By providing quality PySpark training coupled with placement assistance, RS Trainings aims to bridge the gap between industry demand and skilled professionals. They strive to ensure that participants are well-prepared and positioned to capitalize on the growing PySpark job market.
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2023.06.09 09:02 thefinewinecompany_ Is Cabernet Sauvignon considered to be a dry wine?

Is Cabernet Sauvignon considered to be a dry wine?
When it comes to wine, there are various styles to explore, each with its own distinct characteristics. One common question that arises is whether Cabernet Sauvignon is considered to be a dry wine. In this article, we will delve into the world of Cabernet Sauvignon and explore its dryness as well as its availability at The Fine Wine Company Ltd, a reputable online wine retailer based in the UK.
Understanding the Dryness of Cabernet Sauvignon
Before we determine whether Cabernet Sauvignon is a dry wine, let's first define what dry wine means. In the wine world, dryness refers to the absence of sweetness. It is important to note that the concept of dryness in wine is not solely based on the absence of residual sugar but also encompasses other factors such as acidity and tannin levels.
Cabernet Sauvignon, known for its deep color and bold flavors, is generally considered a dry wine. However, the dryness of wine can vary depending on factors such as the climate in which the grapes are grown, winemaking techniques, and the winemaker's style.
Cabernet Sauvignon: A Dry Wine by Nature
Cabernet Sauvignon is renowned for its dryness and full-bodied nature. Its flavors are often described as blackcurrant, dark cherry, and cedar, and sometimes accompanied by hints of herbs and spices. The tannins in Cabernet Sauvignon contribute to its dry mouthfeel and structure. This makes it an excellent choice for those who prefer wines without noticeable sweetness.
Some popular examples of dry Cabernet Sauvignon wines include the esteemed Bordeaux wines from France, as well as those from regions such as Napa Valley in California and Coonawarra in Australia. These wines showcase the characteristic dryness of Cabernet Sauvignon, offering a rich and complex tasting experience.
Sweet Variations of Cabernet Sauvignon
While Cabernet Sauvignon is predominantly dry, there are variations that exhibit some level of sweetness. These can be categorized as off-dry or even sweet wines. The sweetness in these wines is achieved through winemaking techniques such as late harvesting, noble rot, or the addition of residual sugar during fermentation.
Compared to dry Cabernet Sauvignon, the sweet variations tend to have a more pronounced fruitiness and a smoother mouthfeel. However, they still retain some of the signature characteristics of the grape variety.

https://preview.redd.it/9ue08o1ayx4b1.png?width=100&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf63ef60a9439ae61495ec2bd61fd648d1e4e469
The Fine Wine Company Ltd and Cabernet Sauvignon Selection
Now that we have explored the dryness of Cabernet Sauvignon, let's shift our focus to The Fine Wine Company Ltd and their selection of this renowned wine variety. The Fine Wine Company Ltd is a trusted online retailer in the UK, offering an extensive range of high-quality wines.
At The Fine Wine Company Ltd, you will find an impressive collection of Cabernet Sauvignon wines from various regions around the world. Whether you prefer the elegance of a French Bordeaux or the boldness of a California Cabernet Sauvignon, their selection has something to suit every palate.
Exploring Other Wine Styles at The Fine Wine Company Ltd
In addition to Cabernet Sauvignon, The Fine Wine Company Ltd offers an array of other wine styles to cater to diverse preferences. If you're a fan of sparkling wine, you'll find an enticing selection of sparkling wines, including Champagne and other sparkling wine options.
For those who enjoy white wines, The Fine Wine Company Ltd provides a range of choices. From crisp and refreshing Sauvignon Blanc to oaked and buttery Chardonnay, their white wine selection offers something for everyone. If you have a preference for sweetness, they also offer a variety of sweet white wines to explore.
Additionally, if you're looking to indulge in a delightful glass of sparkling rosé, The Fine Wine Company Ltd has you covered. Their collection includes a diverse range of sparkling rosé wines, known for their vibrant flavors and elegant effervescence.
The Best Red Wines at The Fine Wine Company Ltd
While Cabernet Sauvignon is considered one of the best red wines, The Fine Wine Company Ltd showcases an extensive range of exceptional red wines beyond this grape variety. Red wine enthusiasts will find an assortment of options to satisfy their preferences. From the elegance of Pinot Noir to the richness of Syrah and the boldness of Malbec, the red wine selection at The Fine Wine Company Ltd is truly remarkable.
Buying Wine Online in the UK
Buying wine online offers convenience and accessibility to a wide range of options. The Fine Wine Company Ltd makes purchasing wine online in the UK a seamless experience. Their user-friendly website allows you to browse and choose wines at your own pace, providing detailed descriptions and information about each wine to assist in making an informed decision. With just a few clicks, you can have your favorite wines delivered directly to your doorstep.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Cabernet Sauvignon is predominantly considered a dry wine, appreciated for its bold flavors and dry mouthfeel. At The Fine Wine Company Ltd, you can explore an extensive selection of Cabernet Sauvignon wines, along with other wine styles, including sparkling wines, white wines, sweet white wines, sparkling rosé wines, and a diverse range of red wines. Whether you're a wine connoisseur or a novice enthusiast, The Fine Wine Company Ltd offers an opportunity to discover and indulge in the world of wine. So why wait? Start your wine journey today and find the perfect bottle to accompany your next special occasion or a quiet evening at home.
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2023.06.09 08:56 Snovasys25 4 Facts You Didn’t Know About the Remote Workforce

4 Facts You Didn’t Know About the Remote Workforce The remote workforce is on the rise, but there are still a lot of
misconceptions about remote work in different countries.
Here are four facts you didn't know about remote work in America.
  1. Remote work is in demand across all industries
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, in April 2018, 42% percent of employed Americans were "self-employed," which includes freelancers and independent contractors.
That's up from just 26% percent in 1997. With that being said, even though more jobs being done remotely now than ever before, many people have misconceptions that it's just for creative types or consultants—but freelance jobs span every industry and skill level possible.
There are several reasons for this trend. For one , remote work can offer a better work-life balance. Employees working from home or in coworking spaces can often avoid commute times and have more flexible hours. Additionally, remote work can be an excellent option for parents or caregivers who need to be available for their families.
Another reason for the growing popularity of remote work is that it's simply more efficient in many cases. Advancements in technology have made it simple to stay in touch and productive when working remotely.
  1. Remote work isn't just a millennial thing
According to a 2020 poll from Flex Jobs, millennials are more likely to work remotely than older generations.
61% of millennials surveyed said they were "enthusiastic" about the prospect of working from home, while only 42% of Generation X-errs and 32% of baby boomers felt the same way.
But the data shows that remote work is gaining popularity across age groups. Various factors are influencing this recent phenomenon; among them is the rapid increase in the availability and use of personal electronics and high-speed digital internet connections.
What's more, the study found that remote work is not just a millennial thing. Most remote workers are over the age of 35.
So, if you're considering switching to remote work, know that you're not alone. Plenty of us are doing it, and we love it!
  1. Remote workers aren't all freelancing full-time
According to a study by Global Workplace Analytics, 72% of people who telecommute do so at least 1 day per month for their primary employer.
So while we hear a lot about freelancing and remote jobs, there's a lot of people who work remotely and full-time for their primary job.
The demand for remote workers is high in the United States, especially among millennials. A recently published report shows that about half of US workers consider themselves better suited for work from home as an alternative. The presence of flexible schedules, no commuting, no required commute, and remote working are just some of the many reasons that working remotely is an excellent capability.
Of course, working remotely has its share of difficulties. For instance, it is impossible to maintain motivation when you are not working.
  1. Remote work isn't just technology-related
While remote work is most often associated with tech companies, according to The Balance, there are remote opportunities in pretty much every industry.
Whether in the arts, healthcare, retail, education, or science… there's a job out there for you! So why is remote work so popular? There are several reasons. First, it offers a great deal of flexibility and independence. Workers can often set their hours and work anywhere they want (including from home).
Second, remote work tends to be very technology driven. This means that workers need to be comfortable using various types of technology, including computers, tablets, and smartphones.
Finally, remote work is often more productive than traditional office work. To build a remote team and a company, you must equip with tools and techniques to get the insight and work to A
To get insight, Time, Champ is the perfect software to manage your remote team and project simultaneously.
Time Champ offers productivity features to ensure that teams stay focused and on task.
  1. Website and App Monitoring
  2. Detailed Reporting
  3. Optional Screenshots
  4. Customizable Productivity Settings
  5. And many more
Take the next step
See Time Champ in action! Watch our on-demand demo webinar
Want to know more? Book a Demo
Don’t have Time Champ? Sign up for a free account in minutes , no credit card required
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2023.06.09 08:00 Plenty-Agent-7112 China: Aging Before Achieving Wealth?

In 1991, Japan saw its working-age population hit a high point, coinciding with the zenith of its stock market. Since then, it's been a tale of lackluster growth. Alarmingly, China followed suit, reaching its own demographic peak in 2015. With some of the globe's lowest fertility rates and near-zero immigration, these nations are graying rapidly. Surprisingly, China risks turning old before becoming truly affluent. Claims that China's economy will surpass the US seem more like unfounded optimism than rational prediction. Is my analysis off the mark? Would appreciate your insights!
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2023.06.09 07:02 Glum_Prior_2872 Ashok Leyland 6-Wheeler Trucks A Versatile Solution for Efficient Transportation

Ashok Leyland 6-Wheeler Trucks A Versatile Solution for Efficient Transportation
Introduction:
Ashok Leyland, a prominent player in the Indian commercial vehicle industry, has established itself as a trusted brand known for its reliable and robust trucks. Among their extensive range of offerings, the Ashok Leyland 6-wheeler trucks have gained significant popularity due to their versatility and efficiency in transporting goods across diverse terrains. In this article, we will explore the features, benefits, applications, and advancements of Ashok Leyland 6-wheeler trucks, highlighting their impact on the transportation industry.
Company Background:
Ashok Leyland Limited, headquartered in Chennai, India, is a flagship company of the Hinduja Group. With a rich heritage spanning over seven decades, Ashok Leyland has become a leading manufacturer of commercial vehicles, including trucks, buses, and defense vehicles, catering to both domestic and international markets.
Ashok Leyland's Commitment to Quality:
Ashok Leyland is renowned for its unwavering commitment to quality, safety, and customer satisfaction. The company's state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and rigorous quality control processes ensure that their vehicles meet the highest industry standards.
Understanding the 6-Wheeler Configuration:
A 6-wheeler truck, as the name suggests, is a commercial vehicle equipped with six wheels. It typically comprises two axles, with a single wheel on each side of the rear axle, providing enhanced load-carrying capacity and improved stability.
Key Advantages of 6-Wheeler Trucks:
1. Increased Payload Capacity:
The additional set of wheels in a 6-wheeler truck enables it to carry heavier loads compared to smaller vehicles. This makes them suitable for various applications, ranging from intra-city distribution to long-haul transportation.
2. Enhanced Stability and Manoeuvrability:
The distribution of weight across six wheels enhances the truck's stability, especially when navigating challenging terrains or corners. The improved manoeuvrability allows for better control, reducing the risk of accidents.
Features and Specifications of Ashok Leyland 6-Wheeler Trucks:
1. Engine and Performance:
Ashok Leyland 6-wheeler trucks are equipped with powerful engines that deliver optimal performance, ensuring efficient transportation of goods. The engines are designed to provide high torque at lower RPMs, resulting in superior fuel efficiency.
2. Load-Carrying Capacity:
The 6-wheeler trucks from Ashok Leyland are designed to carry substantial payloads, making them ideal for a wide range of applications. They are available in different tonnage capacities to suit diverse customer requirements.
3. Cabin Comfort and Safety:
Ashok Leyland places great emphasis on driver comfort and safety. The cabins of their 6-wheeler trucks are ergonomically designed, providing a comfortable working environment. Additionally, they are equipped with advanced safety features to ensure the well-being of the driver and other road users.
Applications of Ashok Leyland 6-Wheeler Trucks:
1. Goods Transportation:
The primary application of 6-wheeler trucks is the transportation of goods. These trucks are widely used for the delivery of various commodities, including FMCG products, industrial goods, construction materials, and agricultural produce.
2. E-commerce and Last-Mile Delivery:
With the rapid growth of e-commerce, 6-wheeler trucks play a crucial role in facilitating last-mile delivery. Their high load-carrying capacity and maneuverability make them suitable for navigating narrow lanes and congested urban areas, ensuring timely delivery of packages.
3. Construction and Infrastructure:
In the construction and infrastructure sectors, 6-wheeler trucks are utilized to transport materials such as sand, gravel, cement, and bricks. The robust build and excellent load-carrying capacity of Ashok Leyland trucks make them well-suited for these demanding applications.
Technological Advancements and Innovations:
1. Fuel Efficiency and Emission Control:
Ashok Leyland has been at the forefront of adopting innovative technologies to enhance fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. Their 6-wheeler trucks/tipper incorporate advanced features like turbochargers, common rail fuel injection systems, and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) to optimize fuel consumption and minimize environmental impact.
2. Telematics and Connectivity:
Ashok Leyland has embraced the power of connectivity and telematics in their trucks. By integrating GPS-based tracking systems and real-time monitoring, fleet operators can optimize vehicle utilization, track performance metrics, and proactively manage maintenance requirements.
Conclusion:
Ashok Leyland 6-wheeler trucks have become synonymous with efficiency, reliability, and versatility in the transportation industry. Their robust build, high load-carrying capacity, and technological advancements make them an ideal choice for various applications, ranging from goods transportation to last-mile delivery and construction activities. As Ashok Leyland continues to innovate and evolve, their 6-wheeler trucks are poised to shape the future of commercial vehicle transportation, catering to the evolving needs of businesses and consumers alike. Get more information visit here TrucksBuses.com.
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2023.06.09 06:23 A_Vespertine Behold, A Man

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.
Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?
They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.
Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?
Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.
That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?
The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!
And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.
Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.
Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?
Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.
What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.
It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?
It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.
In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?
It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.
Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
Why?” Vici asked.
So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language forthank you’.
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2023.06.09 06:23 A_Vespertine Behold, A Man

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.
Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?
They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.
Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?
Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.
That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?
The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!
And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.
Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.
Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?
Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.
What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.
It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?
It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.
In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?
It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.
Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
Why?” Vici asked.
So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language forthank you’.
submitted by A_Vespertine to DarkTales [link] [comments]


2023.06.09 06:22 A_Vespertine Behold, A Man

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.
Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?
They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.
Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?
Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.
That’s because we fuck like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?
The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!
And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.
Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.
Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?
Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.
What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.
It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?
It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.
In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?
It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.
Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
Why?” Vici asked.
So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language forthank you’.
submitted by A_Vespertine to stayawake [link] [comments]


2023.06.09 06:17 A_Vespertine Behold, A Man

The slender and feminine frames of the four Star Sirens floated with an inhuman ease in the microgravity of their shuttle’s cabin, their prehensile feet and tails either dangling freely or clutching an opalescent perching rod. They stared with a novel curiosity out their window towards the small and relatively unsophisticated Earthly craft that had gradually been drifting its way towards their fleet.
It’s still not answering hails, and I can’t find any sort of transponder or visual identification,” Akioneeda, the eldest of the group, sang in their musical and surgically precise language; the chevron-shaped slits over her trachea granting her a superhuman vocal range.
Using the glittering diodes embedded throughout her mauve skin, she fired jets of light to propel herself over to a crystalline computer terminal on the other side of the cabin.
Why do they have to make their ships so ugly?” the magenta-skinned Pomoko asked; her large and bright cat-like irises constricting in their dark sclera as she squinted at the foreign craft in disdain.
Its design was a smoothly contoured rocket, with a rounded nose and a flaring aft that allowed it to hold both rear and forward-facing thrusters. Its dark hull was nearly invisible against the black of space, and coated in a radar-absorbent material that until recently had masked its approach. The Siren’s shuttle, in contrast, was a luminescent, bright-pink spiral seashell nestled in an array of gossamer-like radiators, sails, and solar panels that resembled blooming flower petals.
I think the polite word is ‘spartan’,” the violet-skinned Kaliphimoa corrected her with an excited grin. The crystalline, oval exocortexes embedded on the sides of her elongated skull began flickering as she began reviewing any information that she thought might be pertinent. “Macrogravitals have a much harder time surviving in space than we do, so they have to be fairly pragmatic in the designs of their vessels. And remember that, unlike our ships, that rocket is meant to launch from and land on planets, so it has to be pretty rugged.
Kali, there can’t be any Macrogravitals on that thing; there’s no centrifuge,” the Cyan-skinned Vicillia pointed out. “Macrogravitals need macrogravity. It’s literally their defining characteristic.”
They don’t die in microgravity, Vici,” Kali said with a roll of her eyes. “In olden times, baseline humans would spend months, sometimes even over a year living in space with no artificial gravity at all.”
This isn’t the Apollo & Artemis Era, Kali. It’s virtually unheard of for Macrogravitals to leave cislunar space without a centrifuge,” Akioneeda said as she examined the telemetry on the intruding object. “That thing definitely has a habitat module, but Earth is on the other side of the sun right now. That’s weeks of travel, and that’s if its fusion rockets are functional. And it is a ship, not a habitat. Something like that is meant primarily for ground-to-orbit transport, and in a pinch travelling between the inner planets during optimal launch windows. It’s not intended to be lived in for prolonged periods of time. I don’t think it came here on purpose. It must have gotten knocked out of orbit and just found its way here. I wish I could tell for sure if there was someone inside, but its mini-magnetosphere is really scattering the sensor beams.”
But doesn’t its magnetosphere mean there must be Macrogravitals inside?” Pomoko asked. “Even normal cosmic radiation is dangerous to humans without our enhanced DNA repair and chromamelanin, isn’t it?
They might have died before they had a chance to shut it off,” Kali suggested as tactfully as she could. “If there are bodies in there, we should recover them and send them back to Earth.
Wait a minute. It’s pretty suspicious that there’s no transponder or identifying markings on the craft, isn’t it?” Vici asked. “This could be a trap or terrorist attack of some kind.”
An attack? Why would anyone want to attack us?” Pomoko asked in dismay.
They wouldn’t. She’s being paranoid,” Kali said dismissively as she comfortingly slid her arm around her. “Vici, save your racist horror stories for when we’re not within visual distance of an Earth vessel, okay?
Reavers are real! Macrogravitals brains get cooked by cosmic radiation and they go crazy!” Vici insisted.
Reavers are most definitively not real, Vicillia. Nonetheless, we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility of an attack,” Akioneeda conceded. “Star Sirens now make up the majority of all humans permanently living off-world, and that’s not a lead we’re ever likely to lose. We’ve only been around a hundred years or so, and there are already over two million of us. We breed like rabbits.
That’s because we screw like rabbits,” Vici said lasciviously, only to incur glares of confusion from the others. “Well, not directly, since we don’t reproduce naturally, but it’s good for our esprit de corps, right girls?
The point being, there are factions on Earth who view our current and forecasted success as a threat to their own potential expansion into space,” Akioneeda continued, failing to hide her annoyance at the younger Siren’s interruption.
That’s backwards. Macrogravitals evolved to live on planets, and we were literally made to colonize space,” Pomoko objected. “Why shouldn’t we breed like rabbits? The solar system, the galaxy, the universe should be filled with as many Star Sirens as they can sustain!
And they will be – eventually. But if we prioritize our long-term survival over the near term, we might not have a future to prioritize,” Akioneeda gently reminded her. “Steady, safe, and sustainable growth is better than fast and risky growth. We don’t want to spook anyone down on Earth into doing something that might hurt us, which is why we have to abide by the Solaris Accords.
Exactly! We’re signatories of the Solaris and Orion Accords, which we’ve always been in complete compliance with,” Kali said. “We’ve already lowered our population growth to two percent per annum, and have agreed to lower it to point four percent when we hit two billion. Anyone attacking us over that would be in violation of the Accords and incur the wrath of every other signatory, including Olympeon, of which we are still a protectorate.
Ugh. Don’t remind me that we’re technically compatriots with Macrogravitals,” Vici said in disgust.
Vicillia, a little respect please for our creators and allies,” Akioneeda reprimanded her.
I gratefully respect them, Preceptress Akio, because no one able to launch this ship out to us would ever do something so suicidally foolish as commit an act of war against Olympeon,” Kali insisted.
You make valid points, Kali, and I’m not saying it’s likely this is an attack, but we should still proceed with caution,” Akioneeda reiterated. “At the very least, the scanner still has enough resolution to rule out the possibility of there being any potential high-yield explosives on the vessel. I think it’s worth the risk to jet over and see what’s inside; if that’s something you girls would be interested in?
Yes, preceptress,” Kali and Vici said in unison, each immediately assuming an attentive posture with their hands behind their backs as they nodded politely, eager for the opportunity to explore a non-Siren spacecraft. Pomoko, however, joined in a little more reticently, and solely because she didn’t want to upset her companions.
Unlike Vici, she never told stories about Macrogravitals driven into mad savagery by the harshness of space, because she found them unbearably terrifying.
The four of them filed into the airlock and grabbed a lungful of air before depressurizing, the short siphons at the base of their necks cinching shut to hold it in. The only things they brought with them were a small bundle of additional air pods and a field kit, both of which were carried by Pomoko.
The enhanced proteins and nanofiber weaves in their bare skin rendered them impervious to vacuum exposure, and their eyes were protected by transparent graphene lenses. Hundreds of small jets of light from all over their bodies propelled them across the gap between their shuttle and the errant vessel, with Kali and Vici taking advantage of the vast open space to perform challenging acrobatic maneuvers.
Akio was the first to arrive at the foreign spacecraft, circling it several times for any signs that might give her some idea about what it was and what it was doing there, but found none. She even peered into a porthole, but could see nothing of note in the darkened interior.
When she reached the airlock, she gestured for Pomoko to hand her a small but rugged cyberdeck from the field kit. While her exocortexes possessed more computing power than she could ever need, the cyberdeck contained a compact suite of sensor arrays for environmental analysis, as well as antennas and ports for electronic interfaces. Syncing the device with her own exocortexes, a holographic AR display projected itself on her bionic lenses.
It didn’t take long for her to find a frequency to engage with the airlock control mechanism, and even less time to find a skeleton key that could best that woefully inadequate security system. As the outer door of the airlock dilated open, Akio signalled for Kali and Vici to rejoin them, and they all funnelled into the ship together. The outer door snapped behind them, sealing them in complete darkness that was staved off solely by their photonic diodes until some emergency lights began to flicker on and off at random intervals.
As the airlock slowly began to repressurize, the Sirens – who were accustomed to an atmosphere maintained at conditions optimal for them - shuddered slightly at the feeling of foreign air creeping up against their skin.
The air’s acceptable. It’s a standard oxygen/nitrogen mix with no detectable toxins or pathogens present,” Akioneeda assured them as she opened her siphons and exhaled the breath she had been holding since they left their own shuttle. “CO2’s a little high, but not dangerous.”
“Doesn’t high CO2 mean there’s someone here?” Pomoko asked, nervously looking about in all directions as she clutched her supplies close to her.
“Not necessarily. I’m not detecting any human environmental DNA,” Akio replied confidently. “I am however sampling some environmental DNA that doesn’t match anything on file. It might take some time to analyze it enough to make any sense of it. The power system is failing, which is why the lights aren’t working right. The electrical surges are generating enough EM interference that the sensor beam is still pretty scattered, so I can’t see much through the bulkheads. Keep your diodes lit up bright and stay alert.”
The shadowy main corridor was hexagonal in shape, spanning several meters across and roughly twenty-five meters from end to end. It was broken into six segments, with every other segment containing a pair of hexagonal doorways across from one another, along with a door at each end of the corridor.
The door next to us should be the engine module, and the one at the other end should be the command and communications center,” Akio said, opening the door to the engine room and sticking her cyberdeck inside. “I’m going to do a quick scan of each room before we start rummaging through everything, so don’t go sticking your tails anywhere they don’t belong until I’m done.”
The other three Sirens all nodded obediently, and limited their exploration of the ship to a solely visible inspection. None of them were used to being in low light conditions, and their pupils were dilated so much they were nearly round. Though their visual acuity was raptor-like in its detail and they could see into the ultra-violet spectrum, night vision had not been a priority when they had been designed. Nonetheless, their large eyes and vertical pupils still let them see better in the dark than any unmodified human.
The writing is Cyrillic, but everything I can see is just basic labels. I can’t tell for certain which language it is,” Kali said. “That doesn’t mean much though. This thing is definitely second-hand, likely even stolen. That would explain the lack of identification. Maybe whoever stole it got spooked and just set it adrift.”
So, it’s a pirate ship then?” Pomoko asked, sounding slightly relieved. “That’s better than terrorists, or Reavers.”
It is not. We’re space mermaids. Space pirates are our natural enemies,” Vici claimed. “If they catch us, they’ll pry the exocortexes from our skulls and pluck out our photonic diodes one by one, then bind us to the front of the ship as figureheads.”
Vicillia, that is enough!” Akio reprimanded her as she scanned the next room. “Stop trying to scare her! Kali’s right. This is an old ship that’s been stripped of nearly every non-essential piece of equipment. Someone stole it, and then abandoned it when the authorities started closing in. That’s it. There’s not a raiding party of pirates hiding behind one of these doors.”
Famous last words,” Vici muttered, defensively folding her arms across her chest.
Kali once again put her arm around Pomoko in comfort and gave her a loving kiss on the head.
The glowing, sylph-like Sirens continued floating through the dim and unevenly lit corridor like ghosts, checking one room after another and finding nothing of note until they finally reached the end.
Now that we’re done checking for pirates, we can focus on the command center,” Akio announced. “Assuming they haven’t been wiped, we’ll check the ship’s logs and records for evidence of its origin and how it got here. If it was stolen, we’ll send it to Pink Floyd Station and they can deal with it. Otherwise, we’ll be free to keep it as salvage.”
She raised her finger to tap the AR command to open the door, but suddenly hesitated.
What is it?” Kali asked.
Akio squinted at her HUD display in alarm, but seemed reluctant to answer.
There’s something on the other side,” she whispered.
Without warning, the door was manually thrown open with a physical force that shocked the gracile Sirens. From the impenetrable gloom beyond the door’s threshold, there emerged a grotesque figure the likes of which the Sirens had never seen before.
Its round torso was squat and bloated, vaguely resembling that of a frog’s. Its veiny, crimson hide was mottled in purple splotches from where those veins had broken. Four long limbs dangled down limply, each possessing five boney, claw-like digits. As with the Star Sirens, its pinky fingers had been repurposed into a second opposable thumb; but unlike them, its digits were arranged more radially so that its hands resembled starving sea stars. It possessed a prehensile tail as well, though closer in appearance to an opossum’s than the Siren’s simian tails.
It was the front of the creature that was most alien to them. It had no neck or even a head distinct from its bulging torso. It had two eyes on mobile stalks, each a bloodshot blue with a crescent-shaped pupil. There was a blowhole near the top of its vaguely defined head, and near the bottom hung a toothless proboscis, as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk.
All four Sirens broke out into screams at the sight of the deformed creature, jetting backward as quickly as they could. Wheezing, the creature lurched towards them, slowly raising its proboscis in the air as it did so.
Vici grabbed the bundle of air pods that Pomoko had released in her panic and began beating the creature over the top of the head with it. Though she possessed just barely enough physical strength to walk in nothing greater than Lunar gravity, her love for her sisters and her fear, disgust, and contempt for anything else drove her to assail the hideous being as hard as she could.
The creature groaned, though it seemed to be more of sorrow than of pain. Raising its arms up protectively while keeping its proboscis elevated, it slowly sunk down to the bottom of the corridor as Vici bashed away at it.
Vici! Vici, stop!” Kali commanded, grabbing hold of her and pulling her back. “It’s not attacking us!
She was right, of course. Despite its fearsomely unfamiliar form, it actually seemed rather pathetic as it lay quivering on the floor, making no sound aside from laboured and gasping breaths.
Alien! It’s an alien!” Vici cried in dismay, scarcely believing her own eyes.
Though that improbable, if more palpable, explanation for the being’s origin may have seemed the most obvious, Kali felt a growing sense of horror well up inside her as the pieces started to click together. She glanced over at Akio who was rapidly reviewing the readings from her cyberdeck, and could tell from the revulsion on her face that she had reached the same conclusion.
Preceptress; please say that it’s an alien,” she pleaded in a softly cracking voice.
Akio looked up at her with pity, and slowly shook her head.
I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But that, save for the skill and wisdom of Olympeon and the Grace of Cosmothea, is us.”
It… it’s human?” Pomoko asked, floating up behind Kali and Vici and just barely daring to peek over their shoulders at the horrid beast.
It’s bred from a human base, yes,” Akio explained. “Heavily modified, of course. Much more than ourselves, though nowhere near as adroitly. It’s a genetic chimera; probably because its embryo was cobbled together from multiple lines of modified cells. Its hide and at least a few of its major organs appeared to have been grown separately and grafted on in vivo. It’s literally a Frankenstein Monster.
What’s that old saying? Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein was the Doctor, not the monster; wisdom is knowing that Doctor Frankenstein was the monster,” Kali quoted, pitying the poor wretch that wallowed before her.
Yeah. I think… I think that whoever made this was trying to make a new species of space-adapted humans, probably in the hopes of eventually surpassing us,” Akio speculated. “But it’s a failed experiment. All of its genomes are highly degraded and riddled with off-target mutations and poorly thought-out on-target ones. Its cells are barely functional, and it’s undergoing mass organ failure at this very moment.
It… he’s dying?” Kali asked softly.
It was probably dying before it even decanted; it’s been held together with prayers and twine,” Akio explained.
Good! It’s an abomination! It never should’ve existed in the first place!” Pomoko declared.
Pomoko, shush!” Kali yelled, hot tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “Can… can he hear us?
It can hear, I think. Its brain size and neuronal density are actually over the optimal limit, and its neurochemistry and connectome are a complete mess,” Akio replied. “It’s probably an idiot savant, at best. It likely has some linguistic capability, but I don’t think it would be able to understand Sirensong. It doesn’t have any kind of speech organs or comm implant, either. Its digestive and respiratory systems are separate, and that blowhole doesn’t have any kind of syrinx.
In other words, he has no mouth and he must scream,” Kali lamented. “Did he escape, do you think?
It must have,” Akio nodded. “Pomoko may have been a bit insensitive just now, but she’s right. This thing’s a violation of multiple transnational laws, treaties and conventions. Its creators wouldn’t want anyone to know about it. It… it must have known that escaping its creators and whatever convoluted life-support system they were using to keep it alive would have meant a slow and painful death, but it did it anyway. All it could have hoped for was that someone would find it and be able to hold its creators accountable. We don’t understand enough about its anatomy to offer any meaningful assistance. The most we could do is prolong its suffering. I think we should just let it pass in peace; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours at most now. We’ll return to our shuttle, tell the fleet what we found, and then have the carcass put in cryostasis as evidence. We’ll send it and this vessel to Olympeon, and they’ll deal with it. They’ll find who’s responsible and bring them to justice.
Yeah, we need to get back to the shuttle immediately for decontamination and med-screening. We could be infected by whatever microbes and nanites they stuffed into this bloated wretch,” Pomoko said with barely restrained panic, jetting back to the airlock as quickly as she could.
Akio and Vici followed closely behind, but Kali lingered in place as she gazed at the creature’s proboscis, which it still held upright. She recalled that elephants on Earth would raise their trunks when they were dying, and that the ancient Romans, despite being one of the cruellest cultures of humans to exist, had still recognized this as a plea for mercy. Though the gulf between the two species was significant, one self-aware being could still recognize the suffering of another, and be moved to pity by it.
I’m staying with him,” she announced softly.
What?” Pomoko shouted, she and the others all spinning around to look at her in bewilderment.
Until he passes. Akio said it wouldn’t be long,” Kali replied.
Why?” Vici asked.
So he doesn’t die alone!” Kali screamed.
Pomoko started jetting back towards her friend, but Akio caught her and gently shook her head in refusal. She silently ushered the two of them back through the airlock and, with some reluctance, left Kali alone with the dying creature.
Kali tenderly took hold of the being’s trunk with her left hand, compassionately petting it with her right. He shuddered slightly, letting go of a noticeable amount of tension in his malformed body. Snorting from his blowhole, he focused his teetering eyestalks up at her, and she could see in those eyes a great, crushing sorrow, both from the suffering he had endured and the lost potential of the life he could have had if fate had been kinder.
A life like the one Kali had led as a privileged and well-bred daughter of Olympeon, and would most likely go on to live for many centuries more.
The tears in her eyes reached a critical mass now, budding off into tiny orbs and floating out into the air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed. It was all she could think to say, and she said it in English, hoping there was a better chance of him understanding it than her native language.
Remarkably, he reacted by raising the flat palm of his right hand up to the space beneath his trunk – a struggle for him even in the absence of gravity – and then lowered it with the palm facing up and out. Kali wasted no time in running the gesture through her exocortexes, frantic to decipher what the creature could be trying to tell her before it was too late.
It was sign language forthank you’.
____________________________________________
By The Vesper's Bell
submitted by A_Vespertine to ChillingApp [link] [comments]