Blue

Well the point of making stuff like this is to learn how to get better.

Well Neighbourhood watch I got when I was far less competent in Source Engine games than I am today. But regardless, I still got "Get Some Grub" and "Little Rocket Man" without cheating. In Episode 1 I also got "One Free Bullet" first try without dying. (Protip: Unbind all weapon switching keys and controls except to Weapon categories 1 and 5.)

I concur. "Censorship" in my mind is an umbrella term for the dictates of when people can't or shouldn't know or see something whose context is governed by why and where. The rationality of the why and where is why there is dispute, I posit.

The sugar rush of the Nyan-Tarts has helped your aim! You whip out your pistol and rattle off 10 shots at the torso and arm of the enemy robot crab. Some of the bullets glance off the plating, but several of them punch the rivets inside the plating. The torso of the crustaceanbot now looks like it's bleeding oil. It's dazed and the non-chainsaw claw has gone limp, but still standing.

"Why she wouldn't hurt a fly."

Eee ann. I wonder what culture that name originated from. Scottish?

The train of thought doesn't carry you as far as it used to because you're no longer halluciinating by the power of starvation. Earl looks curiously at you as you stop hovering. You use the keycard from the cubby and open the next car in the train. There's a drastic difference in sound between being inside the electrical tender and the bridge clamp between cars. The first freight car looks like it's holding heavy machinery of some kind, covered by tarps and held down by thick straps. The sound is still not all that different from the transition between cars, even though the sheet metal of this box car entirely cover the machinery and their tarps. You ask Earl a question, but it doesn't seem that he heard you over the noise of the wind and the rumble of the magnetic motors. You continue walking, Earl keeping pace. The second freight car seems to be very similar to the first, carrying some more machinery, but the curved tubing suggests it might be pumping equipment. A giant enemy crab robot has leaped out from behind one of the machines in front of you, about six feet tall and armed with a chainsaw seemingly built into one of its claws. Earl has skittered away in fear. Obvious exits are to run back to the First freight car NORTH, try to climb onto the smooth (almost slippery-looking) tarps EAST, Dive off the train towards the quickly-zooming-past arch supports on the tunnel wall WEST, or fight the new crab robot SOUTH.

"Hey Earl, you wouldn't happen to know anything about eyeglasses, would you?" "I don't, but Mercury might. She's in the tail locomotive last I checked." replies Earl, starting to crawl onto the wall. "At the opposite end of the train."

"Rainbow flavor Nyan-tarts" most definitively sounds like something both artificial and full of sweetners. Apart from the pickled onions and chocolate covered raisins, there's not much else choice to go on for in terms of foods with sustenance, but you're not one to complain. Unless it's lunchtime, which it is not. The strawberry-ish flavor tastes like it gave you diabetes. How many ounces per inch did they saturate this pastry with sugar?

Be seated. Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you’ve heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball player, the toughest boxer. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Now, an Army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating. We have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. You know, by God I actually pity those poor bastards we’re going up against. By God, I do. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do. Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose and we're going to kick him in the ass! We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we're gonna go through him like crap through a goose! There’s one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home. And you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what did you do in the great World War II, you won’t have to say, "Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana." Alright now, you sons-of-bitches, you know how I feel. Oh, and I will be proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle – anytime, anywhere. That’s all. George C. Scott as George S. Patton

The carbonated water tastes rather snappy and bitter, but with a subtle sweet aftertaste. It's a godsend to have changed the lingering flavor in your mouth- even though it was a while ago, you still had the smell of that tentacle lingering in your nose. Refreshed, you crush the cap in your hand, shove it through the opening in the bottle and place it beside the trash can, hoping someone else will come along that recycles.

You pick up the sandwich, thankfully still in a plastic wrapper and begin moving towards a small trash can beside the sink. Its texture resembles more of a grainy play-dough than the rigid rye it appeared to be, undisturbed. "I don't believe I caught your name." "I don't believe I dropped it." replied the crab whimsically. "Call me Earl." The sandwich makes a rather unnerving "splutch" in the can. "Are you the new conductor?" "Nope." "Well I've got nothing better to do than to scuttle around. Would you mind putting me on the floor?" You pick up Earl and place him on the floor. He weighs a bit more than you anticipated. Earl quickly skittered over to the still-open mini-fridge and began tearing off a portion of one of the beer cans and nibbling on it, before placing another on top of his shell and walking away down the cabin.

Did you know the threshold of space is an altitude of 100 miles (about 500,000 feet)?

Thankfully let's hope it stays that way.

You gesticulate in a friendly manner to the robotic crab on the table, while bending over to look into the mini-fridge. "You're not Bart, are you?" asks the crab. "No, I'm Gordon." "Oh. 'kay." replies the crab. In the mini-fridge you see a pack of pop-tarts, a bottle of jino-brand soda water, a sandwich that looks like it was prepared by either a sentient pile of steel shavings or a slovenly middle-aged man several months ago, a bottle of picked pearl onions with distant future expiry date and a small box of chocolate covered rasins. There are some cans of beer at the bottom, but they're opened and empty. "If Bart's not gonna come back soon, you might want to do something about his lunch. I don't want it to start smelling." pirked the crab.

"Hey train, is there anything to drink?" You pipe up. "I don't know. Maybe there's something in the crew cabin. It's in the electrical tender, just down the ladder." Thinking that the fuse box, being a large panel of push-in-pull-out button switches probably would be just a dangerous way to make the train annoyed, you head South to the ladder. You peek inside the cubby in an idle glance, just to see what's inside. Amongst a few files and a clipboard, there's a keycard and an empty thermos. You take both, since there doesn't seem to be anyone around to otherwise use them or protest, and head through the car connector from the locomotive to the eletrical tender. You recall the train was wider than the room in the tender, leading you to think that on either side of the room just behind the wall is some very large (and probably very heavy) electrical thing. The crew cabin has a Mini-fridge, a Sink and a smallish Table. On the EAST wall is a corkboard, on the WEST wall is a map that looks similar to the one in the Locomotive, but its paper. To the SOUTH is the door out of the tender and presumably to the rest of the train. NORTH is the ladder behind you, back up to the driver cab. The room is comfortably warm and coupled with the droning hum of the magnetic motors under the floor, there doesn't really seem to be any threat present. The air smells like someone didn't open a can of soda pop properly over a carpet yesterday. A robotic crab on the table has perked up and started walking around, occasionally glancing at you.

I put far more philosophical gravity in doctorates, theologians and philosophers than any blogger or commenter on the internet that says that they've done their homework. The overlap between these groups is slim because the former is usually writing books and debating while the latter is usually at a part time job or playing video games. Due to this disparity in professionalism and proficiency in knowledge, it saddens me when I see a Religion partition in a forum because usually it just creates anger and confusion because of the mutual amount of strength of opinion and unwillingness to back down, regardless which party has greater intelligence, arguing skills or learnédness.

Since death is an inevitability regardless if it means the end of the world for everyone else, or if it's just me, I like having assurance in what happens after the fact.

"Is someone there?" You ask, slightly inclined to be surprised. "I'm the train, and you made an unnecessary emergency stop. Now I might be late. Disengage the brake, if you don't mind." says the voice. You timidly but obediently repress the switch, causing a minor lurch before the train automatically starts moving again, comfortably accelerating back up to speed. "I have a schedule to keep, you know. Or else I might get the scrap." the train continues. "What is this place?" you inquire. "Route G-2, southbound from Apex Main Complex to South Bluehill Storage. Load 1,270,000 kilograms, varied consist. Contents of load classified level 3 security clearance. Scheduled 10:15 departure, predicted arrival 21:55 at South Bluehill Industrial Terminus. You are in the main drivers cabin. Automatic pilot currently engaged." it says rather systematically. "What was that green lamp back there?" "Route block signal. It was green because I have the right of way in this block of track and there are no obstructions." "You almost hit me." "You didn't step on the track so I didn't know you were there." "What was the pipe back there that I came out of, filled with green stuff?" you ask, gesturing with your thumb in the opposite direction of where the train's going. "I don't know much about the Apex Complex, but I do know they usually require a lot of coolant for whatever they do. They receive shipments of stuff like that almost every buffin' week. Oxidizers, Engine fluids, Lubricants- megaliters of it. I think they do some variety of engine testing, but I'm not sure. I also think their shipments come automatically, because they've still been ordering stuff even after they shut it down." "Who shut down the Complex?" "The Administrator. Something about bugs. The Transit Authority doesn't get much information on the Science teams." "Could they have been Xen wildlife?" you posit, slightly worried. "What's a Xen?" queried the train. "I want to go back to my original questions." "Well alright, I've got no one else to talk to." "What's Bluehill Storage?" "A warehouse. A very very very big warehouse." "How far did we travel when I was asleep?" "Not very far, actually. I stopped and waited for a few hours because of a block ahead of me being redirected, so the track was occupied. Anything else you want to ask?" "Nothing I can think of." "Well alright then. NORTH is the train console, EAST is the map, WEST is the fusebox, SOUTH is the cubby and ladder. You can talk to the Train whenever you're aboard.

Well let's re-rail it, shall we? Currently we're at level 1 on the Kardashev scale of Civilization technological advancement whereby we're only using a small percentage of a small planet's total energy, putting us at about 0.7. The power of a God would obviously be able to exploit power at equal to or greater than 3 (that is, able to put to work all or more than the energy in a single galaxy that is about the same size of the Milky Way). As it stands, for our species, a travel time of more than four years in space travelling at high speed, or waiting several thousand years for it to be closer, it still presents a fantastic logistical problem traveling to our closest neighboring star (Alpha or Proxima Centari). A God would have very easy time being able to bridge such distances as galaxies (hundreds of thousands, even millions of lightyears apart).

Well there's the other theory that he always was, is, and always will be. But that's not the point of this discussion, now is it?

Where God came from, how he came into being, why and what he is are all the questions which inevitably lead those who don't believe in him to sneer at the simple fact that we don't and can't know, as if that single bit of information is reason enough to damn the entire system of belief.