It’s another gray, drizzly morning in SeaTTTle, the kind that makes you wonder if the sun ever really existed. Evan39’s alarm goes off—though, truth be told, he’s been awake for hours, tossing and turning, thinking about everything. Everything being: the pointlessness of trying to maintain an identity on XO without getting doxxed, the probability that aliens are watching him, the fact that Disco Fries still thinks he can summit a mountain, and, of course, that weird stain on his apartment ceiling that kind of looks like Zeke Morris’ moniker. Dark thoughts mixed with absurdity—just like the XO threads.

He kicks off the weighted blanket with a dramatic flair, frowning at how it’s slightly wrinkled at the edges. "Ugh, no one told me this was the life I’d signed up for," he mutters to no one, with a hint of self-pity.

He stares out the window at the rain-soaked streets. "Hdy," he says to his reflection, scrutinizing his perfectly arranged hair, noticing with a sigh that it’s beginning to thin. Great, he thinks, Boom’s completely bald, and Mainlining? He’s got that ridiculous, luscious head of hair. He frowns deeper, the weight of being older than both hitting him harder than usual. "How dare you!" he mutters to himself, acknowledging that the person he’s most upset with is himself.

The clock reads 4:15 a.m. He slides into his uniform—well, not his real uniform. Not the high-end bespoke suits he’d wear to his large law firm in his past life, before he traded in billing hours for "managing" a grocery store in downtown SeaTTTle. At least that’s what he tells people on XO. The truth? Who knows anymore. He carefully adjusts his collar before leaving, straightening every last fold.

As he steps outside, the smell of damp pavement and stale weed hits him. Homeless tents line the sidewalk, glowing faintly under the orange streetlights. He swerves to avoid stepping in something—best not to know what. His nose wrinkles in disgust. “Lib$ Nonsense,” he growls under his breath, pulling his jacket tighter as a sharp gust of wind blows through the street. "This is my life now. $ociety laughed at me." Another day navigating SeaTTTle's jungle of decay, and his perfectly polished shoes were not built for this mess.

His walk to work, a mere five blocks, is interrupted by the familiar sight of Gary—the local drug-addled homeless guy who likes to shout at pigeons. Today, Gary’s wearing a torn plastic bag as a makeshift raincoat, muttering to himself about the aliens that live in his bloodstream. “Evan, you got a smoke, man?” Gary's voice is raspy, a cocktail of cigarettes, cheap vodka, and whatever cocktail of substances he's found lately.

“I don’t smoke, Gary,” Evan replies, a faint sneer curling on his lips. “And how many times do I have to tell you? The aliens are real, but they’ve already made contact with the people who matter.” He waves Gary off with a dismissive flick of his wrist, careful not to get too close. With a half-smile, Evan walks past, leaving Gary to his extraterrestrial musings.

At the store, things are as chaotic as ever. It’s not even 5 a.m., and a fight has already broken out in Aisle 3. Someone tried to walk off with two carts of Red Bull and a tray of sushi. “Just jump,” Evan mutters as he watches his employees half-heartedly chase down the thief. In moments like this, he wonders why he gave up his cushy corner office. He’s still a lawyer, deep down. Somewhere between the frozen food section and the produce aisle, he knows he could still argue a case better than most. But this? This is his punishment, his purgatory, for…what? For living in a city that sold its soul to homelessness, drugs, and Lib$?

Boom texts him, but of course, it’s on a burner phone—because that’s the only way Boom communicates in real life with a very limited number of other poasters. “Evan39, you’re lied to and cheated out of your life then laughed at.”

He doesn’t even respond. It’s like Boom knows exactly how to twist the knife, every single time. “Sure, bud, sure,” Evan mutters as he silences the burner and goes back to pretending he cares about this managerial life.

Lunch break rolls around, and Evan decides to brave the outside world again. As he steps out, he’s greeted by the sight of a fresh spray-painted mural—some artist's attempt to capture the "essence" of SeaTTTle. It’s a mess of neon colors, random symbols, and—of course—someone’s tent pitched right in front of it. “Art,” he says with a snort. “What even is art in this place anymore?”

He decides to walk down to the park, knowing full well it’s a mistake. The moment he gets there, he’s greeted by the sight of more incoherent shouting. This time, it’s a woman in a dirty pink hoodie, her face gaunt, arms riddled with needle marks. She’s ranting about how the government implanted chips in her teeth. Evan listens for a second, nods, and thinks to himself, “At least she’s got a narrative. More coherent than most.”

By 2 p.m., the rain has picked up again, and Evan is back at the store, scrolling through XO on his phone, blank-bumping the threads from the graveyard crew. Disco Fries has poasted something about summiting Teewinot Mountain again, even though everyone knows his obesity makes that dream unlikely at best. “I’ll get there, boys,” the poast ends, and Evan can’t help but chuckle at the delusion.

He smirks, feeling a strange sense of accomplishment in chronicling the decay around him. "The city's a powder keg," he types furiously, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "A toxic cocktail of drugs, mental illness, and societal neglect. And I, dear readers, am your intrepid chronicler." He hits 'poast,' a smug grin spreading across his face. As much as this life wears him down, it’s moments like these—watching SeaTTTle’s downward spiral and sharing his observations with the XO masses—that give him a twisted sense of purpose.

The afternoon brings the usual blend of absurdity and legal challenges. Someone's trying to return a 12-pack of energy drinks they already drank, claiming they were "expired." "A SeaTTTweak zombie if I’ve ever seen one," Evan mutters, recalling the shuffling, strung-out people he saw on his lunch break. The situation barely requires a brain cell to resolve, but in the back of his mind, he's imagining drafting a memo about it: Energy drink return, or breach of contract? Discuss.

His phone buzzes again, breaking him out of his daydream. This time, it’s Mainlining blank-bumping—yet again—his renowned "Christmas Eve, Biglaw Horror (Holiday $pecial)" thread. Evan knows it’s the 413th time, as he’s tracked it. The thread, originally poasted years ago, was an infamous LARP about that particular Christmas Eve when Mainlining simultaneously handled a high-profile fire drill at Starbucks, one of Perkins Coie LLP's biggest clients. Mainlining—subservient as ever—exhibited legal skills on par with his fictional hero, Chuck McGill from Better Call Saul, while simultaneously artfully poasting on AutoAdmit about a fictional yet similar crisis.

Well, On Balance, I think Mainlining's life is Balanced, Evan muses. It’s almost poetic. He wonders briefly if Mainlining is billing Perkins Coie clients while blank-bumping his XO threads during the day.

As evening falls, Evan clocks out and heads home, the familiar dreariness of SeaTTTle’s streets wrapping around him like a heavy blanket. Tents and trash bags line the sidewalks like the city's shame on full display, while the Space Needle looms in the distance—once a symbol of futuristic hope, now a cruel joke in the shadow of this decaying metropolis. His mind drifts to the endless poasts on XO, reflecting his own frustration with the world and the city he now finds himself trapped in.

He stops at a corner, noticing the same drug-addled woman from earlier, now slumped on the ground. She looks at him, eyes glassy, and mutters something incoherent. He stares at her for a second, a pang of something—pity? disgust?—gnawing at him before he moves on. "SeaTTTweak zombies," he mutters under his breath again. “This city really is a powder keg.”

Back in his sleek, minimalist apartment—on the top floor of an expensive high-rise condominium overlooking the city—Evan pours himself a glass of scotch, the amber liquid swirling in his glass as he reflects on the day. The emptiness gnaws at him more in moments like these. It’s not that he misses the law firm—at least, not the long hours or the endless billing. But sometimes, the facade he’s created, the grocery store manager with the heart of a litigator, feels too heavy to maintain.

Was this all there was? The constant grind, the urban decay, the endless dance with society's failures?

He logs onto AutoAdmit, seeking refuge in the one place where everything makes a little more sense. The usernames, the poasts, the cynicism—it’s all a twisted comfort. He glances at the three monitors in front of him, each reflecting a different persona.

On one screen, Boom is preparing another cryptic burner phone message. Boom’s poasts are always short and dripping with a combination of venom and wisdom—perfectly tailored to stir up XO’s resident conspiracy theorists or mock anyone who’s fooled themselves into thinking life has more meaning than survival. Boom doesn’t need much. In fact, Boom doesn’t even need hair. "No hair, no worries," Evan mutters, typing out some nihilistic quip about society’s decline before switching screens.

On another monitor, Mainlining is mid-rant. He’s currently unraveling a wild theory about how most historical structures, from the Parthenon to the Eiffel Tower, are fraudulent reconstructions, products of government cover-ups meant to deceive the public into thinking we have a connection to the past. Evan smiles and watches as Mainlining’s rant takes an absurd turn, eventually weaving from fraudulent structures to a poast about "pep"—some inside joke Mainlining's been running with for years now, that no one quite understands but everyone plays along with. "Pep is what’s really holding this world together, guys," Mainlining types. "Without it, there’s nothing."

Evan can’t help but chuckle. Mainlining’s always been a mix of genius and absurdity—a reflection of the chaos in Evan’s own mind.

Finally, there’s the third screen. This is where Evan, in his truest form, exists—Evan39, the once-aspiring attorney turned grocery store manager turned unofficial chronicler of SeaTTTle’s slow collapse. He stares at the blank poast box for a moment, fingers hovering over the keys, thinking of something biting to say about the city, its endless problems, and the futility of it all. But the words don’t come. Not yet.

He glances out the window, the lights of SeaTTTle twinkling in the distance, distorted by the rain streaking down the glass. His expensive high-rise offers him a perfect view of the city—a city that looks better from up here than it does on the ground. From here, he can ignore the tents, the filth, the screaming addicts, and the slow-motion decay of everything around him.

But he knows that tomorrow morning, when the alarm buzzes, he’ll be back in the thick of it—dodging trash piles, making sarcastic quips at Gary, and managing a grocery store he still doesn’t understand how he got involved with. And in the back of his mind, he’ll be wondering: is there really anything beyond this? Beyond SeaTTTle, beyond Boom, Mainlining, and Evan39? Or is this it—the endless cycle of poasting, working, and walking through the ruins of a city?

He shakes the thought away and turns back to the screen. With a smirk, he finally types, “F*** this ‘world’ and ‘Humanity’ and $eattle and Lib$ nonsense.” He hits 'poast' and leans back, raising his glass in a silent toast to the madness.

And then, as if on cue, Boom's burner phone buzzes again.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5596974&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310684",#48103298)