The Grasp of Midnight's Thorn

written by Universal Monk

PART ONE

Blood trickled from the deep gash on his hand, dark crimson drops seeping into the soil beneath his prized rose bushes. The rich earth drank it up greedily, staining the roots of the thorny plants. Derek Ahmaogak winced, disgusted by the sharp sting that pulsed through his fingers. His small spade slipped from his grasp, falling uselessly to the ground. He wiped the sweat and dirt from his face with a grimy sleeve, the scent of iron clinging to his skin.

Being a native from the Inupiat tribe, he often felt the weight of his ancestral roots pressing him to master the land, to connect with it in the way his forebears had, but gardening had proven a fickle and unforgiving task.

The sky above had turned a bruised purple, the sun sinking low on the horizon, casting an eerie glow that made the world seem as though it were on the verge of nightfall. Shadows stretched long and jagged across his garden as Derek sighed, feeling the ache in his muscles from the day’s labor.

“Over it,” he muttered, shaking his head. His gaze turned to the house, where his laptop waited, promising an escape from the frustration and pain.

He had heard whispers about a new, mysterious corner of the internet. For years, he’d lurked in forums filled with conspiracy theories, forgotten lore, and the ramblings of half-crazed prophets. But lately, his interest had spiraled into something more mysterious,

It began with a hidden Lemmy community, buried deep beneath layers of cryptic links, accessible only through a private browser extension. At first glance, it seemed like a strange offshoot of Latter-day Saint theology—a sect of Dark Mormons calling themselves The Covenant of the Obsidian Testament.

They claimed to practice ancient rites long hidden from mainstream followers, rituals that Joseph Smith himself had allegedly sealed away to protect the world from their power.

The posts were a tangle of cryptic phrases, dripping with strange, ancient-sounding words that tugged at the edges of Derek's curiosity. Symbols danced between the lines, and scattered clues teased at the corners of his mind.

There were references to old, long-forgotten writings. One thread blazed out like a beacon in the dark: "The Veil of the Forgotten Seer: Rituals of Eternal Ascendance.” The title seemed to pulse with forbidden promise, pulling him in, whispering of something far more dangerous than he could ever imagine.

He couldn’t resist.

Late one night, with nothing but the dim glow of his monitor lighting his cluttered house, Derek clicked on the link. His heart pounded as he read the post, detailing a ritual tied to an ancient, forgotten text buried deep within the one of the original manuscripts of the Book of Mormon.

It spoke of a plant—no ordinary plant, but a seed said to have been passed down from ancient times, tied to something far older than any religion. The Dark Mormons called it “Xymethra’s Bloom.” A plant that could grant unimaginable insight, but only to those willing to nourish it with their own blood.

Derek scoffed at first, but as he read on, his curiosity turned to obsession. The more he read, the more he convinced himself that this could be his chance. He could finally be someone. Finally do something that no one else had dared. This wasn’t just some online community; this was power—real power, hidden from the world.

He posted a response, half expecting to be ignored. But the next morning, his inbox had a single message. The sender was anonymous, but the message was clear: "You are chosen. The seeds will arrive soon. Prepare the soil. Prepare yourself."

It felt like a dream. Four days later, a small, unmarked package arrived at his door. Inside, wrapped in old parchment, were three small seeds—black as night, shimmering with an almost unnatural sheen. A note was tucked alongside them, written in small neat handwriting: “The soil must be fed with blood. Only then will Xymethra’s Bloom rise.”

Derek’s hands shook as he held the seeds. For years, he had searched for something like this—something to prove that the world wasn’t just a monotonous grind of existence. Now, it was in his hands. The next day, he went to his backyard, an unkempt patch of dirt barely touched in months. He dug a small hole and dropped the seeds into the soil.

With a deep breath, Derek peeled away the bandages from his hand, exposing the still-healing wound. He gave it a squeeze, forcing a few drops of blood to fall onto the soil below. As soon as the crimson droplets touched the earth, the air seemed to shift—subtle but unmistakable, like the world itself was holding its breath. He quickly covered the seeds and stepped back, heart racing.

The wind picked up, carrying with it a low hum, almost like a whisper.

Derek smiled. Finally, something was happening.

PART TWO

Days passed, and Derek found himself returning to the garden again and again, watching the patch of soil where he’d buried the seeds. At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and doubt gnawed at him—had he really believed that some ancient ritual would work? Knowing how Lemmy was, it was probably some sort of hemp seed or something.

But on the fifth day, something changed.

A single sprout had broken through the soil.

It was unlike any plant Derek had ever seen. The stem was thin, but it shimmered darkly in the sunlight, almost as if it absorbed the light rather than reflected it. The leaves, black and veined with red, seemed to pulse with a strange energy. Derek knelt down. He reached out to touch one of the leaves, but the moment his fingers brushed the surface, a sharp jolt shot up his arm.

His breath hitched. The plant was warm, alive in a way that felt almost sentient.

The next few days were a blur. The plant grew at an alarming rate, its black vines twisting and curling as they clawed their way through the soil. Every morning, Derek would find it had spread farther, its roots thickening and burrowing deeper into the earth.

He couldn’t stop watching it—obsession consumed him. He barely ate, barely slept. The Dark Mormons on Lemmy had been quiet since sending the seeds, but their final message echoed in his mind: “Prepare yourself.”

One night, as the wind howled outside his window, Derek sat at his kitchen table, staring at the plant through the back door. It had taken over half the garden now, its dark tendrils creeping toward the edges of his yard. The moon cast an eerie glow on its leaves, making them shimmer like black glass.

His phone buzzed, snapping Derek out of his daze. A new PM blinked on his screen—a message from the Dark Mormons.

”Another package coming your way. And instructions.”

The words were simple, but they sent a wave of excitement and unease coursing through him.

Days later, a plain, unmarked box arrived at his doorstep. Inside was a set of cryptic instructions for a ritual called ”The Rite of Xymethra’s Grasp.” To unlock the full power of the sinister plant, he would need more than just a few drops of blood. It required insight—an intimate bond with the dark forces that had given life to the black bloom.

The ritual’s ingredients were strange, almost ludicrous. A small vial of rare wine, included in the package, was to be mixed with a few drops of his blood.

But it was the other bottle that made his skin crawl.

Sealed inside was a spider, desperately clinging to the top of its web, avoiding the thick, sloshing goo that sat ominously at the bottom. The liquid seemed alive, bubbling and shifting, its surface gleaming with an unnatural sheen.

Derek's hands shook as the truth of the instructions sank in. The spider and the thick, sloshing goo weren’t just part of the ritual's theatrics—they had to be consumed together, in one swift swallow, whole and unbroken.

Derek’s hand shook as he read the instructions. He hesitated for a moment, but the desire to see the ritual through overpowered his fear. He needed to know what the Dark Mormons had promised—he needed to be someone, to have the world know him, to unlock the secrets of the forgotten prophet.

Derek arranged everything meticulously on the kitchen table. The chalice sat before him, filled with the dark, swirling wine, while the bottle with the thick goo sloshed unsettlingly at the bottom, the spider skittering desperately on its tiny web near the top, trying to avoid the viscous liquid below. His knife gleamed under the dim, flickering light, poised above his palm.

With a steadying breath, he pressed the blade into his skin, watching as his blood dripped into the chalice. The wine deepened in color, swirling with unnatural patterns that made his head swim. He hesitated for a moment before lifting the chalice to his lips, tipping it back.

The wine was thick and bitter, burning as it crawled down his throat, leaving a searing trail in its wake. He had hoped it would stir some bravery for what came next.

It didn’t.

"Fuck it," he muttered through gritted teeth, eyes shut tight. "Let's do this."

He tilted his head back, uncorked the bottle, and opened his mouth wide to catch the spider. With one swift motion, he tipped the vial back, forcing the goo and spider into his throat.

The spider wriggled frantically against his tongue, its legs scratching the roof of his mouth as he fought to swallow, choking back the urge to gag. The thick goo oozed down his throat, and as the final drop disappeared, a wave of nausea slammed into him, bringing him to his knees.

He heard a noise outside, a low, unsettling rustle from the garden, like something alive stirring in the night. The plant—it responded to him, as if aware of the ritual he had just completed. Heart pounding, Derek staggered to the back door, fumbling with the lock before wrenching it open.

The wind howled through the opening, carrying the sharp scent of damp earth and decay. The once small plant now loomed, its black tendrils twisting and writhing in the moonlight.

And there, at the center of the garden, a bloom opened—a large, grotesque flower with thick, fleshy petals, dripping with some kind of viscous black liquid.

The air felt thick, oppressive, like something ancient and malevolent was stirring beneath the earth. Derek’s mind raced. Was this what the Dark Mormons had been talking about? Was this the power they had promised?

He stepped closer, drawn in by the bloom’s hypnotic pull. The ground beneath his feet seemed to pulse in time with the plant. Something was growing underneath—something large.

And then, Derek felt it. A sharp, searing pain in his chest.

PART THREE

Derek clutched his chest, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He staggered toward the monstrous bloom, the black liquid dripping from its petals forming a slick, oily pool at its base.

The plant groaned. The vines writhed faster now, twisting and curling, reaching out like the fingers of something hungry, eager. The ground beneath his feet trembled, a low rumble that seemed to echo from the deepest recesses of the earth. Derek’s eyes darted across the garden, and that’s when he noticed it—every other plant in his yard had withered, their once green leaves now shriveled and blackened. The life had been drained from them, leaving behind only death.

His mind raced. This was no ordinary plant. The Dark Mormons had never mentioned what lay beneath the soil, what ancient beast his actions had stirred awake.

The pain in his chest intensified. He fell to his knees, clutching at the earth, gasping for air as the movement under his skin became more violent. His veins bulged, writhing like snakes beneath the surface. He screamed, his voice lost in the howling wind, but the garden seemed to drink in his agony, the plant blooming wider as if feeding on his pain.

And then it happened.

The skin on his chest burst open, and something slid out—a mass of wriggling, black tendrils, dripping with the same viscous liquid that bled from the flower. Derek’s body convulsed, his blood mingling with the soil, seeping into the roots of the plant. His vision blurred, the world around him spinning as the grotesque tendrils spread across his chest, rooting themselves into the earth beneath him.

The ground trembled violently now, and Derek’s body sank deeper into the soil, his legs disappearing into the dirt. He struggled, but the more he fought, the tighter the plant's grip became. The vines wrapped around his arms, pulling him closer to the monstrous bloom.

Derek’s breath came in shallow gasps, his body nearly consumed by the earth. He glanced up at the plant—its once-shimmering black petals had shifted. They were no longer just petals; they were eyes. Hundreds of them, blinking, watching him as he struggled. His heart pounded in his ears, terror overwhelming him.

The thing beneath the garden—the ancient beast he had unknowingly summoned—was waking.

Suddenly, the bloom twisted, and from its center emerged a woman’s face— grotesquely distorted, its lips curling into a malevolent grin.

Derek’s blood ran cold. This was no plant. It was a conduit—a doorway for something older, something far more malevolent than he had ever imagined.

The wind died. The world around him seemed to hold its breath.

And then the she-beast spoke.

Her voice was a rasping, guttural sound, like stone grinding against stone. "You sought power, but power demands a price. You are the offering. Your blood has watered the roots of darkness. Let us mate now, become one with the soil, one with me."

The vines constricted tighter, pulling him down, down into the earth. Derek screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the garden. His body, now entangled in the plant, began to wither, his skin turning black, his bones creaking as they were slowly crushed by the relentless pressure.

As the last breath escaped his lips, Derek’s consciousness flickered. His soul, now bound to the ancient power beneath the soil, lingered in the garden. He felt the pull of the earth, the ancient beast's malevolent presence seeping into his very being.

Now, he was no longer Derek. He was part of the garden, part of the monstrous bloom that consumed him. His mind dissolved into the collective consciousness of the ancient creature, lost in an eternal nightmare.

In the center of the garden, the plant pulsed with new life, its black petals glistening in the moonlight. The tendrils that had once been Derek’s body twisted and writhed, merging with the roots of the dark, ancient beast that lay beneath the soil.

The wind picked up again, carrying the faint whispers of screams and laughter, but there was no one left to hear. Only the garden remained, its monstrous bloom waiting, watching.

And far beneath the earth, the ancient beast stirred.

END

Fog hushed the marsh as Josiah trudged through knee-high reeds. Somewhere ahead, a bell rang slow and distant.

Then she appeared. Barefoot. Dress torn. Eyes sad.

She held up a lantern.

“You dropped this,” she called out.

He raised his own. Still in hand. Still lit.

The girl stepped closer. “You dropped it when you drowned.”

The flame inside her lantern turned red. Josiah looked down. His boots were gone. Water up to his chest. Breath shallow.

Behind the glass of her lantern, a tiny version of him pounded and screamed.

The girl smiled. “I’ll take good care of you.”

Prophet of the Venus Maw written by Universal Monk

PART ONE

John snapped the laptop shut with a grunt, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He was sick of it. Lemmy was supposed to be a place for discussion, but lately, no matter what he typed, the responses were always the same: criticism, accusations, harassment. Just because he didn’t fall in line with the majority’s narrow view, they jumped on him like vultures.

He had tried to start a new community on the site, one dedicated to his passion—the study of plants. It should’ve been a quiet, focused space for discussion and discovery. But of course, others from a different corner of the site showed up, harassing him, accusing him of spreading propaganda. Propaganda?! About plants? The very thought was absurd. What kind of twisted logic could turn his harmless interest in nature into some kind of ideological battle?

But whatever. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter. He had more important interests, bigger ideas, things the small minds of Lemmy clearly weren’t ready for. His thoughts drifted back to his love of plants. That was where his mind could roam free, where he didn’t need anyone’s approval or validation. Let them bicker over nonsense online; they’d never understand the brilliance of what he was working on.

With a shrug, he pushed the thought of Lemmy out of his mind. He was done wasting time there. There were far more interesting things waiting for him in the woods, where the plants didn’t care what anyone thought.

He preferred the solitude. There was a peace in the way the trees swayed and whispered to each other, like ancient sentinels sharing secrets that only the forest knew. The rustle of the leaves, the creak of old branches—it was a symphony that made him feel more at home than any city or crowded town ever could.

Cities were too loud, too full of people and their endless chatter. Here, he could lose himself in the dense undergrowth, studying the plants and animals that thrived in the shadows, marveling at the occasional strange phenomena the forest had to offer.

John had taken early retirement for this. For the stillness, the quiet, the endless green. He’d traded the humdrum grind of office life for this decrepit old cabin deep in the woods. The pension wasn’t as padded as it could’ve been if he’d stuck it out another five years, but he didn’t care. He’d lived a sparse, debt-free life, knowing this was where he belonged. Surrounded by nature, the wild beauty of it all, he didn’t need much.

He ran a muscular arm through his short, graying hair, the lines of his tanned skin catching the morning light. He’d spent decades behind a desk, but now his body was stronger, leaner from days spent hiking through the woods. Today was no different. He was itching to get out, to explore, to see what the forest had in store for him.

But among all the things that fascinated him, it was carnivorous plants that truly captured his imagination. The quiet menace of these green hunters, lying in wait for their prey, had become his obsession. The way they lured insects with sweet nectar, then snapped shut—swift, efficient, deadly. John could watch them for hours, utterly entranced.

John set off, his boots crunching against the leaf-strewn path as he made his way toward the south side of the woods. This part of the forest was thicker, darker—untouched. The trees here stood taller, their branches intertwined like skeletal arms. Each step felt like breaking through layers of forgotten earth, the thicket pressing against him, thick with secrets. His pulse quickened. He loved this feeling, the thrill of the unknown.

Suddenly, something strange flickered in the corner of his eye. He stopped. Just ahead, half-hidden beneath a tangled curtain of vines and moss, was a Venus flytrap. But not just any flytrap. No, this one was monstrous. It towered over the others he'd studied, easily three times larger, its leaves a deep, sickly green, so vibrant they seemed to hum with life. It almost glowed in the shadowy underbrush, as if it didn’t belong here, as if it had come from somewhere else.

The leaves of the monstrous plant bristled with jagged, bone-white fangs—not mere teeth, but cruel, serrated blades, each one thick and wickedly curved like a predator’s claw honed for slaughter. Glistening with a sickly, sap-like sheen, they lined the edges of the fleshy, mottled foliage, pulsing faintly as if alive with malice. Each fang arched inward with grotesque precision, forming a ravenous maw that seemed to quiver in anticipation, eager to rend and shred any hapless creature that strayed too near. The plant itself loomed, its verdant bulk heaving with a grotesque, almost sentient hunger, as if it could taste the air for the scent of blood, waiting to snap shut and feast on the screams of its prey.

John’s breath hitched. His chest tightened with a strange mixture of awe and fear. He dropped to one knee, eyes wide, heart pounding in his chest. Slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, he knelt closer. The air around the plant felt different. Heavy. Alive. He could almost hear it breathing, each leaf twitching slightly as though it sensed his presence. The grotesque beauty of it was overwhelming, captivating.

He spent the entire afternoon crouched beside it, his fingers trembling as he scribbled frantic notes into his worn, leather-bound journal. Each detail more incredible than the last. This flytrap was different—ancient, powerful. It wasn’t just a plant. No, this was something more. Something that had been waiting, watching, growing. And it had chosen to reveal itself to him.

As dusk crept in, the forest shifted around him. Shadows stretched long and thin, creeping across the ground like fingers reaching for something just out of sight. John stood up slowly, his muscles stiff from hours of crouching beside the flytrap. He stretched, feeling the satisfying crack of his spine.

But then, a faint rustling caught his ear, soft but unmistakable, like something shifting in the brush.

He froze, eyes narrowing as he glanced down at the plant. His heart gave a small jolt. Was the flytrap facing him now? He was certain that when he had knelt earlier, the plant's leaves were angled in another direction, away from him.

But now... now it seemed to have turned. Its massive, fang-like teeth were pointed directly at him, as if it had shifted, watching him. The dark, fleshy leaves twitched ever so slightly in the waning light, a movement that felt unnervingly deliberate.

Was it like that before? John’s pulse quickened. He took a step back, unsure. He blinked, shaking his head, trying to shake off the creeping unease crawling up his spine. Plants didn’t move like that. Not without a reason.

It was the wind, surely. Or maybe he’d just been sitting so long, his mind was playing tricks on him. Still, he felt the weight of the plant’s gaze, if that’s what you could call it, bearing down on him. It was as though it had been observing him the entire time, and now, it had decided to show a little more of its true nature.

John swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. He didn’t want to leave. Every fiber of his being told him to stay, to continue watching, studying. But it was getting late. Reluctantly, he backed away, never taking his eyes off the plant.

“I’ll be back,” he muttered under his breath, his words more a promise than a plan. He knew he couldn’t leave this discovery alone. No, he needed to understand this thing—this creature—no, this being. It wasn’t just a plant anymore. It had revealed something deeper to him, something ancient and unknown, and he couldn’t stop now.

As he turned and made his way back through the thickening shadows of the forest, he found himself replaying the moment over and over in his mind. The plant had moved. He was sure of it.

Marking the spot in his memory, John swore he would return tomorrow. And every day after that if he had to.

PART TWO

Over the next several days, John found himself drawn back to the plant, unable to stay away. He spent hours sitting beside it, sketching its jagged leaves, observing the way it moved ever so slightly, as if sensing his presence. It was more alive than any plant he’d ever studied. And soon, John’s fascination turned into something deeper.

He began to bring the flytrap offerings. At first, small insects, which it devoured eagerly. The snap of its leaves closing around a fly or beetle thrilled him in a way he couldn’t explain. It was as if the plant was communicating with him, showing its appreciation. He even started talking to it, telling it about his day, his thoughts, and the solitude of his life.

“I know you’re more than just a plant,” he whispered one evening as he watched the flytrap digest a beetle. “You’re something special, aren’t you?”

The plant seemed to respond, its leaves shifting ever so slightly, like it was acknowledging him. John smiled, feeling an odd connection, like he had found a kindred spirit in this silent predator.

PART THREE

One day, as John sat in his usual spot beside the flytrap, the forest seemed to hold its breath. The air was thick, charged with an almost unnatural stillness, when a baby rabbit emerged from the undergrowth.

Its soft brown fur shimmered under the dappled sunlight, each hair catching the light in a way that made the creature almost glow against the dark green backdrop of the woods. Its delicate ears twitched, constantly alert, swiveling at the slightest rustle. Its innocent black eyes scanned its surroundings, always searching for danger but never suspecting what lay right beside John.

The flytrap seemed to awaken. There was no mistaking it this time. The plant’s massive leaves quivered, not from the breeze, but from something deeper, almost instinctual.

Slowly, they began to shift, the jagged edges of its fanged leaves curling ever so slightly inward, like a predator preparing to strike. John stared, amazed. The plant was moving with intent, and it was watching the rabbit.

The small rabbit, oblivious to the danger lurking nearby, bent its head, nibbling at a patch of grass. It took a small hop closer to the plant, its twitching nose brushing the air. John felt his pulse quicken as he watched, frozen in morbid fascination. The Venus flytrap's leaves stretched outward, slow, deliberate, like a snake uncoiling.

It wasn’t just reaching for the rabbit. It almost seemed to be hunting.

In an instant, the Venus flytrap’s grotesque jaws, bristling with needle-sharp, bloodstained spines, slammed shut around the rabbit’s hind legs with a sickening crunch, ensnaring its trembling flesh in a vise of merciless, verdant horror.

The rabbit’s desperate shrieks pierced the air as it convulsed in a frenzy, its sinewy legs kicking wildly, claws scraping uselessly against the plant’s slimy, iron-hard grip. Each thrash splattered crimson flecks across the leaves, which pulsed and tightened with obscene delight, their jagged edges sawing deeper into the creature’s mangled fur and muscle.

John stood frozen, his stomach churning, as the rabbit’s frantic struggles ebbed into pitiful twitches, its wide, glassy eyes clouding with terror and pain. The plant’s maw constricted further, emitting a wet, grinding squelch as it crushed bone and sinew, until the rabbit’s broken form slumped lifeless, swallowed by the insatiable, quivering green abyss.

He should have been disgusted. He should have intervened, saved the poor creature from its grisly fate. But instead, he felt something else. He felt admiration. The flytrap’s efficiency, its unrelenting hunger for survival, mesmerized him.

It wasn’t just a plant anymore. It was a force. A living, breathing thing that thrived on the cycle of life and death, and John had played a part in that.

From that moment on, John’s visits became ritual-like. He started bringing the plant larger offerings, such as birds, squirrels, and even a dead baby raccoon he had found nearby.

The plant grew larger with each meal, its leaves thickening, its reach expanding. And with each visit, John became more and more convinced that the Venus flytrap was sentient. And it was growing, becoming something more powerful, more dangerous.

PART FOUR

Weeks passed, and John’s obsession with the plant deepened. His once-careful observations turned into long, rambling conversations with the flytrap, his voice low and reverent as he knelt before it. He could swear he heard it whispering back, a soft rustling of its leaves that seemed to form words just out of reach.

“You understand me, don’t you?” he said one night, his voice hoarse from hours of talking. “You’re not just a plant. You’re alive. You’ve always been alive. The whole reason me and Tasha broke up was that she didn’t understand me. Funny isn’t it? You, a plant, understand me more than my last girlfriend!”

The plant’s leaves twitched, and John smiled. It was listening.

But as his connection to the plant grew, so did the rumors in the nearby town. People had started noticing the strange behavior of the animals in the forest. Hunters reported finding carcasses, animals that had been drained of life and left to rot in the underbrush. Some claimed they had seen John wandering the woods at odd hours, his eyes wild, muttering to himself.

The local authorities were starting to take notice. They had heard the stories about John, how he’d become obsessed with some monstrous plant deep in the woods. Some thought he was crazy. Others thought he was dangerous.

PART FIVE

The flytrap had become a monster now, its massive leaves stretching out like thick, curling tendrils, nearly wrapping around the entire clearing. The once small space now felt suffocated by the plant’s sprawling presence.

Its serrated, fanged edges gleamed in the faint light, giving the impression that it could devour anything that dared come too close. John stood in awe, marveling at its size, its raw power.

But a dark shadow had begun to creep into his thoughts, an unsettling feeling stirring deep inside his mind.

Before he had discovered this plant, he’d overheard strange tales whispered in hushed voices at the town’s old tavern. They were stories meant to be laughed off, but there had always been an edge of truth in the eyes of the storytellers. A flicker of unease.

They spoke of this southern stretch of the forest, where the trees grew darker, thicker. The locals called it cursed, a place where rituals once took place, performed by an old sect known as the Dark Mormons. Sacrifices had been made in those woods, they said. Terrible sacrifices to dark forces that slumbered beneath the earth, forces that predated even man himself.

John hadn’t believed it then, not really. They were just tales, meant to scare off drunken listeners. But now, sitting here, surrounded by this unnatural, towering plant, the stories came flooding back to him with a cold clarity.

One tale in particular gnawed at his mind. Jebediah Lecent, a devout follower of the Dark Mormons, had lost his grip on sanity over 120 years ago. The man had slaughtered his entire family in the dead of night, then, in a fit of frenzied devotion, hacked off his own feet with an ax.

He believed the blood he spilled would fertilize his garden, making it grow so he could donate the bounty to the dark cause. A garden to bring forth their prophet, born not of flesh but from the earth itself, deep beneath the soil. Something ancient, slumbering, and hungry.

At the time, John had scoffed at such stories, brushing them aside as backwoods superstition. But now, as he gazed at the grotesque majesty of the flytrap, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the plant was somehow tied to those old, twisted legends.

It had grown far too fast, its roots spreading too deeply, its tendrils too knowing. The way it seemed to recognize him, the way it responded to him as if it knew his very thoughts—no, this wasn’t just a freak of nature. It was something ancient, something alive in a way plants shouldn’t be. And it was using him.

A chill ran down John’s spine. The plant wasn’t just growing. It was awakening. An ancient force, long dormant, was stirring—and the flytrap was its vessel.

But John didn’t care. The plant had consumed his every thought, his every desire. It was his world now, and he was bound to it—body, mind, and soul.

PART SIX

One night, as John crouched beside the flytrap, his mind thick with days of isolation and the fog of obsession, a sound pierced through the usual rustling of the leaves. It wasn't the familiar whisper of nature. No, this was different. Sharper, more distinct.

More.

John's breath caught in his throat. He blinked, his pulse quickening. Had he imagined it?

More, the voice repeated, this time louder, commanding.

His heart hammered in his chest as he glanced around, but the forest remained deathly still. The only sound was the faint groan of branches shifting in the wind. Yet, the voice... it was unmistakable. And it wasn’t just in his mind. It was coming from the plant!

John stumbled to his feet, his legs shaking. The words echoed in his head, compelling him, pulling him closer. He had to feed it. He didn’t know why, but he knew with certainty that the plant needed him.

He wandered through the woods in a daze, his mind fogged, consumed by a single purpose. He needed to find something, anything to offer the flytrap. His eyes darted through the tangled trees, desperate, frantic, as his breath came in shallow gasps. He felt the plant’s hunger gnawing at him, an unrelenting pull.

And then he saw a deer, limping through a patch of moonlit undergrowth. It was wounded, its back legs dragging awkwardly behind it, twisted and useless, like it had been hit by a car or mauled by something larger. The animal grazed quietly, unaware of John’s presence. Its weakness made it the perfect offering.

John moved quickly, his movements mechanical, as if he were no longer in control. He stalked the deer, his breath shallow, his heart pounding. When he finally reached it, he grabbed the animal by the throat, dragging it toward the clearing where the plant waited, hungry, eager.

PART SEVEN

The plant's massive leaves snapped open, wider than he'd ever seen, a gaping maw lined with jagged teeth, glistening in the dim light. John shoved the deer forward, his heart pounding as he shoved the deer forward, its hooves skittering on the damp earth.

The flytrap’s teeth slammed shut around the animal’s quivering body with a grotesque crunch, the sound of splintering bones reverberating through the silent clearing like a gunshot. The plant’s fleshy, pulsating leaves constricted with ravenous ferocity, grinding the deer’s flesh and sinew into a pulpy mass, blood oozing in viscous rivulets from the crushed form.

Each sickening squelch of the tightening grip echoed the plant’s insatiable hunger, its verdant bulk shuddering with grotesque delight as it devoured its prey alive.

But something was different this time. The leaves didn’t just stop at the deer. They twitched, then began to reach further. They were reaching for him.

Before he could react, thick tendrils snaked out from the base of the plant, coiling around his ankles like vines with minds of their own. John’s eyes widened in horror as they yanked him toward the flytrap’s gaping maw. He struggled, adrenaline flooding his veins, but it was useless. The plant’s grip tightened, dragging him closer, pulling him into its grasp.

For the first time, John understood. The plant hadn’t just wanted his offerings. It wanted him.

“Unbeliever,” the voice whispered again, cold and distant. “Come to me. Fulfill your destiny. Hail, the return of the Prophet Smith!”

John screamed, thrashing against the plant’s hold, but it was no use. The flytrap’s tendrils were like iron, pulling him closer and closer to its waiting jaws.

PART EIGHT

When the authorities finally arrived at John’s cabin, they found the place in disarray. Books and notes were scattered across the floor, journals filled with frenzied scribblings about the plant. But there was no sign of John.

The townspeople whispered of the Venus flytrap, of the monstrous plant that had consumed him. But no one dared to enter the forest, not after what had happened.

The clearing where the flytrap had grown remained untouched, its leaves still and silent. But some nights, when the wind was just right, those who wandered too close to the edge of the woods claimed they could hear a voice.

A soft, whispering voice.

“Bring more. The prophet will return upon waves of blood.”

The plant’s hunger was never-ending. And its patience was eternal.

END

Whispers from the Elder’s Garden (written by Universal Monk)

The Abernathy estate loomed at the edge of town, overgrown with wild, unnatural flora.

Whispers claimed that long ago, a sect known as the Dark Mormons had twisted the land with forbidden rituals, making the garden a place where strange things thrived. The townsfolk avoided it, but curiosity clawed at me.

One evening, against my better judgment, I ventured closer, peering through the rusted iron gate.

The garden was alive, its plants twisted in grotesque forms, black petals sickly glistening under the pale moonlight. A thick, unnatural mist clung to the ground, swirling around the plants.

As I watched in horrified fascination, one of the vines twitched, seeming to pulse with life.

Suddenly, a figure emerged from the mist, cloaked in shadows, silent, yet undeniably beckoning me forward. I fled, heart racing, desperate to escape. But the next morning, a note was waiting on my doorstep: ”Return tonight.”

Against sense, I returned. The gate creaked an eerie welcome. The plants seemed to whisper, their movements hypnotic. Too late, I realized I’d walked into a trap. The garden claimed me, consumed me.

Now, I wander the estate, a shadow among shadows, doomed to forever beckon the next soul who dares visit.

END

So I started a piefed account, mostly for my writing so that dbzer0 (and Lemmy) wouldn’t have to put up with all my weird fiction stories all the time. Plus, I wanted to check out the biggest Piefed space, piefed.social, because I'm excited about some of the new concepts they are bringing to the table.

I created a writing community, a Socialist community, and a Green Party community there today.

Nothing outrageous or controversial. I posted one news article in each of the Socialist and Green Party communities, and a couple to my writing comm.

The Socialist and Writing communities were local only, so they wouldn’t even show up in the larger Fediverse. I only posted in my own communities. No controversy intended, none created.

I just got banned, almost immediately after starting the communities. The reason in the mod log says: "Universal Monk".

The admin, @rimu@piefed.social, hasn't replied to my DM asking why (yet). I guess being me is reason enough. I feel so famous! Or maybe infamous?

I'm still a libertarian socialist tho! Piefed.social and Lemmy ain't gonna change my mind.

Oh, I already know how the votes (down) here are gonna go! But doing my part in adding content to Lemmy anyway; being the change I wanna see. No regrets! :)

EDIT: I'm posting this here, and I've repeated it in this thread. Just in case piefed.social banned me on the assumption that I’m “conservative” because I’ve posted links to conservative news articles… then, by that same logic, shouldn’t I also be considered socialist and anarchist because I post so much socialist and anarchist content? I actually post way more socialist content than anything else. And there is nothing in my fiction writing that is conservative at all. My entire post history is public, it doesn't take much effort to see that I post practically anything I find interesting.

Mike Kennedy wanted to save video games. Not from microtransactions or mobile shovelware, but from the present itself. He didn’t want software patches. He didn’t want online updates. He didn’t want DRM. Fuck that noize.

Nah, he wanted cartridges. Plastic. Solid. Tactile. He wanted to drag the spirit of 1992 out of the grave, jam it into an Atari Jaguar shell, and make it dance. Back to the good ole days. Hot Pockets oozing death-lava. Kid Cuisine's Hamburger Pizza flavor still alive and smoking straight from the microwave, baby! Sunny D was orange gold. Beating off to Tiffani Amber Thiessen and Shannon Elizabeth. Ahhh, memories.

But before I unzip and get lost in that tastiness, let’s rewind and talk about Mike Kennedy and his lame-ass attempt at being a cool pirate.

In late 2014, Kennedy, known in retro circles for RETRO Magazine and GameGavel, pitched a dream console. It would run physical cartridges. No downloads. No updates. No nonsense. A digital hermit box. A time capsule you could play.

He bought up leftover molds for the Atari Jaguar. That dead console from the ’90s? Yeah. He was going to resurrect it. Not metaphorically. Dude, he literally used its casing. The guts, he claimed, would be custom hardware. Maybe even an FPGA core. Something that could run SNES and Genesis games. Old-school indie devs would supposedly line up to code for it. Capcom was name-dropped. Sega too.

Bullshit, of course. But people wanted to believe.

The crowdfunding started to cook. Kennedy hyped it up through his RETRO followers, forums, Facebook. No working prototype. Just vibes.

Kickstarter didn’t want them unless they could show working hardware. So they pivoted to Indiegogo, where snake oil has fewer fences. That campaign flopped hard. Barely over $80K raised on a $1.95 million target. No backers got charged. Just embarrassment.

But Kennedy wasn’t done. The moldy dream had a few more mutations to go.

December 2015. Enter: Coleco Holdings. They licensed their name to the project. Now it was the Coleco Chameleon. Retro heads perked up. Toy Fair 2016 was on the calendar.

And that’s when things turned from weird to shameless.

At Toy Fair, Kennedy unveiled the Chameleon inside a clear plastic cube. A prototype. A freakin’ miracle! Finally!

Except it wasn’t. It’s was bullshit.

Musky neckbeards online can’t be tricked that easily. They zoomed into the photos and noticed the internals looked a little too familiar. The ports. The components. The electrical tape.

It was a goddamn SNES Mini, stuffed into a Jaguar shell like some plastic Frankenstein. It ran a multicart through a flash cart. Not custom hardware. Not even close.

Interwebs lit up. Forums exploded. Tech sleuths dissected every angle. The Chameleon was a hoax. But it got worse.

Kennedy posted another prototype photo a few weeks later. This time with the guts visible through a clear shell. Bold move. Too bold. Meh, bullshit too.

This one wasn’t an SNES. No, this time the brain of the console was a cheap DVR capture card. The HICAP50B. Not even a gaming component. Just a glorified HDMI passthrough.

Two fakes. Back to back.

Now Kennedy came clean. Sort of. He wrote a novella-length apology on AtariAge, throwing his hardware guy under the bus. A mysterious character named Sean "Lee" Robinson, who apparently swindled him out of over $10,000, lied about prototypes, and convinced him to show off fake units.

Kennedy said he never opened the boxes. Said he didn’t know what was inside. Said he was duped. Said his only crime was believing too hard in a dream.

He dropped links showing Robinson's record. Felony grand theft. Jail time. Grifting history. He practically begged for forgiveness. He even asked people not to cancel RETRO Magazine because of this whole mess.

But by now, nobody cared. The retro scene had already made its memes. Burned its bridges. Buried the Chameleon.

In the end, no console was made. No games shipped. No dreams realized. Just fake hardware. Bruised reputations. A whole lot of cautionary tales.

Kennedy offloaded the Jaguar molds to AtariAge, hoping they'd be used for something real. He vanished from hardware dreams. RETRO Magazine limped along for a while, then died quietly.

And the Chameleon? It became a punchline meme before memes got cool. The mascot for vaporware. The kind of scam where the road to hell isn’t just paved with good intentions. It’s duct-taped to an SNES motherboard and passed off as innovation.

Mike Kennedy was almost a badass. He could’ve been a folk hero. If he’d dropped the act, if he’d just said fuck it and pirated the stuff outright. Dump the ROMs. Hack the FPGA. Throw it online with a wink and a middle finger. Burn a few carts, sell 'em out of a duffel bag, vanish before the lawsuits sniffed his trail. That’s pirate shit. That’s subversion. That’s punching up.

But he didn’t. He wanted to be a visionary, but he played it like a startup guy with a nostalgia kink. No code. No console. Just branding and wishful thinking stapled to an empty shell.

He wasn’t a pirate. Pirates deliver. They crack locked files, duplicate the sacred, and pass it on. Not for glory. Not always for cash. But because the idea deserves to breathe. Because someone said you can’t have this, and a pirate said watch me.

Kennedy? He wanted you to buy back your memories. From him. He was a capitalist dressed in a thrift store hoodie, praying that retro gamers wouldn’t check the receipts. A wannabe messiah hawking vapor and plastic. No payload. No rebellion. Just a mausoleum to his own childhood, carefully monetized and full of ghosts.

The retro community wanted to believe. But belief needs more than molded shells and Facebook posts. It needs circuitry. Sweat. Code. Truth.

Next time someone promises to save gaming with nothing but a clear case and a press release, open the lid, brah.

When Piracy Had a Kiosk at the Mall: Power Player Super Joy III

“You wouldn’t download a car, would you, fuckers?”

Okay, I would. Hell, I will the second someone makes it possible. But it turns out that the meme phrase came from a real anti-piracy ad campaign that tried to guilt-trip an entire generation. The original line was, “You wouldn’t steal a car.” Slapped onto a thousand DVDs like a pre-movie sermon, it played in the shadows of living rooms and late-night rentals. You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a TV. You wouldn’t steal a movie.

You wouldn’t steal the socks from your best friend’s sister, then sniff ‘em and jerk off into them.

Except you would. Maybe. Well, at least I did. No kink-shame!

Apparently Yonatan Cohen didn’t really give to much credit to the feels of the anti-piracy campaign from the early 2000’s either. He went off and decided that a mall kiosk was the perfect place to go full Robin Hood.

Unfortunately for him, “The Man” doesn’t really love Robin Hood. In December 2004, the FBI raided two kiosks at the Mall of America in Minnesota and storage units tied to Cohen’s business, Perfect Deal LLC. They weren’t looking for drugs or guns.

They were hunting knockoff Nintendos. Specifically, the Power Player Super Joy III, a bootleg console shaped like a janky N64 controller, preloaded with 76 barely-legal NES games and marketed with subtle claims like "76,000 games in one!"

Cohen bought the knockoff rigs wholesale out of China for around $7 to $9 apiece. Then he flipped them in U.S. malls for $30 to $70. Pure capitalism, but not the suit-and-boardroom kind. This was capitalism with a folding table and a kiosk, a one-man supply chain trying to make rent while corporate America clutched its pearls.

It wasn’t subtle, but it was profitable. Each console contained copyrighted titles from Nintendo’s golden years, and selling them made Cohen a target.

The government didn’t just slap a fine on him. They made him an example. In April 2005, Cohen pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement. By November, he was sentenced to five years in federal prison, lost hundreds of thousands in property, and got the added humiliation of having to run mall magazine ads warning others about the crime of piracy. He had to pay for the ads as part of his restitution. His mug was in the ad. His crime laid out like a cautionary tale. It was digital pillory.

But here’s where the story gets a little warped. Cohen wasn’t a hacker. He wasn’t running around cracking encryption or spreading ransomware. He was selling plastic boxes full of 8-bit joy. Ancient (at the time) ROMs of Super Mario, Duck Hunt, Contra. The kind of stuff that’s been cloned, remixed, and uploaded to archive.org a thousand times over these days. Back then though, Nintendo’s legal team treated it like digital arson. (Actually Nintendo still does that, they go hard on pirates.) The feds rolled in like it was national security.

Nine days after Cohen’s guilty plea, the FBI busted four Chinese nationals connected to a much larger piracy ring and seized 60,000 more Power Player units from warehouses in New York and New Jersey. But Cohen was already cooked. He kind of became the poster child for IP enforcement.

What made him vulnerable was scale and visibility. He wasn’t hiding in darknet forums. He was out in the open, selling knockoff joypads to middle-class shoppers hunting for last-minute Christmas gifts. A digital gray-market peddler in the age of moral panic.

Was it legal? No. Was it theft? Well, that’s the real question.

In the same era, game companies were battling over clones. Games like Zuma versus Puzzloop, lawsuits about lookalike mechanics and half-borrowed sprites. A lawyer named Gregory Boyd wrote that copyright law covers not just the idea of a game but the way it looks, plays, and feels.

Which is fine on paper. But when you apply that hammer to a guy selling 20-year-old games out of a folding table in a mall, it starts to feel a little like overkill.

Cohen didn’t invent piracy. He didn’t build the Super Joy III. He just sold it. But he was the one in arm’s reach, and the ad campaign was already rolling. You wouldn’t steal a car, remember?

What he did wrong, more than anything, was give people access. Unauthorized, unlicensed, dirt-cheap access. The same thing millions of us were doing in silence with LimeWire, torrents, and burned CDs. He just did it where the FBI could see him.

Five years. For selling childhood. For selling nostalgia.

That’s the part no one wants to talk about. This wasn’t about protecting code. It was about protecting control. Yonatan Cohen broke the unwritten rule of the digital age: you can steal, but you better not get caught making it easy for others. Unless you’re on Wall Street.

And yeah, maybe he wouldn’t steal a car. But he’d damn sure sell you Mario on a knockoff controller. And for a lot of kids in 2004, that was close enough to magic.

Sources, for those who still believe in paper trails or give a shit:

Wikipedia, bitches!

BootlegGames Wiki: Power Player Super Joy III

Vintage Computing: EGM Advertisement: Sell Famiclones, Go to Prison

The Gospel of Phiber Optik or, How to Get Thrown in Prison for Knowing Shit

It begins like a lot of the old-school kick-ass digital legends, with a phone line and a curious teen. Tho I wanna say that I was a curious teen too, but just not curious in any productive way. I was too busy thinking about girls, jerking off to my step-mom’s underwear, and trying to survive the dull ache of being a loser in a town where nothing ever happened.

Sometimes I wonder how different it could’ve been if someone had handed me a clue, or a keyboard, or a reason to dig deeper. Brothers, I had the spark, but no kindling. Just a lot of static and the sense that I showed up too late. I shoulda started my Universal Monk “let’s piss off Lemmy every day while I hack into my OLPC and try to install Linux Puppy on it in the background!” persona way before I got old.

But fuck it, let’s talk about Phiber Optik.

In the early 1980s, Mark Abene, a soft-spoken kid from Queens, New York, discovered that the boring ass sound of a dial tone held secrets. Abene’s first contact with computers came around the age of nine, inside a department store where he would hang around while his parents wandered the aisles. The machines were just sitting there, blinking and waiting for someone curious enough to poke them. His first personal system was a TRS-80 MC-10, a tiny rig with 4 kilobytes of RAM, no lowercase letters, a 32-column screen, and a cassette deck that hissed and clunked as it loaded and saved programs. Like a lot of machines back then, it hooked up to the family television, turning it into a crude but functional portal to somewhere else.

Later, after his parents gifted him a RAM upgrade and a 300 baud modem, the real doors opened. Through CompuServe and its wild little corner called the CB Simulator, he found others like him. People who knew how to reach dialup bulletin board systems. From there he stumbled into guest accounts on DEC minicomputers used in the BOCES educational system in Long Island.

These machines ran operating systems with names like RSTS/E and TOPS-10 and they were a whole different universe compared to the TRS-80. Abene saw what they could do and decided to teach himself how to speak their language.

He pulled books from the library and started reading everything he could find on code. What hit him hardest was the realization that he could write something, log out, come back the next day, and it would still be there. His modest little computer setup had become a window, and on the other side of it was a world worth chasing.

Long before the term cybersecurity existed, Abene had already started burrowing into the veins of the American telecom system, decoding its logic not to destroy it, but to understand how it ticked.

His handle became ‘Phiber Optik,’ and in the grubby wire-y underbelly of the hacker scene he was damn near mythic. People talked about him with reverence or anger, depending on which side of the firewall you were on. To the kids trading exploits in IRC tunnels, he was a digital folk hero, one keyboard away from legend. To the feds, he was a glowing red dot on the radar, a walking middle finger to everything they couldn’t control.

What makes Phiber’s story relevant now, decades after his sentencing, is not just his technical brilliance. It is that he represented an ethical spine to a culture the public has long dismissed as criminal.

As pirate and privacy movements claw their way back into the spotlight, fueled by surveillance capitalism, corporate chokeholds, and the slow suffocation of open access, the old bones of Phiber Optik’s blueprint are starting to show through again. What he sketched in the static of the early 90s wasn’t just a kind of road map, it was a warning, half-forgotten, now suddenly relevant as hell.

After all, doesn’t all information want to be free?

Phiber was a member of two infamous hacking groups. First, he joined the Legion of Doom, a group that had already made its mark exploring the digital frontier of the telephone networks. Later, he co-founded Masters of Deception, or MOD, a New York-based collective that was as much a cultural counterpoint as it was a technical one. MOD went deeper into the cracks of AT&T and the broader infrastructure of early corporate networks. They said that their goal was to explore and document, not destroy.

As the Cold War fizzled and the Information Age kicked its boots up on the desk, the suits and corporations realized the growing value of digital systems. The government’s attitude toward hackers hardened. Home computers were no longer toys. They were infrastructure, currency, control. And suddenly, guys like Phiber weren’t curious kids anymore.

In January 1990, the Secret Service kicked in Phiber Optik’s door. He was just 17. They seized his gear and accused him of causing a massive AT&T network crash that had hit the country a week earlier. Phiber stood there while they ransacked his place, accused on the spot of bringing down part of the backbone of America’s phone system. Weeks later, AT&T admitted the crash had been their fault. A botched software update. No hackers involved. Just bad code and corporate silence.

That didn’t stop the momentum. In February 1991, he was arrested again, this time under New York state law, charged with computer tampering and computer trespass. He was still a minor. The legal system was scrambling to define what counted as a crime in the new digital frontier. Phiber ended up taking a plea to a lesser misdemeanor and served 35 hours of community service. The scare should have ended there. It didn’t.

By December 1991, the feds were ready for round two. Phiber Optik and four other members of Masters of Deception were arrested again. In July 1992, a federal grand jury hit them with an 11-count indictment. This time, the charges stuck. The government leaned on wiretaps. It was the first time in U.S. history they had used legally authorized taps to capture the voices and data transmissions of hackers. They weren’t trying to protect infrastructure. They were trying to make a point.

Despite no evidence of damage or theft, Phiber was sentenced to a year in federal prison. Again, no theft or damage. Just knowledge. Just access. But still, they had to fucking put him in a cage. They needed a scalp. He fit the frame. He was the first hacker convicted under the newly expanded federal computer crime laws.

The punishment was widely seen as symbolic. Phiber was articulate, clean-cut, and openly philosophical about the ethics of hacking. That made him dangerous. His case was less about securing systems than it was about sending a message. A warning to those who might try to explore behind the digital curtain without permission.

The trial lit a fuse. What came after was not just fallout. It was a shift. Phiber became the face of a new kind of threat. The hacker. The digital trespasser. The kid who knew too much. The media pounced. Magazines ran articles warning about ghosts in the machine. The New York Times printed his sentencing like it was a mafia takedown.

Today that kind of coverage is common background noise. But back then it hit like an earthquake. Computers were still the realm of hobbyists. Hackers were not yet cool icons or antiheroes. Seeing a story like this break into the mainstream meant the world had started paying attention. Even if it had no clue what it was actually looking at.

Inside the hacker community, he became a martyr for curiosity. Where some hackers sought money or infamy, Phiber was different. He believed in transparency, in challenging authority through knowledge. In many ways, his worldview mirrored what the modern open access and digital piracy movements have adopted.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape looks different but eerily familiar. Information is still locked behind paywalls. Network infrastructure is still protected less by code than by law. The average user remains dependent on gatekeepers for knowledge. Shadow libraries, sideloading communities, and decentralized networks are once again pushing the boundaries.

The ethos that drove Phiber Optik and MOD now animates projects like Library Genesis, Anna’s Archive, and countless torrent communities. These modern movements rely on the idea that access to information should not be controlled by profit motives. That understanding a system deeply is not a threat. That copying is not theft.

Phiber never claimed to be innocent. But he insisted that curiosity was not a crime. He never sold what he accessed. He documented. He learned. He shared. And he did so with the belief that a more transparent digital world was not just preferable, but necessary.

When people talk about the moral framework of piracy now, it’s all about what’s legal and who’s losing money. That’s the surface game. What gets ignored are the roots. The deeper questions. Phiber Optik and the others weren’t just rule-breakers. They were pulling back the curtain and asking who built the rules in the first place. Who benefits. Who decides what we’re allowed to know. They saw the gap widening between the ones who use the machine and the ones who own it. Between those who are fed and those who are kept hungry.

Phiber Optik went back to being Mark Abene and became a respected security consultant. He rebuilt his life above ground. But his impact lives beneath the surface. In Discord forums and dark web mirrors. In data liberation projects and copy-left publishing. In every encrypted message and anonymized torrent. He was there before the internet was sold back to us, back when it was something we made by exploring it together.

Not every hacker is a pirate. But every pirate who copies for access, who shares for freedom, who breaks a rule to question the system, carries the idea of Phiber Optik in their actions. Maybe not in name. But in spirit.

The spark is the same. Curiosity weaponized. Access reclaimed. A middle finger aimed squarely at the gate.

It was never just about phone switches or command lines. What Phiber did and what MOD stood for was proof that systems are built to keep people out, and that anyone willing to understand how those systems work could find a way in.

That blueprint did not vanish. It evolved. The mindset that once pulled secrets from a telecom grid now fuels the mirrors, torrents, and cracks of the modern internet. Bypassing a locked terminal and bypassing digital rights software are cousins in the same bloodline. Digging into AT&T’s infrastructure and scraping paywalled archives both ride the same frequency. The hardware has changed, the language has changed, but the mission is still carved in the same stone.

The kids cracking textbooks and sideloading banned books today may not know Phiber’s name, but they carry his ghost in every act of defiance. Every time they upload something they were told to keep hidden. Every time they share a file just to make sure someone else does not have to go without.

That is the legacy. The culture of piracy did not appear out of thin air. It grew out of old phone lines, library cards, and the belief that knowledge should not come with a price tag.

Sources, for those who still believe in paper trails or give a shit:

Wikipedia, bitches! (nice 90's pic of homie too)

"Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace" by Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner (fun book I found on Anna's Archive)

"The Life and Times of Phiber Optik" Wired Magazine (I have actual paper copy of this!)

“I’m Universal Monk. You fuckers tried to cancel me, but I’m still here! Ha ha ha ha ha!” by Me

In November 2022, Z-Library, the internet’s underground sweetheart of shadow libraries, got yanked out of the digital shadows and dragged into the goddamn spotlight by the United States government. For years, it floated just beneath the surface, dishing out millions of books to anyone who needed them. Broke students. Underpaid teachers. Porn-addicted shitposting degenerates like me. Researchers locked out by paywalls. Whole classrooms in places where textbooks are a luxury. It was the people’s library, stitched together with torrents and defiance.

Then the hammer dropped.

The Department of Justice came in swinging. The FBI showed up with a global buddy-cop lineup of foreign law enforcement. Hundreds of domain names blinked out like lights in a blackout. The feds even snatched two Russian nationals in Argentina, claiming they were the ghostly masterminds behind it all. Just two people, flesh and bone, dragged into the open for handing out knowledge that corporate publishing kept locked behind gold-plated paywalls.

Suddenly, free books became evidence. And giving a damn became a federal issue. The message was unmistakable: access to knowledge, when it bypasses corporate control, would be treated as a criminal act.

At its peak, Z-Library claimed a database of over 13 million books and more than 84 million articles. Users around the world could access everything from obscure philosophy texts and medical journals to fiction, poetry, and educational materials. The site had evolved from a mirror of Library Genesis into a vast archive and branded itself as the world’s largest ebook library.

It pulled in traffic from damn near every country on the planet. Especially in places where buying a book meant skipping a meal or where bookstores didn’t even exist. It was a lifeline wrapped in a ZIP file. And it didn’t give a single shit about copyright law. None. It ran on need, not permission.

To publishers and the big-name authors clinging to their royalty checks, Z-Library wasn’t a library. It was a threat. A digital F-you aimed straight at their paywalls.

To millions of users, it offered something much closer to a public good. In a world where a single textbook can cost more than a week’s wages and research papers are locked behind forty-dollar paywalls, the idea of sharing books freely was not just appealing, it was essential. For independent scholars, low-income students, and autodidacts with no access to institutional libraries, Z-Library was more than a website. It was a vital tool for survival in a deeply unequal system.

The crackdown unfolded quickly. On November 3, 2022, Argentinian authorities arrested Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova at the request of the United States. Days later, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging them with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering. They were accused of uploading books within hours of release and profiting from donation-based activity that prosecutors framed as illegal commerce. FBI officials painted the pair as pirates exploiting the creative work of others, while the Authors Guild praised the arrests as a landmark victory.

Even so, the takedown left many unanswered questions. For one, Z-Library never fully disappeared. While its main domains were redirected to government-controlled servers, the site remained operational on the dark web. Administrators continued to send out messages and respond to users. This suggested that Napolsky and Ermakova were not the only individuals behind the operation.

Within days, new search engines and mirrors like Anna’s Archive appeared online, preserving the collection and making it clear that the shutdown had failed to stop the flow of information.

The attack on Z-Library was not the first attempt to crush a shadow library, and it likely would not be the last. In previous years, various governments including those in India, France, and the United Kingdom had blocked or seized domains associated with the site. Internet service providers were ordered to restrict access. Publishers filed legal claims across multiple jurisdictions. Each action made it harder to reach the site, but none succeeded in shutting it down completely.

The public statements made by U.S. officials focused on authors’ rights and lost revenue. Yet these same officials offered no solutions for the root causes of piracy. They said nothing about the rising cost of academic journals. They said nothing about the lack of affordable books for students outside wealthy nations. They said nothing about the millions of people who wanted to learn but could not afford to buy access.

For a lot of people, the whole crackdown felt like a sick joke. Copying isn’t stealing. When you copy a book, nothing vanishes. The original stays right where it is. Nothing is lost. Something is shared. In a digital world where making a copy costs exactly zero, scarcity isn’t real. It’s manufactured. Built on locked doors and greed. The gatekeepers call it protection, rake in the cash, and turn anyone who shares into a criminal.

Months after the arrest, reports emerged that Napolsky and Ermakova had escaped house arrest in Argentina. Their whereabouts were unknown, and an Interpol warrant was issued. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities continued seizing domains and targeting infrastructure. Z-Library evolved. It shifted to personal access domains, private distribution systems, and decentralized methods. The people behind it adapted, and so did its users.

Z-Library was not perfect. It operated in legal gray areas. But it filled a need that the formal system refused to address. It offered access where there was none. It provided knowledge without a price tag.

And it asked brought up an important question: who gets to read, and who gets left behind?

Piracy, in this context, was not about greed or laziness. It was a form of resistance. It was a way for the excluded to participate. It was not the opposite of learning. It was learning in spite of a system built to exclude.

As long as the price of knowledge is set higher than what most people can afford, piracy will continue. And it will continue to be justified. Not because it is legal. But because it is necessary.

Inside CRACK99: Xiang Li, Software Piracy, and the Price of Knowledge

In the late 2000s, while most internet users were quietly downloading torrents and cracking Photoshop out of frustration or necessity, a man in Chengdu, China, was doing it bigger, smarter, and far more dangerously—at least in the eyes of the U.S. government.

His name was Xiang Li. Through his website, CRACK99, he distributed cracked versions of some of the most expensive and highly restricted software on Earth.

These were tools used in military engineering, satellite communications, weapons design, and critical aerospace systems. In a world where powerful knowledge was locked behind licensing agreements and pricing designed for billion-dollar governments, Li offered access for a price nearly anyone could afford.

From 2008 to 2011, Li made CRACK99 a reliable black-market marketplace, one that netted an estimated $100 million in sales. His inventory, investigators later said, was valued at over $1 billion.

He did not code these tools himself or crack the protections. They were pirated elsewhere. He simply redistributed them, turning scarcity into availability.

His customers weren’t criminal masterminds. They were engineers, small business owners, students, and even U.S. government employees. Among them was a NASA engineer and a contractor who worked on radar software for Marine One, the helicopter used by the President of the United States.

That revelation rattled national security agencies. It meant classified systems were being developed, at least in part, using pirated tools. It also meant the official channels were either too expensive or too inaccessible, even to insiders.

When access to knowledge is locked behind six-figure software licenses, people will find another way in.

In 2010, Homeland Security and the Defense Criminal Investigation Service launched an undercover investigation led by David Locke Hall, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and federal prosecutor. For eighteen months, agents posed as buyers, gained Li’s trust, and arranged a face-to-face meeting in Saipan, a U.S. territory in the Pacific.

Li flew to the island expecting a lucrative expansion of his business. He arrived with his mother-in-law and son, unaware he had entered U.S. jurisdiction. At a beachfront hotel, Li handed over cracked software and 20GB of stolen data. When he confirmed he was the man behind CRACK99, federal agents arrested him.

That moment, Hall later said, was the most dangerous part of the entire operation. You never know how someone will react when the illusion collapses. Li, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, did not look like a criminal. But appearances can be deceiving.

After his arrest, Hall tried to soften the impact on Li’s family. He took the boy out for ice cream while agents searched the hotel room. He didn’t feel sorry for Li in that moment, but he did feel for the child, caught in something he couldn’t understand.

Li was extradited to the mainland and charged in Delaware. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and copyright infringement. He was sentenced to twelve years in federal prison; one of the longest sentences for software piracy in American history.

While law enforcement saw the case as a vital win against cybercrime, others see a deeper question: If software is priced out of reach, and if even government scientists are turning to piracy, is the problem really the pirate—or the system?

Li didn’t set out to sabotage anything. He simply didn’t believe that tools to build machines or simulate flight should be locked away behind institutional gates. He didn’t care who his customers were, and that scared people. But it also said something damning about how modern knowledge is managed: access to it is a privilege, not a right.

Xiang Li sits in prison, not as a hacker or spy, but as someone who cracked open the paywall and asked why it was there to begin with.