November 5, 2019 • 17 mins
Synøve Pan wanders the crowded confines of Atlas Station, seeking answers in a looking-glass distortion of the world above. As her pharmacological enhancements wear off, she’s forced to face some of her own inner demons.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Following a production by r pointing of this episode contains
depictions of drug use. A second Oil Atlas station, take
(00:37):
a lifetime of tension between landsfolk and recombined, and seal
it all up in the depths, crush it beneath three
D atmospheres worth of pressure, see what happens close quarters
and an extreme environment. Those factors alone were probably enough
to generate a certain amount of enhanced cohesion US, no
(01:00):
matter how long the download lines, no matter their thirst
for surface media, Atlas was cut off, perhaps not so
much the bottom of the world as the very edge
of it. I began to see what Veil was after,
and despite all the crap, maybe it really was there
(01:21):
for the finding. I left Hoffman to his atrium. I
expected to run right back into Jack's, but it appeared
I was chaperone free, not that they needed a physical
guard to keep tabs on me. There were cameras everywhere,
which of course made the situation with Bouklyn all the
(01:41):
more grating. Footage existed, or had existed, to tell us
just where Golden Boy had gone. Command suspected the Triton's.
They'd been pretty explicit. I wasn't sure what Hoffman had
to do with it all, but he knew more than
he led on. I ignored his advice on the virtues
(02:03):
of cleanliness and a good night's sleep. The basilisk drug
wouldn't let me settle just yet. Anyway, I headed back
to the bazaar and squeezed my way into the barrel eye.
It was as much bar as you could possibly cram
into a space so narrow, just bar and stools and
a wall of glittering bottles, all beneath the neon glow.
(02:27):
I poured myself through the crowd. They eyed me with suspicion.
Even with my tattoos covered, I stood out in such
a tight knit community, and word had likely spread. Perhaps
that's why a spot opened up at the bar so
quickly I took it and caught the bartender's double lidded eyes.
(02:51):
What are you having whiskey? You want the good stuff
with the cheap stuff? You have good stuff down here? Well, hey,
you never know when a fresh face is going to
show up, probably with a company spending account. Sure top shelf.
Let's say it's more middle a double then, gotcha. Before
(03:14):
I could ask him anything more useful, he moved over
to another patron, so I drank. It didn't matter how
confident the black drug made me feel. I still needed
something to do with my hands, a prop, a reason
for squirming into a place like this and asking inconvenient questions.
(03:37):
I had another. I showed off one of my blades
to a plastered a u V Tech, but refused to
do a knife trick. That's more of a drink six thing.
The crowd swelled, hot with mingled sweat and the saccarin
breath of the Inebriated, I brushed off a bramble bearded
(03:58):
worker's offer for an other drink and rose to follow
the bartender out through the bead curtained rear exit. The
room was tight. I worked my way out into the
bazaar's back alley, just in time to watch him slip
into a toilet pod. I stalled and pretended to check
out a handful of ragged flyers plastered to the rear
(04:20):
of the bar addiction services, a prayer group of some kind.
I glanced back down the row of pods and saw
a familiar face. It stared back at me from the crowd,
behind a trio of cavorting drunks by a tobacco machine.
It was vail. I kept a poker face, but began
(04:43):
moving my way toward her through the crowd. After all,
why wouldn't a nosy newcomer like me chat up a
random blonde with a staring problem. I was just glad
she'd made it out of the crate. I'd scarcely closed
half the distance before she ducked away. I followed, pushing
my way through the drunks, but I lost her almost immediately.
(05:07):
I stood there a moment, scanning the crowd as it
moved around me, until the jostle of bodies became too much,
and I just moved with them. I didn't blame her.
Chatting with me was trouble. Chatting with her was trouble.
I was just a little too intoxicated to think about it. Honestly,
(05:28):
I was a little too intoxicated in general. I gave
up on the bartender and whatever dead end tips might
have come of it, and I had no interest in
anything else he might be peddling. I kept walking. Mm Hmmtoric,
(05:55):
ye heaven, and ye that dwell in them, whoa to
the inhabitors of the earth and of the sea, for
the devil is calmed down? Unto you, Having great wrath,
because he knoweth that he has but a short time.
And I stood upon the sands of the sea, and
Saul beast rise up out of the sea, having seven
(06:18):
heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns,
and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. See, my children,
it is all foretold the inhabitors of the earth, the
inhabitors of the sea. The Book of Revelation spoke to
this very day and age, as we gather as a
(06:38):
people on the very threshold of armor, getting for it
is written. And the second Angel poured out his vial
upon the sea, and it became as the blood of
a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea.
And the fifth Angel poured out his vial upon the
seat of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness.
(07:02):
And they gnawled their tongues in pain. For in one hour,
so great riches has come to night the Word of God.
Praise Jesus and blessed him who rocked above the water,
and not blow these the Holy book. God is still
speaking to us. Can I get an amen? Can I
(07:26):
see those calm units in the air? God, He's still speaking. God,
he still seeing God. He speaks, He speaking God's silos
speaking sickle speed, still sickness, God sick is sleeping. Jana
(08:05):
Bari first made her splash in Atlanta's art world five
years ago. Her latest work explores the recombined experience in America.
Tabitha Vale has more. Jana Bari Studio in South Atlanta
occupies the gymnasium of a former elementary school. Look closely
and you can still see the lines of a basketball
court on the wooden planks. It also once provided shelter
(08:27):
for climate refugees. Now it's home to a series of
six concrete wall fragments from around the country, each once
part of the nation's coastal fortifications against a growing recombined population.
This one's from Louisiana. So I'm trying to incorporate the
right mixture of immigrant cultures and the murals. So it's
a lot trickier than you might think. You've got centuries
(08:48):
of cross cultural and multi lingual heritage there, all before
the oil crisis. Of course. A Bori made her name
in the art world with the use of decay primed
meta pigments, creating murals that aged and eroded mere minutes
after exposure. For her walls project, however, she's depending on
traditional paints and practical materials. This wall segment is my favorite.
(09:11):
See this smugglers doors board right through the concrete and
that's why they discarded it. The boy grew up in Atlanta,
one of some ten thousand transgend children legally adopted by
sister and parents before the outlaw of the practice. Through
her art, she attempts to communicate the transgend experience to
a wider audience, and in doing so, explore her own roots.
(09:35):
I never fit in anywhere growing up, and when people
found out, they treated me like I was exotic, or
told me that I belonged on a trawler at least
on the other side of these walls. I mean, even
friends tried to convince me that I should just be
content and be grateful. But I'm not. I mean, are you,
(10:00):
I'm not content. I wandered through the crowded avenues of
the bazaar, A complex I came to realize wasn't a
single large module, but three of them lined up beside
each other, all within the vast sprawl of Atlas. The
(10:25):
second elongated chamber was much like the first, composed of
overlapping spheres and stuffed with cheap, prefabricated structures to create
the semblance of a crowded cityscape. It was mostly more
of the same food stands and vending machines. A stall
where a recombined tattoo artist inscribed someone's back with a
(10:47):
graph inc scanner a noisome arcade. But it wasn't all
commerce and consumption. In the Atlas Bazaar, I passed by
divination machines as gaudy as any pachinko or slot. Their
palm raiding panels and ore a lens is smudged with
the oil of countless fingerprints. The mechanical hands of an
(11:10):
e ching machine moved beneath a plexiglass bubble to flip
coins and position yarrow stalks. A mere app couldn't cut it,
we like our ancient fortune telling physical the machines gave
way to slender alcoves devoted to deities and spirits from
(11:30):
a dozen cultures. Recombined Jesus as well as his predecessor,
the Schwissien lords of Water, Mary, Ganesha, Ma Trea, and
the Buddha. Their gold leaf glistered in the light of
glow sticks and artificial candles littered round their bases. I
(11:51):
even spied an altar to the mother and father. Abstract
coral figures not worshiped till the advent of the Second
oil Age. The faithful clustered about. They were all races,
all creeds, all genders, both branches of human genetic lineage.
Bald heads bowed into gild necks, just stalls away from
(12:15):
their landsfolk, compatriots, all reaching out for something to hold
their hand through the chaos. I admired their devotion, their
ability to find solace in a demon haunted world and
distill hope from silent stone. And at the same time
(12:35):
I despised them for their certainty, the very strain of
madness that my mother absconded with to the Christ of
the wilderness society and their landlocked compound to await some
fabled rapture or return. I stopped and caught my breath
beside an empty vestibule. It's God removed for repairs, no doubt,
(12:59):
I meaned against the wall. The basilisk was wearing thin.
I felt for the applicator in my jacket, and since
the subdermal doses inside me each just a mental exercise
away from deployment. But no, I needed actual sleep. If
I was going to face marsh and keep her naiads
(13:21):
out of my head apatheis conditioned or not, I needed rest.
I looked up into the darkness of the alcove. For
a fleeting second, I sensed someone lurking watching me from within.
I strained my eyes and saw that the stall was occupied.
(13:42):
After all, A shadowy saint stood in the murk. The
substance of the statue somehow geologic eroded, like something warped
in the deepest thermal vents. I pushed myself up off
the wall and left her. I let the communit guide
(14:07):
me out of the bazaar through twisting corridors and past
recombined workers, still glistening with seawater, just returned from their
toils in open ocean. I reached the habitat module and
scanned my way into a spherical room. In doing this,
(14:30):
from the perils of the design, weapons and were imperfections.
You didn't think of it as a control the se
an ideal of tentative to No, not now, I'm not
doing this now. I stripped out of my gear and
stumbled into the rooms shower pod. I let it wash
(14:57):
over me, burning the grind him and sweat from my
body in a cloud of billowing steam. They are relentless.
They open is very fun, but you too have been
pretty men. Stop stop a rash, exceed, come off just
(15:22):
a bit more. No, I'm not ready. Three, No kud
I need now. The second oil Age was produced by
(16:05):
Robert Lamb, Alex Williams, Lauren Vogelbaum, and Josh Thain. This
episode featured on Joel Masters as snow Pond, Lauren Vogelbaum
as Tabitha Vale, Julie Douglas as Janny Bory, Jed Drummond
as Pastor Obelisk, and Chuck Bryant as the Bartender. Supporting
voice work by Gina Rakiki and Alexander Williams intro Altro,
(16:27):
and supporting music created by the weirding Mondule. Learn more
at Module dot band camp dot com, pass Shire Radio,
(17:00):
visit the Heart radio app, Papple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Following a production by r pointing of this episode contains
depictions of drug use. A second Oil Atlas station, take
(00:37):
a lifetime of tension between landsfolk and recombined, and seal
it all up in the depths, crush it beneath three
D atmospheres worth of pressure, see what happens close quarters
and an extreme environment. Those factors alone were probably enough
to generate a certain amount of enhanced cohesion US, no
(01:00):
matter how long the download lines, no matter their thirst
for surface media, Atlas was cut off, perhaps not so
much the bottom of the world as the very edge
of it. I began to see what Veil was after,
and despite all the crap, maybe it really was there
(01:21):
for the finding. I left Hoffman to his atrium. I
expected to run right back into Jack's, but it appeared
I was chaperone free, not that they needed a physical
guard to keep tabs on me. There were cameras everywhere,
which of course made the situation with Bouklyn all the
(01:41):
more grating. Footage existed, or had existed, to tell us
just where Golden Boy had gone. Command suspected the Triton's.
They'd been pretty explicit. I wasn't sure what Hoffman had
to do with it all, but he knew more than
he led on. I ignored his advice on the virtues
(02:03):
of cleanliness and a good night's sleep. The basilisk drug
wouldn't let me settle just yet. Anyway, I headed back
to the bazaar and squeezed my way into the barrel eye.
It was as much bar as you could possibly cram
into a space so narrow, just bar and stools and
a wall of glittering bottles, all beneath the neon glow.
(02:27):
I poured myself through the crowd. They eyed me with suspicion.
Even with my tattoos covered, I stood out in such
a tight knit community, and word had likely spread. Perhaps
that's why a spot opened up at the bar so
quickly I took it and caught the bartender's double lidded eyes.
(02:51):
What are you having whiskey? You want the good stuff
with the cheap stuff? You have good stuff down here? Well, hey,
you never know when a fresh face is going to
show up, probably with a company spending account. Sure top shelf.
Let's say it's more middle a double then, gotcha. Before
(03:14):
I could ask him anything more useful, he moved over
to another patron, so I drank. It didn't matter how
confident the black drug made me feel. I still needed
something to do with my hands, a prop, a reason
for squirming into a place like this and asking inconvenient questions.
(03:37):
I had another. I showed off one of my blades
to a plastered a u V Tech, but refused to
do a knife trick. That's more of a drink six thing.
The crowd swelled, hot with mingled sweat and the saccarin
breath of the Inebriated, I brushed off a bramble bearded
(03:58):
worker's offer for an other drink and rose to follow
the bartender out through the bead curtained rear exit. The
room was tight. I worked my way out into the
bazaar's back alley, just in time to watch him slip
into a toilet pod. I stalled and pretended to check
out a handful of ragged flyers plastered to the rear
(04:20):
of the bar addiction services, a prayer group of some kind.
I glanced back down the row of pods and saw
a familiar face. It stared back at me from the crowd,
behind a trio of cavorting drunks by a tobacco machine.
It was vail. I kept a poker face, but began
(04:43):
moving my way toward her through the crowd. After all,
why wouldn't a nosy newcomer like me chat up a
random blonde with a staring problem. I was just glad
she'd made it out of the crate. I'd scarcely closed
half the distance before she ducked away. I followed, pushing
my way through the drunks, but I lost her almost immediately.
(05:07):
I stood there a moment, scanning the crowd as it
moved around me, until the jostle of bodies became too much,
and I just moved with them. I didn't blame her.
Chatting with me was trouble. Chatting with her was trouble.
I was just a little too intoxicated to think about it. Honestly,
(05:28):
I was a little too intoxicated in general. I gave
up on the bartender and whatever dead end tips might
have come of it, and I had no interest in
anything else he might be peddling. I kept walking. Mm Hmmtoric,
(05:55):
ye heaven, and ye that dwell in them, whoa to
the inhabitors of the earth and of the sea, for
the devil is calmed down? Unto you, Having great wrath,
because he knoweth that he has but a short time.
And I stood upon the sands of the sea, and
Saul beast rise up out of the sea, having seven
(06:18):
heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns,
and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. See, my children,
it is all foretold the inhabitors of the earth, the
inhabitors of the sea. The Book of Revelation spoke to
this very day and age, as we gather as a
(06:38):
people on the very threshold of armor, getting for it
is written. And the second Angel poured out his vial
upon the sea, and it became as the blood of
a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea.
And the fifth Angel poured out his vial upon the
seat of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness.
(07:02):
And they gnawled their tongues in pain. For in one hour,
so great riches has come to night the Word of God.
Praise Jesus and blessed him who rocked above the water,
and not blow these the Holy book. God is still
speaking to us. Can I get an amen? Can I
(07:26):
see those calm units in the air? God, He's still speaking. God,
he still seeing God. He speaks, He speaking God's silos
speaking sickle speed, still sickness, God sick is sleeping. Jana
(08:05):
Bari first made her splash in Atlanta's art world five
years ago. Her latest work explores the recombined experience in America.
Tabitha Vale has more. Jana Bari Studio in South Atlanta
occupies the gymnasium of a former elementary school. Look closely
and you can still see the lines of a basketball
court on the wooden planks. It also once provided shelter
(08:27):
for climate refugees. Now it's home to a series of
six concrete wall fragments from around the country, each once
part of the nation's coastal fortifications against a growing recombined population.
This one's from Louisiana. So I'm trying to incorporate the
right mixture of immigrant cultures and the murals. So it's
a lot trickier than you might think. You've got centuries
(08:48):
of cross cultural and multi lingual heritage there, all before
the oil crisis. Of course. A Bori made her name
in the art world with the use of decay primed
meta pigments, creating murals that aged and eroded mere minutes
after exposure. For her walls project, however, she's depending on
traditional paints and practical materials. This wall segment is my favorite.
(09:11):
See this smugglers doors board right through the concrete and
that's why they discarded it. The boy grew up in Atlanta,
one of some ten thousand transgend children legally adopted by
sister and parents before the outlaw of the practice. Through
her art, she attempts to communicate the transgend experience to
a wider audience, and in doing so, explore her own roots.
(09:35):
I never fit in anywhere growing up, and when people
found out, they treated me like I was exotic, or
told me that I belonged on a trawler at least
on the other side of these walls. I mean, even
friends tried to convince me that I should just be
content and be grateful. But I'm not. I mean, are you,
(10:00):
I'm not content. I wandered through the crowded avenues of
the bazaar, A complex I came to realize wasn't a
single large module, but three of them lined up beside
each other, all within the vast sprawl of Atlas. The
(10:25):
second elongated chamber was much like the first, composed of
overlapping spheres and stuffed with cheap, prefabricated structures to create
the semblance of a crowded cityscape. It was mostly more
of the same food stands and vending machines. A stall
where a recombined tattoo artist inscribed someone's back with a
(10:47):
graph inc scanner a noisome arcade. But it wasn't all
commerce and consumption. In the Atlas Bazaar, I passed by
divination machines as gaudy as any pachinko or slot. Their
palm raiding panels and ore a lens is smudged with
the oil of countless fingerprints. The mechanical hands of an
(11:10):
e ching machine moved beneath a plexiglass bubble to flip
coins and position yarrow stalks. A mere app couldn't cut it,
we like our ancient fortune telling physical the machines gave
way to slender alcoves devoted to deities and spirits from
(11:30):
a dozen cultures. Recombined Jesus as well as his predecessor,
the Schwissien lords of Water, Mary, Ganesha, Ma Trea, and
the Buddha. Their gold leaf glistered in the light of
glow sticks and artificial candles littered round their bases. I
(11:51):
even spied an altar to the mother and father. Abstract
coral figures not worshiped till the advent of the Second
oil Age. The faithful clustered about. They were all races,
all creeds, all genders, both branches of human genetic lineage.
Bald heads bowed into gild necks, just stalls away from
(12:15):
their landsfolk, compatriots, all reaching out for something to hold
their hand through the chaos. I admired their devotion, their
ability to find solace in a demon haunted world and
distill hope from silent stone. And at the same time
(12:35):
I despised them for their certainty, the very strain of
madness that my mother absconded with to the Christ of
the wilderness society and their landlocked compound to await some
fabled rapture or return. I stopped and caught my breath
beside an empty vestibule. It's God removed for repairs, no doubt,
(12:59):
I meaned against the wall. The basilisk was wearing thin.
I felt for the applicator in my jacket, and since
the subdermal doses inside me each just a mental exercise
away from deployment. But no, I needed actual sleep. If
I was going to face marsh and keep her naiads
(13:21):
out of my head apatheis conditioned or not, I needed rest.
I looked up into the darkness of the alcove. For
a fleeting second, I sensed someone lurking watching me from within.
I strained my eyes and saw that the stall was occupied.
(13:42):
After all, A shadowy saint stood in the murk. The
substance of the statue somehow geologic eroded, like something warped
in the deepest thermal vents. I pushed myself up off
the wall and left her. I let the communit guide
(14:07):
me out of the bazaar through twisting corridors and past
recombined workers, still glistening with seawater, just returned from their
toils in open ocean. I reached the habitat module and
scanned my way into a spherical room. In doing this,
(14:30):
from the perils of the design, weapons and were imperfections.
You didn't think of it as a control the se
an ideal of tentative to No, not now, I'm not
doing this now. I stripped out of my gear and
stumbled into the rooms shower pod. I let it wash
(14:57):
over me, burning the grind him and sweat from my
body in a cloud of billowing steam. They are relentless.
They open is very fun, but you too have been
pretty men. Stop stop a rash, exceed, come off just
(15:22):
a bit more. No, I'm not ready. Three, No kud
I need now. The second oil Age was produced by
(16:05):
Robert Lamb, Alex Williams, Lauren Vogelbaum, and Josh Thain. This
episode featured on Joel Masters as snow Pond, Lauren Vogelbaum
as Tabitha Vale, Julie Douglas as Janny Bory, Jed Drummond
as Pastor Obelisk, and Chuck Bryant as the Bartender. Supporting
voice work by Gina Rakiki and Alexander Williams intro Altro,
(16:27):
and supporting music created by the weirding Mondule. Learn more
at Module dot band camp dot com, pass Shire Radio,
(17:00):
visit the Heart radio app, Papple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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