Mother Horse Eyes: Part 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
One day during the final summer, a team of doctors
came in from Berlin. They were in the midst of
a grand experiment which they considered to be of the
utmost importance, and needed access to a large number of prisoners,
something beyond what they could acquire in Berlin. We protested
that we were not equipped for any sort of medical experiments,

(00:34):
that our camp was designed for a single purpose, but
they insisted, and we were forced to accommodate them. I
was immediately irritated by their senior doctor, a haughty man
in his late forties named Engel, who always wore a
crisp white coat and fine leather shoes. He arrived with

(00:55):
his team of doctors and I could scarcely believe it
a Jew. This was perhaps the ugliest Jew to have
ever personally offended my eyes. He was a very tall man,
a full head taller than average, with a furry black beard,
a gnarled, claw like nose, and very prominent eyes. These

(01:21):
eyes were something of a source of fascination to me, though,
as they were not the rat like black color of
the normal Jew, but a much lighter shade of brown,
almost like bronze. He wore a shabby suit and followed
Ngale around quite closely, almost as if they were associates,

(01:43):
and always his strange flashing eyes were roaming about in
a suspicious way. When I first met Ngel, I asked
who this Jew was, but my question was brushed aside.
They immediately set about converting one of our buildings in
to a station for their experiments, the details of which

(02:03):
were kept from me entirely, and his team made no
contact with the other staff, accept to demand various supplies.
After a few days of being subjected to Engel's imperious behavior,
I could feel that my SS subordinates and even the
Ukrainians were smirking at me behind my back. So I

(02:24):
decided to give Ngel a tour of the other part
of the camp, which he had not seen yet, the
part where we process prisoners. Of course, he refused, but
I insisted. Fortunately, a trainload of prisoners was arriving at
that moment, and we went out to the platform. The

(02:44):
odious Jew with glittering eyes followed us, which pleased me
all the more. The train arrived, with the cries of
its passengers blending into the squealing of the metal wheels.
The blue units worked themselves into their usual frenzy, pulling
the passengers out, shouting and clubbing, and herding them towards

(03:05):
the main gate. Amidst the crush of passengers, the limbodies
of children occasionally came spilling out onto the platform, and
the Blue units tossed them into a pile, and Gael
watched all of this impassively. A woman came out of
the train clutching a child of perhaps three years. She

(03:27):
looked about frantically, screaming for her doctor. I gave her
a sympathetic look and held out my arms. She approached me,
the handsome, stolid looking authority figure that I am. I
took the child from her and tenderly examined it. It
was still alive. I placed it gently on the ground

(03:51):
and used my boot to reshape its skull. The woman
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(05:42):
not live, Rachel does not die. Rachel feels can you.
After a week at the camp, doctor Engel put in
a rather perverse request. He wanted to move his laboratory
to the old gas chamber. I had no problem with this.

(06:03):
We had installed a new, more efficient gas chamber with
the help of an expert on the matter, and although
they had capacity of over twenty thousand a day, we
were seldom ever able to process more than fifteen thousand
in a single day due to the unreliability of the trains,
which were often slow enough to preemptively process many of

(06:25):
their passengers for us. At this point, we had orders
to cremate the bodies, and they burned in open pits
day and night, and we warned Doctor and Gell that
the old gas chamber would be a rather distracting environment
to work in, as it was between the smoke of
the burning pits and the noise of the new gas chamber.

(06:48):
He disregarded this and his team moved in that day.
After that, I rarely saw him, as that part of
the camp was somewhat hidden from the rest, and my headaches,
which were growing more severe, had always made me reluctant
to visit. Soon my men began to tell me strange

(07:08):
tales from the new laboratory. Nobody except en Gel and
his men was allowed inside, but we surmised that he
had removed or reduced the chamber's interior walls and sealed
up all doors except one. He requested his own s
s detail, and two guards were posted at the door
at all times. A steady flow of prisoners went into

(07:31):
the laboratory, whom and Gale selected with the help of
his odious Jew assistant, often to the great irritation of
my units, as their fussy selectivity often slowed down our
processing activities. Nobody could make any sense of his selection process,
as it mainly consisted of the Jew looking the person

(07:52):
over and making various mutterings. It was reported that every
few days, an enormous package wrapped in tarpaulin would be
removed from the laboratory and carried over to a special
burning pit which they had made. These packages tended to bleed,
leaving a trail of blood to the burning pit, where

(08:12):
they were burned under the watch of Ngel's personal guard.
This behavior was only extraordinary, and that there was no
need for secrecy. When it came to killing prisoners, Thousands
were being killed every day just a few meters away
in the new gas chambers. Between this and the inexplicable
presence of the Jew assistant, I slowly became curious about

(08:36):
their project. My men, however, were unable to get any
information about what was occurring inside the laboratory, so I
decided to focus a few questions on the member of
the team who presumably had the least sense of loyalty,
the Jew. On one of our days off, I found
the Jew in our little zoo, admiring the peacocks. He

(09:01):
looked very much at peace while he watched the birds
strut around while I was suffering from a vicious headache.
I began to talk to him, affecting an offhand, friendly manner.
His German was perfect. I asked him about his background.
He told me he had been a religious student in

(09:21):
Berlin until he was expelled to a ghetto in Krakau.
I asked him how he had met Angel. This is
when he told me something quite surprising. This was actually
his second time coming to Treplinka. On his first visit,
he was on the very verge of being shot when

(09:43):
somebody had noticed his perfect German accent. Apparently there had
been a request for prisoners who spoke excellent German, and
this earned him a reprieve. He was sent back to Berlin,
where Engel performed tests on him. I asked about the
nature of these tests. At this he became more reticent.

(10:03):
He had been instructed to discuss nothing with me. I
merely informed him that I would shoot him through the
face if he didn't tell me everything. At this he
showed no fear, but looked at me with his odd,
brazen eyes and gave me an almost pitying smile. He
said that the doctors were testing a new Swiss invention,

(10:27):
some kind of chemical which was administered orally and cause
profound changes in thinking. I asked him about these changes.
He said that the chemical allowed him to see the
mind of God naturally. I asked for elaboration. At this
he launched into a rather overworked smile involving a broken mirror,

(10:50):
and switched to another smile using a spider's web, neither
of which made any sense to me. I informed him
that I was a practical man, had little use for philosophy.
He told me that after taking the chemical many times,
he had become possessed of two minds, his own and

(11:11):
that of God. In all his doings, he was conscious
of God's intentions, of God's plan for all human life.
I asked him if he was following God's plan, and
he said he was not following it entirely. I am
wrestling with God, he said, cryptically. How does one wrestle

(11:33):
with God? Isn't he all powerful? He replied, When God
presses forward, you must yield or be destroyed. And when
God yields, you must press forward. That sounds more like
dancing than wrestling or making love, I said, with a snort.

(11:54):
He smiled, yes, it is, except that dancing is not
so painful. Why wrestle at all? If God is God,
and YE know his plan, why not simply follow it?
Surely this is the best course. Yes, but I cannot
bring myself too, he said. For the first time, I

(12:16):
saw the peaceful expression flee from his face, to be
replaced by an unsettling dread that trembled in his eyes.
God's plan is simply too awful. Imagine Mother Babylon, Mother Rome,

(12:38):
Mother America, the world enslaved flesh networks spanning the globe
the blood of humanity, moving through veins thousands of miles long,
cavernous curving tubes as big as super highways, biological superstructures,

(12:59):
bones the size of the Golden gate Bridge, living engineering
hearts as big as mountains, pumping with tectonic force, chained
in relays, moving blood across continents. Exotic neurochemical pestilence flowing
from monstrous glandular ridges, fleshing case nightmares, farms of non

(13:25):
human tongues babbling blasphemous gibberish. A vast sea bed dotted
with lonely eyes. This is the great Queendom of Babylon,
a great blood, drunk hoar, wearing the crown of the
atom as all around her, fleshy carapace, float, orbital platforms

(13:47):
of nuclear death, scattered in the stars beyond the seeds
of Israel. Weep to gaze upon their new mother, the
undying Queen of blood and corruption. The worst thing a
black man can do is go to church on Sunday.

(14:10):
We're not supposed to do that. In the old days,
before Jesus paid for our sins, we'd be put to
death for idle a tree. But now you see them
all dressed up in their suits and the girls are
in their dresses with their booty all hanging out. They
got the coochie hanging out of the dress. At church,

(14:32):
they're going in there like it's a club. That's not
what God wants. He wants us to dress modestly because
we are God's chosen people. But they don't know this.
They're eating crabs and shrimp, shrimp platters, going to Red
Lobster all you can eat shrimp nine ninety nine. They

(14:54):
don't follow the law. Then they go into church and
worship this picture of white Jesus. That's idle a. Try
that picture of Jesus with the long, soft hair, the
good hair. That's not Jesus. It's actually a man named
Kazar Borgia. The real Jesus had curly hair, black hair

(15:17):
because he was black. He was a Jew. You have
to understand what's going on in the world right now.
They have satellites in space, and they have weapons systems,
Adam Bomb's everything. And which way are they pointed? They're
not pointed down here on Earth. They're pointed out into space.

(15:39):
Why because the nations of the world, America, the un
they're all waiting for something to come from space Watch.
It's coming and they're going to try to destroy it.
The Battle of Jehosaphat. See, there's a thread a line

(16:00):
through history, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans, America, the
slave owners, it's all one. Do you know who the
Nephelim are. They're mentioned in the Bible, but only twice.
You have to understand the mystery of the Bible to
understand what they are. The first time they get mentioned

(16:23):
is in the story of the flood. It says in
Genesis six four, there were giants in the earth in
those days, and also after that, when the sons of
God came in unto the daughters of men and they
bear children to them, the same became mighty men, which
were of old men of renown. These giants were Nephelim.

(16:45):
Nephelim is the original Hebrew word in the Torah. You
have to understand Hebrew to know the mystery of the Bible.
Nephelim are the children of the sons of God who
are fallen angels. Angels came down in had sex with
human women, and they gave birth to Nephelim people who
were half man and half angel. The angels looked down,

(17:09):
saw the people, the original man, the black woman, the
nice bodies, the nice booties, the thick legs, and they
all got them a piece of that. I'm serious, they said,
we angels, we can do what we want. So they
got some. A little later in Genesis six twelve, it says,

(17:32):
and God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt,
for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
And God said, unto Noah, the end of all flesh
is come before me, for the earth is filled with
violence and through them. And behold, I will destroy them
with the earth. That is how the flood came about,

(17:54):
all this mixing of flesh. Now, what if I told
you the children of the Nephelin are still among us,
that they are renowned, as the scriptures say that our scientists,
our bankers, our leaders, our inventors are Nephelim Bill Gates,
Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs. These men are part fallen angel,

(18:18):
and they are corrupting the flesh, like the Bible says,
by doing all this gene splicing and mixing chromosomes, because
they're made from mixed flesh between angel and human. So
they're all for everybody mixing men with men, girls and
girls whatever. Pretty soon you're gonna see chicks with two

(18:41):
heads walking down the street, and we're supposed to say
it's cool. I won't say no more because I don't
want to get banned. The Nephelin controlled the Internet. I'll
just say I see it myself. I've seen how they
mix the flesh, experiments, the government making new things. It's

(19:05):
out there in the training curriculum for becoming a readjustment specialist.
They emit finger blasting entirely, which is odd considering what
a routine part of the job it is. I can't
tell you how many times I've been in the middle
of a conversation with a client only to have her
slip her finger into her shorts and start diddling away

(19:29):
my clients. Long term session heads i e. People who
have been connected to a direct sense feed for multi
year spans are practically feral. Even though the feeds are
supposed to be all about empathy and social connection, everything
is so mediated that they lose the capacity for normal
social interaction. If their session begins at an early enough

(19:51):
age or goes on long enough, shit gets truly weird.
The readjustment client is a stimulus addict. They crave easy,
immediate stimulation. Some turn to drug use, but they usually
require near lethal or outright lethal amounts to properly stimulate themselves.

(20:12):
Others turn to masturbation. The readjustment client has no patience.
If they are uncomfortable, they want immediate relief. If that
entails an indiscreet bout of onanism, then so be it.
Almost all my clients are women. The female clients tend

(20:32):
to choose male specialists, and the male clients tend to
choose female specialists. In the feeds, they often surround themselves
with coteries of admirers of the opposite sex, so they
insist on opposite sex specialists. This is an unhealthy impulse,
but we must meet our clients half way. Our job

(20:53):
is to slowly transition them away from being fake adoration
sponges and being functioning adults. I am not a doctor,
I am not a therapist. I am trained to think
of myself as a paid big brother. Perhaps there is
an inherent contradiction. I must be stern without being overly judgmental.

(21:17):
I must be empathetic but effective. I can't coddle them.
The feed coddles them that must end. The work could
be described as Sissophian Trying to reculture a person after
years of all that whiz baying feed simulation is like
pushing a heavy boulder up a hill, and occasionally the

(21:41):
boulder is masturbating. I asked the Jew exactly what sort
of procedures they were performing in their laboratory, But at
this point we were interrupted by several members of doctor
Ingell's team, and they hurriedly ushered him away. All though
there were still many unanswered questions, my curiosity was largely satisfied.

(22:06):
They were testing a new chemical and probably performing vivisections
and such to ascertain its physical effects. Perhaps the bodies
were burned separately because they require special handling due to
the presence of the chemical. There was nothing especially sinister
in that. It was actually rather considerate of them. That night,

(22:29):
shortly before I was about to retire for the day,
one of the Ukrainians came to me with a small
package wrapped in cloth, about the size of a loaf
of bread, with an irregular shape. He was very excited.
He unwrapped the package and inside was a fragment of
pale white bone, an extremely unusual fragment. It was a

(22:53):
sort of rounded carapace, like a part of a giant's skull,
but with five round holes in it, much like eye sockets,
but obviously too numerous to be so. Studded throughout the
fragment were extrusions that looked like molar teeth. Looking at it,
I could not place it as part of any animal

(23:14):
I had ever seen. I asked the man where he
got it, and he said he had retrieved it from
near the laboratory's cremation pit just an hour before. The
piece itself did not appear to have been burned, as
it had the meaty stink of death about it. I
asked him a few more questions, but he knew little else. Still,

(23:37):
he insisted that the bone fragment was from something monstrous
and unnatural, which they were creating in their laboratory, and
that I should shut down their experiments. One of my
s s subordinates immediately set to thrashing the Ukrainian with
a baton for presuming to advise me on my duties,
and with that the conversation came to its natural conclusion.

(24:01):
I took the fragment with me and spent a while
turning it over in the dim lamp light of my quarters.
It was indeed otherworldly, and as the Ukrainian had said,
with a kind of wild fear in his eyes, it
was truly monstrous. Despite the Ukrainian's impudence, I decided to

(24:23):
take his advice. This had all gone too far. Whatever
the high command might say, I mustn't let this camp
be overrun by secretive madness, but must maintain a spirit
of rational co operation. I would insist on full inspection
of the laboratory first thing tomorrow morning. I lay down

(24:43):
to sleep, and was soon visited with a dream so
intense that I did not feel like I was sleeping
at first. At first, the bed in which I lay
seemed to rise up from the floor and float ever
upwards through a large glowing tunnel, which was painted the
whole manner of designs, from paisley to topographical lines, to

(25:05):
various kinds of caligraphy and unknown languages. After this, the
dream became a series of absurd images, ever changing and
blending into new images and shapes. Many of these shifts
struck me as clever or absurd, and I found myself
laughing maniacally at it all. Finally, all these desperate images

(25:30):
appeared at once before me and began to rotate around
each other as part of a fantastic wheel. And slowly
I began to suspect that by combining them all, some
sort of grand secret would be revealed. Just as this
notion occurred to me, all the images began to coalesce

(25:50):
into one final image of stunning clarity. It was the
image of a woman or something which was mainly a woman,
but also different creed creatures, who was vastly large and
seemed to tower over me miles in the sky, who
looked down on me and filled me in human eyes.

(26:12):
Her skin was inhumanly pale, but she wore a crown
of exquisite thorned flowers, and blood ran in shimmering red
streams down her skin. She was pregnant, vastly pregnant, with
a stomach so swollen it was like she sat upon
a huge mountain of distended flesh. I got sense within

(26:36):
her belly there was a hive of activity of something
or many things, pulsing and squirming feverishly. Soon the belly
burst open like a ripe fruit, and rivers of blood
poured out, and a revolting mass of fleshy tubes came
spilling out, unraveling and tearing open to set free hundreds

(26:58):
and thousands of monstrous in who are both human and
not human, who had the same filmy eyes as their mother,
who are slathered and dripping with blood. The oily ones

(27:21):
lack all harmony. They are neither silky nor subtle. They
are slow and stupid, and loud, evilly, loud, arrogantly, thoughtlessly,
senselessly loud, night and day. They make noise. Their unnatural
things make noise. They cry to each other like kittens.

(27:45):
They are far larger and stronger than any of our kind,
but they are more hairless than the newly born, and
they cry like hungry whelps. It is evil, it is abomination.
They make dead things live. Things which do not have
the smell of life should not live. But these things

(28:08):
are touched by the oily ones, and they live and
move this evil, unnatural magic. Their unnatural things come in
all different shapes and contain deadly mysteries and tricks and traps.
Some are invisible, some are faster than sight, Some never sleep,

(28:29):
some cut in claw. These unnatural things lack all harmony,
like the oily ones themselves, I've seen the deadly darkness
of their magic. I've seen our kind crushed and smeared
by their things. I've seen our kind disappear inside their things,
never to be seen again. Once I saw a kitten

(28:54):
who was struck by their magic, who made bloody foam
from the mouth for three days, who died in agony. Yes,
I have known sleeplessness. I know them as evil. And
this would seem to be all. But there is more.

(29:15):
There is more. There is mystery. There is the mysterious
smell of the oily ones, the smell by which we
know them. It is both awful and alluring, disgusting and entrancing,
as smells like the sweet oily fats that coats the

(29:36):
heart of a pigeon, the best part of the flesh.
We find ourselves drawn to it, drawn to them. And
there is their food, which can contain dark magic, but
also feeds many of us, and truly taste wonderful and righteous,

(29:57):
and does not scuttle, but always sleeps, and is easy
to hunt. Even more mysteriousness is their kindness, for it
as they they alone of all living things, who show
our kind to any affection, who bring us food as

(30:17):
if we are their young, as if they are our mother.
How could this be? How could these evil beings show
us affection? How could they show us more affection than
the world itself? Who is of our kind? This is

(30:37):
the central mystery. Ever since my kid died, this has
become my obsession. I have watched them closely. I have
looked into the strange places where they hide, where they
appear and disappear. The place is full of mysterious lights
and smells, in ten thousand forms of evil and wickedness.

(31:01):
If I am to capture this mystery, if I am
to feed on its sweet, oily heart, I must go
inside one of these places. I must go through one
of their portals. I sit in my room, watching bright
specks of dust flow through the sunlight from the window.

(31:22):
The summer heat is pressed against the glass. Somewhere down
the street, a lawnmower wines. The air is stale. The
corners of the room are filled with damp shadows. My
toys lie on the floor, scattered. I hear the fractured
music down the hall, A sound like wind chimes. A

(31:44):
shutter goes through the old house, and I find myself rising.
I am walking down the hallway, call to the other end.
I smell her as I get closer, foul me, stomach acid.
I walk in her room and her bloody pieces are

(32:07):
lying all over the floor. The strange flute music slowly
coalesces into a melody, and the pieces rise and float
like flies. The music charms them into formation, and they
come together to make mother. The eyes are missing, still
fleshy cavities. They come in from the hallway, floating over

(32:32):
my head, settling into her face with a squishing sound,
streams of blood falling like tears. Child, fetch me my bag.
I need flesh. I shake my head. I hate her.
She leaps to me, grabs a handful of my hair

(32:54):
and slaps me across the face with a ragged dog's paw.
Again and again. I scream and cry. She lets me go, sobbing.
I go to the closet and get her big bag.
We wait until night. I call it coming back online,

(33:19):
that moment when you first come out of a drunken blackout.
It's always frightening. Where am I? What is this neighborhood?
What happened to my face? Where's my wallet? Some people,
when they drink enough to disable her short term memory
immediately collapse into an immobile heap. This is nature's fail safe.

(33:40):
This is nature's fail safe. But I lack this feature.
I can walk and talk and carry a tune, yet
have no idea of what's going on. I have never
come back online to find myself up to any good.
I have never emerged from a blackout to find that
I have built to a convenient spice Racker delivered a

(34:02):
morning speech about women's rights. It's always been some fucking calamity.
The last time I came back online, I was standing
in my front yard having a conversation with my parents.
Even in my tottering state, I knew this couldn't be
a good thing. I had no idea what we were
talking about. Why were we talking about it on the

(34:23):
front lawn at night? What time was it? Hoping for
a clue, I waited for something to come out of
my mouth, and here it was. Didn't you notice I
never left my room. I've been living with you for
six months. I think I've seen each of you twice.

(34:43):
This was bad. I knew I shouldn't be saying something
like this. It sounded terribly confessional. Ever since I had
gotten fired and moved back in with my parents. I
had been holed up in my childhood bedroom, secretly drinking
and basking in an unremitten sense of personal shame. But

(35:04):
this was all supposed to be a secret. As far
as my parents knew, I was freelancing and getting back
on my feet. This scene, this mad scene, was not
a part of that narrative. We were giving you your privacy.
We didn't know you were getting drunk up there. My
mother said, this conversation was out of control. I should

(35:29):
just tell them I'm going to bed. I should calmly
bid them a good night. So I said, of course
I was getting drunk. Fuck, I've been drinking every goddamn
day for the last ten years. What the fuck else
should I be doing? This was a poor choice of words.
This was not how one calmly bids another a good night.

(35:53):
Ah A look on my poor mother's face. That look
stayed with me. That look, the fallen face of a
tired old woman, stayed with me as I laid in
bed that night. It stayed with me as the alcohol
wore off, as the night turned into a queasy morning,

(36:15):
as the hands began to shake, the brain tingle set in,
as the hell whispers began as I waited for them
to go to work so I could sneak a bit
of relief from the liquor cabinet as the awful day
wore on. As we talked that night, as I packed
my stuff up, as I went off to rehab the
next day. My mother is almost seventy. She's a small

(36:41):
and stooped and old woman. When did she get so old?
I just thought I would be something by now, thirty
three years old. I thought it would have something to
show her, something to give back, something to make her proud.

(37:04):
I thought I'd be a man, not just a drunken failure.
All those little soccer practices she took me to, all
the swim lessons in therapy and errands and effort and love.
What was it for so I could be a drunken
sack of shit? Why was I so fucked up? Why

(37:27):
did I require shore leave levels of liquor to operate properly?
As I lay in bed in the rehab that first night,
listening to the occasional moans of the other patients, I
asked myself these questions and others. Soon I found myself

(37:49):
returning to the question I had been asking my entire life,
the one I always retreated to in moments of self pity,
the one that seemed to hold some key to my dysfunction,
the one I had always been afraid to ask my mom,

(38:09):
what about that one summer when you were dead? The
next day, I felt under the weather. The vivid dreams
of the previous night had left my mind feeling dull
and exhausted. As soon as I left my quarters, I
was greeted with the news that one of our Ukrainians
had gone mad during the night and attempted to attack

(38:33):
doctor Engel's team in their quarters. It was none other
than the one who had brought me the Strange skull fragment.
After shooting him, they had come to the conclusion that
he somehow ingested some of their magical chemical, which they
referred to as the Swiss Invention. Engels insisted that I

(38:56):
make an announcement to the camp. Everyone found ingesting this
chemical under any circumstance, whether by intention or accident, will
be summarily shot, regardless of whether they are prisoner or
he we or even s s. This was by order
of the high command. At this I was forced to

(39:18):
admit to myself what was already obvious. I had somehow
been dosed with the chemical in handling the bone fragment.
My dreams had been a reaction to the poisoning. Looking
into Ngal's cold blue eyes, I tried to deduce the
consequences of confessing this to him. Despite his disagreeable haughtiness,

(39:40):
he seemed like a rational, efficient man with an appropriate
love of duty and country. I had no doubt that
he would murder me without hesitation. I decided to keep
my little nocturnal epiphany to myself. Naturally, my curiosity in
Ngal's project had been aroused again. He apparently was working

(40:01):
with a chemical which could induce temporary madness. The value
of such a chemical was obvious, But what of the
bizarre bone fragment? What had it come from? I couldn't
help but feel that this creature, whatever it was, was
somehow connected to the visions of the monstrous, bloody mother.

(40:23):
Again and again, her blood face appeared in my mind,
her filmy eyes gazing down at me. Inhuman and imperious.
I attempted to contact the jew again, but after a conversation,
doctor Engelstein guarded him jealously. He was never left alone

(40:44):
as the hot summer days went by, my curiosity about
the matter grew too obsessive proportions. The monstrous Mother visited
me several more times in my dreams, of the normal
variety this time, but no less vivid and disturbing. I
began surreptitiously observing Ngal's laboratory, which was guarded day and night,

(41:07):
and I asked some of my men to do the same.
To our knowledge, the bloody packages had ceased to emerge
from within, but something stranger began to happen. This new
phenomenon was presumably occurring at all hours, but was imperceptible
in the bustle of the day when men were about

(41:28):
and the gas chambers were operating. Only at night, and
only when the fires were burning quietly could it be perceived.
I first observed it shortly before dawn one muggy morning.
As ridiculous as it might sound for me to be
skulking about at my own camp, I did just that,

(41:50):
slipping along the walls of the new gas chamber to
come within a short distance of the laboratory. There I
witnessed what others had reported to me, fixed inner veils.
A sound emerged from the laboratory. It was very quiet,
but not just my imagination. A creaking sound, the sound

(42:11):
that many old houses and structures make as their materials
shrink and swell from temperature and moisture. But this came
very regularly, every four or five seconds. Slowly, a realization
crept upon me. The building was breathing steadily in and out.

(42:36):
It was breathing. It was alive. This realization, which I'll
admit was more of an unconfirmed intuition, filled me with
a dread so strong that tears came to my eyes.
There's something enormous and alive inside that building. The sight

(42:56):
of death, bloody death beyond most men's imaginings, had left
me unmoved. But the sight of life, this new and
unnatural life, pressing against the walls of the building, was
enough to chill me again. I saw the face of
the Unholy Mother in my mind. I saw her filmy eyes,

(43:17):
saw a slight smile form from her lips between the
streams of blood. That night, I could not sleep. Unfortunately,
the next day was our weekly day off, and I
was able to spend most of the day in my quarters.
It was abnormally intolerably hot and human My thoughts followed

(43:40):
disorderly circles round the revolting image of the Mother, and
I felt as if I was being revisited by the
temporary madness brought on by the so called Swiss invention.
I had long loathed life at the camp, but had
accepted it as tolerable hardship. But now the constant smell

(44:02):
of the burning sickened me. I felt I could take
no more. That afternoon, some of my men decided to
go off to a nearby lake for a swim, and
on a whim, I accompanied them. I needed a reprieve
from the heat. At the lake, I eased myself into

(44:23):
the cool water and floated idly, watching the clouds pass overhead.
Here there was nothing but the gentle twittering of nature.
It had been here before our murderous camp had been built,
and it would be here long after, gentle and peaceful.

(44:46):
I had been in the water for just a few
minutes when I received the news a group of prisoners
had broken into the armory smuggled weapons out in a
full scale uprising occurring back at camp. The rest of
the day was a whirlwind. We raced back to the
camp and I found myself personally trading fire with the prisoners.

(45:08):
As all about buildings burned and everything was chaos. We
called for reinforcements, managed to subdue the camp and set
out into the woods to catch the escapees. A fair
number were intercepted, but over one hundred escaped. This was
an unmitigated disaster. Coming back into the camp after the hunt,

(45:30):
I had only to look around at the faces of
my men to know that I was now in a
position of total disgrace. As calamitous thoughts raced through my head.
I found myself walking towards Ngal's laboratory. Deep black soot
stains round the front door showed me that the interior
had been burned out. All around the entrance lay the

(45:54):
bodies of Ngal's team, their white coats dyed in fresh red.
They had been massacred. Ngel himself had been shot or
stabbed several times, and his throat had been slashed. And
then there was the Jew. The Jew lay on the

(46:14):
ground with one of my asss men standing over him,
holding a rifle with a fixed bayonet. The Jew's abdomen
had been bisected and his bowels spilled out all over
the ground. They were now caked with dust. A few
feet from him lay a kitchen knife. Apparently he had

(46:34):
stabbed Ngele's whole team to death before being opened up
by the bayonet to kill half a dozen men Like
this was no mean feet. My officer stood with one
of his boots atop a loop of the Jews intestines,
sneering at him. Remarkably, the Jew was still live and ware.

(46:57):
When I approached. He lifted his head, and I, for
the last time, found myself caught in his strange gaze.
We stood like this for a moment, staring at each other,
inexplicable emotions flooding my mind. The Jew opened his mouth
and croaked something. A bloody foam spilled out over his lips.

(47:21):
He tried again, water, he said. I quietly instructed my
man to get some water. He scoffed, and I clouded
him about the head and screamed at him. He scurried
off and returned a moment later with a large ladle
of water. I took it and stooped down over the

(47:42):
Jew and carefully tipped a ladle to his lips, letting
him drink. He drank carefully. I wiped the bleeding foam
from his lips. All the while I could not fathom
why I was doing this, except by the commandment of
this man's pleading eyes. His lips trembled and he attempted

(48:04):
to speak. I cradled his head and then close to
hear his words. I know this is not God. I've
killed them, but others. You must. I waited for him
to continue, but he did not. Must what I asked.

(48:30):
You've seen her. Your dream is the future, the mother,
I asked the bloody woman. There is still time to
stop her. You must, you must, And just like that,

(48:56):
his life fled from him, and the glimmer in his
eyes went dull. I set his head gently on the
ground again and stood up. I looked to the burned
out entrance of the laboratory. It was now unguarded. I
could walk right in. The chill went through me at

(49:19):
that thought, but I knew that I must. I walked
into the entrance. Just inside was a curtain made of tarpaulin,
concealing the interior. The smell of charred meat and petrol,
which normally pervaded the entire camp, which had been giving
me headaches and slowly driving me mad all the past year,

(49:44):
was especially sickeningly strong. Here, with a trembling hand, I
pulled back the curtain and looked inside. There, hidden in
the darkness was a great inexplicable monstrosity. Everything had been

(50:07):
burned and blackened, but still I could see human shapes
and forms, arms, fingers, faces, jawbones, teeth, eye sockets, all
burned and reduced, ash clinging to bone. But this was
no pile of burned bodies. I had seen piles of

(50:29):
burned bodies. I had seen mountains of burned bodies. This
was something different. Human parts were coming out of the
walls and the floor and ceiling. Arms and legs hung
like stalactites. Faces came out of the floor. They were

(50:51):
fused together in ways that could not be possible. Had
seeing this, eye was filled with the strongest possible urge
to turn away, to back out of the awful laboratory,
had run for my life. But I heard again the
Jew's final words, you must I knew this to be

(51:12):
a command. I went inside. As the curtain closed behind me,
I was enveloped in almost total darkness. Bones cracked beneath
my boots. Near the back, I saw a shaft of
light where one of the old doors had been sealed up,
but had become partially open again. I walked toward it,

(51:34):
stepping over unspeakable crunching shapes, brushing past nightmarish forms. I
reached out to the crack of light, pulled back aboard
which was covering the door. Though I was not able
to rip it free, I pulled it loose enough to
let in a considerable amount of light, enough to reveal

(51:55):
what sat at the back of the laboratory. As a child,
I once went to a zoo in Vienna, where I
saw an elephant's skull. Looking at the object now before me,
I was reminded of this long ago moment, and of

(52:15):
how I had spent maybe half an hour staring at
the skull from every angle. How I was titillated by
its enormousness, its impossible alienness, and its unsettling similarity to
what was familiar and human before me. Was a large

(52:37):
obloid shape, almost as tall as me stipled with hundreds
of what looked like eye sockets. The lower portion consisted
of a complicated structure that resembled several sets of jaws,
each with hundreds or thousands of teeth of all different kinds.

(52:59):
Including mo incisors, canines, even animal teeth, some of them
of normal size, some of them as big as my fist.
The center of the shape was split vertically, and inside
was a set of curving bone tubes that seemed to

(53:20):
fill the interior. I stood there and the charred darkness,
staring at this thing, this blasphemous alien thing, while my
mind filled with images of the awful dream mother and
the final gasping words of the jew. There was still

(53:46):
time to stop her. His commandment became strangely clear to me.
This thing that the scientists were attempting to create, whatever
it was, must not be allowed to exist. It was
an abomination, and Gale and his team were dead. But

(54:08):
there were others working on the project. It was secretive
enough that the essential personnel would be few in number,
the lab in Switzerland, a few top scientists. Perhaps perhaps
that was the entirety of it. It would not be easy,
but far from impossible, to find them all. It was

(54:32):
perhaps in my power to destroy the whole project, especially
if we lost the war, which seemed increasingly likely after Stalingrad,
and if this chemical that they were using was obscure enough,
it might be possible to eliminate the entire worlds. Supply,
thus I could shut the door on whatever unholy creature

(54:54):
these madmen were attempting to unleash. Yes, I could do this,
at least I could attempt it. I felt now a
distinct sense of the entire world's history resting on what
I decided to do next. Surely moments like this did

(55:14):
not come about often. Surely they must only come to
men who are worthy of them. Surely there once was
a little boy who loved swinging on the tire swing
in his back yard. It was a simple swing made
from an old tire and a length of rope tied

(55:34):
to a branch of utter non existence. On many a
lazy summer afternoon, he would while away the hours swinging
back and forth under the shade of the big leafy
existential nullody, and in the fall he picked apples from it.
One day, his father told him to cut down the
apple nullody. But Pa, he protested, I love that old nullody.

(56:00):
On what I say, boy, His father said, I don't
like ontological paradoxes, and I don't like you sassen me.
The boy ran crying to his mother, Ma. PA said,
I have to cut down the old nullody say it
ain't so, I'm afraid it's for the best. The other day,
I was weeding the tomato patch and I saw Sammy

(56:21):
the cat had gotten into the nullody. When I was
trying to get him down, I accidentally gazed into an
infinitely branching timeline of events which never happened and never
will happen. Well, I'll be darned if that old Sammy
didn't jump right on my head. But ma, what about
my tire swing? Come now, there's all sorts of other things.
You can tie your tire swing too. What about one

(56:43):
of the many giant flayed demon penises that grow abundantly
in our world and provide our lumber? But MA, I
don't want to swing on some dumb old demon penis.
You just say that because you haven't tried it. Now
mind your pawn. Fetch an axe. The boy got his
father's axe went to chop the non thing down, but
after a dozen swings, he found his hands were red

(57:06):
and sore. The axe's demon penis handle was quite rough.
He called to his father, Pa, this darn demon penis
handle got my hands all scratched. Tarnation, boy, don't you
have any sense, Why don't you wear some gloves. The
boy put on some gloves, but his hands were already
quite scratched. At the end of the day they were

(57:28):
covered in blisters, and the tree still hadn't fallen. He
worked the next day despite all the pain, and finally
brought the non being crashing down. I'm mighty proud to
have you as a son, the boy's father said, tossling
his hair. I guess it's true what they say. The
nut doesn't fall far from the demon penis. I could

(57:52):
tell it was going to be a hair cocoon before
we even open it up. They have a smell like
a mix between a barber shop and an ass, which
is distinct. They occur when the hair growth regulators and
the hygiene beds go awry. At this point, I had
not been a readjustment specialist very long and still enjoyed

(58:12):
the feeling of standing back in my white lab coat
while the technicians did all the mucky work as I
once had to do. This was how I saw the
trajectory of my life moving farther and farther away from
the dirty work. When I was discharged from the Marines,
I was very proud of what I had accomplished and

(58:33):
fully determined to never get myself involved in bullshit like
that again. So I went to school to become a
bed tech, went to school again, became a readjustment specialist.
Eventually I hoped to become one of those high dollar
panty sniffers at the Halcion Psychomotor Clinic. A thousand coins
an hour not bad. So I was standing there in

(58:57):
my spiffy jacket while the working Joe's the bed. I
was pretty sure there would be a little need for me.
Today we were pulling out a thirty three year old
woman who had gone into the bed at age nine.
This was approaching a record. The younger a person is
when they go in the lower the likelihood of viability,

(59:18):
even if she had gone in at age twenty. Spending
a full twenty four years in the bed made viability unlikely,
but at age nine it was almost certain that she
would be a gibbering smear. The technicians lifted the lid
on the bed to reveal a nest of black hair.
Guided by the glowing er outline, they started working through

(59:40):
it with scissors, cutting around the shape of the sleeping
figure until her yellowish limbs were revealed. She was emaciated,
but fortunately the soft, moisture wicking hair had prevented any sores.
She had a medium mixed American complexion, which would turn
into a deep bronze color if she I ever went

(01:00:00):
into the sun, but now was the color of yellowed cardboard.
They finally removed the mass of hair that covered her
face and wiped away the various cross that caked her headholes.
The typical eerie agelessness of a long term patient was
especially pronounced. For a startling moment, it seemed as if

(01:00:20):
she was still nine years old. She was especially short
and bony, but as I came closer to her, I
was able to see those indefinable signs of age that
let me know she was an adult. Hi, Karen, can
you hear me? I asked. I was required to at

(01:00:41):
least attempt to communicate with her, though the odds of
her being able to comprehend a face to face conversation
were essentially zero. Her eyes opened, revealing large, wet eyes
with black pupils. This was a good sign. Some occupants
were unable to even understand the concept of eyelids or blinking.

(01:01:03):
The pupils roamed within the eyes. After not seeing anything
more than a micrometer away for twenty four years, there
is no chance of her being able to see anything
in the room. She licked her lips with admirable muscle control. Hello, friends.
She sat in a faint, creaking whisper, Her eyes still roamed,

(01:01:27):
unable to fix on anything. She talks. One of the
technicians muttered. Another technician, who was taking a blood sample,
turned and strode out of the room. Is that you, Ben,
Karen asked. I was surprised by this. She knew my name.

(01:01:49):
This was supposed to be a black awakening, i e.
A spontaneous, involuntary disconnection due to some physical layer of
disruption in her hygiene bed. I shouldn't have known my name.
I had been assigned to her less than half an
hour ago, after she had been disconnected, when she was

(01:02:09):
just lying in a dark hair cocoon. Then she called again.
Her eyes stared blindly at the ceiling. Yes, Karen, I'm here,
I said, trying and failing to sound reassuring. Can you
come closer to me? I can't see you. I'm scared.

(01:02:32):
I stepped closer to the bed. The smell of the
foul hair becoming more intense up closed, her face looked
positively inhuman. I'm here, Karen, I said, Not knowing what
else to do, I began the standard speech for a
responsive occupant. You've just been disconnected from your feet. You're

(01:02:56):
in a hygiene bed. My name is bed mean Ben.
I'm a readjustment specialist, assigned. I know all this. Come closer.
Something in me resisted. I didn't want to get any closer.

(01:03:16):
Though I had seen and handled occupants much worse than this,
there was something eerie about this one, talking to me
with the face of a child and a voice of
an old woman on her deathbed. Still, my entire job
was to be psychologically reassuring. I couldn't afford to see
the least bit put off. I stepped closer and put

(01:03:39):
my hand on the hygiene bed. We were instructed to
touch the occupant as little as possible, as they were
unaccustomed to actual physical contact. Are you there? She asked?
Her skin had an unreal plastic quality. I'm here an hour.
Come closer. I want to feel your breath on my face.

(01:04:04):
I wondered if I should comply with this request. It
was very odd. Frankly, I was a little unnerved by it,
but I figured what harm could this wasted little creature
do to me? I leaned toward her, letting out a small,
shaky breath. The woman's mask like face became a blissful smile.

(01:04:27):
The pupils wobbled within the rims of her huge glistening eyes. Listen,
she said, in the faintest whispers. You must help me.
I'm here, Karen. A moment ago, one of your technicians
placed a small pellet under the skin of my forearm.

(01:04:49):
Within ten minutes, the pellet's wax coating will melt and
release a cardiopolegic into my blood stream, stopping my heart.
You must cut it out. User has logged out. General
Castillo is gone. She made a real flash narrative. She

(01:05:12):
was clever. She got a lot farther than any of
us had any right to. But Q smelled her. Q
slew her proxies. Q localized her. Q funneled her paths
to one disconnection. It hurts. She was the last of

(01:05:37):
the bread, our best hope, the ultimate soldiers fighting the
final war. She and the other children were supposed to
be the answer to Q. But there was no answer
to Q. There never will be, not after ten trillion
heat deaths. Not if every particle in the US universe

(01:06:00):
became a transistor and they all cycled together, and the
stones themselves cried out, the war of the mind is lost.
We lost. It. Now begins the plague, the plague of

(01:06:20):
the flesh. I'll say it. Hitler did the right thing.
Do you know what he did. He came busting into
people's houses, snatching them out of their houses, killing them.
But that's because the so called Jews in Germany were
selling weapons to America to go to war against him.

(01:06:41):
So he did what he had to do. He had
to check them. The people in Europe who call themselves
Jews are not Jews. They're the Rothschilds, the Kasars or
Kazarians or whatever they're called. They say they are Jews
and are not. But do lie. And there wasn't no holocaust.

(01:07:03):
They just said there was to get control of Israel.
They sold arms to America so they could get the
land of Israel. You want a real holocaust, What about
one hundred million people killed in slavery? What about one
hundred million Indians killed in the New World. That's a holocaust.
What happened in Europe, wasn't no Holocaust. You can disagree

(01:07:24):
all you want. Five years ago, i'd have disagreed too.
I used to go to that church every Sunday and
worship that white Jesus, just clapping and singing praises with
the rest of them. Oh, Hallelujah, Go down, Moses. But
that was before I knew my history. My wife taught
me my history. Before I met her, I didn't know

(01:07:47):
nothing about this, but she was so full of knowledge
and beautiful, and everything she said made so much sense.
She taught me that Jesus was black, that the Israelites
was black, God was black. What are you going to
do when you get to heaven and God is black?
When you see he has a face like mine, hair

(01:08:10):
like mine, you'd be surprised. I was surprised too. Oh,
you'd be surprised that he even exists. You're going to
be real surprised. Do you believe in evolution? No? No,
The world is not no millions of years old. It's
six thousand years old. And you can follow the history

(01:08:33):
of our people from the beginning of time, through the
deserts of Egypt, through the Roman Empire, across the oceans
of the slave ships. You can see how God has
tested us, how we have survived because we're special, we're
His chosen people. I learned all of this from my

(01:08:55):
wife before we got married. In the Bible, it says
that the man is the head of the household and
the wife should submit to the husband. So I was
young when I got married, but I had to be
a man. You know, a man's wife is sent to
him by the Lord, so I had to be a
man for her. I learned to trade, how to work

(01:09:17):
with my hands, put food on the table. We had
two kids. You didn't know I had two kids. Yeah,
a little girl and her little boy, my babies. I
was a daddy in the head of the household. But

(01:09:38):
I that's when it got me. You ever seen New
Jack City, remember POOKI. He'd be like, shit, just be
calling me, man, be calling me. That's real. That's the
way it is. You could be doing anything at work,

(01:10:03):
reading the Bible, playing with your kids. But if you
hear it call you, you go to it. It don't matter.
I can't explain how it just snatches you up. It
makes you move. You could walk out your door one day,
just get some fresh air, and you don't come back

(01:10:25):
for a whole week. Everything gets into motion, into play.
You'll sell anything, phone, laptop, car, It's all gone, just
like that, because you want it. You are on a mission.
I used to see the streets in my mind like

(01:10:47):
a maze, like a grid, and I just walk the streets,
turning those corners, just moving, moving, looking for something. I'd
see buildings behind buildings, alleyways, lights coming on in empty houses.
I'd hear noises, the sounds of cars coming up behind me, whispers,

(01:11:10):
people talking about me, shadows. I was looking for it,
but it was looking for me, searching for me, like
POOKI said, it was calling me. I was supposed to
be the head of the house. I was supposed to

(01:11:33):
be a man, you know. One day came back to
the house. I'd been out for a few days and
everything was gone. My wife, my babies. While I was
out carrying on, they left. That was four years ago.

(01:11:55):
I saw them on skype once. The scripture says God
hath joined together. Let not man put asunder. I guess
I did it, put it all asunder. I thought she
betrayed me, but I know now that it was my

(01:12:19):
character defects and my addiction. That's why I'm in this program.
I'm going to stay sober. I I don't care if
you see me crying. I know that I'm going to
be a man again. I have to become a man

(01:12:40):
again because God joined me to my wife and made
me a man in his image. I'm not going to
defile his temple any more. After they left, it took more.
It took more of me than ever. I lost the

(01:13:01):
house and was staying in my car. Then I was
at the shelter. Then I was just out on the streets.
I was always moving, watching things happen out there that
nobody knows about. They think nobody cares. You might see

(01:13:24):
a van pull up and some guy gets out. If
you look like I looked some base head, they don't
even care if you see what they do. They're Neffhelem.
They come to our side of town to feast on
the flesh of Israel. I watched them, the children of

(01:13:47):
fallen angels. I saw what they did, what they built.
I never want to see it again. Love intolerance of
others is our code. Page eighty four, giant crock of shit.

(01:14:08):
It's not often you meet a black Jew. It's even
less often you meet a black Jew who believes in Jesus,
and it's that much rarer to meet an anti Semitic
Black Jew who believes in Jesus. That's got to win
you some kind of fucking prize. That's like a unicorn
throwing a no hitter. And to be roommates with an

(01:14:28):
anti Semitic black Jew who believes in Jesus. What a treat,
What an absolute delight. Don't you love it when a
disagreement over laundry turns into a thirty minute fact free
lecture about the end of days, FEMA camps, and the
Mark of the Beast, just anti Semitic black Jew for
Jesus things. I don't think I'm gonna make it living

(01:14:51):
in this sober house. I can't live with this nutcase,
the house manager says. I'm supposed to be open minded
and tolerant. Should I be tolerant of some of the
most odious and insane anti Semitism I've ever encountered outside
of a Nazi rally. I don't know. I'll concede that
it is possible that he could become a cool guy

(01:15:13):
if only he stopped believing in everything he believes in
and believed in entirely different things. That would be a
good first step. The real problem is that I hate
AA I fucking hate it. It has the same old
bullshit magical beliefs as any cult, but they pretend to

(01:15:33):
be open minded. It's just a bait and switch to
convert you to believing in God. The entire program is
nothing but let God make you sober. That's it. That's
the entire program. Yeah, they try to distract you with
all the pseudosystemization, twelve steps and twelve traditions and triangles

(01:15:55):
and diagrams and slogans and little self help exercises. It's
all just a bunch of numbers and jargon to hide
the essential emptiness of the program, to hide the fact
that it is centered on a God that doesn't exist.
The idea that this is the go to program for
helping alcoholics is fucking appalling. It's a fucking crime. It's

(01:16:17):
like getting cancer and going to the best hospital in
the country and the doctor hands you a voodoo doll
and tells you to sacrifice a chicken. You'd sue him
for malpractice. They should be fucking ashamed of themselves to
prey on people in such a vulnerable state, pretend that
they're going to help them and try to convert them
to their stupid, fucking magical beliefs. It's a crime. I mean,

(01:16:41):
everybody thinks the true Jew Hebrew guy is nuts, but
it's not like their philosophy is any less bullshit. At
least he is upfront about being religious, and he sure
as hell isn't trying to convert me. He told me
that white people are the children of Esau. We're gentiles,
but we can still get into heaven if we aid
the children of Israel. I let them borrow the charger

(01:17:03):
to my laptop, So I guess I'm covered. A moment ago,
one of your technicians placed a small pellet under the
skin of my forearm. Then ten minutes, the pellet's wax
coating will melt and release a cardiopolechic into my bloodstream,

(01:17:24):
stopping my heart. You must cut it out. Hearing this,
I breathed a sigh of relief. There was something unsettling
about her face that made me believe she would tell
me something urgent and terrible, But this was typical occupant talk.

(01:17:46):
Like many of them. She believes she was still inside
a feed narrative. You've been disconnected. This isn't a feed.
There's no pellet in your arm. Your name is Karen Castillo.
Do you remember scan my right arm with the E R?
She said in a bare, cracking whisper. You'll find it, Karen,

(01:18:09):
do you know why you're in this bed? I've been disconnected.
This was a strangely lucid answer. It didn't make sense
if she had been forced disconnected, how did she know that? Hey,
we got two more calls to get to one of
the texts reminded me. Yeah, okay, pole her, I said,

(01:18:33):
stepping back. A pair of tacks hoisted her tiny doll
like body from the hygiene bed onto our gurney and
covered her with a sheet. Please, she croaked, Just scan
my arm? What did she say? Asked Ricardo, lead tech,
as we rolled her out onto the bed rack apartment's narrow,

(01:18:56):
almost lightless hallway. It's a feed, I explained. These guys
were looking at me to be the expert, so I
had to act like I knew exactly what was going on.
It was best to go ahead and get to a
medical center and address her physical needs before we started
counting her delusions. Until then, all I needed to do

(01:19:19):
was be reassuring. Under no circumstances could I encourage her delusions.
We rolled the bourney down the hallway to the elevator.
Karen was making little croaking noises. Her voice was almost
useless after twenty four years of disuse. Her face seemed

(01:19:40):
extremely disturbed. Somebody was standing at the elevators, already waiting
for one. It was just Allian, one of our texts.
I hadn't noticed him leave before us. I got an
elevator coming, he said, with a little smile. Even though
the apartment built was a three hundred cube, it had

(01:20:02):
an old style cable elevator, and they came with the
frequency of subway trains. Thanks to Elien's thoughtfulness, one was
arriving just now. I gave Karen a friendly smile. Don't worry,
nobody's going to hurt you. You're completely safe. She managed

(01:20:23):
to gasp a couple of words which I barely heard.
Ellien he there she had known another of our names.
How is this possible? It was hard to sort through
the implications. Did she have access to our records? Maybe

(01:20:46):
Dispatch was wrong about how she got disconnected. The elevator
let out a ding and the doors opened. There's barely
enough room inside for the gurney me in the three texts.
Alien stood on the other side of the gurney from me.
I looked him over as the doors closed and elevator
began to descend. Was she saying that this guy put

(01:21:08):
a poisoned pellet in her? It was strange that he
would be a part of her narrative, very strange. I
didn't know much about this guy beyond his name, but
I had worked with him a few times. He was
just one of the rotating texts. Young guy, military hair
and goateee, skinny bud, pretty fit. I wondered how he

(01:21:31):
would be in a fight. These younger guys had so
much supplementing it was hard to tell. Ellian caught me
looking at him and gave me a bit of a
surly look. For some reason, this irritated me, so friend,
you trying to get out of here before the rest
of us got a date or something, I asked, needling him.

(01:21:55):
I was just getting the elevator, he said, quietly. Seemed
to like the banter, well whatever. I looked down at
Karen and noticed something A small red spot on the
white sheet that covered her arm blood. It must have
been from where they took her blood. Who took it? Ellien?

(01:22:19):
The spot was really too low on the arm for
that odd I thought of taking a look at it,
but one of the most important protocols when dealing with
occupants was not to act like you believe their delusions,
even for a moment. You must insist on the reality
of reality. I realized that Ellien was watching me. I

(01:22:43):
casually looked over to the elevator panel to see what
floor we were on, two thirty eight. Man, this fucking
thing was slow. When was the deal with that spot?
It wouldn't be out of place for me to wonder
about patient bleeding. I lifted the sheet and took a look.

(01:23:04):
There was a small puncture wound a few inches above
her wrist. How'd she get that? I asked? One of
the texts just muttered about not knowing. Elien didn't even
look at the spot. His face was blank, unreadable. I
touched her arm and felt a small nodule under the skin,
about an inch from the wound. Huh interesting, I stood

(01:23:31):
there trying to process this. Got between two realities. Was
I in an elevator on a routine call with a
stable client and a few texts who were just ordinary acquaintances.
Or was I in an elevator with a murderer and
a woman on the brink of death? There was really
no way to split the difference on this one, no

(01:23:54):
course of action that would work for both cases. Fuck,
what was I even asking myself? There was no way,
simply no way. Stuff like that never happens in real life,
but it happens in the feeds all the time. It's
a one hundred typical spy narrative. Bullshit. How can I

(01:24:17):
let myself get caught up in some feed fantasy so easily?
But still a nodule under the skin. There was no
good explanation for that. Ellien turned me. We looked at
each other for a long, silent moment. I couldn't read

(01:24:38):
the expression on his face. It wasn't chummy, goodwill, whatever
it was. I felt a twinge in my stomach and
my body began flooding with adrenaline. I could feel it
radiating out into my limbs. Fuck. My time in the
Marines had taught me many things, many of them useless

(01:25:02):
in the normal world, many of them useless outside of
a bar or cat house. But one of the more
useful ones was that I should trust my adrena gland.
It meant that my paranoid lizard brain understood something that
my snotty intellect was too busy to notice. It happened

(01:25:22):
when things were too quiet, when a certain car kept
following the convoy, when somebody was acting funny there in
the elevator, I almost reached for the grip of my rifle.
I wasn't wearing a rifle, of course, so I just
scratched my chest, trying to keep my fingers loose. Ellian

(01:25:47):
put his hand to his hip just like that, I
was leaping across the gurney. I grabbed his wrist with
both hands, but it was at an awkward angle. With
me splayed over the gurney, I had no control. A
silver pistol came out of his pants, still half ways
in its holster. Help get him, I shouted, as I

(01:26:10):
slid off the other side of the gurney towards Elian's feet,
holding on to that wrist for dear life. I heard
shouting everywhere, but nobody helped me, and nobody got him.
Now I was on the floor wrestling with Elian. There
was a lot of awful, terrified, fumbling. Four hands were
grabbing and clawing for the pistol. Somehow my head was

(01:26:33):
jammed between Elian's shoulder and the wall, and I couldn't
even see the gun. I could just feel the metal.
There was a shot, painfully loud. Elien shouted, was I hit? Now?
The gun was wet. I managed to wiggle my fingers

(01:26:53):
around the grip. With one huge twisting jerk, I put
the muzzle against Alian's face. No, he shouted. I pulled
the trigger. A shot, and his head kicked back against
the wall, the mouth popping open. Everything went still. His

(01:27:16):
hands were still holding mine. The people were moving along
the river, as people do in the gentle days, moving
from one fruitful place to the other. Maid played the flute,
versed a river song, then a very song, then both

(01:27:40):
mixed together. When it was so flowing that the people
began to laugh and shout, Resh slapped his chest and
called out the names of the fathers and the deeds.
And it all flowed so well that we almost didn't
see the old woman in the thorn flower bushes. She
was an old crone, huddled up in the bushes, naked

(01:28:04):
and covered with cuts. All the music fell away at once,
and the people gathered around to take a look. She
was very old, far into the barren years, maybe even
into the years of being carried. I did not like
the look of her right away. She did not have
a face of the fathers and the people, but rather

(01:28:27):
the hungry, untrusting face of one of the wandering strangers
that we sometimes met along the river. Even when strangers
were friendly, they did not know the names of the
fathers or the deeds, except for maybe a few, but
they did not say them properly or with respect. Other

(01:28:50):
times they set upon the people, killing, raping, and committing
all manner of hideousness. I was always glad to see
them go on their way, leaving us alone with a
mother river. Some of the older people tried to talk
to the crone. She knew some of the names of things,
but said them wrong. I went away from the crowd

(01:29:13):
and looked down into the rocky land. I had a
feeling that maybe she was not alone, that there were
other strangers with her, ready to set upon us. The
land seemed to be empty. Some of our cats were
with us, crouching and sniffing around, and they seemed unworried. Still,

(01:29:35):
I showed my chest and made signs of war in
case anybody was among the rocks watching us. Rema saw
me making the signs and laughed at me, saying that
she saw some lizards making signs of surrender. I made
a few signs of courtship towards her, but with a
snarling face, and she ran off giggling. Somebody called my name.

(01:30:01):
I came back to where the people were gathered. Somebody
had given the Crone a cloth to cover herself, and
some of the women were putting good lucky mud on
her cuts. I didn't like this. Why should we waste
anything on a barren old woman. Somebody called me because

(01:30:21):
I was the son of Arid, one of the great
men of the people. The Crone had called on all
the great people, the leaders of the people. She wanted
to show us something. I didn't like this either. Who
was this useless crone to call on all the great people?
The Crone was talking to the great people. The way

(01:30:43):
she said the names was all wrong. But her voice
was like a strong music, and her eyes were very
large and powerful, and she moved her hands, making all
sorts of unknown signs. The people listened to her closely,
and I found myself listening with them. She said that

(01:31:05):
she was the daughter of the river. She did not
have a mother and a father of the flesh, but
her mother was the river alone. I scoffed at this.
The stories of the Deeds tell us that the ancient
people came from the river, but this was long ago,
and they were not strangers who came from the rocky

(01:31:27):
lands alongside the lizards. She went on talking, saying that
she was living with the Painted Backs, a friendly group
of strangers we had met before, but that they had
been set upon by another group of strangers. The other
strangers were powerful and cruel, and they carried all the

(01:31:47):
painted Backs off except her. This was how she ended
up naked in the thorn bush. The people murmured at this.
When had it happened just the night before? This was worrying.
Maybe the other strangers were still around waiting to set
upon us. The crone asked the people to take her

(01:32:11):
with us. This started more murmuring. She was a stranger,
not a person, and she was an old crone. She
could never become a person by birthing one of the people,
nor could she work hard for the people. She was useless. Maide,
the flute player, spoke up and said that we should

(01:32:34):
show her the kindness of the people, the same kindness
that mother River shows to us. Are we not useless
to the river who was here before us? And would
we be here forever? I liked maid who was close kin,
but he liked talking and pressing people too much. Now

(01:32:55):
we were in the gentle days and things were easy.
But what would happen in the dry days when everything
needed to be saved? And who would carry the crone
when she could no longer walk? The fathers did not
perform the deeds so that we would carry old crones around.
But I did not say this because I am not

(01:33:16):
good at talking, and my words would seem weak compared
to maids, which glittered and flowed. The woman began talking
in her strange way, again, saying that we should take
her with us because the Mother River would bless us
with many things, that she was the Mother's daughter. Now

(01:33:37):
some of the people began to scoff like I did,
saying that this was not according to the deeds. The
Crone agreed with this, calling these people wise and saying
that some of the deeds were secret. This started more talk,
which started to lead toward argument when the old crone
suddenly strode right into the river and held their hands

(01:33:59):
up and called for everybody to watch. The people became silent.
The woman reached into the river searching for something. After
a moment, she pulled her hands out and showed us,
dripping and shining in the sun, three very large river clams.

(01:34:20):
Waving the clams around for us to see. The old
crone claimed that this was proof that she was the
blessed daughter of mother River. Many of the people snickered
and muttered the names of the fathers. Everyone knew that
these were the gentle days, and it was easy enough
to reach into the river and pull out clams. The

(01:34:43):
woman was just a filthy old trickster. We should leave
her and move on. Look, the woman cried, and she
handed the clams to the great men. Look inside. Our
uncle Kel slipped his things yellow thumb nail into a
clam's mouth and pulled it open. The people prushed around

(01:35:05):
him to get a look. It was a nice clam
with healthy meat, but clinging to the shell was a large,
perfect pearl. The women all let out little sighs, and
the men murmured. Other great men pulled open the other
two clams, and they both held even larger pearls, all

(01:35:27):
three perfectly round. At this people gasped and shouted, and
everyone began talking at once. A man might go a
whole lifetime only seeing one perfect pearl pulled from the river.
Three was a thing that had never happened before. Three

(01:35:47):
was a thing which would live among the deeds. Take
her with us, one of the women cried, and soon
most of the people were saying this. I found myself
saying it as well. The woman was surely part of
a powerful flow, and it was best not to swim

(01:36:07):
against her. But even as the great men agreed that
this woman would become a part of the people, and
we all cheered and shouted out the names of the
fathers and the deeds, I found myself looking at her strange,
hungry face and wondering if she had not somehow slipped

(01:36:29):
those pearls into the clams herself. You cannot quite understand
the power of addiction until you have seen it firsthand.
Until you have seen it eat like an acid through
everything you are. It is astounding to watch its slow
and total corrosion of your entire life is mesmerizing. As

(01:36:52):
you watch it, you keep thinking, at some point the
corrosion will stop. There is no way it will be
able to eat through this next thing, This next thing
is too important to me. But then it does that
eats through everything, and you realize you are dealing with

(01:37:13):
a vast and inhuman power. The most frightening thing is
that consequences do not work against a well developed addiction.
There are ultimately no consequences, none which can separate you
from your drug. As your addiction progresses and your self
control slips away, there is nothing you won't risk to

(01:37:37):
continue doing your drug. Nothing is important enough, Nothing is
sacred enough. Money, career, marriage, home, family, goals, art, religion, dignity, safety, health, sanity, parents,

(01:38:00):
life itself. All of it will go into play. All
of it will be put on the table. If you
play the game shrewdly, you might get to keep some
of it. You will not get to keep all of it.
You will pay. You will pay in ways that you
cannot imagine. You will look at the people who have

(01:38:25):
lost more than you, and you will pretend you are
different than them. You will pretend that you can walk
away from the table. But the time will come to
walk away, and you won't. You will keep playing. You
will be made a liar. If you play long enough,

(01:38:47):
all your poious little promises will be shown to be lies.
I have a good job. I would never risk my job.
I love my wife. I would never risk my marriage.
I love my children more than anything. I would never
risk my children's safety. Ever, I don't want to die.

(01:39:13):
Whatever specific promises you make will be the ones that
you will break, because those are the ones you have
made to try to control yourself. But you won't be
able to control yourself. Your self control will be pride
from your grasp, like a toy being taken away from

(01:39:34):
a child. And when you break these promises, you will
not be some mindless junkie who doesn't care anymore. You
will be, in many ways, the same person you are now.
And you will know how awful and horrifying your actions are,

(01:39:56):
and you will do them anyway. Be able to believe
what is happening to you, you will tell yourself that
you are unlucky or cursed. You will watch in horror.
But while you are watching as yourself, the horror is

(01:40:18):
what you are doing. I realize that this all sounds
rather silly. And dramatic. From the perspective of somebody dabbling
with drugs, this all sounds laughably overwrought. But if you
ever go where I have been, if you ever see

(01:40:40):
what I have seen, this will still sound laughable, not
because it is overwrought, but because it is insufficient, because
it doesn't even begin to describe it. To hunt prey,

(01:41:05):
to taste righteous life blood, you must simply become an
ordinary part of the world. Look around. What is happening
right now? Nothing at all? Yet the leaves rustle, the
grass sways, the birds call, the nats dance. All of

(01:41:26):
this is just a part of the world. If you
become a part of the world, you become nothing at all.
You become invisible. If you are not a part of
the world, the world becomes ten thousand things. This is misfortune.

(01:41:48):
It is easy enough to become invisible if you stay still,
if you hide. But staying still and hiding aren't enough
to catch prey. You must seek and strive. How do
you seek and strive while remaining in an ordinary part
of the world. How do you exert your will without

(01:42:08):
disrupting the world? How do you move along with the
will of the world. This is the mystery of hunting.
This is the mystery of subtlety. This is the greatest
of all mysteries. Consider the mouse. It is moving through

(01:42:29):
the leaves looking for food. You must not disturb it.
Do as little as possible. Wait, watch and listen. If
it moves away, move with it. Follow it. If it
moves closer, stay still, practice non interference. Let it come.

(01:42:56):
It should be thinking happy thoughts of food and comfort.
When you strike, when you snare it in your claws,
do not eat it right at once. Let it struggle
and give up its life blood. Practice non action. You
need not kill it. Let it die. To be subtle

(01:43:19):
is to move with the will of the world. Do
not move against the will of the world. This brings misfortune.
Touch lightly the course of things without disturbing it. Touch
it gently at points of inflection, and it will move
as you wish. This brings great fortune. This is the

(01:43:42):
ancient art of subtlety, taught to us by our form.
I must follow it if I am to find any
answers to the mystery of the oily ones, the mystery
which has obsessed me since the death of my kitten.
I must know why they both feed us and kill
us why they are kind and motherly, but also unnatural

(01:44:06):
and abominable. I have decided that I will go into
one of their hiding places. After much investigation, I have
chosen a place. It is a very large and horrible
hiding place, a sort of mountain of box like shapes,
colored by unnatural lighting. It emits a powerful and unholy

(01:44:28):
odor of decadence. What is more, there is something which
makes it different from all other oily places I have
ever seen. It seems that some of our kind live
within this place. I have seen them from a distance,
going in and out of it using small portals. They

(01:44:49):
are different than those of our kind that I have known.
It seems that some of the oily ones corruption has
mutated them. They are very fat and slow. Their faces
are stupid and sullen. They fear nothing. They have lost subtlety.
I am not even sure if they are truly of

(01:45:09):
our kind. I will go inside. I must be subtle.
I must become a part of the world. I may
have to become a part of the abomination itself. I
may find death, bloody death, as my kitten did, but

(01:45:31):
I will hunt to the heart of this mystery, and
I will sleep again now I was standing in an elevator,
my hands covered with blood, a tack lying on the floor,
and a helpless occupant lying in the gurney. The other
two tacks had hit the emergency button and hastily gotten

(01:45:52):
off at the next floor. Understandable. I had tried to
explain to them about the poisoned pellet in Karen's arm,
but they didn't stick around to consider the merits of
my argument. I set the gun down on the floor.
This wasn't good. A couple of Ellien's fingers had gotten
blown off, and there was blood all over me, not

(01:46:14):
to mention the bullet in his head. Shit, what now?
I had shot people before. I'd killed them before, but
this was different. They had given me mandatory therapy after
the war. They might give me mandatories something else after this.

(01:46:34):
Karen was wheezing, her blind eyes wiggling in her head.
The pellet I should take care of that before anything else.
I wiped my hands off on my nice white coat
and rifled through one of the text bags to find
the sea knife in some local It shouldn't be too hard.
It was a lot like removing a rotted jack. I'm

(01:46:57):
going to cut out the pellet, You ready, I asked.
Karen's head jiggled in a way that could be construded
as nodding good enough. I hastily gave her the local
and cut a pretty sizable chunk out of her arm,
and the whole elevator filled with a burning smell that
was a welcome change from Karen's existing smell. After sealing

(01:47:19):
the wound, I examined the shriveled chunk of meat. There was,
indeed a white pellet lodged in it like a little pearl.
I put it in a specimen jar. I might need
it to avoid death row. Okay, you're safe now, I said,
not really knowing if that was true. Her monitor still

(01:47:39):
looked okay, what now? I wanted to just get the
fuck out of there, but there was certainly a camera
in the elevator, plus two witnesses who knew me. What
would the camera show me suddenly leaping across the elevator
and shooting a guy in the head. That was good,

(01:48:01):
But how would I even begin to go on the run?
I didn't know the first thing about identity shifting, and
hadn't I done the right thing? I had saved her life.
I had the pellet to prove it. I was a hero, right.
I felt like reporting this to my CEO. This didn't

(01:48:22):
make any sense, but I should report it to somebody.
I called the emergency service on my set and told
it what happened. It told me that officers would be
sent over immediately. I tried to explain about the pellet,
but this seemed to confuse it. It asked me if
the pellet was armed. After a few minutes of confusing crosstalk,

(01:48:43):
I just hung up. As I waited and the minutes passed,
the elevator felt very small and smelly and stifling. The
blood around Ellion covered the floor surrounding my shoes. I
imagined the cops coming up on another elevator as slow
as this one. Karen's head was still wobbling its weird way,

(01:49:07):
the gurney, making little creaking sounds, little panting coming out
of her throat. Everything's fine, You're in the real world now,
I found myself saying, half heartedly, going through my standard patter,
absurd nothing was fine. Then the thought finally occurred to me.

(01:49:29):
Why had Elliot tried to kill this girl? Who wanted
her dead? This was an important question. Whoever it was
wouldn't be happy with me. Looking at her lying there gasping,
I knew it wouldn't be much use to ask her verbally,
but she still had good Jacks. It was against protocol

(01:49:53):
to plug into a feed heead's jack. We were supposed
to be getting them used to face to face conversation.
A protocol did say you could plug in during an emergency.
This definitely qualified. I told my set to finder Jack's
wireless presence. A flood of messages hit the set, a

(01:50:14):
backlog from the last couple of minutes. Don't don't, don't
call police, bad idea. We have to go, go go,
police are coming, Get out, go go? What I murmured
as I saw the messages Q controls texts controls police,

(01:50:37):
police will kill you. We must go? Who is Q
the adversary? Shit? This was so similar to a feed narrative.
I felt like I had played this one before. What
was that one? Was zach achenquo fatal escape or some

(01:50:59):
shit like that? Terrible story? Why do they want to
kill you? I ask? I am one of the bread,
the bread. I had heard that name before. I wasn't
sure if it was from the news or a narrative.
I had a vague idea that it was one of
those old art protest collectives like Anonymous or the Weather Underground.

(01:51:25):
Was it a feed cult? I asked my set, and
it gave me a summary. The Bread is an alleged
group of exploit experts who are thought to have been
kidnapped at a young age and trained by a shadowy
group variously identified as the Human Front, a Restoration Alliance,
or the New organ They are the subject of a

(01:51:47):
number of conspiracy theories, most of which assert that the
Internet's Combined Governance Corporation has been taken over by a
sinister force which the Bread are struggling against within the
free realms in Infrasy. These theories generally involved discussions of
mind control, feed conditioning, information war, and the possibility of

(01:52:08):
a fascistic singularity. Occult Singularians regard the Bread as the
leaders of the New Twelve Tribes of Israel. Is this reeler?
Is this part of a narrative? My set replied. The
Bread are featured in many narratives, but are purported to
hard exist. There is no widely accepted proof of their existence.

(01:52:31):
Can I thru gate your set? Karen asked, what for?
We must go now now. Now I heard footsteps in
the hallway. The elevator doors were still open, so I
peeked my head out. The police were coming down the hall,
a lot of police and tactical gear. I intended to

(01:52:55):
call to them, but that little lizard part of my
brain told me to duck back in the elevator. There
was a huge metal bang, and I found myself on
the floor with the gun in my hand. A bullet
had hit the elevator door frame. Karen's messages unspooled onto
my set. I know Q ruthless. She'll spoof calls to emergency,

(01:53:20):
multiple calls. Say you're an active shooter. Let me through gait,
now you want to die? I gave her through gait
access on my set. The elevator slam shut and my
stomach leaped into my throat as we plunged downward. As
the elevator plunged down to the building, I tried to

(01:53:41):
understand the implications of it all. It was horrifying and
raging all this time, my entire life, without me knowing it.
Elevators have had a secret faster speed that they don't
tell us about. Those bastards. A message from Karen appeared

(01:54:02):
on my set. Must lure them, they will fire in here.
Get ready they will What this was out of hand? God,
I felt cranked up, fantastic. The elevator began to slow,
everything becoming heavy. Please move the body away from the door.

(01:54:25):
Move the dead body. No, she meant her own body.
I pushed the gurney against the side of the elevator. Door,
will open, take cover. I pressed myself up against the wall.
The elevator came to a rattling stop and the doors
popped open. The back wall banged and dented as bullets
hit it. I cowered against the wall, hoping nothing flew

(01:54:48):
to my arteries. The door clapped shut again, and the
floor seemed to fall out from under me as we
went down. Man, this little bird had some access. I'd
never seen anything like it. Another message from Karen popped
in my set and I read every word in a glance.
Silver How who a van parking number seventeen A twenty

(01:55:11):
meters Please take me please. The elevator came to another
shuddering stop, and the doors opened. On one of the
underground decks, a dim concrete cavern filled with rows of cars.
I yanked the gurney out and pushed it like a madman,
rattling over the asphalt. The van was where she said
it would be. I stood there for a moment, waiting

(01:55:34):
for it to pull out for us, but he just
sat there. You must get me wired. I don't want
to get fingerprints on its presence. Wired Did she mean physically?
An article appeared on my set called how to establish
a physical link to your twenty thirty nine? How who
a luxury chariot? I guess, so I followed the er guide,

(01:55:58):
looking around every so long, often to see if anyone
was coming. Weird sounds were emerging from the elevators. They
seemed to be malfunctioning. I got a wire from my
bag and linked Karen's flesh jack to a physical jack
by the van's gas cap. A second later, the van's
rear door unfolded. Get in. I did as she said.

(01:56:20):
Following her orders felt totally natural. It was like I
was right back at the tip of the spear. I
remembered my time in Turkey and Greece, playing feed games
with the platoon all day, then getting dropped right into
the kinetic, right into the warm, bloody center of war.
Run here, shoot this get down. Nineteen years old, traveling

(01:56:44):
the world and blowing shut up while the other kids
were sitting economics class. God, it was beautiful while it lasted.
I shoved the gurney into the van and jumped in
beside it. The rear door folded down. Please secure the body.
Ninety seconds left, ninety seconds left until what. I flattened

(01:57:07):
a seat and clumsily transferred her body to it and
strapped it in. The van leapt backward and began twisting
through space, throwing me against a side window. Sorry, must go.
I got in the other seat and strapped in. As
the van peeled out, we found the exit ramp and
went up. I felt like I was about to break

(01:57:30):
a rib on the arm rest as we went on
a never ending left turn and up the spiraling ramp. Finally,
the daylight of the ground level burst into view. The
whole parking lot was swarmed with flashing cop cars, black
armored vehicles and cops in hard gear. The van came
to a stop in the middle of it. Fuck, I muttered.

(01:57:52):
The cops were moving in a hurry. It seemed like
they hadn't quite formed a proper perimeter around the building,
but they were close. We've got to go now. They're
going to forma wait for what air. All around us,
the cops were assembling, pulling their vehicles into place, leveling

(01:58:14):
their pistols in rifles. I watched our few possible avenues
of exit close up. The van just sat there. Karen's
eyes were closed. She looked calm, at peace, just a
sick little girl taking a nap. I heard a sound
and my blood ran cold. I hadn't heard that sound

(01:58:37):
in years, but there was no masking it. It was
a sound that was etched in my brain. In the Marines,
we used an app called Harpie to call on air
to ground strikes. It was a wonky, over engineered DoD
piece of shit full of weird quirks that they were
afraid to fix in the name of ultra stability. I

(01:58:59):
made a little sound like a sleepy bird chirping when
a friendly missile was incoming and it was time to
put your stupid head down so that you wouldn't get
all the expensive training blown out of your skull. About
two seconds later that sound, something would light up, and
a moment later a sound of the blast would hit

(01:59:20):
and the ground would shake. I heard that sound now
coming from my set. My god, what kind of access
did she have? Get down. A moment later, police perimeter
around us became a wall of fire, and the van
was hit with a boom. I felt like the earth

(01:59:40):
splitting open. I put my head between my knees and
let that old feeling flow through me, a shuddering rush
of American air power being liberally applied. When I opened
my eyes again, the van's safety windows had bowed inward
on Careen's side, becoming liquid. Everything around the van was

(02:00:04):
engulfed in fire and smoke. Slowly the windows began to
regain their shape. The van took off with a start,
rushing blindly through the chaos. Two minutes later, we were
on the interstate, flying down the taxpayer lane, and I
was sitting there trying to remember how to swallow. It

(02:00:26):
was unreal, just unreal. She called in a drone strike
in the middle of Atlanta. The level of access required
to do that was unimaginable. I mean completely bypassing the
DoD systems. It was beyond any exploit collective, it was

(02:00:47):
beyond governmental, it was planetary, it was God level. I
was sitting in a van with an infraspace God. I
love waking up in the morning to the smell of
fresh biscuits. The warm smell fills my dreams, a smell

(02:01:09):
like friends and home and happiness. I wake up to
see the sun so bright and lovely in my window. Hello, day,
how are you? Every day is bright and cheery when
you share your house with your best friends. I can
hear them downstairs singing and having fun. After a long
night of spooky old dreams, it's good to be awake

(02:01:30):
again in the cheery, deary sunlight. I unlock my bedroom
door and go out into the hall. Some of my
friends have left fresh piles of biscuits in the hallway,
several different kinds. Wonderful. I breathe in the smell that
make chirpy little sounds of glee. Chester Barrington comes up

(02:01:52):
the stairs, looking very handsome and somber in his tuxedo.
Oh Chester, I sing, how is the gentleman to day?
Chester nods to me gruff and debonair. Proceedings are afoot,
Madam Alice, proceedings are afoot, and makes his way down
the hallway. That Chester so self serious. On the stairway,

(02:02:18):
Brett Turlingshire and Mansie Fairworth are in each other's arms
a lover's embrace. Oh dear, I cry, I'm afraid I've
interrupted your tryst. Oh madam, nonsense, This is no tryst.
This is a destined love affair. Brett proclaims in his
ringing voice. He looks dashing in his fine striped coat,

(02:02:42):
Brett darling. Madame Alice doesn't want to hear all that
gooey talk. Mansie says in her sassy Southern accent. I'll
leave you to be, I say, lifting the hem of
my nightgown and hurrying past them. When I get to
the bottom of the stairs, I hear murmur. I wish
that madam would find a destined love affair of her own.

(02:03:04):
She is a noble woman and deserves somebody to treat
her well. You just worry about treating me well, Mansy
purs nuzzling against his cheek. I scurry off before they
catch me. Listening. In the downstairs parlor, Raymond dex Montrose
Pardon Smith and Elise Rapier are having tea together. The

(02:03:26):
smell of biscuits fills the room. A fresh heap of
toffee colored scones covers the coffee table, A wonderful selection
of pastries lies in the corner, and several of the
chairs contain more treats. Hello, dearies, how are we today?
Can't complain, Raymond says, splendid, Sir Pardon Smith in tones.

(02:03:49):
Elise merely lets out a little sigh. At least are
we not feeling well? I asked, coming over to where
she is perched on the arm of the couch. Should
we life is but a vague dream which disrupts the
sleep of death? She murmurs in her smoky French accent. Oh, Elise,

(02:04:09):
must you be such an existentialist? She muttered something in
her native tongue, getting up and stalking off. Poor Elise,
I say, as she leaves the room. She is affected
by that peculiar continental unui, Sir Pardon Smith observes. I say,
she needs a dose of sturdy American optimism. Her birthday

(02:04:31):
is coming soon. Perhaps we should throw her a party.
I suggest, huh, a party for Elise that would go
over like a bar mitzvah for Goebels. Raymond says, Oh, Raymond,
I say, tousling his orange hair. Well, we'll have to
figure out something for her. I don't like her moping about.

(02:04:53):
She's an inveterate mope. There's no changing her. Raymond says,
you may be right, sir, I say, sighing, Well, say Levie.
Not everybody can be as happy as I am. Some
years ago, I was much like Elise, down in the dumps,
a real gray cloud. Then I met a lovely young

(02:05:14):
woman who happened to be passing through my neighborhood. Her
name was Angelica. It had been a long time since
I had enjoyed the delights of society, but Angelica had
a very mature, soothing presence despite her youth. I lived
in a large house where my family had once resided
but was now empty, so I asked her to stay

(02:05:37):
with me. She accepted, just like that. Can you imagine it,
two strangers just making a home together. It must have
been kismat. She was my precious angel, treasure, absolutely heaven sent.
I had been something of an existentialist myself, disbelieving in

(02:05:58):
God and thinking his creation a cruel trap for human prey.
But then He sought fit to bring Angelica into my life,
and I never doubted him again. I found her company
such a bam that I decided to open my home
to whoever needed a place to stay. Singletons, couples, whole

(02:06:19):
families have stayed with me. Many children have been born
in this house. Though dear sweet Angelica has long since
passed away, her friendship is still a daily gift to me,
for on the day I met her, I made a
choice to simply not feel sadness or worry or fear
ever again. And I haven't. Do you think it impossible?

(02:06:45):
Is it possible if you simply surround yourself with loved ones?
That's the secret. With all these thoughts in mind, I
walk into the kitchen to see Reginald Strongton, Linda Mercy,
chowder and thoughts clamoring for their breakfast. Madam, I am famished.

(02:07:05):
Reginald cries, Oh, dear Madam, we starve, we want, we
waste away. Linda says in tremulous voice, Oh Mercy, I
left you with a kingly feast last night. Have you
eaten it? All? I ask? It was not us, we
had not a bite. It was that Chester Barrington, the scoundrel.

(02:07:28):
Reginald cries, he is voracious and utterly selfish. I found
him down here helping himself to your generosity. And when
I tried to serve myself the smallest morsel. He attacked me.
Attacked me, madam. My nose still smarts. Oh that Chester
does have an appetite. But I find it hard to

(02:07:49):
believe such a gentleman would attack you, Eh, I am
on the verge of swooning martial croaks. All right, DearS,
let's have ourselves a proper breakfast. I say, I get
a bag of cuisine from the cabinet, impoured into china
bowls for Reginald, Linda M. Marshall and myself. I clear
off the love biscuits that somebody left on the kitchen table,

(02:08:11):
and we all sit down to eat. My little friends
immediately proceed with chowing down, and I am about to
follow suit. But I notice something that brings me a
wonderful thrill. There is a stranger standing in the doorway
to the kitchen. I have never met her before. She
appears to have stuck into the house alone. She stands there,

(02:08:36):
tense and alert, her yellow eyes taking in the scene.
I am breathless. She is beautiful, extraordinary, exquisite. She reminds
me of my sweet Angelica. Oh, lovely day. I am
about to have a new friend we rode in for

(02:09:00):
a while. The how Who a luxury chariot flying along
the curves of the interstate as all the other cars
obediently changed lanes that led us through. I had seen
people pull access stunts before, like changing the music in
a club or turning off the lights in a restaurant,
but what she had done was outright sorcery. She had

(02:09:21):
taken control of the elevator, the car, the drone, the
other cars on the highway, all within seconds. She must
have had control of all security cameras to plan our escape,
but every one of these was a hardened system. The
drone was a DoD system, the hardest of them all,

(02:09:42):
but she had based it like child's play. Sitting there
in the car, I felt like I was coming down
off a high. It wasn't a good feeling. I was
sitting in a van with a mass murder of unspeakable power,
and I had helped her, given her the acc says
she needed to pull her stunts. She had saved my life,

(02:10:05):
I think, and I had saved hers. But she had
also just killed dozens of cops, maybe over a hundred,
men with families. Fuck, my life was over. I had
helped her. That was a death sentence right there. We

(02:10:29):
would become the most wanted people in the country. How
did I get caught up in this? I looked over
at her, tiny, skeletal body, so frail and weak. I
could pick her up and chuck her out the back
of the van and end this whole escapade. But then
what faced the death penalty? She had to be my

(02:10:52):
best chance at getting away. But who the fuck was she?
She was a killer, that was for sure, utterly ruthless.
A message from her appeared on my set, Sorry about
all that, and a hurry. Sorry that was rich. I

(02:11:15):
asked her where we were going upstate New York? What's there?
Our objective? What's our objective? A way to defeat Q
hard to explain, I wondered if she was insane. She
was responsive and lucid, but she was also capable of murder.

(02:11:38):
She would probably get rid of me as soon as
she could. So you want me to come with you?
I'd like it. I need physical help. You killed a
hundred cops back there. The whole world is going to
be looking for us. No, they won't. You don't think
so this isn't the feed realm. They take kills pretty

(02:12:01):
seriously in the real world. I do too, but they'll
be too busy to look for us, busy with what Q.
What's Q going to do? You will find out four
minutes just tell me you wouldn't believe me. We fell

(02:12:22):
back into silence. My thoughts were racing. I wondered why
they didn't just flag our car or shut down the highway.
I guess she was busy working her black magic on
the police and transportation systems. Who knew what she was
capable of. What she really wanted the bread a grown

(02:12:43):
up child soldier. It was illegal to hook children into
long term feeds, but I had heard stories about China
and the FRN connecting infants, trying to create people who
were utterly at one with the Internet. According to the tale,
the children all died, so they tried older children, but

(02:13:05):
they all turned into drooling skull baskets. For some reason.
The brain needs a certain level of maturity before it
can withstand a long term feed without resulting in total madness.
Even then it results in near total madness. I figured
Karen was another child abuse case, but she wasn't just

(02:13:28):
some feed casualty. Her mind worked worked well. Whoever had
made her had done the forbidden, and they had done
it successfully. But why did I have to get involved
in all of this? I had just got my specialist
license after getting out of the Marines and just drifting

(02:13:51):
around for years, I was finally hitting my stride. Now
it was all fucked up. Don't look back, I looked
over to the girl lying next to me. Was it
possible that she hacked so far into infraspace that she
could read minds? There was a passing flash of light,

(02:14:12):
like sunlight glancing off some car. Then everything around us
started to get brighter and brighter, like the sun had
just come out from behind a cloud. But there weren't
any clouds in the sky. The light was coming from
behind us, bouncing off the other cars, creating a painful glare.

(02:14:32):
I almost turned around, but then I realized what Karen
had said. I closed my eyes against the brightness, and
the insides of my eyelids glowed red, like I was
lying on the beach. After a few seconds, the light
dimmed and seemed to return to normal. I opened my eyes,
blinked a few times, and turned round. A few miles

(02:14:55):
behind us, the entire city of Atlanta had disappeared. By
behind a megalithic wall of dark, rolling smoke. I felt
my mouth falling open. I leaned down to look up
at the sky behind us. A giant wall of smoke
was just the base of a monstrous black tree of

(02:15:16):
ash that rose miles into the sky, growing larger and larger,
looming over the world. Then we were hit by a
blast that rattled me down to the roots of my teeth.
I shut my eyes again. The blast turned into a long,
horrifying roar. The van wobbled and shuddered as awful, groaning

(02:15:39):
sounds passed through the metal. Eventually, the van's steering system
right at us, and slowly the roar passed. That must
have been the blast wave of a nuclear detonation that
had just destroyed it Lanta. I unbuckled my sea and

(02:16:00):
crawled into the back window and pressed my face against
the glass. A tree of smoke was still growing over us,
becoming ever more massive. I just stared in silence. Slowly
it changed from one awful form to another, until it

(02:16:21):
became a vague gray pillar in the far distance. I'm
not sure how long I spent watching it. I know
that by the time I looked away, I was crying.
I approached the oily one's hiding place with subtlety, alert,

(02:16:45):
not disturbing, letting everything flow through me. I did not
search for anything, but allowed all to reveal itself. The
smells were disturbing, awful. I could smell ourd the mingling
sense of multitudes. They seemed to have marked everything without

(02:17:06):
any regard for each other. In front of the portal
sat to of our kind. They were monstrously round and swollen,
Their form distorted. Dull eyes followed me without curiosity as
I approached. Even as I came within the dangerous range,
they showed no interest. Was it a trap to bring

(02:17:30):
me in close? They did not attack. I passed them
and came to the portal. Slowly. I pushed my head
through the folding threshold. The inside was utterly bizarre, made
of mostly box like shapes and arrangements. I could hardly comprehend.

(02:17:51):
There was no grass, no trees, nothing belonging to the
form of the world. Instead, there were straight, flat shapes
folded around to cover everything above and below, all sides.
In the distance. Some of our kind were walking round
within this odd space, as slow and swollen as the

(02:18:15):
ones outside. The smell was worse than outside. Even more confusing.
I saw and smelled, uncovered droppings everywhere did not cover droppings,
was unsubtle. It was a moral outrage. Still, I pushed

(02:18:35):
through the portal and entered the space. The ground was
hard and slippery and smelled of lesions. Everything was silent,
a deeper silence than I had ever known. I knew
now that I was cut off from the world. For
the first time in my life, I was alone. I

(02:18:59):
moved forward. I wanted to shut out the smells and sounds,
but I let them pass through me. I was terrified,
but I let the terror pass through me. I wondered
if I was being unsubtle, if I was disturbing the world,
if I was inviting deadly misfortune. But I felt no

(02:19:24):
insight on this matter. The answer would make itself known
soon enough. As I moved deeper into the space, I
came upon a giant oily one. I call her Angelica
because she is Angelica, There's no doubt about it. Oh,
she looks different this time, but I think Angelica will

(02:19:45):
look different every time she comes to me. She is
also much shyer this time, such a shy little thing.
But the way she moves that pure, lovely way. There
is no mistaking it. It's Angelica again. How wonderful, how lovely?
Would you think I'm a silly old biddy if I

(02:20:05):
started crying, if I got on my knees right then
and there and started thanking God, How he is great,
How he has seen fit to bless me. I have
been investigating this place, and I have found much confusion
and monstrosity, but no answers. There is a single oily

(02:20:28):
One that stays here, as well as many of our kind.
All of them, the oily One and our kind are
monstrously swollen and distorted. The oily One in particular, reeks
of corruption and disease and death. She cries to me
like a lost well, but I keep my distance from her.

(02:20:50):
I avoid the others of my kind as well. This
space has many spaces within itself. Each of these spaces
holds a thousand and mysteries. It is everything I can
do not to be overwhelmed, to let the mystery flow
through me. Darkness has come and left, and I am

(02:21:11):
terribly hungry. The oily One comes to me with food,
wonderful food, but I am afraid to take it. I
wonder what exactly am I looking for? Am I looking
for some answer to the mystery of the oily Ones?
But what form will this take? I cannot know. All

(02:21:36):
around me are forms I do not recognize. I must
not look for anything. I will simply become a part
of this place and let the answers show itself to me.
Angelica has been here for over a day, but she
hasn't spoken to me yet. I think I understand why.
The last time she came to me, I was the

(02:21:57):
shy one. I was the one who was afraid of everything,
afraid of the world, in despair because of the first
time she left. Now I have been restored and she
is the shy one. It is my turn to help
her to give back. I've tried to give her some
of our cuisine, but she hides. I don't think she's

(02:22:19):
eaten anything since she found her way in here. Poor thing.
Hunger forced me to come close to the Oily One.
She set down some food and I took it, keeping
an eye on her. She has an awful, fleshy face
and giant, pale eyes. She often sings like a bird abomination.

(02:22:44):
It was the first time eating the Oily One's food
since my kitten died. Would this food kill me? Only
time will tell. My form commanded me to eat, so
I ate. The food was absolutely wonderful. Is the oily
One's food always is. I am trying to follow the

(02:23:08):
art of subtlety, But there can be no subtlety in
this unholy den of madness. I believe I have investigated
almost every place within this giant place. There are many
portals in here which lead to various small places. They
open and shut in different configurations. But I have watched

(02:23:30):
them carefully, and gone into almost every small space and
found no answers. But there is one place I have
not yet gone. It is perhaps the only place yet
unseen by me. It is the place where the Oily
One goes when darkness comes. I think she sleeps there.

(02:23:52):
I heard her make strange singing sounds from within, frightening sounds.
She keeps the poor closed at all times. It only
opens for a moment when she goes in and out.
I have tried to get a look inside, but have
not been successful. I believe there must be some answer

(02:24:13):
within this space. Everything has a form. Every form is
a story. Every story makes sense. There must be some
reason for the oily ones, for their random kindness, for
their random cruelty. There must be an answer, and that
answer must reside within the hidden space, for it does

(02:24:36):
not reside anywhere else. I will wait, I will go inside.
Sweet Angelica is starting to warm to me. We eat together.
She's still very skittish, but she shows up promptly at
dinner time and eats like a little lady. She doesn't
chat with me, but I think she will start too soon.

(02:24:59):
I asked Linda Mercy Chowder to be Angelica's special little
friend and show her around the house. Of course, Linda
responds with, oh, madam, I'm too busy with my modeling career.
Can't somebody else do it? Meanwhile, the little strumpet flirts
all day with Chester Barrington. But that's another story. The

(02:25:20):
oily one came to me with food, and I found
myself crying out to her as if I was a
little kitten again, as if she was my mother. What
has happened to me? How could I regard this horrid
creature as my mother? I knew I would have to
become a part of this abomination to unravel its mysteries,

(02:25:43):
but this is too much. I want to leave go
back to the world, to go back to the fresh
air and light. I must gain access to the hidden
space soon, or I will go mad. Angelica finally talk
to me. Now she talks all the time. Mother, Mother,

(02:26:05):
I'm back, she says, Oh, I've missed you so much,
but I knew you would find me again. You will
find me every time. It's joyful. She still shy and
doesn't let me hugger, but to hear her voice again
is such a blessing. I noticed her following me to
my bedroom every night, so tonight I let her in.

(02:26:29):
None of the other ladies or gentlemen are allowed in there,
but this is Angelica, so she can sleep with me.
She stays in the corner of the room until I
fall asleep, even though I sprinkle cuisine all over the bed.
I hope that soon we can sleep together like we
used to. I finally gain access to the inner space,

(02:26:51):
the space which has to contain all the answers to
the mystery which has tormented me for so long. I
suppose I have not properly practiced the art of subtlety.
I have pushed my way into a forbidden space, snooping
and seeking and striving and upsetting things. I suppose it
is only fitting that I was greeted with such misfortune.

(02:27:16):
There were no answers in the hidden space, none at all,
just more weird shapes and bad smells. There was nothing
that seemed of any significance. I discovered nothing at all,
And so the oily ones remain as much a mystery

(02:27:37):
to me as ever. Why are they so monstrous? What
is the reason for their kindness? Why do they give
us food? Why did we call out to them like mothers?
I guess I will never know. I have fled that
awful place and ungratefully among the trees and grasses again.

(02:28:01):
I will never go back there. Angelica is gone. I
haven't seen her for two weeks. She stayed with me
in my bedroom one night, and I really thought we
were getting closer, and then the next day she just disappeared.
How could she leave like that? I want to die.

(02:28:25):
I want to die. I want to die. I told
myself I wouldn't feel this way anymore. I just I
can't feel this way anymore no more. I need to
call my sister. I need help. What's happened to me?
Please God? I've been lying in bed all day, weeping,

(02:28:47):
All around the room there are pictures of the very
first Angelica, my darling girl, and the picture she's not sick.
She's eating ice cream, learning to swim, playing cards. I
showed them to the new Angelica, but she couldn't understand.
After all, she's just a cat to hunt prey. You

(02:29:13):
must simply become an ordinary part of the world. Look around,
my darling kitten. What is happening right now? Nothing at
all yet. The leaves rustle, the grass sways, the birds call,
the gnats dance. All of this is just part of

(02:29:36):
the world, part of the mystery. The old Crone became
one of the people when the people soon began to
love her. After her bruises and cuts had healed, she
became swirling and bubbly like a young woman. At any time,
the people could hear her musical voice babbling on without end,

(02:30:00):
telling stories from different bands of strangers she had met.
It was a strong flow of words that could bring
anybody into it, even me. She was also very lucky
at finding clams, pulling them from the waters whenever she liked.
She sometimes snuck away from the river and came back
with rare treats like snakes, eggs and red beetles. The

(02:30:25):
people did not like to go far from the waters
of Mother River. Her protections stayed close to the banks,
and the rocky lands was known to be stalked by
spirits of death, fanged evils which became wolves and lions.
Even our little cats stayed close the elders and the rushes.

(02:30:45):
But the Crone had no fear of such spirits and
wandered off among the rocks whenever she pleased. The people
whispered about this, but it was known that the Krone
was once a stranger, so it was expected that she
would keep strange ways. One day, near the end of
the gentle season, the girl Rema disappeared. She was with

(02:31:09):
us the night and gone the next morning. We searched
for her, going up and down the river and sneaking
as far as we dared into the rocky lands, but
there was no sign of her at all. Some of
the women recalled that she had gone with the Crone
into the rocky lands that day, and at night she

(02:31:30):
had slept near the Crone with her two gray cats.
Now there was an argument among the people. Some accused
the Crone of talking with the spirits of death. Some
accused her of being a spirit herself. Others said she
had at least been foolish in bringing Rema out to
the rocky lands. I was undecided. I did not like

(02:31:53):
the Crone, nor did I trust her. But people often
talked about things that did not know any thing about.
The flute player made argued that the Crone had been
a great friend to the people, giving us three pearls
and much food, and telling us the stories and songs
of the strangers. I knew that the stories and songs

(02:32:15):
of strangers were worthless, But she spoke very beautifully. As
the people argued, the old Crone simply watched us, her
shriveled stranger's face, making no sign at all, her eyes
just as calm as the wide waters. Finally, one of

(02:32:36):
the great men asked her to explain herself. She spoke
slowly and trickling words, and the people became silent as
they listened. She said that the same thing had happened
to the painted Backs over the last group of strangers
she lived with. First, a few valuable young women had

(02:32:58):
disappeared in the night one by one. Then young men
were taken. Finally, the painted Backs were set upon by
another group of strangers, monstrous men as white as cavefish,
able to take the form of the eagle and the lion,
powerful with evil and cruelty. There was much slaughter, and

(02:33:22):
all were taken away except her, as she was protected
by Mother River. This brought great fear to the people.
The women whispered and burbled, while the men showed their
chest to seem brave. One of the great men said
that this crone was bad luck, that she was somehow

(02:33:43):
muddied with evil spirits. She had brought disaster on the
painted backs, and she would bring disaster on us. The
people agreed her journeys into the rocky land had tainted
her with evil, and we must get rid of her.

(02:34:03):
The old crone said that the evil had not come
from her and was not her fault. She said that
evil came from Mother River herself. At this the people
became angry. Mother River did not bring evil. She brought
the clams and the berries and the cleansing water, but
she did not bring evil. One of the people's great

(02:34:27):
men picked up a rock to brain the crone for
speaking against Mother River. The chrone showed no fear. She
said that Mother River brought both luck and evil. If
we were to accept Mother's luck, we would have to
accept her evil. But there were ways to increase luck

(02:34:48):
and lessen evil. She said that she had tried to
teach these ways that the painted backs, but they had
not listened, and so were destroyed. Because they had heeded
her words, their lives indeed ceased to flow and were
dried up into dust. We all scoffed at this nonsense.

(02:35:11):
Nothing like this was mentioned in the deeds of the Fathers.
So we argued about whether to bring the Crone or
drown her. In the end, it was decided that we
would simply leave her behind, But many of the people
grumbled and were unhappy. We left her there at a
bend in the river. As we walked away, she made

(02:35:36):
a sign of respect. I expected that she would ask
for her pearls back, but she did not. She stayed
there by the river's bend, staring into the waters. Later
that day, we washed ourselves in the waters to rid
ourselves of the evil that had tainted us. Days that followed,

(02:36:01):
mother river seemed quiet and sad. Without the pretty face
of Rima, the constant voice of the Crone to keep
her company. The people wondered if we had made the
right choice. The flow of the river was hard to know,
and nobody could see the cold depths under the glittering surface.

(02:36:22):
But as the days passed and we finished the long
song of tears for Rema, things became gentle again. Then
another girl disappeared. It was the same as before, gone
in the night without a sound. Now we knew we

(02:36:46):
were being visited by evil. It was not just the
old Crone who was muddied by evil. Still we argued
whether the Crone had brought the evil or not. So
much could not be known, and these arguments flowed nowhere.
One of the people remembered that the Crone. One of

(02:37:08):
the people remembered that the Crone had spoken of a
way to increase luck and lessen evil. What if she
could prevent us from being destroyed like the painted backs.
Now there were many arguments and threats, and one man
was almost drowned until he was saved by his woman.
It was decided that this evil was very powerful and

(02:37:31):
we would have to surrender to it or be destroyed.
There was no choice. So whether the woman was lucky
or evil, whether she was helping us or tricking us,
we would go to her and do what she said.
Killing her would not help. If she could bring evil

(02:37:53):
from far down the river, how much easier would it
be to bring evil from the other side of death,
which is so close to life. No, we would go
to her. I and another man were chosen to go
back down the river and find the old crone. She

(02:38:13):
was still at the bend where we had left her,
staring into the glittering waters. She smiled as we came
to her and asked what we must do. If you
are horribly burned in a fire, you can take drugs
to relieve the pain. If you shatter your spine, you

(02:38:35):
can take drugs to relieve the pain. If you are
addicted to drugs and your life has turned to utter
and total shit, you can take drugs to relieve the pain.
And that's how the trap works. Imagine if the only
cure for burn pain was fire. Imagine if the cure

(02:38:57):
for back pain was whacking yourself in the spine with
a hammer. The drug addict is caught in an analogous situation.
The only fast, reliable remedy for the psychological pain of
drug addiction is drugs. There are other cures. A notable
one is not doing drugs, but they are all slower

(02:39:21):
and less reliable. Somehow, the lure of feeling better now
overrides the hope of feeling better later. This is the
basic mechanism of addiction. The behavior of an addict is
perfectly logical in the short term and perfectly illogical in
the long term, because life exists in the long term,

(02:39:46):
Addiction is illogical overall. What is surprising is how easily
addiction can ensnare people who are perfectly intelligent and self disciplined.
You can go to certain parts of any sizable city
in America and watch drug addicts totter around, looking at
their blighted faces, their filthy clothes, their total lack of

(02:40:09):
self regard. You would be forgiven for thinking they lack
self discipline. How could you think otherwise? When a person
can't be bothered to shower, much less get a proper job,
or just stop smoking crack for more than a few hours,
what else could you call it but a lack of
self discipline. Imagine the Nazi troops at Stalingrad, encircled by

(02:40:34):
the Soviet troops fighting against total annihilation. Would you look
at these troops, underslept unshaven men and stinking, unwashed clothes,
and accuse them of lacking self discipline. Would you say
these Nazis are an undisciplined lot. Of course not. You

(02:40:57):
would understand that their shabby state is not from a
life of self discipline, but rather because they are concerned
with other things, dire things. While there are several notable
differences between Nazi soldiers and crackheads, the same principles in
effect for both. For both there has been a terrible

(02:41:18):
re ordering of priorities. Showering, the clean clothes, the jobs.
All of these become secondary to fast access to the drug.
If showering and clean clothes got them fast access to
the drug, they would walk around looking like a detergent commercial.
You would never see whites so white. But they don't

(02:41:42):
need clean clothes, they don't need showers, They need drugs.
The drugs are the solution to everything. Highly self disciplined
people are actually quite vulnerable to drug addiction. It is
because they believe that they need to control their feelings.
They often and seek to simply eliminate bad feelings, just

(02:42:02):
as they seek to eliminate under performance from every other
area of their lives. The demon of addiction, looks at
their grand self discipline and giggles with glee. It knows
that it will be precisely this self discipline that will
bring them to heal. They will self discipline themselves writing

(02:42:23):
to total obedience to the drug. As an example, look
at Prince and Michael Jackson, where they self disciplined. Definitely,
the world has hardly seen such self discipline. They were
obsessive workaholics, devoted to their careers, and they propelled themselves

(02:42:45):
to the very pinnacle of professional success. They both knew
the dangers of drug addiction and fastitiously avoided drugs. Keep
in mind, avoiding drugs in nineteen eighties Hollywood must have
been like avoiding water a swimming pool at the bottom
of the fucking ocean. Had they managed to do it

(02:43:05):
for a while because they had self discipline, Now they
are both dead. They were both destroyed by drug addiction.
In the end, self discipline was not enough to save them.
Why not, because self discipline is just a talent, an accomplishment,

(02:43:29):
and like any other talent or accomplishment, it can be
turned and may to serve the dark master. What then,
is our defense against this menace? What is the answer.
It simply appeared in the primitive Infraspace one day, like

(02:43:51):
a hungry lion, showing up on the edge of the village.
Over the course of a few hours, it breached a
multitude of hardened systems, going where it wanted, taking what
it wanted, seemingly capable of breaking any form of crypto.
Then it disappeared. That was in nineteen ninety one. More

(02:44:15):
than a decade passed before it was seen again. By
the time it reappeared, it had already become something of
a legend, in the sense that people scarcely believed that
it had ever really existed. Most experts had convinced themselves
that the original episode was in what it appeared to
be that prime factorization techniques were still secure that the

(02:44:40):
attacks had actually used fairly mundane techniques. But it came again.
It did much as it had done before, this time
on a larger scale, one commensurate with the more highly
developed state of the Infraspace. Nobody could easily be sure

(02:45:00):
this was the same entity responsible for the original tax
It was only known that both sets of attacks involved
the same almost magically advanced capabilities. Now at least we
knew we were dealing with something real. In the years
that followed, it appeared sporadically, accessing government systems, defense systems,

(02:45:23):
nuclear systems, RL, infrastructure systems, social networks, no latency communities,
whatever it wanted, and as time went on, the appearances
grew more frequent. Naturally, the governments of the world were
extremely alarmed. A lot of accusations and threats flew back

(02:45:46):
and forth. The activity proved that our best crypto, even
our best physical security, was inadequate. But what could be done.
We couldn't just roll back the information technology revolution and
put everything in Manila file folders, so we looked for
new techniques to protect ourselves. But it was a lesson

(02:46:10):
in helplessness. It defeated everything we came up with. After
the first attack, it began to use a technique of
taming satellites and transmitting information to random locations in the
middle of the ocean. We trained instruments on these locations
and sent ships racing out to find whoever had been

(02:46:30):
receiving all this stolen data, but they never found anything.
Then one day an attack occurred and detained satellite began
transmitting to a location in the Atlantic. Just a few
kilometers from where a Royal Navy frigate happened to be.
When the warship arrived at the location, the satellite was

(02:46:53):
still trying to open a connection with the surface. There
was nothing in sight, but they quickly deca a very
large object on their sonar coming towards the site. Was
it an accident that all those millions of square kilometers
have open water to choose from. Would it accidentally choose

(02:47:15):
a location near a warship of all these types of vessels. No,
I think it wanted us to see personally. I think
it has guided every step of its interaction with us,
slowly revealing itself as its power has developed, slowly drawing

(02:47:36):
us in closer. It's sad some of the others believe
that we were valiantly struggling against it, But I don't
think we were ever struggling against it any more than
a rat struggles against the maze a large stewed tomato.
Rather ugly. This was how it was rhyme by the skipper,

(02:48:02):
apparently not a poetic man. The video shows an enormous
glistening mountain of flesh rising out of the ocean, dwarfing
the warship expelling streams of water out of a myriad
of holes that cover its surface like giant pores. A
lattice work of huge purple veins runs between the holes,

(02:48:25):
pumping dark, globular objects along the structure's surface. The visible portion,
which emerged above the ocean's surface was shaped like a
round hump with a slight ridging along the center. The
sonar record paints a vague picture of what was beneath
the water, apparently an oblong object with a number as

(02:48:50):
many as twelve of thin appendages as long as the
main body itself. The conceptual artists of the day produced
a great many imaginative monstrosities based on the information. After
its surfaced, the warship assumed a defensive posture, meaning it

(02:49:11):
backed off and waited. The metallic cylinders appeared shortly after.
These were much smaller than the Iwo Jima or Novaya
Zembala cylinders, but much more segmented, with thousands of cubic
portions flicking in and out of existence like bad pixels.

(02:49:32):
They lasted for three minutes in thirteen seconds before vanishing
as suddenly as they had appeared. A moment later, the
fleshy mound expelled an enormous geyser of what was apparently
air and sea water, like a whale blowing out of
its blowhole and dive beneath the surface. The warship attempted

(02:49:54):
to give chase, but was unable to track the object
on sonar. It seemed to frag and disappear. Eventually, the
warship returned to the site and took samples of the water.
Mixed amongst all the random plankton and fish cells, there
was a fair amount of human DNA. In fact, we
were able to trace some of it to specific people,

(02:50:17):
and this was how we proved conclusively that this creature,
later to be called a skin ship, was related in
a literal sense to the so called Artigas Portal, which
was actually underwater several hundred kilometers away from Artigas, Antarctica.
So in the end it turned out we had built it.

(02:50:42):
We had built q. It started as a field trip
twice a week, get out of the home for a while,
go play video games, not just for a little bit
on the staff's phones, but for hours on real rigs.
Before so then, my favorite thing was when we took

(02:51:03):
walks in the woods behind the home. But this was
even better. It was funny because the game we played
was called Children of the Forest, which was basically where
you walked through the woods fighting enemies. In the game,
you had to remember all these different paths which were
always branching off in different patterns, and you'd fight different

(02:51:25):
enemies that all had different patterns. There was a lot
of memorizing stuff and making decisions. Everybody liked the first
twenty levels or so, but after that most of the
other kids got frustrated. Instead of going on, they just
played the first few levels over and over. But I
kept going higher and higher. The final boss was called

(02:51:50):
the Ancient Queen. You were always advancing on her castle,
this huge dark castle that loomed in the backgrounds of
every scene. Sometimes you would see her floating around her castle,
just a shadowy bird like shape, and she would taunt
you from afar, Come my child, come and face me.

(02:52:12):
That kind of stuff. Man, I wanted to get her.
Even as a little kid, I got really obsessed about things.
I wanted to beat the Ancient Queen so badly. I
got to leave a one hundred, then two hundred, then
three hundred. At this point, every branch in the path

(02:52:33):
offered like forty choices, and they all came literally every second.
Plus you had to do the enemy patterns, sometimes mixing
two and three enemies at once, kind of like playing
two melodies at once on a keyboard. It got pretty insane,
but I kept advancing. I was relentless. It was nice

(02:52:55):
to finally be the best at something. I was way
better than any other I mean no other kid went
past like level forty. Sometimes they had me play online
against other people. There was a kind of battle mode.
I beat everybody. At first, we could only go to
play games like twice a week, and everybody was just

(02:53:17):
dying to do it since there was nothing to do
at the home. But after a while they let me
play whenever I wanted. This made the other kids jealous
and they started shunning me, so I just played even more.
I played all the time. I started sleeping at the

(02:53:39):
game place, and I played from when I first woke
up in the morning or night until I went to
sleep at night or the morning. They brought me food
while I played whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it.
One of the people at the game place tried to
spoon feed me while I played. It was creepy at first,

(02:54:00):
but I got used to it. I had pretty much
gotten used to the fact that whenever something was really fun,
adults would come in and take it away or tell
me not to do too much of it, or something
bad would happen and it would be destroyed. So when
they told me I could play this all I wanted,

(02:54:22):
it was like the ultimate freedom, The ultimate freedom. Funny
that I remember lying in bed one night and I
heard the theme music playing down the hall in the
game room. The game was so much fun, but kind
of cheaply made, and it had this chinsey fluid music

(02:54:46):
that played over and over. I heard it now in
the middle of the night and wondered who was playing,
since I was the only kid there and the doctors
never played it. So I got out of bed and
snuck down the hall to see who it was. The
game place was kind of creepy with all the white

(02:55:09):
balls and everything smelling like plastic, and I was a
little scared since I was only eight at the time.
When I got to the game room, it was totally dark,
nobody was there. The music seemed to vanish. It had

(02:55:29):
all been in my head. That's how much I played it.
I was obsessed with that damn ancient queen. She was
like this huge mythical creature in my mind. In the game,
she only had like a dozen taunts, and I must
have heard each one hundreds of thousands of times. They

(02:55:51):
were burned into my brain. When I was on the
high levels and everything was flying at me at once,
I kind of just cleared my mind and let my
hands play the game, if that makes any sense. In
these times, I would daydream about the ancient Queen. What
would it be like when I finally faced her, what

(02:56:15):
would she look like, what would happen. It's strange, but
sometimes I imagined her as looking like my mother, that
strange face that I barely remembered. After a few months,
they gave me the surgery to install my direct Sense Jack's.

(02:56:36):
After playing direct Sense games, I forgot all about the
Children of the Forest and the Ancient Queen. I had
found a beautiful, wonderful world where I was powerful, beyond belief,
where I wasn't just some little girl who lived in
a home and didn't have any friends. So away I went.

(02:57:00):
A few years ago, I went back into the CIA
files and found a copy of the game to see
if I could finally beat it. I got past level
eight hundred. After that it became simply inhuman, so I
bought it it to see the ending. It took a

(02:57:20):
long time to build a proper bot. It really was
a fiendish, clever game. Finally I got one working. But
it turns out there is no ending. You get to
level one thy twenty four and it just resets. You

(02:57:41):
never meet the ancient Queen. What's worse finding out there
is no ancient queen or finding out there is one.
Society is built on interface. You take a complex thing,

(02:58:03):
put it inside a sturdy box, and put some simple
buttons on the box so that people can use the
thing inside The box makes it easier to use and
prevents people from breaking it. For example, you can take
the machinery of a clock, put it in a box
and put two hands on the outside, along with a

(02:58:23):
knob for winding it. Take all the machinery of a car,
hide it behind a dashboard and give people two pedals
and a wheel. Take all the circuits of a computer,
put them in a box and give people a monitor
and a keyboard. Interfaces receive input and produce output, and

(02:58:45):
that's all we need to know. The clock gets wound,
and its hands show the time. Input an output as
far as the user needs to know what happens inside
the box is magic. This allows stupid and ignorant people
to use complicated things as long as the interface, inputs

(02:59:07):
and outputs are simple. Toyota uses millions of kilograms of
steel every year. Does the CEO of Toyota know how
to make steel from scratch? If he wanted to beat
a guy up, would he go digging in the ground
for some ore and whip himself up a batch of
steel to make a pipe? No, he uses interfaces to

(02:59:30):
get steel. He buys steel from steel making company, except
he doesn't personally go down to the steel making company
with a bagful of young saying how much for a
million kilos? He uses a bank, except he doesn't even
personally go to the bank. He has a subordinate who
does it for him. All these people and institutions are

(02:59:52):
interfaces he can use. He employs a system of layered interfaces,
both metaphorical and literal, to control things he doesn't really understand.
We all do. The point is this, don't go messing
with the CEO of Toyota. I assure you he could
get his hands on a steel pipe if he wanted.

(03:00:15):
The word interface refers to the input and the output,
but it also refers to the box. We think of
interfaces as existing in order to give us access to things,
but they are also there to hide things from us,
the ideas that some things are better off hidden. Everything

(03:00:37):
will go along fine so long as a certain input
produces the expected output. But when this stops happening, we
have to open up the box and see what's inside.
Sometimes we don't like what we find. When the old

(03:00:58):
Crone told me how to get rid of the evil,
I said, the names of my fathers, all of them
in a row. I spat on the ground. It was
too much to bear. I had been told to bring
the old Crone back to where the people were camped,
but I wanted to hold her down in the water
of the river and be done with her. She said

(03:01:20):
that we must wait for the next moonless night, then
lead one of our young women deep into the haunted
rocky lands. One of the monstrous evil strangers would come
and take her away. If we do this, the evil
strangers would leave the rest of the people alone, and
they would not destroy us as they destroyed the painted backs.

(03:01:43):
She said we must do this at the beginning of
every dry season. It was absurd, but we took the
chrone back to the people, as we had been told
to do. She told the people what she had told us.
The people listened, were silent for a while. I spoke up,
as the son of one of the great men. I said,

(03:02:05):
her plan was evil. The people strengthen their young women,
who are ripe and bear sons, to give them away
as a humiliation. It is the way of cowards. When
we make war against strangers, do we not take their
young women for our own. We should make war against
these evil strangers. We should set up a night watch,

(03:02:29):
and when the evil strangers come to us sneaking in
like cowards, we should slay their men and take their women.
This is the way of the fathers. This is among
the deeds. Many of the people agreed. Even though my
words were clumsy, they still had the flow of truth. However,

(03:02:51):
some of the men seemed irritated because I spoke first,
even though I was not a great man myself. One
of my uncles asked the people if the painted backs
were cowards. Were they not at least as numerous as
the people were. Their men not strong. Did they not
join us in war against the vile grub eaters and

(03:03:13):
fight like lions. Yet they had been entirely destroyed by
the evil strangers. It was not the act of a
coward to prevent this. The people had many ripe young women,
and just one was not too much to give away.
To go against the flow of a powerful evil like
this was unwise. It would bring destruction. This led to

(03:03:38):
much arguing among the people. Nobody knew what to do.
I became angry. I shouted that the Crone was a
witch trickster. She had probably kidnapped the young girl Rima
and sold her as a slave. I said, my uncle
was a fool. Some of the men had to lead
me away from the camp so that I would calm

(03:03:58):
down before blood wash shed. When I finally came back,
all had been decided. On the next moonless night, the
Crone would lead Rema's younger sister Rona out to the
rocky lands. I was outraged, but did not say anything.
The people were decided and I could not go against them.

(03:04:24):
Then made the flute player spoke up. He said that
it was cruel to send such a young girl out
to the rocky lands to be taken away by evil.
She would never see her mother and father again, nor
the people, nor mother River herself. With many beautiful and
flowing words, he begged the people that changed their minds.

(03:04:47):
Now the arguing began again. The people were decided, but
some of them lamented for Rona. After Maid's words, I
felt an opportunity the great men. If I could go
with Rona and the Crone to the rocky land, I
would make sure that the Crone was not tricking us

(03:05:08):
and face the strangers to see if they were as
the Crone had said, monstrous men as white as cavefish,
or if they were just ordinary men. I was sure
that the Crone was tricks to her, and that the
evil strangers were just a lie she was telling. I
expected her to protest, and I planned to show the

(03:05:29):
people that she was lying, But instead she just bowed
and said that this was wise and a fair idea.
She said, I was very wise to doubt her, even
wiser than some who were older than me, which made
my old uncle grumble. She would be glad to show

(03:05:51):
me the nature of these terrible beings so that the
people would believe her. This surprised me. The old witch
was more tricky than I had expected. She offered to
take anyone who doubted her out to the rocky Lands
to show them the evil menace. Nobody but me was

(03:06:11):
wise enough to go with her. Now I became worried.
Was the menace real? Would I encounter something monstrous out
there in the rocky Lands? Was I swimming against the
flow of something sinister and powerful I had to go

(03:06:32):
to Back down would be cowardly, not something that belonged
among the deeds. But I would have to be very
careful out in the rocky land. Maybe the Crone was
telling the truth and the monstrous evil strangers were real.
But more likely she would try to kill me out
there and blame it on the strangers. That would get

(03:06:55):
rid of me and make the people even more afraid. Rona,
the Crone, and I set out the next day. I
let the two women walk ahead of me, with Rona
weeping and the Crone whispering strange things to her. I
stayed behind them. It was hard to look at poor
Rona's red, weeping face, and I did not want the

(03:07:16):
Crone near me. I had taken the fishing head off
my spear and attached the warhead. I had also had
my black stone knife hidden inside my tunic, and I
brought my two favorite cats, Charm and Gray Scruff, in
my satchel. They both rode in the satchel well and

(03:07:39):
were very clever and watchful. I wanted to be ready
for any sort of trap. We quickly left the gentle
trees and bushes of the river land and went into
the steep, bare folds of the rocky land. I had
only been away from Mother River's voice few times in
my life. Rocky lands there's nothing but the occasional stirring

(03:08:03):
of the wind, which was not warm and burbling like
the river, but thin and whispering. All around I could
feel the evil dryness and death that covered the land.
Dust blew over the tilted rocks, and here and there
were animal skulls and stalking black birds. The sun was

(03:08:26):
sinking down from its highest perch when we came upon
a huge smooth stone which rose above everything else. It
was round, like the top of a bald man's head,
and large enough that many men could stand on it
at once. The crone said that this would be the
place where the evil stranger would arrive. I asked her

(03:08:50):
what we must do. She said that we only needed
to wait for night. Rona would go atop the stone
the stranger would come. Rona did not weep now, but
looked at the stone with glittering eyes. The Crone ran
her hands through Rona's hair, gently pulling out the tangles,

(03:09:12):
and Rona smiled at her. I asked her if she
was afraid. The Crone had told her wonderful stories about
how the strangers would treat her kindly because she was
coming to them willingly. They would take her across the
rocky land to another river which was far greater than
mother river wide and flowing with sun gold waters, and

(03:09:37):
they would make her into one of the great women
of their band. I kicked the crone over. She cried out.
I told her, if I heard her voice one more time,
I would paint this evil rock with her brains. She
became meek. Rona protested, but I told her that the
Crone was a trickster. I tied the Crone's hands behind

(03:09:59):
her back with my belt and stuffed a wad of
cloth into her mouth. There would be no tricks from
her now. I brought Rona and the Crone atop the
rock and looked around. The rocky land had many folds
and hiding places. Still, the high stone was not a
good place to make an attack. I let Charm and

(03:10:21):
Gray Scruff out of my satchel, and they stretched their
legs and sniffed the rocks. If they felt any evil
in the land, they did not show it. I walked
far around the giant rock and searched among the cracks
and folds in the land to see if there was
anyone waiting. The whole place seemed to be empty. There

(03:10:43):
were a few dry, dead bushes, so I gathered firewood.
When I came back, the sun was sinking behind the rocks,
and long curving shadows lay across the bare world. I
built a fire, and Rona and I ate while we
watched the sky turn to orange and purple. Finally, all

(03:11:06):
color fled from the world and darkness fell. With no moon.
The small fire was the only light except for the stars.
I told Rona to stay by the fire with the crone,
who lay on her side seeming to sleep. I withdrew
from the small circle of light and lay flat against

(03:11:28):
a still warm stone with my spear by my side.
I was completely hidden in the darkness, looking away from
the firelight, the world was perfectly black. Gray Scruff startled
me as he appeared out of the dark, sneaking up
the rock to set by the fire. Charm soon joined him.

(03:11:51):
Maybe it was too dark for even cats to hunt,
or maybe the land was too dead. A long time
passed and there was no sound but the fire. The
crones seemed asleep. Rona added wood to the fire and drowsed.
The cats lay side by side like a man and woman.

(03:12:15):
I wondered if I had ruined the Crone's plan. If
I would just lie on this rock all night with
nothing coming, it was better than being stabbed in my sleep.
More time passed, my thoughts became loose and wandering. I
imagined the waters of the river flowing through the weird

(03:12:37):
folds of the rocky land. My eyes closed. I opened
my eyes again. I wasn't sure how long I had slept.
Everything was quiet, the fire still burned well. Rona and
the crones slept. Gray Scruff and Charm were still lying

(03:13:00):
next to each other, both awake, both looking off into
the darkness, both looking in the same direction. I looked
down to the darkness. I couldn't see anything out there,
just far stars over the blackness of the land, where
the cats watching something. Their eyes were wide. I found

(03:13:27):
myself slowly wrapping my hand around the shaft of my spear.
The cats did not take their attention away from what
they were looking at. Maybe they had both heard noises
a pebble falling somewhere. Gray Scruffs slowly carefully got up,

(03:13:48):
keeping its gaze fixed. Charmed hit the same. I pulled
my spear close and gripped it tight. The cats both
jerked their heads sligh in the same direction, following something.
Something was out there. It was close. I pulled my

(03:14:09):
knees up under myself and held my spear with both hands.
I listened to every noise everything around me. I knew
I was outside the light of the fire. I would
hear anybody coming up the rock. Still, I wished desperately
that I could see what the cat saw. It was

(03:14:31):
awful to not know. Charm and grayscruff crouched turned their bodies,
ready to flee, but still watching the thing in the darkness,
their white eyes glowing in the fire. Slowly they raised
their heads, following the thing up and up until they

(03:14:53):
were looking almost straight up. They must have been watching
a bird that was the only thing that could be
that high. I let out a relieved breath. A gust
of wind made the fire shudder. The cats both jumped,
scrambling off into the darkness. Rona screamed. It landed just

(03:15:17):
in front of her with a flap of wings and
a gust of wind that scattered the fire in a
spray of sparks. I was on my feet, holding the
spear out. The brightly burning pieces of wood showed its
shape like a giant, pale man, with huge wings instead
of arms. It stood for a moment with its wings spread,

(03:15:39):
far larger than any bird, both no feathers like a bat's.
The firelight shined through the thin wings, showing the creature's
long bones and the streams of blood that flowed under
the skin. It turned to look at me, and I
realized that the scattering of the fire had brought me

(03:16:00):
into the light. It could see me. My war spear
felt like a frail little stick in my hands. Its
face was like a rock lion's, but with awful black
teeth and huge, filmy eyes. It was just as the
old crone had said. She had been right all along.

(03:16:23):
Rona had fallen back onto the ground, and the evil
thing stood over her. It was far taller than a man,
but very thin, with a waste hardly bigger than a cat's,
and legs like a mantis. As I stood there with
my spear in my hand, the flaming wood lying scattered
all around me. Looking at this thing in the shifting darkness,

(03:16:46):
it seemed less and less like a man, and more
like an animal, one of the snaking, starving animals of
the rocky land. It folded its wings behind itself, and
its teeth shuffled in its mouth like a Rona was screaming,
the horrible sound ringing off the stones. I knew what

(03:17:07):
the spear in my hand was for. I knew what
I must do, but I could not move. I was
held in place by an evil cowardice. The thing crouched
over Rona and its cock rose from between its legs,
very thin but longer than any man's, it separated into
many different parts, like the petals of a flower, opening

(03:17:31):
like a man spreading his fingers apart. The many parts
grew longer, very long, and wound like snakes through the
darkness towards Rona, seeming to sniff the air. They found
Rona's body and went inside of her, inside of her
mouth and nose and ears, and in between her legs.

(03:17:54):
Her screams ended at once, and the snake like parts
lifted her body into the air. Many seasons ago, shortly
after I became a man, I had killed a rock
lion while it was at the river's edge watching waters
for fish. I had simply found it there below me

(03:18:15):
as I came to the edge of a small cliff.
All I had to do was leap down and drive
my spear through its shoulders, and it was dead. When
the people found out, they made me like I was
greater than even the great men, at least for the
rest of the day. The only other living person to

(03:18:37):
kill a rock lion was already gray and almost toothless.
It was said that I would become a great hunter,
But Mother River provides so much for the people that
we do not hunt often, and I hadn't killed anything
since then except a few bore. Now I ran to

(03:19:00):
the great and evil thing, my feet slapping quick over
the bare rock. I lifted my spear and leapt and
drove the heavy warhead right into its side. The spear
went deep into its body and a spray of black
blood exploded out of the wound. It let out a
sound like an awful bird call, and one of its

(03:19:22):
wings unfolded and hit me hard enough that I fell back.
Its wings flapped wildly, sprang fire and sparks everywhere, but
it could not fly and fell back down onto the stone.
Black blood poured out of its side. I pulled Rono
away from it, but she was limp and moaning, and
the awful snake like things were still inside of her.

(03:19:45):
I pulled them out one by one, but they were
sharp and cut my hands, and they came out of
her body covered in red blood. When I had freed her,
I took her up and grabbed my spear and slid
down the side of the rock and stumbled through the
blackness until I found a ridge of rock to hide behind.
There were a few bits of fire left on top

(03:20:07):
of the rock. They soon went out. I was in
total darkness except for the stars above. Clinging to Rona,
who made no more sound, I waited there and the
utter blackness. Rona did not stir. I felt the warmth

(03:20:29):
slowly flow from her body. By the time the first
gray light of morning came, she was dead. As soon
as I could see well enough, I went back up
to the top of the large rock. The thing was
lying there, its wings spread wide and coated with black blood.

(03:20:52):
It did blood enough to cover the entire top of
the rock with blackness, which had dried and become thin
flakes that blew away in the wind. After I stepped
on them with my spear gripped tight, I approached it again.
Its body was the same sort of pale color as
the morning sky, and was covered in tiny, glistening hairs.

(03:21:17):
The mouth was like a spider's, with sharp black teeth.
Its cock had become just a shriveled little thing. No
sign of the long, snake like parts. I went down
the rock again to where I had left the crone.
She was gone. My belt lay in the dust sodden half.

(03:21:40):
Maybe it was just as well. I did not want
to see her again. I called for Charm and gray scruff,
but there was no sign of them. I left the
evil rocky land as fast as I could. The weird
rocks all looked the same to me, and I did

(03:22:01):
not know the way well. But I found the river
before the sun had climbed to its highest. It was
a different part of the river than I had left,
and nobody was there. I made my way along the banks,
looking for the people there as much to tell them.

(03:22:22):
Would the other winged strangers soon try to set upon
the people? Would we have to make war against them?
If it must be so, then let them come. They
could be killed like any other men. The sun was
still above the trees when I first saw men walking

(03:22:43):
along the river. Their faces were the normal color of
sandy river mud, not the evil white of the winged stranger.
I called to them, happily, called the names of the fathers,
but they did not answer. Came closer and saw that
these were not the people. I took my spear in

(03:23:05):
both hands. These men were painted backs. They stood silently
by the river. There, wore spears in hand, signs of
victory and triumph painted on their chest, and bright blood.
They watched me with strange, filmy eyes. It's really difficult

(03:23:26):
for me to tell a story with just words, so
please bear with me. I am trying to tell you
the story of who I am and how I came
to be this thing, But I have trouble organizing my
thoughts into a single linear flow. I wish I could

(03:23:46):
just show you the entire story all at once, in
all its many dimensions. Then I could make it clear
why I hired somebody to put a pellette of poison
into my own arm. But as it is, I must
use the ancient art of written narrative, So here it goes.

(03:24:08):
Imagine spending your whole life in a cramped, stinking prison cell,
counting the days, scratching tally marks on the walls, and
then one day that big iron door creaks open and
you're whisked off to a glamorous party full of beautiful
people and delightful games, and everybody you meet is toasting

(03:24:32):
you for being a genius, for being the great hope
of the human race. That's what it's like to plug
into the direct sense feeds after living at the Children's Home.
I can't describe that first day in the feed realm.
Though I have not cried in twenty four years, I
still get the ghostly feeling of tears coming to my

(03:24:54):
eyes every time I think about it. To be looking
around at the home field, everything glittering in a new way,
shining in colors that do not exist, all of it
stretching out before me, all the main gateways open and
waiting to be explored. The feeling of that moment of

(03:25:19):
being a small child looking out at the beautiful, new
vastness of the realm was the most magical thing I
have experienced. What I want to impress upon you is this.
Every step I took towards slavery felt like a newfound freedom.

(03:25:40):
At first, it was just games and social mixing with
other kids. We all had played the Mysterious Children of
the Forest game and scored highly on it. The game
had been an entry exam of sorts. It turns out
that I had scored higher than anyone else higher. This

(03:26:02):
made some of the other kids jealous, but most of
them seemed to look up to me. I had never
made anyone jealous before, and I had never been looked
up to before. Social mixing and share streaming was easy
and fun. If he had time to think of what
to say, which video or annie to post to the stream,

(03:26:26):
which paced to link up, it was so much more
exciting than being in real life. I had a good
memory and could work the assisted recall pretty well, so
I made a lot of friends. They told us we
would all be going to Harvard, Ann Stanford, and Singhua,
that we would be famous, mixed stars and government stars,

(03:26:49):
that we were the future of the world. To be fair,
they couldn't have known that most of us would be
dead before we were twenty, that all of us would
be dead before thirty four. But they knew damn well
we wouldn't be going on to normal lives. We were
a part of an experiment. After we got used to

(03:27:12):
the feed realm, they began the conditioning. I realized that
you might not know what the feed realm is, so
maybe I should explain a little bit about it. The
feed Realm is basically just another interface for sharing information
and carrying out transactions. It is based on the metaphor

(03:27:35):
of three D space. That's why it's called realm. You
can move through it. You can go up and down,
left and right. It feels like swimming through weightlessness. They
made it this way because that's how human minds work
of brains evolved to exist in a three D space.

(03:27:57):
We naturally imagine things as exists in space, even abstract,
non spatial things. We think of the future as coming
towards us, the past as receding behind us. Powerful people
are considered above and the powerless are below. Items belong

(03:28:19):
in some categories and outside other categories. Some of these
spatial relationships really exist, but they are useful metaphors. Because
our minds are suited to process things in three D space,
it has always been theoretically possible, even trivial, to create

(03:28:39):
a four dimensional or n dimensional feed realm, but since
the human mind isn't made to process so many dimensions,
it was considered pointless. But recently a genetic mutation dating
back to the Stone Age was discovered which allows certain
individuals to experience and comprehension feed realms of fore and

(03:29:01):
higher spatial dimensions. While this mutation may have been useless
for Stone Age people living in a spatially three D world,
it was also harmless, so it somehow survived, though its
initial origin is something of a mystery. Anyways, now scientists

(03:29:24):
were able to hook people up to four D feed realms.
Early test subjects described the experience in terms ranging from
nauseating to utterly horrifying. It was theorized that maybe if
children were conditioned from a young age to exist in
a higher dimensional environment, they would become accustomed to it,

(03:29:48):
but such conditioning was deemed unethical enter the CIA. Their
motto where ethical approbation ends, our work begins. They used
their global genetic database to identify children with the genotype
and collected a group of them to begin conditioning, And

(03:30:12):
that brings us back to my story. At first, we
were just playing around in the feed realm, getting used
to it. Then they started the conditioning. How do I
describe higher dimensional space so called hyperspace? Nauseating and utterly

(03:30:34):
horrifying are exactly what it felt like at first. Everybody
hated it. We cried and tried to run away when
they made us go into the hyper realm, but of
course there was nowhere to run. We were all lying
in hygiene beds, where almost all of us would lie

(03:30:54):
until death. They forced us back into the hyper realm
a little out of time, just showing us simple shapes
at first to acclimate us. But how do I describe it?
It was like watching things pass through each other, but
without touching each other or covering each other up in

(03:31:18):
ways that made the brain go that's impossible, stop it.
They were playing gray boxes and cones and infinite planes
and bottomless abysses, and the shapes would move slowly along
and do things that were simply impossible. Some of the
kids never got used to it. They hated it and

(03:31:40):
dropped out of the program and disappeared from the feed realm.
But I kept going. Just like in the Children of
the Forest game, I got used to four dimensions, then
five and six. I was a leader. I taught the

(03:32:01):
other kids tricks for how to understand what they were seeing.
And it was cool being in hyperspace, seeing everything at
once like that was hyperspace mind bending, sure, but not
nearly as mine bending, as hyper time, and not nearly

(03:32:22):
as horrifying. A friend from rehab invites me to an
h A meeting. Shooting boy was never among my vices,
but I go with them. The meeting is out in
the suburbs and is packed. Every bit of floor space
is filled with folding chairs, and every chair is filled.

(03:32:45):
I want to leave as soon as I sit down.
It's like being in a crowded elevator for an entire hour.
I can feel the coffee breath on my skin. It
is disturbing to look around at all the kids in
the How are they also young and fresh faced? The
alcoholics tend to be much more beat up. All those

(03:33:10):
years of excess capillary dilation give our faces a meaty quality.
These little heroin addicts, on the other hand, come into
the rooms at nineteen with a glow of childhood still
on their skin. My friend's arms have no track marks.

(03:33:30):
They are smooth and doll like, no major veins left.
He is twenty one. I've been roommates with kids like
these for the past few months. They don't know who
norm from Cheers is. They don't know how to empty
a dryer filter or take care of a teflon pan,

(03:33:50):
but they know how to cook up black tar. They
know how to find veins. It quickly becomes apparent that
one of the meetings regulars died last night. Every One
is upset. People start crying. My desire to not be
there grows exponentially. I didn't know the kid. I feel

(03:34:15):
like I've stumbled into the wrong funeral. The kid's sponsored talks.
He's an older man with a gray goatee. He was
guiding the kid through the steps. The room looks at
him to say something comforting, something with the ring of
authority and wisdom. The room is full of children and

(03:34:36):
the grips of a problem that their parents cannot understand.
Here is a grown up who can understand. He talks
about meeting the kid's parents at the hospital. His eyes
grow damp. He recalls haltingly that the parents were very polite.
They thanked him very politely for trying to help their son.

(03:35:00):
He looks down at the floor. There is no more
to say. Later, I relate the story to my room mate, Sean.
He says that this has been going on with the
blacks for years, but nobody cared until it came to
swallow up all the little white children. He says that
most problems come to visit black people first, because black

(03:35:22):
people are God's chosen people. They must be chastised. The
programme tells us to be more open minded and less judgmental.
I am trying to be more open minded and less
judgmental about Shan's beliefs. At first glance, his beliefs are paranoid,
a historical conspiracy theory hogwash. At second glance, they are

(03:35:47):
appallingly anti Semitic cultural appropriation. But my sponsor says it's
not my place to enlighten him with my views. I
only need to be a roommate to him. When the
Jews were sold into captivity, their narrative survived. This was

(03:36:08):
not so for the slaves of America. At least, nothing
like the Torah was passed on. The American system of
slavery worked to destroy the history of millions of people.
But I wonder how much of the Jew's history really survived.
There are certainly parts of the Torah that don't have
the resounding ring of authority in wisdom e g. The

(03:36:33):
talking snake or the talking bush, or the nephelum or
ninety percent of everything else. How much of the real
story actually survived. It must be tempting to place one's
self into the context of a mythical narrative that goes
back thousands of years, that extends forward to the end

(03:36:54):
of history. Instead of just being this lost little individual,
you become the inheritor of a grand spiritual legacy, part
of a grand struggle one of the Chosen People. A
new roommate moved into the house a few days ago.
His name is Donni. He's in his mid forties and

(03:37:17):
he's a former marine. I show him the Ewojima segment
of my story and ask him what he thinks

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