Mother Horse Eyes: Part 3

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
When I was in high school, I liked dropping acid.
One of my favorite books was The Electric kool Aid
Acid Test, which tells the real life story of a
band of early acid heads and proto hippies called the
Mary Pranksters, who invented a lot of what would become
tropes of the nineteen sixties, such as dressing up in

(00:36):
weird shit and riding around in a painted bus while
stoned on drugs. I was especially intrigued by an experiment
which was carried out by the Pranksters in nineteen sixty five.
One day, a few of the Pranksters put a sign
on the front gate of the group's compound that read
the Merry Pranksters Welcomed the Beetles. At the time, the

(00:58):
Beatles were the biggest band in the world, and the
Merry Pranksters were largely unknown. Moreover, none of the Pranksters
actually knew the Beatles or had any idea of how
to contact the Beatles, nor did they make any attempt
to do so. For the Beatles to show up at
their house in California was extremely unlikely. Despite all this,

(01:23):
the Pranksters put this crazy banner out on their front gate,
and they fully expected the Beatles to show up. To
understand the prankster's behavior, you must understand the effects of LSD.
This is true in a general sense and with specific
regard to that banner you see. Sometimes when you take LSD,

(01:45):
something strange happens, something beyond all the weird hallucinations and
thought distortions. Sometimes you get the eerie feeling that coincidences
are happening all around you. You might be listening to
music while watching TV and notice that the pictures and
the sound seem to sync up. You might open a

(02:07):
book and notice that the opening passage has an odd,
unmistakable relevance to the current moment you are in. At times,
you almost feel like you are conscious of things before
they actually happen. You imagine your friend walking through the door,
and a moment later she does. You look at your phone,

(02:29):
and a moment later it rings. Sometimes these coincidences pile
up so quickly that you get the feeling that there
is something behind it all, that all the seemingly disparate
and unrelated phenomena of your life are actually part of
an underlying order or pattern or structure which is normally hidden.

(02:52):
This order seems to be a cosmic phenomenon that pervades
and controls all of existence, something which has always existed,
but which you have been blind to until now. The
existence of this fundamental order comes as a revelation because
it is completely different from the ordinary mechanism of cause

(03:13):
and effect that you are used to that science uses
to explain things. This feeling, to me, is the essence
of the LSD experience. LSD leads to a sudden awareness
of meaningful coincidences, which in turn gives rise to an
awareness of an underlying cosmic order, which is a casual

(03:38):
The a casual part is important. A true coincidence is
when two things happen which are clearly related, but which
cannot possibly be related by cause and effect. For example,
let's say you are watching a show on TV about zebras,
then you walk out your front door and see a
zebra trotting down the sidewalk, dropping zebra shit all over

(04:02):
the place. The two events have an obvious connection, but
it's hard to imagine how that connection could occur through
cause and effect. It's not likely that your TV viewing
choices caused that zebra to escape from the zoo, nor
is it likely that the two events have a common
cause unless somebody is playing an elaborate prank on you.

(04:23):
Such a coincidence could be considered meaningful if you believe
that it is evidence of the aforementioned underlying order. Otherwise,
it's just some weird shit that happened randomly. During my
high school years, because of my little l SD hobby,
I became obsessed with meaningful coincidences. I was always looking

(04:43):
for little signs from the cosmos and hidden connections between
things which weren't casually related. I tried to predict things.
I looked for symbols, and tried to fit the events
of my daily life into cosmic patterns. I got into
nostra damis, the eye chain, stichomancy, all sorts of shit. Unfortunately,

(05:05):
my attempts to ascertain the underlying structure of the cosmos
were heavily clouded by my own immature narcissism. You'll notice
that people who believe in past lives tends to see
themselves as great figures of the past, like Caesar and
van Go, rather than the anonymous turnip pickers and fishwives
who actually populated most of history. Similarly, I was convinced

(05:30):
that the cosmos was sending me indications my impending greatness
rather than port ending my eventual descent into alcoholic mediocrity. Yes,
it was revealed to me that the world would end soon.
I be a cristlike figure of greatness in the coming apocalypse.
I shit you not, I really believe the stuff. Luckily

(05:53):
blogs had not become popular yet. Then I took my
final acid trip, and it was a bad trip. I
don't want to go into the details, but let's just
say that I saw some shit and I never wanted
to take acid again. All my life, I had been

(06:13):
hoping to be visited with the Grand Revelation, and now
I just hope I was never visited by another one.
It filled my head with all sorts of crazy shit,
not truth, just madness. I decided that whatever was underlying
the cosmos could stay underlying the damned cosmos. I wanted

(06:36):
no part of it. Well, I guess I should tell
you what happened with the Beatles banner and putting out
that banner. The pranksters had hoped that they could tap
into the underlying a casual order of the universe by
simply welcoming the Beetles rather than reaching out to the
Beetles or pursuing them, but the Beetles never showed up,

(07:00):
at least they never showed up in a literal sense.
A couple years later, the Beatles released the Magical Mystery
Tour film, in which they all dressed up in weird
shit and rode around on a painted bus while stoned
on drugs, precisely as the Pranksters had done so. In
a sense, they did come to the pranksters. Of course,

(07:24):
this can be explained by ordinary cause and effect. The
pranksters helped popularize a social movement which eventually spread to England,
or you can invoke a mystical explanation saying the pranksters
somehow sense that the underlying pattern of the cosmos would
bring the beetles around their way of doing things. After
I stopped doing l s D, I started leaning away

(07:47):
from notions of cosmic patterns, and it became more convinced
that any understanding of the universe would have to rely
on cause and effect. My earlier attempts at mysticism again
to look like embarrassing folly. I came to regard all
that meaningful coincidence stuff as bullshit. I figured that LSD

(08:10):
just overstimulated. Whatever sort of coincidence detector might exist in
the brain, you could dress it up in a fancy
word like synchronicity and give it the impremature of Carl
Jung or whomever. But it was nothing more than magical thinking,
as old and stupid as stone age tribes. I had

(08:32):
been perceiving connections between things where none existed. There are
no meaningful coincidences. A coincidence is only meaningful if you
can find a casual relationship between the two, and if
you can, it is no longer a true coincidence. The
universe doesn't send people signs through the Ei ching or

(08:54):
nostrodamis or any of that silly shit. If there are
rain clouds in the sky, it's a sign you should
carry an umbrella. That's an actual sign from the universe.
The other stuff is just a load of crap. It
was with this mindset that I entered AA years later.

(09:14):
AA is a God centered program. The main idea is
that you can get sober if you live according to
God's will instead of your own will. People in AA
often talk about watching for signs from God and listening
to instructions from God and so forth. As you can
imagine I was less than impressed. I was appalled. I

(09:39):
felt like I was being dragged back into this narcissistic,
mystical bullshit that I had thankfully left behind. I felt
like I was being asked to roll back my personal
age of enlightenment and go back to the dark ages.
Fuck that I wasn't going to do it. One night
at a meeting, after months of listening to the spirituality shit,

(10:02):
I made my feelings clear. I've told them that spirituality
was the hugest load of horse shit ever foisted up
upon human culture. Spirituality, i opined, was like a thought
virus that gets passed on from one person to another.
It was basically gonrhea of the brain, and AA was
one of the biggest fucking disease vectors I had ever seen.

(10:24):
I told them they should be ashamed of themselves for
preying on people who are in a vulnerable state just
to convert them to their bullshit spiritual beliefs, rather than
the stunned silence that is the dream of every r
atheism subscriber. They just told me to keep coming back
and moved on to the next guy. It turned out

(10:46):
that little rants like this are semi regular occurrence. Having
no other good options, I kept coming back. I asked
a lot of people why they believe in God. They
almost invariably brought up meaning fol coincidences or magical signs.
I became more convinced than ever that it was all bullshit.

(11:07):
I argued a lot with one guy in particular, in recovery,
you meet a lot of people who are like ned
Flanders with tattoos, people who live dirty, then cleaned up
and became extra square, but they still have their tattoos.
This was one of those guys. He told me a

(11:27):
story about how he was in prison at the end
of his rope, and he prayed to God to send
him a sign. Just then a little bird alighted on
prison window and sang him a beautiful little song. God,
he knew at that moment was real. I almost dislocated

(11:48):
my eyes they rolled so hard. What a bunch of
silly shit. How could a grown adult believe this crap?
I read the AA literature mainly to bolster my mind
arguments against the program. AA literature is very sneaky. It
knows that most atheists follow the tradition of Western secular humanism,

(12:10):
which values open mindedness, in contrast the close mindedness of religionists.
So the literature portrays atheism as closed mindedness. Atheists are
encouraged to be more open minded, more flexible, more willing
to accept the idea that they don't know everything about
the universe. I wondered, if it was fucking opposite day,

(12:33):
how are these spiritual nutcases going to portray spirituality as
open mindedness and atheism as closed mindedness. I was simply
asserting that my entire life, I had never seen any
convincing evidence of God that wasn't closed minded, that wasn't presumptuous.
It was the opposite. I was willing to accept the

(12:55):
evidence presented to me by the world, unlike religionists who
turn a blind eyedea. I told heavy Metal ned Flanders
that if the Skies ever opened up to show me
the majestic glory of God, then I would be happy
to fall to my knees because either God existed or
I was in the presence of a technology advanced enough

(13:15):
to be godlike. I told him that I was perfectly
willing to believe in God if I was ever presented
with a shred of credible evidence for his existence. Soon after,
I was presented precisely that who knows, Maybe it was

(13:38):
a coincidence. I think it's possible it could be written
on the fly. The story gives the appearance of vast
scope because the storylines are from different eras and areas,
but rather than a broad panorama, it only provides thin
slivers of insight into each time and place. Everything in

(13:59):
between them slivers is left to the player's imagination, and
given the author's hints at branching timelines, he or she
is not even necessarily required to link these little slivers together.
People also point to the various stories interconnectedness and claim
that the work has a structure too intricate to be improvisational.

(14:20):
But how much interconnectedness is there really? For example, the
stone Age story has cats in it and the Cat's
story has cats in it. Obviously this is a point
of similarity, obviously, but what is the significance? So what
if both stories have cats? Is this meaningful coincidence or

(14:41):
a meaningless one? The same question could be asked about
the children of a forest, or the various marines, or
the demon penises for which the author has such fondness. Yes,
these elements recur, but to what end? Perhaps, like somebody
on LSD undergoing a false revel, we are drawing connections

(15:02):
where none really exist. Perhaps these are meaningless coincidences. The
story employs a number of callbacks, where it makes references
to something which was not mentioned in quite a while.
This gives the appearance of careful pre planning, but callbacks
are actually a pretty easy thing to improvise. The author

(15:24):
can just look over the story, pick an ELEMENTA, and
bring it to the four again. Like a prime factorization problem,
the problem is easier to create than it is to solve.
A successful callback is really more of a testament to
the reader's intelligence than the authors. And by the way,
whatever happened to companion twelve? That seemed like it was

(15:45):
going to be a thing. But anyways, all this is
speculation on my part. It's an interesting question. How can
we know whether the story is improvised or not. The
author does occasionally make direct responses to others comments, it
makes reference to current events, but as you said, this

(16:06):
could just be a sort of superficial improvisation where most
of the story is actually fixed but a few of
the details are improvised. The author could also be combing
through Reddit for the right comment to give the appearance
of improvisation. Are we watching real choices in action or
are the events of this universe occurring along some deterministic path?

(16:30):
Is there any way to find out? Maybe some sort
of test should be devised, but that would require the
author to play along. Okay, Now I'm in my bedroom.
The bedroom smells like bedroom, actual bedroom, so definite. It

(16:56):
smells like wood and blankets and stuff sharp. I wonder
how they decide on the bedroom smell. I moved my
arms around and bounce a little on the bed springs.
My body feels really natural and comfortable. Everything looks sharp too.

(17:16):
There are no weird color trails like an acclamation cool,
really crisp. I stand up and take in all the
little touches. It's an attic bedroom with a slanting ceiling
and wood paneled walls. Night outside the window, mood lighting

(17:38):
from a night stand, lamp, clothes and a skateboard and
other random teenage stuff scattered on the floor. Walls covered
with posters, iron excess. The cure Michael Jackson in the
yellow vest. Very definite or should I say groovy? Did

(17:59):
they say that? In the eighties? An interrupt comes through
Atlanta completely destroyed in full scale. I use my illegal
bypass to cut off all interrupts. Ugh, I hate sports interrupts.
I'll have to figure out how to change that setting.
I notice a can of Pepsi Free sitting on my nightstand.

(18:21):
I pick it up, still cold. I crack it open
and smell it, and the fizz tickles my nose. It
really smells like soda. I take a sip. Wow, not
very good. Maybe it's a low quality render, or maybe

(18:42):
I just don't like Pepsi free. It's pretty amazing to
be tasting something in a feed. This was really worth it.
The doorbell rings somewhere downstairs. Oh, definitely we're starting. I
head towards it's a door and catch myself in the mirror.

(19:03):
I'm supposed to look like a girl named Brooks Shields
at eighteen years old. Wow, she's pretty what a render.
Eyebrows are a little intense though. I consider toning them down,
but I don't want to get caught up in character designer.
If you change one thing, you end up changing fifty things,

(19:24):
and it goes on forever. I head out into the
hallway and pause for a moment. The smell just changed.
Now there's a hallway smell, carbon and dry wall. I laugh.
I take a step back into the bedroom and the
bedroom smell returns instantly. They step into the hallway again.

(19:47):
Hallway smell, bedroom smell. Hallway smell, bedroom smell. My snicker
at this. The smell changes just like that. They make
it more natural or a giveaway. Oh well, I head
down the stairs. The furniture in the front hall looks

(20:10):
really cheesy. I pick up a lamp and toss it
at the wall. It smashes apart and the bulb explodes
with a spark. I look at the shards. There's bits
of powder and all sorts of little details. Yeah, very certain,
Undo that, I say, and the lamp fades away and

(20:33):
reappears on the side table. I open the front door.
A guy stands there with sweat back, blonde hair and
a baggy red and black jacket with a collar popped
up and sleeves rolled up. Nice. He gives me a
killer smile and says, a babe, what took you so long?

(20:56):
A blast of electric guitar hits me and the guy
floats up and over the front lawn, becoming two stories
tall and striking a sexy pose. Colors fill the night sky,
sparkling starlight showers him, and synth beat kicks in. An
announcer shouts Corey Lancer, high School, hot shot, and rock

(21:17):
and roll renegade. He's a fast talker with a slick attitude,
a guy who can make anything happen. All the girls
want him, but all he wants is one thing. The
Ferrari two eighty eight gto, a red sports car, comes
flying out of the sky and does crazy circles around
Corey while he strikes more sexy poses and the music thumps.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
It's the fastest street legal car in existence, only two
hundred and seventy two produced. This is Corey's dream, Corey's obsession,
Corey's life. He'll do anything to get one, and he
needs your help. Can you get the car? Can you
win his heart? Are you ready for eighties turbo so ascension?

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Hm? Shit, I should have looked the summary closer. I'm
not really into cars, and this doesn't really seem like
a very interesting narrative. Still, Cory is really well rendered.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, a bit of a mischief, and
a smile. I like it. I wonder if he'll be

(22:24):
controlled by an AI or a Filipino. He floats back
down to me and returns to normal size. So what's up,
he said, with a devilish little grin. Wow, this is
a stuff. Just doing my hair, I say, flicking my
huge brown mane off my shoulder. This brook Shields lady

(22:48):
has an absurd amount of hair, you chicks, Corey says,
leaning forward and giving me a kiss. His mouth tastes
like bubblegum. The kiss feels perfect. Yeow, just definitely. I
feel Corey's chest through his shirt, skinny but nice. I

(23:10):
think about toning him up a bit. Nah, it's better
to just go with his default settings. So listen. There's
a race denied at the Speedmax track. Corey says. The
Crystal Cobras put out a challenge and they're taking all comers.
The prize is I don't really like racing. Corey thinks

(23:32):
for a moment a character animation. He looks cute, thinking
his sharp eyebrows pressed together. Now he's taking too long.
It's getting awkward. I think he's controlled by a Filipino,
or maybe there's a lag. He snaps back into action. Okay, listen,

(23:53):
there's going to be a dance off at the club.
Heat wave. The Crystal Cobras put out a challenge and
they're taking all comers. The prize is one hundred K dancing. Yeah,
that would be one way to try out my body.
Sounds groovy, I say, But I can't help but think
of another way to give this body a test drive.

(24:15):
I slipped my hand down in my tight purple skirt.
Feel my genitals. Ugh. Yeeks, they really have everything working
down there. Should I do it already? Just five minutes
into the narrative? Eh? Why not? Everybody does it right away?
Corey looks really good. I wonder what kind of dick

(24:38):
they rendered him with. But no, I should go at
least half an hour without slutting it up. Dancing will
be fun. Corey holds out his arm like a gentleman,
and I take it. He leads me down the front
walk towards his car, a smeary, old junk ride thence
and rusted all over it. Sorry, hun, it's only temporary,

(25:02):
Corey says. As we come up on the car, I
promise you, by the end of this week, I'm going
to have a Ferrari two eighty eight g t O,
the fastest street legal car in the world. It's my dream,
it's my obsession. I'll do anything too, but I'm not listening.
There's something in the bushes by the road. I wonder

(25:23):
if this is one of those fake out horror narratives.
I really hate scary stuff. I bend over and look
into the bushes. A pair of shining eyes stares back
at me. Now, what the hell? There's an old naked
lady hiding in the bushes. Yuck. This naked old lady

(25:44):
hiding in the bushes looks like the beginning of a
story line. I don't want to go down. I really
wish I had looked at the summary closer who knew
something called eighties turbo ascension would have artisanal porn in it.
I consider saying my safe word to stop the narrative,
but I don't feel like going through the loading process again.

(26:08):
I should have loaded. My feed splits, but I rush
through the set up. The old lady's bony arm shakes
out of the bush and grabs my ankle. Certainly not.
I yank my leg away and curse at her. Corey
is looking at her with the same confused animation he
used a moment ago. Is he already using the same animation.

(26:30):
That's kind of low death. The crazy old lady comes
stumbling out of the bush, her saggy old boobs flopping around. Now,
what kind of narrative is this? I pick up a
nearby potted plan and smash it on her head. It
breaks apart, pretty nice, full of high definition dirt. Lady

(26:53):
falls on the ground and starts moaning. I back away
to watch how the scene develops between Corey and her.
It looks like her leg isn't quite attached to the
rest of her You can see the meat inside of
her hip. Really low death. Corey just stands there, cycling
through different animations. He turns to me and shrugs and says,

(27:15):
big babe, that's life. I stare at him. Is this
how the storyline is supposed to go? He runs his
hand through his hair and says, cute skirt. What the
hell this narrative is bugged up? Let's go, I say,
going to Corey's car and opening the door. It's an

(27:36):
old hand drive with a fixed wheel. You want me
to drive? Cory asks, coming over, Yeah, maybe you better.
A minute later, we're cruising down the freeway, listening to
some oldie about a girl named Jesse. The scenery looks cool,
with the blue freeway lights passing by in an old

(27:56):
fashioned Neon Metro in the background is running through his backstory,
talking about the Ferrari or whatever. I can't ignore the
fact that I feel a little bored. I'm just ten
minutes into my first direct sense feed narrative, and I'm
already a little bored. Was a surgery really worth all

(28:16):
that money? I don't even want to think about what
it cost. I slip my hand in my skirt again
and touch my genitals. It feels really nice. Everything is
super sharp. I think about fucking Corey again, but I
can't go back to feed fucking all the time every day.

(28:38):
Why am I always bored with narratives after ten minutes?
Why am I bored with everything? After ten minutes? We
pull up in front of Club heat Wave, a big,
glittering building with a neon sun shining above it. A
line of gleaming black limos snakes through a colorful crowd
out front. We park in the player's spot across the

(28:59):
street and head to the grand entrance, Corey leading me
by the hand. Music thumps from within. People are waiting
in line, but Cory says something to the bouncer and
we slip past the entrance. Hall is all mirrors and neon.
I can feel the beat of the music pass through
my entire body. That's cool. The singer tells me to

(29:23):
get out of his dreams and into his car. Humph.
The inside is filled with shadowy bodies dancing through strobe
lights and lasers and artificial fog. Cheesy but kind of fun.
It even has that fake fog smell. Want to get
some practice in, Corey asks, giving my bumb a little squeeze.

(29:46):
This one is naughty. We head out onto the dance
floor and start to cut it up. Wow, Corey's dancing
is terrible. Looks like a motion glitch. Guess I had
to give him some more moves. But did they have
to make it this bad? This is kind of ruining
the storyline. I look across the dance floor and see

(30:10):
a tall man in a black suit with black hair,
standing perfectly still among the dancing crowd. He's watching me
with dark eyes. There's a sort of glow around him
so that I can tell he's going to be a
part of a storyline. I lean over to Cory and ask,
who is that Cory stares at the man for a

(30:31):
moment and runs his hands through his hair and says,
cute skirt. What the fuck? Cory? The dark Man comes
across the dance floor, coming toward me. The other dancers
don't move out of the way, and he passes through
them without breaking his stride. Some programming. Now he stands
in front of me, looking down at me with his

(30:54):
gleaming black eyes. What an incredible render this guy is.
I mean, this is outright art like Rembrandt level. Say
what you will about the game's production, really know how
to build hot guys. It's like he's tailor made to
turn me on. Then I noticed Corey's standing right there

(31:20):
looking at us all confused. He looks like a cheap
plastic doll compared to this new guy. What gives Corey?
Asks fuck off? I say. Corey gets this really heartbroken
look on his face and says, listen to me, zen
Zen's a back, and you'll break my heart if you
go with any other guy. You got that you are

(31:42):
the most special, most beautiful girl I have ever met.
I can't really get into a speech because it's too
early in the narrative for that kind of stuff. Plus
he pronounced my name wrong. The new guy reaches out
and grabs a handful of Corey's face. Literally, he just
sings his fingers into the face and tears a huge,
bloody hunk out. Blood sprays everywhere. Holy shit, I guess

(32:08):
this is the horror narrative. Is this guy like a
vampire or something? Face less? Corey keep standing there, spurting
blood out of his headhole. I push him away. The
new guy squeezes the hunk of flesh like a sponge
and lets the blood run down over my face and
starts licking it off deep. This must be some kind

(32:32):
of art porn sampler narrative. I feel I got to
start reading those summaries crucial. Despite how strange the situation is,
I ignore it all and begin some steamy sex with
this man. Even though I am lost in the moment,
I can't help but notice that delight and the club
is changed. It seems like it's coming from two angles,

(32:55):
making everything seem doubled. I feel like I'm looking at
the man's face from two angles, seeing four of his eyes.
It's a weird effect, and I wonder if there's something
wrong with my visual line. Next to me, A woman
in a pink dress opens her mouth and her jaw
floats away from her face. Her head floats off of

(33:19):
her neck. Beside her, a man separates into a dozen slices.
God damn it, this is definitely a fatal glitch. But
I am so close to climax. It's going to be
fucking fabulous. I wonder if the narrative can hang together
for just ten more seconds before it crashes all around us.

(33:41):
The people begin to break apart, become floating parts. The
weird lighting effect becomes more intense, and the man seems
to be made of four sections, except each section is
his entire face from a different angle, and they're all
crossing each other but staying in place at the same time.
And eight eyes are watching me. Ah fuck, this is

(34:05):
hurting my brain. Fuck I can't take this. The narrative
should have already crashed back in the safety road. I
say my safe word. Nothing happens. I feel my stomach
drop in terror, except it drops at four different places
all around the room. Oh god, am I stuck in

(34:29):
a crashing narrative? They say, I can fuck you up.
I feel myself falling and expanding. One of my hands
feels like it's way off on the horizon. Another's ten
stories below me. Body parts are swirling around us, showing
all sides at once. The man is staring down at

(34:50):
me with his awful eyes. How are they so awful?
His face is as giant, has a mountain range as
the entire skill. I'm seeing too much, no above and beneath.
Everything has too many sides, screaming. He has dozens of eyes, thousands,

(35:11):
thousands of sides, thousands and millions and millions of eyes. God.
When we got to the clear View Hospital, it was
like Karen said it would be. The emergency room was
flooded with patients coming from Atlanta, but the readjustment center

(35:34):
was empty except for a lone staffer who was watching
the lobby's wall set and praying. The said was showing
footage of the black cloud over Atlanta, or maybe it
was Denver or Riot. Twelve cities had gone up in
the last hour. They weren't the largest or most powerful

(35:57):
cities in the world. Hefe zang Zhao Bangaloroo. What was
the pattern? What the hell had Begaloroo done to anybody?
Karen said, there was no real pattern. This is Q's opening,
move her entrance into the world. She won't destroy everything,

(36:22):
but she will kill and kill until she thinks we
are ready for her demands. I found a wheelchair by
the readjustment Center's entrance and wheeled Karen down to the E.
M R. T Room. Somewhere, a hygiene bed's life alarm
was ringing. I ignored it. My goal was to get
Karen some muscle treatment. A single treatment probably wouldn't give

(36:47):
her enough strength to stand on her own, but she
could at least hold her head up and move her arms.
She might regain her voice and sight. In the treatment room,
I felt a treatment with the minty smelling conducting gel,
and washed caron off and fit her with breathing tubes.

(37:07):
These were normally tech duties, stuff I thought I would
never be doing again. Looking down at this little twig
of a woman on the table, it occurred to me
that all I had to do was tie off her
breathing tube, and that would be the end of her.

(37:27):
I asked her the question that kept coming into my mind.
How do I know for sure that you didn't blow
up and lay to yourself? How do I know you
aren't full of shit? My set was blank, for a
while before she answered, well, how could I prove it?

(37:52):
I tried to think of a way of some kind
of test. I don't know, I said, finally, you know
much about statistical proxy dilation tracing. No, that it would
be hard to prove it to you. So how do
I know it wasn't you? You can't know. I need

(38:16):
to know if I'm going to help you, then learn
about s P d T. I don't have time to
learn about fucking s P fucking d T. Then you
can't know. You're just dealing with stuff that's too advanced.
I walked away from the table and sat down in

(38:37):
a nearby chair. I felt like I was cracking up.
The urge to cry had come and passed every few minutes,
and I came again. I don't know what to do.
I told you we must get to upstate New York.

(38:57):
There's a way to defeat Q. Maybe you are Q.
Listen before you put me in the gel, I want
you to pull my jack battery, cut it off, and
that would prove you're not Q. Not really, I could
have scripted everything. Oh, but it would mean I can't

(39:22):
directly order nuclear strikes. Oh well, that's a relief. I said,
rubbing my face and trying to blink away the fresh
wave of tears. What's in upstate New York that's so important?
There is a resource Q can't access, something she cannot

(39:43):
defend against what. Honestly, if you don't understand something simple
like s P D T, you won't understand this fucking great,
I said. We sat there in silence for a long time.
Moment finally another message showed up. I'm not Q. I

(40:07):
spent my life fighting Q. I fought Q instead of
living a life. We still have a chance to win.
We must win. I sighed and stood up and walked
over to her. Well, then let's get started good. I

(40:31):
found the jack patch on the back of Karen's neck
and squeezed at the tattooed points. Her battery capsule slowly
slid out of her skin like a giant black head.
I disconnected the wire. Now she was completely disconnected from infraspace.
I picked up her body and gently lowered it into

(40:51):
the conducting gel. It took a minute for her to
sing to the bottom for the jail to slowly slide
over her face like a closing curtain. I dialed up
to ninety minutes of muscle treatment and thirty minutes of
eye treatment and started the tub up. I sat for

(41:13):
a while, listening to the soft, wobbling sounds of the
gel shifting as Karen's muscles clenched and unclenched at rapid
fire rate. This was the sort of spare moment where
a person would stare at their set, look at a
game replay or something. But my set was just a

(41:34):
long list of red interrupts telling me about how everybody
was dead. I realized that the hygiene bed's life alarm
was still going off in some other room. Usually when
I heard that sound, I went racing to find out
what was going on, but I had just ignored it. Well,

(41:58):
the person was probably dead before we got here. What
were the odds that they had just gone into a
rest when we walked in the door. And who gave
a shit anyways, when a hundred million people had also
died to day. Still, there was an instinctive part of
me that wanted to run toward the sound, that wanted

(42:21):
to help. I got up and walked down the hall.
The ringing got louder. At the end of the hallway,
there was a small room with four hygiene beds that
had been brought in for in hospital disconnection, a procedure
usually reserved for really complex cases. The last bed was

(42:45):
blinking red. I took a look at the readout, but
it didn't show cardiac a rest. In fact, it was
showing two hundred and sixty beats per minute. It must
have been malfunctioning. I looked at the patient chart, zenzen

(43:07):
Sobakin twenty years old, total connection duration forty seven minutes.
It must have been a runtime crash. Unlucky. I pressed
the seal button and the bed lid opened. When she

(43:30):
came into view, I staggered back and shouted for help.
I sat careing up in the electro convulsive tub and
wiped the warm jail from her face and detached the
breathing tube. Her head rolled back, her face glistening in
the glare of the LED. I could see the shape

(43:53):
of the skull clearly through the wet skin. Slowly, she
pulled her head upright, blinking the goo from her eyelashes. Ah, Hey, hello, Hello,
can you hear this? Yeah? I can hear you. I said, Wow, Okay,

(44:16):
it worked good, she said. Her voice was completely flat
and surprisingly deep for someone so scrawny. I am here,
she said, baring her teeth in what might have been
a smile. Can you see anything, I asked. She opened

(44:38):
her eyes wider and moved them around. Yes, perseust in shapes,
she said, pronouncing the word persistent like a child. Can
you see how many fingers I'm holding up? Now? Try squinting? Oh? Right,

(45:00):
that changes things? Hum two? She was right, except she
was looking at a completely different direction than my hand. Great,
I said slowly. Her knobby knees emerged from the gel
and she grasped them with her hands. It was a

(45:23):
good sign for somebody in her state. It also showed
that she knew some of the standard tests for emergence.
We went through a few more of the tests and
found that the treatment had worked well. She might even
be walking soon. I got her out of the tub
and washed her off and put her into some scrubs.

(45:45):
She managed to sit up right on the table without
leaning on anything. Her bony arms sat stiffly at her sides.
Can I ask you a question? I asked, Sure, she said,
in her deep childish monotone. What is Q? You want
the whole story? Yeah? She took a deep breath. Okay,

(46:14):
so approximately fifty thousand years ago. She told me the
story of Q as she knew it from the beginning
in prehistory, when the hyperspace code was inserted into the
human genome, and she went all the way to write
Now and the so called Plague of the Flesh. Her

(46:36):
description of the plague explained what happened to poor Zenzen
in her hygiene bed. It also explained the red butterfly
thing I found in the other hygiene bed. If you
are reading this, I guess you have access to her
story as well. Hopefully she wrote down the whole history

(46:56):
of Q, because I honestly didn't understand it all and
couldn't do it justice. If I had heard it on
any other day, and the day Atlanta was destroyed, I
wouldn't have believed any of it as it was. I
just looked at it in a calm, detached way, as

(47:19):
if I was just listening to another delusion. I guess
you'll be reading her story before any of this even happens,
so you'll be inclined to believe it even less so.
At that point I asked her how she knew so
much about Q, like what its plans were and everything.

(47:43):
She said, Q had recently stopped hiding anything from her
and the other Bred soldiers. It was fully confident in
its ability to win against them in any scenario. It
no longer felt a need for any secrecy. I asked
her why it had tried to kill her, and she
said that it hadn't It was plain to destroy Atlanta anyways.

(48:09):
She had arranged for the assassin herself an improvisation to
get her out of the city more quickly. I asked
her if her ability to see all those extra dimensions
allowed her to see into the future. She told me
that she could only see extra dimensions in the feed realm.

(48:29):
It allowed her to fight against Q more effectively because
she can process information on a different level. She explained,
When you look at a digital picture, you can process
a huge matrix of color values all at once. If
you try to process the same picture by looking at
a list of color codes for each point, like R

(48:52):
one O one, G two fifty four, B zero seventeen,
it would take forever and be in comprehensible for certain problems.
I have the same advantage over you that you have
over a guy reading a list of color codes on
a ticker. I can see many things all at once.

(49:13):
But I can only see extra dimensions in the feed realm.
Here outside the realm, there seems to only be three
dimensions plus one timeline. I can't see beyond that, but
I can imagine beyond it. So you can't see the future, No,

(49:35):
I can only imagine the future. I can imagine a
lot of futures. Then why did you hire an assassin
for yourself? I mean that just seems like a really
risky move, like something that was unlikely to pan out. Oh,
I couldn't imagine any scenario where it wouldn't have worked. Really,

(50:00):
what if I had just been like, fuck this, I'm
out of here, I'll come now. Nobody would do that.
Nobody would do that. Almost everybody would do that. He
had a gun. Wrestling over firearms is quite common, maybe
in feed narratives, but not in real life. You see

(50:23):
stories about that kind of thing all the time in
the news. We argued about this point for quite a while.
It was like arguing with an intelligent child who has
no clue about the real world. Her view of real
life had been warped by seeing only the sensational parts
of it that managed to leak into the feed realm.

(50:46):
She seemed completely unaware of that most basic and fundamental
fact of human life, that most of it is boring,
that most of it is just waiting around. The people
go through large portions of their lives tired and sleepy
and wanting to lie down. I tried to convince her

(51:07):
of this, but in her short time in the real world,
she had experienced a murderer, a drone strike, and a
nuclear holocaust. So I wasn't having much success until Lo
and behold, she got tired and wanted to lay down.
I helped her into a gurney and we made plans

(51:29):
to head towards Plattsburg in upstate New York. She said
that the key to defeating Q was somewhere near there.
Of course, she was lying to me, but I didn't
realize it at the time. How the flesh dances, and

(51:52):
how the flesh plays, How the flesh toils and spins
through its days. See the flesh happy and strapping and young.
See the flesh sagging, dragging in glum sh Hear now
the giggling, See the shadows grow. Step down the hallway,

(52:15):
each door, aglow, Watch now the ceiling sweet cradle rocks.
Who made these puppets who made this clock. Ancient hand
on the cradle, Withered lips form a song. Golden wheels
spinning backward. Withered hand becomes young. The hands can spin, spin,

(52:42):
then slow. The clock is wound afresh, But is the
key turn this time by fingers made of flesh. I
am twenty four, and it's a Friday night in early summer.
The sun is settling down into a haze beyond the mountains,

(53:04):
and the city's concrete is beginning to cool after a
baking day. The signs for all the bars are turning on.
The windows of stolid office buildings become a wild collage
of reflected neon. Yes, everybody wants the party to night.
Even the Central Insurance Bank is looking festive. I've drunk

(53:27):
six beers. I am right in the zone, active, playful, charming,
Oh so charming. I am actually charming myself right now
with my internal monolog reeling off clever little observations about
the people who pass on the sidewalk. I can see

(53:50):
a glowing doorway in my mind. All I have to
do is walk through it. My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Who's calling me now? Maybe it's my usual gang of friends,
or the sweetish friends I drank with until six a m.
Last weekend, or one of the dozens of girls who

(54:12):
are saved in my phone with thoughtful pet names like
brown Hair Too and Meton Park. But I'm not going
to answer my phone. I don't want to make any plans.
I am simply going to walk down this street and
something is going to happen. Because the door is open,

(54:36):
the world awaits. I stand by a food vendor and
watch people pass. I smile, nod, make funny comments. Most
people smile and pass right by. Others linger for a while.
Two girls and a guy start talking to me, their

(54:57):
tourists from out of town. What are they looking to do?
A nice place, sir, Just somewhere cheap. Do they like sake?
I know just the place, Sure, no problem, and we're
off soon. We're sitting in a booth and the sake
is arriving at regular intervales, and I'm telling crazy stories

(55:21):
and snapping off jokes, and I'm listening to them and
they're telling me about themselves. And one of the girls
keeps glancing at me when she thinks I'm not looking.
And I am thirty, and I am in a darkened apartment,
hunched over the glow of my laptop screen, jacking off.

(55:46):
I finish and go to the bathroom to wash up,
and there's that moment, that same moment where I have
to look at my blotchy face in the mirror and say, well,
not my proudest moment in my head, the same joke

(56:07):
I make to myself every time. When I'm done, I
stand in the doorway of my bathroom and look at
the tiny studio apartment. A desk, a laptop, a futon,
a small window with the curtains closed against the summer glare,

(56:28):
A crowd of empty bottles on the floor by the door,
the stink of old sweat and beer. I whimper. The
door is closed, the doors closed forever. I am locked
in this apartment, this little box, closed off to the world.

(56:53):
Now that the jerking off is done, the jitteriness starts
to creep back in. I want to drink, but it's
only three pm. I've only been awake for half an hour.
I should wait until at least eight before drinking, at

(57:14):
least six. But this is torment. I need some nour
I will have some kind of fucking seizure. Just two shots.
That's it, and then no drinking until I am thirty
three and I'm sitting in the twenty four hour Club

(57:36):
listening to a man talk about a mouse that changed
his life. He had been living out of his car
for a month, and it was so full of trash
that a mouse started living there too. This was the
problem that finally broke him. I finally showed him the
absurdity of it all. I finally made him get sober.

(58:01):
How do you set mouse traps in a car? It's
a pretty good story, but I've heard it before. Stallid
Haircut walks into the meeting Plait again. I call him
Stolid Haircut because I don't know his name, but he

(58:23):
has a respectable Republican haircut, silver and gray and sculpted
into broad curves that recall the body of a pregas
crisis American sedan. He wears the uniform of a retiree,
bright blue dad jeans with running shoes and white socks,

(58:44):
and a plaid shirt buttoned up to the next to
top button. Stallid Haircut walks with the wide, clumsy steps
of a hesitant toddler. Years of alcoholism have damaged his rebellum,
resulting in an abnormal gait. This and his redden venous

(59:07):
nose make his weakness for alcohol plane for everyone to see.
At a glance, you can know his most painful personal shame.
His lips are permanently pursed into an embarrassed smile. I
watched him ease into a chair and go back to

(59:29):
listening about the mouse, and find myself looking at him again.
It's a tragic haircut. The haircut caused me from some
golden past. It is the haircut of a man who
once was in days gone by. It was thick and

(59:54):
brown and belonged to a man who walked with a
purposeful stride, a husband and father, kind of guy who
hoisted his son onto his shoulders to watch passing prates,
who played softball and relaxed with a few beers after

(01:00:15):
work and a few whiskies after that, but always woke
up bright and early the next day, who worked hard,
who knew who he was, who knew right from wrong,
who knows how the world ought to be. I stared

(01:00:39):
at his soft, shining, embarrassed eyes and feel my own
filling with tears. How it all has slipped away from him.
The young son has grown the job is done. The
wife doesn't talk. Everything that once was strong and sure

(01:01:00):
is now frail and shaky. How many nightmares has this
ordinary man seen? I saw so many in just ten years,
and I am nowhere near the point of an abnormal gait.
This man has seen unutterable things. How bewildered was he

(01:01:25):
when it first came for him, the scuttling darkness. Did
he think he was going mad? He comes from a
generation where this sort of thing is not discussed. How
he must have suffered the haircut, the haircut, the haircut,

(01:01:51):
the bleeding drops of red. I am staring at him openly.
The rest of the meeting is not there anymore. A
halo of light pours out around his face, and he
becomes a vision. Doves and cherubim swirl around him. Esher

(01:02:12):
staircases extend in every direction. Mandelas expand and overlap and spin,
and the door, my god, for a moment, the door
is open again. Right now. The cars headed silent down

(01:02:33):
the highway. It's dark and there's nobody driving. I snuggle
up in my seat and listen to the hum of
its parts. I have turned my set off as shows
nothing but reports of destruction and plagues, the world on fire,
the world gone mad. Mostly the interstates have shut down.

(01:03:00):
They want people to stay in one place. The car
is moving along the back roads, switching from one lonely
little highway to another. We are headed towards the answer,
towards the key to defeating Kew. I hope we get
there fast. Slowly, the sky pales and the blue curves

(01:03:22):
of the mountains emerge from the darkness beyond the guard rails.
I heard once that the Appalachians used to be as
high as to Himalayas. Looking at the sloping hills under
the sky, I consense the ancient shape of the world,
a world that was here before us. Man, I'm getting

(01:03:45):
pretty philosophical in my mind. Another shape appears, massive, continental,
the slope of human decline, the full descent of the
human race into Christ. Let's just enjoy the pretty mountains.

(01:04:08):
Karen is lying in the back. She is doing another
eye treatment with equipment we took from the hospital. Before
we reach Plattsburgh, the car switches highways and heads west.
The sun climbs higher. We are getting closer. Eventually, the

(01:04:29):
car turns into an unpaved road. After a few minutes,
it slows to a stop, and here we are. I
look around. It's a nice bit of country scenery, grass
and trees and gentle hills and blue sky and pretty
much fuck all. There is nothing here, or whatever is

(01:04:54):
here is hidden. Karen is still doing the eye treatment.
In the darkness of the van's rear. Light from the
goggles seeps out a little flashes, sketching the shape of
her face. Finally, the goggles turn green. She pulls them off,

(01:05:15):
blinking and squinting. I go and help her set up again.
You see a little better, I ask. She looks down
at her hands, moving the fingers slowly in the dark. Yeah,
persistent shapes. She raises her hand into a shaft of

(01:05:37):
sunlight shining in from the front of the van. Her
fingers sketch the glow my hands, she says softly, her
voice quavering with disbelief. It's the first strong emotion I've
ever heard from her. Good, that's great, I say, Well,

(01:06:02):
we're here. What do we do now? She looks at
me and smiles maniacally. We go into the forest, she says.
Her smile is unnatural and stiff, more of a grimace
than a smile. But for a brief moment, as at
first spreads across her face. She looks like a giddy

(01:06:26):
little kid. The key is there, she says. What is
it some kind of secret underground base, a hidden laboratory.
She makes a groaning sound that I barely recognize this laughter.
You play too many narratives. It's much simpler than that.

(01:06:50):
I unfold a wheelchair that we borrowed from the hospital
and help her into it. When I open the back
doors of the van, she wins against the bright sunlight,
and again her face looks like a little kid's for
a moment. I give her a pair of huge, black
wrap around sunglasses that we took from the eye treatment center.

(01:07:14):
The van lowers to the ground, and I rolled a
wheelchair out onto the dusty road. She makes sure I
take a bag of supplies with us, snacks and drinks
and other stuff. The sun is warm on my skin,
but the breeze is fresh and cool. It's a perfect day.

(01:07:34):
You would think that everything is right in the world.
So where to I ask? She looks around, her head,
wobbling on her thin stalk up and neck, her eyes
hidden by the massive glasses. There was once a house here,
Do you see it? I look around and spy a low,

(01:07:58):
crumble gray wall, mostly hidden behind the high grass. I
think I see an old foundation. That's it, she says,
her eyes are hidden. There's something in her voice that
wasn't there yesterday, shivery excitement. It makes me excited too.

(01:08:20):
I pushed the wheelchair down a weedy gravel driveway toward
the foundation. There's nothing else left of the house. It
must have been torn down and hauled off. Karen has
me push her around it and go down a trail
leading towards the forest. What was that house? I ask?

(01:08:42):
Anything important? I used to live there. I turn and
give it another look, as if I would see some
new detail in the crumbling concrete that I had missed.
That was the old children's home. Yep, And where are
we going? We're almost there, she says. It's close. We

(01:09:08):
follow the trail into the forest. The trees become thick
and shadowy. The wheelchair has a little power assist, but
it's still tough to push and over all the roots
and rocks that lie along the narrowing, twisting path. Oh yes,
Karen whispers excitedly. Up ahead, sunlight gleams through the branches

(01:09:31):
of the crowding trees. A wave of excitement moves through me,
and I push Karen faster. We come out into a clearing,
a broad patch of wild grass that glows green and
golden in the sunlight. Here, Karen says, I stop the
wheelchair and look around. At first glance, there doesn't seem

(01:09:56):
to be anything here. So what's here? I am as
I used to come here as a child, play make
believe before I was connected. I take a walk around
the clearing, looking for something a hatch, a hole, an

(01:10:16):
actual key lying in the grass. There is nothing across
the clearing. Karen is slowly pulling off her sunglasses. When
her eyes appear, they startle me. They are wide and
gleaming with utter fascination. I walk up to her. She

(01:10:40):
is staring at something. Tears fill the rim of her
eyes and spill over. What is she looking at? It
seems to be something right in front of her, something
I can't see. I stand beside her and crouch so
I can see what she is seeing. There's nothing there

(01:11:03):
but a small cloud of gnats. What are you looking at?
I ask? She looked all around, takes a deep breath
and shudders. There's more, she whispers or what they said,
the feeds were complete, but they were wrong. I wait

(01:11:29):
for her to say more, but she doesn't. What do
you mean, I ask. She looks at me and smiles
the most goofy craze smile I've ever seen, tears still
flowing down her cheeks. The designers of the feed said
that it provides a complete experience, enough colors, enough frames,

(01:11:52):
enough smell gradients, enough complexity to make it indistinguishable from reality.
But they were wrong. On here, Look at them, she says,
raising her hand into the air. You mean the gnats. Yes,

(01:12:16):
the gnats are glowing specks, dancing senselessly in the sunlight.
I wonder if some pattern will emerge? Can care and
control them with her mind? Is that the secret? Are
they forming shapes? But they just dance and dance, forming nothing,

(01:12:38):
making no pattern that I can see. I feel silly
for even thinking that they would. They're gnats. I turn away.
A flood of angry thoughts rushes through my mind. Gnats,
fucking gnats. She's a nut. She's lost it. Yeah, she's

(01:13:01):
powerful and impressive in the feed realm, but now she
is in the real world. She has completely lost her shit,
and this whole trip has been a waste. Is there
anything here? I ask, what's the key? Seriously, don't give
me any of that bullshit like I can't explain or

(01:13:21):
you'll see. Just tell me what are we doing here?
What is the plan? The crazed look of joy fades
from her face and is replaced by a look of
a scolded child. She lets her head hang and wipes
the tears from her face with her weak little hands.

(01:13:43):
I feel bad. I kneel by her chair and say,
I'm sorry. Please just tell me what your plan is.
I need to know now, Karen begins, speaking softly, without
looking up. Q has base control of every major system

(01:14:05):
in the world, every drone, every rover, every defense robot,
all orbital assets, all nuclear weaponry. She has control over
most human political systems. She has destroyed or contained every
existing countermeasure, including me. There is no scenario in which

(01:14:28):
we could ever reacquire control now with a thousand times
our current resources, now with a thousand years of computation time.
So then what's the plan? What we need is a
way for Q to be destroyed by just one or
few motivated individuals. I believe there was points in the

(01:14:52):
past when this could have happened. Maybe one of the
Germans overseeing the early research program could have stopped it.
Maybe it could have been stopped round twenty twenty when
the portals were shut down and interface research was temporarily abandoned,
But it didn't happen. Currently, at this point, there is

(01:15:15):
no way for it to happen. Q has control Afar
far too many assets. The war is already lost irrevocably.
Then what do we do. We must hope that there
are alternate time lines, and that somebody in one of

(01:15:36):
these time lines foresees what is happening to us right now,
that somebody foresees this very moment in time and takes
steps to prevent it. I stare at her. She looks
into my eyes. I groped for words. Is that? Wait? Wait,

(01:15:58):
alternate time lines? Is that the plan? We have to
send a message back into the past in a sense,
then the person who receives this message will destroy Q
in the past, and that will save us. Karen shakes

(01:16:19):
her head slowly. No, that clearly won't happen, or everything
would already be different. We are utterly doomed. Will either
be incinerated in a nuclear strike or rounded up and
incorporated into Q. There is no stopping that. They only

(01:16:43):
hope to feed Q is on some other timeline. If
such a thing exists, there's no hope for us at all.
Then what are we doing here? Why are we in
this fucking clearing? Haven't you felt it? Felt? What the

(01:17:07):
feeling that you're inside a narrative? An eerie shiver comes
over me. I look around at the clearing like I'm
inside a feed now, inside a narrative, a story in

(01:17:28):
somebody's mind. Doesn't this all seem just like a story
two people rushing off to save the world, to find
some hidden key in the forest. Yeah, it all seems
pretty unbelievable. That's how I wanted it to feel. That's

(01:17:52):
why we came out here, so that we can be
inside a story. Now, hopefully there's somebody out there in
the past who will write the story. Write the story.
What so there's nothing out here, there's no magic key

(01:18:16):
or secret underground base. Well, this story sucks. Why it's
a huge fucking letdown. Karen makes a mild choking sound
that might be a chuckle. I slumped down into the
grass beside her wheelchair and hang my head. I'm out

(01:18:39):
in the woods with a crazy person. She doesn't even
make sense. She spent too long in five D. She's
talking about alternate timelines. Finally, I asked her, so we're
just fucked right. If you look toward our future, if

(01:19:01):
you look at the series of events which will happen
to us, they are dark, they are very awful. We
will suffer, we will die. But that would be true
in any timeline. On the other hand, if you look
at the entire story not as a series of events,

(01:19:24):
not from beginning to end, but as a single, continuous,
connected shape where every event is occurring simultaneously. I think
my life, even my stupid little life, which I spent
mostly inside that hygiene bed, could form a beautiful shape.

(01:19:51):
I snort, I'm tired of the scryptic bullshit. Karen goes on,
Maybe that's the shape reaches back back to some place
where somebody can see it and change things. I don't
say anything. Karen reaches into her bag of supplies pulls

(01:20:15):
out one of the little paper notebooks she bought at
the gas station. What are you doing, I ask, I'm
going to write a poem. Do you want a notebook? What? Four?
Maybe there's somebody out there. Who needs you to write
a story? Who would read it? Isn't everybody going to die?

(01:20:42):
Who knows? She says, and drops the other notebook into
my lap. Maybe somebody would be interested. I tossed the
notebook off into the grass. Fucking pointless. I can barely
write on paper anyway. We sit in silence for a

(01:21:04):
long time. When I look up, Karen is staring at
the same little cloud of gnats, occasionally jotting stuff down.
I find myself staring at them too. They look like
nothing more than living specks of dust worked into a crazy,

(01:21:26):
whirling frenzy. Is there any pattern in how they move?
Would it matter if there was? I think about what
Karen said about the shape of her life, what it
would look like if everything happened simultaneously, if it could

(01:21:47):
all be seen at once. I think about the shape
of my own life. I stare at the gnats and
imagine seeing every position of every gnat all at one time.
What kind of shape would it make, even if I

(01:22:07):
could see it? When this shape have any meaning? I
pick up the notebook and began to write. Before writing
the series, I wrote a novel. I worked on it

(01:22:28):
for six years. The worst years of my life. As
I sank deeper into alcoholism and became a pathetic, trembling recluse,
I held on to the novel as my one desperate hope.
Maybe it would turn out well. Maybe it would get published,
Maybe it would sell well. Maybe my life would change,

(01:22:49):
maybe I would escape my stinking little apartment. What dreams
I had? What desperate little dreams. As my life got worse,
I told myself I was on a journey of self discovery,
that I was an artist going through a period of
struggle before my great breakthrough. Every famous artist has some

(01:23:13):
story of living in a tiny apartment and working a
mind numbing job and eating crab food before their first
big success. Surely this was just part of my story.
How much richer would my success be after all this
pathetic degradation. After a night of writing, I would get
drunk and imagine myself being interviewed in front of an

(01:23:36):
auditorium full of my fans, telling self deprecating by touching
anecdotes about my ragged days before I became a literary success.
The audience, full of bookishly pretty young women would titter
and sigh as they related to my struggles and admire
my unwavering determination what fantasy I had. There were other

(01:24:03):
times when I knew that I was just comforting myself
with delusions of grandeur, that I was trying to romanticize
my lazy failure of a life by pretending to be
a struggling artist on the verge of success. Really, I
was just a lazy drunk on the verge of fuck all.

(01:24:23):
I wasn't even some proud rebel drunk like Charles Brukowski.
I hated myself. I didn't write enough, or read enough,
or know enough, or work hard enough to be a
real writer. I had never read Anna Carnina or One
Hundred Years of Solitude or anything by Henry James. I

(01:24:44):
was often bored when reading and bored when writing. Did
I even like it? I had half asked my way
through school and work and relationships. I had half asked
everything I have ever done, and I was even half
asking something that was supposed to be important to me.

(01:25:04):
I hadn't even finished one novel after six years, and
then there was the most damning evidence of all my
writing sucked. Sometimes I felt like I was a fraud.
Sometimes I felt like I was on the right path.
Sometimes I felt like both of these things were true

(01:25:26):
at once, Like I was on two different timelines, my
view on the matter changed often. At night, I tended
to regard myself as being on the very cusp of
fame and fortune. The next morning, I tended to wake
up feeling like an untalented dilettante. Meanwhile, this supposedly temporary

(01:25:48):
period of struggle stretched on and on and on. I
turned thirty. Surely something would happen by forty What if
it didn't. As I withdrew from friends and co workers,
it became more of a recluse. I rationalized it as
concentrating on my writing, except my busy schedule of drinking

(01:26:12):
and hangovers didn't allow for much writing. The story of
the struggling artist was showing itself to be a lie.
Then I got fired from my job and sent to rehab.
After I stopped drinking, I used my newfound energy in
spare time to finish the novel. I finished it in

(01:26:33):
a few months. You can get a lot done when
you're not entering the void every night. For someone like me,
the completion of a six year struggle is an occasion
which simply begs to be accompanied by a drink. By
many drinks. I had always planned to just go get
drunk for an entire week after I finished my novel. Instead,

(01:26:59):
I took a walk down to a nearby bar and
stood outside of it for a while. I didn't go in.
In my head, my life seemed to redeveloping into a
new story, a heroic turnaround in which I got sober
and everything fell into place. Yes, surely this was how

(01:27:21):
it would go. I sent letters to thirty literary agents
with the hopes of getting the book published. None expressed
any interest. It hurt to be rejected. I had stopped drinking,
but I still hadn't found a fulfilling job. I was
able to talk to people and loot cashiers in the
eye again, but I was still a recluse. I had

(01:27:45):
still invested a lot of desperate hopes into getting the
novel published. I felt so foolish for investing so much
hope into something that is just so unlikely, but I
couldn't help myself, Laura, feeling some sense of purpose and
accomplishment was just too much. I wanted to be noticed, honestly,

(01:28:08):
I wanted to be rich and famous. Though they may
have been disguised as achieving, artistic success and finding my purpose.
Perhaps my dreams were ultimately as crass and grasping as
any Kardashians. I had given the literary agents four months
to respond to me before accepting that they were not interested.

(01:28:32):
Soon after that deadline passed, I started writing this web series.
As you may know, a few websites wrote articles about
the series, and some very lovely people created a very
wonderful subreddit about it, and this drew the attention of
people in the publishing industry. They contacted me, and just

(01:28:54):
like that, my long held dream was again revived, and
now it seemed more reach than ever. I had been
struggling to contact agents, and now they were contacting me.
What a hatty feeling. Again, it felt like everything was
falling into place, like my life was shaping into a

(01:29:17):
story with a happy ending. Speaking of endings, I need
to come up with an ending for this series before
I could finally take my rightful place as the leading
might of the literati. A few people on the subreddit
had expressed doubt that I could possibly deliver a satisfying ending,

(01:29:39):
and I was inclined to agree with them. I had
already noticed that the story was easier to write when
I was opening narrative threads than when I was wrapping
them up. A would the overall ending be. It had
to be about mother, that was the center of the story.
But what did I really know about beyond a few

(01:30:01):
vague memories. I had long puzzled over these memories. Back
when I was drinking, I was convinced that something had
happened to me one summer, something beyond my understanding, something monstrous.
But after I got sober, I was encouraged to digest

(01:30:22):
some hard truths about myself, and I decided that it
was entirely possible that I had more or less made
it all up. Not that I simply lied to myself,
but more that I had latched onto some vague memory,
perhaps a reoccurring nightmare, and built it up in my

(01:30:43):
mind over the years, perhaps as an explanation for why
I was so emotionally fucked up. It was easier to
face life as a victim of some unknown, half remembered evil.
Gave me an excuse to crawl into the bottle. I

(01:31:03):
needed to provide a satisfying ending to the series and
to my quest to get published. Being intertwined, both of
these tasks rested on a hazy collection of sinister memories.
Then again, couldn't I just make some shut up? Hadn't
I been doing that all along? The solution presented itself

(01:31:26):
to me one night when I was talking with my
roommate Sean. He told me, back when he smoked crack,
he used to break into abandoned buildings to see if
there was stuff to steal. He said that once he
broke into a warehouse downtown and found a set of
stairs that led to an underground room, which led to
even more rooms that went deep underground. Over the course

(01:31:49):
of a few weeks, he went deeper and deeper into
the complex, taking various stuff, but always leaving quickly because
it as a spooky place. On the last night he
snuck into the complex, he found a room where the
walls were covered in human bone. So there I was

(01:32:14):
on the front porch with Shan, both of us sitting
in rickety old chairs, slapping away the mosquitoes, when he
mentioned quietly that he had once seen a room where
the walls were covered with human bone. Right away, my
heart started thumping in my chest. He must have seen
my Reddit post. This was something I had been worrying

(01:32:37):
about even dreading My posts were none too flattering of him,
and he was a very private person, very defensive of
his boundaries. He would see it as an intrusion and
a betrayal. I had taken great pains to obscure the
details of his identity, giving him a new name and

(01:32:59):
a different sort of afrocentric religion. Nobody would recognize him
from my post, but some of the stuff in my
writing had been taken verbatim from our conversations. If he
saw them, he would surely recognize himself. Sean was not

(01:33:19):
a guy I wanted to piss off. When he first
came to the house, he told us that his main
character defect was his temper, and he wasn't kidding. On
more than one occasion, I had watched anger build up
inside of him until he ended up chewing somebody out.
It was a sort of scene that left me tiptoeing

(01:33:40):
back into my bedroom giddily thankful I wasn't taking the
brunt of his outrage. All those years as a recluse
had left me with no appetite for confrontation. Sean had
been sincerely working on his temper. He was the only
black dude in the house and he was worried about
being seen as the angry black guy. He often said

(01:34:04):
to me, you get up in somebody's face and they'll
be like, say, fellows, let's work this thing out. But
if I cross the line, they'll be like, call the police.
This dude's gone crazy. I assured him that this was
not the case, while not being entirely sure that this
wasn't the case. As a result of his fears, he

(01:34:25):
had become very indirect about how he expressed his anger.
If he felt somebody was disrespecting him, he would give
them the silent treatment for a while, then come down
hard on them for something small, all the while being
very careful not to raise his voice or make any
threatening gestures, which somehow made him more intimidating. As much

(01:34:50):
as he didn't want to play out the angry black
eye stereotype, I didn't want to play out the meek,
affronted white guy stereotype. But I was sometimes in intimidated
by him. So now, when he told me about the
walls covered with bone, I figured he must have been
feeling me out, seeing if I would come clean about
what I had written. But it was such a strange

(01:35:13):
way to do it. I didn't know what to say.
I looked him in the eye, trying to make my
face completely natural. He gazed back at me, his face
half in shadow, half colored by the yellow porch light,
his expression dead serious. He went on speaking softly. Sculls, teeth,

(01:35:40):
arms and hands melted together on the walls, up on
the ceiling. He had seen in real life what I
had only seen in my mind. He was about to
tell me that the flesh interfaces, and mother and all
the other nightmares were true. I had, on some level

(01:36:02):
known this was coming. It was the culmination of the
strange feelings I had all weak. It started when I
was sitting in that AA meeting, looking at the sad
face of the old man with a stolid haircut. I
had entered a strange and sudden reverie, carried away by

(01:36:22):
the sheer, damn poignancy of this man's hair cut, and
how it symbolized the sword of strong, upright man he
had tried and failed to be. I saw him in
a great shifting vision, different versions of him emerging and overlapping.
Here he was a young boy learning how to use

(01:36:43):
a comb. Here he was a young man, the wind
ruffling his sturdy locks as he experienced that rush of
confidence that comes with drink. Here he was in front
of the mirror, running the comb through his wet hair
with a shape hand, dropping it into the sink. Here

(01:37:05):
he was with stitches just below the hairline after another
accidental fall. Here he is finally faced down at the
bottom of his stairs, his hair ever so slightly muzzed,
just a few strands out of place, almost perfect. The

(01:37:29):
next day, my roommate Donnie, the ex marine, and I
went out to the river to swim. It was a
perfect sunny day and there were a lot of people
out swimming and floating along in inner tubes. As I
lay back in the cool waters, feeling the warm forest
of air alive on my wet skin, I saw for

(01:37:50):
a moment that vanished primeval world peopled by the forest children.
These children lived along the river, not working or toiling,
but simply taking what the river offered, living and dying
by the good mother's generosity. Sure they wouldn't know the

(01:38:12):
benefits of writing or agriculture, and they would drop like
flies to horrible diseases and predators, but in doing so
they would accept their humble place in the universe, rather
than striving to overcome it through science or religion. They
would know themselves to be fragile things which lived for

(01:38:34):
a brief moment and died like limours on the river's water.
For the second time in as many days, I found
myself with tears in my eyes over some trivial moment,
and I was forced to turn away from Donnie as
he related a story about Marine Buddy, who had been

(01:38:54):
given a humorous nickname by the platoon due to his
uncanny neck for finding and acquire venereal diseases. In AA,
they talk about not struggling or trying to manage everything,
but rather letting God manage it. Not believing in an
interventionalist God. I had to interpret this as simply trying

(01:39:17):
to accept the things I cannot change. I saw a
vision of my life where I was able to accept
life's vicissitudes with humility and grace, and where life opened
itself to me as a result. With it came a
wave of nostalgia. Last time I felt this, I had

(01:39:39):
been in college and taking a lot of acid. How
long had I shut myself away from life and that
goddamn apartment, with that goddamn bottle. I had been unable
to accept any discomfort or unhappiness, so I had avoided
everything except life. I had tried to control my feelings,

(01:40:03):
and as a result, I found discomfort and unhappiness like
I never imagined. But now I could accept life, Embrace life,
welcome all the awkwardness and frustration and pain and indignities.
How many opportunities right at my fingertips. I could talk

(01:40:27):
to one of these girls wearing the smart bathing suits
and be married in a few months, or just find
a friend, or be hired as staff writer as some
kind of pastry magazine. Anything was possible. I saw now
the glowing door open before me. I saw all the
doors open, all the doors open, and a line one

(01:40:51):
after another, and behind them all there was there was
what I couldn't say. The insight slipped away without revealing itself,
but the fading reverie left a warm glow, and I
dipped my head back into the cool water and looked

(01:41:14):
up into the sky crowded with bright, weightless clouds. I
could see now that so many things were coming together
in my life. I was getting sober, I was learning
to talk to people, even the dream of being a novelist.

(01:41:35):
The dream was coming true. So now, when Sean told
me about the walls covered with bone, it seemed like
yet another thing falling into place. But this time it
was something sinister, something so awful. I thought it couldn't
be real. Now it seemed that whatever force was bringing

(01:41:58):
my dreams to life was also acting on my nightmares.
I looked Shon in the eye, trying to make my
face completely neutral. He gazed back at me, his face
half in shadow, half colored by the yellow porch light.
I asked him, very carefully, is this something you read

(01:42:21):
about on the internet. He shook his head and said no, man,
and looked down into his lap. I needed to find
out exactly what was going on, even if a man
giving myself away, I asked him, have you been reading

(01:42:41):
my Reddit post? He squinted at me and asked, read it?
What is that? So it was real? After all? A

(01:43:05):
full scale interfaced portal below a highly populated urban center.
In the early days of flesh interface technology, this would
have been considered utter madness. The uncontrolled incident zone would
have resulted in mass segmentation and total chaos, and looking
back on the experiment, madness was in fact the result.

(01:43:30):
Before a brief time, it seemed like an idea worth exploring.
It all started one day when a mid level analyst
was navigating a three D map of the Honduras contained
interface too and felt the urge to go to the bathroom.
Just as she was getting up from her desk. She
was struck by an overwhelming realization. But before we get

(01:43:53):
to that, you must understand some background information first. Building
an interface below a populated city was now possible. Because
we had learned how to control the size of the
incident zone. We could create interfaces with incident zones that
only existed within the interface tunnel, instead of there being

(01:44:13):
a large, uncontrolled zone around the interface. This was achieved
through a breakthrough involving signal cables. For years, we thought
that the interfaces had little appetite for anything, but flesh,
machines and other objects were ignored. They were not incorporated
into the interface superstructure. It did not seem to undergo

(01:44:36):
significant travel, but the Chinese figured out that the interfaces
were willing to incorporate electromagnetic signal cables. If alive transmitting
cable was sent into a fagus corridor, the cable was
taken up by the scilla limbs and connected directly into
the interface's nervous conduits. At this point we could send

(01:44:58):
and receive signals from the interface. You could imagine our excitement.
We had a working example of seamless techno organic integration.
It would naturally become the basis for direct sense feed technology.
In those early days, we had no idea what the
interface did with the signals we sent to it, nor

(01:45:21):
could we make much sense of the signals it sent
to us. All we knew is that it loved signals.
The more the better, the more cables we hooked up,
and the more information we sent and received, the smaller
the segmentation zone would become. As computing in signal technology advanced,

(01:45:42):
we were able to reduce the segmentation zone to an
area within the interface tunnels. Finally, we had a relatively
safe and stable flesh interface. Still, we had no reason
to consider building an interface below a city until our
Midland level analysts made her startling discovery. Before this discovery,

(01:46:06):
we knew that the size of a flesh interface depended
chiefly on one factor, how much flesh it was provided.
But at a certain point the interface would cease to
grow even if it was provided with ample building material.
We wanted to know why why had the Nova Zemlia
and the Artigas portals grown so large when other portals

(01:46:29):
were offered more flesh but failed to grow. In addition,
we wanted to know what factors shaped the configuration of
the interface tunnels, the so called and farms. At that point,
we knew only a few basic facts. The tunnel would
form either underground or underwater, but not in the atmosphere.

(01:46:51):
The underwater tunnels were much larger than the underground tunnels,
generating more segmentation and requiring more signal transfer to the segmentation.
While the interface tunnels avoided the surface, they had little
regard for the composite of the rock, sand, or soil
that they were tunneling through. They tunneled through everything at

(01:47:13):
rate chiefly determined by how quickly we fed them flesh.
It was impossible to observe the tunneling process, but it
must have happened via segmentation because the dirt rock which
was removed simply disappeared. The tunnels were self supporting and
would remain in place even if the surrounding earth shifted

(01:47:35):
unless they were wholly exposed to the open air, in
which case they would putrefy. But why did the tunnels
take one configuration or another. What our mid level analysts
discovered as she traveled through the three D digital recreation
was that the route she was taking was strangely similar
to the trip she took to the bathroom every day.

(01:47:57):
It was an odd little route through a poorly dis
research facility, which included a short flight of stairs and
a switchback at the end of the hall. All of
this was reflected in the ant tunnel. Forgetting for a
moment about her desire to use the bathroom, she took
an emergency escape map off the wall and compared it

(01:48:19):
to the ant tunnel she was studying. The layout of
the Honduras Research Facility, which was just a few hundred
meters from the interface entrance, was quite different from the
layout of the interface tunnels, but there were certain similarities
which went beyond coincidence. The analysts discovery spread quickly through

(01:48:40):
the facility, and the analyst herself was given a minor
promotion along with a new office. It was discovered that
the interface tunnels did not copy the architecture of the
research building, but rather the most frequently used paths and
most frequently occupied rooms in the building. That is, it
copied the layout of human activity within the building. But

(01:49:04):
even this did it in a distorted, oblique way, repeatedly
copying and multiplying certain sections of the layout, as if
the building map was being viewed through a multifaceted lens.
For the people working in the facility, the discovery was
nothing less than eerie. Shortly after the newly promoted analysts

(01:49:25):
moved into a new office, a new section of tunnel
was created within the interface to reflect this. No longer
were the analyst detached observers. It was clear that on
some level they were being observed and copied for some
inscrutable purpose. A quick comparison of interfaces and nearby human

(01:49:48):
occupied research facilities revealed unmistakable parallels. Huge facilities such as
NOVAA tended to produce huge interfaces. This even held for
undersea interfaces such as artigas, but the nearest facility might
be many kilometers away. The correlation was stupefyingly obvious once

(01:50:10):
we looked for it, and had set off a wave
of crazed speculation. People started theorizing that the interfaces were
affected by all sorts of things, the mood in the office,
how much coffee we drank, the health of our potted plants.
This period of wild speculation came to be known as
the correlation game, as almost anything was proposed as a

(01:50:33):
possible correlation. Most of this speculation came to nothing, but
there was one idea that gained traction. What if we
built an interface in a highly populated area and gave
it unlimited flash material? How big would it get? There

(01:50:56):
was this abandoned warehouse that everybody knew about. I knew
it had evil spirits when I first went into it,
but the crack had me thinking nothing could touch me.
Even the other crackheads didn't like to go in there,
except the ones who had really fell off. Those ones
you see standing around, just staring through the wall. But

(01:51:17):
I'm up in here like I got God's protection. I
don't fear anything. But really it's just a crack talking.
I start looking around and I find some stairs. In
the back. At the bottom is a steel door. This
thing is big, solid, dead bolts everything. Somebody already went
at it with a sledge, but it ain't moved at all.

(01:51:40):
You think there's crackheads in there, every night, and they
still ain't broke through that door. That's a solid door.
So where I was working at I knew my boss
had a spreader like some jaws of live shit. So
the next night I took it and I broke open
that door and was just a little room with block

(01:52:02):
walls and another door, same big ass steel door. And
there was a smell that underground smell, but also like
how when the spirits are unclean, they made a stink
that smell. I broke open the next door and it's
a hallway with another door. I keep going through the place,

(01:52:25):
breaking open doors, but it's mostly empty, just some desks
and computers too old to sell. I was like shit,
So I took the doors, sold them for scrap, heavy
ass doors. The reason nobody got in them doors before
is because a crackhead can't hold onto something like a
hydraulic spreader. That thing was like four hundred dollars. The

(01:52:49):
crackhead will just sell the spreader. He ain't gonna fuck
with those doors when he can just get his four
hundred dollars. I still had some discipline. I was smoking rocks,
but I had some discipline, so I would put it
back in the morning before my boss saw I took it.
But that crack had me going. So one day I

(01:53:13):
sold the spreader too. My boss never figured out it
was me who took that spreader. I was so slick.
Then some things happened with me and my wife, and
I stopped smoking for a while. Things were going all right.
She acted like I was going to see my kids.
But nah, I had forgot all about that old warehouse.

(01:53:38):
But just as soon as I had forgotten, I looked
at my boss's trailer and he had another spreader. I
was like, damn, I didn't even want to look at it.
I had been clean for two months, but the crack
was whispering. It got me again, and I was back

(01:53:59):
down in that warehouse. I was just breaking open doors,
going room to room. There was hallways, stairs, more rooms.
I keep going deeper. I found a room full of cages,
a real big room, like a pound. I was glad
because it was a lot of metal. But in that

(01:54:22):
last cage at the end, do you believe the things
I'm saying? I know you don't believe in God. I
know you don't care about the Jews or the Gentiles.
The Bible is real, but it happened a long time ago.
People have forgotten. That's why they carry on like they do.

(01:54:43):
They don't know. It's just when people forget, that's when
the Lord comes again, and he will punish us all
for the antiquities, the evils we do. The days to
come will be full of terror, will chastise us like
little children. The smell was strong in that room, real strong,

(01:55:08):
that evil smell. I knew what I would find before
I found it. There were some bones in the last cage,
little bones, curled up in the corner, still with clothes on.
I got out of there. I was gone. I wasn't
never going to come back. But God, I came back

(01:55:30):
and I chopped up those cages and I took them
all out, just kicked them bones out on the floor.
I came back again the next day and broke into
the next room, and there was more cages, all of
them full. I was supposed to be back in mild

(01:55:51):
house with my wife and kids, but I was down
in that room with all those little skulls and hands.
That's the insanity. It wasn't even worth that money. But
I kept going back. There was always one more door,
one more room, just a little more money. I ain't
even think about where them bones came from, who killed them,

(01:56:14):
who put them in the cages. I didn't care. When
I found the room with the bones on the walls,
that's when I was done that. Last night, I was
way down in there, underground. I opened a door and
inside there was just a cave. The other rooms had

(01:56:35):
block walls, but this was like a mine. I shined
my flashlight around and up ahead. I thought there was
crystals on the walls or something, but it was bones.
I mean, people, hands, skulls, ribs, all of it, just
put together. And it went on and on and on.

(01:56:57):
I said, God, this is the valley of the shadow
of death. I knew I wasn't scared of those spirits
because they were already inside of me, telling me don't worry,
telling me to keep going back down in there. I
prayed to the Lord to deliver me, and I got scared.
Right there, the spirits came out of me, and I

(01:57:19):
got scared. I won't lie. I was crying, just shook up.
I knew I wasn't alone in there. I could feel
the evil one down in that tunnel. It was all
power in the dark, spirits of all those dead people
were all formed together to form up into the body

(01:57:41):
of the evil one, formed into a beast. They wanted
me to bow to it, to bow to the idol.
I didn't bow. I ran, I was gone. That was
my moment of I didn't bow before a minute. For

(01:58:05):
a little minute, I could feel all that power, and
I smelt another smell different from the other rooms. I remember.
My daughter's more grown now, but when she was little,
i'd feed her apple sauce. I'd be thinking about her
when I smell it. I smelt it then, coming out

(01:58:30):
of the dark God, I wanted to bow. Alcohol goes
great with nostalgia and melancholy. It's what gives us misty
eyed barflies, forlorn poetry, midnight phone calls, last page of

(01:58:50):
the Great Gatsby Sinatra ballads, and seventy three percent of
all country music. That was my favorite part of drinking,
The wistful interlude a couple hours after the first flush
of drunkenness, when you wander away from a moistuous party
and look out into the darkened woods and see, for

(01:59:11):
a moment the fragile passed floating ghosely before you colored
in sunset oranges, all the by gone things which have
slipped away in the gentle flow of time. Your breath
catches in the tightness of your throat, and your eyes
filled with tears, and somebody calls your name or you

(01:59:32):
have to piss, and you wander back into the party.
I felt like I was at my finest in these moments.
I felt poetic and sensitive and alive. Eventually, though, it
all became an awful parody of itself. The gentle wishfulness
devolved into me sitting in front of my laptop, drunk

(01:59:55):
on a Wednesday night, watching sad YouTube videos, weeping and
slurping down vodka and water. I would watch any sort
of weepy video, soldier homecomings, kids with cancer, dogs being
put down, et cetera, just to get a good cry on,

(02:00:16):
to trigger that dopamine release that came with the tears.
It was nothing more than emotional masturbation. Just like with
the alcohol itself, I had found something that gave me
true pleasure, then used it over and over until my
feelings had become wrote and dead. The same sort of

(02:00:37):
thing happened with my memories of mother. At first, they
came unbidden, stirring up a sense of wonder so powerful
it brought tears to my eyes. But over the course
of too many drunks and too many hangovers, I replayed
the memories over and over from every angle. Eventually I

(02:01:00):
couldn't be sure of certain parts came from the original
or were formed by later recollections. The whispering magic became
a monotonous drone. The vaporous impressions dried and hardened into
simple facts. Mother was a woman sewn together from different things.

(02:01:21):
Mother would come in late at night with a bag
that squirmed. Inside the bag were children. We would go
down into the basement where she kept the cages. We
would do things to them together. I thought the memories
had no more power. I thought they were just abstractions

(02:01:42):
at this point, bad data. Who could explain them? And
why bother Now I found myself walking down the street
in the middle of the night, trying to burn off
these eerie feelings that Sean's story had put in so
at the intersection, a stiff breeze zipped down the empty lanes,

(02:02:07):
making the traffic lights sway. I walk by a bar
with a patio and listen to the low rumble of
confident male voices. The smell came off the bar, cigarettes
and hot wings and liquor sweat. It was the smell
of action, a smell of good times. I could just

(02:02:29):
walk in there, have a couple of drinks and hold court,
tell a few jokes, make a few friends. The problem
with going out sober is you have to make all
these little decisions where to go, where to set, what
to get. When you go out drunk, you just make

(02:02:49):
one decision to keep drinking. Every other decision just falls
into place. Life becomes easy, as easy as listening to
a story. It wasn't worth going into the bar. It'd
be closing in an hour anyway, so I walked past

(02:03:10):
it on down the street by myself. God, if there
is no closing time, no tomorrow morning, just darkness and
magic and mystery forever. If I could just be drunk
until the end of time. Mara is molting, so we

(02:03:36):
can't play. I'll have to wait until she's done. I've
moved out of the crowded sandborough. I think six different
broods live there now, and everybody crawls all over each
other and bickers and snips. Now I live in one
of the sea caves. It's wet and lonely, but at

(02:03:57):
least nobody snips at me, and it's a little easy
to find food. When Mara is done molting, I want
her to come here and maybe we can live together.
The caves are made of Gona black melt rock that
was hardened to fluid shapes. The moon shines through dozens

(02:04:18):
of porous holes in the roof, and the sea glitter
throws shapes onto the rock ceiling. I like to sit
back and let the shapes tell the ancient world story.
This cave is nice. I will stay here. I'm getting
tired of eating sea flowers, but I don't want to
go through the trouble of buying live stock. The crowds

(02:04:40):
at the temple are awful this time of year. Everybody
clamors and begs, and the priests are greedy and officious.
They tell us the live stock is a generous blessing
from the wombsack of the mother. But I think they
just buy it from the inland. At any rate, I
don't want any part of it. There is never much

(02:05:03):
food around during the ebbing, when the air turns cool
and the worms travel away. But the plumes have not
yet come. This year is even worse than usual. They say.
The ocean dies a little more each year. The water
is becoming bitter. But since I live in this sea cave,

(02:05:24):
I can get down into the cove before anybody else,
so I'm pretty lucky with what I get to eat.
I wake up to the sound of rain on the
ocean outside the cave. I look out to see which
kind it will be. Light yellow, catta green, my favorite.

(02:05:45):
I crawl out onto a bluff and let the rain
fall on my carapace. There is something sweet in the
cata green rains that loosens up the whelks on my seams.
I comb through my carapace with my forelimbs, snipping them off,
letting them fall into the rocks until whole front is
clear and smooth. After that I do my joints and

(02:06:07):
my under side. Nowadays, with food scarce, it has become
common to eat the whelks, but they taste like ammonia.
Just as I am done grooming and feeling very new
and shiny, Mara comes climbing up the rock. Her shell
is bran new and looks amazing. We dance and burrow

(02:06:31):
and make happy little snips. I have missed her even
more than I realized She moves the colors on her
carapace to show me how she feels they are very
vivid on her new bone. She shows pictures of her
looking everywhere for me, searching through all these sea caves.

(02:06:53):
I show her myself as I sat in the cave,
lonely and waiting for her. She snips at my front
legs and I dance around for her, Sweet, lovely Mara.
I show Mara my cave and she likes it. She
loves the sea mist and the way we can see

(02:07:15):
the tet of purple moons pass through the sky through
the holes in the rock. I show us living there
together and making it into a nice home. She shows
me leaving the burrow colored as a question. I show
her that I was too crowded and I was getting
sick of all the others. She flicks her intent at me,

(02:07:39):
making slow comforting movements, but I notice she hasn't answered
about living in the cave. I feel my little plan
as being washed away. Mara doesn't stay with me in
the cave, but she visits often. I make sure to
always have some sea flowers for her when she comes over. Lately,

(02:08:03):
they've been harder and harder to find, I get so
hungry that it's hard not to eat all the flowers
before I can give any to morrow. I give her
the best flowers, but they are all small and colored
and ugly shade of Hannah blue. Despite this, she always
shows me how delicious they are. Mara suggests we go

(02:08:29):
to the temple to get some live stock to make
a proper meal. I show her that I don't like
the crowds. Mara has always loved the temple. She uses
admiring colors to show the great Gemstone mountain and the
moons passing through the pylons, and the great Ziggaret. But
live stock is brought out and sold. She shows the

(02:08:52):
priests with their painted shells and red claws. I insist
that I don't like meat. I prefer sea flowers. She
wiggles her hind jaws at this. Nobody can prefer sea flowers.
They taste like sand. I crawl back away from her
a little. Hadn't my sea flowers always been delicious to her?

(02:09:15):
Was that just a lie? She crawls closer to me.
Her carapace takes on gentle yellows. She shows me that
they were delicious because I had picked them. But I
don't want her pity. I pull my legs in and
stay still until she leaves. I don't see Mara for

(02:09:37):
a long while. The third moon makes its way to
the high cusp, marking the end of the ebbing. The
plumes have still not come, and I'm often hungry. Finally,
Mars shows up with a meat wrapped in temple cloth.
I wonder if she's there to taunt me, but she

(02:09:57):
offers it to me that my shell has become thin
and dull, and I am looking worse. She is right,
I have not eaten enough in a while. We go
down inside my cave. Before she unwraps the meat, Mara

(02:10:18):
lets me know that she has become a priestess at
the temple. I turned blue with surprise. How had it
happened so quickly? She had been studying for a while
without telling me. Since I never liked the priest I
feel sad about this. How many times have I complained
about them in front of her while she was studying

(02:10:41):
to become one? It was no wonder I didn't have
many friends. Mara unwraps her gift. The creature she has
brought me is soft and pale, pink. Mara likes the
taste of these the best, but I don't think there
is any difference between these and the brown w I

(02:11:01):
break off one of the five little feelers on the
end of its fore leg and nibble at it. But
Mara snips at me and breaks off a hind leg
and offers me the thick end. My shell turns yellow
and I take it. The pretty red juice runs all
over my jaws as they pull the meat from the bone.

(02:11:23):
We eat in blankness for a while. Then I ask
Marrow where the priests get the livestock from. It has
always been a mystery, since none of these soft little
creatures are ever found on the land or in the sea.
I have wondered if they raise them inside the temple,
or if they bring them in from the inland. Mara

(02:11:46):
doesn't answer it first, she doesn't want to show me.
I ask again. She shows me a quick, vague picture
the old story about the womb and egg, something the
priests tell little children. I know she is hiding something,

(02:12:06):
so I snip at her. Why does she hide things
from me? We used to be so close. After a moment,
a picture forms on her carapace, as clear and vivid
as anything she has ever shown me. I ask what
I am seeing. It is the womb. That's where they

(02:12:31):
come from. Dear is Landria, I hope your name is
is Zelandria. I will name my daughter Tezlandria, and I
will tell her to name you Islandria. These names are
prettier more than my name Anne too plain. I am

(02:12:53):
your grandmother, and even though you are still not born,
I am writing to you in all one hundred percent
original English. Grandmother is teaching it to me. My grandmother
is your great great grandmother. I call her ali Helmany,
Yet that is not true English. Whoops. Grandmother is my

(02:13:15):
best friend, and she gives me presents. When I meet you,
I will give them to you and we can be
best friends the same. Can you keep secrets? Some of
the presents are secret. I will keep this letter and
your presence safe under my bed until you are here.

(02:13:39):
I will give you the presence and a lot of hugs.
I am learning new English every day. Cloister, do you
know what that is? Grandmother used to live there. It
is a special house for the mountain born. Surprise. Grandmother
was a mountain born. She came out of the mountain's

(02:14:01):
womb when she was a little girl. That's why me
and mom are very healthy, and I hope you will
be very healthy the same. I hope you have curly
hair and green eyes rather plain hair like me. Grandmother
said she hated to live in the cloister because the

(02:14:23):
monks are mean. Grandmother does not like the monks yet
that is secret. Don't show this letter to anybody. It
is just for you. After she moved out of the cloister,
she met Grandfather. He was very nice, yet not healthy,

(02:14:43):
and he is passed on to the love of the
IMP's son. On days when the IMP's son rises before
the big Monk's son, I say some prayers to grandfather.
Grandmother never says prayers to the IMP's son. Rather, she
only prays inside. I want to tell you about your presence.

(02:15:06):
Grandmother carved them directly from green crystal. The biggest one
is a kitty cat that is an animal that lives
on the far world. The next one is a rose
that is a vegetable that grows on the far world.
It is supposed to be red, yet this one is
green and still very pretty. The littlest one is the

(02:15:28):
secret one. Grandmother keeps it for herself and she will
not tell me what it is still, yet one day
she will give it to me. I think she is
still working to carve it. When she started to make
the rose, it's just a block, and she carved it
and made it beautiful. When she started the little one,

(02:15:51):
it was just a t shape. Yet now she has
carved a little man on the front of the tee.
I know she will finish it very beautiful. You okay,
that's it, see you not soon. Is Alandria love Anne,

(02:16:13):
the remnant ember of a dying star dress along the
gigantic fringe, companioned solely by a tiny world. On the
planet's surface, a great crystal tower lords over a vast
and airless plane the cooling stars. Blue light draws the

(02:16:33):
tower's shadow across the land and marks the passage of
the ages. Through the core of the tower runs an
artery of living flesh. Branching paths of blood are refracted
within facets. At the base of the spire. There is

(02:16:54):
no door, no entryway, but at the top a fleshy
orifice once or twice an age for purpose. Unknown tower's
mouth expels a living human to fall down and down
so the airless space and land atop a scree of

(02:17:15):
other people. A traveler passing on foot would be forgiven
for wondering why so many other travelers had approached the
tower and flung themselves down at its base to die.
Perhaps it was in prayer, or perhaps they were searching

(02:17:35):
for an entryway for a door which doesn't exist. I
have decided to move out of the sober house. People
usually stay here a couple months. I've stayed here for

(02:17:57):
over six months on a I'm finding it hard to
live in the same house with Sean. He's never been
easy to live with, and lately we've been getting in
arguments about little shit like chores. On top of that,
I'm freaked out by a story about the room full
of bones. I've come up with a few theories about

(02:18:19):
why he would tell me that story and why he
would insist it was real. None of these theories are
terribly comforting. I want to put it behind me for
a while. I had actually considered finding the warehouse that
he mentioned, maybe it would give me some answers. But

(02:18:40):
I've decided fuck that. I'm not going to some goddamn
warehouse in Crack City. I don't need an ending to
my story that badly I'll just do what I've been doing,
make shit up. Actually, I've been stuck for the past
few days. I can't really come up with anything that

(02:19:00):
seems fitting as an ending. I've been considering just leaving
it unfinished. Maybe not all stories should have endings. Endings
are a lie. I've realized that AA meetings are just
a form of storytelling. That's what we do in meetings.
We sit in a circle, tell each other's stories, and

(02:19:22):
we pretend like it's all real life. But every time
somebody shares, they make an attempt to storify their life,
to make it into some tidy, little parable. Sometimes the
parables are profound and touching, and sometimes they're just absurd,
or cliched, or just terrible. A guy in meeting might

(02:19:46):
tell a story about how he got into an argument
with his boss, and he might end it with something like,
and that's how I learned I need to stand up
for myself. Except maybe arguing with his boss was a
terrible idea. Yeah, maybe he's trying to portray stupidity as wisdom,
or maybe it really was wisdom. Either way, he's packaging

(02:20:09):
the truth up as a story with a lesson at
the end, and This covers up one of the essential
facts of life that it just keeps going along, not
giving a shit about our attempts to explain it. There
are these moments in life when the goal is achieved
and the story should end and the credits should roll,

(02:20:30):
but instead it just keeps going the fuck along. The
guy gets the girl and now they have to live
with each other. She farts a lot and he hogs
the shower. Or the underdog team wins a tournament and
now they have to get ready for the next season.
Ten seasons later, they're all retired, sitting around and scratching

(02:20:51):
their balls. That's the first big problem the recovering alcoholic encounters.
We make the inspiring and courageous decision to walk away
from our whole way of life to try something new.
The story could end there, but it doesn't. Instead, life

(02:21:12):
stretches on and we have to live day after day
with a grinding boredom of sobriety. So maybe the interface
story should be like that, no tidy ending, just here,
take it or leave it. Except that's lame, that's a
rip off. I'll just wait. Some kind of ending will

(02:21:36):
come to me. But I'm not going to that warehouse, though.
Fuck no, I'm not asking Sean anymore about it either.
If I have to make up a shitty ending, that's fine.
A lot of good books have shitty endings. At this point,
I'm just a little burned out. After I'm done, I'm

(02:22:00):
going to put a side writing and work on my
social life for a while. I'm going to try to
change my number of friends from zero to a positive integer.
I thought maybe I could find a group of friends
in recovery, but it hasn't happened. I don't like recovery people.
They're corny and boring. I've found a room to rent

(02:22:23):
near downtown in an arty neighborhood, and as as soon
to be acclaimed writer, don't I belong among the thinkers
in the artist I'm going to get in touch with
some old friends, and I'm going to try to go
out and meet people. I'll just try to get a
small circle of friends started. I know I need to

(02:22:45):
meet friends. I've always known how it's easy. I'm going
to drink again. One time, my mom took me to
a clothes store. She was wearing a blue dress. I
was following her around, but then I looked up and
it wasn't her. It was some other lady wearing a

(02:23:07):
blue dress I had followed by mistake. I was scared,
so I ran away from the lady, but then I
couldn't find Mom. A lady from the store found me
crying and took me back to her. I was mad
at her because I thought she switcheding to that lady
on purpose to trick me. I was too little to

(02:23:30):
know that that's not possible, is it. I wake up
by myself and go downstairs for toast and jam, but
the kitchen is totally empty. I call mom, Mom, but
she doesn't answer. I can't find anybody in the TV room.

(02:23:53):
There's a stranger sitting in the big chair. Uh oh,
I can only see the back of her head, gray hair.
I sneak away into my room upstairs. I check Mom
and Dad's room, in my sister's room, but they're all empty.

(02:24:15):
Where did they all go? It's not fair that they
all left without me. Anna and Brittany always go places
and do things without me. But Mom wouldn't do that.
She likes to take me everywhere. We are best friends.
So what happened? Maybe they said they were going somewhere

(02:24:37):
and I didn't listen. Mom always tells me to listen better.
Why don't I wait a minute? Today is Sunday. Usually
we go to church on Sunday. Mom and Dad go
to the grown up church and I go to Sunday
school that they must be at church. Last week I

(02:24:59):
told Mom that I never ever wanted to go to
church again. Hey, maybe Mom decided to leave me at
home just like I told her to. This is great,
no stupid Sunday school. All the playtime I want. I
run over to where my toys are piled up in
the corner and get all the ones I want. I've

(02:25:22):
been playing this great game with my trucks and cars
called police versus Firemen. The policemen use their guns and
the firemen use their hoses, and they even have hoses
that shoot fire. I play for a long time and
it's great, but I'm getting more hungry. When will everybody
be back? How long is church? It feels like forever

(02:25:46):
when I'm there. It's so boring, and the kids aren't
nice to me. I remember that last week I cried
in the car on the way over because I didn't
want to go. Mom was mad. I was really crying
like a baby, and it was embarrassing. I always cry
too much. Anna and Brittany make fun of me for

(02:26:09):
it because I cry more than them, but they are girls.
I try not to, but I do it anyways. I
wonder about the stranger downstairs. It looked like an old,
gray haired lady, but I only saw her back. Is
she a babysitter? I decide to go downstairs and get

(02:26:31):
some crackers from the pantry. Mom keeps them on the
shelf for me. I go get the crackers and eat
them until I'm full. On my way back, I passed
by the TV room. That old lady is still sitting there.
Her long gray hair is hanging down over the back
of the chair. It's got leaves and little sticks stuck

(02:26:53):
in it. This makes me want to giggle a bit.
What a messy lady. But then I start to get
scared thinking about it. I sneak back upstairs. Now at
sunset time, and I'm hungry again, and I'm a lot

(02:27:13):
more scared. Mom and Dad and everybody are still gone.
What if they don't come back. What if Mom was
really mad at me for crying last time? Now this
is punishment? Oh no, what if God is mad at

(02:27:34):
me for not going. We're supposed to go to Sunday
school to make God happy, and I didn't go. I
was really bad. What if this is a big punishment.
God can make people disappear forever. I get down on
my knees and press my hands very tight together and whisper,

(02:27:58):
I'm sorry God for not going to Sunday school. I
will go every time forever until I am dead. I
am sorry. I am sorry. Please bring Mom and Dad
and Anna and Britney back. Thank you God. Amen. I
get up and run over to my window. I can

(02:28:19):
see the front lawn in the street. It's all empty.
I wait for Dad's car to come down the street.
Now they'll all come back. But nobody comes downstairs. I
hear noises like a dog growling but so loud, and

(02:28:42):
something banging on the ceiling. I go into my closet.
I cry too much. I always cry too much. The
person sitting in the big chair new mother. A basement
full of specimens, glistening membranes, blurred faces, laughing tower, witch, monster, mountain,

(02:29:09):
apocalyptic sky infested with winged things. The dream folds in
on itself and spills out dozens of new creatures. Images.
Intercourse panes of light behind everything, ragged muppet creatures tumbling
out and chasing one another, devouring, bloody, crunching, growing panes

(02:29:33):
of light, Galopagos critters, howling, infesting, affixing, lamp preisd succubus vultron,
food chain formation panes of light. A persistent locusts the
window panes. Persistence triggers reality, rational bootstrapping. Persistence rapidly infects

(02:29:55):
everything else. The weird Galopagos creatures die off, too weird
to live. All the props of ordinary reality are rushed
into place. Just before I opened my eyes, A sunlit
window in a bedroom. Where is this my new place?

(02:30:18):
I rented it online before moving out of the sober house.
This is real. I try to remember what I did
over the last few days. The memories are a dark,
shifting mess, a clinging mud. I'm afraid to touch. Face hurts,
my tongue finds cuts on the inside of my bottom lip.

(02:30:41):
Brown spots dot the white pillow case. Picking my head
up and looking round the room, I recalling from the
twenty sober minutes I spent here before going to the bar.
Beside the bed, the night stand has been tipped over,
and the lamp is a quartered pile of shards. Shit,

(02:31:05):
this isn't my stuff. It's just a bedroom in somebody's house.
I slide out of bed. My stomach tingles, my brain tingles.
My limbs are moving stroboscopically. Oh wow, I am inside
the nightmare mine. Crucifying reddish spots make a trail along

(02:31:29):
the hardwood floor. Fuck fuck, fuck, I can't handle this.
I run to the little bathroom. A red faced creature
lurches into the mirror's frame. Oh Jesus, a distorted mass
of bruises. I turn this way and that to see
my new features. The horrible tingling in my brain feels

(02:31:53):
like it's going to eat through my skull. I check
my teeth, and my heart sinks. The bonding of my
front tooth has been knocked out. The other teeth seem okay,
though I look down at the sink. It seems to
have been scrubbed with blood. Swirling trails of reddish brown

(02:32:14):
covered the porcelain. It's on the floor, the toilets, the walls. Damn,
it's a lot of blood. Have you ever noticed that
whenever you swallow, your throat closes up for a moment,
and you can't breathe at all. Of course, it always

(02:32:35):
opens back up. The process is quite automatic, and you
don't need to think about it. But what if you
do think about it? What if by thinking about it
you somehow confuse everything and your throat just stays closed.
What if all that gummy flesh just sticks together and

(02:32:56):
you suffocate to death. This is how I think after
a bender. I call it the scary swallows. I swallow in.
My throat seems to catch for a moment, cutting off
my windpipe, and panic blooms through my brain, threatening to
take over everything. And then I managed to suck in

(02:33:18):
a breath, and the panic subsides until the next swallow.
So I try not to swallow at all. But then
I'm thinking about it, obsessing over it, and my throat
starts to twitch. Shut up, Shut up, irrelevant, stupid, Do something?

(02:33:41):
What do I do? Liquor? Look for liquor. My queasy
stomach groans at the thought of it, but every other
part of me shrieks with anticipation. Liquor will make everything
else possible. Without it, the panic will rattle me apart.
With it, I can do anything. I scan the blood

(02:34:04):
smeared bathroom for bottles. Nothing out in the bedroom. There's
an empty half gallon of vodka and empty cans everywhere,
drunk to the last drop. God damn it, nothing in here.
Where's the owner? I remember that I checked into the

(02:34:25):
place without meeting him using a door code. Have I
met him since? No idea. That area of memory is corrupt.
What will he think when he sees the broken lamp,
the blood my face. He'll kick me out, for sure.
What if something even worse is waiting outside the bedroom door.

(02:34:47):
What if I've killed him and his body is lying
face down on the floor, and my entire life is over.
And I was so close, so fucking close to getting
out of this misery, of doing something, of accomplishing something,
something Mom and Dad could be proud of it. Now
it's all over all destroyed. Calm yourself, calmness. This is

(02:35:14):
all imagination, just your fanciful imagination. What a delight it is.
Just go out into the living room and look, just go,
just go. I crack the bedroom door and peek out.

(02:35:34):
It's the ordinary living room in kitchen of a pretty
nice apartment. I don't see anybody lying face down in
a pool of blood. Nothing is broken liquor. Now I
go to the kitchen. There's nothing on the counters. I
open the refrigerator, please, please please, there's nothing. Oh, you

(02:36:02):
tutulating cunt. Did I go to a room with one
of the sober motherfuckers in this whole fucked up drinking
as city. I open the freezer. A frosty bottle lies
on its side. I pull it out. It's a fifth
of absolute full, unopened, emitting a ghostly cold miss like

(02:36:25):
an angel. I stare at it in my shaking hands,
tears coming to my eyes. I feel, flowing through my
entire existence to be grudging mercy of a disapproving God.
I scratch at the stupid slippery plastic around the cap.
My trembling hands are almost useless. I imagine myself having

(02:36:49):
a seizure before I can get the bottle open, dying
right here on the kitchen floor, like a man in
a desert, dying of thirst, just feet away from an oasis.
But finally I managed to tear the cracking plastic off.
The front door of the apartment swings open, letting in
a blast of horrible sunlight. A figure stands at the door.

(02:37:12):
I shoved the bottle back into the freezer and slam
it shut and turn my back to the person. I
want to run and hide, to evaporate, but all I
can do is just stand there. Fuck. Fuck oh amen,
A friendly voice says Nick. Right, Yeah, good, I mumble.

(02:37:39):
I am still standing with my back to the person.
This is not a valid human behavior. Fuck fuck? Why
did he have to come home? Now? I forced myself
to turn around a youngish dude standing in the doorway
with the bags slung over his shoulder, apparently the owner.

(02:38:04):
Hey are you all right? He asked, the smile fading
from his face. Yeah, what happened to you? I don't know.
Mountain biking another invalid response from me. Now he's worried.
He glances around the apartment, checking to see if his

(02:38:24):
stuff is Okay. I broke your lamp, I say, preemptively.
I'm gonna go. I'm sorry. What happened, he asked, closing
the front door. I got drunk in the mountain biking,
I mumble. I head to the bedroom, my heart pounding.

(02:38:47):
On second inspection, I noticed that not only as the
nightstand turned over and the lamp is broken, but there
are broken plates in a hole punched in the drywall.
And beef jerky sticks strewn everywhere. Jesus, man, what did
you do? The guy asks as he follows me into
the room. I don't know, I say, already on the

(02:39:09):
verge of sobbing. Maybe I can just cry my way
out of this. Nobody likes to see a grown man cry.
I've got to get out of here. I got drunk.
Please just just take the month's rent. I'll go. I say,
this is a really stupid offer. I can't afford to
give away a month's rent, but I don't know what

(02:39:31):
else to do. I can't handle going to jail. It
would kill me. My heart feels like it's trying to
punch its way out of my chest. I need liquor.
I just need liquor. Dude, Hold on, how much stuff
did you fuck up? The guy asked? This is it?

(02:39:54):
I say, not really knowing if I'm telling the truth
or not. A bunch of my clothes are lying on
the floor, and I gathered them up and throw them
into my suitcase and zip it up, only to realize
that there are a lot more of my clothes obviously
lying all over the place. Well, we need to figure
out the damages. I can't Okay, I've got to go,

(02:40:16):
I say, in a quavering, childish voice. Just take the
month's rent. The guy starts inspecting the room as I
pack my clothes. The awkwardness of it makes me want
to claw my eyes out. My suitcase won't close, the
clothes won't fit unless they are perfectly folded. God, I
want to cry. I am almost crying. Good good, It's

(02:40:42):
like a squid blasting out a jet of ink. It
will allow me to escape. I throw my least favorite
shirts under the floor and zip the suitcase up. When
I stand up, me and the guy have this moment
where we're looking at each other eye to eye. Dude,
he says, you're all fucked up. I'm taking the vodka,

(02:41:06):
I announce. I fall asleep in the closet, but I
wake up in my bed. Before I open my eyes,
I know she will be there. She is standing at
the end of the bed morning time. She is not

(02:41:26):
a person, She is something else. I try not to cry.
I start crying right away. I can't stop. She is tall,
but her body is not a body. It is just
a pile of things. It's covered in a long, shiny robe,

(02:41:48):
shiny from a million blue gold flies crawling on her
long gray hair covers most of her face. I look
up at the ceiling and scream and screw and scream.
I scream for Mommy to come back. The ceiling turns
pink and fuzzy. I am screaming so hard. Then she

(02:42:13):
is standing over me, looking down on me. Her faces
awful pieces of animal I remember her eyes, the same
eyes as the white horse Britney rides, the one that
Mom said I could pet, but it bit my hand
and I had to go to the hospital. The eyes

(02:42:35):
are just hanging on the face, not really looking at me.
Flies crawl on them. I am shaking, scared. Please God, please,
please make her go away. She snorts and makes animal sounds.
Her old barn smell makes me want to throw up.

(02:42:57):
She reaches out and her fingers or made of crab legs,
all different sizes. No, no, no, I hate crabs more
than anything. When we go to the beach, my dad
always makes sure to pick a part of the beach
with no crabs. He says he can tell when there
are crabs because no, no, no, no. She touches my

(02:43:19):
face with her crab hands. Horrible, horrible. I close my
eyes as tight as I can, and skewed against the
back of the bed. The touching stops. I press my
eyes shut tight, tweets and chirps. Drink, A happy little
voice says, I keep my eyes closed. Drink, says the voice.

(02:43:47):
This sounds fun and cartoony. I open my eyes just
a little bit. A dozen bird heads have crawled out
of a hole in her neck. They move in different ways.
I found a dead baby bird once in our backyard.
It had no skin and blue lumps for eyes. It

(02:44:10):
is there with the other birds. Drink, it says, and
it's funny parrot voice. She holds up a big silver
spoon in her crab hands. A greenish monkey hand holds
up a glass bottle full of purple stuff and pours
it into the spoon. I can smell it grape like

(02:44:35):
the medicine Mom gives me. Is it the same stuff?
She holds the spoon up for me to drink. Please,
God make this stop. All the birds giggle. Her claw
pinky pokes my neck. It hurts. I opened my mouth.

(02:44:55):
Down goes the medicine. I lie there with my eyes
shut tight. I cry and stop crying and cry again.
I know she's there. The smell the flies, the sound
of animal breath. Why won't she go away? Please go away,

(02:45:18):
go away, go away, Please God make her go away.
Something slipped inside my eyes. I can see it even
though they're closed. Not a square, not a triangle, A shape.
I don't know the name of lots of shapes. Oh no,

(02:45:44):
My eyeballs fill up with little people, like a Ware's
Waldo book. There's a million of them, all doing different things,
moving around in an old city with castles and flags.
They're running through tunnels and climbing up towers. I can
watch them all at once. There's a baker and a knight,

(02:46:04):
and a clown and a queen with lots of They're
all dying. Cartoony blood pours everywhere, and they've all got
scared looks on their faces. And the blood washes away,
and they're all playing and smiling again. The places and
people change. I see stories. They happen all at once,

(02:46:29):
a hundred stories, but I can watch them all at once.
It's different people, crying and laughing and living and dying
and doing all kinds of things. It's like seeing ten
movies all at once, and it's so much too much.

(02:46:50):
I open my eyes She is still there, piled up
on the edge of the bed. The were's waldo. People
are still there, playing and laughing and bleeding and dying.
The animal pieces of her face open up and look,

(02:47:10):
there's another face inside. It's a woman's face, or maybe
a man's face, made of wet clay. It's smooth and beautiful,
and I'm not scared at all looking at it, and
i feel like I'm floating. The clay changes and the
face turns into other faces. An old man, a young man,

(02:47:34):
a Chinese guya, sad black guy, other guys, a cat.
The shapes of the face has changed, but something in
the eyes stays the same, staring at me, telling me something.
The face changes one more time. It's a woman's face,

(02:48:01):
maybe very old, maybe very young. Mother. The eyes say
something clearly, Mother. I can feel my heart beating when
it beats, it says mother, Mother. Mother. The eyes are sad,
so old and sad and kind, so kind, like they're

(02:48:26):
sorry for me, like they wish that could help me.
But the face is still, and the lips are pressed
together like she mother is trying to hide that she
is sad, trying not to be sad, trying to be
strict because because she is going to punish me. It

(02:48:53):
is the same look Mom gives me when I've been
bad and she puts me in time out. The face
is Mom's face, but also a thousand other faces they
feel sorry for me. Oh no, oh no, no, no,

(02:49:14):
no no no. I scream and scream, scream, scream. Outside
the midday light and the heat are mine, bending like
some kind of goddamn ufo rays apping me. Sweat rolls
down my burning face. Squinting makes my cheeks ache. The

(02:49:39):
wheels of my suitcase rumble over the gritty sidewalk. I
have no fucking idea where I am or where I'm
going some street, some fucking neighborhood. I desperately want a
drink from the bottle of liquor I'm carrying in a
grocery bag, but I'm afraid somebody will and report me.

(02:50:02):
All the internal alarms in my mind and body are
ringing at once. Each passing car seems like it will
pull over. Each one seems to slow and veer towards
the curb. Each one is surely filled with gang members
or undercover cops ready to beat me down. Each one passes,

(02:50:23):
sending a wave of warm air and panic past me.
I am insane. I do not belong in normal society.
I must be isolated. I must keep moving. Sidewalk ends. Shit, fuck,

(02:50:46):
the road is turning into some kind of freeway. Can
I walk along it? Is it allowed? I don't know.
I don't know. Why don't I know things? Everybody knows
things here. I am wandering tits out, no fucking clue.

(02:51:07):
This wet bottle of liquors showing right through the plastic bag.
I've got to get somewhere. I've got to get this
liquor inside me. I trudged through an abandoned lot trying
to get away from the road, dragging the rebellious suit
case over rocks and weeds. There's a bunch of high

(02:51:30):
grass and some kind of sloping concrete drainage thing behind it.
I don't even know what the fuck it is, or
how to describe it. I'm not a novelist, never was.
I PLoP down on the concrete so that the weeds
shield me from the passing cars on the road. But

(02:51:51):
I spin the cap off the bottle. My stomach cringes.
When the cold liquor hits it, relief begins to flow
on immediately into my brain. Merely psychological, I'm sure, But
psychological is exactly what I need right now. I breathe

(02:52:12):
deep and shudder and take more SIPs, shaping my tongue
into a sluice, send it right down my throat with
no fuss. The panic slackens, perfect, perfect relief. All the

(02:52:33):
nightmarish feelings are still inside me, but now there's just
a bit of distance between me and them. They are
at bay pretty soon. I've taken down a quarter of
the bottle. Wow. Fuck, look at me, just a few

(02:52:54):
days out of the sober house and I'm literally lying
in a ditch with a bottle of liquor. At least
it's a concrete, man made ditch, No de class a
dirt ditches for me A snicker at the thought my
panic of just moments ago seems ridiculous underneath it, though

(02:53:18):
the awful horror is still there. I know my snickering
is just an empty, little show of bravery. What to
do now? Usually at this point I would do forensics.
We have to find out what happened over the past
few days. For example, who beat me up? But it

(02:53:40):
could be anybody who even cares. They used to get
punched out all the time. Whoever did this really hand
it in for me, though, I must have unleashed a
few of my delightful bond mots on an unamused stranger.
I checked my phone. All my cringe sensors are on

(02:54:02):
full alert, ready to fire when I see what nonsense
text and three am calls I've made. But it's just
a few ordinary texts from my new landlord. He says
he won't be back until Monday. That's today. I left
the sober house on when was it Wednesday? Fuck? A

(02:54:28):
five day bender or only a handful of memories from it?
All scary? At least the owner was out of town
for most of it. A tegas sipped my good fortune.
It occurs to me to check Reddit. I have a
vague memory of being on there chortling at some outrageous

(02:54:51):
comments I made. Let's see it turns out I posted
the piece I had been working on and the title
use choed or choed. Let's settle the debate, Jesus, how stupid.
It certainly undermines my claims of possessing otherworldly knowledge. Hey,

(02:55:15):
some guy possesses the power to see into alternate timelines
and he's using it to make chod jokes on the internet.
Right the wave of ethanol relief is fully washing over me,
caressing me, easing my worries. I can feel the euphoria
of the booze, but I can also feel the dread

(02:55:36):
of the withdrawal at the same time, and I know
that both feelings are lies. Soon the euphoria will be
gone and the dread will rain again. It will be
like this for three days or more. If I keep
getting drunk, and this turns into just another day in
the bender, I have to try to taper down. But

(02:56:00):
tapering means always drinking less than you want to, always
remaining in barely tolerable misery. I groan, and my babyish
instincts tell me to take another drink, but I don't.
I shouldn't drink for another hour. Then one shot every

(02:56:22):
hour until it's time for sleep. Then six shots to
speed me through the nightmare realms. God, the math, the
fucking math, seventeen drinks in a fifth, nine hours until
alcohol celles stop. The body processes a drink an hour.

(02:56:45):
For all those months, I didn't have to do the
drinking math. Now I'm back in it. I groan, and
lie back against the concrete drainage. Whatever. I know, I
look like the very picture drunk, but I don't care
by a wallow in the feeling good good, I say.

(02:57:09):
One of the lies that leads you down the road
of addiction is that you are just visiting. The first
time you end up in the drunk tank or the
trap house is the kids call it, or the rehab,
you look at all the other guys and shake your head,
and how sad their lives are because they are regulars.

(02:57:30):
But you, you are just visiting. You're here because of
a crazy fuck up. But you'll go back to your
normal life. Heck, it'll be a funny story. Even when
it happens for the second or third time. You're still
just visiting. You're just a tourist in the land of misery,

(02:57:52):
not a resident. Well, no more lies for me. I
am not visiting. I am returning home, and everything is
just where I left it. Mother has put a nail

(02:58:13):
in my brain. The nail stays still, everything else moves.
Last year, me and my family took a trip to California.
My dad got to drive on the Pacific Coast Highway.
He really loves cars, and it was his dream to
drive on that highway since he was a little boy
like me. But he didn't get to drive on it

(02:58:36):
much because I got really car sick. We kept having
to stop, and then we just went home. My dad
didn't say anything on the way home. Why did mom
and dad leave me behind? Was it because of stuff
like that? Because I'm too much of a baby. I

(02:58:58):
feel like I am car sick now. The medicine makes
everything look like it has colored shadows. Everything is going
different ways in different colors. I can see things that
don't happen and things that do, things that try to
happen but don't get to It's too confusing. Outside it's sunny,

(02:59:26):
but I stay in bed so I don't feel so sick.
If I lie in bed, I only see a few things,
me lying this way or that way. But if I
get out of bed, I see a thousand different means.
I'm doing different things and crowding everything up, like where's Waldo?
It makes me dizzy. Mother comes in and puts three

(02:59:49):
big stones on the floor by my bed. I don't
know why I watch them. They just sit there doing nothing.
I think about pushing one of them away, and that
it's covered with colored shadows. The shadows show things that

(03:00:10):
could happen but don't. So I make this a game
watching what could happen. After a few days, I start
feeling a little better. I still see colors, but they
don't make me sick all the time. When Mother comes
to give me more medicine, I tell her I'm hungry.

(03:00:32):
Make some food, then, dear, she says, with her bird voice.
How she points to the stones. Command that these stones
be made bread, she says, in a new voice, a
man's voice. I look at the stones. Now they are colored,

(03:00:52):
with more shadows moving every different way. It looks like
colored fire. But I don't know what to do. I say,
stones turn into bread. Shake my finger at them, like
Harry Potter, pointing as one. I see a color of

(03:01:13):
fire I haven't seen before. It works. The stones are bread.
Mother laughs. Mother leaves, and I eat the bread. It's wonderful.
It's just like my favorite bread from Tony's, warm and squishy.

(03:01:34):
But how did it happen? Is this magic? Real magic?
I drop the bread and run to the window. The
street is empty, almost sunset. I close my eyes. I
make a special magic spell. When I open my eyes. Yes,

(03:02:00):
there it is coming down the street Mom and Dad's car.
The back of my neck feels all hot and boggy
when I wake up. I hate that the air conditioner
in this motel room makes a lot of noise, but

(03:02:21):
it's just the big show. I close my eyes and
hope sleep takes me away somewhere dark and cool, But
it doesn't. Reality persist. I have been tapering off booze
for the past few days. It's amazing how timid and

(03:02:44):
jittery I become when the alcohol is oozing its way
out of me. I haven't even worked up the nerve
to call the motel manager and complain about the air conditioning.
To think I lived for years in this helpless, reclusive
line state. What a fucking waste the whole time I

(03:03:06):
thought the alcohol was giving me courage, when it was
stealing it from me. I can't drink anymore. I need courage.
I'm down to my last two hundred dollars. I could
call good old Mom and Dad and ask them for
some help. Well, what kind of conversation would that be? Whim?

(03:03:32):
I broke? Well, I took some time off work so
I could write a book about what you know, usual
tripping acid Nazis finger blasting cats. No, I'm not gonna
call mom and dad. I'm not going back to the

(03:03:53):
sober house either. I'm gonna get some answers. I'm going
to call Sean. Sean shows up at the motel right
after he gets off work. I'm surprised because we had
got into a lot of little arguments towards the end,

(03:04:15):
and I left on pretty bad terms with him. I'm
standing in the parking lot when his black pickup truck
pulls up. My paranoia starts the flare. Maybe he saw
the story online and was outraged. Maybe he's been looking
for me. He strides up to me and gives me

(03:04:37):
a quick hug, patting me stiffly on the back. He
steps back and squints at the dingy face of the motel.
I know this fucking motel, he says quietly. Come on, man,
let's get your stuff, get my stuff. You said you're sober, right.

(03:04:59):
I already talk to the house manager. They'll take you back.
We got to bed, he says. I'm not going back
to the house. I asked you to come out here
because I want to know where that warehouse is, the
one downtown. Sean turns and looks me in the eye.

(03:05:22):
Why you want to know about that? I tell him
the story. I tell him about mother horse eyes, the Nazis,
the CIA, the LSD, the experiments. Most of the stuff
that I've told you I leave out some parts, like
the fact that he is in the story, that we
are in the story, that all of this is in

(03:05:45):
the story. Right now. He listens to me, but his
face darkened. Maybe he thinks I'm crazy or high or
full of evil spirits. Listen to me, I say, working
myself up to deliver my big speech. I have lived

(03:06:05):
things which are impossible, which could not have happened. So
have you. Those tunnels, those cages, the bones, none of
it should exist, but you saw it. I've seen things too.
We have to find out what it is. I've lived

(03:06:26):
with that monster for a whole summer. I know she's
down there, and I want to find her. Sean narrows
his eyes as he stares at me. What's down there
is the devil? Nick? If you go down there, you
won't come back. I want to see her. I want

(03:06:52):
to know, please, I say to him, my voice breaking.
I just want to know why I'm so fucked up.
You're fucked up because you drink all day and you
got character defects like me, then everybody else. That's it.

(03:07:13):
Don't you want to know what's going on down there?
You're not curious. No, it doesn't eat at you. You
don't need any answers. He shakes his head. God doesn't
promise answers. God gave us all the answers we need
in the Bible. That's all we get. I don't ask

(03:07:37):
him what's going to happen in the future. I don't
do horoscopes. I don't practice witchcraft. God's not going to
come down and give me the answers to everything. All
he wants from me is obedience. Oh come on, So
we shouldn't try to figure things out. We shouldn't ask questions.

(03:08:00):
That's just some anti intellectual, anti science bullshit. When we
were roommates and got into disagreements, he would start quoting
the Bible at me, and I would start picking at
him with snid intellectual arguments, using as many big words
as I could. We're falling back into the same dynamic

(03:08:23):
anti science. He says, Shit, I'm not saying don't be
a scientist. I'm saying don't go into a tunnel. With
fucking bones on the walls. Man, I find myself laughing
at this. He smiles with me. For real though, Man,
it's dangerous, he says, smile fading. I look out across

(03:08:49):
the crumbling parking lot. Long evening shadows are drawn across
the asphalt. Man, I don't know. I just feel like
if I could figure out what happened during that summer,
then maybe I wouldn't be so fucked up. I've obsessed
about this shit for twenty five years, give or take,

(03:09:13):
and now there's a chance to get some answers. Just
let it go. Oh No, there has to be an ending.
There has to be some kind of payoff. Moses and
the people wandered in the desert for forty years looking
for the promised land. One day Lord took him up

(03:09:35):
to the mountaintop and showed him all the promised land,
and Moses died right there without ever setting foot in
the land. Do you know what kind of lord does that?
A messed up one, I muttered. The Lord knows that
we are generations, man, is a few days generations might

(03:09:59):
pass before we get any answers. For the last ten years,
I've been living like the world might end any day.
But I'm not doing that anymore. I have to remember
that we know neither the day nor the hour wherein
the sun of man cometh. That's why I'm going back
to school and all that I nod. Through the course

(03:10:25):
of our little debates, I had told him many times
that the world wasn't going to end anytime soon. The
world was going to go on and on and on
like it always dead, you know, fucked up, in confused state.
Maybe some of it rubbed off on him, Maybe some

(03:10:48):
of it should be rubbing off on me. Now I
need answers. I told him, I've tried just accepting the
mystery and whatever. At this point, I just need to
know why I'm all fucked up, why I can't stop drinking,

(03:11:09):
why I can't be normal. I could tell you where
the warehouse is, But what are you going to do
when you go down there? What are you going to
do when you meet the devil? I haven't told him
that part of the story. It's a part that I'm
not sure I really believe myself. I think I have

(03:11:35):
been given reason to believe that whatever is down there,
I can destroy it. As soon as I see the car,
I rush downstairs, mother's in the kitchen making noises, but
I run right by her outside. The car pulls into

(03:11:56):
the driveway. I run to its smiling, but I slow down.
Something is different about the car. Whose car is this?
The door opens, I stop. Dad gets out. He's got
that grumpy look he usually has. He's wearing his pajamas,

(03:12:18):
but they have no buttons. Mom gets out of the
car too. She comes out the same door. She's wearing
her blue dress. I start to cry and run to
her and hug her legs. She pats my head and says,
they're there, Nick, it's okay. Where did you go? I ask?

(03:12:42):
I'm crying like a baby. Why did you leave me?
Why did you go? We went to the store, Mom says,
But you were gone so long? I say, My face
is smushed against her side. We went to the store,
bought some dresses, and Dad got some stuff for his car.

(03:13:04):
I look up at her. Her face is all blurry
because I'm crying. I wipe my face. She looks down
at me, smiling. Her face is smooth and glowing. We
stayed at the store a few days, she says, and
pats me on the head. It doesn't make sense to me.

(03:13:27):
Why did you leave me with the monster, lady? I ask,
Mom stops smiling. Monster, there's a monster in the house, Nick,
She says, like she thinks I'm telling a story. You
weren't at the store for three days. Where were you? Nick?

(03:13:48):
My dad says, in his grumpy voice, that's enough. I
look at him. The shape of his face is weird.
He usually has freckles on his sh cheeks, but they're
not in the right place. I let go of Mom
and look at her. She makes a little smile like

(03:14:09):
she always does when she sees me. It's her. It's Mom,
it's her face, but it's too what's wrong with it?
Mom's shirt moves. There's something underneath it. It's pushing and
trying to get out. I step back. Her face SAgs

(03:14:32):
like a water balloon, and her cheeks fall off. It
hits the ground right in front of me with a big,
wet smack. It's lying there like a big raw piece
of chicken. I scream and Mom falls apart. Her face
falls into pieces, and her whole body hits the ground
like a sack of potatoes. The same thing happens to Dad.

(03:14:57):
Their clothes are just lying on the driveway, but there's
something inside the clothes, moving around inside. I scream, and
something screams back. It screams again a little scream, and
pokes its head out of my mom's dress. It's a cat.
Other cats slip out of the bottom of the dress

(03:15:20):
and out of my dad's pajamas. A whole bunch of cats,
all different colors. Mom and Dad's clothes just blow away
like tissue, and the driveways full of cats and pieces
of meat. A few cats run away, some of them cry,

(03:15:40):
some wander around and sniff and lick at the meat.
Something pinches my shoulder and I scream. It's mother's crab hand.
She yanks my arm and drags me back into the house.
I shout and scream, but she holds me tight. She
slams the front door shit and pushes me into a

(03:16:01):
big metal cage. In the kitchen, her birds are pushing
out her shoulders and her face. They're missing eyeballs and
covered with big golden flies, and all of them tweeting
and cackling at me. Your magic isn't strong enough to
make whomever you want, she says in a deep voice.

(03:16:22):
The birds all giggle. Never will be one of them,
shouts mother locks me in the cage and sits down
at the kitchen table. I scream and cry, but she
doesn't move. Her horse eyes stare at the wall. The
sun sets very slow, and the room coats dark. She

(03:16:45):
is just the shape of a black mountain, sitting at
the table. When the sun rises, her eyes are still
on the wall. You were bad, Your magic was bad.
You won't be bad again, she says. I hate you,
I shout, I do hate her. I hate her hate her.

(03:17:11):
Mother's birds giggle. She stands up from the table, and
all her golden flies scramble around the bars in the cage,
slide to the side like magic. She reaches in and
grabs me with her crab hand. It hurts so bad.
I scream and kick at her, but she doesn't care.

(03:17:33):
She lifts me up and carries me into the living room.
It's full of cages. When did they get here? There
are naked kids inside the rows of cages. They are
not scared like me. They are sitting cross legs with
their hands on their knees, sitting nice and still and straight,

(03:17:54):
with their eyes closed. I will show you what will
happen if you are bad, she says. We go to
the back hall. There is the door to the basement.
I don't like the basement. I cry and ask her
to please let me go. She opens the basement door.

(03:18:16):
Usually the basement is dark, but not this time. Light
shines out of the door. I look inside inside, It
is not the basement, It is alive. Grim stuff on
the news lately, gunshots popping like fireworks, people scrambling through

(03:18:40):
shaky footage, Cops dead in the streets. It hit one
hundred degrees today. It's supposed to hit one hundred every
day this week. What a strange summer it has become.
Nobody can agree on the truth. They say the media
is ignoring the prob They say the media is creating

(03:19:03):
the problems. Protesters are the problem, The cops are the problem.
The whole thing is a false flag operation. So Obama
can take our AR fifteen's away. Kim Trails crisscross in
the sky. Conspiracy theories clash in the comment section. Single

(03:19:24):
women in your area, one a day, now across the ocean,
the crucifying people again. I feel so much different than
I did in the spring. Less optimistic. I thought maybe
I would achieve the dream of publishing a novel and

(03:19:44):
wouldn't that be neat? But now I don't feel any
excitement about it at all. Whether I publish something or not,
I'll still be this friendless little specter hold up somewhere,
sneaking drink money is pointless for a recluse that never
does anything, and fame a bicycle for a fish. There's

(03:20:12):
nothing in my future. I'm going back to the past.
I'm going to kill it. Mother doesn't care what I do,
so long as I don't bother her. I make sure
not to bother her when she comes into a room.
I sneak out as quiet as a mouse. I never

(03:20:35):
go into the rooms with cages. I never ever go
near the basement. I just stay quiet and make sure
not to get in trouble. I have been practicing my magic,
doing small, secret things. I make bread for myself out
of stones. I make yummy cookies. My stuffed animals walk

(03:20:59):
around and do fun things. My trucks race around a
little track I made. Magic is a lot of fun.
But I'm afraid of making mother mad. How long will
mother stay here? Will it be forever? I think it

(03:21:19):
will be forever. It makes me cry when I think
about it. I can't even think about Mom and Dad
for even a little second before I start to cry,
I came up with a neat idea. Lately, there are
a lot of ideas in my head, like a crowd

(03:21:39):
of people all talking at once. One idea was very
strong and clear. I tried to bring Mom and Dad
to the house, but I couldn't do it right. My
magic fell apart and they turned into stupid cats. It's
because Mom and Dad are on the outside. I can't

(03:22:01):
make them do things with magic. I'm not strong enough,
but I can make myself do things. Sean told me
where the warehouse is. I am going down there. I
am being called by the shape of my entire life.

(03:22:23):
I am being called. The story must end this way.
Mother will be down there, and so I will try
to destroy her. I've thought about bringing some kind of weapon,
but what good would a weapon be against her? She

(03:22:43):
who is everything, who has shaped my life across space
and time. I feel exactly like I do when the
evening comes. I have woke up so many mornings swearing
I won't drink that day. But seven p m Comes
and I am walking to the store feeling none too wise,

(03:23:08):
and I don't want to be walking to the store,
and I know I am making the wrong choice, but
my feet keep moving me closer and closer. I know
what I am doing is wrong, but I am doing
it anyways. I am coming, Mother, I am coming. I

(03:23:35):
am being changed. Mother's lessons are teaching me things, transforming me.
At night, I lie in my little bed, eating cookies
and watching the ceiling. Then the seams open up and
look at what's behind them, colors without names, stars from

(03:23:58):
long ago, tunnels through the beyond. My magic is growing stronger.
I can make things happen. I pray and wait, and
they come to me. Every morning. Little sparrows land on

(03:24:18):
tree branches outside my window. Mother says, I can't be
too greedy. Press at the curves, she says, direct the flow,
don't move against it. I am reading the Bible with
the new words I've learned. Christ had blood, magic, magic

(03:24:42):
of suffering, of desire, and limitation. At night, Mother and
I watch the soft flesh writhe and struggle on the
hard architecture of the cross. Mother. He cries, behold yours, father,

(03:25:02):
he cries, into your hands. I commit my spirit. Soon
I will call my own little Christ onto these yellow sands.
The other passengers on the bus seem unaware that I
am headed towards a showdown which will decide the fate
of all mankind? Am I still sane? I feel pretty sane.

(03:25:28):
I'm not drooling at the mouth, I'm not shouting at
the pigeons. But what really makes me feel sane is
that I can still recognize that my actions are insane.
I am going to confront a sinister entity which has
been shaping the course of human events since prehistory, which
may one day enslave all of humanity, and I am

(03:25:52):
going to it. Wearing an old Garth Brooks T shirt.
As I step off the bus and on to the
blinding summer sidewalk, I am reminded of the brave marines
piling out of their landing vehicles onto the beaches of
ibo Jima. Yes, brave warriors are we? They say. One

(03:26:15):
hall mark of delusional thinking is grandiosity. The delusion man
often thinks himself to be a part of some grand struggle,
when really there is no struggle, but that in his mind.
A pigeon bobs across my path, I mutter, fuck off.

(03:26:38):
Google Maps leads me through the streets. I expect to
see a bunch of crackheads milling around, but everything is empty.
In the sunshine, it looks like an ordinary factory street.
The warehouse itself is just a dusty, old brick building
with scribbles of spray paine and boarded up windows. It's

(03:27:00):
not even especially shitty. The front door is chained up,
but I check the boarded windows and find a board
that bends back easily. A musty smell seeps out of
the dark. Fuck, am I really doing this? Sweat already
coats my face. My fish a flashlight out of my

(03:27:21):
backpack and turn it on. Inside the warehouse, my sweeping
flashlight finds dusty shapes littering the floor, old boxes, cinder blocks,
and a gleam on the floor. Yes, it's our first
crack pipe, or maybe a meth pipe. Is there a difference?

(03:27:46):
Listening to people in the rooms has made me feel
rather worldly when it comes to drugs, But it's all
been secondhand stories. What do I really know? Sean said
there was a flight of stairs that led down to
a door. The floor of the main room doesn't seem
to have any stairs leading down, but there are a

(03:28:09):
few doorways on the far side. I make my way over,
stepping carefully through the debris. The middle doorway sits at
the top of a short staircase. At the bottom is
another empty doorway. The flashlike catches the glint of metal
a pair of torn hinges. When we were roommates, Shawn

(03:28:32):
always had such a cool demeanor, cool and poised and confident.
But now I see a new picture of him working
the hydraulic spreader, prying the door off its hinges, the
metal groaning and shrieking, sweat coating his face, his eyes
bright and white, with that terrible craving, that thing beyond hunger.

(03:29:00):
I shudder and step down the stairs. Sure enough, they
lead to a tunnel. I move slowly, forced to press
against some basic animal instinct to go back, get the
fuck out of there. But the tunnel is strangely plain
and featureless, considering that it lies under a crack den

(03:29:22):
and leads to a possible flesh in her face, It's
just dusty block walls with no light fixtures or anything.
The tunnel leads to more tunnels, more stairs, empty rooms.
The black air teems with bits of dust that shine
in the flashlight. My skin tingles all over. This is

(03:29:45):
the dust clinging to me, or is it just a
low grade terror that has filled my body. It reminds
me of the tingle that filled my limbs on all
those mornings before the first drink. How I had begged
for the feeling to end, But now I know it
will never end. There will always be another awful morning,

(03:30:09):
another fuck up, another withdrawal unless I go forward, not
away from the nightmare, but into it. But it goes
on and on. I cannot believe how long the tunnels are,
how many rooms there are, how deep the stairs are.

(03:30:32):
I can taste the dust on my lips, and I
pull my shirt over my nose. Occasionally I come across
an old metal chair or some rotting boards, but nothing else.
I'm hoping to find some scrap of paper, or maybe
a name tag, some clue as to who built this monstrosity.

(03:30:53):
There's nothing but dust, more and more dust. I stop
and watch the dust float across my flashlight's beam. Holding
out my sweating, shaking hand, I let a dark speck
settle on my finger tip. Looking at it closely, I

(03:31:17):
see that it's in the shape of a flake. Is
it dust or is it ash? A wave of dread
moves through me. Could it be from a burned interface.
Is this human ash? A wave of dread is followed

(03:31:37):
by a flurry of nervous wise cracks. Fucking dust whether
fuck do I know about dust or ash? I'm not
some dust expert. Maybe it's just flaky dust. Maybe it's
dand drift. Maybe I'll find a huge cash of used
wings down here. Did you find an interdimensional portal? No,

(03:32:01):
but these wigs are in pretty good condition. Look, we
got a mid sixties dusty springfield here. I wipe my
hand on my shirt and keep moving forward. Just a
few steps later, my flashlight finds the end of the
block tunnel, in the beginning of the rock cave, just
like Sean said, God, can it be real? Maybe it's

(03:32:27):
an ordinary rock tunnel. Maybe it's just part of an
unfinished reaching out from the shadowy wall. With its bony
finger splayed almost elegantly, there's the shape of a human hand.
I stare at it for a moment, letting my eyes

(03:32:49):
flood with tears, before I have to kneel down and
wipe my face. I am not crazy. I have not
been crazy all of these years. Something happened, something happened
to me when I was a child, and I'm not

(03:33:12):
just some fuck up. I'm not just some piece of
shit loser who can't keep his hands off a bottle.
I have seen something. I have been touched by something
vast and unimaginable. I stand and approach the hand. Yes,

(03:33:32):
it is a human hand, as real as my own
hand holding the flashlight, accepted as little mor than bone.
Wrapped in a gray papery skin, It extends from a
wrist that is fused to a distorted mass of gray
and black shapes. A flashlight passes over an awful calash

(03:33:55):
of desiccated anatomy, rows of teeth, acts of ribs, pairs
of eye sockets and hip sockets, snaking vertebrae and femurs,
antibious and clavicles. For a moment, I feel like I'm
not standing on the ground, but I'm suspended over a

(03:34:15):
pitfull of bodies, like one of the great burning pits
of Treblinka, or much faster. These are not just the
bodies from Treblinka, but from all the camps, all the prisons,
all the pogrims, all the wars, all the plagues, all
the different machinery of history, the great unfeeling clock wheels

(03:34:40):
of the cosmos, which roll sublimely along generation after generation,
rending and crushing the human form into pieces, into powder,
into dust, into ash. Vertigoing closes me, I taught her,

(03:35:02):
and find myself sitting on the ground, sweating and gasping.
A jumble of body parts spin around me, and I
close my eyes. What is this vision of death? This
dead clockwork universe, stars and abyss, atoms and void? This

(03:35:24):
is something beyond Mother, even more horrible and fundamental. Mother
is at least alive, monstrous and devouring, but alive, virulently fertile.
She writhes and struggles within this vast tomb universe, binding

(03:35:45):
times and worlds too. But the dizziness passes, and with
the visions, the idea slip away like fish in a stream.
Sitting there in the afterglow of the near revelation, I
think of what Shan said happened to him when he
came down to this cave. He said he smelled apple

(03:36:10):
sauce coming out of the tunnel, a smell that reminded
him of his daughter. He said he could feel the
presence of the evil one, tempting him with dreams of
family and love. I opened my eyes and pick up
the flashlight and shine it down the tunnel. Is there
anything down there, anything to tempt me? The flashlight catches

(03:36:36):
awful shapes along the walls, extending on and on until
the beam of light fails. But I don't see anyone
in the tunnel. I don't sense anyone waiting for me,
and I don't smell anything but dust and ash and cookies,

(03:37:00):
sugar cookies. My god, I remember they were like the
ones my mom used to make for me, but not
quite the same as them. These were the ones I
used to make for myself out of stones. The memory

(03:37:21):
of it comes flooding up to me so hard that
again my eyes are full of tears. Christ. I used
to set my room with stones and turn them into cookies.
I tried to make them like Mom's cookies, but they
always tasted a little different, and that made me miss
her even more impossible, completely impossible and yet real, real

(03:37:54):
and floating in the darkness before me. I stand and
brush myself up. There is something at the end of
the tunnel waiting for me, good or evil. It will
be an answer, a resolution, an end. I walk into

(03:38:18):
the dark, I say my prayer and look out the
window for a long time, the street is empty. Then
he comes walking down the road carrying a flashlight, even
though it's light out. I brush downstairs. Mother is sitting

(03:38:39):
at the kitchen table. I think of saying goodbye to her,
but the gleam in her eyes tells me there is
no need. I go into the dim little front hall.
A beam of daylight is shining through the people. There
is a knock on the door. I wait. The knob

(03:39:01):
turns and the door opens. This is it the beginning.
I walk into the light. We have to take back

(03:39:24):
the world, to free it from mother and let it
be born again. It's our world. Either it was made
for us, or we were made for it. Either God
designed it and bestowed it upon us, or we slowly
evolved according to its rhythms. Either the glove was made
to fit the hand, the hand was made to fit

(03:39:46):
the glove. Either way it fits. Either way. We were
meant to live among the trees and the grasses, and
winds and sunsets, not to live in these stinking steel pipes.
Stare at this empty blackness as our power cells slip
into entropy. We were meant to be eternal, to strive,

(03:40:07):
to live forever, to pass ourselves down, however imperfect we
may be, so that something of us remains in the future.
We weren't meant to live lying in some plastic coffin,
flicking our endorfic clits until we decay into the point
of hopelessness. We were meant to roam the lands, to

(03:40:30):
wake up with the sun, to smile at the warm air,
and to take shelter against the cold in the dark.
We weren't meant to live in this eerie half light,
where there is no true sun and no true setting
of the sun, no real cold and no real warmth.

(03:40:52):
Moses traveled through the desert with his people for forty
years and died before his people ever reached the promised land.
Some would ascribe this to be the cruelty of God,
but you must understand in this incident God showed in
his great and wondrous mercy. He showed that a man's

(03:41:13):
axe can live beyond himself, that a man is not
here to fulfill his own whims, but the higher call
of history, which stretches far beyond a single man's life.
We must commit ourselves that, should it take a thousand
generations to see again the Earth's sweet sun, we will

(03:41:34):
not give up, for we do not seek reward for ourselves,
but we seek to simply become part of the long
and unknowable flow of righteousness, mere atoms in the water,
in the stream of the Sweet River Jordan. Not rewarded
in this life, but rewarded in our connection to what

(03:41:55):
is beyond this life, not some fantastical promise to after life,
but the real course of history, history which depends now
on our actions, our commitment to something beyond ourselves. Men
who do not understand history destroy themselves, become vaporous whiffs

(03:42:16):
of selfishness. I would hope that we would live beyond this,
that we would become part of the flow. And the
children of Israel replied, Oh, come on, man, you ain't MLK.
And this place sucks. And I'm three levels away from
winning a full sensory night with this chick with three tits,
three good tits, very proportional and not weird. So don't

(03:42:39):
get on my shit about going back to Earth. I
am an old man, the oldest on the starship. So
you have some notion that there is wisdom in me.
Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. I can't say much

(03:43:04):
for wisdom there is only experience, which, in the long
run includes and conflates with wisdom. Is it wisdom or
just a story? Do you want to hear an old
man's story? I was on our orbital platform when the

(03:43:26):
world ignited. When it burned at a whim. Mother set
fire to a few major cities. That wasn't enough, so
she set fire to everything. I watched, safe behind the
vast vacuum of space. I watched a city after city

(03:43:49):
bloomed and faded, silent embers, and what was to become
an eternal night. As a young man, I wish that
I would be present for important times, for world changing events.
I wished to be prophet like those of the old days.

(03:44:12):
Now I saw before me my burning bush. Now I
saw the terrible beauty of the Lord, burning and consuming
all I had ever known. Now I had become a prophet,
a man face to face with the Lord himself. What

(03:44:34):
was it like? It was beautiful, truly beautiful, beyond man's conception.
Moses stared into the flames of a burning bush. I
stared into the flames of a burning world. But what
difference should it make to a god eternal? Avoid prophecy

(03:44:58):
Eschee revelation when the Lord calls, bow and turn your
eyes down. This, if it is wisdom, is the best
advice I can give you. I have to admit, with
no small amount of shame, that I've always been perversely

(03:45:22):
titillated by the nazis depravities. That's why I wrote the
Treblinkis segment in the rather lurid style that I did.
When I look at the old pictures of the Nazis
in their nicely pressed uniforms, I can feel thee asture
pride with which they wore them. I can feel the

(03:45:44):
almost sexual withholding of human compassion that accompanied their crimes
against their fellow human beings. To button up your nice
crisp jacket and step out into the campgrounds, to strip
other people of all their clothing, and then strip them
of their lives, this must have been a thrill, one

(03:46:07):
of the deepest and sickest and darkest thrills a human
can experience. People have been slaughtered by the millions of
various atrocities throughout history, but the Nazis brought a certain
orderliness to it, a pristine hypocrisy which has not been
matched before or since. The fusty cavets of American slaveholders,

(03:46:32):
the drab tunics of Chinese and Russian communists, the sweaty
overalls of the Chimer rogue. None of them can incite
that sick and awful delight at the s s uniforms
in sight. The ancient Jew, as the Nazi saw him,
with the stories of shepherds and wine, with his beard

(03:46:54):
and his curled side locks, with his insistence on the
value of God and history, with his lawyer's offices and
jewelry shops, must have seemed the perfect target for destruction.
For the Jew was both more modern and more ancient
than the Nazi in the West. At least, he lived

(03:47:16):
in the cities and earned money through what he now
calls the knowledge economy. But he practiced a faith far
older than all others, save perhaps Hinduism. For a set
of sociopaths bent on creating an entirely new past and
a new future, the Jew, through entirely no fault of

(03:47:38):
his own, was an ideal vessel for their hatred. With
their ruins and their silly firelit ceremonies and all of
Himmler's invented lore, the Nazis made their claim to ancientness,
but compared to the Jews, and must have looked rather amateurish.

(03:48:00):
And wasn't this at the root of anti Semitism throughout
the ages. As centuries passed, Christianity was able to assume
the prestigious mantle of ancientness, but to know there was
something still more ancient, something which rejected their claims to majesty.
It must have rankled. And so the centuries of killing,

(03:48:24):
the Nazis wanted to own the past and the future.
They wanted to bend both of them to the throbbing
will of the Furor and his obedient vulk. But the
past cannot be owned if it is still alive. To
build a pristine, new future, the past must be destroyed

(03:48:44):
and made remote. It must be argued that at some
point in time, the flow of history was interrupted, that
we have become decoupled from our glorious past, that it
does not currently live among us. The eternal flow has
been diverted and must be restored. Though I hope it

(03:49:05):
doesn't need to be said, I feel I should make
it clear that I reject anti Semitism in all forms.
Anti Semitism is perhaps the ultimate conspiracy theory and though
it may surprise you, but I don't much care for
conspiracy theories. The world is far too chaotic and complex
for one small set of people to exert much control

(03:49:28):
over it. Anti Semitism is nonsense. As I understand the
AA philosophy, the root of all human suffering is in
attempting to control what we cannot control. For the alcoholic,
this attempt takes the form of alcohol we try to

(03:49:49):
control our feelings. For others, it may take another form,
regardless of the means, A person who attempted to control
everything will suffer grievously under their delusion of control. Conspiracy
theories are just this same delusion turned on its head.

(03:50:10):
Instead of assuming that I can control everything, I assume
some shadowy person or set of people can, and I
assume that by overthrowing them everything can be made right.
This is delusion. Nobody has that much control over the world.

(03:50:30):
There is no secret puppet master. The puppet is pulled
by a million different strings, and nobody controls them all. So,
then Mother, the wicked being, which has shadowed us through
all history, which has guided everything, which is now in

(03:50:50):
the cusp of separating us from the past and plunging
us into an unrecognizable future. Is a just delusion, a
futile attempt at control, or is it just the ravings
of a sad a misogynous man with mummy issues.

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