Latest / INSPIRE STORY / Drums in the Clouds
Transcript
- 0:15Speaker 1: Welcome back to Greek Cast. Hey, hello, there.
- 0:23Speaker 2: Are you.
- 0:25Speaker 1: A story today? I hope it's a good one because
- 0:29it's coming from one of you. That's right, we're reading
- 0:33a creep cast fan story original called There's Drumming in
- 0:37the Clouds. This is kind of cool. I saw this
- 0:40story on the subreddit. But then also I just looked
- 0:42towards the end of the author's note and it just
- 0:44said that shout out to the homie. So this port
- 0:47and helped the feedback, which was Limetime Live, rude three dude,
- 0:51three tenors one imperative Imperial necative is that author we read?
- 0:59So I thought that was fun and I was like,
- 1:00oh cool, yeah, imperial infective. Yeah yeah, And I thought
- 1:03that was kind of cool. So I thought to my Isaiah,
- 1:05why don't we just read this one today. Let's read someone,
- 1:08let's read a story from the homies, a news story.
- 1:11We're going around talking about some stories we're gonna read.
- 1:14We're gonna talk about one. I don't know what we're
- 1:15gonna talk about it. We're not going to talk about
- 1:17talk about We're not going to talk about what are
- 1:19you talking about?
- 1:20Speaker 3: You know, I don't know what you're talking about.
- 1:22Speaker 1: You know the thing, the one we were going to do,
- 1:24but we're like, eh, better not in our subreddit. No, no, no,
- 1:31But on our conversation we had before recording, Oh, it
- 1:36would be silly if we read that one. That one.
- 1:39Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand. I see what you're saying now.
- 1:43I thought you were talking about the fact that one
- 1:44of the most uploaded like fan made stories in our
- 1:47slash podcast is a fan fic of us.
- 1:49Speaker 1: I don't know how I feel about reading fan fiction. Granted,
- 1:52it is a horror story. It's a horror for me
- 1:55at least, and it would be I don't know if
- 1:57I could. I feel like it's going to lean sexual,
- 2:00and I don't want someone to write that. I don't
- 2:04want to find out. Oh, it's not gonna lean it'll
- 2:07fall into it and there's gonna be no ple It's true.
- 2:11I guess it really isn't a little uh, It isn't
- 2:13the side of a table you can lean into. It's
- 2:15more of a giant pit of despair for sure that
- 2:18you're gonna you're going to fall into. Regardless, today this
- 2:21seems kind of fun. There's something drumming on the clouds.
- 2:24I don't know it it's a it's a catchy title.
- 2:26I'm excited to read it, and it's being something that
- 2:29came out. Apparently he wrote it three months ago or
- 2:31here this is your part.
- 2:32Speaker 3: Sorry, No, it's okay, you can you can do my job.
- 2:34I don't care. I'm getting paid the same either way,
- 2:38So go ahead, d in the union. So this story
- 2:41is written by Pitiful Scream ninety seven.
- 2:43Speaker 2: Uh.
- 2:44Speaker 1: He seems to talk a lot in our Slash creep cast.
- 2:46Speaker 3: He also has a couple other stories over on his
- 2:49Creepypasta account, including I Sleep with My Window Closed Now
- 2:53and A Thousand Morning People. Potentially an up and comer,
- 2:56potentially someone who's cool. I'm not seeing it. Seems like
- 3:00he started writing this year, or at least started publishing
- 3:04this year, so that's pretty cool to see. And looking
- 3:08at the comments on his post on Our Slash could cash,
- 3:10you guys have been really supportive of this story, which
- 3:12is awesome. So we figure this might be a good
- 3:15one to read. And if it's awful and terrible, well
- 3:18this may be the last thing you ever post, given
- 3:20I'll react to it.
- 3:21Speaker 1: So I no, no, no, no, no, I'm just excited
- 3:25that people are This is a continuous debate that we've
- 3:28been having is we've gotten so when we announced that,
- 3:31we were like, I just post your stories on our subreddit.
- 3:34There's so many submissions. I thought like, oh, yeah, it'll
- 3:37be big at first, or people will post a lot.
- 3:39You know, I wouldn't know if like when we first
- 3:41announced it, it has not stopped. People write all the time.
- 3:45I fucking love how much people write, so much so
- 3:47that I'm wondering if we should just make like a
- 3:50new subreddit just for stories that way. People, It's just
- 3:53it's all stories that way, people can also meme and stuff.
- 3:57I don't know. All I know is it's just it's
- 3:58exciting to see people men and write and use this
- 4:02as a time to experiment and find their voice creatively.
- 4:06And I and I enjoy it. I think it's cool. Yeah,
- 4:09I think it's Uh.
- 4:10Speaker 3: It's really awesome to see people coming forward and saying
- 4:12stuff like, oh, well, you know, I watched the podcast
- 4:15and I decided why not post some of these things online?
- 4:17And now they're like writing more and people are giving
- 4:20them feedback and stuff like that. That is very inspiring
- 4:24and we appreciate you all.
- 4:25Speaker 1: That's really our cold dead heart.
- 4:29Speaker 3: Yes, your cold dead heart. I was already warm.
- 4:35Speaker 1: They're really okay.
- 4:38Speaker 3: Anyway, we're gonna go ahead and get into his story.
- 4:40I guess unless there's anything else you have to.
- 4:44Speaker 1: About, I think that I'm excited to jump in.
- 4:46Speaker 3: You have to say thank you. Now you were talking
- 4:48about taking my job by describing the author. You know,
- 4:51I have to say thank you to the people on audio, you.
- 4:55Speaker 1: Guys for listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts, and hopefully
- 4:59if you your you know, listening to those considers giving
- 5:03us a good review. It does help us out a lot.
- 5:05And also thank you to our beautiful patrons who support
- 5:07our channel and had to listen through the last story
- 5:10that we read that was a like pulling teeth, definitely
- 5:13a crash out episode. So we apologize for that, even
- 5:16though some people like it. They're sadist. I don't know.
- 5:19Go ahead, Idiah, which was the last one we read? Hell?
- 5:21Speaker 3: I oh yeah, yeah, I see you hate those? They're
- 5:27my most memorable I love those all right, Well, without
- 5:32further ado, we're going to get into it. There's drumming
- 5:35in the clouds. Phase one. The arrival. The photograph arrived
- 5:39without explanation. It showed some kind of mass, dark gray
- 5:43and pulsating. It was hovering far above the North Atlantic.
- 5:47It resembled a cyclone, but there was no eye of
- 5:50this storm, no rotation, just layers like folds of gauze,
- 5:55stacked and suspended the sky around. It was eerily clear.
- 6:00That was the first impossibility. Doctor Married Finn saw the
- 6:04image at six point thirty two am. It was forwarded
- 6:08to her personal account from an encrypted Ministry server. The
- 6:11subject line read only come in immediately. Doctor Finn arrived
- 6:16at the North Street Climate Monitoring facility before sunrise. The
- 6:20conference room was already full, unusual for a Wednesday, technicians,
- 6:24military lihazons, two senior meteorologists, and a man from the
- 6:28Department of Anomalous Phenomena, a department that officially didn't exist.
- 6:34No one spoke for the first ten minutes. They just
- 6:36stared at the image projected on the main wall, still
- 6:39framed from a weather satellite feed.
- 6:41Speaker 1: I've never seen a static formation at this altitude.
- 6:43Speaker 3: Before, Married said, her eyes locked on the impossible image.
- 6:48Speaker 1: How high is this exactly sixty eight kilometers.
- 6:51Speaker 3: One of the technicians said, adjusting his glasses.
- 6:54Speaker 1: She blinked, mesosphere correct, this doesn't make any sense.
- 6:57Speaker 3: She murmured to herself, irritated by confusion. What of the meteorologists, dood,
- 7:02it's your.
- 7:02Speaker 1: Job to make sense of a doctor, Finn, When was
- 7:04it first reported.
- 7:05Speaker 3: She responded, ignoring the man's tone.
- 7:07Speaker 1: It's been there for six hours. It's it just showed up.
- 7:11Speaker 3: Military liaison cleared his throat.
- 7:13Speaker 1: Spotted by a satellite over the Atlantic, cross checked by
- 7:17a second pass. We thought it might be a weapon
- 7:19to breeds, not civil flights are already diverting merritime routes too.
- 7:24Speaker 3: On the monitors, numbers scrolled, temperatures, wind speeds, strange depth readings.
- 7:30The mass wasn't moving. Winds tore it at hundreds of
- 7:33kilometers per hour, but it didn't rotate. It didn't sheer,
- 7:37just remained possibly still.
- 7:40Speaker 1: This is what every meteorologist deals with every day. Like
- 7:44my local meteorologists, when I'm watching the weather in the morning,
- 7:48this is them in the morning. It's frantically running around.
- 7:51Speaker 3: They get called into like a government facilitating and they're like,
- 7:54what is that.
- 7:54Speaker 1: It's just like, clearly a cloud? What is that? Hell
- 7:57is this? What is this?
- 8:00Speaker 3: We keep saying, Magan, there's generals in the room, like
- 8:04what makes sense of this. What am I looking at?
- 8:06It's like, well, it's a cumulat nimbus. I think, God,
- 8:09damn it. Can we kill it?
- 8:11Speaker 1: Kick? Does it bleed? Can't we kill it? Doesn't? Doesn't bleed?
- 8:16I I really I desperately want the meteorologists. Like in
- 8:21my mind, now, this isn't a government facility. It's Channel
- 8:25nine news and it's like a local weather It's like
- 8:27it's like your local w whatever weather station is there
- 8:33going to be exactly is it going to be a
- 8:39cumulat nimbus cloud.
- 8:41Speaker 3: It's very it's just like it's just moving with all
- 8:43the other clouds. It's like, oh my god, I just crish.
- 8:51I do like the idea of like what a movie
- 8:54did this where there's a cloud.
- 8:56Speaker 1: I'm doing, oh h no, little alien in the cloud.
- 9:00Speaker 3: How like the first thing they see is the cloud?
- 9:02Is it moving with all the other clouds? It just
- 9:04sets in spot kind of reminds me of that foot
- 9:07it's shaken by a commercial pilot had gone viral. A
- 9:10band of dark mists stretching from horizon to horizon, bloated
- 9:13and heavy, blotting out the sun. It covered a region
- 9:17roughly the size of North America and appeared to be growing.
- 9:20Oh well, in my head, I was like, I could
- 9:22see it taking a wall from one cloud to be spotted.
- 9:25Speaker 1: But it's the size of a content that was god,
- 9:28you know what. I take it back.
- 9:29Speaker 3: If the the General's right, if you walk into a
- 9:34weather station they're like, yeah, it's just a cloud, and
- 9:36be like, no, no, it's not. The shadow of the
- 9:43cloud cast was immeasurable. On a clear day, the light
- 9:47was dim, like a solar eclipse. The sky turned to
- 9:50dull gray, shadows vanished, and birds fell silent. Some areas
- 9:55experienced perpetual dusk the night posing in its darkness, people
- 10:00on the ground began reporting changes, strange static coming in
- 10:04their teeth, tension, headaches, and a persistent low pressure in
- 10:08the ears. Online forms exploded. Hashtag the cloud trended within
- 10:12the hour. Doctor Finn kept working. She had trained herself
- 10:15to remain clinical, methoughtical. Still she couldn't shake the feeling
- 10:18that the air in the lab had gone stale. Something
- 10:21was very wrong, and not a single thinking brain on
- 10:24the planet could provide answers to the impossible situation. At
- 10:27exactly nine forty three pm GMT, the first sound was recorded,
- 10:33a low frequency thump, thump, deep distant, then another two
- 10:40hours apart, then again and again thunder. Someone offered, but
- 10:46the radar was clear, not a single weather system for
- 10:49one thousand kilometers. The thump came again, only minutes apart.
- 10:53It's not where the story's going, I know, but it's
- 10:55funny going off of what you said earlier about it
- 10:58being just a normal cloud very clearly has a thunder noise.
- 11:02In the general's like.
- 11:03Speaker 1: What is that? What is that? Yeah, war drums. They
- 11:13have a band.
- 11:14Speaker 3: There's a band in the.
- 11:17Speaker 1: Led zeppelins in the clouds.
- 11:20Speaker 3: God, God forbid. He witnesses a lightning strip shooting at us.
- 11:26Married sat perfectly still, head set on, watching the sound
- 11:30wave for all across the monitor. It wasn't thunder, it
- 11:33wasn't seismic. It was airborne high above our heads. Jesus whispered,
- 11:39ay young in turn nearby, to.
- 11:41Speaker 1: Come everyone side the cloud by men. I feel like
- 11:45I feel like I need to get it out of
- 11:48my I've been fucking this up.
- 11:50Speaker 3: You're just like said the same lines on top of
- 11:53each other for like three minutes. I can't feel what's
- 11:57cracking me up is now it's stuck in my head,
- 11:59the idea it's just a normal cloud, and it's like
- 12:02it's coming from inside the cloud, and the meteorologist is like, yeah,
- 12:05that sounds underworse. It comes from the cloud. Why as
- 12:10it's all gain by midnight and it's settled into a rhythm,
- 12:14a slow, deep drumming sound. Ump thumb, thumb, thumb, hump thumb, regular, relentless,
- 12:21as though something far far above was knocking from the
- 12:25other side of the sky. Almost sounds like a heartbeat
- 12:28with like the double rhythm, like that Project Cerberus Veil
- 12:32Field Journal entry Doctor Marie Finn Lead meteorologists Classified level Omega,
- 12:38day one, eleven forty two pm GMT.
- 12:41Speaker 1: The cloud remains stationary. It scales beyond measurement. Its stick
- 12:45fog goes far beyond her atmosphere. The sound began tonight,
- 12:49regular pulses, low frequency origin no no, but a triangulated
- 12:54within the formation. The collection of all data is incomplete
- 12:57at this time. Personal note, it is not weather, It
- 13:00is not man made. You don't know what this is
- 13:03kind of fucking creepy, I would you know what. I
- 13:05kind of think it almost seems like a giant like
- 13:07whenever there's like a nuclear explosion. It almost seems like
- 13:10something like that, where it's like it just casts this giant,
- 13:13ominous basically just smoke cloud for god knows how long.
- 13:18But for something to be that stationary moving, that'd be
- 13:20fucked up.
- 13:21Speaker 3: Well, I made the Nope comparison earlier, but now after
- 13:24the heartbeat thing, it might actually be like a creature
- 13:28in there, you know.
- 13:29Speaker 1: Well, I mean you'd have to. I mean, I don't know.
- 13:31I think that's where it's it's leaning, but it it'd
- 13:34be kind of sick. I love the idea to have
- 13:35something floating too, Like that's why I loved about Nope,
- 13:38this idea of something floating there but you just don't
- 13:40know what it is, or it's just this cloud formation
- 13:43totally in disguise.
- 13:44Speaker 3: Did you ever read At the Mountains of Madness?
- 13:47Speaker 1: No, but I know of it, or don't know. I've
- 13:49read Down the Mountains of Madness.
- 13:51Speaker 3: You know how at the end of the story they
- 13:53fly away in the plane and the giant like sail
- 13:56thing comes out of the city.
- 13:59Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 14:00Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like a stereotypical like Lovecraft creature.
- 14:05But from his description of it, it's like it's like
- 14:07a ship. It's almost like a living, breathing ship the
- 14:10size of a city. I kind of have an image
- 14:12of that, like a I forget the author's name, the
- 14:16guy that did the old depictions of Hell with like
- 14:18all the weird abstract images of different demons and stuff
- 14:22like that, but like a creature out of one of
- 14:23those paintings, like a something not of our planet hiding
- 14:28in the cloud, or maybe the cloud itself is the thing.
- 14:30That's just what the creature looks like. I'm assuming it's
- 14:33a creature. Could also just be a presence or a
- 14:34ship or something like that. Who knows. Phase two. The
- 14:38sound of god by mourning drumming was heard across the
- 14:42entire Northern Hemisphere. It was no longer limited to the
- 14:45monitoring stations. People across Europe, the eastern United States, parts
- 14:50of western Africa, and even as far as Argentina parted
- 14:54hearing it, not just through the air, through their bodies.
- 14:57I mean, they're all just is like again, that's hearing works,
- 15:01and you hear it in the base of the skull.
- 15:06The hollows of the chest are behind the eyes. The
- 15:09sound was felt just as much as it was heard.
- 15:12Tire cities reported the vibrations. Hospitals began to fill, not
- 15:16from injury, but from confusion, migraines to nias, bleeding noses.
- 15:22Some people began to lose their minds, tormented by a sound.
- 15:26Speaker 1: They couldn't escape.
- 15:28Speaker 3: Others seemed unfazed by the strange phenomenon. A woman in
- 15:31Bordeaux began convulsing and screamed.
- 15:34Speaker 1: I heard I heard it, I heard it.
- 15:36Speaker 3: Before falling unconscious. At one o six am GMT, Doctor
- 15:41Finn watched from the roof of the North Strand Facility
- 15:44as the light changed again, not dimmer, not quite. She
- 15:48struggled to name it. Shadows had lost their edges, Buildings
- 15:53looked slightly flattened. Colors were muted, like the world had
- 15:57been submerged in water. She raised her hand and stared
- 16:00at her palm veins like rivers on a map. Her
- 16:04skin was paler than before. Hairs on her arms stood up.
- 16:09The drumming continued, Doctor Finn, the man from the Department
- 16:12of Anomalist Phenomenon pushed through the steel door behind her.
- 16:16Speaker 1: My name is Jonas, ma'am. I've been meaning to speak
- 16:18with you.
- 16:19Speaker 3: He paused beside her eyes turned upward at the dreadful
- 16:22cloud swallowed the entire skyline, hiding stars and moon alike.
- 16:28Speaker 1: Quite the view. What can I do for you, jonas.
- 16:31Speaker 3: She asked, her tone clipped, unwilling to indulge small talk,
- 16:34I mean.
- 16:34Speaker 1: To be fair. Well, yeah, quite a view. It's like,
- 16:37why don'd she funck often? What will do you not
- 16:39see the thaing coming towards us? Exactly? That would piss
- 16:43me off.
- 16:43Speaker 3: So man, this thing's like eating It's consuming the top
- 16:49half of the planet. Everyone can hear it in their skull.
- 16:52And then a guy from the Department of Anominalist Phenomena
- 16:56kicks open the door and says, I need to talk
- 16:58with you. Quite the view up here.
- 17:02Speaker 1: Quite the deals. We make a little bit of lighthearted
- 17:05the uh what department is he in? Anomalous? I don't
- 17:09know why I thought you said McDonald's phenomena as the
- 17:12fun I'm sorry, it'll be oh bist braying. Ronald McDonald
- 17:19comes in the secret. Yeah, the only way to stap
- 17:24his cloud is to give it a cheeseburger. That would
- 17:27actually be way more terrified.
- 17:29Speaker 3: If she's on top of the she's on top of
- 17:32the roof, and she turns around and through the little
- 17:34wire glass you.
- 17:35Speaker 1: Can just see Ronald. Yeah, quite the view up here.
- 17:41I need to talk to you. What does Ronald sound like?
- 17:48Does he have a voice. I don't think he's I
- 17:50think that if he speaks every his his voice is
- 17:54so low that if he speaks, children ship their pants.
- 17:57That's what happens. So he has to remain quiet. He
- 17:59just looks at me against the media.
- 18:01Speaker 3: At Hamburgler, which is everything he touches with Tony McDonald's cheesburger.
- 18:04Speaker 1: What would what would Ronald have to say? I swear
- 18:07I've heard him say this burger is tasty. That's what no.
- 18:11I've heard.
- 18:12Speaker 3: And every and every video is just smiling and like
- 18:14a mime, and he's like, there's like a one.
- 18:17Speaker 1: I feel like there was like an ad campaign where
- 18:18he's like just giving the shush sign and I was like,
- 18:21what the fun?
- 18:22Speaker 3: Yeah?
- 18:22Speaker 1: I know right what, You're in the play place between
- 18:27us now, the play is crawling around. You're in the
- 18:30play place. Also, I love the rock rock reference.
- 18:35Speaker 3: That's where I've heard that, That's where that's it.
- 18:39Speaker 1: That's their bill. Jacks Billy calm down starts to beating
- 18:47the look Jackson. That's so good. Yeah, say, obviously it's not.
- 19:01It's not McDonald's, all right, even though I kind of
- 19:07wish it was not for the author.
- 19:11Speaker 3: Maybe include Donal McDonald's for the author should have had
- 19:14for Ronald McDonald's, but specifically the rocker rock version of
- 19:19Ronald McDonald Jonah.
- 19:20Speaker 1: And Jonah enters the rob and sets down his blu
- 19:23ray copy of the Founder on the table. You're gonna
- 19:25want to see this.
- 19:29Speaker 3: This will tell us everything.
- 19:33Speaker 1: Okay, what can what can I do for you?
- 19:35Speaker 3: Jonas, she asked, her tone clipped and willing to indulge
- 19:39small talk.
- 19:40Speaker 1: You know who I work for, the clown.
- 19:46Speaker 3: Okay, she nodded, once offering him a cigarette from a
- 19:50nearby empty pack.
- 19:51Speaker 1: No thanks, I quit fresh air for me. Can this
- 19:56guy get to the point, Jonas, I'm a need, I'm
- 19:59a need, Jonas. I mean it's been too I'm gonna
- 20:01say this, it's been two lines, but it's felt like
- 20:02two years. All right, Jonas, to the point. Please. The
- 20:08cloud is getting closer. Those things only frush air for me.
- 20:13Behind him is just a giant cloud, he laughed awkwardly,
- 20:22as doctor Finn lit smoke. They're relocating me opposite side
- 20:28of the world, the counterpart facility in the southern hemisphere.
- 20:32They won simultaneous readings mirror data sets. Honestly, it feels
- 20:37like I'm just being moved out of the blast zone.
- 20:41Speaker 3: The department guys like, hey, so there's sending me a
- 20:44South America kind of like an arc.
- 20:46Speaker 1: Yeah, there's all kinds out there, double of every animal
- 20:50and stuff, and I don't know, it seems kind of weird. Yeah.
- 20:54The guy like he like, really likes lemurs. I don't
- 20:57know if I like him. He paused for if this
- 21:02thing is global, he keeps growing. We need to know
- 21:05if he behaves the same way everywhere. Otherwise we're flying blind.
- 21:09Speaker 3: Ben studied him, the shadows across his face blurred and
- 21:13trembling in the wrong light.
- 21:14Speaker 1: So you'll be chasing the other horizon something like that.
- 21:18Speaker 3: You gave a then smile, but his eyes stayed locked
- 21:21on the sky.
- 21:21Speaker 1: Sends everything I find. Maybe between the two of us
- 21:24will make sense of it.
- 21:25Speaker 3: Our kays lingered on him a moment longer than she intended.
- 21:29Then he looks back to the cloud. Maybe drumming echoed low, cavernous, endless.
- 21:36Speaker 1: Doom, doom, the thumb doom dum boom almostems it's a
- 21:40it's a giant heartbeat. It's gotta be a giant heartbeat.
- 21:43Speaker 3: That's why I think it is.
- 21:44Speaker 1: That's what I think.
- 21:44Speaker 3: It's a heartbeat.
- 21:45Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish it was just Neil Park in the
- 21:47clouds doing drum solos. My god.
- 21:58Speaker 3: I love the idea because with some of these videos,
- 22:00it's like, oh, won't be funny if the author watched
- 22:02this episode. But we know the author is gonna watch
- 22:05this episode, right, Yeah, so they're like, oh, the Hunter
- 22:10and Isaiah are reading my story. Wow, And then they
- 22:13get on and it's like, oh, yeah, I really wish
- 22:16there was like a guy.
- 22:16Speaker 1: In the That's what you have to say that you
- 22:21have to expect empty brained reaction. That's okay. First off,
- 22:25I was gonna say, we're just did the stories kicking off.
- 22:29If you haven't expected this by now, then you have
- 22:31not been listening to the show very long. What happens
- 22:34is you start off, you joke around, and then as
- 22:36as you keep reading, you get more and more bought in.
- 22:39This is just just pound around, all right, I'm still
- 22:42bought in. I still like the giant idea of a
- 22:45huge cloud with a mysterious i'm guessing creature inside of it,
- 22:49all right, and then you have a little moment with
- 22:51Jonas that makes you have a little McDonald's me moment.
- 22:53Why not? This is just how it happened on the show.
- 22:55Speaker 3: What if the cloud? What if the cloud was Grimace, if.
- 22:59Speaker 1: The cloud was Reis, I would get on my knees
- 23:02and I would start bowing to the story and I
- 23:04would say, God bless you. He's just like, oh, in
- 23:10the clouds, And that's where Ronald comes out. Ronald's like collage, collage,
- 23:21that entire.
- 23:23Speaker 3: God go ahead, No, no, I'm just gonna say during
- 23:26the entire dialogue segment, I was thinking that it was
- 23:29Ronald the whole time, but I didn't say anything.
- 23:32Speaker 1: I was being good. We can for us and not
- 23:34for the audience. Audience, you don't listen to this for us.
- 23:37If Jonas comes back, it's Ronald McDonald. That's just between us.
- 23:42It would be very funny, though, if Grimace was in
- 23:45the clouds and Ronald sat there and he's like, you
- 23:46have to shoot it down. You have no idea what
- 23:49he's going to do to the Burger supply chain on
- 23:51planet Earth. If we don't kill him now, God something.
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- 25:26to the episode.
- 25:27Speaker 1: This episode is sponsored by Babel. Everything we do on
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- 27:11Speaker 3: Back to the episode, neither of them spoke after that.
- 27:17The emergency broadcast systems went live just afternoon. News anchors
- 27:21read pre written statements, no questions, no speculation.
- 27:26Speaker 1: Authorities are aware of the atmospheric anomaly currently positioned over
- 27:29the Atlantic, remain indoors limit direct observation of the phenomenon.
- 27:34Further information will be provided when available. Definitely nice little Also,
- 27:38I was going to say, and I know it's kind
- 27:40of becoming a bit of a meme and I don't
- 27:42appreciate it, but it is very Lovecraftian. If you look
- 27:44at the cloud you pretty much go fucking This one
- 27:47is Lovecraftian.
- 27:48Speaker 3: You can say that without it being a meme. I
- 27:49think it's very clearly like something that big, something indescribable,
- 27:54you know, kind of thing.
- 27:55Speaker 1: The looking at a looking at a beautiful fluffy cloud
- 28:00going insane from it really is a uh that's fucked
- 28:03up to not be able to look at a beautiful sky.
- 28:06If you look up, you basically go insane. That's kind
- 28:08of crazy.
- 28:09Speaker 3: That was pretty hot. That does get my goat, so
- 28:13to speak.
- 28:14Speaker 1: Are you chubbed up in the pants. I'm not answering that.
- 28:18And no, oh, I think that means yes.
- 28:24Speaker 3: The feeds cut off after ninety seconds. Black screens revealed
- 28:27the concerned reactions of the population. Social media boiled over
- 28:31with conspiracy, prophecy, and fear.
- 28:34Speaker 1: Viral clip from New York.
- 28:36Speaker 3: Showed commuters frozen in the middle of an intersection, all
- 28:39exiting their vehicles, all staring up at once, dozens of them,
- 28:44like they'd heard a voice. Then some began to cry,
- 28:48others fell to their knees in prayer, all united by
- 28:51the oppression of complete and total helplessness. Government helicopters swarmed
- 28:56beneath the cloud like flies shrawn to the stinch of death.
- 28:59Another clip from Nigerian cargo ship showed the cloud expanding,
- 29:03spilling outward and curling tendrils. Vast sections of dark mists
- 29:07whirled within the cloud, like black sand and clear water.
- 29:11The crew's final log simply read God has returned to Us.
- 29:15Two forty two am. Doctor Finn stepped into the soundproof
- 29:19chamber to listen to the unfiltered live feed. She sat
- 29:22in the center of the small white room, trapped on
- 29:25the overyear monitors, and listened.
- 29:28Speaker 1: There it was.
- 29:30Speaker 3: The thumb drumming from the cloud, clear, now more spacious,
- 29:36more thoughful. There were pauses between the beats, pauses long
- 29:41enough to create the illusion it had stopped where it
- 29:44came again. She felt it deep in her rib cage,
- 29:47her heart sinking to the aerial phenomenon. The drumming had
- 29:51become a presence, not sound alone, but a tidal force
- 29:55pressing against the earth. Every beat made her stomach alerge,
- 29:59as if some vast stirring within the planet itself.
- 30:02Speaker 1: I do love this idea of like a some kind
- 30:05of creature coming into our atmosphere without us knowing and
- 30:08like formulating or forming like almost like it like the cloud,
- 30:14Like if the creature is able to like exude like
- 30:18a gas or something and cover itself like camouflage itself
- 30:20in that way, and it's like growing, like it's pretty
- 30:22much using as a defense mechanism until it can like
- 30:25fully unravel. That's pretty sweet. Like that's kind of a
- 30:28that's kind of a cool little way of blending in
- 30:30with like natural with like I guess you're surroundings like
- 30:33instead of like a like you know, like a gecko
- 30:36or something getting on like a a branch or whatever
- 30:39and then blending in with or chameleon whatever, blending in
- 30:41with its surroundings. It would just be that. But yes,
- 30:44just with the sky. Pretty much.
- 30:45Speaker 3: Yeah, it's creepy to imagine that just keeps getting bigger
- 30:49and bigger under are like it went. It went from
- 30:53nothing to just be in the size of North America
- 30:55in one day, almost instantly, Like you didn't see it
- 30:58arrive or anything like that. What they haven't mentioned anyone
- 31:02trying to fly into it or anything yet?
- 31:03Speaker 1: Right, Okay, I think they've just been flying around it
- 31:06if I remember, or they've just been like flying near it,
- 31:09and I don't know, I don't think they've gone outside,
- 31:12so real real world.
- 31:14Speaker 3: How long on a clock before the United States military
- 31:20throws some kind of drone into it? I would immediately
- 31:25just hits that thing with hellstore missiles.
- 31:27Speaker 1: I don't know if they would do missiles, but they
- 31:28would definitely. They'd at least be like Amazons fucking flying
- 31:31a couple of fucking drones and see if we can
- 31:34make sense of this thing.
- 31:36Speaker 3: Yeah, surely, right.
- 31:38Speaker 1: What would be the most disturbing thing if you flew
- 31:40a drone into a cloud that you would see?
- 31:43Speaker 3: I think grimace.
- 31:44Speaker 1: I think that size and sports America. That'd be pretty alarming.
- 31:49That would be that would be pretty alarming. You're not wrong.
- 31:53You were not wrong.
- 31:54Speaker 3: Did you see that footage that went around of that.
- 31:57I think it was over the Persian Gulf or something
- 32:00in one one of the waterways around Middle East. There
- 32:03was a UFO that was not like an alien, like
- 32:07the traditional sense of the word, Like we just didn't
- 32:10know what kind of aerial vehicle it was. It was
- 32:13like rocketing over the water and we like US government
- 32:18sees it instantly shoots a health store missile at it, uh,
- 32:22and it just tinks off it like it hits it
- 32:25and just like the missile spins off the side and
- 32:29it keeps going.
- 32:30Speaker 1: That must made it. That probably let every other nation
- 32:32be like, dude, their fucking missiles suck. You should just
- 32:37fucking like we should go in there and just fuck
- 32:39them up. Their missile suck. And everyone's like, no, that
- 32:42thing's gonna be like an alien or something. It's definitely
- 32:47like an alien whatever.
- 32:52Speaker 3: I think it's funny to imagine that there's just a
- 32:54terrified Russian meg pilot in there like that got a
- 32:58one in a million, like the missile hit just right
- 33:01off one piece of metal to deflect, and he's in there.
- 33:04Speaker 1: Like, oh my gosh. I was talking to a friend
- 33:15of mine who's in.
- 33:17Speaker 3: Like does like a lot of the secret squirrel letter
- 33:20agency stuff. And he said that he can talk about
- 33:23that one since it leaked in this public info now.
- 33:26But he said when that came out, like the video
- 33:30of it and everything, every high ranking agency was freaking
- 33:34out over it.
- 33:35Speaker 1: They're like, who is this? What is this? How do
- 33:37we kill it?
- 33:37Speaker 3: We need a bigger weapon, blah blah blah. So again,
- 33:40even funnier to imagine. It's just a really scared Russian pilence.
- 33:46Speaker 1: Also to answer my od question to the scariest thing
- 33:49that I think could be in a giant cloud if
- 33:52you were flying a drone into a giant cloud. If
- 33:55I saw a giant and it's so that the cloud
- 33:59is the size of North America, right, if it was
- 34:02a giant Italian American slurping spaghetti, that would be uh,
- 34:08that might that might be my greatest fear.
- 34:11Speaker 3: So by Italian American, do you mean like, hey, I'm
- 34:13walking here kind or like a MOMMI.
- 34:16Speaker 1: It could be anything, just an Italian American sweaty, sweating
- 34:21profusely sweating olive oil. Everyone's like, it's raining olive oil.
- 34:26It's because that's the sweat for the Italian American guy.
- 34:30He's slurping it up.
- 34:31Speaker 3: Shift some gift, some beef with Italians.
- 34:34Speaker 1: No, definitely not.
- 34:37Speaker 3: No, what gives you that idea?
- 34:39Speaker 1: What? No? You fly the drum to the cloud? He said,
- 34:44there's He looks because he's huge, right, he said, there,
- 34:51that's gonna be my next question. So he's the size,
- 34:55this giant turns towards the camera. He looks at you.
- 34:58He does if he good? Good? That was okay, that
- 35:04wasn't an Italian?
- 35:05Speaker 3: Next?
- 35:06Speaker 1: Pretty good? You're like, what are those sounds? What? Also?
- 35:26Speaker 3: Also, after the no specification, I don't think you can
- 35:30say you don't have a problem with the I don't.
- 35:32Speaker 1: Man, not at all.
- 35:35Speaker 3: Which also, what what voices that it's not an Italian.
- 35:41Speaker 1: Italian American accent? No? No, pretty good?
- 35:52Speaker 3: Did you ask that question originally so you could set
- 35:54up an Italian joke?
- 35:55Speaker 1: No, okay, I don't use minor situations like this to
- 35:59further prove that I dislike Italian Americans.
- 36:04Speaker 3: That's not anything to me, buddy, you don't got proved.
- 36:08I know, all right, that's not what I'm about. Okay, Hey,
- 36:12that's not what I'm about.
- 36:14Speaker 1: He's a pretty dude. And then he said, and then
- 36:21he has the thing. He has a giant he's a
- 36:24giant pepper cracker. Whatever he did. People are screaming because
- 36:33they're getting eyes. Mean, when is what he says? Just
- 36:43like that? Who is this an at tackle? You targeting
- 36:52with you? Run the run the drawer drone into his eye. Oh,
- 37:06he frowns at you. He's wiping his hand. He's wiping
- 37:08his hand on his eye. He quickly gets his bull
- 37:12spaghetti back. M hmm, good one man, it's a long
- 37:27day blood. Alright, Okay, buddy, we'll get through this. Okay, man,
- 37:36you're it's all right. We'll get there. We'll get there.
- 37:40Speaker 3: Then it's shifted. The sound broke free of rhythm. A
- 37:44single elongated groan, wet and guttural torch from the cloud
- 37:50get rippled across.
- 37:51Speaker 1: Seat, slurb with spaghetti. Dude, all right.
- 38:03Speaker 3: It rippled across the atmosphere like thick viscous.
- 38:18Speaker 1: Was I was.
- 38:19Speaker 3: I psyched myself out waiting on you that I started reading.
- 38:25It rippled across the atmosphere like thick viscous liquid, sloshing
- 38:30into every crack or crap as it could find the
- 38:33ground itself, vibrating under the sonic pressure. It was enormous, impossible,
- 38:41something malignant, something so vast that its moan reshaped the sky.
- 38:46The pitch was almost beyond hearing, subsonic, yet tortuously present, low, dragging,
- 38:53reverberating with the weight of mass. She could not comprehend
- 38:57the grown slithered and pulse, wet crack of muscle tearing,
- 39:02send you stretching a predator, yawning across the heavens. Her
- 39:07chest heaved, her stomach twisted, her fingers tingled with the
- 39:10pressure of sound. Her mind screamed against the comprehension. The
- 39:14noise was alive, shapeless yet aware. It hung in the
- 39:18room like a storm that could devour everything, pausing only
- 39:22to let its presence sink further into her bones before
- 39:24dragging itself back into a wet, shuddering growl. She ripped
- 39:29the headphones off, trembling, sweat prickling across her skin. The
- 39:34chamber was silent, but not really. The sound lingered, imprinted
- 39:38on her ribs and skull, crawling through her blood.
- 39:42Speaker 1: Was that a voice? The inturn monitoring the signal, turned
- 39:46to her, pale and crying No. It wasn't a voice, then,
- 39:53was it She.
- 39:53Speaker 3: Stood slowly and left the room without speaking another word.
- 39:57The drummond resumed as normal. Project SERB surveil, field journal entry, doctor,
- 40:02married Finn Lead meteorologists classified love lo Omega A two
- 40:07to three seventeen am gmt.
- 40:10Speaker 1: Cloud remain stationary. Estimated diameter now exceeds five thousand kilometers.
- 40:15Audio patterns continue, rhythmic, biological, possibly vocal, global symptoms reported,
- 40:21neurological disruption, auditory hallucinations, emotional volatility, mass hysteria, thousands of
- 40:29casualties across different countries, burst ear drums and internal hemorrhaging,
- 40:34public unrest, increasing governmental control deteriorating. A plan was initiated
- 40:39to obtain a visual of the sound source. Jonas team
- 40:42ran three lighter sweeps from orbit, from a U two
- 40:45spy plane and from a modified weather balloon. Orbital scan
- 40:50return no depths, readings, not zero, just nothing as if
- 40:54struck open air for one thousand meters then refused to return.
- 40:56Plane scan logged one frame of internal structure looked like bone.
- 41:01A moment later, if the image glitched, reloaded and it showed
- 41:04a perfect sphere the size of mountain and static, what
- 41:10can we run that back? One more time plane. Can
- 41:13you get another picture? Please? Looked like bone. It glitched,
- 41:17nothing was there, so we just said fuck it. Never mind.
- 41:20Well it kind of looked like blown.
- 41:22Speaker 3: But then the picture finished and it was actually just
- 41:24a sphere the size of a mountain, which is perfectly
- 41:27reasonable given the condition.
- 41:29Speaker 1: Balloon feed twenty minutes of telementary before a loss of signal,
- 41:34internal layers, visible fibrous twitching.
- 41:39Speaker 3: Once again, I'm gonna need a We're gonna need some
- 41:42clarification on that, mister, balloon.
- 41:44Speaker 1: Final frame A shape in the center, spindled, bowlike, covered
- 41:51in Parmesan and marinera spindled, elongated, symmetrical, but wrong. Our
- 41:58analysts ran it through the edge of detection software. The
- 42:02results were disturbing. They resembled a face, but only when
- 42:06you didn't look at it directly. The convergence of lines, folds,
- 42:09and textures that formed something odd. One technician collapsed during
- 42:14image review. She said she felt like I could see her.
- 42:16I saw too, just once. Didn't scare me. It just
- 42:19made me feel ashamed. We've locked the files project code
- 42:24Serber's veil access visual AI system only. No human review permitted,
- 42:29effective immediately. Personal note Jonas agrees there's something in there.
- 42:35He's gone south into the dark. I don't know when
- 42:37I'll see him again. I think it's stretching. I like
- 42:42that entry a lot.
- 42:43Speaker 3: I like to mention that it's like fibers in there,
- 42:45like they get close to it. It looks like these
- 42:47long like veins and arteries and stuff, something that I
- 42:51did think about. When I look at it, I feel ashamed,
- 42:55and the mention of it looks like a face. But
- 42:58when you don't look directly at it, I think this
- 43:00is where the story's going. But this would be a
- 43:03cool way to write, like the appearance of an angel
- 43:07right on Earth, because they can be theoretically any size, right,
- 43:15and they have like unlimited powers. So perhaps when like
- 43:18Judgment Day comes and they come to destroy the Earth,
- 43:20they're the size of the planet, right, this giant structure
- 43:23that stretches over it. I don't think that's where it's going,
- 43:25but that could be a cool interpretation. It could also
- 43:27tie into like the boat off Africa saying God has
- 43:31returned and stuff like that.
- 43:33Speaker 1: Yeah, all right.
- 43:34Speaker 3: Phase three the arms Doctor Finn jolted from her sleep,
- 43:39her phone vibrating on the skill table she had passed
- 43:42out at her desk. Overworked and exhausted, she grabbed her phone.
- 43:47The screen read Jonas dap Finn. Jonas's voice came sharp, urgent,
- 43:52are you seeing the last readings? Her pulse quickened, Claud
- 43:55it had been behaving different. The drumming was heavier, more insistent.
- 44:02Thumb thumb, I'm thumb, I'm thumb.
- 44:04Speaker 1: I'm watching. It's intense, but nothing new yet them thumbum
- 44:09thumb thumb intense.
- 44:12Speaker 2: Intense doesn't cover this. There's so sound, like pulses. Every
- 44:15monitoring station on every continent. They're aligning the inner side
- 44:18of the cloud. It's splitting along a street vertical seam.
- 44:21The satellitees caught it just before it closed again a seam.
- 44:24Speaker 1: Thumb thumb, thum, thumb thumb, like.
- 44:28Speaker 2: It's preparing to open. And I don't mean metaphorically.
- 44:31Speaker 1: The voice dropped urgent.
- 44:33Speaker 2: There's a pattern in the pulses, rhythms building, and I
- 44:36don't know how else to say this. The drumming, it's
- 44:39a fucking heartbeat. Married it's getting faster. You need to
- 44:43be ready. Something is happening. Whatever you do, don't go outside,
- 44:46whatever happens next. It's not just a sound it's alive.
- 44:51Speaker 1: Thumb thumb, thumb.
- 44:54Speaker 3: She felt it in her chest before she could reply,
- 44:56A vibration deep in bone and blood, the wet resonance
- 45:00of something enormous, stirring jonas.
- 45:03Speaker 2: I stay calm, lock yourself in, go to the bugger now,
- 45:07the monitors are there. You can observe whatever you do.
- 45:11Do not fucking step outside.
- 45:13Speaker 3: Then the line went dead A heartbeat later, across the
- 45:17northern hemisphere, a vertical fracture tore through the sky like
- 45:21a wound. It widened with deliberates slowness. Layers of mists
- 45:25peeled back in fleshy folds. Shadows deepened, bending the space
- 45:30around it. A deafening, sticky squelch, like tearing flesh, echoed
- 45:35across the hemisphere. Behind it was a darkness that seemed
- 45:38to breathe, vast and unfathomable, a darkness that bent perception.
- 45:43No camera could capture it. No eye on the planet
- 45:46was built to perceive such a biblical event without tremmor
- 45:49or trumpet. Cloud opened. I like that, without tremor or trumpet.
- 45:53That calls back to the whole Biblical rapture in times
- 45:57kind of imagery. What lay inside was not lightless but unknowable.
- 46:03Some said it was a mouth, some said it was
- 46:06a wound. And from it came the sound again, louder,
- 46:10now clearer, something wet and vast and pulsing, something impossible,
- 46:17not breathing.
- 46:19Speaker 1: Mine.
- 46:19Speaker 3: Across the world, people looked up in unison. Some screamed,
- 46:24some dropped to their knees. Others stood still and watched, transfixed,
- 46:29as the first of the arms descended, long, tapering limbs
- 46:33like serpents, oily black and glistening, emerging from the wound
- 46:38in the sky in slow spirals.
- 46:40Speaker 1: Some were miles long, others kilometers.
- 46:43Speaker 3: They swam through the air like they were underwater, languid, elegant, hypnotic.
- 46:50Thousands of them, tens of thousands. They moved across the
- 46:54sky like a nest of worms, poured through a funnel, coiling,
- 46:58searching by one. The arms reached down into the earth,
- 47:02slithering through cities, across oceans, over fields. It didn't take
- 47:07long for the first to be taken. A man in
- 47:10Tokyo screamed as an arm squirmed its way around him.
- 47:13His fingers dug into the strange meat, as the grip
- 47:15around his waist tightened, pulling him skyward.
- 47:19Speaker 1: This cry split the morning air.
- 47:21Speaker 3: In a European city, a young couple ran through the
- 47:24streets hand in hand. The woman tripped an arm twisted
- 47:28around her ankle. Her boyfriend tried to pull her free.
- 47:31The arm retracted, twisting her upward with such force that
- 47:35his hands tore away from hers. He fell back on
- 47:38his back, begging only for the arm to return for him.
- 47:42This is sick, dude, Like the giant shade, these hands
- 47:46come down and grab This feels very edo if it
- 47:50reminds me of a hellstar Remena, the one about the
- 47:54giant the planet that shows up and people like panic
- 47:58try to sacrifice someone to it.
- 48:00Speaker 1: Doomsday planet.
- 48:01Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I love the idea of like a rapture almost,
- 48:05but it's like the arms of this entity swallow you up,
- 48:08comes down like tongues and pulls you towards its mouth.
- 48:11And a Venezuelan village, a mother was snatched from her courtyard.
- 48:15Her young daughter clung desperately to her leg, screaming for
- 48:18her mother to come back down. Her tiny hands gripped
- 48:21her mother's ankle and desperation to save her, but the
- 48:24child's fingers cannot hold. They were ripped upward hundreds of
- 48:28feet in a matter of seconds. Her mother's body ascended,
- 48:32twisting elegantly like a dancer in mid air. Gravity did
- 48:36not forgive the child. She fell, limbs flailing, hair whipping
- 48:40across her face, gliding with the unforgiving earth. The sickening
- 48:44thump ichoed across the village. Some were taken screaming. Others laughed,
- 48:50lifted as if ascending into a dark ecstasy. Cultis convinced
- 48:54of divine favor, threw themselves towards the future appendages, arms outstretched,
- 48:59their voices raised, and hymns or chance of joy begging
- 49:02for rapture. The arms took only a few of them,
- 49:04with the same cold precision, pulling them up forward. It
- 49:07as their ecstasy transformed into terror mid flight. It's also
- 49:11a terrifying notion that as it's pulling you up, even
- 49:14people that wanted to be taken by and have this realization.
- 49:17Speaker 1: Yeah, post ut clarity kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, I
- 49:22guess the way of like they're crazed and they think
- 49:25that they want this, and then as soon as it
- 49:26starts happening, they're like, oh shit, wait, never mind kind
- 49:30of thing.
- 49:30Speaker 3: The view from halfway down. Across continents, people fought, clawed, resisted,
- 49:36but it was futile. Each arm performed the same ritual,
- 49:39one human at a time, spiraling upward towards the yawning darkness,
- 49:44then returning to the earth for its next selection. Cities
- 49:47became theaters of chaos. Streets emptied in seconds, Traffic snarled,
- 49:52installed windows rattled under the roar of thousands being drawn
- 49:56skyward as humanity unleashed below. Parents clawed for their children,
- 50:01Children screamed for their parents. People tried to leap from balconies, bridges,
- 50:05and rooftops, only to be grabbed amidfall. Last moments of
- 50:10tangled damps of limbs, and terror. In remote fields, farmers
- 50:14and herders watched as the arms swept across the horizon.
- 50:18Livestock scattered, terrified, the ground shaking under the thrombing resonance
- 50:23of the arms. One farmer caught a glimpse of his
- 50:26wife being lifted, screaming grind his name. He tried to run,
- 50:31the arm retracted and she was gone, leaving him kneeling
- 50:35in mud, screaming into the indifferent sky.
- 50:38Speaker 1: Over the first twelve hours.
- 50:40Speaker 3: Over forty million were gone more than the entire population
- 50:44of Canada. By forty eight hours, estimates climbed past ninety
- 50:48million tire nations devoured by the sky, children, the elderly,
- 50:54the healthy, the sick, criminals, priests, lovers, the lost. The
- 50:58arms moved like a living tied, slow but inexorable, elegant
- 51:03in motion, but grotesque and function. Each human was treated
- 51:07as a singular prize, twisted upward toward the infinite process.
- 51:12Horrifyingly meticulous. Doctor Finn watched from the bunker as the
- 51:15monitors flared with the screams of abductions, faces contorted and panic,
- 51:20joy or disbelief. She could hear them through the cameras,
- 51:24screams and prayer that layered upon one another like a
- 51:27living symphony of terror. The arms paused briefly over cities, observing,
- 51:32coiling and uncoiling. Their thick veins pulsate, seemed to savor
- 51:37the fear. Then, with chilling patience, they selected again, dragging
- 51:42the living towards the maaw.
- 51:43Speaker 1: Over the fifty.
- 51:44Speaker 3: Seven hours, the northern hemisphere emptied in a relentless, mechanical,
- 51:49almost ritualistic harvest. Every arm returned repeatedly to the sky's wound,
- 51:55each human plucked and lifted until the air was thick
- 51:58with echoes of terror and awe. By the final hour,
- 52:02Doctor Finn could only stare at the screens numb arms
- 52:06paused at last, holding their harvest a law for a long,
- 52:09silent moment, as if counting observing savoring. Then they began
- 52:15the slow, deliberate retreat, one by one, carrying their captives
- 52:20towards the unknowable darkness that had given them form. Over
- 52:23four hours, the sky closed and survivors emerged from false shelters.
- 52:28The world was left in silence. Only the sound of
- 52:31the drums remained thumb them.
- 52:36Speaker 1: Project Cerberus Veil.
- 52:38Speaker 3: Field Journal Entry Doctor Murriied Finn, leading meteorologists classified level
- 52:41Omega day three, eleven eleven pm GMT.
- 52:46Speaker 1: The formation opened an aperture as to diameters three thousand
- 52:51kilometers across arms, tongues merged thousands movements suggests intelligence not random.
- 52:59Selection appears non biological. We can't predict it. I watch
- 53:03them be taken. God forgive me. We tried everything, interference,
- 53:08signal jamming, sonic weapons, rush us in a nuke to
- 53:11hell with the aftermath of that. It didn't go off.
- 53:14It was just swallowed by the cloud. The arms are
- 53:17not affected. The world is hollow. The monitors lie dead.
- 53:22There's screens froze with faces I will never forget. Even
- 53:25the saved recordings fail to convey the scale of what happened.
- 53:28The arms, the screams, sounds that followed, entire populations. Take
- 53:33the precision of a surgeon, the cruelty of a predator,
- 53:36the indifference of an animal. Ninety million more, perhaps one
- 53:41hundred million, I can't be certain. The Northern hemisphere is
- 53:45a graveyard with no corpses, and yet the sky is calm,
- 53:48deceptively calm. The wound has closed, the drum it continues,
- 53:54always beneath everything, a low, insistent pulse that will not
- 53:58be ignored. Personally, I don't know what to do next.
- 54:04Every theory, every model, every calculation is meaningless. Against this.
- 54:08We are observers of an event. We are its remnants,
- 54:12survivors only in technical sense, and every other way we
- 54:15are gone. There's nothing to fight, nothing to flee, only
- 54:19to record, only to bear witness, and I will till
- 54:23the end. What else is there to do?
- 54:26Speaker 3: I really love that segment that was sick. Yeah, that
- 54:29whole last time that's coming down and pulling everyone up.
- 54:31Speaker 1: Yeah, that was very engaging. I have a couple of
- 54:35thoughts after, like I'm curious after, like I want to
- 54:37finish the story to see how it wraps up before
- 54:39I start asking questions. But yeah, I mean that that
- 54:43was a great way to like cement you know, I
- 54:46guess just the action of the story. This big mass
- 54:49event a really fun way to do a rapture, by
- 54:51the way, and you know, like we see that a lot,
- 54:54but that's a fun way of having like kind of
- 54:56a doomsday event or a rapture or lensing, taking kind
- 55:01of what we know or predictions of what we think
- 55:03will happen, and using that against us in a fun way.
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- 56:38Speaker 3: The belch, it's gonna split up all the bones and stuff. Excellent.
- 56:42One month and fourteen days past, no arms, no movement
- 56:47from the sky. Cloud remained hanging impossibly still above the Atlantic,
- 56:52like a wound that refused to heal. Most nations had
- 56:55abandoned any attempt to engage with it. Some still broadcast
- 56:59official statements, hollow, robotic reassurances, but no one listened. The
- 57:04world had been held in place, breathless, afraid to look up,
- 57:09held hostage by our new god. Cities went dark, markets crashed,
- 57:14faiths fractured, people starved. Millions gathered in open fields, begging
- 57:19to be taken. Millions took their own lives in the
- 57:22face of the inevitable. Others locked the doors and prayed
- 57:25to be forgotten. Doctor Marie Finn stayed. She slept inside
- 57:29the bunker, beneath the north strained climate facility. She hadn't
- 57:33left in weeks. The others were gone, some taken with
- 57:36the arms, descended, some fled, some too broken to continue.
- 57:41She kept her notes or logs or rituals of data
- 57:44and control, but every day it grew harder to believe
- 57:46than any of it mattered. Finn's console crackled life at
- 57:50three point fifty eight am. The signal was faint, washed
- 57:54and static, but the voice on the other end was unmistakable.
- 57:59Jonas said quick and hushed, like he was afraid of
- 58:02the sound itself might carry.
- 58:04Speaker 2: Tell me you're awake.
- 58:06Speaker 1: I'm awake.
- 58:07Speaker 3: Her voice was brittle, syllables clipped. She had been awake
- 58:10for days.
- 58:12Speaker 1: What is it?
- 58:13Speaker 2: I've been tracking something pressure reaching from the south of
- 58:15Lay like booy network. They're tanking a storm, not a
- 58:19current shift. It's like the air itself is leaking.
- 58:22Speaker 1: You've said that before.
- 58:24Speaker 2: Now this is different.
- 58:25Speaker 3: His breath was uneven, shaky.
- 58:27Speaker 2: The drop isn't local, it's global. Everything is bleeding toward
- 58:31the cloud, not wind. Everything it's pulling clicked like it's.
- 58:37Speaker 3: He stopped himself and said it anyway, like it's annaling it.
- 58:40Finnix sailed through her nose.
- 58:43Speaker 1: We don't know what it's doing.
- 58:45Speaker 2: I do know it's hungry and it's patient.
- 58:49Speaker 3: But low laugh broke out. That wasn't joy.
- 58:52Speaker 2: Christ I can't believe we're still pretending this is about data.
- 58:56Speaker 1: This is about survival, Jonas, She.
- 58:58Speaker 3: Said, doubt in her own words, is it? There was
- 59:01a pause before he spoke again.
- 59:02Speaker 2: We're all dead anyway. It's just a matter of time
- 59:05before he gets hungry again.
- 59:07Speaker 3: And when it does, he trailed off static, filling the gap.
- 59:11Speaker 2: You've seen the fields, You've seen them once and begging
- 59:14for it to take them. Let's stop living. Let's meat
- 59:18waiting to be picked up.
- 59:19Speaker 1: Stop?
- 59:20Speaker 2: Why you what the truth married? There's no stopping it.
- 59:26There's no bargaining. We're not even ants to it. Ants
- 59:30get nosed before they're stepped on.
- 59:32Speaker 3: Sorry, this thing, he stopped abruptly. The next sound of
- 59:36sharp hiss in the line jonas silence. She waited another
- 59:42three seconds and set the receiver down, her fingers trembling
- 59:46against the console. She clasped her hands together, lowered her head,
- 59:50and for the first time in her life, she began
- 59:54to pray. She waited nothing. At exactly four seventeen am,
- 1:00:00one month, fourteen days since the cloud arrived, the sky
- 1:00:03opened again. No warning, no signal, just a sudden shifting
- 1:00:08of the cloud center folds drawing back, parting like lips
- 1:00:14peeled open by invisible hands. Drumming was constant, but this
- 1:00:18time something new came. The sound began low, wet, rolling,
- 1:00:24like a cauldron of bile, tipping somewhere beyond the stratosphere.
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: Pressure dropped, the wind died. Then came a vast guttural
- 1:00:32exhalation that.
- 1:00:34Speaker 3: Seemed to surge from the planet's core and shattered the
- 1:00:36sky above, a noise like the entire sky, dry, heaving, viscous,
- 1:00:42and flim soaked, the kind of sound that makes the
- 1:00:45stomach Knot before the years understand a single cataclysmic guttural
- 1:00:50bellow that cracked windows on every continent and shattered the
- 1:00:53upper atmosphere. The ground shook, tides were coiled, and birds
- 1:00:58fell from the sky. It wasn't just sound, It was force,
- 1:01:02a pressure wave of wet breath and raw heat, like
- 1:01:05an open furnace filled with rotting flesh. It swept the
- 1:01:10globe within minutes. People clutched their heads and screamed as
- 1:01:13their ears bled. Animals bolted and dropped dead in mid run,
- 1:01:18birds fell in flocks, machines dyed, satellites blinked out. Those
- 1:01:23of the epicenter could only scream as the force burst
- 1:01:26them into nothingness, and the smell stenched so vast, so cellular,
- 1:01:33soaked through walls, It crawled into lungs and stayed there,
- 1:01:37a taste of spoiled meat and copper. People vomited, others
- 1:01:41toward their flesh, trying to escape it. Most were dead
- 1:01:44in seconds. And then came the blood. From deep within
- 1:01:48the beast, beyond the gauze folds of miss something ruptured,
- 1:01:52a pressure valve, a gullet, a wound no one knows.
- 1:01:58A tidal wave of thick, arterial blood expelled with such
- 1:02:01volume and speed that it fell, like monsoon rain. Over
- 1:02:05half the globe. Red soaked the ocean and rivers, Red
- 1:02:08splashed across rooftops and deserts and jungles. Half the earth
- 1:02:12painted in blood. It steamed where it landed, hot and thick,
- 1:02:17and it reaked aviron and something sweet, something wrong. Some
- 1:02:21said they heard whispers in the rain. The clouds peeled back,
- 1:02:24and for the first and only time, being was seen,
- 1:02:29truly seen. For exactly ninety three seconds, the sky was clear,
- 1:02:34not in fragments, not distorted. It filled the sky. It
- 1:02:39was the sky. It shaped defied thought, impossibly symmetrical, yet shifting,
- 1:02:44as though the universe itself was s trying and failing
- 1:02:48to remember it. Its surface was a chaos of textures,
- 1:02:51pinkish gray membranes that pulsed with a rhythm older than time,
- 1:02:55bone plate ridges spiraling, and geometries our minds could not hold,
- 1:02:59and nerves that writhed like lightning, frozen midstrike. Each wrinkle,
- 1:03:04each twitch, seemed to hum with awareness, as if the
- 1:03:07cosmos itself had been stitched into its flesh, its face,
- 1:03:11or what passed for One stared down through a million lidless,
- 1:03:15goat like eyes. Some were as vast as mountains, some
- 1:03:19flickered like dying stars, all simultaneously seen and knowing. Our
- 1:03:24thoughts recoiled, our vision trembled, and yet we could not
- 1:03:28look away. And then it did something impossible. It smiled.
- 1:03:33No teeth, no lips, no gesture that humans could recognize,
- 1:03:38just a slow, dreadful unfurling a facial tissue, an imitation
- 1:03:43of something it had only ever observed in our species,
- 1:03:46a suggestion of amusement aimed at the futility of existence.
- 1:03:51The motion folded in on itself in ways that should
- 1:03:54have torn it apart, yet held. We felt it not
- 1:03:58just in our eyes, but in our blood and our marrow,
- 1:04:02at the corners of thought we didn't know existed. And
- 1:04:05then the sky swallowed itself once more. The memory lingered,
- 1:04:09Shapes impossible to describe, etched themselves into our minds, Geometry
- 1:04:13that should not exist, haunted our dreams, and the faint
- 1:04:16possible smile echoed in every shadow we have ever crossed. Again,
- 1:04:20silence fell, not peace, but silence. And then nothing, no arms,
- 1:04:28no sound, just the repetition of fear felt through the
- 1:04:31drum of the cloud, the wind returning at last, the
- 1:04:35stench never faded, never fully gone, the red rains soaked
- 1:04:39into everything. No government spoke publicly again after that. People
- 1:04:44stopped going outside. Entire towns were found empty, dead, others worshiped,
- 1:04:50others killed themselves.
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: The world waited.
- 1:04:54Speaker 3: Project Cerberus Veil, Doctor Marine Finn Classified, day forty five
- 1:05:00seven two am.
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: It belched. I don't know how else to describe it.
- 1:05:05It expelled something vast and foul into our atmosphere. Not
- 1:05:09an attack, not a gesture of dominance, a function, a
- 1:05:14bodily function, like I forgot we were here. The sound
- 1:05:20I cannot put it into words. I fell it in
- 1:05:22the roots of my teeth and the gaps between cells.
- 1:05:26It broke something in the sky, and the smell. The
- 1:05:29smell is still here, clinging to the vents to my skin.
- 1:05:34It soaked its way into the bunker. The blood is everywhere.
- 1:05:38We've confirmed its organic, human and something else. For ninety
- 1:05:44three seconds, it let us see it. I don't think
- 1:05:47we were supposed to, but I don't think it cares.
- 1:05:51I haven't slept since I don't believe anyone is left
- 1:05:54to read this, but I'm still writing. There's no scientific
- 1:05:58language left for what's happening. This is a non anomaly,
- 1:06:02this is a presence, this is an extinction event.
- 1:06:06Speaker 3: This is such an interesting like you see this impossible
- 1:06:10thing again similar to hellstar, And it's not really like
- 1:06:14there's some oh, how do we beat it or how
- 1:06:16do we survive or not even like an I am
- 1:06:18legend like this is the last person riding to valiantly
- 1:06:22hold the line for humanity. It's just like, yeah, so
- 1:06:25this thing's going to in the world and that's it.
- 1:06:28That's all you get. Yeah, right, what's going to happen?
- 1:06:31Speaker 1: A hopeless kind which I mean for an extinction event.
- 1:06:33That's what it should feel like, which I will give
- 1:06:35the story a lot of credit for, is that it
- 1:06:38feels utterly hopeless, and I think that like gets conveyed
- 1:06:40really well in The Doctor too.
- 1:06:42Speaker 3: It also like caught like yes, insert joke, lovecraftiing and
- 1:06:49cosmic core and whatnot. But it is cosmic horror in
- 1:06:52the way most people overlook because a lot of the
- 1:06:55time people just focus on the aesthetic of it because
- 1:06:58that's like what Lovecraft talked about and stuff, things that
- 1:07:00are hard to describe. The imagery of it.
- 1:07:03Speaker 1: But more so cosmic core is.
- 1:07:06Speaker 3: The idea which I got into it some of my
- 1:07:09most recent YouTube videos.
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: I'm not going to rehash the same points.
- 1:07:13Speaker 3: But it's more often the concept of something that either
- 1:07:19we can't perceive or a thing that doesn't care to
- 1:07:22perceive us.
- 1:07:23Speaker 1: Right.
- 1:07:24Speaker 3: The analogy I used in my video was a fish
- 1:07:27understanding a license plate. Like imagine what a bug, what
- 1:07:32a beetle would think of a computer? Right, it would
- 1:07:35have no if a beetle was able to understand it
- 1:07:38would come across like electricity and servers and you know,
- 1:07:43interfaces and all these things that are so far beyond
- 1:07:45it's understanding because it's finding something that doesn't.
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: Care about beetles, right, so scale that up.
- 1:07:52Speaker 3: Humanity has a creature that comes across it that uses
- 1:07:55us as a food source. But like she says, it
- 1:07:58forgot we were there. It belched, and the belch annihilated people, destroyed,
- 1:08:03you know, millions, that destroyed part of the earth.
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: But it's just it.
- 1:08:06Speaker 3: Doesn't care about us. Why would it care about us.
- 1:08:07We're like smaller than ants to it. It's no different
- 1:08:11from bacteria that are on the floor as you walk
- 1:08:13through a room. I like that whore the idea of
- 1:08:17like things that have a disregard for humanity. Yeah, even
- 1:08:22like the people that are religiously worshiping it. It's almost
- 1:08:26like there is a comfort in worshiping something this powerful
- 1:08:30because then at least it's like, well, even if it
- 1:08:33kills me, even if it ruins me, I still mattered,
- 1:08:36Like it still cares about me to some degree, rather
- 1:08:39than being totally disregarded. Like even in world religions, you
- 1:08:42may not have a say in the end of the world,
- 1:08:44but you were at least a part of it. It
- 1:08:46at least knew about you to some degree. Yeah, but
- 1:08:48to have something in the world that doesn't even consider
- 1:08:51your existence. That's terrifying.
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: I think it's hard for humans to comprehend that too,
- 1:08:55with just like the level of consciousness we have and stuff. Yeah,
- 1:09:00and how we disregard things to have like a lower
- 1:09:02self like sense of consciousness and everything.
- 1:09:05Speaker 3: Yeah, it puts the shoe on the other foot. It
- 1:09:07like turns you know, where we are to them.
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: Because there's never been.
- 1:09:12Speaker 3: Other than like the cosmos, which were just like kind
- 1:09:15of tapping into as.
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: Bars we've seen.
- 1:09:18Speaker 3: There's never been something discovered or something built so to speak,
- 1:09:22that hasn't had humanity in mind. Right, Like, even if
- 1:09:27we see an image of some far off galaxy, it's like, well,
- 1:09:29we built the camera that took the picture, or if
- 1:09:33we you know, every invention that's ever been made was
- 1:09:36by humans for humans, or like in relation to humans
- 1:09:39or whatever. But to come across something that we are
- 1:09:42completely inconsequential to, that's terrifying. It's never happened to us before, right.
- 1:09:47I think that's where like cosmic wor really shines in
- 1:09:50instances like this phase five after birth, it began to harden,
- 1:09:56not all at once, but gradually day by day as
- 1:09:59the blood congealed under heat and rain. The bright red
- 1:10:02stains that had covered oceans, cities, forests darkened, thickened with
- 1:10:08reddish clots, then began to bond. What had first been
- 1:10:14described as organic blood now revealed itself to be something more,
- 1:10:19a precursor, a fluid waiting to become. On the fifteenth
- 1:10:23day after the belch, the first major surface scan from
- 1:10:26what remained of the El EO satellites returned images of
- 1:10:30a continuous sheet forming across the Atlantic Basin, fibrous, pale,
- 1:10:36rigid in places like cooled wax, right over the surface
- 1:10:39of the Earth. At first, it seemed like sediment or ice,
- 1:10:44but it flexed beneath solar radiation, It tightened beneath a
- 1:10:49lunar light, It swelled. Seismic equipment registered subtle movement, microscopic contractions,
- 1:10:56as if breathing through the crust. The red had become
- 1:11:00pink gray. The pink gray was becoming skin, a skin
- 1:11:04that now stretched uninterrupted from Portugal to the eastern edge
- 1:11:08of the Caribbean. The scientists who remained debated this transformation
- 1:11:12in hushed mechanical tones. No conclusions were reached. There was
- 1:11:17no baseline, no comparative models. But doctor Marie Finn understood
- 1:11:23this was not an invasion, This was not a divine punishment.
- 1:11:27This was gestation Earth, or what remained of it, was
- 1:11:31being blanketed in, something alive, not absorbed, not consumed, prepared.
- 1:11:37And then at eight forty six pm on the forty
- 1:11:40sixth day, the cloud moved. It shifted, without sound, without storm,
- 1:11:46without effort, not blown, not carried, not pulled by gravity.
- 1:11:51It simply drifted, as if an unseen cord had been cut,
- 1:11:56as if the process in the west had reached some threshold.
- 1:12:00It took six hours to traverse the ocean, six hours
- 1:12:03of silence. People in Asia and Australia watched and approach
- 1:12:08the spiraling gauze, blotting out the sky as if it
- 1:12:12was swallowing it whole. They had seen the videos, they
- 1:12:16knew what would come. Still they watched. Some hoped it
- 1:12:20would pass.
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: It didn't.
- 1:12:24Speaker 3: Two seventeen local time, the cloud settled about the Indian Ocean,
- 1:12:28the sky began to open again, and the arms began
- 1:12:31their terrible descent. Project serbers Aveil. Doctor Marie Finn classified
- 1:12:37day forty six, eleven forty four pm. Serber's veil final transmission.
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: The blood is not inert. It is a matrix per
- 1:12:47forming tissue, something between placenta and a cocoon, still softened
- 1:12:52parts but solidifying. Already three quarters of the Atlantic seafloors
- 1:12:56covered in a single sheet. Our instruments can't pierce it. It's warm,
- 1:13:02It pulses every seven minutes. It is alive. The cloud
- 1:13:05has moved to the Indian Ocean. The initial sign suggests
- 1:13:08the process is starting again. The same pattern, same altitude,
- 1:13:12same shape, same silence. I believe this is the reproductive behavior,
- 1:13:16a life cycle. This thing or system or entity is
- 1:13:20using the atmosphere to sow itself. It does not need us,
- 1:13:24It does not hear us, It does not need us.
- 1:13:27We were not chosen, we were not rejected. We were
- 1:13:30incidentally present. What we thought was anomaly was a phase,
- 1:13:34a part of something older, larger, maybe a million years old,
- 1:13:38maybe eternal. It doesn't matter. What matters is what's being
- 1:13:43left behind, a blanket, a membrane, a womb stretched across
- 1:13:48the earth. There is no rescue coming, there's no top
- 1:13:52of the food chain. There is only the shape behind
- 1:13:55the clouds and what it leaves in its wake. I
- 1:13:57am writing this from a world already half covered in skin,
- 1:14:00already half dead. Tomorrow we'll step outside and feel it
- 1:14:05for myself. I want to know if it responds. I
- 1:14:09want to know if it knows I'm here. That that's
- 1:14:13so hard. I love that she is.
- 1:14:15Speaker 3: She's come to the point that it's it's meaningless, like
- 1:14:19the world's gonna in one way or the other. But
- 1:14:21that last line about I want to know if it
- 1:14:23knows I'm here goes back to what I was saying.
- 1:14:25It's like, at least if you worship it, you can
- 1:14:27be a part, right at least you Yeah, we're just
- 1:14:30an incident. An accident feels like.
- 1:14:33Speaker 1: It feels like one last ditch effort of having some
- 1:14:36kind of conclusion to this that it like that it
- 1:14:40mattered to you in a way, like kind of just
- 1:14:42a bit of a selfish desire to be like I
- 1:14:44need I need it to know that I was here. Whatever.
- 1:14:47Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I mattered. I'm a person. I exist. Yeah,
- 1:14:52it's a desperate it's like fighting. I mean, the reference
- 1:14:56people make with most cosmic stuff is like it's a
- 1:14:58it's a god figure. It's like yelling out at God.
- 1:15:02You know, a desperation to be known, to exist, that
- 1:15:05your existence mattered in the face of something that doesn't care.
- 1:15:08It'd be like if the bug in your house, like
- 1:15:12the way a bug feels about you, is indifferent to you.
- 1:15:15If your ladybug refers, if a ladybug in your homeer first,
- 1:15:18you have some deity or some devil or something doesn't
- 1:15:21matter because you don't think about it. It's like a
- 1:15:23desperation to need to be known, need to be seen.
- 1:15:27So finally, Phase six, final breath. The surface of the
- 1:15:31planet is no longer visible. A thick, swirling fog blankets
- 1:15:36every inhospitable continent, every ocean pising miles into the sky,
- 1:15:42doesn't move with the wind, ignores the weather, simply clings dense, luminous,
- 1:15:49and unnaturally still. Satellite feeds what few remain show the
- 1:15:53same impossible formations of Earth's surface while you're missed, spiraling
- 1:15:59but unmoving, no rotation, no eye, just folds, just gauze,
- 1:16:05stacked and suspended. Jonas no longer checks the time he
- 1:16:10has it. For days, his oxygen mask hisses its final
- 1:16:14shallow breaths, each one thinner than the last. The generators
- 1:16:19have gone silent, the lights burn only and intermittent flickers,
- 1:16:23passing the facility in a pulse of dim goes like queues.
- 1:16:27Every room is empty, everyone else is dead. Jonahs lies
- 1:16:31flat on the cold concrete floor, cheek pressed against it,
- 1:16:35one hand spread wide as if to hold the earth steady.
- 1:16:39His lips move, forming soundless words, but he stops. He
- 1:16:44doesn't need words. He needs to listenmb thumb, thumb, thumb,
- 1:16:53a heartbeat. He was in the cloud, was in the sky.
- 1:16:59Now it's here, beneath his bones, inside the crust, deep
- 1:17:04in the dark belly of the world. Jonas let out
- 1:17:07a broken laugh that cracked into his sob. His eyes glisten, unfocused,
- 1:17:12staring at the ceiling as if he could see through
- 1:17:14it to the sky above. There are two of them now,
- 1:17:18he whispers, barely audible. Fog outside pulses with a faint
- 1:17:22eternal light, not lightning, not fire, something vascular, something alive.
- 1:17:29His throat tightens, his chest is heavy. The hiss of
- 1:17:33his mask is a thin trickle of air, barely enough
- 1:17:36to maintain Hope pulls it away to fall beside him.
- 1:17:40Silence rushes in. He smiles, weak and delirious, teeth shrieked
- 1:17:45with blood from biting his tongue raw on his sleep.
- 1:17:48Speaker 1: We were the whelm.
- 1:17:49Speaker 3: Jonas had never been a religious man, used to scoff
- 1:17:52at prayer, a ritual, but now on the floor of
- 1:17:56a dying world, the last man standing, a gun, trembling
- 1:17:59and his hand, he mounts the words anyway, fragments of hymns,
- 1:18:04half remembered psalms, apologies to no one, turns the gun
- 1:18:10on himself, comforted by the realization it will all be
- 1:18:13over soon. The fog above glows brighter, its folds pulsing
- 1:18:18with rhythm like veins, like lungs. Keness closes his eyes,
- 1:18:25the weight of suffocation pressing him into the floor. His
- 1:18:28last thought is not of escape, not of resistance, only
- 1:18:33a far beyond earth, the silence of space. First cloud
- 1:18:38drifts on, searching for the next world. The Earth excels
- 1:18:42its final breath and becomes something new.
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: Man, How sick was that? It's not that it was
- 1:18:49hard to get bought in. It was just like, how
- 1:18:51many times have we seen a thing where it's like
- 1:18:53doctors doing into a log of some kind. Right, And
- 1:18:57then we were getting into this part with a lot
- 1:18:59of a lot of love Craftian things, which is like
- 1:19:03the tentacles, all that kind of stuff, right that we
- 1:19:06see a lot and with with love Crafty and monster
- 1:19:09stuff that just kind of goes hand in hand. But
- 1:19:12I feel like I really picked up and I feel
- 1:19:14like I was like really cemented in when after the
- 1:19:17rapture part. But then when you find out that it
- 1:19:19kind of feels like this rapture end time thing is
- 1:19:21actually a creature coming prepping a planet to become basically itself.
- 1:19:26I like to think that that creature is another planet, right,
- 1:19:29It feeds off a planet and then it molds and shifts,
- 1:19:32and then it flies away and kind of does the
- 1:19:34same thing. It's almost like these prophecies that were man
- 1:19:36made were true and that this rapture was coming, but
- 1:19:40it just means something completely different, which I think is
- 1:19:43cool about. I'm curious what you think though of this
- 1:19:47idea of could you think you could have done this
- 1:19:48without having the like kind of stereotypical love Craftian And
- 1:19:52not to say stereotypical, because I wouldn't say that, Like
- 1:19:55I mean, like it ventures off into some fun stuff
- 1:19:57with like you see the eyes and you see like
- 1:20:00that it's smiling. It doesn't really have like a face.
- 1:20:02It's just muscle tissue that it's mimicking and then it
- 1:20:05understands and it's like expressing emotion in that way. But
- 1:20:09could it be done in a way where it doesn't
- 1:20:11have this like I don't know, like the very stereotypical
- 1:20:15love crafty and like you know, the tentacle type thing
- 1:20:19and people going mad. Do you think, like the people
- 1:20:22going mad or insane? Is that something that's like inherently
- 1:20:26necessary when tackling these like very large existential like leaps
- 1:20:32and bounds that kind of goes hands at hand with Lovecraft,
- 1:20:36you know.
- 1:20:37Speaker 3: I think if you're describing a creature the size of
- 1:20:40the earth that is going to be the death of everyone,
- 1:20:42I think you kind of got to mention people go
- 1:20:44insane because I feel like any rationality would go right
- 1:20:49out the window, right like if.
- 1:20:52Speaker 1: I think so, I guess it's just that before it
- 1:20:54seems like the story led that it's like you look
- 1:20:57at it and you go insane, almost like there was
- 1:20:59like a mystic cool property to it versus the inevitability
- 1:21:03of like, oh this I'm going to die that leaves
- 1:21:06you insane. To me, those are two different things. I
- 1:21:09think like, no matter what, you definitely do go insane.
- 1:21:11But I guess there was like a mysticism to that before,
- 1:21:16where it's like, if you even looked at it, it
- 1:21:17was so appalling that you went insane, you know, And
- 1:21:21that's like a very lovecraft thing.
- 1:21:23Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's the look of it that
- 1:21:26you go and say. Now, granted, it would be terrifying
- 1:21:28to see a creature that big, right the size of
- 1:21:31the sky. That would probably be alarming, especially if it
- 1:21:34was shapes that like, you can't really like it's something.
- 1:21:37The way it's described is like it's a mist or
- 1:21:39a fog around the earth. I like the idea that
- 1:21:41when it's over the earth, it's like things are just
- 1:21:43a different color. It's not even on the same realm
- 1:21:47of existence that we are entirely. We just kind of
- 1:21:50see glimpses of it. So I feel like that's certainly
- 1:21:53imagery that would make you like go mad, But I
- 1:21:56feel like it's more so the impending doom of humanity.
- 1:22:00You know, whatever religion you followed doesn't matter, whatever connections
- 1:22:04you made with your life doesn't matter. I feel like
- 1:22:07that's where the insanity comes in. More so maybe not
- 1:22:10necessarily insanity, but panic would maybe be a bit more fitting.
- 1:22:14Speaker 1: You know, No, I mean I think that's really.
- 1:22:16Speaker 3: Signs breaks just so they become so desperate.
- 1:22:18Speaker 1: I guess it was. It's just before it was like
- 1:22:20don't go out and don't look at it. I'm just
- 1:22:23it was just a it's a very standard love Craftian thing.
- 1:22:26I don't know. I mean, like the love to me,
- 1:22:29if I had any criticism for the story was that
- 1:22:32the weakest part was just the love Craftian nature of
- 1:22:36the beast itself. Everything else was so fun.
- 1:22:41Speaker 3: You're talking about the physical appearance, Yes, yes, yeah, that
- 1:22:45that that I was kind of here an ore there.
- 1:22:47I just think it would probably be a bit stronger
- 1:22:49if you just left the physical appearance of it as
- 1:22:52the mention that it's like a shape, and then when
- 1:22:56it come when it gets closer to the ground, things
- 1:22:58are a different color.
- 1:23:00Speaker 1: I feel like that's more.
- 1:23:01Speaker 3: Effective than the giant shapes in the sky.
- 1:23:04Speaker 1: The different colors impactful.
- 1:23:07Speaker 3: I like that idea that it's just like a hue
- 1:23:09that's placed over everything.
- 1:23:10Speaker 1: The story I think does well with what it's trying
- 1:23:14to achieve, which is basically like reidentifying what a rapture
- 1:23:17is and I think like it feels like even the
- 1:23:20ending is the Earth becomes impregnated and becomes its own entity.
- 1:23:26If you looked at the creature like a sperm cell
- 1:23:29going into the earth like a womb, and that was
- 1:23:33the mass event is like a thing hitting the earth
- 1:23:35and like impregnates the earth in that way and then
- 1:23:38it like spores out or does something. I feel like
- 1:23:40that would have been a really fun way to go
- 1:23:42about it because really, like I said, the only criticism
- 1:23:44is that we get a lot of like similar imagery
- 1:23:47and things. Granted, like you were saying very jungieto of
- 1:23:52the guy being like the rapture isn't just people floating
- 1:23:54up into a light, its tentacles coming down and grabbing people.
- 1:23:57I think that's fun. And like the way that it
- 1:23:59went and you get all these different people on Earth
- 1:24:02and different scenarios was really fun and horrifying. I just
- 1:24:06don't know, And this is just me as like feedback
- 1:24:08or just like you know, food for thought. Obviously, it's
- 1:24:11like after reading the story, it's easy to make these
- 1:24:13it's easy to say these things. But just wondering if
- 1:24:17if that could have been or like you know, for
- 1:24:19future work. If it's we're looking at ways of like
- 1:24:21there's a traditional way of this of doing this love
- 1:24:24craftiing thing. How do you continuously flip it on its head?
- 1:24:27You know? How do you do a love Craftian thing
- 1:24:29where there is no tentacles, where there is no kind
- 1:24:32of like thing where people are like I look at
- 1:24:34it and I go completely mad, Which these are all
- 1:24:36things I love. But I'm just wondering because the idea
- 1:24:38is so cool that I'm wondering, could it have just
- 1:24:42been a thing where it's like out in the cosmos,
- 1:24:44almost like a sperm cell hits you know, the Earth,
- 1:24:47like a meteor, Like a meteor hitting Earth is actually
- 1:24:50like an.
- 1:24:50Speaker 3: I think it's necessarily like a sperm an egg metaphor
- 1:24:55as much as it is like a bacterial thing almost.
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: Like I'm just saying, in my rendition, if you had
- 1:25:01to do this thing about Earth regrowing, I'm just saying
- 1:25:03it like that's another kind of unknown kind of thing
- 1:25:06of it's like an asteroid hitting Earth. Is an asteroid
- 1:25:11hitting the Earth and causing like a cataclysmic event is
- 1:25:14something very similar to what we're doing here, which is
- 1:25:18just like an end of time things that was just
- 1:25:21like it wasn't even planned. It just happened because you
- 1:25:24were there. You know, it just happened because like you
- 1:25:28there was no divine intervention of why it hit your planet.
- 1:25:32You were just in a way. And to me, that
- 1:25:34also taps into that like you know, meaning the almost
- 1:25:38like the very nihilistic view of like life as we
- 1:25:41know it, and like humans trying to comprehend like a
- 1:25:44larger part of the story that they're a part of,
- 1:25:46which is like nothing. You know.
- 1:25:49Speaker 3: I think that, well, yeah, I think you can do.
- 1:25:54You can certainly do without like the standard visuals like
- 1:25:56hell Star remin as an example of one that's just
- 1:25:59a planet that eats other planets.
- 1:26:01Speaker 1: But there's also.
- 1:26:04Speaker 3: Like the thing I just covered on the main channel
- 1:26:06that which gave Chase. You never see any visual there.
- 1:26:10It's just a creature that's implied to be beneath or
- 1:26:13above the ice. Maybe that like it's not even called
- 1:26:15a creature, just a presence that like towards people's memories,
- 1:26:19but you never see anything of it.
- 1:26:22Speaker 1: And I do want to say I give prose to
- 1:26:24the author for describing the creature and that kind of thing.
- 1:26:28I think that like an easy way out all the
- 1:26:29time is that you do get that thing that you
- 1:26:32don't ever see it, and you kind of like lean
- 1:26:34on the person's imagination, which is effective because you can
- 1:26:38never be disappointed because you're kind of like making the
- 1:26:40own youre You're making your own visual that satisfies you
- 1:26:43in your head. But I do have a lot of
- 1:26:45respect for people who do put them stuff out there
- 1:26:47and they're like this is what I think would be
- 1:26:49the creepiest, weirdest thing, or like this is why I
- 1:26:51think is the most intriguing aspect visually.
- 1:26:54Speaker 3: When when he was describing the clouds broke open and
- 1:26:58it was like a series of shapes and stuff that
- 1:27:00were symmetrical but not right and stuff like that, I
- 1:27:03was almost imagining like a kaleidoscope. Yeah, and like as
- 1:27:07the kaleidoscope is moving, you can see different like bones
- 1:27:10and stuff appear than disappear, and stuff like that, like
- 1:27:13it's here, but it's not here.
- 1:27:15Speaker 1: Whenever you said the angel appearing, That's kind of what
- 1:27:18I like when I think of like a kaleidoscope. It
- 1:27:20almost has that kind of like heavenly vibe to it,
- 1:27:23just the way that it's like twisting and you know,
- 1:27:26just the shape conveying it's almost beautiful, you know.
- 1:27:29Speaker 3: Yeah, the millions of eyes too. That's also leans back
- 1:27:32on angel imagery. I'm trying to see if the day
- 1:27:35count had anything to do with like revelation, but the
- 1:27:38days of revelation are mentioned is like seventy weeks. That's
- 1:27:42like the imagery people use, So I didn't really see that.
- 1:27:45Speaker 1: Well, what I found too is after you said that,
- 1:27:48I thought something similar was like, well, maybe this is
- 1:27:49kind of like a It does have like a almost
- 1:27:52like a biblical aspect to it, but it's kind of
- 1:27:55fun because then it completely disregards it in the same
- 1:27:58way that like the people in the story start to
- 1:28:01disregard that too, where they're just like, oh, this has
- 1:28:04no meaning, like there's no kind of like there's no
- 1:28:07grand plant to any of this, you know. Like I
- 1:28:09enjoyed that the futility kind of fell into our lap
- 1:28:13as well as like the reader with the characters.
- 1:28:17Speaker 3: Yeah, the idea of like it starts out just like
- 1:28:21maybe we can figure it out, maybe we can. There's
- 1:28:23not really like you figure it out from descriptions, but
- 1:28:26there's not really explanation given to it. I imagine this is
- 1:28:30like some parasite, some giant creature that it's life cycle
- 1:28:33is just going to a planet and impregnating the Earth
- 1:28:37with like its offspring and moving on to another planet,
- 1:28:40almost like the way a is it a bot fly
- 1:28:44that plants their eggs on or a grab or fly
- 1:28:47or whatever plants its eggs on other things, Like it
- 1:28:49just comes to a planet, lays it and goes, which
- 1:28:51implies there could be a whole other world of these
- 1:28:53creatures that size, or maybe these things are the small
- 1:28:56parasites to something much larger. We're a spec of a
- 1:28:58spec like Again, it gets into the cosmic idea of
- 1:29:01humanity's on importance in the universe, which is something we're
- 1:29:04very unfamiliar with, which I think is cool and where
- 1:29:06a lot of the fear comes from. But I liked
- 1:29:09a lot of the individual moments. I liked the idea
- 1:29:13of Jonas being the last man standing.
- 1:29:15Speaker 1: I think that's a cool idea.
- 1:29:17Speaker 3: It reminded me of Soma at the end of that game,
- 1:29:19where it's one person alone at the bottom of the
- 1:29:22ocean being kept alive by machines. It's like the last
- 1:29:26person of the planet killing themselves before this planet becomes
- 1:29:30whatever it's going to be next another one of these
- 1:29:32parasite things.
- 1:29:33Speaker 1: Perhaps the idea too, that the idea too that the
- 1:29:36planet probably was just flying by and then it noticed
- 1:29:42that there was life in our planet, and then it
- 1:29:44needed that life to reproduce. Is fun because it also
- 1:29:48means that because that creature is flying around, there was
- 1:29:52other plants with life that spawned itself. It's just kind
- 1:29:56of like an even I don't know, like that cycle
- 1:29:59is just interesting where you think about it and you're like, oh, fuck,
- 1:30:01it probably fed off somebody else, you know, like we're
- 1:30:04not alone in this universe and stuff, and like it's
- 1:30:07all just it's it's just so fucking hopeless or like
- 1:30:11you know, it's just people like you just don't even
- 1:30:13comprehend these things. I don't know. It's a big big
- 1:30:15existential questions which are which is just really fun. But
- 1:30:18it's just a it's just a fun, uh fun visual,
- 1:30:21fun story, really well written to. I just want to
- 1:30:23say there was a lot of great little segments of
- 1:30:26like beautiful, beautiful descriptions and just like the flow of
- 1:30:34ideas and yeah, like I said, descriptions and stuff. It
- 1:30:37was just really really really nice. I really like a
- 1:30:39lot of the imagery.
- 1:30:40Speaker 3: I really love, love the references to the rapture and stuff,
- 1:30:43not just because it's me, but also because I just
- 1:30:46think that's a fun time between the two. And I
- 1:30:50also really dug like pretty much all the descriptors for
- 1:30:56stuff like the hands coming down or the belch and stuff.
- 1:30:58Speaker 1: I thought that was for sake.
- 1:31:00Speaker 3: Honestly, if I had one critique for the whole story,
- 1:31:02the only thing that I'm like, yeah, you could have
- 1:31:04done without that is the mention of the anomalous agency
- 1:31:09or whatever. That didn't really come up anywhere, and I
- 1:31:12think it's cool or if he's just like another meteorologist
- 1:31:14or another scientist, because it's not like that anomalist group
- 1:31:18offered any deeper insight into what was happening here, so
- 1:31:23it didn't really come up anywhere.
- 1:31:24Speaker 1: So I think it's cooler if humanity is.
- 1:31:26Speaker 3: Even more unprepared and he's just in the I don't know,
- 1:31:30the Weather Service or something like that.
- 1:31:31Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:31:32Speaker 3: Other than that, I think it was a stellar story
- 1:31:34with great writing. And I really love the creature. I
- 1:31:37love how futile everything was. I like how inventive the
- 1:31:40creature is. It's like a giant bacteria or mold that
- 1:31:43lays over the earth and pulls everyone up then reproduces
- 1:31:47it was sick. I really loved it. Again this offer
- 1:31:49this author, Pitiful Scream ninety seven has two more stories.
- 1:31:53I sleep with my window closed down a thousand morning.
- 1:31:55Speaker 1: People.
- 1:31:56Speaker 3: We'll have his stuff linked in the description. Be sure
- 1:31:58to support him because he deserves it. And of course,
- 1:32:00Pitiful Scream, thank you for posting in our slash screep cast.
- 1:32:03Speaker 1: It means a lot if I had any critique. I
- 1:32:05don't think I have any critique. I think just subjective
- 1:32:07thoughts kind of going off what you're saying, just to
- 1:32:09tie it up to is i'd like And this is
- 1:32:12just a personal preference. I kind of I liked when
- 1:32:14stories don't go like the giant government route whatever, like
- 1:32:18I know we were joking about like the meteorologist thing,
- 1:32:21but it would be kind of cool if it was
- 1:32:22just like this is just a single person, Like this
- 1:32:25is just somebody in a field where it's like they
- 1:32:27can still see this anomaly happening and they don't comprehend it.
- 1:32:31There's no way that we'll ever comprehend it. So like
- 1:32:33having them be scientists too feels not irrelevant, but just like,
- 1:32:38you know, cause having them be scientists helps them be
- 1:32:40like trying to make unders make sense of everything. But
- 1:32:43I still think you can do that with like a
- 1:32:44smaller just like a Yeah, I don't know if that
- 1:32:48makes sense. That's just but that's once again, it's just subjective.
- 1:32:50That's just me being like, oh, my personal preference, So
- 1:32:52who gives a fuck. But that's just the one thought
- 1:32:54I had. Otherwise it was awesome, man. Yeah, I appreciate
- 1:32:58your writing and thank you for posting it to the
- 1:33:00creep Cass subreddit. We'll leave a link in the description
- 1:33:03as well to that post. And if you guys want
- 1:33:04to write stuff, fucking put it up on the server. Man,
- 1:33:07there's people.
- 1:33:07Speaker 3: Please please, for the love of God, keep writing. Yeah, sure,
- 1:33:12just good like one month then oh my gosh, dude.
- 1:33:15Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's and that's the thing too, is like
- 1:33:18I mean, every story you write, you're just going to
- 1:33:19figure more and more stuff, more, more and more stuff
- 1:33:23out about what you enjoy and like ways that you
- 1:33:26wish you could take stories. So this isn't another opportunity
- 1:33:29as well to just tell people write things, be upset
- 1:33:33with what you wrote, and just continue to write and
- 1:33:36use this hopefully as like just an experience, just to
- 1:33:38be creative and make something fucking cool because your story
- 1:33:42is something we want to read. So uh, until next time, guys.
- 1:33:45Thank you so much to our audio listeners. If you're
- 1:33:47listening right now on Spotify and Apple podcast, thanks for
- 1:33:50giving us a good rating there. And also thank you
- 1:33:52to our patrons. We appreciate you and we will see
- 1:33:55you guys in the next one. To you guys later. Yeah,
- 1:33:59it's real shame that hunter.
- 1:34:01Speaker 3: You guys getting here right now bodys telling me on
- 1:34:03my headset that he thinks the story is stupid and
- 1:34:06he hates all of you for uploading stories to creep casts.
- 1:34:10Speaker 1: Are you sure?
- 1:34:11Speaker 3: Are you sure you want me to tell everyone that?
- 1:34:12Speaker 1: Okay?
- 1:34:12Speaker 3: Yeah, he says. He says he doesn't appreciate you. He
- 1:34:15says that you're awful. He says that you should get
- 1:34:18alive or a job, and more importantly, get out of
- 1:34:20his h and also he hates his mother and wife.
- 1:34:30Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:34:30Speaker 3: Bye,