Latest / INSPIRE STORY / I Talked To God

Transcript

I Talked To God · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Greek Cast. Today we are doing a
• 0:18
  little double headed feature, starting off with one of the
• 0:22
  stories that is in our subrid our slash cut Creek
• 0:25
  Cast called esoteric isotopes, which I don't like that. Isotopes
• 0:31
  Are youe yucky yucky numb numb time.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: You you e yucky time you?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Isotopes are like the little the little fucking fish bugs.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Right, No, that's isopods.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Oh well okay, well then you see we're never out
• 0:43
  of the yucky yucky.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: We're out of a yucky nasty podcast with right now.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I thought it was like isott Yeah.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: No, No. An isotope is a variant of an element
• 0:55
  that has a different number of neutrons compared to the standard.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: They're also the little bugs that are in fish's mouth whenever.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: You know, No, that's not you ever see the movie.
• 1:06
  I don't even think it's you ever see the movie
• 1:07
  The Bay? Yes, that's the that's the story the Bay.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: That's just that's the story. Reading esoteric yucky bug, the
• 1:15
  story should have been called already giving it a docket
• 1:19
  for not calling the story esoteric yuckie.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Bug, already docking point from it.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Literally, no, not all.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: It's not all isopods that do that. It's just like
• 1:33
  the one. No, no, no, all of them do that.
• 1:36
  All of them do that. Have you seen the picture
• 1:39
  of a bunch of isopods around the back and.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: They're extremely esoteric. There's a bunch of isopods Rondurno's I mean,
• 1:45
  do you blame them?
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Hold on? This is an important image. I feel sometimes
• 1:50
  I feel like I'm on the show with my grandfather.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm being completely honest, I don't
• 1:55
  really I don't think I really know what esoteric means.
• 1:58
  Teacher Isaiah, could you tell me what esoteric means?
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: No?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: All right, then I'll ask my real teacher, asked Jeeves
• 2:05
  so terric okay, intended for or likely to be understood
• 2:09
  by only a small number of people with a specialized
• 2:12
  knowledge or interest. That's kind of funny. That's ironic that
• 2:14
  you wouldn't tell me that too. Feels like you were
• 2:16
  being esoteric yourself.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about, dude.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I know I like that picture. I like the picture.
• 2:25
  I forget what. I want to eat them. I want
• 2:27
  to boil them and eat them.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: The giant looking thing, because they're the good lobster dude,
• 2:33
  what you mean?
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: They're the good. The lobsters are the the the rats
• 2:36
  of the sea. And these isopods that have obviously a
• 2:39
  good taste next to this vintage bag of Doritos, I
• 2:43
  think would taste delightful. You're telling me that if you
• 2:45
  cooked up an isopod that had a belly full of
• 2:47
  Doritos that it wouldn't taste good. I don't know.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, so this has nothing The story that we're in
• 2:54
  today that has nothing to do with isopods was written
• 2:57
  by user Project fade touched. I think this is the
• 3:01
  only story they've posted to the subreddit, but had some
• 3:05
  up votes, and Harry on our team said that we
• 3:08
  should check it out, that we would like it, so
• 3:10
  we are going to be doing that now. So Project
• 3:12
  fade touched, thank you for writing. Thank you for putting
• 3:15
  it in our subreddit. It means a lot to us.
• 3:18
  For anyone who wants to read it or support the author.
• 3:20
  We'll have it linked in the description.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: And thank you so much to our beautiful audio listeners
• 3:23
  on Spotify and Apple podcast. Appreciate you for the amazing
• 3:26
  ratings there. And also thank you to our beautiful patrons
• 3:30
  and guys just want to let you know too here
• 3:31
  before too long, new merch is on the way. Not
• 3:34
  sure if it's this week, can't really, I don't know,
• 3:37
  but a new merch is coming. So all the people
• 3:40
  that have been fiending for some new fabric, let me
• 3:42
  tell you. The new fabric we have is quite legit
• 3:47
  and it is very isopod coded. So without further ado,
• 3:52
  let's get into it.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Esoteric isotopes.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: So karayukey tobes Well is going to kill you to
• 3:58
  say this first line.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: All right, m I was never a very religious man.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Clip that.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: I've made a choke, go all back that you're the
• 4:12
  person Bety Tails warned me about. But you are in
• 4:15
  like the Saturday Morning cartoon way of like, go ahead,
• 4:19
  say the bad word, say the bad word for your mom.
• 4:22
  Will hear? I was ever a very religious man. Hell
• 4:26
  I wasn't even a very good please clip that most.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Of my life.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Thank you so much, Thank you
• 4:32
  for the clippers for doing that. All right, that's the
• 4:34
  last time I'm saying it unless there's another great one.
• 4:36
  But that's just awesome.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Well, you just want a clip that they said, I'm
• 4:40
  not the good. Oh, hell, okay, most of my life
• 4:49
  was lived in direct contrast almost every tenant of any religion.
• 4:53
  I sat there, listening to the raspy breath escaping my lungs.
• 4:57
  I was never a religious man, and even now in
• 4:58
  my final hours, I reached out to no God. I said,
• 5:02
  no prayers to fall upon apps and ears. All I
• 5:04
  could think about was my life and the events that
• 5:07
  put me here. Spring of nineteen sixty nine. Ooh is
• 5:10
  this slow Vietnam story? I hope? So. I awoke in
• 5:13
  the morning after a night of terrible sleep, and stretched
• 5:16
  out as far as the space of the small cop
• 5:18
  would afford me to slid myself up and over its edge,
• 5:21
  slipping my feet into my black combat boots. Oh, it
• 5:23
  is the chatter of over a dozen other men, drowned
• 5:27
  out any private thoughts I might have had, which was fine,
• 5:30
  because a strange feeling of sadness had overcome me. Bopping
• 5:32
  open a small trunk, I retrieved my uniform and donned it,
• 5:35
  buttoning the olive green shirt over my white undershirt slay
• 5:39
  as I walked over to the edge of the tent.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: What I just said, sleigh after the the uh, it
• 5:45
  just seemed like he was serving real there with the
• 5:47
  olive green shirt over the white undershirt. I just thought
• 5:49
  he I just thought he was slaying.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: I don't like I don't like you saying that. Don't
• 5:58
  do that again, thank you. As I walked over to
• 6:02
  the edge of the tent, one of the older men
• 6:03
  shouted to me, Dick, Hey, Dick, glance in his direction
• 6:07
  to see the sergeant in charge of the platoon. Ever
• 6:09
  since our first lieutenant pit the dust coming towards me, Sure,
• 6:12
  I said, snapping into an attentive stance, I felt, have
• 6:17
  you been wanted to be like a like a sergeant?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Really, I've wanted to do that? Stupid fucking well, I'm
• 6:22
  not gonna say stupid. I guess I don't really know.
• 6:24
  I just whenever they're sitting there, like they throw their
• 6:29
  gun around the dew, all right, I've always wanted to.
• 6:35
  I've always wanted to not only know it, but I've
• 6:37
  wanted to lead one so long and to hear all
• 6:40
  the little you know, any people throwing the gun around.
• 6:45
  It's oddly satisfying. It's a it's stemming for my tisms,
• 6:51
  is what I would say.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Did you have something this morning? Is there a reason
• 6:57
  that you're in this like state.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: What what did I do?
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: You're just so amped up, you've jumped me on the
• 7:05
  first sentence for everything, You've ran like three micro bits
• 7:10
  by yourself, completely undated.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I'll stop you like bucking stock, just firing off the
• 7:17
  fucking stock.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: I fell to the ady's stance and looked expectantly at him.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Need you out on the horn. Apparently something's happened that
• 7:24
  requires your attention.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Ray Snybrow will only to be met with a shrug
• 7:28
  as he turned to go chase down some of my
• 7:29
  other squad members. I walked to the tense edge, pulled
• 7:32
  across the lip to open it, and exited into the
• 7:34
  heavy air, thick with moisture. Mornings in Vietnam were always
• 7:38
  like this. Hot, muggy, intense rain through the night hadn't helped.
• 7:42
  A blanket of fog had settled upon the ground, almost
• 7:45
  so thick it felt like you were wading through water.
• 7:48
  I hurriedly made my way to the radio tower, stomping
• 7:51
  through the muddy ground along the way. At the top
• 7:54
  of the tower, I found the radio telephone operator waiting
• 7:57
  for me, with a solemn look on his face. Seeing me,
• 8:00
  he stood and shook my.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Hand, son, Will I think I'll just let you have this.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: He had to be the receiver from the radio, and
• 8:07
  after fiddling with the console, I could finally hear a
• 8:11
  voice through the static.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Richard, Richard, can you hear me?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: The voice belonged to my mother, congresswoman from my home state.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Mom, Richard, I'm pulling some strings and bringing you home.
• 8:23
  It's your father, Pete.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: The grief was so laden in her voice that didn't
• 8:29
  even need her to finish the sentence. Honestly, I don't
• 8:32
  think I even needed this call to know. The night
• 8:34
  prior I had the Stranger stream, it was hard to
• 8:37
  recall all of it. It had started with me locked
• 8:40
  inside a dark room. I could see just a slit
• 8:43
  of flight coming from a very far distance away from me,
• 8:46
  leaking into the room ever so slightly. I could tell
• 8:50
  the space I was in must have been enormous, and
• 8:53
  the dream I could see figures pacing outside of the door.
• 8:56
  I could hear them arguing and yelling, but I couldn't
• 8:59
  make out the word they said. It was then that
• 9:01
  the door swung open to reveal my father dressed in
• 9:04
  a lab coat, which to me felt strange because my
• 9:06
  father had been a stay at home father for most
• 9:08
  of his life, something almost unheard of in those days,
• 9:11
  of course, but he was adamant to support the political
• 9:14
  career of my mother. Strode over to me for what
• 9:16
  felt like a yawns, each stepped back out in his
• 9:19
  face around us, and as he finally arrived, I was
• 9:22
  looking down at him from dozens of different angles at once.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. I've tried it,
• 9:28
  I feel Please tell him I tried.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: The dream warped and I was now looking down on
• 9:33
  my father in bed from just one angle, this time
• 9:36
  looking far too old, much more frail than he had
• 9:39
  when I left, looked back up at me and his
• 9:42
  face contorted into horror. He tried to wriggle out of
• 9:45
  the bed, but it was like his limbs simply wouldn't function.
• 9:49
  As he struggled to move, he opened his mouth to speak.
• 9:51
  No sound escaped them, but from the movement of his
• 9:54
  lips I could garner the words ooh.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: He just said. No. No sound escaped him, so.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: I guess that is what it would sound like, just
• 10:13
  moaning from his lips. I could garner the words I'm
• 10:19
  sorry again and again. Then I woke up, Richard, Honey,
• 10:24
  are you there? The voice of my mother brought me
• 10:27
  back to the present moment. Yes, sat there numbly.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Listen. You'll be home by the end of the day. Okay,
• 10:33
  we need you home. Sharon, Sharon is inconsolable. And Michael
• 10:38
  whom he's Michael.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty nine. They're going to have him home
• 10:43
  by the end of the day.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I just want to say so. I didn't want to
• 10:46
  stop the flow, but it was very funny to me
• 10:49
  that there's more words, like my dad came out in
• 10:51
  a lab coat, and it made it seem like he's
• 10:53
  like which was strange because he was a guy who
• 10:55
  landscaped yards or whatever. It's like that they presented the
• 11:00
  lab code thing was funny. Yeah. I don't know, I
• 11:02
  I I get. Let's it's it like unless the base
• 11:09
  is nearby? I don't know, right?
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Or is he No, he's in he's in Vietnam.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Said the Vietnam mornings. Yeah, put combat boots. He's talking
• 11:18
  to a platoon sergeant because the lieutenant got killed. So yeah,
• 11:22
  he's in. He's in combat in Vietnam. Well, I guess
• 11:26
  what what were they was it C one thirties. Back then,
• 11:29
  what was the transport plane around that long bomber? Well,
• 11:34
  I don't.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is the name of that big black one that's
• 11:43
  like that looks sick? What's the name of that one
• 11:46
  that's the n obomer right?
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: The uniform is all right, what's that's the nickname was?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: What was the what's the big black one?
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, well it was the C one thirty. It says
• 11:59
  that the two transport aircrafts where the Sea one thirty
• 12:01
  and the C one one. Okay, so yeah, okay, yeah,
• 12:05
  you could get there in one day, then I think,
• 12:07
  like the flight over the ocean is like eleven hours
• 12:10
  or something like that.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I just I just literally googled. I just I just googled,
• 12:13
  could you fly to Vietnam to America in one day
• 12:16
  in nineteen sixty eight? Said no, you could not fly
• 12:18
  from Vietnam to the United States and one day in
• 12:20
  nineteen sixty eight. I just want to see that. That's what, Yeah,
• 12:22
  that's what googled. It says.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: It says airtime would be twenty six hours. I like
• 12:26
  how this guy made a story for our subreddit and
• 12:29
  was like really pumped about it. Really like I don't
• 12:32
  think this timeline is right. I think this is wrong incorrect. Yeah,
• 12:36
  now if he was flying on the unibomber, ted Kazinski
• 12:40
  fly through the air, what is that?
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a unibomber. What is that? What?
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: What?
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: What?
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: What is that actual airplane called?
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Which plane are you talking?
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: It's the fucking big black one that's like kind of
• 12:55
  flat and wide. Oh the B two is that? I
• 12:57
  was called B two bomber. That's what I was talking about.
• 12:59
  That's what That's what they flew. Yeah, that's what they
• 13:01
  flew home like six.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: The stealth bomber.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: The stealth bomber is sneakly going to break the laws
• 13:08
  of time and get home from Vietnam to American one day.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, So the B two production ended in the year
• 13:16
  two thousand, so I don't think in nineteen sixty nine
• 13:19
  he would have we don't make him anymore, had access
• 13:21
  to one. Yeah, no, they still make him. I'm saying
• 13:25
  that they that's when they started. It was first made
• 13:28
  in nineteen eighty eight, and the production was from nineteen
• 13:31
  eighty eight to two thousand. You know those things cost
• 13:33
  over a billion dollars.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, easy chimp change anything to get our boys home. Right,
• 13:41
  what could we be carying that's worth a billion dollars?
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: It's two billion, actually it's two billion.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: It seems like such an excessive amount of money to
• 13:53
  put into a stupid.
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: Fucking plane to get our boys up, just randomly getting
• 13:58
  like really political all about it. Uh So someone someone
• 14:03
  crashed one during a test flight too.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: That was he fired or killed and he had to
• 14:08
  hand to kill.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: I'm sure he was fired, but it was on landing.
• 14:12
  It like you lived the crash, but like the plane
• 14:16
  was destroyed. Just two billion dollars recked.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think two billion dollars for a stupid fucking
• 14:22
  plane is not worth it. Think about what you could
• 14:26
  do it for two billion dollars, man, Think about how
• 14:28
  many Dave and Busters you could open two billion dollars.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: That's how how many day.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: It cost a minimum of eleven point eight million dollars
• 14:42
  with a requirement of a significant portion around four million
• 14:44
  to six million to open a Dave and Busters.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: All right, well, okay, hold up, with two billion dollars,
• 14:51
  you could open about four hundred company on locations.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I just want to say that that's what we're missing.
• 14:58
  I mean, like I'm not going to try to get
• 15:00
  political or anything, but that's what we're missing.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I thought you said anything to bring those boys home.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, that's before I knew.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, even though even though the B two bomber
• 15:12
  wasn't really bringing anyone home, it was a bombing plane.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I thought that dropped the people off. That's why they
• 15:18
  called the bomber. It's like a big parachute plane.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: No, it drops bombs. That's why it's called a bombers.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: That kind of like sour cadence. It's very obvious now,
• 15:30
  but you know.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Do you think the ones people jump out of the
• 15:36
  carriers would be called bombers?
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: God, it's sick, isn't it? Is that kind of cool?
• 15:43
  Speaker 6: You're like, bombs awayboards and he dropped all the people.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Be fucking cool.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm pretty sure every aerial combat unit jumps out
• 15:52
  of C one thirties, So it's just like the standard.
• 15:57
  The back door drops open.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Then there is the NUB podcast. Why don't we get
• 16:01
  back to fucking this horseshow? Okay?
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: All all right, all right, yeah, okay, whatever, whatever, whatever, Okay,
• 16:08
  I'm not going to get mad. I'm not going to
• 16:09
  get mad. Sharon, my younger sister by five years, was
• 16:12
  only eighteen. She had absolutely been a daddy's girl from
• 16:16
  the time she could speak, so I could imagine she
• 16:18
  was devastated. Michael was our younger brother, and he was
• 16:21
  only fifteen. I'd been in Vietnam for four years at
• 16:25
  this point, so I missed his becoming a teen era.
• 16:27
  I'd gotten letters, though, describing how difficult he had become
• 16:30
  from my mother. Apparently he was a real rebel, having
• 16:34
  been caught drinking, smoking, reefer, even got himself in some
• 16:37
  hot water when he burned down an abandoned factory. All
• 16:40
  right stood up and I could hear my mother saying
• 16:43
  something on the radio. But all I could think about
• 16:46
  was my father. I wasn't there in his final moments.
• 16:49
  The worst part of it for me was that I
• 16:51
  wasn't even drafted. I chose this stupidly, of course. Instead
• 16:57
  I should have stayed home. I should have let my
• 16:59
  parents get me set up with a cushy government job.
• 17:02
  I didn't seen him in four whole years now I
• 17:04
  never would again. My mother was accurate with the information.
• 17:08
  It wasn't long after a helicopter landed to evacuate me
• 17:11
  to the nearest friendly airport and out of Vietnam altogether.
• 17:15
  Some sixteen hours after waking up, I was home. Some
• 17:19
  sixteen hours after waking up, I was home. Stole them
• 17:23
  from the warran to the dead night. Upon landing in Washington,
• 17:26
  d C. I was greeted by a driver holding a
• 17:28
  sign with my name on it. Rode quietly through the
• 17:31
  night to my family's townhouse in the city. If I
• 17:34
  thought the air in Vietnam was thick, it was nothing
• 17:36
  compared to the somber stillness that awaited me in the house.
• 17:40
  Despite of being one in the morning, I could hear
• 17:42
  Sharon upstairs crying, layered into the far too loud song
• 17:45
  Fortunate Son blaring from Michael's room. My mother was sitting
• 17:49
  on the stairs waiting my arrival. Her eyes were puffy
• 17:52
  and red as she strode over to embrace me, and
• 17:54
  the moment my arms wrapped around her, she began to sob.
• 17:58
  I held my mother there for some time before I
• 18:00
  went to comfort chair, and I noticed Michael's door was
• 18:03
  plastered with anti war stickers, peace signs, and other hippie shit.
• 18:07
  After I got done trying and failing to pacify my sister,
• 18:11
  I went to his door, which was locked. I saw
• 18:13
  it and went to my parents' room. I glanced at
• 18:16
  the ceiling where I had looked down at my father
• 18:18
  in my dream, expecting nothing, only to be shocked by
• 18:21
  what looked like someone had taken a torch or lighter
• 18:24
  and held it just below the spot, enough to singe
• 18:27
  the plaster only in the shape of a ring. I
• 18:30
  walked over and got onto the bed, reaching out on
• 18:33
  my tippy toes to brush the circular ring spot. Soot
• 18:36
  or ash came off onto my finger, which I rubbed
• 18:39
  together and smelled. Didn't smell like soot or ash. Smelled
• 18:43
  like oranges and pine needles if you burned them together.
• 18:47
  Buried my father that weekend. The entire time I was
• 18:50
  back home, Michael wouldn't so much as look at me,
• 18:53
  let alone speak to me. He was a lot different
• 18:56
  from when I had left, gangly and taller, care down
• 19:00
  past his shoulders, he was sprouting peach fuzz along his lip,
• 19:04
  and he always wore an olive green jacket with a
• 19:06
  graphic band tea underneath it, even to the funeral a
• 19:09
  few weeks past. And eventually my mother began to insist
• 19:12
  I take that cushy job instead of going back to Vietnam.
• 19:15
  Ultimately I decided she was right. She began to plead
• 19:18
  for Michael's sake. She had me honorably discharge. It set
• 19:21
  me up a lab in the city so so Terratronics.
• 19:25
  It was a kind of pushing government job. Is that
• 19:30
  you have a lab called so Terrritronics. It was a
• 19:36
  leading government funded research site for electronics, something I had
• 19:40
  actually shown some promise with this kid in the Army
• 19:44
  time out.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: It was a leading government funded research site for electronics.
• 19:49
  And it's called trucks. It's like being like I I
• 20:00
  worked at an artillery place called Boomy Big Bombs.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: It was a.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Governmental lead. It was a government leading funded artillery.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: It's I mean, to the story's credit. If it was
• 20:17
  a public business that the government was just using and funding,
• 20:21
  then it could be any name. But if it's an
• 20:24
  actual government job like he's describing and not just funded,
• 20:28
  then like the government calling it the big Boomy Big
• 20:34
  Big fun time house. I want to take a quick
• 20:40
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  mean the most, and we are back to the episode.
• 22:12
  I was constantly fixing up radios and other gear, so
• 22:14
  it fit me well. I began pretty small there, mainly
• 22:17
  doing office administration type of work. Over the course of
• 22:21
  the next few years, however, I went back to college
• 22:23
  and graduated. This resulted in a bump up the ladder,
• 22:27
  so to speak, so I was now able to take
• 22:29
  on more advanced tasks. Winter of nineteen eighty four, I
• 22:34
  paced the lengths of my office staring at a blackport
• 22:36
  across the room. Currently, I was working on coming up
• 22:40
  with a solution to infant mortality and the solution to
• 22:45
  infant mortality the one the secret code infant Mortality and
• 22:49
  unpredictability and integrated circuits are those two things in are
• 22:54
  linked circuits and infant debts. He's just setting at his desk,
• 23:06
  holding like a baby doll at a computer chip, and
• 23:09
  he's like, there's got to be away.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: The technologist isn't there yet.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: If only I had more time, he has a test
• 23:24
  covered in baby dolls. He just like swipes it off.
• 23:28
  The chips would pass a benchmark test in the lab,
• 23:31
  only to fail once released to consumers, were placed in
• 23:33
  lab equipment. Despite this issue, might higher up seem too
• 23:36
  worried about it.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Don't worry about it, Richard, I'm sure the answer will
• 23:39
  come in time.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Just keep at it, it would say to me, nonchalantly,
• 23:43
  not a very expeditious mood for a company whose profit
• 23:46
  margins were being harmed by these chip failures. Of thinking
• 23:48
  to myself, I gave up for the night and decided
• 23:51
  to leave it for another day. I left the office behind,
• 23:54
  turned my home, that same townhouse where my parents raised
• 23:57
  my siblings and I mom had passed away for you
• 24:00
  years back, and lifted in my name, probably because no
• 24:03
  one even knew where Sharon was. Michael was imprisoned for
• 24:06
  repeated counts of arson. I pulled my escort into the driveway,
• 24:10
  where I noticed a light on one of the upstairs windows.
• 24:13
  Quickly got out of the car and headed up to
• 24:15
  the steps. To the patio door was ajar, having been
• 24:19
  clearly kicked open. I quietly pressed on the door make
• 24:22
  sured a tiptoe as slowly as I could to avoid
• 24:24
  making any noise. Glancing to the side table, I quicked
• 24:28
  myself with a heavy silver candlestick, carefully placing the candle
• 24:32
  onto the table. So I crept along the hall. I
• 24:35
  began up the stairs, and in my moment of nervousness,
• 24:38
  I forgot all about the loose step a few steps up. Pump,
• 24:41
  pressing my full weight down on the floorboard, let out
• 24:44
  aloud groan. I froze, looking up past the banister towards
• 24:48
  the light coming down the hall. Nothing, no sound. As
• 24:53
  I continue to make my way upstairs, a familiar sin
• 24:56
  assaulted me, causing me to freeze again and pine needles
• 25:02
  they had been burned together. I had to press on,
• 25:04
  trying to find the source of intrusion into my home.
• 25:08
  Once I approached the top of the stairs, the smell
• 25:10
  was stronger, much stronger. Rounding the banister. At the top,
• 25:14
  I finally saw the light's origin was from Sharon's old room.
• 25:17
  The door was cracked, light smoke was coming from the room.
• 25:21
  I dropped the candlestick holder, which clattered to the ground
• 25:24
  with a thud, and ran to the door, swinging it open.
• 25:26
  Charon laid across the bed that once belonged to her
• 25:29
  in her room, which was completely unchanged from the day
• 25:32
  she left. To her side. Her outstretched arm had a
• 25:36
  rubber hose ripped from somewhere in the house tied around
• 25:39
  it at her pesep needle hung from the vein her
• 25:43
  in her elbow. To her side was a small plastic
• 25:45
  baggy of a yellow powder accompanied by a spoon and
• 25:48
  lighter heroin. I looked on in whr at my baby sister,
• 25:51
  who had come home to what die. I ran over
• 25:56
  to her and pressed my finger to her neck. Upon
• 25:58
  seeing her eyes rolled back in her head no pulse.
• 26:02
  She was dead. Sank to my knees and began a sob,
• 26:06
  holding her head against my chest. It was quite some
• 26:08
  time before I found the strength to move, and when
• 26:11
  I did finally come back to my senses, the room
• 26:13
  around me was almost as nightmarish as her body. Holes
• 26:17
  had been punched into the walls, and it seemed Sharon
• 26:19
  had taken red lipstick and written all over them. I
• 26:22
  scanned some of the writings, dreams and eyes, father lies, rings,
• 26:28
  so round and round and round? Can you smell the
• 26:31
  oranges too? Take me to the forest. I can't save you.
• 26:37
  I'm sorry for what he did. I'm sorry sorry. I
• 26:42
  couldn't make sense of the insane scribbling and scrawling she
• 26:45
  had left on the walls, but the smell of oranges
• 26:48
  was all too familiar. When it hit me, it hit
• 26:51
  like a truck sinking into my gut, hesitantly, as if
• 26:54
  my body refused to obey. My eyes dragged to the
• 26:57
  ceiling above Sharon's lifeless corpse. No it can't, but it
• 27:03
  was a small ring of soot and ash was imprinted
• 27:06
  onto the ceiling. I stood now, my legs shaking, climbed
• 27:11
  onto the bed beside Sharon. My hand extended towards the spot.
• 27:15
  Only this time it was hot, hotter than a stove.
• 27:19
  I could barely get close enough without a feeling as
• 27:21
  though I was going to burn me. What was this
• 27:25
  this stuff? Was it something from heating the heroin? Was
• 27:31
  this how my father had died? Was he secretly an addict.
• 27:34
  I got back off the bed and removed the needle
• 27:36
  from Charon's now cold arm, took the heroin and flushed
• 27:39
  it down the toilet before calling nine to one one.
• 27:42
  They came fairly fast to remove her body. No need
• 27:45
  to check if it was laced or you know, tag
• 27:46
  or anything like that, just get rid of it. They
• 27:49
  came fairly fast to remove her body and didn't ask
• 27:51
  about the riding on the walls or obvious lack of drugs.
• 27:54
  The police came and asked me questions. I answered honestly
• 27:57
  and told them what I had done with the heroin
• 27:59
  of indolences, and then left the house that had already
• 28:02
  felt empty now felt like a pit of endless darkness
• 28:05
  in despair. This place had claimed two of the people
• 28:08
  I had loved. I decided it wouldn't claim me too.
• 28:12
  Then a few months I had listed the house for sale,
• 28:14
  and within a few more it had sold. With it
• 28:17
  came a change for my life, because in the spring
• 28:19
  of nineteen eighty five, I both met my wife, who
• 28:22
  lived within the same complex I had moved into, got
• 28:25
  a huge promotion at work for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Interesting thing of it. It jumped like would it jump like.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: They jumped five years and now two years.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Two years, yeah, interesting and pretty much just oh right, no, no, no,
• 28:41
  fifteen yeah, yeah, so a long time. And the big
• 28:47
  thing is he's basically fallen into this. I wouldn't say mundane,
• 28:50
  but kind of like formulaic life comes back home and
• 28:53
  his sister has died of a heroin overdose. I guess
• 28:57
  I'm wondering. Also, the mom was past two now, so.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: It's it's the only one still lives since.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Brother him and his brother. Okay, yeah, I'm trying to see.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, after that would get another jump In two years
• 29:17
  Spring nineteen eighty six, my life was slowly coming together.
• 29:20
  Now it felt like better late than ever at all.
• 29:23
  I suppose I was now married to my beautiful wife,
• 29:26
  Elaine Cook. She quickly became my whole world. She inspired
• 29:30
  me to do better, to be better. Despite having been
• 29:33
  abandoned as a child orphan at the age of two,
• 29:35
  she was incredibly strong, willed and persistent. She had worked
• 29:38
  herself to the bone getting ahead in life, making sure
• 29:41
  her past never defined her. Things at work had taken
• 29:44
  a turn in March of eighty five, when I was
• 29:47
  both taken off the infancy mortality project and assigned to
• 29:50
  finding a way to deal with high temperature diffusion and chipsets.
• 29:55
  This promotion came with the higher clearance than before, and
• 29:57
  I gained access to portions of the building I didn't
• 29:59
  know exis. Originally, i'd worked in the labs found in
• 30:02
  the second sub basement, to my assumption, the last basement.
• 30:06
  To my surprise, when my new clearance came, I was
• 30:09
  informed I would be in the eleventh sub basement from
• 30:11
  now on. I remember the conversation pretty vividly my manager,
• 30:16
  Timothy Bruce, who was also a high ranking army general.
• 30:19
  I'd come into my office in the morning, still.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: No look on the infancy mortality Dick, No, unfortunately, not well, he.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Just has he just has a bunch of baby dolls.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: It's like there's got to be a clue now, just
• 30:36
  a bunch of dead battery babies on my desk. It's
• 30:41
  just he's just like, yeah, it's a sleep yeah. All
• 30:47
  the babies, all the baby dolls have like goggles and
• 30:50
  helmets on and like a giant bull's eye on the wall.
• 30:54
  He's just there's still they're still dying on impact charging.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Just all night. He's got he's got a clipboard, and
• 31:07
  he's like walking over to the dolls and writing notes
• 31:09
  and then putting it back in the slink shot.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: That's all right. Not every problem is gonna get solved immediately.
• 31:20
  That said, we're out searching this problem. I'll keep trying, Sergeant,
• 31:28
  Thank you, sir, dude, John, just.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Not every problem is gonna get solved immediately.
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: As they're flying in between the two of them like
• 31:41
  strain and the walls, his smile was friendly.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: There's a twitch in his brow. Something in his voice.
• 31:56
  I'm poison this scene for me, I followed us. Uh,
• 32:02
  it's something in his voice like annoyance I hadn't heard before.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Wait, am I being fired? No? No, no, no, a
• 32:08
  brilliant mind like yours. No, no, no no. That's the
• 32:12
  most condescending should have ever heard my life.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Dude.
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: No, no, no, no, a brilliant mind like yours, sling
• 32:19
  shotting the babies into the wall with goggles and helmets. No,
• 32:23
  you're actually being promoted, getting a nice fat bonus to
• 32:26
  your pay, plus new security clearances.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: I nodded my head and then asked, well, I still.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Be in this office and in the same lab.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: General shook its head.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Son you'll have the new office in a lab both
• 32:38
  on sub basement eleven min screw wide sub eleven.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Wait, there aren't even buttons for that. On the elevator,
• 32:47
  Win put his hand up to stop me. You'll be
• 32:51
  using the elevator you didn't even know existed before.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Now you'll need.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: This reduced a new badge, this time with a magnetic
• 32:58
  strip running along it.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Follow me.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: I did as I was told and followed the General
• 33:03
  out of my office, which was immediately flooded by a
• 33:06
  few men who proceeded to grab anything that belonged to
• 33:08
  me and toned after us, just arms full of babies.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Leave the baby dolls, Dick, I can't. It's my life's work.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I'll never know. I looked back and began to object.
• 33:22
  When one looked back and began to object, one of
• 33:26
  them started manhandling sensitive equipment. Yeah, the slave shot, but
• 33:30
  the General waved as we continued down the corridor. It's
• 33:34
  it's just that infant mortality is so far removed from
• 33:37
  cybernetics that I'm sure it's not gonna come into the
• 33:41
  story somewhere, And that's why. But it's so abrasive initially, Well, we've.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Had we've only had we've had so far, we've had
• 33:49
  three deaths of but not but none of them have
• 33:52
  been infants, So just it just feels jarring. I think
• 33:55
  you know what I mean.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. We rode the elevator back up to the
• 33:58
  ground floor and passed a few more hallways up to
• 34:00
  a door I'd seen a few times but never paid
• 34:02
  a second glance to. It was labeled supply closet Omega.
• 34:07
  Now that I read it, it seems somewhat odd now
• 34:12
  that I see the closet was labeled Omega.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: That was suspicious, A closet labeled Omega in a giant
• 34:19
  building called Esoteric Tronics. She was going, weird that there's
• 34:24
  no Omega here in this building called Esoteric Tronics. That
• 34:27
  I've been firing children at the wall for the past
• 34:31
  thirteen years.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Every single room there's this baby's flyer.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Ooh wo, these babies keep dying. God damn it. What
• 34:48
  will it be enough? Yeah, we need more babies.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: The general inserted my key card into a slot beside
• 34:55
  the door, which unlocked with a hiss and swung open.
• 34:58
  Side of the room was a series of computers with
• 35:00
  men and women sitting at them, working dilligently across the
• 35:03
  room instead of elevator doors, waited me.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: You'll be working alongside these men and women here when
• 35:08
  it comes to contacting us with project updates. Through the elevator,
• 35:12
  you'll find an access to sub levels three through eleven.
• 35:16
  Go ahead and head down to your lab and you'll
• 35:18
  be briefed by your colleagues. Your office is just there, and.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: He pointed to another door which now had my name
• 35:24
  on it. I walked up to the office door and
• 35:26
  opened it. Scent of oranges and pine needles wafted out
• 35:29
  of the office, which seemed old and unused. When I
• 35:33
  closed the door again, the glass rattled slightly. I could
• 35:36
  see that the lettering used to spell my last name
• 35:38
  was much older than the lettering used to spell my
• 35:41
  first and I could also see the outlines of residue
• 35:44
  in the shapes of letters spelling my father's name underneath it.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Do you think he's just being tested on?
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: No.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: I think the idea was that he thought his father
• 35:54
  would stay at home, didn't have a job, but he
• 35:56
  was actually part of this program. Wow. Flash forward a
• 35:59
  year and I it's no closer to a solution to
• 36:01
  this problem than I was infancy mortality issues. You gotta quit.
• 36:09
  Speaker 7: The babies won't stop falling. Damnute baby, damn you hell.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: No matter what I tried, what combination of elements were used,
• 36:25
  or methods of cooling helium, still seemed like the best option.
• 36:29
  Left the office. On a cool spring night, air damp
• 36:32
  from recent reign, drove home to my two bedroom apartment
• 36:35
  I shared with the lane. My wonderful world greeted me
• 36:38
  as I came into the living room, slipping off my
• 36:41
  shoes and sinking into the couch. She sat down beside
• 36:44
  me and curled up to me, stroking my face tenderly
• 36:46
  as it let out along sigh, and press my fingers
• 36:48
  to my temples. Rough day, she asked. I nodded, Well,
• 36:54
  tell me about.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: It, not particularly, It's just that we're no damn closer
• 36:58
  to a solution now than a year ago.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I stroked my chest, now almost nervously.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I have some exciting news.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: It looked up, and she reached behind her, slowly pulling
• 37:10
  h oh. She reached behind her, slowly pulling out a
• 37:24
  pregnancy test. My eyes honed in on the blue shade
• 37:27
  of the tip. I stammered over my words.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: What wait are we we I'm gonna be a dad.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: She nodded her head excitedly, and I wrapped her up
• 37:39
  in my arms and I jumped off the couch, picking
• 37:41
  her up and dancing around.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: This baby's guy. I hate to say that this baby
• 37:48
  is fucking dead.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Dude.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: It's such a bummer. It's such a bummer to be like,
• 37:53
  we're so happy just to know. I'm like, there's no
• 37:56
  fucking way in hell that baby's lancing.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Mortality.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: They've mentioned mortality rates far, far too often to have
• 38:11
  any kind of to have any kind of hope that
• 38:13
  this baby's gonna make it to fucking do Yeah, right, bro,
• 38:17
  God to introduce you to my sling shot.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I was gonna make a joke about
• 38:26
  how that the story now enters an interesting moral complexity,
• 38:30
  because it's like, you know, his whole career is sling
• 38:32
  shot in babies, but now that he has one of
• 38:35
  his own, will he be able to put it in
• 38:37
  a sling shot.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: I think what's gonna happen if I could try to
• 38:41
  set my own bear trap, is that the.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Dad which, by the way, by the way bear trap
• 38:46
  with the baby dyed thing. I know the story brought
• 38:48
  it up, but it's mine. It's mine now, so that's fine.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: The uh, I think that we're heading in an area
• 38:55
  where the dad tested on something on the the main
• 39:00
  character when he was a baby, and it's getting ready
• 39:02
  to be like, uh, you know, like the cycle continues
• 39:05
  kind of thing.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that experiment is, but I do
• 39:09
  think that it's like a generational kind of meme.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so that that's why he's able
• 39:14
  to see it, and I think all of his kids
• 39:16
  it's probably why his sister and brother are so messed up.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all they're older than him or no, his
• 39:22
  sister was five years younger than him, right.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think they are old, but I think
• 39:26
  all of them have been experimented on. We kissed deeply
• 39:28
  and went to the bedroom to celebrate that night. For
• 39:31
  the first time in the year, I dreamed. In the dream,
• 39:35
  I was floating once again in that black room where
• 39:37
  only a sliver of light could be seen. This time,
• 39:40
  there are no figures moving in the light beyond. The
• 39:43
  light began to fade. Soon I was enveloped in nothing
• 39:46
  but a pitch black darkness. So if I shut my
• 39:50
  eyes tightly in the void, I could see small dots,
• 39:54
  no clusters of dots, the rings rotating around them, and
• 39:58
  each ring containing its own dots. I recognized these as atoms,
• 40:03
  so dots floated freely above my head. I counted the
• 40:06
  electrons around me, floated atoms of lanithm, aerium, copper, and oxygen.
• 40:14
  Soon the metal atoms would dance around me, combining in
• 40:18
  pairs with the oxygen ones to form powders and solids.
• 40:22
  Then fire, blazing hot from underneath, as if a portal
• 40:26
  to hell. It opened up and I could feel the
• 40:29
  flames licked me from underneath. It came, and it burned
• 40:33
  everything around me, until all at once it disappeared. What
• 40:38
  was left was a shiny, black, floating disk of a
• 40:41
  nanthetom barium copper oxide, perfect material for my problems. A
• 40:46
  superconductor capable of handling the heat of hell. Woke up
• 40:50
  in a sweat with a lameb beside me, and jumped
• 40:51
  out of bed, which garnered a groggy response from l
• 40:55
  So excited I didn't even recognize that all too familiar
• 40:58
  smell in the air, I ran into the living room
• 41:01
  and dragged out a blackboard, where I hastily wrote down
• 41:03
  the formula of this new inorganic compound cee U BA
• 41:09
  zero fifteen LA one point eight five oxygen four. But
• 41:14
  you have a one point a point whatever. I sketched
• 41:18
  out the structure and stepped back to look at my work. Yes,
• 41:21
  this was it, the solution to my problems. I quickly
• 41:25
  went over to the phone and began to dial the
• 41:27
  number to the lab before a clock on the stove
• 41:30
  caught my eye. It was only three am. No one
• 41:33
  was even awake or there right now. I couldn't sleep.
• 41:36
  When Alane woke up around five, she came to the
• 41:38
  living room where I had sat staring at the blackboard
• 41:40
  the entire time. Richard I smiled at.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Her, Elayne, this is it the solution to the.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Heat point eagerly at the blackboard, which she glanced at
• 41:51
  and gave me a groggy thumbs up before going back
• 41:53
  to the bathroom. Another hour passed and Elaine left to
• 41:56
  go to the hospital she worked at as a nurse
• 41:58
  on base in Maryland. Finally I was able to get
• 42:01
  ready and head out myself for the lab. I was
• 42:03
  so eager to share my discovery that I had to
• 42:05
  drive back ten minutes in and get my key card.
• 42:08
  When I got to the lab, I could hardly contain myself.
• 42:11
  I entered the supply closet and revealed my findings to
• 42:14
  my colleagues and team of workers, who relaid the information
• 42:18
  of the General. It was a few hours later when
• 42:20
  he would arrive, coming down to the eleven sub level
• 42:22
  and into the lab.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Richard, good news I hear.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: He opened his arms wide and then came in to
• 42:27
  shake my hand. His grip was tied on my hand.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir, very very good news.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: A breakthrough, said excitedly, clasping the open hand and shaking it.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I've discovered the key to our heating problem. This is wonderful, son.
• 42:42
  Tell me how'd you do it? Sir? That's the funniest
• 42:46
  thing about it. It was a dream.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Actually caught a glance between the General and one of
• 42:50
  my colleagues, followed by a small nod. Then he turned
• 42:53
  his gaze back to me.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Walk with me, son.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: I did as I was told and fell into step
• 42:58
  beside the General. We approached the elevator, the doors open
• 43:02
  and we stepped inside. So the doors were shut. But
• 43:05
  the second time of my time here some men entering
• 43:08
  the lab to take things out.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Sir, what do you know about your father's? Son?
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Stared at him and stunned silence, before asking quietly, my father.
• 43:17
  The elevator lurched and its doors opened. We couldn't have
• 43:21
  gone farther than a floor or two.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, son, your father, I understand he was a stay
• 43:27
  at home father for most of your life. What do
• 43:29
  you know about before your life?
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: I raked my memory for stories about him before me
• 43:33
  being born, only to be slightly shocked. I knew absolutely nothing.
• 43:37
  I responded as much, and the General nodded.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: I suspect that they keep it quiet. It was their duty,
• 43:43
  after all.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: He stepped out into an enormous room with computer towers
• 43:47
  and monitors active, all of them stationed by men in
• 43:50
  radiation suits. Two of the men got up and brought
• 43:53
  us suits of our own. General indicated for me to
• 43:57
  suit up, and I did. Looked at one of the men's.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Make sure all that info from upstairs gets out to ibm'.
• 44:05
  They'll know what to do with it.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: Man nodded, got on the elevator and send it. Strode
• 44:08
  over to some consoles, which showed on its black screen
• 44:11
  and dots surrounded by interlocking rings, each ring itself containing
• 44:15
  multiple dots and adam, sir, the General chuckled, Well, kind of,
• 44:20
  but no.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: We walked to a.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Door on the far side of the room and entered
• 44:23
  a hallway which shot out for a few hundred feet
• 44:26
  before turning sharply to the right.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Your father worked here, I'm sure you noticed by the door.
• 44:31
  In the late thirties and early forties. He worked on
• 44:34
  a top secret project. You know it as the Manhattan Project.
• 44:39
  Down here, we just called it another part of Project Gabriel,
• 44:42
  as we will with your superconductors. Unofficially, officially, that information
• 44:48
  is on its way to IBM.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: I know it's saying like I was a part of
• 44:52
  a greater test, but that's just funny that it's like, yeah,
• 44:57
  to me, the Manhattan Project is just another project. That's
• 45:00
  what it's like in this sick and twisted mind of mine.
• 45:04
  Still remained silent until we neared the corner. But why,
• 45:08
  sir he stopped. Just before the corner, The General turned
• 45:12
  to look at me directly, sizing me up and down.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: So what you're about to see is highly classified. With
• 45:19
  your dream and this new information you brought us, I
• 45:22
  think it's finally time to let you in on this project.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: Turn the corner to yet another hallway, this time a
• 45:28
  single door lay on the right side of it. All
• 45:30
  the way at the end. There's no light coming from
• 45:33
  under end, and a feeling in my stomach like waves
• 45:36
  against the bow of a ship hit me hard. My
• 45:39
  legs felt like iron as I dragged them along after
• 45:41
  the General. The door at the very end of the
• 45:44
  hall had a key hat to its side, and the
• 45:46
  General stepped in between me and the path to enter
• 45:48
  a cone. With a green flash of light and a
• 45:52
  very loud thud noise, the door hissed its one open.
• 45:55
  Inside lights began to cut on one by one, revealing
• 45:59
  and even more enormous room than the first. In the middle.
• 46:03
  My eyes finally saw it. My jaw fell open and
• 46:06
  I sank to the ground. General just stood there, arms crossed.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Some This is Project Gabriel.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: The center of the rooms to spend a midair by
• 46:16
  some sort of electromagnetic energy field being propelled by several
• 46:20
  giant of citty in colored panl in the center of
• 46:22
  the room, suspind a midair by some sort of electromagnetic
• 46:26
  energy field being propelled by several giant city and colored pillars.
• 46:31
  So tarnished set of interlocking rings, upon each of which
• 46:34
  had dozens of bloodshot eyes. Oh it's an angel. They
• 46:38
  have an angel inside of inside of electromagnetic prison. At
• 46:45
  its center, a ball of hot energetic plasma was cracking
• 46:48
  and spitting electricity to contact the field around it and dissipate.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: My god, what is that thing?
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: The General put a hand on my shoulder and shook
• 47:00
  to me to stand up.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: According did it's the angel?
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Gabriel looked on in horror at this tortured bean. What
• 47:13
  General walked closer to the obelisk on the far right,
• 47:15
  which had wires coiled around in space leading to a console.
• 47:19
  General typed something in and then stood back as crackling
• 47:22
  beams of plasma shot from the obelisk and into the
• 47:24
  center of the angel let out the most unearthly wail
• 47:27
  of agony, a well that pierced my brain and caused
• 47:30
  it to rattle on my skull. I grabbed my head
• 47:33
  and fell once again to the ground.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Stop stop it.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: The General came to my side and helps me up
• 47:40
  to my feet.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Hmmm, sorry, I had to be sure. You see, Richard,
• 47:44
  you are special. Your fallow was special.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: Two.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: You can understand communicate with the angels. We don't should
• 47:53
  Why we don't know why only some people can, and
• 47:56
  why some people seem entirely removed from them. We suspect
• 48:00
  it has something to do with bloodlines dating back to
• 48:03
  the very oldest peoples. We know more only well, No
• 48:07
  matter the pain we inflict, Gabriel won't reveal all his secrets.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Swayed on my feet. The pain in my head dined
• 48:13
  down by remaining present.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: But why why do this?
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: The general looked at me with a straight and unfeeling
• 48:20
  face as he answered.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Because we were losing the war, Son, we were losing
• 48:24
  the war, and Germany was going to bring about the
• 48:27
  Book of Revelations, he told.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Us, pointed out the angel.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Now, he came to your father one night and told
• 48:34
  him of the impending end of the war, and that
• 48:37
  soon your father would be then, and that soon your
• 48:40
  father would impregnate your mother with the second coming of Christ,
• 48:43
  who would grow to lead the Christians in a movement
• 48:45
  called the Rapture, a mass exodus to the last livable
• 48:49
  place on the planet. There, God would come and give
• 48:53
  us the tools to start again to make a heaven
• 48:55
  on earth.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: The general just cracked out of his mind.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: You are Jesus, Are you serious? That's awesome?
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: What me?
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Wow, I'm Jesus.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Are you saying that? I'm Jesus Christ.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: Mean meanwhile, the Angel's like, ah.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, She's like, why don't think I took it if
• 49:24
  you had an angel there?
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: I love I like how.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: I like how the angel flew up one day, his
• 49:29
  big stupid fucking eyes floating around.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: He's like heard more seriously by the way, Hitler's gonna
• 49:34
  blow up the world.
• 49:34
  Speaker 6: And they're like in prison that thing, They're like, lock
• 49:40
  it away.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like it came down to visit him and they
• 49:44
  all jumped on him to hold it down, like quick, quick,
• 49:47
  put it in the time prison put it. And then
• 49:58
  immediately the general is like, yeah, your father impregnated your mother,
• 50:02
  brought about.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Father, totally filled your mom.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Up and got okay, no, no, no, yeah, you're you're
• 50:16
  the main character.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Now you don't have to No seriously.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: No, you don't need to. I get it. I understand
• 50:22
  how that works.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I how funny. How funny would it be? Like why
• 50:27
  do you think it was? Do you ever think it
• 50:28
  was weird that you were born with a beard?
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like he's just like that explains how
• 50:33
  I always walk on water or.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: You thought it was stranger you have holes in your
• 50:40
  hands and feet, and that you were born with a beard.
• 50:43
  Well they just said I was They just said it
• 50:44
  was a birth defect. No, your Jesus Christ.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the entire story. He's he's wore like the purple
• 50:54
  sash and like the white and he's.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Like wow, the white rub and everything, and he's just like,
• 50:59
  I can't if I got a job at.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: T O all right, and they've imprisoned the angel gay
• 51:12
  role apparently yep. Also the angel was like, hey, you
• 51:16
  guys should probably stop Hitler and then they caught him.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like that what I mean to say,
• 51:24
  like he came up and he's.
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: Like totally guy's girl like up the world or something like.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: He's like he's like giving him like a kind of
• 51:32
  a cool heads up and they're like that sounds good. Shot,
• 51:37
  Like what why why do this?
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: It's like, uh huh yeah, tell me war and behind
• 51:44
  that crazy they have a frying pan that they're.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: The uh uh yeah, what you know. It's just kind
• 51:58
  of weird. It's like, I mean, they're we're probably getting this,
• 52:00
  but it's like it's not even like they're trying to
• 52:02
  harness his power.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: The guy literally just flew in and he was like,
• 52:06
  mo no, circially, seriously, you should like waltch out because
• 52:10
  it's gonna be.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Crazy, because he's just like why why do this? Because
• 52:14
  we were losing the war, and it's just like, well,
• 52:16
  all he did was tell you that Hitler was going
• 52:18
  to blow up the FU.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: I assume what it's saying, because they're like Project Mandhattan
• 52:23
  was just a part of Project to Gabriel, I assume
• 52:26
  they used to energy that they gave the Americans the
• 52:30
  ability to create nuclear weapons. I think is what's being implied.
• 52:35
  The look on my face was pure incredulity. Despite the evidence,
• 52:40
  your father, the diligent soldier he was, came to me
• 52:45
  and reported what he had been told.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: We couldn't allow that. So we scoured ancient text and
• 52:51
  we found a way to the trap, and we found
• 52:53
  a way to trap Gabriel. They looked, they looked at
• 53:03
  they looked at some like old scrolls. They saw a
• 53:05
  giant butterfly net. Of course.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: The dad would have stood underneath. The dad stood underneath
• 53:21
  a giant cardboard box with a stick propping it up, Like.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I can't game gamebra can't hear you?
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: Keep him over here, closer.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: It's not just came here. I got you gotta.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Right next to the box. They have a giant spinning
• 53:44
  frying as soon as the box drop just sleep.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: So so we scoured ancient texts and we found a
• 54:03
  way to trap Gabriel.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: Your father called to him, and as you can see,
• 54:08
  he game glancing back. I could see you. Bloodshot eye
• 54:12
  was on me now, staring as if asking pleading for help.
• 54:16
  I looked back at the general.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Gabriel here gave us the secrets to crack in the
• 54:21
  anomal open. He gave us the power of God himself.
• 54:25
  He gave us the language of God.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: It was that he walked over to and gently patted
• 54:30
  the monitor by the obelisk.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Microchips processes the etchings on the boards sigils of the heavens,
• 54:39
  designed to move and control energy to manipulate God's power.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: I think I've talked about that on this show before.
• 54:46
  Right now, people like, we'll make that connection that microchips
• 54:49
  look like ancient sigils, like they are entrapping supernatural powers,
• 54:54
  and that's how they work. I think I've talked about
• 54:55
  that before. Cool concept definitely cool. There's also some of
• 54:58
  our stuff in here. Yeah, I'm picking up on just
• 55:00
  a lot of information happening at once. Like we believe
• 55:03
  that people that can speak to Gabriel dates back to
• 55:06
  ancient times, so that's likely in reference to the nephel
• 55:09
  M right, half human half angel hybrids. Those are something
• 55:14
  we saw on Mother Horse Eyes, another adaptation of that idea.
• 55:18
  And then there's stuff like will lead us. There's going
• 55:23
  to be a rapture, but we need a new Jesus
• 55:26
  to lead us. But then the quote unquote Christ figure
• 55:29
  that appears around the time of the rapture is actually
• 55:31
  the Antichrist, so perhaps it's a negative instead of a positive.
• 55:35
  But like I said, there's just a lot being divulged
• 55:38
  at once. In a flash, I recalled my dream during
• 55:40
  my time in the war dark room, my father's face
• 55:44
  pleading and apologizing.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: He he tried to stop you to free Gabriel.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: General looked at me with a raised brow.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: So we did tell you something. I dreamed it in
• 55:58
  Vietnam before my thought died. The General nodded, I see, yeah,
• 56:07
  your father became quite the others autistic. Sorry, I see
• 56:21
  I see yes, your father became quite the altruist at
• 56:25
  some point decided what we were doing here was an
• 56:28
  ethical disturbed. He tried to make a case saying, how
• 56:32
  we won the war, we diverted the rapture and stopped
• 56:35
  the end of our world A fool start. How could
• 56:39
  he know that maybe we only delayed it? And then
• 56:42
  if we and if even if we did avoid it,
• 56:44
  there was so much more Gabriel had to tell us,
• 56:46
  still has to.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Tell us the giant butterfly that people puffed out my
• 56:52
  chest to finally, now my father's son.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: No, this has to stop. General This is wrong. You
• 57:01
  know it, I know it. Do you know what evil
• 57:04
  you're bringing down on this world? What if? God, Son?
• 57:09
  God is dad? Abril himself told another dreamer we used
• 57:16
  to have under our thumb. She was so in tune
• 57:20
  that she could sit in this very room for hours
• 57:22
  alone with him and bring back so much information, Only
• 57:26
  none of it was particularly useful, so we got her loose.
• 57:32
  He says that, he says that you should always like,
• 57:35
  you should always like take meat out of the freezer
• 57:37
  and put it in the refrigerator if you want to
• 57:38
  talk to the frost properly, God damn it. Gabriel we
• 57:41
  already know that. He says that hot wheels are a
• 57:45
  lot better than matchbox cars. Okay, all right, we have
• 57:49
  got to find someone. We gotta find somebody.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: New, he says. Gabriel says, be sure to check your
• 57:55
  credit history before you apply, because if you do it
• 57:58
  at the application, there could be smonth sing things and yeah,
• 58:02
  trust the company.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: So Gabriel says, to always ask the car dealership for
• 58:06
  the carfax and the car before I actually buy it.
• 58:10
  And Gabriel said. Simon says, is Uh is a little
• 58:14
  better than Bopit, but he says he likes to play
• 58:17
  both like she's the because it's obviously a sister, right
• 58:22
  right right. That's so it's like it's like sisters sitting
• 58:25
  there in for like seventeen hours just having this. Yeah,
• 58:28
  Gabriel says that. Gabriel said that his favorite comedy of
• 58:30
  all times Kung Powell. Like they're like, what about is
• 58:37
  there anything cool with like Selving cancer? Let me ask no, no,
• 58:45
  nothing about that.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: But he does have Bopit. He does have it if
• 58:51
  we want to play that.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: But he does. He does have a pretty killer streak
• 58:54
  on Bopit.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: God damn you. I like the the idea that as
• 59:00
  soon as sharing got out, she's like, well, it's probably
• 59:01
  overdose now, it's probably all I got left going?
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Or was it? Or was it the existential crisis of
• 59:08
  being like, God's dead. I can't handle it, so I'm
• 59:11
  just gonna fucking get high.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But if you don't trust anything they're saying, and
• 59:14
  they don't have good info, then why would you trust
• 59:16
  the God is Dad thing?
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: I thought? Because she said Gabriel said that, that's what
• 59:22
  that's what he said. Is that not what Gabriel said?
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: Oh? Oh yeah, Gabriel's giving her good info. It's just
• 59:28
  not useful to them.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So he's like sitting there, He's like, no, seriously,
• 59:32
  Like the best way to do mac and cheese is
• 59:35
  to bake it in the oven and have like a
• 59:37
  little Christie layer on top. Also, God's dead. You also
• 59:39
  want to figure out that, Like when you're red in
• 59:42
  your lawn? Hey, why is that last part? When you
• 59:46
  received your lawn, you are, oh, yeah, God, he's been dead.
• 59:50
  He's dead.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: He's gone. Yeah, he's been gone a long.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Why do you think I'm down here? You know, I mean,
• 59:54
  what do you think I'm doing?
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: What?
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: What?
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: Why do you think I'm stuck inside of this box.
• 1:00:00
  Do you think that that would happen otherwise? Flashes in
• 1:00:05
  my mind and my baby sister sitting here in the
• 1:00:07
  dark with the angel before her. Sharon General simply stared
• 1:00:12
  back and then said.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: Correct, she threatened to tell on us, so we did.
• 1:00:22
  She threatened to tell on us. Is such a funny line. Correct,
• 1:00:26
  she threatened to tell on us, so we did what
• 1:00:30
  had to be done. Unlike your father, she had no family.
• 1:00:33
  We could threaten to keep her in line.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: I like the idea that, like a local beat cop
• 1:00:38
  could take down the government angel operation.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Hey, so my job at Esoterictronics, they have a giant
• 1:00:45
  angel down there to talk to me about bop it
• 1:00:47
  and receiving my lawn. Uh okay.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: I also like because they said that the way they
• 1:00:54
  started this program is his father, who was already working
• 1:00:57
  for the government, came to them and was like, hey,
• 1:01:00
  an angel told me we have to stop Hitler. And
• 1:01:02
  they they didn't just like fire him, they were like, really,
• 1:01:08
  imagine they think it's fake the whole time, and then
• 1:01:11
  they get him there and the angel actually shows up
• 1:01:13
  and they're.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: Like, oh, Mark, is there a way that this connection
• 1:01:16
  with Joseph Smith at all, because does this not read
• 1:01:19
  like Joseph Smith.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look you can get I take enough flack from
• 1:01:25
  the Mormons. All right, if you want to start a
• 1:01:26
  fight there you go right ahead.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying that Joseph Smith, he talked to the
• 1:01:31
  angels like that. I didn't I that was a legitimate question.
• 1:01:35
  Could we know? I was just wondering.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: I thought I thought Joseph Smith talked. Well, okay, yeah,
• 1:01:41
  sure you know, buddy, this is the Joseph Smith story.
• 1:01:44
  Just for you. Better be careful making jokes like that.
• 1:01:47
  Then okay, cut that, God that.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: From That's a historic moment, that's a historic mode. That's
• 1:02:01
  the first time you've ever at you've ever had a
• 1:02:03
  spastic cut that cut that.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: Or bleeve that or do something? Do not believe that?
• 1:02:10
  In the episode, the rush of heat to my head
• 1:02:13
  overwhelmed me, and I rushed the general in anger. I
• 1:02:16
  didn't think first, I could only act. Beside stepped and
• 1:02:19
  I rushed past him the field of electromagnetic energy, which
• 1:02:22
  reacted violently. Time seemed slow. As the rotating rings beyond
• 1:02:27
  me came to a near halt, A booming voice within
• 1:02:30
  my head echoed out Suddenly time returned to me and
• 1:02:39
  I was ejected outwards, back onto the floor. General shook
• 1:02:42
  his head.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: No, son, please, let's be pragmatic and reasonable, shall we.
• 1:02:48
  You do have a family. You wouldn't want anything to
• 1:02:51
  happen to your lovely wife and soon to be baby, now,
• 1:02:54
  would you?
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: I froze, How did he know about the baby? It's
• 1:02:59
  my house wired, they surveilling me. Stood to my feet,
• 1:03:03
  shaken to my very core.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: You sick, bastardly leave them alone. Then work with us, son,
• 1:03:10
  work with us. Think of all the discoveries to be made,
• 1:03:13
  the advancement for humanity.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: I rocked back and forth, Woozy looked again into Gabriel,
• 1:03:18
  whose eyes bore sadness and pain. I could scarcely imagine
• 1:03:23
  decades of torture, unnatural capture, decades more to come. No,
• 1:03:28
  I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't condemn this being to
• 1:03:31
  an eternity of torment. I couldn't. I stood tall with
• 1:03:34
  the false bravado.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I've never been a very religious man.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: General smiled warmly, and then I replied, but I won't
• 1:03:43
  let you do this, small faded turn it into a
• 1:03:46
  grimace of annoyance. I made a run for the consoles,
• 1:03:49
  this time aiming to smash it or grab the wiring. Suddenly,
• 1:03:52
  a gunshot rang out, going through the chamber. Warm blood
• 1:03:56
  red down my back and chest. Looked down to see
• 1:03:58
  a bullet hole directly through me. I clutched my chest
• 1:04:01
  to turn slowly, gurgling and coughing up blood, expecting to
• 1:04:05
  see the culprit of my death. The General stood, their
• 1:04:08
  arms folded behind his back, with a look of disappointment.
• 1:04:11
  I swiveled my head around, and there at the door
• 1:04:13
  was a laying pistol in hand, no tear in her eye.
• 1:04:17
  I filled to the floor, no air in my lungs
• 1:04:19
  to protest her inquire. I heard the sound of her
• 1:04:22
  footsteps as she walked up to the general side.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: Too bad, he didn't agree, Daddy.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: The General nodded, yes, well, we always have the backup,
• 1:04:35
  and he placed his hand on her stomach. Don't worry,
• 1:04:39
  I got pregnant by Jesus, so now I will have
• 1:04:42
  Jesus two or three Jesus backup Jesus. As I lay there,
• 1:04:49
  I listened to the raspy breath escape from my lungs.
• 1:04:52
  I was dying, no doubt about it. I really wasn't
• 1:04:55
  a very religious man, and I offered no prayer to
• 1:04:57
  God in my end. Despite this, as I lay there,
• 1:05:00
  life fading away, I could see the bride and warm
• 1:05:02
  light at the end of the tunnel black they stood,
• 1:05:05
  my father, smile on his face with the hand extended,
• 1:05:08
  my mother and sister at his side. It's why'd ever
• 1:05:10
  being a religious man? I was going home.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: And that's the end.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: That's the end. So I I like the concept. I
• 1:05:22
  don't really know isotopes come into it, I guess cuz
• 1:05:26
  I guess it's kind of drawing that Adams looked like
• 1:05:30
  biblically accurate angels, which is a cool concept. And it
• 1:05:32
  brings up the thing that I like about, like circuitry
• 1:05:35
  being sigils and stuff like that, or runes.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the microchip thing.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the microchip thing.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: I like all that.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: I like the stuff about an angel being imprisoned, and
• 1:05:49
  like I like the details about the family when it
• 1:05:51
  was kind of a mystery as to what they were
• 1:05:53
  writing about, what the burned hole in the ceiling means,
• 1:05:55
  how they're able to communicate with each other.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: All that was interesting.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: I felt like it got bogged down with a lot
• 1:06:00
  of the like general details. A lot of the exposition
• 1:06:03
  at the end, like the things about him being Jesus
• 1:06:05
  never came into play. Amazingly, the infant mortality never came
• 1:06:09
  into play either. That didn't ye pulled up like that
• 1:06:13
  just got brought up. A lot didn't go anywhere.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: The only thing I get, the one thing I can
• 1:06:16
  think is that do you think.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: That rapture never came up? Stuff like that?
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: So do you think that the infant the infantile mortality
• 1:06:24
  rate thing. Do you think that was at all linked
• 1:06:26
  into us supposed to be like uh, that they have
• 1:06:31
  tried to bring back like the Second Coming of Christ before,
• 1:06:34
  but they keep dying or something, you know, like.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: So they it sounded like he was trying to solve
• 1:06:39
  the cure to like sids like such.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: Wells, I mean I thought that it was something like
• 1:06:44
  that too. I'm just just you know, food for thought.
• 1:06:48
  I'm trying to see how it ties in, because there's
• 1:06:50
  a lot of themes that tie in. Do you have
• 1:06:53
  like the capturing the angel the problem? I think that
• 1:06:56
  like my biggest stipulation with it is that the general
• 1:06:59
  it's just when someone is so overtly evil and the
• 1:07:02
  motive just seems so just kind of silly. It's just
• 1:07:07
  it's like the sheriff in Broska. I wouldn't say it's
• 1:07:09
  as you know, bombastic and fucking crazy as that, but
• 1:07:13
  it is this thing where it's just like as this
• 1:07:15
  angel came down and wounded us about Hitler, so we
• 1:07:18
  captured him, and it's like, I get man is inherently evil,
• 1:07:21
  but I guess I just wish that there was more
• 1:07:23
  like the idea of like, well, he has so many
• 1:07:25
  secrets to tell us. I think that like that's I
• 1:07:29
  think that's fair. I just I don't know, I just
• 1:07:31
  I guess it just wasn't totally bought in on that,
• 1:07:33
  and that like kind of like crazy motive. And then
• 1:07:36
  then and then this idea of like well you know what,
• 1:07:40
  I'm I won't do it, I'm going to stop you whatever,
• 1:07:43
  and then you can just get shot. And that's just
• 1:07:46
  kind of the ending. I like. I I guess just
• 1:07:49
  like if you're introducing that thing, it'd be nice to
• 1:07:51
  have him just kind of play around with it more.
• 1:07:54
  It was just kind of very quick, I guess, you
• 1:07:55
  know what I mean.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: It's a lot to take in, very a lot of it,
• 1:07:59
  A lot of it, given more time, I think would
• 1:08:00
  do better. I think maybe instead of the general explaining
• 1:08:04
  a lot of those things at the end, they like,
• 1:08:07
  you know, since our main character is a scientist, he
• 1:08:09
  can kind of figure stuff out as he goes a bit.
• 1:08:11
  Vietnam didn't even really factor in to the story like
• 1:08:15
  I thought it would. Maybe maybe he had some experience
• 1:08:17
  or vision in Vietnam that related to combat or something
• 1:08:20
  that like I thought father's visions of World War two
• 1:08:24
  perhaps or something like that.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the only thing that I think was supposed to
• 1:08:29
  be there. The only thing that I think that Vietnam
• 1:08:31
  helps with is that it's just the parallels with his
• 1:08:33
  father of like I think his dad was like active
• 1:08:36
  during World War two or whatever. But then also I'm
• 1:08:39
  wondering if, like, oh, because he had this military job,
• 1:08:42
  if that's literally a justification to why he would get
• 1:08:45
  this government job. Yeah, you know, yeah, being like, well,
• 1:08:50
  I don't know, I just I got hired because like,
• 1:08:52
  maybe that's just.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: Because my mom's a politician, which didn't really come into
• 1:08:56
  except for mentioning maybe that because his dad was in
• 1:08:59
  the program, his mom was given political favor maybe. But
• 1:09:05
  I also don't think you need the ending where he's
• 1:09:06
  going to heaven and seeing everyone I go, also him
• 1:09:09
  being like I'm not a religious man. It's like, you
• 1:09:11
  have undeniable evidence of the supernatural and God you're looking
• 1:09:14
  at an angel, so maybe you become to that really
• 1:09:16
  quick at once.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of good elements. I think
• 1:09:23
  if you cut a lot of the fat and use
• 1:09:27
  that time to expand more on stuff the general reveals
• 1:09:30
  at the end, so it comes more natural and isn't
• 1:09:32
  dumped all at once, I think they would read more
• 1:09:34
  naturally because I like the concept of like humanity imprisoned
• 1:09:37
  an angel, which is actually a concept in an arg
• 1:09:41
  that's been floating around essay Ergy a YouTube series that's
• 1:09:45
  been floating around called Angel Engine that is about a
• 1:09:50
  group of scientists that imprison an angel and use it
• 1:09:54
  to try to make like a perpetual energy system and
• 1:09:58
  like it's about heaven. Like I haven't watched it, and
• 1:10:03
  I'm not that big of a fan of it because
• 1:10:06
  all the art for its ai, which I think is
• 1:10:08
  really lame and dumb, but the concept of it is interesting,
• 1:10:13
  the idea of humanity and prisoning an angel, and then
• 1:10:15
  like the supernatural War behind the scenes, which I saw.
• 1:10:20
  I was listening to one YouTuber talk about it, and
• 1:10:23
  he raised the point that maybe it's actually kind of
• 1:10:27
  smart in a medicense because the series is about like
• 1:10:32
  humanity imprisoning a power they can't understand to try to
• 1:10:36
  get things that they want, and it's using AI. So
• 1:10:39
  maybe it's like a statement about AI because it doesn't
• 1:10:42
  but it doesn't directly critique AI. And the whole thing's
• 1:10:45
  like made itself off of AI, so that may just
• 1:10:48
  be accidental like irony, you know.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: But anyway, I mean, I dot it. I doubt it
• 1:10:53
  has that many metal layers behind it. I think that
• 1:10:56
  this story though I like the like I agree. I
• 1:10:59
  like the idea of the you know, capturing a spiritual
• 1:11:04
  essence and that has like that's the thing that's been
• 1:11:07
  like progressing technology and all this other stuff forward for
• 1:11:10
  the past like one hundred years or decades or whatever,
• 1:11:12
  you know, and.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: The U.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: Or the decade it is only the forties or the eighties.
• 1:11:18
  But uh, I tell you, I like that Elaine is
• 1:11:23
  in on it. I think that I just I think
• 1:11:26
  to do something that makes it feel satisfying because her
• 1:11:29
  coming in it's just like there's a bunch of kind
• 1:11:32
  of cheesy things where you come in it's like, oh,
• 1:11:34
  my wife is here, and it's like sorry, daddy, I
• 1:11:36
  guess you know he's he's a fucking idiot, and he's like, yeah, okay,
• 1:11:41
  what do I we have all that? I think like
• 1:11:45
  it would have been interesting if he's like stressed, and
• 1:11:47
  if she would have made a really big emphasis on
• 1:11:49
  like reproduct, like being like we need to have a kid,
• 1:11:54
  like we need to have a kid, like putting a
• 1:11:56
  big emphasis on that, to where you could have developed
• 1:11:59
  some of that kind of like weird uh, just kind
• 1:12:04
  of like some of the things in the background to
• 1:12:05
  where if you reread it or you're like, oh fuck,
• 1:12:07
  that's why she was being so pushy with this or whatever.
• 1:12:10
  I think there's a lot of ways that you can
• 1:12:11
  get that going. Also, I think you could have had
• 1:12:13
  Gabriel trying to talk to you or something. You work
• 1:12:16
  at this job and you're getting all these signs and
• 1:12:18
  these different things. I'm still wondering where like the orange
• 1:12:22
  sent came in. Remember they kept putting like an emphasis
• 1:12:24
  on the.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: Orange and pine. Yeah, the orange and pine. Maybe you
• 1:12:29
  could connect that back to some memory he has or
• 1:12:31
  some visual because again, the mystery phase was the best
• 1:12:34
  part of it, and which.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: Is you know, that's that's the best phase of any
• 1:12:40
  of any story, is the discovery or you know, the
• 1:12:42
  adventure of everything of like basically just all these clues
• 1:12:46
  being left around for you and stuff. It just felt
• 1:12:50
  like a bunch of pieces that just a lot of
• 1:12:53
  loose ends that just didn't really feel like they came
• 1:12:55
  together once again, though, I think that that's it's pretty fun. Also,
• 1:12:58
  I mean, did you like the fact that it was
• 1:13:00
  an actual angel? You know what I mean?
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: Like, couldn't could it have been something where it's like
• 1:13:08
  what they thought was if the story was about that,
• 1:13:12
  then that'd be fine. I think, like Angel Engine, if
• 1:13:14
  it was about humanity imprisoning an angel, but where it's
• 1:13:17
  kind of like set dressing amidst everything, it's like, well,
• 1:13:22
  how did they imprison it? Like what does that mean
• 1:13:24
  to imprison an eternal being like infinite power? You know,
• 1:13:28
  like did they use angel capabilities to imprison it? Probably not,
• 1:13:32
  because it had to talk to them first.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: So it's like it's something.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe if there's something to be something that isn't an
• 1:13:42
  angel or like a fallen angel if it was if
• 1:13:44
  it said it was Gabriel, but it turned out to
• 1:13:46
  be like, uh, who's Abadon the Demon of the pit
• 1:13:51
  or whatever, another a powerful demon or something that could
• 1:13:54
  be interesting, and it used the angel powers to imprison it,
• 1:13:57
  but humanity thought they had an angel. That could be cool.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if humanity thought they had an angel. And like also,
• 1:14:03
  it wasn't trapped, but it was just there on its
• 1:14:05
  own will and it was feeding stuff to where then
• 1:14:09
  you could be like, is this like is this good?
• 1:14:12
  You know what I mean? Like is this a thing
• 1:14:13
  that we is that you like? This idea of trapping
• 1:14:16
  something just feels kind of I don't know, it just
• 1:14:19
  isn't it's not hit me hit me super well or
• 1:14:23
  even like how An I don't know if you've ever
• 1:14:24
  seen Evan Galien, but uh, the way that they did,
• 1:14:27
  the way that they show or the way that they
• 1:14:29
  like uh basically show angel sometimes is just in human
• 1:14:32
  form in this one character. It'd be kind of cool
• 1:14:35
  if it was just one character or it was just
• 1:14:38
  like one humanoid person that was like a cell or
• 1:14:41
  something that's like trapped somehow, just to just the back
• 1:14:46
  and forth. It's just the the the biblically accurate. Angels
• 1:14:48
  things aren't just they're huge. It's just such a loud thing.
• 1:14:53
  I don't know. I mean, I'm rambling by this point
• 1:14:55
  at the end of the day. It's an interesting idea,
• 1:14:57
  but it just it was a little all over the
• 1:15:00
  place for me. I like the ideas.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: I think there was good writing bits in there. I
• 1:15:07
  think that maybe just workshops some of the way the
• 1:15:11
  details come out of stuff. Because I liked it, I
• 1:15:13
  enjoyed it. I thought it was a good read. Maybe
• 1:15:15
  think of I would want to see more done with it.
• 1:15:17
  I'd like to see more from this author.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: So it makes me think of Jacob's Ladder meets Angels
• 1:15:23
  in the Outfield. So what makes me think of actually
• 1:15:25
  reminds me of Jacob's.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: I thought that was going to lean more into that
• 1:15:29
  side of you know, like he's back in Vietnam, yeah,
• 1:15:33
  or just like this whole idea of like just you know,
• 1:15:35
  such a huge thing of faith in the afterlife and
• 1:15:37
  all that kind of stuff. But it really plays into
• 1:15:41
  his death in the war and stuff like that. Oh
• 1:15:45
  in although fun story, also cool to see it come
• 1:15:47
  from our community. It's tough, a lot of fun.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you guys so much for watching this week's episode.
• 1:15:52
  Thank you to all the audio platform listeners on Spotify
• 1:15:55
  and Apple Podcasts. We appreciate it. And thank you to
• 1:15:57
  our very supportive and very toful patron supporters as well.
• 1:16:02
  It really does help us out. If you're interested in writing,
• 1:16:05
  and you're interested in just being fucking creative and like
• 1:16:07
  a storytelling aspect and you want somewhere to show it,
• 1:16:09
  put it on our subreddit. It's awesome. Not everything needs
• 1:16:13
  to be gold, you know. It's just fun seeing where
• 1:16:15
  people's minds are coming from and seeing how people are
• 1:16:18
  getting inspired by each other here and I think that
• 1:16:20
  we have. We've read a lot of really great shit,
• 1:16:22
  So please be creative and start writing. We will see
• 1:16:25
  you next week. Boe bye.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: And if the Angel Gabriel ever tells you to hurl
• 1:16:31
  babies into a wall with a slingshot, you know I'm
• 1:16:34
  not your dad, so do what you want.