Latest / INSPIRE STORY / If You_re Armed At the Glenmont Metro_ Please Shoot Me

Transcript

If You_re Armed At the Glenmont Metro_ Please Shoot Me · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Isaiah, you got it. You're doing the intro today. You're
• 0:14
  doing that. You're doing the welcome back.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I have there's no will left after what we've been
• 0:21
  through this morning, which mind you, it's now been an hour.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Over a little over an hour.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Welcome back to creep Cast. There did I do it?
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Right? It up?
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: Today? We are going to be reading a story called
• 0:37
  if You're Armed and at the Glenmont Metro please shoot me.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Indicative of how I feel today for these recordings?
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: Do you want to tell the audience what?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I have no will?
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: You're going to have to spill the beans and I
• 0:51
  just need to emotionally chime in when I can.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: So we we went.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: We We've been to five different stories. We record two
• 1:00
  of them. We started to record dialogue for two of them.
• 1:02
  We started to record the first one, which is one
• 1:05
  you guys have recommended. We read forever and Hunter hated it.
• 1:11
  He I have the recording that may eventually see the
• 1:14
  light of day. He immediately began to crash out. He
• 1:17
  got so upset, and he's like, we have to change stories.
• 1:20
  We have to go something else. So we find another
• 1:22
  story he likes and we start reading it. But then
• 1:25
  the author of the story has posted like in giant
• 1:28
  letters across their reddit, like I will take you down
• 1:31
  if you read this story, or like if you read
• 1:35
  the story without first getting permissioned. So we had to
• 1:37
  ask for permission and now we're waiting to hear back
• 1:40
  on that. And then we looked at all these other
• 1:42
  stories and they all had like individual problems. It's been
• 1:44
  over an hour.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: I've said this story twice now, or three or four,
• 1:53
  an infinite amount of times. Yeah. Yeah, we are in
• 1:56
  the end of the year of doing the show. We
• 1:59
  have some obligations we have to do as well, and
• 2:02
  also just want to make sure that you guys feel
• 2:04
  like you got enough content for the month as well.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: But I leave the country this week.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Going to be gone on vacation doing going to Japan,
• 2:14
  and my soul is there already. I'm like, it's kind
• 2:19
  of like whenever you know something's coming.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Up, you're kind of just checked out. That's how it feels.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Now, here's the thing about this story we read earlier,
• 2:25
  and I don't want to say the name because I
• 2:27
  don't want to.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I don't want to crash out again. I don't want
• 2:31
  to freak out. But we could revisit it in the future,
• 2:34
  maybe i'll you know, better mindset or whatever, but it
• 2:36
  has been you know, we are.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I am here to make sure that we deliver a
• 2:41
  nice show, but my god is at pulling teeth. So
• 2:44
  I'm here to be a good little boy during this
• 2:46
  recording no matter what, to make sure that this gets
• 2:48
  fucking done and that we can end this year on
• 2:52
  a nice upbeat note. And I will say that if
• 2:54
  you're armed at the Glenmont Metro, please shoot me. It's
• 2:57
  a great title, and I think I think I'm pretty
• 2:59
  sure we're going to do something similar he did for
• 3:02
  The Whistler, which is because this is a short story.
• 3:04
  This is pretty short, so I think we're going to
• 3:06
  try to read a couple by this author.
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: And either a couple from this guy. But it also
• 3:11
  seems like there is if we like this. There are
• 3:14
  two following like addendum parts to this story, so we
• 3:18
  could just read those two.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we could just pick and choose how we
• 3:22
  go about this.
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: So the story is written by Reddit user sarcassanomicon sarcasticon,
• 3:32
  I believe it's how it said. His name is Peter
• 3:34
  Frost David and he has an interesting website called a
• 3:38
  New Kind of Monster, and across the entire website it's
• 3:43
  like him theorized like the best monsters that could be
• 3:46
  great for stories. He has like a store. He has
• 3:50
  different stories based on abominations, different realities and stuff like that.
• 3:55
  And it also seems that he has a series of
• 4:00
  books that you can get on Amazon. He has one
• 4:03
  called Second Death, Do Not Speak the Names of the Dead,
• 4:06
  which I think is part of a greater collection of
• 4:10
  what we're talking about today, like this story. And then
• 4:12
  he has two others called Kubai Nis and another one
• 4:16
  called Oonscaped, and both of those like ones called Oonscaped
• 4:21
  a medieval cybersecurity incident. So a bunch of interesting titles
• 4:25
  and stuff. Seems like a cool author, So check his workout. Yeah,
• 4:29
  Peter David Cross, it goes pretty hard.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: This is probably the last episode of the year for Creepcast.
• 4:36
  We might do a little just another little piece of
• 4:40
  content that we've been wanting to try for a bit
• 4:43
  as well for this month. But if you guys can
• 4:46
  to support the channel. Since I've been a good little
• 4:49
  boy this year, go to I've even said that line
• 4:53
  four times now. Listen to this on Spotify listen to
• 4:58
  us on Spotify or Apple podcasts and give a rating there.
• 5:01
  It sincerely does help us. And when we do climb
• 5:03
  the podcast charts and stuff, it does help.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know, just food for thought.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: You know, if you want to give us any little
• 5:09
  cute Christmas gifts, this here maybe just what listen to
• 5:12
  this episode so you don't have to see my face
• 5:15
  get beat red with rage. You know what, I'm so mad.
• 5:19
  I'm so happy with my outfit for audio listeners out there.
• 5:22
  I have orange sunglasses on, look like porno sunglasses, my
• 5:25
  porno mustache.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I have a nice beautiful hooter shirt on.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I was like, I woke up this morning a little tired,
• 5:30
  but I was like I'm ready to get it, like
• 5:32
  today's gonna be a good day.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: And immediately, immediately.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: Because he was so happy about his outfit in the
• 5:40
  first recording, like he was like, I've got my fit on,
• 5:43
  I'm looking cool and stuff. Like he was so upbeat.
• 5:46
  And now it's just like a child telling you he
• 5:48
  got like expelled from school today, not even expelled from school.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: It's like I feel like the fat, ugly kid who
• 5:55
  doesn't get invited to his friend's birthday party. And everyone
• 5:57
  else is talking about the bird, the party around me,
• 6:00
  and I feel like a fucking nanderthal.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: That's what it feels like.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: That's how I feel right now, sitting here, and this
• 6:06
  story Isaiah needs to reel me in, So I say,
• 6:11
  let's do it. Let's see if we can't turn the
• 6:14
  tides on today and get this recording going.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: All right, So let's go.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: We'd like to take a minute to think. Today's sponsor
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• 7:24
  Speaker 3: That is right for free at rocket.
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• 7:27
  this incredible offer today. Thank you so much to rocket
• 7:30
  money for sponsoring the show. It means the most. And
• 7:32
  now a word from Hunter. If you're armed and at
• 7:35
  the Glenmont Metro, please shoot me. Make it a headshot.
• 7:41
  Shoot me in the temple, I mean slightly downwards. I
• 7:44
  need the bullet to travel the shortest possible distance from
• 7:47
  my brain before it hits my hippocampus. If I'm lucky,
• 7:51
  the sensation of the gunshot ripping through my skull will
• 7:54
  only last a few decades.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: This sounds like you right now already.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: That's what the perpetual hell man already is that sitting
• 8:02
  down to open up Reddit slash r slash no sleep
• 8:05
  feels like a thousand years, is what it feels like.
• 8:07
  So good on you. I do want to say, that's
• 8:10
  a sick way to end. It will only last a
• 8:12
  few decades's kind of fucked, right.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look at that. Look how quick this one hooked you.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Well, see, you know what. I'm trying to be a positive,
• 8:18
  little bear.
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: All right, I'm proud of you, little bear. As awful
• 8:23
  as this sounds, you'll be doing me an enormous favor.
• 8:26
  Death by a headshot as soon as possible is vastly
• 8:30
  better than the alternative. My ordeal started over ten thousand
• 8:34
  years ago at ten fifteen this morning.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's pretty cool. That goes kind of hard, right.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Was he a caveman?
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: I hear no, he's saying ten thousand years ago at
• 8:45
  ten fifteen this morning, as in ten fifteen this morning
• 8:48
  was ten thousand years ago.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Oh I see?
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: Okay, I earn extra money by participating in drug trials.
• 8:53
  I'm a so called healthy subject who takes experimental drugs
• 8:56
  to help assess side effects. Once it was a kidney drug.
• 9:00
  A few times it's been something for blood pressure, cholesterol.
• 9:03
  This morning they told me the drug I took was
• 9:05
  a psychoactive substance intended to accelerate brain function.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's kind of fun.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Like drug Not to get too sidetracked, but like drug testing,
• 9:15
  like pharmaceutical drug testing. I would never do it. I
• 9:18
  don't care how much of in a pinch I am.
• 9:22
  I would be too afraid. There's too much crazy shit
• 9:25
  that they make too you know what I mean.
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: I mean, logistically, yes, but some people, I yes, some
• 9:31
  people need the money. But even then, some people don't
• 9:33
  know like the level of like how much drugs can
• 9:36
  mess you up? Right, Well, yeah, I'm bad for a
• 9:39
  little bit and that's it.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, I will just assume that everything's I
• 9:44
  don't know, there's nothing, whether it's like, well it's just
• 9:47
  you know, this is just a vitamin or what. I
• 9:50
  would wouldn't trust it with any like any fiber of
• 9:53
  my being.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Also, here's another thing. I would gladly shoot somebody in
• 9:59
  the head if they were saying, yes, please.
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: Knew you were gonna I knew you were gonna go,
• 10:03
  would you not in a second if someone asked me
• 10:08
  to shoot them in the head.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if somebody was just like, hey, by the way,
• 10:11
  meet me at the mall tomorrow. You know, let's here,
• 10:13
  let's let's set it up. Let's meet me at the
• 10:16
  mall tomorrow. I'm gonna I want you to just go there.
• 10:19
  Everyone else knows you're not going to get arrested. That's
• 10:21
  just the most convenient place for me to be. I
• 10:23
  want you to put it in the back of my temple,
• 10:25
  point it down slightly, and shoot it into my brain.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: And the guys you'd be doing doing me a big favor. Thanks, buddy.
• 10:31
  You want to get arrested, he clean conscious? Would you
• 10:35
  do it?
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: I I don't think that makes it legal.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: I think you're still wanted for murder.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: If and then let's just say, in this world it.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: Is no, I would not kill someone because they wanted
• 10:52
  me to, all right, you would have.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: It would have to be like a mercy kill.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: It'd have to be like I would do that if
• 10:58
  they I don't know, we were in like apocalyptic scenario
• 11:03
  and someone's like ripped in half, like they're not gonna
• 11:05
  make it.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: You know, I was if I was on my farm
• 11:08
  and I was underneath a tractor, would you would you no?
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Would you kill?
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: No? No? Absolutely?
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: What do you mean if we if you were on
• 11:17
  your farm, you're underneath the tractor. I'm calling an ambulance.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: There's no tie, Isaiah. No, No, it's not good. That's
• 11:25
  not how that works. It is twenty twenty four.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: We have there's hospitals, you can go to it. I think, fine,
• 11:35
  it's funny in my head because like your legs ran over,
• 11:37
  like the rest of you's fine.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: No, in my mind, it's the giant tires on my sternum.
• 11:43
  It's like almost impossible for me to be talking about.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't end it.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Please for me, for me, okay, for me to shoot you.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: In that scenario, it's got to be like your rib
• 11:57
  cage down is gone.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Let's say I it's not gone, but it's like you
• 12:03
  can kind of see my gutty works.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: We can we can fix that.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think you can't.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: People get like people get, there's a name for it.
• 12:12
  I forget.
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: But you can get amputated from the hips down, like
• 12:18
  you can lose your pelvis and still be Okay.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't want that life, dude. If I have my.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Cock, I would say, idea, I don't have my cock anymore,
• 12:28
  or my balls or my asshole, shoot killed me?
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Like wow? I'd be like, wow, kill me. You know what,
• 12:32
  I'm not gonna lie.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: If I got to live with no fucking cock, balls
• 12:36
  or asshole, I would kill you. That's what I would do.
• 12:38
  I would say, he's kidding me. I would kill you
• 12:41
  my knife. Here's a crazy idea. What if you killed yourself?
• 12:46
  Because I have to be the one to do it,
• 12:49
  because I here's the thing. I don't have to to
• 12:53
  forcibly do it to yourself. I don't think I have
• 12:55
  the gumption. I would need someone to assist me. Could
• 12:59
  I kill someone else at a pure rage? Probably? But
• 13:01
  I don't think I could ever. I don't think I
• 13:03
  could pull the knife or gun on myself. So you're
• 13:06
  saying you'd have no problem killing me. I think if
• 13:09
  you left me in a state where my cock and
• 13:13
  balls and asshole are squashed like a bug, what.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: Do you need the asshole? Why is that?
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry?
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: You?
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Do you not like a do you not like a
• 13:23
  nice morning?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Shit?
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: That you can still? Okay? I'm saying that, like, Okay,
• 13:28
  I get.
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: I'm not gonna leak into a bag, and you can
• 13:32
  tell you because you're young and that's fun and that's
• 13:35
  like what drives a lot of your thoughts. It'd be
• 13:37
  frustrated to live without it. I'm saying, like, why does
• 13:40
  a colostomy bag decide the difference between life or death?
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: To you?
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't say it was just a cost me bag,
• 13:46
  And I'm saying it's a collection. If I'm under attractor, right,
• 13:52
  if I'm under a tractor and I'm like, oh, I like,
• 13:56
  lift up my neck a little bit and I see
• 13:58
  that my cock, my balls, and my asshole are squashed
• 14:00
  like a bug, that would drive me to a place
• 14:02
  where I'm like, you need to put me down, okay,
• 14:05
  like like a sixteen year old lab. I mean like
• 14:08
  there's no reason.
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: Okay, okay in your okay? For one, how do I
• 14:12
  explain that to the cops? Right, I would write, Oh
• 14:15
  I thought he would I thought he was dead.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I would write a note.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: That does not how that works. And I think you
• 14:21
  shot yourself and wrote a note. That'd be fine if
• 14:24
  I shoot you and then you write if you write
• 14:26
  a note and then I shoot you.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: That's not going to hold up in court.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I think, okay, well then what about this. What if
• 14:32
  you take out your phone and I say I hunt
• 14:35
  your hancock.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: That is definitely not going to hold up in court.
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: That looks like an isis beheading video If I like
• 14:41
  pull out a phone and make you record on camera
• 14:44
  and then shoot you in your on your land under
• 14:47
  your tractor, absolutely not.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: What if I sat there and I started the video
• 14:50
  by saying are you are you recording?
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Good, okay?
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: What if why do I why do I need to
• 14:58
  be the one just you can die yourself. Look, if
• 15:01
  you get injured too, you are probably going to die.
• 15:06
  You are going to you are going to.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Let I think I think I am going to die.
• 15:10
  By the thing I'm saying is I might please end
• 15:12
  my suffering. Please I can't so what what I'm saying.
• 15:19
  What I'm saying to you is like I know I'm
• 15:20
  gonna die, So for you to call somebody would do
• 15:24
  nothing like I'm going to die. Please end this for me.
• 15:26
  That's what I mean. This is a scenario where there's
• 15:29
  no chance of survival. And even if there was, and
• 15:32
  I was a person with Okay, your balls are I
• 15:35
  would stay sticked.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: Okay, look, okay, let's let's change this. Let's say this
• 15:38
  is in a no like like an infrastructure breakdown, right,
• 15:42
  Like I can't call an ambulance, right sure, because that
• 15:46
  that would be the decision maker. Because if if, if
• 15:49
  there is a micro percentage of a chance you could live,
• 15:51
  I would not kill you.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Right even if I was like Isaiah, I have no
• 15:56
  point to live.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I will resent you for the rest of my life.
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: No, just because just because of friend once uh is
• 16:02
  like once to die doesn't mean I grant them that.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Because would what I would do you?
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: No?
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: No, no, look at this. What if like this is
• 16:10
  a couple of years from now. Okay, what if what
• 16:12
  if you? What if you had a child right during
• 16:15
  this scenario and then, like you, you abandoned the child. Like, no,
• 16:18
  I'm not letting you do that just because you want
• 16:20
  to go in the second a.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Bet of the child with no cock balls or asshole.
• 16:25
  What kind of father figure could I be? I can't
• 16:28
  father figure a teacher?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: No, No, no, I don't think so.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: I would Your son is going to appreciate that I didn't.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I would think that you He doesn't even have to
• 16:40
  know would this could be your secret.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: He doesn't have to know that Dad has a bullet
• 16:46
  in his forehead. Okay, look, listen back to what I'm saying.
• 16:49
  I can't patch you up if you're if you're ripped
• 16:52
  up from like you know, ripped cage down, and I
• 16:55
  doubt we would have the resources to do that if
• 16:57
  there was no ambulance of police. So if this was
• 16:59
  like an apocalyptic scenario and you were ripped in half,
• 17:02
  I would shoot you.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Is that what you want?
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: That's a good enough for me?
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna if I can call the police,
• 17:10
  I'm not doing it.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, first off, if it's an apocalyptic scenario, there
• 17:16
  probably is no police.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I'm saying that.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: If they, if.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: I think that under the right circumstances and under the
• 17:25
  right pressure, I think.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I could get you to do it. That's what I'm gonna.
• 17:28
  That's what That's that. That's where I'll end it. I
• 17:29
  don't think I don't think it'd be easy. I don't
• 17:31
  think that.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: I think, like I said, if I had no means
• 17:35
  of getting you to a hospital or like an ambulance
• 17:39
  or something like that then I would do it.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, I would sit there and I'd just be looking
• 17:43
  at you like this.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I'd put my hands up and I beg should do
• 17:49
  it like that. I think I could get you.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: I would cut there, I would sit there. I would
• 17:58
  sit there and I would cry.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: With you and with you, with you, and then I
• 18:03
  would choose.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Stop stop saying that just killed the Isaiah. You're trying
• 18:08
  to talk and stuff. I'm like, stuff, Just put a
• 18:11
  bullet my head. Put a bullet my head. I'd say,
• 18:14
  like that, please it hurts or it hurts, oh God.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: And then for you to have the gumption to even
• 18:23
  like visit me in the hospital after it, I'd be
• 18:25
  like you don't you never look at me again?
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Did say?
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: The only way they get you buy me if you
• 18:34
  buy me robot legs, and then somehow I'm able to
• 18:37
  get my cop balls and asshole back.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: Okay, you're not getting those three days back, but they
• 18:45
  you can get prosthetics. That's what I'm saying.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: You can still exist, you can still make our people
• 18:52
  can people are braver and stronger than I am.
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: Not me.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I'm saying that I know myself enough to know that
• 18:58
  there's no way.
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: You hunter, you have a great life without your genital.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Now if I can't. It's not even like even polysexual.
• 19:10
  It's like some of it, well, it don't know it
• 19:13
  is partly, but I just mean that some of it
• 19:14
  is more so like a nice piss you're I mean like, if.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: There are there are greater things to life than that.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I mean there is. I'm just saying that that's a
• 19:25
  that's a large It'd be the same thing if I
• 19:27
  was blind. I don't think I could. I don't think
• 19:28
  I could live as a blind man. I'll be honest,
• 19:30
  I do not think I could do it. People that
• 19:33
  do that, i'd like, you could survive any amount of torture.
• 19:36
  I feel like are being deaf even.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I do not. I do not bode well with adversity.
• 19:46
  This is what I'm saying.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: I can see that clearly. Okay, Look, I'm not shooting you.
• 19:53
  I take it back. Even in the apocalypse is what
• 19:55
  you can bleed. Okay, that's my new take. Yeah, I will.
• 20:01
  I will pray with you, I will mourn with you.
• 20:03
  I will watch over I will watch over Alison and
• 20:06
  any family you have, I will take care.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I will make sure they are taken care of. But
• 20:10
  I will not kill you.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: I think that's I think that's extremely selfish, Isaiah. I
• 20:15
  think that I would say if I was sitting there
• 20:17
  and I was like, oh, you're you're praying around me,
• 20:20
  and I was like, it hurts kill me.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: Okay, let's flip the script. What happened If I'm under
• 20:30
  the tractor.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Go ahead and ask me, like, how however you would
• 20:36
  ask me to do hunter?
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: If you and I were out at my house and
• 20:40
  I had a tractor, piece of equipment, whatever followed me,
• 20:43
  I was like, flattened from the boom.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: I would have I would have done it already.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: See what if I'm like, no, I think I can
• 20:56
  I think I can live.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: I think they can.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Well the gut that you'd be dead.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So I would just be like, he asked me to
• 21:03
  do it.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: I think I think I can make it, I think.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: And then people would people would come up and they'd
• 21:12
  be like, well, how do we know. I'd be like, well,
• 21:13
  what do I do? Drive a tract on top of
• 21:15
  him after I fucking shot him in the head, and
• 21:17
  I'm like, no, he's my buddy, He's in pain. I
• 21:19
  put him down. There's no wife to live. Look at
• 21:22
  his asshole. Like then then the camera would like people
• 21:25
  look over, and then people would look over, they'd see
• 21:27
  your asshole pro lapsed out, squashed like a bug.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, what kind of life is that he
• 21:32
  doesn't want to live like that?
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: And that's then, and you know how You're like, I
• 21:37
  would make.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Sure your family's taken care of. Then they sit there
• 21:39
  and I would hoard all of I would not give
• 21:41
  Kayla any rights to anything. Oh, and I'd be like,
• 21:45
  I'd be like, listen, I had business with your husband,
• 21:48
  but not particularly you, but I would and I would
• 21:51
  keep the gun, and I would keep the bullet casing
• 21:53
  that I killed you with, and I would I would
• 21:55
  do like a broke Back Mountain thing, and then it
• 21:57
  broke Back Mountain when he like has the shirt of
• 21:59
  the guy that he loved, I'd look at it and
• 22:01
  I would.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: Like, you know, like that, so you would so you
• 22:06
  would kill me and leave Caleb to rot.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: You would leave my family to just fin for themselves.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's a traumatic thing. You know, I'm not
• 22:14
  thinking clearly?
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, clearly, So okay, let me put it this way hunter.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I can still do this podcast.
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I lose my my waist down right. So if
• 22:29
  you shoot me underneath that tractor, your paycheck here is gone.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I would not continue, And I want to put this
• 22:36
  on record now, I would not continue the show if
• 22:38
  you were gone.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: So in that case, would you think twice before shooting me?
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: No? I mean I'd figure it. Oh, I'm thinking selflessly, Isaiah.
• 22:48
  You know, I'm not thinking about the business. I'm thinking
• 22:50
  about my friends.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Suffering because you're such a good friend.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, well I like to think.
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: So, Okay, I'm gonna can I read a story I forgot?
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, good to know.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: See. I think people are going to want to know that.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's going to help. But emotionally tie in
• 23:05
  with whatever happens in the story. That's what I gotta say.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: None of the drugs I had tested so far have
• 23:10
  ever done anything for me in the recreational sense. In
• 23:14
  other words, none of the drugs I've tested have given
• 23:16
  me a killer buzz or mellowed me out or anything.
• 23:19
  Maybe I've always ended up the placebo group, but nothing
• 23:22
  I've tested had affected me at all.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Today's drug was different. This shit worked.
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: They gave me a pill at ten point fifteen and
• 23:30
  told me to hang out in the waiting room until
• 23:32
  they called me back for some test.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Only about thirty minutes, the research assistant told me.
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: I flopped onto the waiting room couch and read a
• 23:39
  few articles from a copy of Psychology Today that was
• 23:42
  sitting on the coffee table.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Then it called me back when I finished.
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: The Psychology Today, so I picked up a US News
• 23:48
  and read it cover to cover. Then I read an
• 23:51
  old Scientific American. What was taking them so damn long?
• 23:56
  I still actually turned my head to look at the
• 23:58
  wall clock. It was only ten thirty. It was only
• 24:02
  ten twenty three am. I had read all three magazines
• 24:06
  in eight minutes. I remember thinking this was going to
• 24:09
  be a long day, and I was right. The waiting
• 24:13
  room had little bookshelf with some used hardcovers on it.
• 24:17
  When I stood up to walk to the bookshelf, it
• 24:19
  felt like my legs barely worked.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: It's not that they were weak, they were just slow.
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: Took a full minute just to stand up off the
• 24:27
  couch and another minute to take two steps to the bookcase.
• 24:32
  I scanned the old books on the shelf and picked
• 24:34
  out a copy of Moby Dick. Bar Arms had the
• 24:37
  same problems as my legs. Just reaching one foot in
• 24:40
  front of me to grab the book took a long time.
• 24:43
  Actually got bored just waiting for my hand to reach
• 24:46
  the spine of the book. I slogged back to the
• 24:49
  couch and collapsed onto it in a slow motion fall
• 24:51
  that reminded me of the low gravity hops of astronauts
• 24:55
  on the Moon. I opened to Moby Dick slowly and
• 24:58
  began reading. I started with call Me a Schmell and
• 25:02
  got as far as Ahab throwing his pipe into the sea,
• 25:05
  which was all the way to the freaking chapter thirty
• 25:08
  before they called me back. How are you feeling, the
• 25:12
  research assistant asked me.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: I feel slow. Actually it's the other way around. Everything
• 25:20
  seems slow because you're fast. But my legs, my arms,
• 25:24
  they're moving in slow motion. Your body seems like it's
• 25:29
  moving slowly because your brain is fast. Your brain is
• 25:32
  running ten or twenty times faster than normal. You were
• 25:34
  thinking and perceiving reality as at an accelerated pace, but
• 25:39
  your body is still constrained by the laws of biomechanics. Frankly,
• 25:43
  you're moving much faster than I know a person, but
• 25:47
  your brain. But your brain is running so much faster, right,
• 25:51
  now that even your fast walk seems very slow to you.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: I just freaked me out. Let me be fucked. Can
• 25:59
  you imagine that?
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: Especially because it's a drug. So you're like, well, I
• 26:02
  guess I have to live with this.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Now, yeah, I have, you know, I this is my
• 26:06
  this is my reality for a bit. Even the idea
• 26:09
  though of like that much time passing. It's weird. It's
• 26:12
  kind of like a uh, it seems like a Monkey
• 26:15
  Paul kind of operation, doesn't it, Like a you know,
• 26:19
  I wish time, like I wish I had more time,
• 26:22
  and then that wish.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: I had four hours in the day, and it's like, yeah, well,
• 26:26
  yeah exactly. I thought about my slow motion flop onto
• 26:29
  the waiting room couch. Even if my muscles had slowed down,
• 26:33
  my body would still react to gravity the same way.
• 26:36
  But in the waiting room I even fell in slow motion.
• 26:39
  Slow muscles couldn't explain why gravity seemed weaker. My brain
• 26:43
  was going at warped ten. That's how I managed to
• 26:46
  read three magazines and the first thirty chapters of MOPI
• 26:49
  Dick in fifteen minutes. They ran a series of tests
• 26:52
  on me. The physical tests were fun. Made me juggle
• 26:56
  three balls than four than six. No problem keeping six
• 27:00
  balls in the air because they seem to be moving
• 27:02
  so slowly. It was boring, frankly waiting for each ball
• 27:06
  to move through its arc so I could catch it
• 27:08
  with my slow motion hands it to us it back
• 27:11
  into the air. They threw cheerios in the air and
• 27:14
  I caught them with chopsticks. They dropped a handful of
• 27:17
  coins and I counted the total value before they hit
• 27:19
  the ground.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: It's kind of interesting of the fatigue as well. Makes
• 27:22
  it seem like because he's moving so fast and probably
• 27:25
  like going around, that his muscles are actually still becoming
• 27:29
  physically exhausted, you.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Know, yeah, because he's moving so quickly.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: This also seems like a kind of an interesting take
• 27:35
  on like the horrors of like getting super intelligence or something.
• 27:39
  Mm hmm, you know, like, oh, you're becoming super strong,
• 27:41
  and having that much access to your brain's functionality would
• 27:44
  actually just like be torture.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: I feel like it would be like, uh, I mean,
• 27:51
  if you were stuck in it, you would become like
• 27:53
  a great mind. Sure you could process a lot of information,
• 27:56
  but it's like you're in a purgatory.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Well, what's the thing is that you would never even
• 28:00
  be able to enjoy the like advancements of what you're doing.
• 28:04
  So it's like everybody else is probably impressed with what
• 28:06
  you're doing, but everything is so nonchalant and non fun
• 28:09
  and like earth, so nonchalant.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Non.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's just not exciting in the least, Like it
• 28:16
  would just be such a miserable existence.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: It's an interesting I think you could do a lot
• 28:25
  of good for like humanity, the world, so to speak.
• 28:28
  But it's certainly a martyr position you would suffer.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: The cognitive tests were less fun, very illuminating. Finish a
• 28:35
  fifty word word search three seconds. Solve an intricate made
• 28:39
  drawn onto a poster sized paper two seconds. You a
• 28:43
  slideshow projected it at ten images per second, and answer
• 28:47
  detail questions about what I saw ninety five percent correct.
• 28:51
  They told me I measured over two hundred and fifty
• 28:54
  on the Knop scale. Apparently that's deep into the superhuman
• 28:58
  range of thinking speeds.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Then they sent me home.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: It'll wear off in a few hours, which will seem
• 29:04
  like days to you. Try to use the residual effects
• 29:07
  to get some work done, catch up on work emails
• 29:09
  while you're still in high speed mode.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: The ride home was horrible.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: It was only three metro stops, and in real world
• 29:16
  time it took about thirty five minutes, but in my
• 29:19
  drug accelerated hypertime, it felt like days.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Days.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: Just walking out of the medical research suite the elevator
• 29:27
  seemed like it took an hour. I sprinted out of
• 29:30
  the office, willing my legs to push me faster, but
• 29:33
  the laws of biomechanics held me prisoner. As accelerated as
• 29:37
  my brain was, I couldn't do anything to make my.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Legs work faster.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: The huge disconnect between my body and mind made it
• 29:45
  extremely difficult to judge how and when to slow down, turn,
• 29:48
  or rotate my body. I'd basically turned into giant slow
• 29:53
  motion spas. I misjudged my speed and rammed into the
• 29:57
  wall by the elevator button at a pretty good speed.
• 30:01
  Even though I could see the wall coming at me,
• 30:03
  I couldn't make my finger outstretched to hit the elevator
• 30:06
  button move away fast enough, and I jammed it against
• 30:09
  the wall hard.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: The pain was intense.
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: If my brain had been running at regular speed, it
• 30:15
  probably only would have hurt for thirty seconds or so,
• 30:19
  But in my accelerated state, the intense pain seemed to
• 30:21
  last for half an hour forty five minutes maybe fuck, oh,
• 30:28
  every feeling is like super intense.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, can you imagine like breaking a leg in.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: This state or something that would hurt, well, also being
• 30:36
  able to hyper fix it, because I'm guessing.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: He's able to.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: His brain is able to hyper fixate on like all
• 30:43
  of the neurons activating and like all of the pain
• 30:46
  receptors activating and stuff to where you'd almost feel like
• 30:50
  you'd be able to like feel and like understand like
• 30:53
  every crunch and like crack of your bone until it
• 30:56
  fully just like fully snaps, but into this excruciating process
• 31:01
  that's almost an hour long. Just sit in that painful
• 31:03
  thing for forty five minutes. Holy fuck. And it's just
• 31:07
  like the paint is only elevating for that time too, Like.
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I uh, I'd wonder if the effects will get worse.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: As time goes on. That's kind of what I suspect.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Well, it's where did did doctor say any He didn't
• 31:25
  say how long it would last, right, he said it'll
• 31:27
  last a few hours.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: Be sure to do your work emails.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I have fun doing your work emails and
• 31:32
  it's like, yeah, you just sent me into hell do Thanks.
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: Thanks, Bud, I appreciate it. The elevator ride was horrible.
• 31:38
  I felt like I spent four or five hours just
• 31:40
  descending the seven floors. Nothing I'll look at but the
• 31:43
  interior of the elevator car. I spread it to the
• 31:46
  Metro station. I have to admit this part was almost fun.
• 31:50
  Even though my body moved at what seemed to me
• 31:52
  super slow speed, I could still carefully choose how and
• 31:55
  where to place my feet, swing my arms, and turn
• 31:57
  my tours. It only took a bla two to get
• 32:02
  of getting used to having a brain that ran two dozen.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: Times faster than my body.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: Then I basically sprint dance the rest of the way,
• 32:08
  twisting and juging people on the sidewalk and dodging moving
• 32:12
  cars with inches aka minutes of clearance. Spent an hour
• 32:17
  in my time frame descending into the subway and running
• 32:20
  into the platform endless hetium waiting the six minutes for
• 32:24
  the Red Line train to arrive. Although there was no
• 32:27
  more to look at in the metro platform than inside
• 32:29
  the elevator, was still intensely boring. Should have stolen that
• 32:33
  copy of Moby Dick the Red Line train wored into
• 32:37
  the station in slow motion. Normally high pitched squeal of
• 32:40
  its brakes was frequency shifted by my high speed mind
• 32:43
  to a long, low tone, like a monotone tuba solo.
• 32:48
  It wasn't just the squealing subway training that was three
• 32:50
  octaves lower than normal. All sound was slow to the
• 32:53
  point of near inaudibility. Voices were gone shifted below the
• 32:57
  threshold frequency of my hearing. I did manage to hear
• 33:01
  a screaming baby on my subway car. Her shrieks slowed
• 33:04
  to sound like whale songs, sharp sounds like a car horn,
• 33:08
  and trucks bouncing over potholes were low, muddied roars like
• 33:12
  distant thunder. Back at the research offices, I could still
• 33:17
  hear and communicate with the research staff, but now verbal
• 33:20
  communication with anyone would be impossible. The effects of the
• 33:24
  drug were still intensifying. I spent what seemed like days
• 33:28
  on that Redline train, days listening to the whales song
• 33:32
  of the screaming baby and the tuba solo of the
• 33:34
  breaks where ordinary voices were frequency shifted out of my
• 33:38
  audio range.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Smells didn't seem to be affected.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: I never became nose blind to the body odor, the
• 33:45
  stinship of the trains breaks, the malaying of farts and
• 33:49
  other smells wafting through the metro car.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Let me ask, so does he perceiving all these things too,
• 33:54
  like when he's looking at other people and they look
• 33:56
  like they're in slow motion.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, everything's just making sure.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to make sure I have like a I'm
• 34:02
  trying to get it visualized in my head.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: The world's moving incredibly slow compared to him.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Right, Even he feels like he's moving slow too.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: It's his body, is.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: I finally got back to my apartment.
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: Sprinting through my open door and into the front and
• 34:19
  half at full speed was like a slow, relaxing drift
• 34:23
  down a lazy river. I was relieved to be home.
• 34:26
  At least I had stuff I could do there. Picked
• 34:28
  up the book I was reading, one hundred Years of Solitude,
• 34:31
  and finished it, despite turning the pages so quickly that
• 34:34
  I tore many of them. It seemed like most of
• 34:36
  the time I spent finishing the book was spent on
• 34:39
  page turning and not actually reading. Three minutes had passed
• 34:42
  since I got home. I tried served therenet. My god,
• 34:47
  it takes a long time for computers to boot these days,
• 34:50
  but it was too frustratingly slow hours seemingly to load
• 34:55
  each new page in a fraction of a second to
• 34:57
  read it. One hundred articles in my news feed read
• 35:00
  just three more minutes done.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: So definitely, time is slowing down even more as it
• 35:06
  goes on. Yeah, it's kidding, Yeah, I mean, like the
• 35:08
  saying of, like an instantaneous thing like a page and
• 35:12
  a browser opening up is taking hours now, Like that's
• 35:16
  fucking crazy.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: And he says.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: I dipped into my pile of yet to be read
• 35:20
  books and finished two more four more minutes had passed,
• 35:24
  all right, p I decided to try to sleep off
• 35:27
  the remaining effects of the drug. Unfortunately, whatever part of
• 35:30
  my mind is responsible for perception, the part that's been
• 35:33
  accelerated to hyper speeds by the drug, isn't the same
• 35:36
  as the part that governs sleep. Despite being awake for
• 35:40
  what I perceived as days, my physical brain still thought
• 35:42
  it was one twenty five pm.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: It was not ready for sleep.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: Nevertheless, I tried to sleep walked to my bedroom slow,
• 35:50
  forty five minutes drift through my apartment, flung myself into bed, lazily,
• 35:54
  falling like a feather under the mattress. I closed my
• 35:57
  eyes and lay there for hours and hours, ten minutes
• 36:02
  of reality time before giving up. Sleep would not come.
• 36:06
  I was facing what was going to feel like days
• 36:08
  or maybe even weeks, being trapped in a slow motion prison.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: So I took an ambien.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Oh god, that's not taking another drug on top of that.
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: That sounds like a horrible idea. Why didn't you take
• 36:21
  coke instead? I'm sure he doesn't have access to coke,
• 36:24
  But when you want something that's like.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Well, you would want something that's not a down or
• 36:27
  yeah exactly, you'd want an upper, something that's gonna like,
• 36:30
  I guess, perk you up. But I guess the idea
• 36:32
  is that he's like, well, I'm just going to try
• 36:33
  to sleep through this. But even then I would almost
• 36:36
  assumed that by sleeping, I would sleep for half a
• 36:42
  second and my body would be fully arrested, like it'd
• 36:44
  be impossible to sleep.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I don't think he's going to be able
• 36:48
  to sleep through it. I'd be afraid to dream on
• 36:52
  this drug because it sounds even worse. The sensation of
• 36:56
  the pill and the splash of water. I used to
• 36:58
  swallow it slide in My throat was sickening, a lump
• 37:01
  that blocked my breathing, moving like a slug down my esophagus.
• 37:05
  I read a book. Ten minutes had passed. I read
• 37:07
  another a teen minute since I took the ambien. I
• 37:10
  threw the book across the room and discussed at my situation.
• 37:13
  The book slowly per purade and spun through the air
• 37:17
  like a leaf blowing in a breeze.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: It hit the wall with a long, faint rumble.
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: The only sound I had heard for what seemed like hours.
• 37:27
  Then drifted to the floor like a flip flop sinking
• 37:30
  in a swimming pool. The force of gravity hadn't changed
• 37:34
  since I took the pill. The laws of physics were
• 37:36
  the same. It was just my perception of time that
• 37:39
  has gone wackadoo. This meant I could use the speed things.
• 37:44
  This meant I could use the speed things seemed to fall.
• 37:47
  As a way of judging the effects of the drug,
• 37:49
  based on how long it took the book to drift
• 37:51
  to the floor, I estimated the effects of the drug
• 37:53
  were still intensifying. Read a magazine, turned on the television.
• 37:58
  I clearly saw each frame of video, like I was
• 38:01
  watching a slideshow. Frustrated, I turned the television off. I
• 38:06
  read some more first two books of Churchill's A History
• 38:09
  of the English Speaking People's not exactly a light read.
• 38:13
  Frankly I hated it, but given the hours of tedium
• 38:16
  it would take to get another book off my bookshelf,
• 38:18
  just sitting on the couch and reading Churchill was better,
• 38:21
  or at least less worse. It had now been thirty
• 38:25
  five minutes since I took the ambient, laid down on
• 38:27
  the couch, closed my eyes. Time passed, I inhaled hours
• 38:32
  long process. Time passed, I excelled for more hours. Sleep
• 38:37
  would not come. I needed a new plan. I decided
• 38:43
  to go back to the offices where they gave me
• 38:45
  the drug. Maybe they would have something that could counteract
• 38:48
  as effects, or at least something to knock me out
• 38:50
  until I get wore off. Actually my apartment as fast
• 38:54
  as possible, taking hours in my time frame to do so.
• 38:57
  I didn't even bother locking the door. It would have
• 39:00
  taken too long down the stairs. It's faster than the
• 39:03
  elevator of you run through the lobby, out the front door,
• 39:06
  and onto the street. These few things felt like a
• 39:10
  long day at the office, spreading down the street, dancing
• 39:14
  and weaving between pedestrians with what must have looked to
• 39:17
  them superhuman dexterity. Down the first flight of stairs at
• 39:21
  the metro across the landing another hour, then on to
• 39:26
  the second flight of stairs. That's when the ambient hit me.
• 39:30
  The ambient didn't make me sleepy, not at all. Instead,
• 39:35
  it must have had a severe cross reaction with the
• 39:37
  experimental drug I took this morning. I was bouncing down
• 39:40
  the second flight of stairs, moving in slow motion, but
• 39:43
  still making perceptible progress. Then wham, everything stopped. The dull
• 39:50
  roar of the street and metro noise ceased, replaced by
• 39:53
  the most perfect silence I've ever experienced. My downwards motion
• 39:58
  seemed to completely freez. Before the ambient kicked in, my
• 40:02
  perception of time was maybe a few hundred times slower
• 40:05
  than real time. After the ambient took effect, time moved
• 40:09
  thousands of times slower. God, every second seemed like daze
• 40:14
  to me. Even just moving my eyes to focus on
• 40:17
  a new point was like an impossibly slow scroll across
• 40:20
  my visual field. Over the course of the afternoon, I
• 40:23
  learned how to walk, run, and jump when my mind
• 40:26
  ran hundreds of times faster than my body, with another
• 40:29
  four or five orders of magnitude to slow down caused
• 40:32
  by the ambient body, control was almost impossible. I fell
• 40:37
  on the stairs, even though I was all but frozen
• 40:40
  a midstep. Controlling my muscles was impossible. I commanded my
• 40:44
  foot forwards for hours, then backwards for hours more when
• 40:49
  it seemed like I would miss the next step, hours
• 40:52
  attempting to adjust the angle of my ankle, then readjusting
• 40:55
  when it felt wrong. Despite these efforts, I rolled my
• 40:59
  ankle on the next step. The pain wasn't at all
• 41:03
  mitigated by the slowness. Hours of increasing strain on my
• 41:06
  bent ankle. The nerve signals that sind pain into the
• 41:10
  brain must work differently than the nerves in my ear.
• 41:13
  Sonic energy was spread out over time, diluted until it
• 41:16
  was imperceptible. Pain flowed into my brain, undiluted by the
• 41:20
  change in my perception of time. Hours and hours of
• 41:24
  increasing weight on my turned ankle turned into hours of
• 41:26
  increasing pain. Upon increasing pain, I pitched forwards, my high
• 41:31
  speed mind completely unable to control my low speed body.
• 41:35
  I drifted downwards for days, managing to rotate my tour
• 41:38
  so enough to keep my head from impacting the ground first,
• 41:42
  I eventually landed on my right shoulder. At first, the
• 41:45
  impact wasn't even noticeable. Then I felt a slight pressure
• 41:48
  in my shoulder as it came in contact with the ground.
• 41:52
  The pressure grew, bringing increasing pain. For hour upon hour,
• 41:57
  my shoulder finally gave out, popping out of its socket
• 41:59
  with an endless, sickening tug.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so that's the kind of thing I was
• 42:03
  talking about with that bone Like breaking bone, like being
• 42:06
  able to feel your shoulder pop out of its socket
• 42:09
  would be so brutal for that like that long, my.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: God, every detail of it, can't stop it. I came
• 42:15
  to a stop days later, grumbled onto the ground, staring
• 42:18
  at the ceiling, the pain of my shoulders still screaming
• 42:21
  with the intensity of a fresh, violent injury. I had
• 42:25
  plenty of time to think during that fall. If every
• 42:28
  second seemed like days to me, in each minute of
• 42:31
  real world time felt like years, even if the drug
• 42:35
  cleared out of my system in the next two or
• 42:36
  three hours, this nightmare would seem to last centuries.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: By the time I hit the ground. I had a plan.
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: I would somehow get to the platform throw myself in
• 42:47
  front of a train. I twisted it onto my hands
• 42:51
  and knees. Days of my dislocated shoulder, crying for relief,
• 42:55
  I misjudged my rotation and rolled onto my back. I
• 42:59
  tried again, collapsing onto my face as I tried to
• 43:01
  figure out how to control a body that moves slower
• 43:04
  than grass grew. Weeks of effort were finally rewarded with success.
• 43:09
  I stabilized on my hands and knees. If just getting
• 43:14
  on all fours was this difficult, I figured that walking
• 43:17
  or running was completely out of the question.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: So I crawled.
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: I crawled through the metro tunnel, the dumb looks on
• 43:24
  the faces and the crowd lingered on me for weeks.
• 43:27
  I crawled under the turnstile and onto the escalator.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: I just want to stay really quick.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: The escalation of time is very seamless, Like I really
• 43:35
  enjoy how it hasn't been this thing of like all
• 43:38
  of a sudden weeks past. It's just kind of like
• 43:42
  even his perception of how he's telling it, it's just
• 43:44
  kind of the way it is.
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: Their eyes fixed on me for weeks, yea, for weeks.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: There was no real build up like at the beginning,
• 43:51
  when it was like, it's kind of interesting because I
• 43:55
  wonder how intentional this is. Not to harp on it
• 43:59
  too long, but at the beginning, the guy had more
• 44:02
  time to kind of articulate his like the time passage
• 44:06
  of yeah, I mean this, only four minutes had passed
• 44:10
  and I had been reading for thirty minutes, or you
• 44:12
  know that kind of thing.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Now something that's as brief.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: As him being like I was finally able to get
• 44:17
  onto my hands and knees.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: It took weeks.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Like even that has sped up in a way, you know,
• 44:22
  like it's taking longer and longer. Like the lapses of
• 44:24
  times of him even describing something to us that seems
• 44:28
  so short are now like become like the bridge is
• 44:31
  becoming wider and wider basically, or longer.
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: It's becoming more direct, more rancid, basically more.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Direct, but it's happening in a longer sense of time,
• 44:44
  Like the information we're given is shorter, but it's perceptually
• 44:49
  longer to him.
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the escalator spilled the rush hour crowd onto the
• 44:53
  platform at the same spheedic glacier spills ice enter the sea.
• 44:57
  I looked out over the crowded platform. During my an
• 45:00
  interminable downward ride, the train status signed said the next
• 45:04
  train would arrive in twenty minutes.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: Twenty minutes was like a year to me.
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: But after spend a year on the metro platform waiting
• 45:13
  to die, oh god, I crawled off the escalator, and
• 45:19
  during days of stupid expressions on the commuter's faces, I
• 45:23
  crawled a few feet to a concrete bench, curled up
• 45:26
  next to it, trying to find a position to lessen
• 45:28
  the pain in my shoulder. Then my problem with time
• 45:31
  got worse, and possibly worse.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Got How can you imagine watching people look at you
• 45:37
  for a year it's only.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're all just frozen in place.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like people are just like awkwardly looking at you
• 45:43
  for an entire year.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: My god, the massive slow down on the stairs was
• 45:48
  just the beginning of the interaction between the experimental drug
• 45:51
  and the ambien. It fully hit me. While I was
• 45:53
  curled up by the bench, I blinked. Years of darkness followed.
• 46:00
  Sound was already gone, and with my blink, sight was
• 46:03
  gone as well. All that existed was the pain for
• 46:08
  my fall.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, he's in darkness with throbbing pains, for years.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's sober. I loved that line. I blinked. Years
• 46:18
  of darkness followed. That's so good.
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: My hyper accelerated mind wasted no time compensating for the
• 46:23
  lack of sensory input. Voices spoke to me. They sung
• 46:27
  to me in languages that never existed. Patterns and faces
• 46:30
  and colors came and went in my mind's eye. I
• 46:34
  recalled my whole life and imagine living another. I forgot English.
• 46:39
  I settled into a profound despair. I spoke to God,
• 46:43
  I became God. I imagined a new universe and brought
• 46:47
  it to life with my thoughts. Then I did it
• 46:50
  all again and again. My eyes opened with geological slowness,
• 46:57
  a faint glow, weeks of light, weeks, A narrow view
• 47:03
  of the metro platform, ankles of the commuters near me,
• 47:07
  and an advertisement on the opposite wall. I extracted my
• 47:12
  phone from my pocket project that spanned decades. How can
• 47:17
  I even explain the boredom? The pain in my shoulder
• 47:20
  is nothing compared to the boredom. Every thought I can think,
• 47:24
  I have thought hundreds of times already. The view of
• 47:28
  ankles and advertisements never changes, never. The boredom is so intense.
• 47:34
  It's tangible, like a solid object of metal and stone,
• 47:37
  wedge into my skull and escapable. What are my options?
• 47:43
  If I crawl and fall into the tracks without an
• 47:45
  oncoming train to crush me. I won't die. I'll experience
• 47:49
  even more pain from the four foot fall, but I'll
• 47:51
  most likely be rescued by some do good or on
• 47:54
  the platform and unable to act when the train finally
• 47:56
  does arrive, my suffering in that scenario will be endless.
• 48:01
  So I wait for the train so I can throw
• 48:04
  myself under it. When it finally hits me, I will
• 48:07
  experience the pain of being ripped to pieces for centuries,
• 48:11
  until finally the light of life leaves my brain and
• 48:14
  my experience ends. I've lived hundreds of life spans at
• 48:19
  the foot of this bench. I'm far older in spirit
• 48:22
  than any human who.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: Has ever lived.
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: Most of my life experiences have been a snapshot of pain,
• 48:29
  huddled on the floor of a subway platform with an
• 48:31
  unchanging view of angles and advertisements. This post is my
• 48:36
  plan b my hell Mary, my long shot. I've spent
• 48:41
  lifetimes typing and posting this message in the hope that
• 48:44
  someone will read it and become convinced that my suffering
• 48:47
  must end someone on this platform right now, someone who
• 48:53
  will find the man curled under the bench, the man
• 48:55
  who crawled down the escalator, and kill him as swiftly
• 48:58
  as possible. A bullet to the temple, if you're armed,
• 49:02
  in epically, nmont Metro, please shoot me.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Wonderful.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: That was great. I like that one. That was a
• 49:08
  lot of fun.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: I'm absolutely wonderful that, by far, out of all the
• 49:12
  things we've read, this would be the most excruciating.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: This is the most horrific thing we've ever read in terms.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Of yeah, page actual like, in terms of actual despair
• 49:25
  and horror. This is by far the most horrifying thing
• 49:27
  we've ever read.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: In just the theory of like actually living that thing.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: Like obviously there's stories that instill a lot of fear
• 49:36
  in us as well, but this one is just being
• 49:38
  a thing of actually trying to put yourself in those
• 49:40
  shoes of i mean, ten thousand years, Like, can you
• 49:47
  even imagine the you know what it reminded me a
• 49:49
  lot of was the Jungi Eto's story The Long Dream.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: It's my favorite junji Eto story, and it reminds.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: Me, oh yeah, yeah, that is what I was trying
• 49:58
  to think of something that and uh, there was another story.
• 50:02
  It reminded me of those similar those thing. Maybe I
• 50:05
  was just thanking the long Dream.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very probably the Long Dream. And then it's like
• 50:09
  a movie and my brain was kind of trickling over
• 50:11
  into limitless. Like after a while, I kept picturing the
• 50:14
  guy looking like Bradley Cooper from that movie. Yeah, there's
• 50:17
  just something horrifying about messing with perception of reality, like
• 50:23
  a very I guess uncanny weird way too pretty much,
• 50:31
  I mean pretty much, it's this is hell. I mean,
• 50:36
  I don't know any like, it's an eternity of suffering,
• 50:39
  you know, and I think something that I just really
• 50:45
  love the Monkey Paul aspect of making almost like eternal
• 50:49
  life feel like hell, you know, like someone who would
• 50:54
  wish I want to live forever. This was this is
• 50:56
  what it would be, you know. Maybe not everything slowed down,
• 51:00
  but still that idea that boredom. Like the most horrifying
• 51:04
  thing is the idea of for thousands of years laying
• 51:07
  there and just seeing ankles and nothing, like you can't.
• 51:11
  I love the part too when he's like I forgot
• 51:14
  the human language.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: I spoke to God. I became God and I did
• 51:17
  it over again.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: It's like the cycles of not I mean, there's probably
• 51:21
  not even a word for it. Like it's beyond insanity.
• 51:23
  It's like I don't even know, Like how would you
• 51:26
  even describe that?
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's like it's like a hell, right, if
• 51:33
  your brain perceives time that slowly, it's I mean, like
• 51:37
  you said, like a year when his eyes were opening,
• 51:40
  years of a glint of light, right, Like, it's horror, horrific,
• 51:47
  and hypothetically, if he has to do that for hours,
• 51:49
  it would be millions of years, right.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: I wonder if if after a while, too, do you
• 51:55
  think that there would be a point ever that the
• 51:57
  brain would just like that's like that that was kind
• 52:01
  of the ending in the Long Dream, was that in
• 52:03
  his mind, each time he slept, millions of years had
• 52:07
  passed to the point where it physically was altering his
• 52:11
  body until he just like turns to dust. Do you
• 52:15
  think that in this reality, in this thing in this universe,
• 52:18
  do you think something would happen where your brain is
• 52:21
  moving so fast that like it rapidly aged, Like, I
• 52:24
  wonder if there would be any kind of physical.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: Brain moving that fast it would change so much about
• 52:32
  your bother. I mean, like realistically, probably the sun failure
• 52:36
  or something. The synapses in your body can only move
• 52:39
  so fast, right, and the at the speed his brain
• 52:45
  is processing his synapses are moving faster than the speed
• 52:47
  of light.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: Right, But within.
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: Reality, if your brain was moving that much that fast,
• 52:55
  you would probably seize and die. Like for your brain
• 53:00
  to process information that quickly, it would be like an
• 53:03
  overload effective play. Yeah, yeah, aneurysm or something.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: What would be weird though, is that even though even
• 53:11
  what's kind of interesting to think about is that it
• 53:13
  might even be happening now, but the perception of time
• 53:18
  is just getting longer, so it doesn't actually execute until
• 53:23
  like it almost be something where you're having an aneurysm,
• 53:25
  but it takes millions of years to fully.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Like go through through your perception or something.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: And that just is so fucking brutal. I mean, even
• 53:37
  trying to actually wrap your head around the idea of
• 53:41
  like typing out that message or like this Reddit post
• 53:46
  would be something that would just be like, I mean,
• 53:50
  I don't even know, I can't even describe. Just to
• 53:53
  see just to look at your days and you're like
• 53:56
  trying to type and trying to do that and like
• 53:58
  a tee pops up, like if you're like my long shot,
• 54:01
  you just typing my takes god knows how many years.
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: Pretty, it's uh, it's it's heavy. I really loved that story.
• 54:13
  I love the way that ended too.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: I feel like it's weird. I feel like it.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it was just the amount of
• 54:22
  time that goes into this, how slow time went, but
• 54:27
  for such a short story, it felt so full, like if.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: It felt much longer than I expected.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: When we were kind of were looking at this at first,
• 54:35
  I was like, oh, I wonder this is gonna be enough.
• 54:37
  But it really kind of fucks with you. I really
• 54:40
  wonder mentally if I was like like slowing down on
• 54:43
  my own and like my head like talking about it
• 54:46
  so much, you know, I don't know.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Pretty crazy, great story.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: Big big fan. I like that one. That one was
• 54:54
  a banger. I feel like.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: An absolute mad lad banger.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: So from there we have the other stories for him.
• 55:01
  There are other stories within this universe, kind of within
• 55:05
  like the storyline of the Glenmont Metro. There is a
• 55:09
  three part one called this is Why I Didn't want
• 55:13
  to give away the title My Patients spent eight million
• 55:16
  years under a bench at the Glenmont Metro. So that's
• 55:21
  its own three part story. We may not want to
• 55:26
  read that one, or at least give it a while
• 55:28
  just because it feels like my prediction is it probably gives.
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: Too much.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: You know, I would this story, I think just for
• 55:41
  like let it sink and let me like live with
• 55:43
  it for a bit, you know.
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: Another one from the same author. As a matter of fact,
• 55:47
  if you go to his website, a New Kind of Monster.
• 55:50
  He has some of his stories grouped by different like styles.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: So there's ones for.
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: Called Notes from the Laboratory, there's one about cosmo pathology,
• 56:04
  which is a really cool term, and then he has
• 56:06
  one for Glenmont and the Second Death Universe. So obviously
• 56:10
  the first story in that series is the one reread
• 56:13
  if you're armed in at the Glenmont Metro, Please shoot Me.
• 56:15
  And then the second one is this story called My
• 56:19
  Daughter Wants to Eat a woman who shares her birthday,
• 56:22
  which is another banger title by the way. Yeah, then
• 56:25
  after that there seems to be a three part stories
• 56:28
  that is about the person.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: From the Glenmont Metro story.
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: We may get into that one day, and then it
• 56:34
  seems that Peter Frost David has made an entire book
• 56:38
  kind of built in this universe called Second Death. So
• 56:43
  if the Glenmont Metro thing sounds cool to you and
• 56:45
  you want to see more, we'll check out the Second Death. Yeah,
• 56:49
  but this is the second short story he has written,
• 56:52
  at least according to his website, within this universe. So
• 56:56
  we're going to get into that and see how we
• 56:58
  like it.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love these titles.
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they're good, They're great. From that first story,
• 57:04
  I'm hooked. The guy's kicking.
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: Cooking of a storm, So my daughter wants to eat
• 57:10
  a woman who shares her birthday. The only way this
• 57:14
  is going to make sense is if I start at
• 57:16
  the beginning. August twenty first, nineteen eighty two. A baby
• 57:20
  girl was born shortly after midnight.
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: I wasn't the mother's doctor, but I was attending on
• 57:26
  the same labor and delivering floor. Even though the.
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: New board's app app gar apgar, I'm sure that my
• 57:34
  sister's in her she could probably tell me what that is,
• 57:36
  even though.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Editor put in an app gar definition. Because I don't know, I.
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: Assume it's something to do with the baby's stats or whatever.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the baby's baseball garden pretty much.
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: She was clearly in great distress. The on call pediatrician
• 57:52
  raised the child to the nick you. Twenty minutes later,
• 57:55
  I was called to consult. You have me to check
• 57:58
  on the mother. I an obstetrician. I care for pregnant
• 58:02
  women and deliver their babies. Once they're born, the infants
• 58:05
  become pediatric patients webs. I being called into the neonatal unit.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: No, doctor Kausen, it's the child.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Please come to the nicee you.
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: I heard panic creeping into my colleague's voice. The baby
• 58:20
  lay and a nick you incubator screaming. The nursing staff
• 58:25
  stood at a distance. None of them were looking at
• 58:28
  the child. They stared at the floor, or at the
• 58:30
  far wall, or at me. They were experienced neonatal ICU nurses.
• 58:36
  They had dealt with every horrible condition that could possibly
• 58:39
  result from birth. But whatever is in the incubator had
• 58:42
  rattled them.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: How is this an obstetrict's case.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: The pediatrician gesture to the incubator.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Please examine the patient, doctor Kauisen, and tell me what
• 58:52
  you think.
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: The baby girl looked like a healthy, birthweight baby eight
• 58:58
  pounds or so, but her her abdomen was terribly distended.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: She certainly had a good reason for screaming.
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: I gently palpated the girl's bulging belly, expecting to feel
• 59:10
  signs of fluid or gas.
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: I didn't.
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: Instead, I felt an enlarged uterus. The fundus was near
• 59:19
  the infant sternum. I gently squeezed the sides of the
• 59:22
  child's belly, feeling with my fingertips a miniature version of
• 59:26
  what I feel with my whole hands in adult patience.
• 59:31
  I placed my palm on her tiny belly. There was
• 59:34
  an almost imperceptible flutter. Something gently pushed against my hand.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: So is this saying that the baby is pregnant? Pretty
• 59:42
  much is what they're saying. The baby's like a little
• 59:44
  Russian nesting doll or something.
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's a baby inside the baby. I turned
• 59:48
  to the nicew's staff. Their eyes were locked on me,
• 59:52
  hands holding their mouths, or touching their foreheads.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: I said, this infant is pregnant and she's in labor.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: Oh God, oh lord, oh man disgusting. I did my
• 1:00:07
  best to remain calm, but I heard my voice crack
• 1:00:10
  as I spoke.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: Something was inside this newborn. Something had grown inside her
• 1:00:15
  as she developed in the womb, and it wanted to
• 1:00:18
  get out. Have as much experience as the nick U
• 1:00:21
  nurses with the terrible effects of abnormal pregnancies. No matter
• 1:00:25
  what condition my patients and their fetuses had suffered from,
• 1:00:29
  I never felt what I felt in that moment. Fear,
• 1:00:33
  fear of what was inside of this baby. I delivered
• 1:00:37
  the infant's baby by caesarean by cesarean section, the operation
• 1:00:42
  normally performed on an adult to deliver a normal sage child,
• 1:00:46
  was difficult and time consuming due to the mother being
• 1:00:48
  an infant herself. When I was done, I felt the
• 1:00:52
  infant's own baby in my hand, tiny two inch long
• 1:00:57
  but fully developed and very much alive baby girl. The
• 1:01:01
  fear dissipated and was replaced with a more ordinary sense
• 1:01:04
  of concern. This impossible, little baby, who only two hours
• 1:01:08
  earlier filled me with fear, was, in the end still
• 1:01:11
  a baby. She needed to be cared for. Premature babies,
• 1:01:16
  children born months too soon require extreme interventions to keep
• 1:01:20
  them alive. Lungs, for example, acquired nearly nine months to mature.
• 1:01:25
  Premature babies as small as a child I delivered always
• 1:01:28
  require breathing support. But this baby had no breathing problems.
• 1:01:32
  Her color was good, she cried normally, Her lungs had
• 1:01:36
  the full nine months of development. Somehow, this child had
• 1:01:39
  been conceived at nearly the same time as her mother
• 1:01:42
  and gestjaded for nine months inside her simultaneously gestating parent.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: This, of course, is impossible.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: How did you get here?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: I asked her, after I gently laid her in her
• 1:01:55
  own NICU incubator.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Doing into that. I think I'll be better off if
• 1:02:00
  I don't know.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: What an interesting Uh hmm, this is an interesting like
• 1:02:07
  body whose set up?
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird, but the idea of like, yeah, like
• 1:02:12
  a maybe that's like a Russian nesting doll pretty much.
• 1:02:15
  It's like there's no rhyme or reason, almost like, uh,
• 1:02:18
  what is a divine What is it called?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: When it's immaculate conception?
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, almost like an immaculate conception thing, like like a
• 1:02:25
  really foxed version of that.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty messed up.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: The grandmother, twenty two year old woman who delivered a
• 1:02:32
  pregnant baby, wanted nothing to do with the miraculous daughter
• 1:02:35
  her new child delivered.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: She referred to her granddaughter as the excess tissue you
• 1:02:41
  removed from my baby.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I mean, honestly, what else would you say?
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: Right, Well, I guess it's just the idea the it's
• 1:02:49
  it's a healthy, it's a tiny.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: But the only thing I would think is like, well,
• 1:02:55
  maybe it was like a twin, like it was twins
• 1:02:59
  and then one of the like try to absorb the
• 1:03:01
  other twin because that happens. Maybe it wasn't absorbed or
• 1:03:03
  kept developing by something. I guess that'd be the only
• 1:03:07
  primer reason you give it.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I just it's crazy that it's a healthy
• 1:03:12
  it's completely healthy, it's just small. And it's weird too
• 1:03:14
  that the babies like ovaries were working, and like, you know,
• 1:03:18
  it's just so fucking crazy. But I guess you too,
• 1:03:23
  I would probably be living in denial as well.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, it'd be like, okay, absolutely not right.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the nick new nurses never warmed up to the grandchild.
• 1:03:32
  They did the minimum necessary to keep her healthy, but
• 1:03:34
  they didn't dote affection and attention onto her as they
• 1:03:37
  did with the other tiny patients. I'm not religious, but
• 1:03:41
  I do believe in the idea of universal balance, cosmically
• 1:03:44
  and individually. Three years earlier, my life was thrown into
• 1:03:49
  imbalance when my wife died of an aneurysm. This tiny girl,
• 1:03:53
  born to an infant mother, the girl referred to as
• 1:03:56
  excess tissue, filled me with a sense of direction. I
• 1:04:01
  sensed in her a path towards the equilibrium that I lost.
• 1:04:05
  Adopted her. I named her Helen. The grandmother's reaction and
• 1:04:11
  the impersonal way the nick u nurse has treated Helen
• 1:04:14
  told me that I needed to hide the circumstances of
• 1:04:16
  her birth. If her grandmother and the nursing staff can
• 1:04:19
  find a way to see Helen as a person, and
• 1:04:21
  how about the rest of the world treat her. From
• 1:04:24
  the perspective of the adoption papers, Helen was born premature
• 1:04:29
  to a mother who was not competent to raise her.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: This is true.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: How could her mother, an infant, raise another infant. The
• 1:04:36
  family the paperwork recorded did not want anything to do
• 1:04:41
  with the child. Also true, The fact that Helen's mother
• 1:04:45
  was only ninety minutes older than Helen was omitted. Man, Okay,
• 1:04:49
  what I really like about this author is he pushes
• 1:04:54
  these scenarios where sentences like that exist. Right, Because there
• 1:04:58
  were a couple times in the last it was like that.
• 1:05:00
  It was like I blinked years past, right, what a cool?
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: What a cool?
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: Like predicament we've got ourselves into and did that line
• 1:05:08
  the mother was only ninety minutes older than Helen, Like
• 1:05:11
  what you know?
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: Stuff like that's just so cool.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: I think it shows two that with confidence in writing
• 1:05:18
  in any sense, like very Croninberg. One thing I love
• 1:05:21
  about like Cronenberg stories is there's really no explaining the world.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: It's just kind of showing, like you're like.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: That this is just it is what it is. And
• 1:05:28
  by doing so too, you immediately get bought in. And
• 1:05:31
  like there's so many times where people would try to
• 1:05:33
  justify this or like they would do a whole lap
• 1:05:36
  around to have this make sense, versus just being like it.
• 1:05:39
  I mean, it's just it is what it is. Ninety
• 1:05:41
  minutes older baby, it makes no sense. But you're fully
• 1:05:45
  engrossed in the story.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like it doesn't matter how we got here.
• 1:05:49
  We're here, Now what do we do with it?
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the reality you're in. Buckle up. Yeah.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: The adoption process required a maternity and a paternity test.
• 1:06:00
  Parents must have proved the adoption. Given Helen's strange background,
• 1:06:04
  we tested her mother, the infant, and her grandmother, the
• 1:06:07
  twenty two year old new mom and her husband. The
• 1:06:11
  DNA analysis proved that the infant was The DNA analysis
• 1:06:15
  proved that the infant who bore Helen was indeed Helen's mother.
• 1:06:19
  Twenty two year old mom and her husband were Helen's grandparents.
• 1:06:22
  The implication is astounding. Nine months before Helen was born,
• 1:06:27
  some unknown male DNA entered her mother, who had yet
• 1:06:30
  to be born. The DNA some now combined with the mothers,
• 1:06:33
  and Helen began to exist.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Oh weird, pretty weird. So do you think that do
• 1:06:40
  you think this is going into immaculate Uh?
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: I think that's what's insane, or it's going to be
• 1:06:46
  like some uh this author. I mean, we've only read
• 1:06:50
  one of his stories, so I don't know, but off
• 1:06:51
  the one we read it was very sci fi, right,
• 1:06:54
  so maybe it's more of a.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: Sci fi thing, you know, like maybe this.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: Child was like created by like a non human entity,
• 1:07:03
  like maybe the father or the mother is at human
• 1:07:06
  or something like that.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that there's an interest. Like
• 1:07:10
  as soon as the narrator said I'm not a religious person,
• 1:07:15
  I figure that it was going to go into a
• 1:07:17
  place that is going to test the person's belief system.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right, probably, I mean this certainly was this is insane.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: I raised Helen and she grew up. She was a
• 1:07:29
  normal kid.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: Mostly.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: I hate to gloss over or trivialize our happy years together.
• 1:07:34
  Please try to picture a single dad happily raising a beautiful, brilliant,
• 1:07:38
  and energetic daughter. The incidents I recount here only stand
• 1:07:42
  out now that I see what Helen became. Were these
• 1:07:45
  warnings that I ignored or that I rationalized a way
• 1:07:48
  as evidence of Helen's fantastic imagination. The first incident's happened
• 1:07:53
  when Helen was eight years old. We were eating lunch
• 1:07:56
  at the mall food court. I was talking to her
• 1:07:59
  and her to respond.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: She didn't.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: Her attention was laser focused on something on the other
• 1:08:05
  side of the seating area. I turned and followed her gaze.
• 1:08:09
  Another girl about the same age as Helen stood in
• 1:08:12
  line with her mother to get pizza. Got a sick
• 1:08:15
  feeling in my gup when I realized who the mother was.
• 1:08:19
  I'd only met Helen's grandmother a few times, but I
• 1:08:21
  remember what she looked like. Little girl ordering pizza was
• 1:08:26
  Helen's mother. The woman was Helen's grandmother that time. Helen
• 1:08:31
  had no idea that she was adopted.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: Why are you looking at those people, Helen? I'm looking
• 1:08:39
  at the girl. I want to eat her. Why do
• 1:08:44
  you want to eat another person?
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: Not any person, dad, just her, Helen. That's not an
• 1:08:52
  appropriate thing to say, I know.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: But it might help me get out one day, get
• 1:08:58
  out what out of what?
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: She never answered? Bro, I like that. That's fun.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: See see what I mean where it's such a weird scenario.
• 1:09:09
  There's like a little child that's like shouldn't exist, and
• 1:09:12
  what's to eat her mother who's the same age as her.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: One thing with people that that do this kind of
• 1:09:18
  stuff and they just go full force with this, uh,
• 1:09:21
  like just full steam ahead with these weird ideas, is
• 1:09:23
  that you're then able like then there's no boundary, like
• 1:09:26
  the absurdity of things are all believable, and like you
• 1:09:30
  treat them seriously, you know, Versus if you had it
• 1:09:33
  so grounded and then all of a sudden someone said
• 1:09:35
  something absurd, well then you're just like you're dancing around the.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Idea of like, well, what why would they do that?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: You know?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? So yeah, I love this.
• 1:09:43
  I think it's great.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: It's like it's like we're gonna pick one really weird
• 1:09:47
  thing and I'm gonna commit to it. It's gonna be weird.
• 1:09:49
  The opening lines like the baby's pregnant, right, and now
• 1:09:53
  it's like we're just we keep following that. It's not
• 1:09:56
  pulling from other places to be strange. It is strange
• 1:09:58
  in its own unique sense, and I like that. The
• 1:10:01
  second strange event occurred when Helen was ten, during a
• 1:10:04
  visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
• 1:10:07
  We wandered the galleries together. I paid more attention to
• 1:10:11
  what Helen found interesting than to the art itself. I
• 1:10:14
  wanted to know what she found boring and what inspired her.
• 1:10:17
  We found ourselves in front of a nineteenth century oil
• 1:10:20
  painting depicting Christ's descent into Hell. The gloomy painting feature
• 1:10:24
  to desolate landscaped, burning city, filled with the dead, monsters, demons,
• 1:10:30
  the River Styx, and of course Jesus himself breaking down
• 1:10:34
  the gate to gain entry into Hell to rescue the
• 1:10:36
  souls of the just. Helen stopped abruptly in front of
• 1:10:40
  the painting. She stepped towards it, studying the painting so
• 1:10:43
  closely her nose almost brushed the canvas. She examined each detail, carefully,
• 1:10:49
  moving deliberately from each figure to feature to the next
• 1:10:53
  so she wouldn't overlook anything. Finally, she scrutinized the depiction
• 1:10:58
  of Christ breaking down the gate to Hell. She started giggling,
• 1:11:02
  then laughing loudly.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: What's so funny?
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: I wasn't worried at that point, just curious.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: The picture's so silly.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: Christ is sitting. The hell is silly, The gate is silly.
• 1:11:17
  The gate is the way out of Hell, not into it.
• 1:11:20
  You don't need to break in, you need to break out.
• 1:11:23
  It's just so funny. Plus the door isn't big enough. Yeah,
• 1:11:30
  oh that, I'm like, Yeah, this is I do, I do?
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: Mm hmmm sounds good.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Hell, I'm gonna go get some dippin' dots, and I
• 1:11:36
  would leave that little bitch there forever.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: In fact, you know, for a fact, that would know
• 1:11:41
  how to find its way home. Oh God, easily I
• 1:11:44
  had cab Fair.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: How did you get cab Fair?
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna eat you now like a little monsters
• 1:11:52
  your toes.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I hope you know what. I hope your kid bites.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: God shit, well it's gonna happen now.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: That would fit. That is so fitting if you had
• 1:12:04
  to her. Oh man, dude.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: That is so h well, that's not what the gate
• 1:12:13
  to Hell looks like.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: Oh that's great now.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: I was worried the image of Helen's mother screaming in
• 1:12:18
  the Nicko incubator with Helen's squirming inside of her flash
• 1:12:21
  into my mind's eye. The fear that I experienced when
• 1:12:24
  I felt Helen kicking in her mother's minture womb flooded me.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: Helen, what are you talking about?
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: When I go to Hell, I'm gonna eat my way
• 1:12:34
  out through my bloodline. Good fucking god, Helen, why do
• 1:12:42
  you think going to hell? That's a very sad thing
• 1:12:44
  for a little girl to believe. It's just something I know.
• 1:12:48
  I remember it, even though it hasn't happened yet. Oh wow,
• 1:12:52
  so sick.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: That is sick.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: Gosh, that's so cool. I give him dad, even though
• 1:12:59
  it hasn't happened yet.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: The dad like looking at her kind of like a
• 1:13:02
  little confused, but like almost an emotionless and he's like
• 1:13:04
  mm hmmm, oh.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: This is And also, thank god it didn't go a
• 1:13:11
  weird route. Right, like with like the pregnant child or whatever.
• 1:13:14
  It's like her soul was taken from hell and just
• 1:13:18
  thrown somewhere to be.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: You know what, I would be.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: So pissed if I was that dad where I'm like,
• 1:13:23
  I took I took home the fucking keychain baby, and
• 1:13:25
  everyone was giving me odd looks, and I thought I
• 1:13:27
  was being a good guy. Turns out that they were
• 1:13:29
  like fully right to be.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: So turns out they were completely It turns out I'm
• 1:13:33
  the one who didn't recognize I'm apparently the asshole here.
• 1:13:36
  Oh I guess I'm the bad guy. Man, Gosh, that's
• 1:13:42
  so cool. Then she skipped away to the next gallery
• 1:13:44
  of paintings. See, here's the thing people always like, they
• 1:13:49
  try to be absurdist, uh, and they'll recreate it and
• 1:13:52
  it always comes out as nonsensical, right, It's always like, oh, well,
• 1:13:56
  everything's just random.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: It's like, no, this isn't random.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: Sure, it's an ass concept, but it follow it has
• 1:14:02
  a track of logic that it's sticking with at least
• 1:14:06
  so far. Right of Like the child was weird, it
• 1:14:08
  was strange, and now it wants to eat her.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: And now it's a thing from hell.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: Like you're developing off the same idea in a pattern
• 1:14:15
  of logic.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: It's just a very weird one you've pulled out of.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: Well. I think it works well.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: It works well because of the absurdity of how the
• 1:14:23
  child came to be, right. Yeah, so now you're starting
• 1:14:27
  to unweave or you're starting to weave this web of
• 1:14:30
  the backstory or kind of like more of the demented side.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: So the the even the way that.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: The child is born and this immaculate conception kind of
• 1:14:39
  thing is interesting because you believe it's going to be
• 1:14:42
  a religious but it's.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: You know, kind of the negative side of that religious. Yeah,
• 1:14:46
  you know, it's just it's fun. I really like it.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: It bangs. I like it so far.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: The final incident that stands out in hindsight some kind
• 1:14:54
  of red flag, happened seven years ago. Hella was doing
• 1:14:57
  post doctoral work at Lawrence Livermore Or but was home
• 1:15:01
  for leave during the Christmas holiday. Helen was a workaholic.
• 1:15:05
  She might have been on vacation, but she never stopped working.
• 1:15:07
  This is fun too, just the idea that like, for
• 1:15:10
  like twenty thirty years she was a perfectly normal girl.
• 1:15:13
  Except he can only think of three times she was weird.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 4: Also, I guarantee you, I guarantee you this kind of
• 1:15:21
  woman would absolutely decimate half of the men watching this video.
• 1:15:27
  Oh could you imagine, like an actual demon lady who.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: Likes hell and shop clean up shop.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: Several several several men in this in these comments would falter.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: I fear, Yeah, yeah, just.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: Fall over themselves to give their soul away. Yeah.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely not saying I haven't been there before, but
• 1:15:51
  uh I am I have been picked from the vine,
• 1:15:53
  so to speak, as since so I'm saying.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: Judge the rest of it.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: I can judge you all from the safety of my basket,
• 1:16:01
  as you all hang on the vine, willing to be
• 1:16:04
  eaten up by the foxes of the field, so to speak.
• 1:16:07
  During the time she was home that year, she worked
• 1:16:10
  even more intensely than usual, and that's saying a lot.
• 1:16:14
  She heard a physics PAHG from Caltech. In just three years,
• 1:16:17
  I don't think she worked fewer than twelve hours a
• 1:16:20
  day even once during those three years. I was happy
• 1:16:23
  she was home, but she was so focused on a
• 1:16:26
  lab related problem that it was more like having a
• 1:16:28
  cardboard cut out of my daughter visiting me than an
• 1:16:30
  actual person. For nearly a week. All my attempts to
• 1:16:34
  start a conversation failed. She'd respond with one syllable answers
• 1:16:38
  to my questions and immediately curl back around her notebook.
• 1:16:41
  Finally asked her what she was working on. She stared
• 1:16:45
  at me, blinking for a minute. Mine slowly descended from
• 1:16:50
  the world of high energy physics to the world of
• 1:16:53
  normal human interaction. Oh sure, She handed me her notebook,
• 1:17:00
  hardcover journal with the word record stenciled on the front.
• 1:17:05
  Or record, I should say, since on the front. I
• 1:17:08
  opened the book to the page she had been writing on.
• 1:17:10
  The only way I can describe what I saw there
• 1:17:13
  was that it was Satanic. A pentagram, an upside down
• 1:17:19
  star inscribed in a circle filled half the page. The
• 1:17:23
  rest was filled with intricately drawn symbols, strange curving shapes
• 1:17:28
  drawn from an alphabet. I had never seen decorative lines
• 1:17:31
  linked the constellations of symbols, lines with loops, curves with arrows,
• 1:17:36
  arcs with circles and triangles drawn on top of them.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: Hold, what is this At its math, it looks like
• 1:17:46
  you're I don't know, worshiping the devil.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: The devil really, she started laughing. It was the first
• 1:17:54
  time I heard her laugh since she arrived five days earlier.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Lucifer the Lord of Lies or is it flies? One
• 1:18:01
  of those I'm not trying to be like I don't know,
• 1:18:06
  Tipper Gore. I'm just saying it looks a little wacko.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: She laughed so hard she fell out of the chair.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: She finally recovered and climbed back into it.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: It's a problem for work. I'm trying to design a
• 1:18:19
  thermal stabilization system. These devil words or whatever you think
• 1:18:22
  they are, they're just stochastic tensers. The whole thing is
• 1:18:27
  just a huge stochastic different differential equational problem.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: Caud, I'm too fucking stupid to read this shit. What
• 1:18:33
  about this demon? So many things? This the pentagram?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: She turned off the hilarity.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: Now that's interesting.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: When you do the math, as I've clearly done here,
• 1:18:44
  it turns out a star inside of a circle is
• 1:18:46
  the epititum epitomum shape of them opt Jesus Christ inside
• 1:18:52
  of a circle is the optimum shape of the thermal elements
• 1:18:55
  we need to stabilize the.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: She cut herself off, paused, and show her neck words carefully.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: To stabilize the thing that needs that needs stabilizing.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: That's an interesting idea that demonic images pop up in
• 1:19:10
  because that's the kind of the joke about circuit boards, right,
• 1:19:14
  that the circuitry outlining looks like old demonic and angel sigils,
• 1:19:20
  like they're names printed, so like technology rots forth these
• 1:19:25
  forgotten like names and ideas of you know, spirituality and
• 1:19:29
  stuff like that.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: The way demons can speak without speaking so to speak. Yeah,
• 1:19:34
  that it's just.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: A fun element for like religious horror, and it's cool
• 1:19:39
  that kind of pops up here. I'm sure she's expressly demonic,
• 1:19:41
  and no, she's demonic from what we've seen, but her
• 1:19:45
  being like, oh well, coincidentally, a star, an upside down
• 1:19:49
  star inside of a circle is the best way to
• 1:19:51
  thermal stabilize.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: So it's like, I don't know, it's fun.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 4: It's a fun like loop back of like cultural demonology
• 1:19:59
  mixed in to like the science and this girl being
• 1:20:01
  a demon and stuff like that. It's just I'm completely
• 1:20:04
  sold everything. I love everything about this so far. I
• 1:20:06
  was going to press her. I know she works on
• 1:20:08
  classified projects at the lab and is it free to
• 1:20:10
  say much about them? But I thought I could tease
• 1:20:13
  out a little more information about why she was what
• 1:20:16
  she was actually doing with her life, But then she
• 1:20:19
  changed the topic to the subject I've been dreading since
• 1:20:21
  the terrible and wonderful night that she was born.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: Dad, when you adopted me, do you remember if you
• 1:20:29
  came across any information about my biological family, specifically about
• 1:20:33
  my biological father.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, Helen, I flopped onto the couch.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: Why do you want to know about your father? It's
• 1:20:43
  not like I want to meet my bird family and
• 1:20:44
  try to get all my kumba ya. Believe it or not,
• 1:20:47
  I have a professional interest in the subject, Helen. Nobody
• 1:20:53
  knows who your father is. That's what I thought, And.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: She dropped the subject. Who pursues everything she's ever been
• 1:21:02
  interested in with a relentless, white hot intensity, simply drops
• 1:21:06
  her questions about her own father.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: Do you know why? Because she knows her father's the devil.
• 1:21:10
  Let's go.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious to see what they're they're where they're
• 1:21:15
  going with this.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: I hardly saw or even talked to Helen after that Christmas.
• 1:21:22
  Her visits home became infrequent. We would go six months
• 1:21:25
  or more between phone calls. Then she died. Damn she
• 1:21:31
  was working on a project for the Army. Not at Livermore,
• 1:21:35
  they said, somewhere else. There was an accident involving a
• 1:21:38
  high energy experiment. She was killed, along with twelve other scientists.
• 1:21:43
  Her bodies were vaporized. There were no remains. Losing a
• 1:21:47
  wife and a daughter's too much for one lifetime. I
• 1:21:51
  couldn't work after that. I had to retire. I aggrieved.
• 1:21:55
  I tried to kill myself.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: I damn.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: I spent three weeks. I spent three weeks in an institution.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 4: I somehow inched my way back up to something that
• 1:22:05
  looks like a functional person. Then the mail started showing up.
• 1:22:11
  The Army apparently never stopped sending her paychecks. Six months
• 1:22:15
  after Helen died, a rubber band bound bundle of pay
• 1:22:18
  stubs with her name but my address, arrived in my mailbox.
• 1:22:22
  W two forms showed up. Next, paperwork for benefits, enrollment,
• 1:22:27
  retirement account statements showing ongoing contributions. The paperwork that modern
• 1:22:32
  life produces kept coming. I called ther HR office dozens
• 1:22:36
  of times. Their answer was always the same.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: We're sorry for the confusion. We'll look into it.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 4: Then an envelope from a company named Parental DNA analysis
• 1:22:46
  appeared to my mailbox. It was addressed to Helen. I
• 1:22:51
  tore it open with I tore it open while standing
• 1:22:54
  in the driveway. Contained the results of a paternity test.
• 1:22:58
  Ooh child Helen Kaisen father hair sample supplied by client.
• 1:23:06
  Probability of paternity ninety nine point nine repeating percent. Somehow,
• 1:23:12
  before she died, Helen found her father. She had found
• 1:23:17
  the person whose DNA entered her mother's embryo, and, contrary
• 1:23:20
  to everything known about human development, produced a child. Or
• 1:23:25
  she had at least produced a hair sample from the
• 1:23:27
  man who contributed half her genome. Interesting, so I would
• 1:23:32
  say we have a break there if I would guess
• 1:23:35
  in these high energy experiments that requires setting up a
• 1:23:39
  pentagram and stuff like that.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: She did like a demon summoning ritual.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's why I was assuming as well.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, she got hair from the devil. Yeah, that
• 1:23:47
  got so hard. I saw Helen. She's changed.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: I was returning from running errands, which she arrived at
• 1:23:55
  my house. I knew something was happening. When I turned
• 1:23:57
  into my neighborhood. The streets were full of dogs what
• 1:24:01
  looked to be every neighborhood dog labradors chihuahuahs and everything
• 1:24:05
  in between were running around like crazy. They were barking, growling, crying, jumping,
• 1:24:10
  and nipping at the air. Their owners were futilely running
• 1:24:13
  after them. I pulled into my driveway.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: There was a.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: Package hecks to the door. It was addressed to Helen.
• 1:24:21
  I liked the heavy cardboard box into the living room.
• 1:24:24
  The package was only the size of a banker's box,
• 1:24:26
  but it was as heavy as a box of rocks.
• 1:24:29
  I sighed, Why was Helen's death nearly as strange as
• 1:24:32
  her perth? I wondered what I would be doing at
• 1:24:35
  that moment.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: If the aneurism hadn't taken my wife two decades earlier,
• 1:24:39
  would I'd be happier? Opened the box.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 4: Inside was the steel case, the kind of case you'd
• 1:24:46
  used to ship something expensive and fragile. A post it
• 1:24:51
  was stuck to the top of the steel case on it.
• 1:24:54
  Someone had ridden Yeah, open this asap. I pulled the
• 1:24:59
  steel case out of the cardboard shipping box and thunked
• 1:25:02
  it down in the dining room table. I did the
• 1:25:04
  heavy duty lashes and opened it. Inside was a tablet computer.
• 1:25:09
  Underneath that was a hard plastic case. Another post it
• 1:25:13
  note was stuck to the tablet screen. Turn me on,
• 1:25:18
  I did it, booted into a heavily customized version of
• 1:25:21
  the regular operating system, and automatically started a messaging app.
• 1:25:25
  I typed a message Hello. I waited a minute, another minute.
• 1:25:32
  Someone finally typed her.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: Response, Dad, what is my mother's name? It's crazy?
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: I started to cry.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: This was probably a joke or a crazily complicated scam,
• 1:25:49
  but the thought that maybe I was messaging Helen was
• 1:25:51
  too irresistible. I never saw her body. Her paychecks keep
• 1:25:55
  showing up in my mailbox. Why couldn't I be talking
• 1:25:58
  to her?
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: Co h, where are you? Another long pause?
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: Dad.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 5: I know who my father is. I met him. I
• 1:26:09
  need to find my mother. I know how I was born.
• 1:26:14
  I know you know who my mother is. Tell me
• 1:26:16
  her name and I'll tell you where I am.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: Does not feel like a trick from the devil or
• 1:26:22
  something like that. It does, well, I imagine, mean like I
• 1:26:25
  do not believe that's her. I guess that's why it
• 1:26:28
  is her.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: Well, I say it could be her because I think
• 1:26:31
  she's been a demon or like, uh uh, what's the
• 1:26:34
  name of the kid from the omen Damien? I feel
• 1:26:37
  like she could be like an Antichrist figure. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:26:39
  And now she's communicating through hell effectively.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 4: I truly didn't know her mother's name. The infant i've
• 1:26:46
  performed the cesarean section ALM was less than half an
• 1:26:49
  hour old when I operated. She hadn't even been given
• 1:26:52
  a name yet.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know your mother's name, Helen, but I know
• 1:26:58
  your grandmother's name.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: Then I typed in the name of the woman who
• 1:27:02
  said my daughter was just excess tissue. A minute passed,
• 1:27:07
  then five. It was Helen Cohn.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: Opened the smaller case, turn the camera on.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 4: I pulled the black plastic case out of the steel
• 1:27:18
  box and opened it, and so I was a video
• 1:27:20
  camera nestled in a custom cut foam. Insert sticker on
• 1:27:24
  the camera said L L. Flear calibrated and the day
• 1:27:28
  less than two weeks earlier. It was an infrared camera
• 1:27:32
  from Laurence Livermore. Found the power switch and waited for
• 1:27:36
  it to come to life. I typed into the tablet
• 1:27:40
  it's on. Stared at the screen without blinking. She finally wrote,
• 1:27:46
  I'm in the backyard. I ran through the kitchen and
• 1:27:51
  flung open the back door. The yard was empty. I
• 1:27:54
  collapsed on the threshold and wept. Whoever I've been messaging
• 1:27:58
  to was not Helen.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: It was a joke. I heard a growl.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: The beagle who lived next door was standing by my
• 1:28:06
  backyard gate. The dog bared its teeth and snarled at
• 1:28:10
  my empty backyard.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: The dog thought something was there.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 4: Whoever I was messaging on the tablet said they were
• 1:28:18
  in my backyard. I'm slow sometimes. I realized the camera
• 1:28:22
  in my hand was there for a reason. I lifted
• 1:28:25
  the camera and scanned it across the yard. Something was there,
• 1:28:29
  Something huge, rendered in the infrared camera's garish shades of yellow, pink,
• 1:28:35
  and red, was standing directly in front of me. It
• 1:28:39
  was too close and too big to see all at
• 1:28:41
  once through the camera's narrow field of view. This is
• 1:28:47
  so cool. I started viaiving the camera at the grass.
• 1:28:51
  I saw four huge feet with long, five jointed with
• 1:28:58
  long five jointed toes protruding at odd angles.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: It was hard to get a sense of their.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: Size on the infrared, but my guess was that each
• 1:29:06
  foot was the size of a yoga ball. And inside
• 1:29:09
  the house, that slammed the door for uh, let's go,
• 1:29:13
  She's she's just It's described as almost like the Leviathan
• 1:29:17
  of revelation, like the seven headed beast with the wings
• 1:29:20
  and they lie and yeah, that's so cool. I caught
• 1:29:24
  my breath and peered out the back window. To my
• 1:29:26
  naked eye, the backyard was still empty. I am the
• 1:29:29
  camera out the window. The same feet were visible in
• 1:29:32
  the infrared spectrum. So not to be pedantic, because I
• 1:29:37
  know the author doesn't know this, and I know he's trying,
• 1:29:40
  but infrared cameras cannot see through glass.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: Just so you know what demonic one though that Helen
• 1:29:48
  gave him.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: Well, I thought it says it's from the laboratory. I
• 1:29:50
  thought the idea is you can only pick up infrared signals,
• 1:29:53
  so like it's on the what.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: If it's a demonic lab camera?
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 4: Well, no, oh, because the way infrared works is it
• 1:30:01
  picks up heat signatures, right, so if there's a demon.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: If demonic signatures, you know what, You're right, Maybe there's
• 1:30:09
  a perfect imprint of the world and the thing on
• 1:30:14
  the window from heat.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: Sure, sure, hunter, okay, there, We'll just make sure.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: The same feet were visible in the infrared spectrum. I
• 1:30:21
  raised the camera.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 4: The thing had a body like I don't know what
• 1:30:27
  an upside down dog merged with an octopus. It made
• 1:30:31
  no sense. Appendages with a dozen elbows sprouted irregularly from
• 1:30:36
  the body. The arms or tentacles or whatever you'd call them,
• 1:30:39
  mindedant hoofs, heerd feet, and human like hands. One of
• 1:30:43
  the hands held the tablet computer, identical to the one.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: I left in the living room.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 4: Table face was senslessly placed on the side of the
• 1:30:51
  thing's body. There was no neck, nothing to even suggests ahead,
• 1:30:56
  just a face stuck on the body like an afterthought.
• 1:30:59
  I'm the camera at the face. The auto focus worked
• 1:31:03
  for a moment, and the face became clear. It was Helen.
• 1:31:07
  She smiled. It reminds me of like those old, like
• 1:31:14
  eighteenth century depictions of demons where they're like these little
• 1:31:18
  balls of faces and feet like crawl around.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: Almost like weird looking animals, like the old Renaissance paintings
• 1:31:24
  of what.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like they all got like mushed together, you know,
• 1:31:28
  just like a weird fox surrealist animal depiction.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 4: I flashed back to that moment decades earlier, when I
• 1:31:36
  put my hand on the screaming baby's spelly and felt
• 1:31:39
  Helen kick.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: My first reaction had been fear.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 4: I felt terror and revulsion at the idea that somehow
• 1:31:45
  a baby had been born pregnant, that someone something had
• 1:31:50
  put its seed into an embryo produced a creature. That
• 1:31:54
  same terror and revulsion filled me when I saw Helen's
• 1:31:57
  face on the side of that monster. Years ago, I
• 1:32:00
  was able to put my fear aside and do my
• 1:32:02
  job as a doctor to deliver Helen into the world.
• 1:32:06
  I had to do the same thing today. I had
• 1:32:08
  to put my fear aside and do my job as
• 1:32:10
  a father.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: I flung the kitchen door open and shouted into the
• 1:32:14
  backyard Helen pause the new text on the.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: Tablet, goodbye Dad.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: I needed the conversation to keep going.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: I couldn't let this, this insane situation be the last
• 1:32:29
  time I saw my daughter.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: I yelled, I got.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: The patternity test results.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: The hair sample was your father.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I know who is he? A man who died a
• 1:32:44
  long time ago.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: Then she typed one last message to.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: Me, Thank you, Dad. This is what I needed to
• 1:32:52
  be doing now. There's only a thirty seven point nine
• 1:32:55
  percent chance that I'll see you again. Sorry.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: Looked into the yard with the camera. She was gone.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: So what it seems like so far? If she consciously
• 1:33:07
  did that decision. Then it makes it seem like when
• 1:33:10
  she quote unquote died, she did an experiment where she
• 1:33:13
  was able to.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: Like go into a different dimension. She went to Hell pursue. Yeah,
• 1:33:17
  she basically went to Hell.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 4: I think she was like an anti Christ or some
• 1:33:20
  kind of like seed of the Devil or something like
• 1:33:23
  that that was put on earth. And then she dedicated
• 1:33:27
  all her times to studies, which was sciences, which was
• 1:33:30
  effectively the way she used it like a modern witchcraft,
• 1:33:33
  a way to use technology to open a telport to Hell,
• 1:33:38
  her and twelve other people. Right, those twelve other people
• 1:33:40
  might as well be human sacrifices, right, or other people
• 1:33:43
  in her similar condition.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: Twelve.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 4: The number twelve is interesting. That number shows up a
• 1:33:48
  lot of the Bible, twelve disciples, twelve tribes of Israel.
• 1:33:51
  So like saying she took twelve people with her is
• 1:33:53
  saying that like either twelve or counting her thirteen, she
• 1:33:57
  would be the you know, evil thirteenth one or whatever.
• 1:34:00
  Thirteen people around the world were either these demons or
• 1:34:03
  she created a sacrifice of twelve people to open the
• 1:34:05
  gateway into Hell.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing it's the sacrifice is kind of where my
• 1:34:10
  gut was going when I.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 4: Probably the sacrifice because it makes her more special as
• 1:34:13
  like a anti Christ figure, right, like the one and only.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it seems more like the like the key, like
• 1:34:19
  that's the key she needed to than buying product go
• 1:34:22
  to hell.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so she goes to Hell and now she's
• 1:34:26
  become this demon. I don't know what the thirty seven
• 1:34:29
  point nine percent thing is. I'm sure we'll see that
• 1:34:30
  in a second, but.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: It'd just be something where she understands some kind of
• 1:34:35
  like anomaly because she was a math major before, so
• 1:34:38
  maybe she just understands the like probability is low, and
• 1:34:41
  she's like maybe like also shown like how well she's
• 1:34:44
  prepared for this.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it definitely could be. I don't know. We're
• 1:34:48
  all I'm excited to see, like this is the last section.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: The section coming up here, so curious.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: I'm so interested. This is so good.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 4: I began this post by saying that it wouldn't make
• 1:35:00
  since unless I started at the beginning. Well I did
• 1:35:02
  start at the beginning, and it probably still doesn't make
• 1:35:05
  any sense. I've gotten used to the idea that I'm
• 1:35:08
  not going to ever fully understand Helen's life death.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: And whatever you call what came after.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: Given the few fragments of information I have, any decision
• 1:35:17
  I make about what I should do next is going
• 1:35:19
  to be half baked, but baked or not. Choosing a
• 1:35:23
  course of action will at least feel like forward motion.
• 1:35:27
  If I move forward long enough, then maybe law I'll
• 1:35:29
  escape the despair that Helen left me with. There's one
• 1:35:32
  more thing I want to document here. If there's anyone
• 1:35:35
  that cares about what I've done what I'm about to do,
• 1:35:39
  maybe it will help them understand my reasons. I stayed
• 1:35:43
  in bed for three or four days after I saw
• 1:35:45
  Helen or the thing that wore her face. I got
• 1:35:49
  up a few times to trash the house, throw plates
• 1:35:52
  and glassware around, and knock over furniture. Eventually I had
• 1:35:56
  to clean up. The last thing I put away was
• 1:35:59
  the steel box that held the tablet and the camera.
• 1:36:02
  So as putting the items back in the box, I
• 1:36:05
  discovered something at the bottom of the steel container. The
• 1:36:08
  notebook Helen brought home for our last Christmas together, the
• 1:36:12
  notebook that I said looked like it belonged to a
• 1:36:14
  devil worshiper. Found the page that Helen was working on
• 1:36:18
  during that Christmas vacation. I know she said it was math,
• 1:36:22
  stochastic differential equations and tensors, but it still looks satanic
• 1:36:27
  to me. The rest of the journal was filled with
• 1:36:30
  her research work. Most of the remaining fifty pages held
• 1:36:33
  nothing but math. Some of it looked like the Satanic
• 1:36:37
  ruins on the page with the pentagram, and some held
• 1:36:39
  the standard curvy integral signs and Greek letters that I
• 1:36:42
  remembered from my college calculus classes. Something on the last
• 1:36:47
  page caught my eye. A mess of computations that started
• 1:36:51
  twelve pages earlier ended with this line.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: Selection ratio equals zero point three seventy nine.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: The last thienk Kelen wrote to me included the same number.
• 1:37:05
  There's only a thirty seven point nine percent chance I'll
• 1:37:07
  see you again. I've spent the last three months studying
• 1:37:11
  those twelve pages of calculations. The main thing I've learned
• 1:37:15
  was that Helen was far more brilliant than I realized.
• 1:37:18
  Whatever problem she worked out on those last twelve pages
• 1:37:21
  drew from the fields of probability statistics, game theory, population dynamics,
• 1:37:26
  Bayesian analysis, and non Euclidean geometry. Ah my heart whenever
• 1:37:31
  I hear that phrase. I went over the notebook again
• 1:37:35
  and again. What was thirty seven point nine percent? What
• 1:37:39
  was she calculating? As far as I can tell, which
• 1:37:42
  is it very far? She was studying some attribute of
• 1:37:46
  people who have died. There's nothing conclusive in her notebooks,
• 1:37:50
  so I have to guess. Based on data gathered in
• 1:37:53
  high energy physics experts at Lawrence Livermore, Helen calculated that
• 1:37:57
  a thirty seven point nine percent of people who die
• 1:37:59
  can you to experience some form of existence after death?
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: With one exception.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 4: I don't regret anything that I've done in Helen's impossible life.
• 1:38:09
  I would do it all over again, from performing a
• 1:38:12
  sinesarean section on a pregnant infant to adopting the child
• 1:38:15
  I delivered, saying goodbye.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: To whatever it is that she became. The only regret
• 1:38:20
  I have said, I didn't learn her mother's name. Of
• 1:38:25
  the thing.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 4: Back to the day in the mall when Helen was
• 1:38:28
  eight years old. She had no idea that the girl
• 1:38:31
  on the other side of the food court was her mother.
• 1:38:33
  But Helen sensed something not a maternal bond or a
• 1:38:38
  vague sense of familiarity. Whatever, eight year old Helen sensed
• 1:38:42
  in that child activated something dark inside of her. Helen said,
• 1:38:47
  I'm want to eat her. I think she meant it literally.
• 1:38:52
  Eight year old Helen said that eating her.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: Mother might help her get out one day.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 4: I don't know what she thought she needed to get
• 1:39:02
  out of, but if helping Helen out of something she's
• 1:39:05
  stuck in can return me to her, then I'm going
• 1:39:07
  to help. I went online, I went to the courthouse
• 1:39:11
  and dug through moldering adoption paperwork. I hired a private investigator.
• 1:39:16
  I dug into the past and discovered the name of
• 1:39:18
  the infant who was my surgical patient on that terrible
• 1:39:21
  and wonderful night in.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 3: Nineteen eighty two.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 4: That baby's an adult now. I found her address, her employer,
• 1:39:28
  her credit history. I didn't care about hippo regulations, privacy agreements,
• 1:39:33
  or anything like that. I gathered, bought, and stole all
• 1:39:37
  the information I could find about the family that I
• 1:39:39
  adopted Helen. From the box I contained the tablet, camera
• 1:39:43
  and her notebook had a return address label on it
• 1:39:47
  a PO box in Livermore, California. But everything I learned
• 1:39:50
  about Helen's brother into an envelope and sent it to
• 1:39:52
  that PO box. One more task remains task. It has
• 1:39:58
  a thirty seven point nine percent chance of success. I
• 1:40:02
  need to see my daughter again. I need to exist
• 1:40:04
  in a universe where she also exists. I've decided to
• 1:40:08
  kill myself. Wasn't an easy decision. It was based on
• 1:40:12
  imperfect information and guesswork about Helen's research. But death feels
• 1:40:16
  like forward motion towards an existence where I can be
• 1:40:20
  with my daughter. Posting the strange memoirs my final living act.
• 1:40:25
  I have no family left to say goodbye to my
• 1:40:28
  close friendships with her decades ago. Perhaps the information I've
• 1:40:32
  written here will be useful to investigators or to people
• 1:40:35
  related to the woman who referred to my daughter as
• 1:40:37
  excess tissue. Hopefully the information I sent to the po
• 1:40:41
  box will make its way to Helen. She will finally
• 1:40:44
  eat the woman who shares her birthday Goodbye. My daughter's
• 1:40:49
  calculations are correct, my plan succeeds. There's a thirty seven
• 1:40:54
  point nine percent chance I'll meet you one day.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: I love how he ends his stories.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a nice little cherry on a little Yeah.
• 1:41:03
  That one was great too. I liked the religious aspect
• 1:41:07
  that ties in with just the science nature of it
• 1:41:10
  as well, like it'd be interesting to if this is
• 1:41:13
  like a longer story, because once again, this one was
• 1:41:15
  pretty tight, like pretty short, but it's very effective, Like
• 1:41:20
  very that's been pretty hard, I mean, like going through
• 1:41:23
  it would have been nice to you know, really live
• 1:41:27
  with these characters a little bit longer because I really,
• 1:41:29
  in terms of like actual character building, I really enjoyed
• 1:41:31
  the dynamic of the dad here.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 4: It's such a brutal place too, to be like, well,
• 1:41:37
  my daughter's the devil, but I have to kill myself
• 1:41:40
  to go see her, you know, like the sort of
• 1:41:43
  desperation of that.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: It's very violent.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the conclusion to that is so harrowing in a
• 1:41:48
  weird way. It's also it's kind of like as psychotic.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: Break in a weird way.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: You can't tell if this guy is really rationally there
• 1:41:55
  and he's kind of making conclusions about her work and
• 1:41:59
  all that kind of stuff.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: Not to say that he's wrong, I'm just saying you can.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: Read it in a way where this man's just like, well,
• 1:42:04
  I'm gonna kill myself and see my daughter. I can
• 1:42:07
  see that being uh, I don't know, I could also
• 1:42:10
  see that just being someone who's just emotionally distraught and
• 1:42:13
  that's their kind of emotional reaction and response to that thing.
• 1:42:19
  I really enjoyed it, really enjoyed it, just like this author,
• 1:42:24
  Peter Peter Right, Yeah.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: Peter, something dark.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 3: Let me make sure I got this right, David Peter Cross.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: Let me look, David Peter Cross, Where's I.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 3: Clicked on it in about a second ago? Am I stupid? Uh?
• 1:42:40
  Peter Frost?
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: David Peter Frost, Duvid Peter Frost, David, I really enjoy
• 1:42:46
  the commitment to the initial idea, starting with a very
• 1:42:50
  absurdist hook, and then really kind of like rationalizing it
• 1:42:53
  in a fun way while not deviating and trying to
• 1:42:56
  give it too much grounded realism. Like I think the
• 1:42:59
  rationale is necessarily something that's like it's rational in the
• 1:43:03
  sense of it makes sense in terms of reality, but
• 1:43:07
  more so it rationalizes it in the story with having
• 1:43:11
  characters interact and like continuously reaffirm the hook of the story,
• 1:43:17
  you know, with the guy basically adopting a che key
• 1:43:20
  chain size baby she gets raised, and like then introducing
• 1:43:23
  these new kind of weird absurdist things but never revealing
• 1:43:27
  its hand too much. Kind of just like it's in
• 1:43:29
  a weigh it's a It becomes an answer to why
• 1:43:33
  to her abrupt like you know, pregnancy and delivery of
• 1:43:38
  this baby. But it doesn't fully say this is the answer.
• 1:43:42
  It kind of just dangles a carrot in front of
• 1:43:44
  your face and leads you down this little, uh, this trail,
• 1:43:47
  which is just a lot of fun.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed both of these stories from him.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 4: It goes really hard. What do you think that means that,
• 1:43:54
  Like Helen has to eat her mother to get out?
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 3: What do you think that means?
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a couple of things. One I didn't know
• 1:44:02
  if because the whole thing she says, I, well, I
• 1:44:04
  saw it one day. It's not like it's happened yet,
• 1:44:07
  but I've seen it happen. So my whole thing is
• 1:44:10
  does she have to quote unquote eat I'm guessing either
• 1:44:13
  possess or kill her mother to return from hell?
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: Is what I'm wondering is if that's what that means.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of especially with biblical and demon shit,
• 1:44:27
  there's a lot of stuff about like devouring or consuming,
• 1:44:30
  you know, and I think that's always open for interpretations.
• 1:44:32
  So whenever she says I need to eat this person,
• 1:44:35
  is it an actual is it an actual you know,
• 1:44:38
  consuming or is it more just like metaphorical translation.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 4: With one line they said when they went to look
• 1:44:46
  at the paintings where he said, uh, what was that.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: Skipped all the way?
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna eat my when I go to Hell. I'm
• 1:44:59
  gonna eat my way out through my bloodline.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it sounds like she's legitimately going to
• 1:45:05
  have to kill her mother is the big thing almost
• 1:45:09
  like it seems like a.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Like it's like.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 4: Her soul is some ancient demon that's existed in Hell
• 1:45:17
  for generations that's mad and found a way out, and
• 1:45:20
  now it's finding a way to like take revenge on
• 1:45:23
  like it's bloodline, the people who made it exist, the
• 1:45:25
  demons of Hell that made it exist, you know.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't know, there's a lot of ways
• 1:45:31
  to think about.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: Believe in or something like that, Like you could take
• 1:45:34
  it so many different directions.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many ways to hypothesize what is happening
• 1:45:39
  in the story because there's a lot of things too
• 1:45:41
  where it's like, well, you're already out and living in
• 1:45:43
  the world, so where exactly like going to Hell and
• 1:45:48
  finding your true form and then re rekindling into the world.
• 1:45:52
  Is it something that's supposed to be a sign of
• 1:45:55
  the end times or something? Is it somebody bringing hell
• 1:45:58
  with them? You know, there's a lot of different ways,
• 1:46:01
  Like you said that if you can interpret this, But
• 1:46:06
  once again, as always, which I don't know if people
• 1:46:08
  feel the same way, I think I just really love
• 1:46:11
  don't reveal your full hand, Like this is the funnest
• 1:46:13
  part of these stories is being able to talk with
• 1:46:15
  your buddies about it and being able to speculate on it,
• 1:46:18
  because the whole thing is you could read this again
• 1:46:19
  in the future and you take it a completely different way.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: And I think that's just such a powerful thing with
• 1:46:23
  these stories.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't feel like a cop out either, Like
• 1:46:26
  I think that the story has a definitive enough end
• 1:46:28
  to where there's a finite end to this character. But
• 1:46:34
  the results of those things are different. But I don't
• 1:46:36
  think I need to necessarily know the results. More so
• 1:46:39
  the closure of this our main character, the dad. So
• 1:46:44
  I thought it was very interesting and I think it's
• 1:46:47
  a great way to round out the episode.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 3: It is I'll say one more time, check out.
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 4: We'll link it into the description. On Amazon, you can
• 1:46:56
  get paperback or kindle. Second Death, Do Not Speak the
• 1:46:59
  Name of the Dead, Do Not Pray is the full
• 1:47:02
  title of it by Peter Frost David Brutal. It seems
• 1:47:05
  to somehow link together the story we just read about
• 1:47:11
  the daughter as well as the glenmontt Metro story, because
• 1:47:15
  there is another story, a three parter called my patient
• 1:47:19
  has spent eight months or has spent eight million years
• 1:47:22
  under a bench in the Glenmont Metro. That story seems
• 1:47:25
  to combine the elements from both, and then the Second
• 1:47:27
  Death is like.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 3: A full novel about it.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 4: Interestingly, so check out The Second Death if you're interested
• 1:47:32
  in seeing this story continue further. We certainly enjoyed it,
• 1:47:35
  and he seems to be a great author, So show
• 1:47:37
  some love.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, seriously, go pick up a book, give the
• 1:47:40
  guy some love. Be sure to get a physical copy
• 1:47:42
  of these books as well. You never know what might
• 1:47:44
  happen where these things just disappear one day, So I
• 1:47:46
  am always an adamant I.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: Always recommend getting physical copies of anything that we read.
• 1:47:50
  If you enjoy it, you just never know.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 2: And also thank you for everyone who's listening on Spotify
• 1:47:56
  or Apple podcast right now and has rated the podcast
• 1:48:00
  with a nice rating. I guess whatever, but thank you.
• 1:48:03
  The audio side of the things help us a lot.
• 1:48:05
  And this year has been an insane year of growth
• 1:48:09
  and just the community coming together. The amount of memes
• 1:48:11
  and like fun and camaraderie has been so explosive and
• 1:48:15
  so awesome and just so looking forward to next year
• 1:48:19
  and what we can do with reading stories and just
• 1:48:22
  introducing more stories and more authors to our audience, and
• 1:48:25
  just wanted to say thank you as well.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: It's been awesome, So thank you, thank you, thank you,
• 1:48:29
  thank you.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 4: Thank you all very much for everything it means the world.
• 1:48:33
  This year has been incredible and I'm excited to just
• 1:48:37
  keep on keeping on right. But thank you for the
• 1:48:40
  blessing it means the world.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: You all have a good rest of your day. We
• 1:48:43
  will catch you in the next one.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 3: See you all later in the next one, and be
• 1:48:48
  sure to not go to hell by