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Smiling Ones On Space Station Mir · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Creepcast. Today.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: We're reading the Smiling Ones on Space Station Mirror, which
• 0:22
  I could tell us about that.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I have to finish sharing my met So. The author
• 0:41
  of this story is someone named Darius Pilgrim uh and
• 0:46
  I think that's his actual name.
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: He is the author of this story, which you can
• 0:51
  get as an ebook on Amazon. He also has another
• 0:54
  published story that Nick's iPad has once again crashed for
• 0:58
  the thirteenth time today and make Me lose my mind.
• 1:01
  He's also the author of Wrong Roads Scary Stories from
• 1:06
  Coast to Coast, or at least he was one of
• 1:08
  the contributors to the anthology Buck of It, so he's
• 1:10
  got a couple things published out. This story comes highly recommended.
• 1:14
  As a matter of fact, we're going to be reading
• 1:15
  it on Darius's website Darius Pilgrim dot com. That will
• 1:18
  be linked in the description so you can keep up
• 1:20
  with the stuff there. Harry says, this is a good one.
• 1:23
  I've never read it before. People have recommended this to
• 1:27
  us in the subreddit a couple of times, so hopefully
• 1:31
  it's cool. Sounds like it's cool. We haven't done a
• 1:34
  space story since mister Floppy. Yeah, yeah, what was that one?
• 1:39
  The other astronaut on this trip.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Died Darius Pilgrim dot WordPress dot com. Slash, the smiling dashes,
• 1:46
  the dash, smiling dash, ones, dash on dash, Space dest
• 1:49
  station dash, mirror forward slash and it will be in
• 1:56
  the link as well. But if you want to type
• 1:57
  it out, which I like to do, I thought that
• 2:00
  just put that you've never done that before, Darius Pilgrim
• 2:04
  dot WordPress dot com for something.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Before before we uh we went and got ice cream
• 2:11
  right before this, and uh, children.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Like children, we dooke before we got ice cream.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: Before this stole, we didn't got ice cream. And while
• 2:22
  we were getting ice cream, Alison referred to me as
• 2:24
  Hunter's friend, and he quickly corrected her and said, uh, coworker, Yeah,
• 2:30
  there's no jests. There's no joke to his tone. He
• 2:33
  hasn't shown any humor in that statement since then.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So the uh we got ice cream though? Pretty good.
• 2:44
  Do you like space stories?
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: I feel like they are very hit or miss.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I guess they never miss.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Huh where.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Okay? I feel like they can do some really cool
• 3:04
  stuff like.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I forgot about it.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: He just really, that's the dumbestraw.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Come on, man, Wait the dumbest.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, just like the chip the big cheese smile
• 3:36
  with the little tiny.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So the smiling ones on Space Station Mirror, well, well.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: I was saying, is like a lot of them are
• 3:45
  either really good. You can do cool stuff with them,
• 3:48
  like the themes of the comment going through space and stuff
• 3:52
  that we saw in the writing during the other astronaut
• 3:55
  on this mission died six weeks ago, and I'm trying
• 4:02
  to think of I know there's some space stuff I've
• 4:04
  read that's kind of lame. I think I read one
• 4:07
  about like a bug on a spaceship when I was
• 4:09
  younger that was kind of just like lack lesser. The
• 4:12
  setting is very creepy, but you gotta do something with.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: It if you had, Do you like this the name
• 4:16
  of the story?
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I think the smiling ones, I mean similar to
• 4:21
  the other astronaut died. It's like, why why would there
• 4:24
  be smiling ones in the middle of space? Right? What
• 4:37
  is that just a stack of drawings?
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: What's some drawings I've done?
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: What else in there? To me? I said, we saw
• 4:47
  that one. Everyone saw that one. Yeah, why does he
• 4:53
  always draw my neck so long? Five seconds before we
• 5:08
  started recording, he said he asked, who's your favorite superhero?
• 5:14
  I'm probably Batman. Just that for me to go, that's
• 5:21
  really good? Whoa what's that? Oh my gosh, it's like
• 5:24
  a skull coming out of a hand hold on can
• 5:28
  you can you? Can you get that one and smile
• 5:30
  dog out? Just can you just hold them both up
• 5:34
  to the camera at the same time. No, that's not
• 5:39
  the one I asked you to get out. I need
• 5:47
  All right, let's read this story, okay, Smiling Ones on
• 5:50
  Space Station Mirror?
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Can I be controversial? Off the top? I think that
• 5:54
  the title is a bit of a flop for me.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: You know? Is that where you give me why I
• 6:00
  felt about it? Feel about them? What would you rather
• 6:03
  be called?
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't read the story first to make a title name.
• 6:15
  I just don't like smiling ones.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: You don't like smiling ones?
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: You just a bit try hard? And then also, mirror,
• 6:21
  isn't that what they gave Jesus?
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: That's mer tell then why r R? It's different? What's
• 6:31
  this like? Shifty little? You're in a mood right now here?
• 6:33
  I feel like a goblin? All right? Part one, March nineteenth,
• 6:39
  two thousand and one. The Russian Space Station mirror disappeared
• 6:42
  from low Earth orbit. There's no collision or explosion. One
• 6:46
  minute it was there and the next it wasn't. For
• 6:49
  twenty four panicked hours, a select group of scientists, intelligence agents,
• 6:54
  and government officials worked tirelessly to simultaneously figure out what
• 6:58
  had happened and the general public from discovering that anything
• 7:02
  had occurred at all. Exactly one day later, mer reappeared
• 7:06
  in the precise location it had last been observed. It
• 7:09
  appeared relatively unchanged, but for one major exception. Space station,
• 7:14
  which had been unoccupied for months in preparation of deorbiting,
• 7:17
  was now inhabited. The fact that you've never heard of
• 7:21
  this proves the cover up was successful. Figuring out what
• 7:25
  caused this anomaly and what happened during the twenty four
• 7:28
  hours mir was missing as an entirely different matter. I
• 7:32
  know this because I was there in Ross Cosmo's Mission
• 7:35
  control on that day in March so long ago. Never told,
• 7:40
  single sold this story. I'm an old man now, I
• 7:44
  don't have long left to live. Man. He needs to
• 7:47
  hear the truth where there's no one left alive to
• 7:49
  tell it. Were you about to say something?
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be negative you already don't like it. No,
• 8:01
  it's not that.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: It just reminds me a lot like a Twilight Zone episode.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: Okay, is that.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Called the Parallel? You watch that one?
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: A specific one? No, I don't think so.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Twilight's on the Parallel an astronauts going up into outer
• 8:15
  space and then he auto all of a sudden, he
• 8:17
  just he like blacks out, and the people on Earth
• 8:19
  are like, where did the spacecraft go? And he wakes
• 8:22
  up and basically an alternate reality and then he uh
• 8:25
  has to basically go back out into space whatever. But
• 8:27
  it was like going into space, it put him into
• 8:29
  an altered timeline or an alto reality where when he
• 8:31
  landed he was on like a different version of Earth.
• 8:34
  But this whole idea of like going up blip gone.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: I see, Oh why'd you point it? Nick? When he
• 8:44
  walked by?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Are you doing Nick? Did you gonna hang out with us?
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: Just to make sure that he's been he's been in get?
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Did you get nervous?
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I always get a little nervous. You want to hang
• 8:59
  out for a second? Listen the next paragraph of this.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: What did you want right now? What? He's a strange movie,
• 9:08
  He's been weird you didn't even do the thank you
• 9:11
  patrons for watching, thank you to audio is none of that.
• 9:16
  You can say it now, I think, thank you patrons,
• 9:19
  thank you to people listening on audio platforms like Spotify
• 9:22
  and Apple Music. Be sure to give us the rating
• 9:24
  over there. We really appreciate. It means a lot. And
• 9:26
  of course, thank you to our lovely patrons who support
• 9:28
  the show with your harder and cash. It means the world.
• 9:31
  Extra content over there for you if you're interested, and
• 9:33
  there might be I can't. I have no idea if
• 9:35
  there will be March when this episode's up, but there
• 9:37
  might be that too. Precast dot shop, storecast dot store.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: No one else noticed it, but when we were pulling
• 9:43
  into my driveway, the person behind me ran over a turtle.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: That been bothering.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: You where on the road, out on the road.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Or was the turtle in.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: A weird mood till we started recording. You were fine
• 10:08
  talking to that other guy. You're fine talking to Alison.
• 10:14
  I asked you a question.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: He's like.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: Got family annihilator eyes. All of a sudden, all right,
• 10:30
  just whatever. In the days leading up to the anomaly,
• 10:34
  there had been a distinct sense of gloom hanging over
• 10:37
  the mission control room. Every one of us there had dedicated.
• 10:47
  In the days leading up to the anomaly, there had
• 10:49
  been a distinct sense of gloom hanging over the mission
• 10:51
  control room. Every one of us there had dedicated our
• 10:54
  lives to the space station, and now it was all
• 10:57
  about to end. Mirror was launched into orbit by the
• 11:00
  Soviet Union in nineteen eighty six for what was supposed
• 11:04
  to be a five year mission. Now fifteen years later,
• 11:08
  the plucky space station that had survived the end of
• 11:10
  the Cold War and collapse of the USSR was showing
• 11:13
  its age. It was cluttered, dirty, worn, and rapidly deteriorating
• 11:18
  when the Russian government decided to finally divert all funds
• 11:21
  and manpower to the newly built International Space Station. Yet
• 11:26
  it still held a special place in the heart of
• 11:28
  every Russian who had ever looked up to the stars
• 11:31
  and dreamed of what was out there. Multiple attempts were
• 11:34
  made by various private organizations and individuals to fund the
• 11:37
  continued existence of the station or even buy it outright.
• 11:42
  One company even tried to purchase Mirror and turn it
• 11:44
  into a permanent orbital movie and television studio. In the end,
• 11:49
  it proved too expensive to be feasible, leaving us skelting
• 11:52
  crew of scientists, astronauts, and engineers to despondently monitor the
• 11:56
  last few days of the station's existence, like watching a
• 12:00
  beloved family member whither away in hospice care. I was
• 12:04
  a member of the communications division of Mere Mission Control,
• 12:08
  once a twenty five person department, now dwindled down to
• 12:11
  just sixth essential personnel. I was home in bed when
• 12:14
  I received an urgent call at four in the morning,
• 12:18
  the call stating that an emergency had occurred and requiring
• 12:21
  me to report to mission control immediately. I arrived to
• 12:25
  find the normally tranquil control room in a frenzy of
• 12:28
  activity that verged on panic. My head was spinning as
• 12:32
  I was briefed on the situation. How could this be true?
• 12:36
  Something as big as a space station doesn't disappear without
• 12:39
  a trace, seemed impossible. We all did our best, but
• 12:44
  there wasn't a whole lot anyone could actually do. All
• 12:47
  of our trafficking systems seemed to indicate that the station
• 12:50
  had simply ceased to exist. Visual inspection of the station's
• 12:54
  normal trajectory confirmed this. Washington had also been discreetly contacted
• 12:59
  and vehemently denied involvement. Beyond that, what could be done.
• 13:04
  We activated every radio telescope we could get access to,
• 13:07
  hoping for a miracle. We even convinced the Americans to
• 13:11
  clandestinely use the Hubble telescope to aid in a visual search.
• 13:15
  But it was like looking for one particular grain of
• 13:17
  sand on all the world's beaches, and we all knew it.
• 13:22
  The next twenty four hours passed in a haze of coffee,
• 13:24
  cigarettes and sleep deprivation. Then twenty four hours to the
• 13:28
  second after I went missing, mirrors suddenly and inexplicably reappeared
• 13:34
  as we've reappeared, as if we had collectively wished it
• 13:37
  back into existence. Monitors showed the station there, intact and
• 13:41
  seemingly whole, where a moment before there had been nothing
• 13:44
  but empty space and distant stars. Stunned silence engulfed the room,
• 13:49
  stretching out for what felt like hours. Then the radio
• 13:52
  crackled to life, and I jumped in my seat, breaking
• 13:55
  the trance. We were receiving a radio transmission from an
• 13:59
  unmanned space station that had just reappeared, as if by magic.
• 14:04
  It made no logical sense. The voice that came over
• 14:07
  the mission control speakers, was breathless, panicked.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: May day, may they may day, this is Glsowski.
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: But then the contact Soviet space program in Moscow.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Please does anyone rhythm?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine if I just go on here you go, pop,
• 14:29
  it's back. That's what happened with mirror, right, huh, that's
• 14:36
  it happened with mirror. Is that what happened?
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: And that's exactly what happened.
• 14:42
  Speaker 6: It's fucking scary. What it's scary?
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Why are you laughing? For a moment, no one reacted.
• 14:58
  It felt like all the air had been sucked out
• 15:00
  of the room. My mind was reeling, trying desperately to
• 15:04
  maintain a grip on reality in this world of sudden insanity. Ladovski,
• 15:11
  Alexi Ladovski. The name registered with me. I'd heard it
• 15:15
  somewhere before, but I couldn't remember where. We looked at
• 15:20
  one another in confusion, no one wanting to take responsibility
• 15:23
  for the situation, no one knowing how to proceed. Finally,
• 15:27
  the director made his way to the communications station to
• 15:31
  take command of the situation.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: As you nikopted General Director of the Russian Space Agency.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: The soft hiss of static filled the room, as we
• 15:40
  waited for a reply Russian.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Space Agency, I do not recall. I am sorry, I
• 15:46
  do not recognize your name. Mister Koptev is chief designer,
• 15:50
  said Gikolov with you, I would very much like to
• 15:53
  speak with him.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: I exchanged a confused look with the operator in the
• 15:57
  terminal next to mind, a small bespect named Yakovlev, Chief
• 16:02
  designer Saragei Korlev was a legend, the founding father of
• 16:06
  the entire Soviet space program and arguably the founder of
• 16:10
  the modern astronomy as a whole. He had also been
• 16:13
  dead for over thirty years. Doctor Koptev somehow kept us cool.
• 16:18
  I'm missing a beat.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry to cosmonaut Ladowski. The chief designer is not
• 16:23
  here at the moment. Might deb of assistance to you.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: He replied, with a barely detectable quiver in his voice.
• 16:30
  The only other sign betraying his trepidation was his hand
• 16:34
  gripping the transmitter so tightly that the knuckles turned to
• 16:37
  ghostly white.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, comrade, you can tell me how to get off
• 16:40
  this damn thing and back to Earth.
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: I could see it through the porthos. Please you have
• 16:45
  to help me.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: I want to go home, f Arman di Cosmo. No,
• 16:50
  we're starting to work on that as we speak. In
• 16:52
  the meantime, it's very important that you stay calm and
• 16:55
  try to answer one questions as best you can. I'm
• 16:58
  going to turn the radio over to my colleague Yokolev,
• 17:02
  who will ask a few basic questions and take her
• 17:04
  biometric information and preparation.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: Said Toptev, Ben whispering to Yakova Lev, get.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Him to tag his heart, read the blood press shut
• 17:13
  didn't but turn anything else you can think of. Just
• 17:16
  keep him talking, keep him distracted and lesson for everything,
• 17:19
  and listen for anything unnatural going on up there. This
• 17:23
  whole thing is unnatural.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: Sir, replied Jakovlev. Doctor Kopteff glared at him in motion
• 17:29
  for him to put on his headphones. He then turned
• 17:31
  to the rest of the room and raised his voice.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: The rest of you I need prepared for a briefing
• 17:35
  up and up front, exactly thirty minutes. In the meantime,
• 17:40
  no phone calls or communications with anyone outside this room,
• 17:43
  the wives, parents, children, or anybody else. We're going completely silent.
• 17:48
  Failure to observe this protocol result of immediate termination and
• 17:52
  in guard's oration.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: He walked briskly into his office, in motion for the
• 17:55
  other senior department heads to follow. Half hour later, we
• 17:59
  had gathered in front of the Michigan Control room under
• 18:01
  the large central screen. Director Koptev stood facing us his
• 18:05
  countenance an emotionless mask. Sound of Yakov liv quietly speaking
• 18:09
  into the radio drifted up from the back of the
• 18:11
  otherwise silent room. Koptev cleared his throat and began.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: As you all know, Russia's predecessor state, the USSR, was
• 18:19
  responsible for a great number of milestones in space exploration.
• 18:23
  One of the most important of these accomplishments was putting
• 18:26
  the first human into autor space, Yuri Garigan, who completed
• 18:30
  an orbit around the Earth on Aper twelfth, nineteen sixty one.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: A black and white picture of Gagarin, dressed heroically and
• 18:36
  covered in metals, appeared on the screen.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: What most of you do not know is that Yuri
• 18:41
  Gagarden was actually one of the first humans tool survived spaceflight.
• 18:45
  Four attempts were made previous to Gogarden, each ending in tragedy.
• 18:50
  As the Soviet Union was at the time in the
• 18:52
  midst of the space race with the United States, any
• 18:55
  possible failures would deem poor for morale. As such, each
• 18:58
  attempt went on an announced and was shrouded in secrecy,
• 19:02
  got again, succeeded and was paraded as hero for the
• 19:05
  world to see. The failures were covered up and the
• 19:08
  details remained classified to this day. The first of these
• 19:12
  secret attempts was made in nineteen fifty seven, a few
• 19:15
  months after the success of Sputnik, by a cosmonaut traveling
• 19:19
  what amounted to a modified in a continental ballistic missile.
• 19:24
  Instruments tract this progress to a height of one hundred
• 19:26
  and eighty six miles, at which point the transmission suddenly interrupted,
• 19:30
  The rocket seemingly disappeared, and cosmonaut was never heard from again.
• 19:35
  That man's name was Elisky Ladowski.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: So this is based on the lost Cosmonaut conspiracy. Have
• 19:44
  you heard of it before? So basically what he said
• 19:46
  that before Russia's successful attempts, the United States monitor that
• 19:50
  they had several missile launches or like station where satellite
• 19:55
  launches into space, that historically there was never anyone on
• 20:00
  like no, they didn't do stuff. There were animals that
• 20:01
  were sent like you know, like at the dog and stuff,
• 20:04
  but right between like the animals and people. They just
• 20:07
  sent stuff up there. So the conspiracy is they were
• 20:10
  sending people up every time they died. It was covered
• 20:12
  up until eventually Gagarin lived and then they publicized him
• 20:16
  as the first So the idea being they sent a
• 20:18
  bunch of people in space to just die. So it's
• 20:21
  working off that a series of gas rose from the
• 20:24
  small crowd. I can feel my heartbeat thumping away in
• 20:27
  my temple. None of this made sense now.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: I hope to God that the voice coming through those
• 20:31
  speakers really is Ladowski, and then we can bring him
• 20:34
  back to Earth with the heroes welcome. But all my instincts,
• 20:38
  as well as the intel we've managed to gather, are
• 20:41
  telling me otherwise. Well, there are some obvious similarities between
• 20:45
  the disappearance of Ladovski in nineteen fifty seven and yesterday's
• 20:48
  disappearance of Mirror. We all know that correlation does not
• 20:51
  imply causation. We must all try to keep a levelheaded
• 20:54
  the remain rational, and rely on scientific training it trying
• 20:59
  to unravel this mystery. I cannot call in any more assistance,
• 21:03
  as that would only open the door to more leaks
• 21:05
  of information. So people you see around around you here
• 21:09
  in this room are going to have to be the
• 21:11
  ones to figure this out.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Pause for a moment. As we each looked around the room,
• 21:16
  it was only half as full as it had once
• 21:18
  been at the height of the program. My mouth fell
• 21:20
  very dry as Coptiff continued.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: To solve this puzzle. I'm going to need one hundred
• 21:24
  percent effort at dedication from every single one of you,
• 21:28
  and it will not be easy. As far as I'm concerned,
• 21:31
  the events of the last twenty four hours represent a
• 21:33
  total paradigm shift to all the previous understanding the physics
• 21:38
  and astronomy. So I want you to toss Awkhun's razor
• 21:42
  out the window because the premises of which we base
• 21:45
  reality have changed. As such, all possible explanations are on
• 21:48
  the table, even the seemingly improbable. No hypothesis should be
• 21:52
  discarded without thorough examination. This is a scientific discovery as
• 21:56
  it's purest. This is what the Russians were born for.
• 21:59
  It goes without saying that a lot more than the
• 22:01
  fate of one Cosmo is at stake.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Odd silence filled the room as the gravity of the
• 22:06
  situation settled on each of us. My chest felt heavy
• 22:09
  in my throat tight director Koptev took a seed, and Markov,
• 22:13
  the head of tracking and communications, took his place center stage.
• 22:17
  Central screen changed to the familiar image of the Mere
• 22:20
  space station.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: This is the highest resolution image of Mere we have
• 22:24
  from before the anomaly, captured about fifteen minutes prior to disappearance.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: He said in a horse smoker's voice.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And here is an image of mea Currently.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: The picture changed over to one that looked superficially similar
• 22:38
  if something was clearly off. A few moments later, the
• 22:41
  screen switched again, now showing both images side by side.
• 22:44
  After only a few seconds of studying, the difference quickly
• 22:47
  became apparent. In the newer image, the coloration of the
• 22:50
  space station was far darker, almost as if coated in
• 22:53
  a layer of soot. Scratches and dents covered its surface
• 22:57
  where there had been few previously. Many of the solar
• 23:00
  arrays were broken and twisted, and some of the modules
• 23:03
  show cracks and other signs of where a few were
• 23:06
  even missing. This was clearly a very changed space station
• 23:10
  from the one that had disappeared the day before. The
• 23:13
  other thing that stuck out to me were the windows
• 23:16
  clear and reflective in the first image, completely darkened in
• 23:19
  the second, as if someone had taped black construction paper
• 23:22
  to the inside of each of them. Markov continued on
• 23:25
  to introduce another of the many mysteries confronting us. After reappearing,
• 23:30
  the station's eternal clock seemed to be malfunctioning. The time
• 23:34
  was still correct, but the date now read March twentieth,
• 23:37
  twenty forty five, forty four years into the future, and
• 23:41
  the exact same length of time from Ladevsky's disappearance in
• 23:45
  nineteen fifty seven to today. That possibly be a coincidence, perhaps,
• 23:52
  but the sinking feeling of my gut told me that
• 23:54
  it was not. Either the computer was malfunctioning or Mirror
• 23:58
  had really been somewhere else for forty four years while
• 24:04
  only twenty four hours had passed here. Thoughts still makes
• 24:08
  me shudder to this day. Barkov went on to highlight
• 24:10
  a few more strange occurrences. First, the life support system,
• 24:14
  which had been shut down for months since there was
• 24:16
  no one left on board, was found to be engaged
• 24:19
  in operating. When mir reappeared, something else up there was breathing,
• 24:24
  be it Ladovski or something else. Furthermore, if the man
• 24:29
  on MIRR really was Ladovski. How could he possibly know
• 24:32
  how to activate the life support system? Technology in nineteen
• 24:36
  fifty seven was extremely primitive compared to what it is
• 24:38
  up there on the space station now. There's no way
• 24:41
  he would have been able to access the computer system
• 24:43
  and navigate the complicated process to manually engage live support. Secondly,
• 24:49
  the cameras and microphones used for video communications, which were
• 24:53
  in working order before the anomaly, had either been deactivated
• 24:57
  or were malfunctioning. Getting these back online as possible would
• 25:00
  be a top priority for my communications team. After this,
• 25:04
  mark off to Casiit and Kavlev. My communications team member
• 25:08
  who worked at the terminal next to me is called
• 25:10
  up front. His face was white as chalk, his forehead
• 25:13
  beaded with sweat, and his hands and legs were shaking
• 25:16
  as he stood before the control room.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I have spoken at length with the one calling himself
• 25:20
  a Leski Lodowski. He is coherent, rational, and articulate, though
• 25:25
  he seems just as confused about this situation as we
• 25:28
  all do and wants to come home. He claims to
• 25:31
  have no memory of how he got onto space station
• 25:34
  or of anything from the last forty four years. He
• 25:37
  says his last memories are crossing into space on rocket
• 25:40
  in nineteen fifty seven and then waking up a board mirror.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Today, Kavlev paused to take a sip from a bottle
• 25:46
  of water resting on the podium. Sam was shaking so
• 25:48
  violently that his struggle to get the cap off.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Something about the way he said this made me doubt
• 25:54
  his sincerity. So he went back at double checked or recording,
• 25:57
  and something strange stood out to me. Each time Ldowski
• 26:02
  would answer a question, there were several moments of silence
• 26:05
  in static and upon further of you, I detected that
• 26:08
  he was king and realizing his radio transmitter in rapid accession.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: Before speaking, he paused again, wiping his glasses on his shirt.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I soon recognize this is Morse code, and well, here
• 26:21
  is what was transmitted.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Screen above him changed to a white background the following
• 26:27
  stark black text translation of the Morse code. The smiling
• 26:32
  ones are with me. The smiling ones are here. Not
• 26:35
  trust the smiling ones. Don't tell them you know it
• 26:38
  will hurt me if they know it's the end of
• 26:40
  part one?
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: Are you just looking? What?
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Erry? Rachie and I would eat my words and say
• 26:59
  that the smile on's but at the end made it
• 27:01
  really scary?
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: Is it? Before?
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know what the smiling One's title,
• 27:05
  but I don't know what.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: What's got you in this mood? You're being stupid sarcastic
• 27:11
  right now, and I don't know.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I legitimately really like this.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: I don't believe you.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I like it a lot.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: He's doing the Morse code there and he's that's a
• 27:18
  fun twist at the end.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: These are all gamisure. What it like? I don't know
• 27:21
  what character you've adopted.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Do you not like it?
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: I'm enjoying it, No, you're not. This is when you
• 27:29
  enjoy things, when you enjoy things. You said over there
• 27:32
  and you're like this rules. Yes, it's sick. Yeah it's not.
• 27:35
  You're not like that was scary.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: That was really scary.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I was cool, Like I thought that this was good
• 27:42
  and I'm excited to see what happens next because I
• 27:45
  can't tell if people doing Morse.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Code are the smiling ones or not.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's interesting or do you think that
• 27:51
  he's in a parallel university. He's able to talk with
• 27:53
  this right now, like it's static, like he's there, but
• 27:56
  he's not. You know what I mean, Like he's still
• 27:58
  existing in an alternate timeline.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: To me, this sounds like gun to your head kind
• 28:02
  of thing, Like they're around him making them talk and
• 28:05
  answer questions, but he's trying to get a warning out.
• 28:07
  I think interesting.
• 28:09
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  episode part two. I read those words and immediately fell
• 30:48
  till I made it to the lavatory, just in time
• 30:50
  to vomit the thin gruel of cigarette butt flavored coffee
• 30:53
  into the sink. After washing my sick out of the
• 30:56
  base and splashing my face with cold water, I looked
• 30:59
  into the mirror. My face was pale and haggard. Large
• 31:02
  bags had formed under my bloodshot eyes. It was the
• 31:05
  face of a man who had been working for over
• 31:07
  twenty four hours straight. I remember having, during that surreal moment,
• 31:12
  lost in reflection, a vague presentiment that things were about
• 31:16
  to get much worse and much stranger. But I not
• 31:20
  just how horrifying the next sixty hours would be. I
• 31:22
  would have gladly accepted determination and incarceration been worth it,
• 31:28
  not to know what I know now. I left the
• 31:31
  bathroom and made my way back to my station. Through
• 31:33
  the glass window on the opposite side of the room,
• 31:35
  I could see a small group of directors arguing in
• 31:38
  Koptev's office. An uneasy quiet had settled over the mission
• 31:42
  control room, punctuated by mouse clicks and the clacking of keyboards.
• 31:46
  Each operator I passed avoided eye contact, either completely focused
• 31:50
  on the task they had been assigned or doing an
• 31:53
  excellent job staring at the screen and faking it. Gossip
• 31:57
  and idle talk are strongly discouraged by the Russian space age.
• 32:00
  And see when I arrived back in my terminal, I
• 32:02
  looked over to see your kV live, hugging his elbows
• 32:05
  to his chest and staring vacantly in space. His chair
• 32:08
  had been pushed back from the desk and he reclined,
• 32:11
  stretching away from the radio transmitter, resting there as if
• 32:14
  it were a snake coiled a strike.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: What did they miss?
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, snapping him from his trance. He looked over at
• 32:20
  me through cloudy eyes.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: No more more so far, but Lodowski has been pleading
• 32:26
  for rescuing non stop. He was really starting to get
• 32:29
  to me. I told him that we are currently discussing
• 32:32
  the best way to get him off MIR. Then I
• 32:34
  had to mute him. There's seriously something off about that guy. Yeah,
• 32:38
  no kidding.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: They muted the transmission.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: I think they muted like maybe they're or even his transmission.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Maybe yeah, Well, if it's his transmission, it's like you
• 32:47
  need to listen to his transmission, walking like gosh, and like.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: What They're probably just freaking him out.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: He's probably just incessantly being like, Okay, come get me,
• 32:58
  give me.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: The door to Koptev's office was closed, but the argument
• 33:03
  inside had grown heated, and I could just make out
• 33:05
  a few words, all of them harsh, through the glass.
• 33:08
  I could see Markov gesturing angrily and occasionally pounding a
• 33:12
  fist on the desk. Koptev said calmly at his desk,
• 33:15
  hands clasped in front of him.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: So is this what do you think they're discussing in there?
• 33:19
  I had to get Lodowski back to Earth. From what
• 33:22
  they can gather, this is precisely what assistant director Ivanov wants.
• 33:26
  I heard him yelling something about Lodovski being a national
• 33:29
  treasurer and a hero of the Soviet Union. He thinks
• 33:32
  immediate rescue is the only option and that we can
• 33:35
  figure out who, what and why later on once Vladowski is
• 33:38
  safely back on solid ground.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: This guy who's been up there forty years, that's a huge.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: I think even questioned like, shouldn't he be like super old?
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm hmmm.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Well that's why I'd say, Uh, shouldn't you be like
• 33:50
  a hundred.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Shouldn't this guy be old and also have starved to
• 33:53
  death like you know, forty three years ago? Shouldn't they
• 33:57
  not be alive? Yeah? I rolled my eyes, though I
• 33:59
  honestly he hadn't expected any other reaction from the assistant director.
• 34:03
  Ivanov had been a cosmonaut himself in the eighties, but
• 34:06
  even resided on mir for a few months. He was
• 34:10
  a fiery and passionate man with the very traditional values,
• 34:13
  the type to yearn in secret for a return to
• 34:16
  the greatness of the USSR. Now close to retirement, he
• 34:20
  had been skipped for the job of director in favor
• 34:22
  of the younger and more level headed Kopdev. Ivanov bitterly
• 34:26
  resented this fact. You must have seen this as an
• 34:29
  opportunity to upstage Kopdev and as a possible propaganda victory.
• 34:34
  In Ivanov's mind, rescuing Ladovsky would open the door to
• 34:38
  the mysteries of the universe. Russia would be the first
• 34:41
  to step through the vanguard into the unknown.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I take it that Markov has other ideas.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: I asked the head of trafficking and Communications was standing
• 34:51
  in the office now screaming and pointing at Ivanov, shaking
• 34:54
  with fury.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Quite an understatement. I've never thought of Markov as a
• 34:59
  superst vicious man, but he seems to think that there
• 35:02
  is something sinister and possibly supernatural going on up there.
• 35:05
  He's asked Koptev to cut off all communication with a
• 35:08
  mirror and proceed with the overdings planned. He wants to
• 35:12
  let the station bun with Ladovski still on, still on it,
• 35:16
  cover this up like nothing happened.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: I asked nikovleva a solemn nod, And what about Koptev?
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Where does he stand? You know as well as I
• 35:26
  that the director is a cautious man. I think he
• 35:28
  is weighing out his options and will try to gather
• 35:31
  more information before making a decision. There is so much
• 35:34
  about this that cannot be rationally explained, but I think
• 35:37
  Coptev believes Ladovski has gone mad.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: Conversation was interrupted by Kaughtev poking his head out of
• 35:43
  his office. He spoke loudly so the entire room could hear.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: I want all personnel except communications department to put the
• 35:50
  hold on their current task, spend the next half hour
• 35:53
  research in the smiling ones SCA, government records, historical archives,
• 35:58
  the Internet, and anywhere else you can for any reference
• 36:01
  to that phrase communications. I want your full attention to
• 36:05
  restoring our visual link to the space station.
• 36:07
  Speaker 7: I want to see what's going on there. I will
• 36:09
  expect reports in thirty minutes. Shut the door on the
• 36:12
  arguing inside resumed. CoV Levi and I made eye contact
• 36:16
  for a fleeting moment, and then turned to our terminals and.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Got to work. Half hour later, we were once again
• 36:21
  gathered in a semi circle, with Koptev, Markov, and Ivanov
• 36:25
  standing in the middle beneath the central screen. Each department
• 36:28
  reported their findings, but all were variations of the same theme.
• 36:32
  There were no substantial mentions of the smiling ones to
• 36:35
  be found. I like how he steps out of the
• 36:37
  office and he's like, I need you guys to go
• 36:39
  to Google, you know library.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Everyone log into Wi Fi and use as jeeves for
• 36:46
  smiling one.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: Remember Wi Fi password is Russia number one, but the
• 36:52
  number is n O and then period and the hashtag
• 36:56
  pound sign.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Everyone got to being turned safe off.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: I've been smiling one. If not that print out newest image.
• 37:07
  You know what I mean?
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Cop to have clearly frustrated,
• 37:14
  turned to the communications department, and it fell to me
• 37:17
  to act as spokesperson. I stood up from my desk
• 37:20
  and faced the director. Could feel the eyes of every
• 37:22
  person in the room crawling over me. My left leg
• 37:25
  was shaken and voluntary.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Sir, I have some good news as well as some
• 37:31
  strange news. The good news is we have fully restored
• 37:34
  the visual link to the space station MIA, and all
• 37:37
  cameras are now active.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: So dude cheer went up in the room. I waited
• 37:41
  for her to receive and then leaned over and pressed
• 37:43
  a button on my terminal. The man display at the
• 37:46
  front of the room changed into a black screen separated
• 37:48
  by crisscross gray lines, each labeled with a different location
• 37:51
  on the space station, and each completely dark.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: The strange news is that every camera on MIA seems
• 37:57
  to be blocked or covered by something I guess would
• 38:00
  be black electrical tape.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Coptev and Markov exchanged the look while Ivanov stared at
• 38:06
  the screen confused. After a few moments, he turned to me,
• 38:10
  snack clowing Crimson under his collar.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: You are certain the cameras are active. There hasn't been
• 38:16
  a mistake. I'm certain of it, sir, okay, excellent work,
• 38:21
  Communications department. We will take that under advisement. Anyone else
• 38:26
  have anything.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: To report, said Director Coptev. A man from the life
• 38:30
  support department stood up and cleared his throat.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Director, I'd been going over the data for the life
• 38:36
  support systems and I'm running into some inconsistencies. First, though
• 38:42
  the station's internal clocks as forty four years have passed,
• 38:45
  it appears that the life support system remained deactivated the
• 38:48
  entire time. In fact, they were only reactivated the moment
• 38:52
  of Mia reappeared in low Earth orbit. Secondly, though the
• 38:57
  electron oxygen generator is activated and worked as intended, there
• 39:01
  is something very strange about the numbers coming from the
• 39:04
  Votekov carbon monoxide scrubbers. They basically aren't doing anything. There
• 39:09
  is no carbon dioxide in the air, only oxygen. Either
• 39:13
  there is either a malfunction in the Vodkov data collection
• 39:17
  system or or whatever is up there isn't breathing.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: Parkov finished his sentence, glaring at Koptev, his eyes full
• 39:23
  of fire.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: I did like this, sir, Stop being so superstitious, Markov.
• 39:29
  You're like an old provincial peasant woman making the sign
• 39:32
  of the evil eye.
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: Pat.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: There clearly must be a malfunction in the unit. It's
• 39:36
  the only rational explanation. Besides, a national hero is up there.
• 39:41
  He is a loan and afraid and not in his
• 39:43
  right mind. It is our duty to rescue him. It
• 39:46
  must be our first priority.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: Optev's face was blank and hard at stone. He gave
• 39:51
  each man a dead eyed look, which silenced any further backering.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Men and women of ros Commos, it appears we have
• 39:58
  reached an impasse. None of us have any idea of
• 40:00
  what happened to me or how Ladovski got aboard. I
• 40:03
  will not risk bringing this man back to earth without
• 40:06
  first understanding that what has happened to him. So we
• 40:09
  have but one option left. We must speak to Ludovski again,
• 40:13
  and we must ask him directly, who are the smiley ones?
• 40:16
  I know the message requested. We are not to bring
• 40:18
  it up, but I see no other choice. I must
• 40:21
  know what we are dealing with. Simply a deranged man
• 40:24
  who wants to come home or something else.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Like, hey, what's the smiling ones? And he just gets
• 40:29
  like a viscerated It's well, that was bad idea, Well,
• 40:33
  that was probably kind of well well, we shouldn't have
• 40:35
  done that, My bad. Do you know what guys on me?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Seriously?
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: My bed He paused for a moment and looked around
• 40:43
  the room, eating the eyes of anyone brave enough to
• 40:45
  look up. Finally, he turned towards our station.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Yokolov, you've already developed a rapport with Lodowski, so I
• 40:53
  will ask you to continue speaking with him. I want
• 40:56
  the rest of you searching for clues to a possible explanation.
• 41:00
  You are free to chase down any leads you come across. Now,
• 41:02
  let's get to work, Cosman, not Lodowski. This is Rose
• 41:06
  Cosmo's Michigan control. How do you read?
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: Over anxiety and exhaustion and turned yr Kavlev's face an
• 41:12
  ashy gray color. As he held his headphone to his ears,
• 41:15
  I could tell he was fighting to keep shaking. Coptev, Markov,
• 41:20
  Ivanov and the other directors were huddled behind his chair.
• 41:23
  Speaker 8: I read loud and clear, Roskomos, got to hear your
• 41:26
  voice again. Please tell me you have a rocket on
• 41:30
  the way to get me here, to get me. I'm
• 41:32
  ready to feel soil under my feet again.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: His voice was calm and steady, seemed in high spirits.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: We're still working on the Landowski. It's quite complicated process
• 41:42
  and will take some time to organize. In the meantime,
• 41:45
  there are a few questions I had to ask you.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: There was no response but dead static. Kavlev looked to Coptev,
• 41:52
  who nodded for him to continue.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Cosmo, I need you to tell me where you have
• 41:56
  been for the last forty four.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: Years, Vowski gave an exasperated.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Michigan Control.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: I've already told you.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I have no idea. Last thing I remember was escaping
• 42:06
  Earth's hemisphere on my rocket in nineteen fifty seven and
• 42:09
  then waking up here today. There is nothing else, okay, cosmoknot,
• 42:13
  then how about you help us better understand your situation
• 42:15
  by checking on the visual communication system. There seems to
• 42:19
  be something blocking the camera and you can Can you
• 42:21
  find it on your console in front of you and
• 42:23
  remove the obstruction.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Several moments of silence followed before the radio crackled back
• 42:28
  to life.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: No, I'm sorry, Michigan Control. There are many buttons and
• 42:33
  lights here that I don't understand. I don't see any camera.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: I like how the explanations like oh you'll know me.
• 42:42
  I'm a boomer you should.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Not have put so many flashing lights.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: Like all the cameras are visibly taped up, and he's like, oh,
• 42:50
  I'm a clouds.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know what this is.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: Markov gave a derisive snort. We all knew that the
• 42:56
  camera was in the direct center of the terminal where
• 42:58
  Ladovski sat, very clearly labeled and easy to find, even
• 43:02
  for someone from the fifties. Kikav Lev looked again to
• 43:06
  the director, who nodded for him to continue the kav
• 43:09
  Lev took a deep breath and keeped the mind.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Gozmen Littlodowski, who are the smiling ones?
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: Instantly, the mission control room was filled with a shrill
• 43:19
  inhuman screech, impossibly loud and high pitched. It felt like
• 43:23
  a hot drill burrowing into both my temples. Underneath the
• 43:27
  shriek was a continuous stream of rapid mechanical clicks, like
• 43:31
  a damaged hard drive trying to boot up. I immediately
• 43:35
  felt nonxious. I watched as Chakavlev ripped the headphones from
• 43:38
  his head and the directors covered their ears. After ten
• 43:42
  agonizing seconds, the line went silent. I still heard and
• 43:46
  felt the noise reverberating in my head and I rubbed
• 43:49
  my ears with the palms of my hands. Well the
• 43:51
  hill was that, screamed Markov, hands cupped over his ears.
• 43:55
  The radio cracked and sputtered, and then Ladovsky's voice returned,
• 43:59
  now high and pain.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: I don't know what's all you're talking about.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: I've never heard of that. I have no idea. Just
• 44:06
  please please get me out of here. I don't like
• 44:08
  it here.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: I just want to go home, Please plead it.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: On the verge of tears, calm down, cause we're not
• 44:13
  I need you to identify the source of that noise.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: Such a CoV livet It was yelling like a deaf person.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: What noise?
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: I didn't hear anything on my end, There's nothing.
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: Just please get me out of here.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Listen, Landowski, there's nothing to be afraid of. We have
• 44:29
  tried to help you. We received the morse code you sent.
• 44:31
  You need to help us understand what their message meant
• 44:34
  so that we can help you.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: A fucking dumbass.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: What was the secret message you tried? The thing you
• 44:44
  don't want anyone to hear? What was that about? I
• 44:49
  like how I like how they're like? What about the
• 44:52
  smiley one? Like the loudest noise ever. And they're like, so, so, yeah,
• 44:56
  those that's weird. What about the smiling one that was weird?
• 45:02
  Did you hear that? Ladowsky's like, no, I don't what
• 45:07
  I'm winking, Comrade, I'm winking. When yakav Liv let go
• 45:15
  of the transmitter, Ladovsky's voice came screaming over the speakers,
• 45:18
  now fraught with terror.
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: No, no, I am not yet. How they know?
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't say anything.
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: I didn't send any message. I said, I'm not you
• 45:27
  what they're talking about. Please you have to believe me.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: Now he was groaning, Oh no, no more, please, please
• 45:35
  them up. The line went dead for several minutes. The
• 45:38
  directors looked around the room in silence, avoiding eye contact. Finally,
• 45:43
  your kav Lift said what we were all thinking.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Is it just me?
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Or does this guy like a total pain in my ass?
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: The actual line he said, is it just me?
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Or did it sound like he was talking to someone else?
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: Wow? Incredible detective work from the command.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Your intuition is amazing.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: Is it just me?
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: Or?
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: When he turned and said I didn't hear that and
• 46:08
  then said no, no, I don't know how they know. No.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Someones that are with him on the space station.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: Before anyone could answer, the radio clicked on and he
• 46:17
  was back mission control.
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: I wish I could help you, but they have no
• 46:21
  idea what they're talking about.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Perhaps one perhaps, once I have my feet back on
• 46:26
  the ground and some food in me, I will remember more.
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: And he worked on my rescue missues.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: Buddy got turned into a stick puppet. They got their
• 46:35
  hand of him right now, just talking. But it's funny
• 46:39
  is we never see it? Which I will say the
• 46:41
  smiling ones at the beginning were kind of like, I
• 46:44
  see a lot of smiling faces. That could be kind
• 46:46
  of cheesy. But the fact we don't see anything is
• 46:48
  fun makes more inventive. But we don't see what's happening
• 46:52
  when he's.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Like no, no, I don't know, please no more.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: We don't see it. So for all we know, it
• 46:57
  could be like they've like got little tiki bar and
• 47:01
  they're making him like dance, like they pull.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: This is what's on the space station with Ladowski.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: That's just behind him at the chair that has to
• 47:19
  have a little astronaut helmet on of course, of course,
• 47:22
  and he put a helmet on and so he's got
• 47:24
  that and staying behind him when he heard like they
• 47:27
  have make a pull up and they're bringing him to
• 47:28
  the dance floor. He's like, no, no ball, it's been
• 47:31
  forty four years. CoV Lev picked up the transmitter to respond,
• 47:35
  but cop Dev grabbed his wrist and stopped him. The
• 47:38
  static was interrupted by a series of long and short clicks.
• 47:41
  I grabbed for my pen and began to write down
• 47:43
  the Morse code message, which reads do not let. But
• 47:50
  that was as far as I got. The message was
• 47:52
  cut off by the screeching of that same shrill piercing tone,
• 47:56
  louder this time. The mechanical clicking was there again, but
• 48:00
  was now accompanied by a deep, wobbling bass note. The
• 48:03
  frequency of the wobble increased faster and faster, like the
• 48:07
  spinning of a giant coin, the volume rising. The screech
• 48:12
  pierced through my brain like hot iron, and I could
• 48:14
  feel the back, and I could feel the base and
• 48:17
  the pit of my stomach and all the way down
• 48:19
  into my testicles. It felt like I had been kicked there.
• 48:23
  My stomach turned over, and I could taste the bile
• 48:26
  rising in my throat. I looked around the room and
• 48:28
  found I was far from the only one experiencing this.
• 48:31
  Everyone was covering their ears. Some had grabbed waste baskets
• 48:35
  to vomit them. Others leaned back in their chairs, eyes
• 48:39
  rolled back in their skulls. I was vaguely aware of
• 48:42
  one other noise somewhere in the blackness of space. Ladovsky
• 48:47
  was screaming. Ladovski try to say something like wah wah, wah,
• 48:50
  wah wah, just decimated. Yeah, that's the end of part two.
• 48:58
  Now on to part three. I woke with the thin
• 49:00
  coppery taste in my mouth and a throbbing headache above
• 49:03
  each eye. The signal must have cut off at some point,
• 49:06
  though I have no memory of this happening. For the
• 49:09
  briefest moment of bliss, I thought I was home in bed,
• 49:12
  safe and comfortable. My greatest worry the inevitable cry of
• 49:15
  the alarm clock. Then I rolled over and couldn't find
• 49:18
  my pillow. When I tried to look for it, I
• 49:20
  woke up and found myself face down on my desk.
• 49:24
  I didn't slept in so very long. I wanted so
• 49:26
  badly to close my eyes and drift away, to give
• 49:29
  me the bee boys a free mussaultser i'ming lost in
• 49:33
  your rocking roll and drift away ski to pretend this
• 49:41
  wasn't happening, but it was, and self deception would get
• 49:44
  me nowhere. There's a job to be done by God.
• 49:47
  I was going to do it a fool. I was
• 49:50
  should have stayed asleep. I shook the cow webs from
• 49:53
  my mind and rose from the desk, trying to ignore
• 49:57
  the piercing ring in my ears. Looking around, I can
• 49:59
  see other ru Cosmos operators and engineers coming to similar predicaments,
• 50:04
  some wiping vomit from their mouth with the back of
• 50:06
  their hands, others massaging their necks or temples.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Is everyone okay? Is there anyone injugged?
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: Came the loud voice of director coptive, clear but strained,
• 50:16
  like an out of tune instrument, scattered confirmations that go
• 50:20
  throughout the room. I was about to attest my own
• 50:23
  well being when I happened to glance over at Yakov
• 50:26
  Leven stopped short, his forehead resting on the keyboard in
• 50:29
  front of him, and the headphones he'd been wearing to
• 50:32
  communicate with Leadovsky were still covering his ears. I could
• 50:36
  not immediately tell if he was breathing, but he definitely
• 50:38
  wasn't moving. I rushed to his side and peeled off
• 50:41
  the headphones. A thin stream of blood trickled from each
• 50:44
  of his ears, forming small pools on the desk. Tenderly,
• 50:48
  I lifted his head, cradling into my hands and calling
• 50:51
  his name. His eyes were closed and blood dripped from
• 50:54
  his nostrils. After a few moments, his eyelashes fluttered and
• 50:57
  his eyes opened, But they were distant and open, as
• 51:00
  if he didn't see me at all, as if he
• 51:03
  were in a dream, stay off at some distant wonder.
• 51:06
  His face was blank, loose, and emotionless, except for his
• 51:10
  mouth was curled up into a large, toothy and humorous grin.
• 51:15
  He didn't speak or seemed to hear me at all.
• 51:17
  I screamed for a medic, but what I got were
• 51:19
  two intelligence agents and charcoal colored suits. They lifted Jakovola
• 51:23
  from the chair by his elbows and led him from
• 51:26
  the room. He wafted between them, grinning and dreamlike, in
• 51:29
  the direction of the medical facility, the last time I
• 51:32
  would ever see him. With Yakavlev out of the picture,
• 51:36
  the task of manning the radio fell to meme. Markov
• 51:40
  tried to make the burden upon himself. Koptev was having
• 51:43
  none of it.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: I sawry Markov. I admired your tenacity, but which our own.
• 51:48
  Have our roles to play, and as the department head,
• 51:51
  your role is supervising our department members and providing advisement
• 51:55
  to the director.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: When Markov continued grubbling, Koptov turned to me.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Will you serve your country and completely assigned task with
• 52:02
  vigor and professionalism?
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, I will, replied automatically, the product of decades of training.
• 52:09
  Even as I spoke these words, my brain was screaming no,
• 52:13
  I won't let me go, leave me in peace, but
• 52:16
  it was too far too late for that.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Turn back to Markov, Would you deny him the chance
• 52:22
  to serve Russia and fulfill his duty? No, I suppose,
• 52:25
  I could.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: Not rasp Markov speaking of Koptev, but locking eyes with me,
• 52:30
  he turned to follow. Koptev swallowed hard and placed the
• 52:33
  headphones over my ears, but Markov turned back and snatched
• 52:36
  them off my head. No more headphones, he said to Koptev.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: He can hear with the rest of us here on
• 52:41
  the overhead speakers well enough. And I won't lose another
• 52:44
  man in my department too. Whatever is up there Koptev
• 52:47
  nodded his approval and added, cut the audio feeds as well.
• 52:51
  I don't want to hear that noise or anything else
• 52:53
  from the space station. That we're good and ready for it.
• 52:56
  Ludowski will just have to stay iced for a while
• 52:59
  and they'll be clear.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: Few things up could have kissed him for that. I
• 53:03
  was not ready for this ship. Then the pair turned
• 53:05
  and walked off, continuing their rounds checking for injuries among
• 53:08
  the operators. That's kind of cool that the guy that
• 53:11
  had headphones on just dies whatever.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Smiling now, yeah, well, smiling one.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: He has a humor lest grand that almost feels like
• 53:19
  his face is just stretched, Yeah, like it's been pulled,
• 53:23
  rather than it's kind of there. You're actually frowning when
• 53:26
  you do it that way. It's the top of your
• 53:28
  mouth going down. That's closer.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: If it was like the ABG in mouth.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: I love. I love that.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: You just can't see any of his teeth ever, so
• 53:40
  he's just.
• 53:40
  Speaker 9: Like, did you like a fucking diarrhea shit sandwich?
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: Did you like AVG and or the nostalgia Critic better?
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: I've never watched any of them.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: I didn't have internet until I was in college, so
• 53:57
  I missed the whole wave of stuff.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: Watched a Stuta critical a lot I remember, which was
• 54:03
  he he's a he would do movie reviews, but like
• 54:07
  it would always be gags about like he get really
• 54:10
  mad over like minute details and stuff like that. It
• 54:13
  was it was like more comedy.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Was he the one was the Red Tie?
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh yeah? So Doug Walker. He's also what I
• 54:18
  like about him is like he's still around and a
• 54:23
  lot of those older guys have got like real butt
• 54:25
  heard about not being like as popular as they thought
• 54:27
  they went stuff. But every time I see Doug, he's
• 54:29
  just like he has a good humor about it. Like
• 54:32
  on an episode of SpongeBob, they made fun of him.
• 54:34
  They had they had a character like where the Red Tie,
• 54:37
  and like the joke was he lived in his mom's basement.
• 54:40
  He was like really upset over something that didn't matter.
• 54:43
  So Doug posted a video of him watching that and
• 54:47
  like like he was heartbroken, and he's like he pulls
• 54:50
  out his phone and calls avg in and goes SpongeBob
• 54:53
  doesn't like you process criticism about himself, but he's a
• 54:59
  good he's a good sport about it.
• 55:00
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  you for spaonshoring this episode. Now back to the episode.
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: After confirming there were no other major injuries, cop To
• 56:06
  have appeared at the podium upfront. Once more, the room
• 56:09
  fell silent. He began the greatest motivational speech I would
• 56:12
  ever bear witness to.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: It goes without saying that we are all experiencing something
• 56:16
  completely unique in our species history. It is in my
• 56:20
  personal opinion that we are in communication with some kind
• 56:23
  of undiscovered life form. If this is true, you will
• 56:27
  forever change our understanding of the universe and all to
• 56:29
  the future path of humanity. Whatever these smiling ones are,
• 56:34
  we can all attest to the fact that this is
• 56:36
  first contact. That's really what's going on here. Has been
• 56:39
  less benevolent than we might have hoped. Regardless, our job
• 56:43
  is scientists remains the same, not to have opinions and beliefs,
• 56:47
  but to provide proof. I have asked so much of
• 56:50
  you already, but now I must ask for more. We
• 56:53
  need to figure out what we are dealing with here.
• 56:55
  We need more information, We need proof, But the fate
• 56:59
  of the human race made the pend on it.
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: Room was silent, the atmosphere gravit with the seriousness of
• 57:05
  the task in hand.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: I want the communications team to focus on analyzing that sound,
• 57:10
  but do not listen to a recording directly. We've all
• 57:13
  seen what that can cause. The rest of you keep
• 57:16
  searching for any clues that might tell us who these
• 57:19
  smiling ones are, where did they come from, or what
• 57:22
  they might want. It's about time we finally catch a break.
• 57:26
  I put this in their capable.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: Hands, he smiled warmly.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: I'm counting on you, and I'm proud of every one
• 57:32
  of you. There's no other team in the world I'd
• 57:34
  rather be working with than the one I see before
• 57:36
  me here today.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: So analyze we did, breaking the noise down, searching for
• 57:41
  similarities in the sound wave patterns to no sounds from Earth,
• 57:44
  comparing the frequency and amplitude to mysterious recordings collected during
• 57:48
  various natural disasters and from the deep ocean in outer space.
• 57:53
  We worked for hours, all for no Nothing even came close.
• 57:57
  The sound was completely alien, unlike any think anyone had
• 58:01
  ever heard or produced. It was more complex than anything
• 58:04
  we had even considered possible the noise to fight our
• 58:07
  very understanding of sound waves. Altogether, we had been affected
• 58:11
  by ultrasound and infrasound frequencies far beyond the range of
• 58:14
  what was previously thought possible, but we had all heard
• 58:18
  it and experienced the reaction. Denial was not an option.
• 58:22
  Others had better luck. Via confidential maneuvering by the Russian
• 58:26
  Foreign Intelligence Agency, we were able to obtain from the
• 58:28
  United States Space Surveillance Network higher quality satellite based images
• 58:33
  of the exact moments Mirror disappeared and reappeared. For once,
• 58:37
  the Yankee spine actually benefited Russia, and the results were stunning.
• 58:41
  From these new angles, we discovered something previously overlooked. At
• 58:46
  the exact instant of banishment, something had appeared in the
• 58:49
  path of the space station, which momentarily blocked out the
• 58:52
  dim light from distant stars in the background. The image
• 58:55
  showed nothing directly behind mirr except absolute blackness. The same
• 59:00
  thing occurred at reappearance. The images were taken at a
• 59:03
  high frame per second rate, and in a few of
• 59:06
  those frames we could actually see the space station partially
• 59:10
  obstructed by this void, as if it were disappearing into
• 59:14
  whatever was there In the darkness, like a photo of
• 59:18
  a diver disappearing into a pool. Various hypotheses were tossed around,
• 59:23
  but all kept coming back to the same explanation, a
• 59:27
  theoretical phenomenon known as a wormhole or something akin to it.
• 59:31
  Till this time, wormholes tunnel like structures connecting two separate
• 59:35
  points of space time, though congruent with Einstein's general theory
• 59:39
  of relativity, had remained purely hypothetical. Now Here we sat
• 59:44
  an entire room of physicists and scientists staring at possible
• 59:47
  evidence of an actual wormhole. Excitement and tear bundled together
• 59:51
  into a peculiar nod of emotion. There are a few
• 59:55
  different theories on wormholes. Some believe they connect together two
• 59:59
  vast distant points in space, perhaps billions of light years apart.
• 1:00:04
  Others propose the linkage of the same place in space
• 1:00:07
  at two different times. Still, others advocate of the multiverse theory,
• 1:00:12
  propound the idea of wormholes connecting a point in our
• 1:00:15
  universe to another point in a completely alternate universe. Any
• 1:00:19
  of these seemed a possible explanation for our anomaly, though
• 1:00:22
  the potential evidence was exhilarating, the fact that it had
• 1:00:26
  appeared in the exact same location twice in the span
• 1:00:28
  of twenty four hours implied that the wormhole had been
• 1:00:31
  controlled or even manufactured by some kind of intelligence, a
• 1:00:36
  sinister prospect given the events in a transpired sinsubmerged reappearance.
• 1:00:40
  There was one little problem with our wormhole theory, however,
• 1:00:44
  Unlike a black hole, in which the event horizon boundary
• 1:00:47
  in space time beyond which events cannot be observed, prevents
• 1:00:51
  light from escaping due to gravitational pull, a wormhole would
• 1:00:54
  not produce an event horizon. Peering through the mouth of
• 1:00:57
  a wormhole more of a three D sphere than a
• 1:01:00
  two D hole, should reveal to us what is on
• 1:01:03
  the other side. Or if matter can pass through, then
• 1:01:07
  so can light, though distorted by the curvature of space
• 1:01:11
  in the wormhole. All of our theoretical models visualize a
• 1:01:15
  wormhole as something similar to a bubble in space, with
• 1:01:18
  intense light radiating from inner rim of the mouth, quickly
• 1:01:22
  dimming as our view moves towards the center, and in
• 1:01:25
  the center we should be able to see right through
• 1:01:27
  to the planet's stars or nebula on the other side.
• 1:01:30
  In our case, we saw nothing no ring of light,
• 1:01:33
  and certainly no stars, nothing but an empty field of
• 1:01:36
  pitch black. Three possible conclusions can be drawn from this.
• 1:01:41
  Either our understanding of wormholes is way off. What we're
• 1:01:45
  seeing in the images is not actually a wormhole, something
• 1:01:48
  else altogether. Or it is a wormhole but whatever universe
• 1:01:52
  it leads to is a vast empty void, or not
• 1:01:55
  even light exists this at which if your look that
• 1:02:00
  scientifically like, would have to be the most likely option.
• 1:02:07
  If what you're looking at to again, assuming all this
• 1:02:10
  actually happened, would be the most likely option, because the
• 1:02:13
  fact that anything exists according to like scientific theory is
• 1:02:17
  a super super impossibly rare occurrence that, like you know,
• 1:02:22
  Big Bang, everything exists as it is, so any other
• 1:02:25
  universe a wormhole would ppear into would more than likely
• 1:02:28
  have nothing, because nothing's far more likely than something, right.
• 1:02:32
  But I also don't know if models of the wormholes
• 1:02:35
  were that in Tune in nineteen fifty seven. Maybe yeah,
• 1:02:39
  it would, because Einstein was around and he theorized it.
• 1:02:42
  He also theorized that like black holes would be like
• 1:02:45
  a bending of light, like the light would kind of
• 1:02:49
  bend in two forms around it, so it looks more
• 1:02:52
  like an axis rather than like a hole. And then
• 1:02:55
  when we got actual footage of black holes, now he
• 1:02:59
  was right. So the dude was pretty honest. Game imagine
• 1:03:01
  in the nineteen forties being like, well, it would been
• 1:03:04
  light in time to look like this, and then a
• 1:03:06
  hundred almost one hundred years later they're like, yeah, yeah,
• 1:03:09
  he was right.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Damn yeah, that what he was talking about here smart.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: That guy must have been an Einstein or so oh okay,
• 1:03:18
  it real convenient that that Einstein guy had no idea
• 1:03:22
  I could match the name. It's like like that scene
• 1:03:25
  from The Sopranos when Chris is like, isn't it crazy
• 1:03:29
  that Lou Garrick died of Lou Garrick's disease?
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: That's so good? I love Chrissy.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: My favorite Chris joke on that show is after Olivia
• 1:03:45
  dies and him and Adrianna are high as a kite
• 1:03:48
  at Tony's house and no one's will say anything nice
• 1:03:52
  about Olivia, and Chris is like, you know, they say
• 1:03:55
  that there's never two of the same people. Everybody's unique,
• 1:04:01
  But how as they know, because you'd have to like
• 1:04:05
  get everyone on the planet to line up and look
• 1:04:08
  at all of them, and even then there could be
• 1:04:10
  someone dead. It goes for five minutes. He's like, the
• 1:04:14
  point is that, Tony says, he goes, thank you, Chris.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: The new revelation had produced an atmosphere of excitement in
• 1:04:29
  the mission control room and in director Coptev. Especially here,
• 1:04:33
  we if you, stood unique among all humans living in past,
• 1:04:37
  perched upon the precipice of the utterly unknown. We were
• 1:04:40
  living out a scene from the pages of a science
• 1:04:42
  fiction novel, except it was reality. A surreal, terrifying, astonishing reality.
• 1:04:49
  May have been a bit of a stretch, but by
• 1:04:51
  this point Coptev had thoroughly convinced himself and in turn
• 1:04:55
  all of us, that we had encountered a newly discovered
• 1:04:57
  life form, extraterrestrial, extra dimensional or otherwise. We couldn't help
• 1:05:03
  but feel excitement. This was every astronomer's dream. Any who
• 1:05:07
  said otherwise was either lying about their own dream or
• 1:05:10
  lying about being an astronomer. At the same time, it
• 1:05:14
  was a horrifying prospect for what it meant for us,
• 1:05:16
  for our planet, and especially what it meant for Ladovsky
• 1:05:20
  cop TeV. We were on the threshold of a discovery
• 1:05:23
  which would alter the destiny of mankind, but among the
• 1:05:27
  other director's opinions of how we should proceed still differed.
• 1:05:31
  They began to argue again, passionately and excitedly, not bothering
• 1:05:35
  this time to retreat to the confines of the office.
• 1:05:38
  This is our chent yelled Assistant Director Ivanov, brown eyes
• 1:05:43
  bulging to.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: Step out from under the shadow of the United States
• 1:05:46
  at dagon rightful place as premier among the nations.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: His face was flush and beads of sweat stood out
• 1:05:54
  of his wrinkled brow.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: We'd be fools not to reach out and take it.
• 1:05:58
  I propose we send zoya Is capsuled to talk with
• 1:06:01
  Mirror and bring whatever is up there back to Earth
• 1:06:04
  and still hold that hope that it really is Ldowski.
• 1:06:08
  But if it isn't, we capture it, examine it, experiment
• 1:06:12
  on it, and force it to reveal to us the
• 1:06:14
  secrets of the universe. Just imagine Russia the first nation
• 1:06:18
  on Earth to make interstellar travel possible via wormhole generation.
• 1:06:22
  We would instantly become the greatest nation on the world
• 1:06:25
  no the universe has ever known. We must do this
• 1:06:28
  for the benefit of all mankind and for the glory
• 1:06:30
  of Mother Russia.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: So I like I like how ivanovs so fired up
• 1:06:35
  about like getting the guy back and stuff like that.
• 1:06:38
  And I understand that's kind of what's motivating what he's saying,
• 1:06:41
  like for Russia to be on top. He's near the
• 1:06:42
  end of his career, as mentioned, and I get all that.
• 1:06:46
  But it's also funny because like, what are you gonna
• 1:06:49
  do with wormhole travel? Maybe two hundred years from now
• 1:06:52
  when we have tech, Let's like people colonize space and
• 1:06:55
  live and travel to far off planets, but it's like
• 1:06:58
  right now, we're gonna go through and be like, yep,
• 1:07:02
  a whole lot of nothing. All right, I'm on my
• 1:07:04
  way back.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: It's crazy, total darkness.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: Wow. I sure hope this works the other way or else.
• 1:07:13
  But also, like I realized I was wrong because Ladovski's
• 1:07:18
  from the nineteen fifty seven, but this space crew is
• 1:07:21
  like what two thousand and one it said two So yeah,
• 1:07:24
  I was I was off with that. They certainly would
• 1:07:26
  have wormhole theory. Yeah that's great. A few muffled agreements
• 1:07:30
  rose from the assembly. The room was filled with the
• 1:07:32
  quiet tension, almost palpable, like a still wire ready to snap.
• 1:07:36
  All eyes turned to Markov, who sat with one leg
• 1:07:39
  crossed over the other and an ironic smile plastered to
• 1:07:42
  his face.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: Do you have anything to add, Markov?
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: That's sculptive.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, Director, I still think you should be destroyed. Do
• 1:07:50
  you over the space station with Ladowski's still on board? No,
• 1:07:55
  I don't think we can risk that. I think we
• 1:07:57
  should destroy it while it's still in orbit. I'm not
• 1:07:59
  sure how yet. Maybe with a nuke, just to be certain, so.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: I'm one hundred percent on COPTIV side, like, just blow
• 1:08:07
  it up, yeah, immediately.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: Been gone for forty four years. Man, we ain't mentioned.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sorry, man, according to the records, you never
• 1:08:16
  died up there. You don't even think.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you for your assistance, comrade.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, no, everything will be fine. Ship on way.
• 1:08:27
  A few surprised exclamations rose about the general murmur that
• 1:08:30
  followed his remark top to have looked at him, aghast.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Markov, You could not be serious, but I am. People
• 1:08:38
  have already suffered right here in this room. Well, whatever
• 1:08:41
  is out there still over sore miles above our heads.
• 1:08:44
  I think we've only seen a miniscule portion of the damage.
• 1:08:47
  It might be possible how many more people might be
• 1:08:51
  hurt or worse if we bring this thing back to Earth.
• 1:08:54
  We understand nothing about it, sir, nothing, I evan off
• 1:08:58
  maybe right, and by cap it may open a door
• 1:09:01
  to a whole new world discovery. But once the door
• 1:09:04
  is open, who knows what Mike walked through from the
• 1:09:06
  other side. That is too great. We may well be
• 1:09:10
  sending the desert defecate of the entire planet and welcoming
• 1:09:14
  our own destruction. I say we destroyed it immediately and
• 1:09:18
  remove that possibility.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: Whispered approvals rose from a few of the gathered. Coptev
• 1:09:23
  and Markov locked eyes. Markov's smile gone, now replaced by
• 1:09:27
  a look of iron determination.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: I understand your sentiment, Markov, I do, but I will
• 1:09:31
  not be responsible for firing any weapon into space, especially
• 1:09:35
  a nuclear weapon. How would we explain that to the
• 1:09:38
  rest of the world. Who knows what other repercussions there
• 1:09:41
  might be.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: Markov led out a frustrated grunt and crossed his arms.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: Cop Deev continued, Besides, Ludowski may still be alive up there,
• 1:09:50
  if there's still a chance to save him. However, Slim,
• 1:09:53
  we are obliged to try.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: I don't think you are. I don't think you have
• 1:09:57
  to try it all actually again on paper, that guy
• 1:10:00
  his dad is ever even up there? So Ivanov was beaming.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: So what we'd go with Ivanov's planet and invite the
• 1:10:06
  chaos onto our planet. No, we will still need more
• 1:10:11
  data to make a decision. We need to know who
• 1:10:13
  the Smiling ones are. Thank you for their input, gentlemen,
• 1:10:16
  but they believe I have a plan.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: Grin on Ivanov's face twisted into his sneer as he
• 1:10:21
  turned back to Koptev.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: And what might that be? We gone Backlodowski again, but
• 1:10:28
  this time we bluff. We tell him we have a
• 1:10:31
  soyes capsule prepared to launch. We tell him rescue is
• 1:10:34
  on its way. Then we see how he reacts.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: I feel the color training from my face. Stoptev turned
• 1:10:40
  to me.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: Think you can handle that?
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: Forced myself to nod. This is good. I like the Sessionaire.
• 1:10:47
  There's as I'm liking the story, I enjoy it. I
• 1:10:50
  feel like there's a few times that like, honestly, it
• 1:10:55
  being titled the Smiling Ones and like the word of
• 1:10:58
  the Smiling Ones used is one of the story's biggest faults. Yeah,
• 1:11:01
  like just because it it's too cheesy, too cheesy, and
• 1:11:05
  it completely cheapens the story, Yeah it chieves so yeah,
• 1:11:09
  I think I.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: Think you could have just literally been like like you
• 1:11:11
  could have just called it like they they could have
• 1:11:14
  been or could have just been like, uh, I don't
• 1:11:17
  know that the uh the Forgotten space station, like just
• 1:11:20
  anything that was just like something that's just or could
• 1:11:22
  just become mirror.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean like in the story, like have
• 1:11:26
  the guy oh yeah, yeah, they are in here.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think I don't think you refer to him
• 1:11:29
  as anything.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's just a thing if you are wondering
• 1:11:32
  the whole time, is there actually someone there?
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: You know, and you can have him scream to.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: Somebody and be like I didn't tell them anything and
• 1:11:39
  you're like, is he just crazy?
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: I don't know. But here's the thing. And this is
• 1:11:42
  kind of what we were like when we uh had
• 1:11:44
  the interview with Dathan. We kind of talked about Patreon exclusive,
• 1:11:48
  Patreon exclusive, the author of Penpal It's it's on patreon,
• 1:11:51
  it's on Patreon. Let's just to interview. I want Patreon
• 1:11:53
  if you want. We were talking about with him is like,
• 1:11:56
  there's this crossroads between what I want to do and
• 1:11:58
  what does well because there was if this was written
• 1:12:01
  around like twenty fourteen, twenty sixteen area stuff about like
• 1:12:04
  smiling people was killing it was it was like, oh,
• 1:12:08
  new is a story. I have no idea, But my
• 1:12:11
  point is like, if that could have been like a
• 1:12:14
  strategic move.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I being like, oh, oh, I see you're saying
• 1:12:17
  where he's like, well, that's just that that's the hot
• 1:12:19
  thing or.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: That's what sells, that's what people want to read, and
• 1:12:21
  maybe that's part of the reason it's successful, and like
• 1:12:23
  people are recommending it now, yeah, because they read it
• 1:12:25
  from that. So it could be some of that. But
• 1:12:28
  for the story, I feel like the smiling ones is
• 1:12:30
  a disservice to it. If you take that out, it's
• 1:12:33
  a good story.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: I love the simple premise of just a you know,
• 1:12:37
  thing goes missing, it comes back, and now it's floating
• 1:12:40
  and we have this dilemma of do we help save somebody?
• 1:12:42
  Oh wait, I feel like literally humanity might be a
• 1:12:46
  jeopardy if we let this thing back on earth or yeah,
• 1:12:48
  yeah that's fun.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: And also like how ivanovis kind of set up as
• 1:12:53
  like he's desperate for something to happen, so he wants
• 1:12:56
  to bring this.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: Story proud man.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's also like that was the other thing.
• 1:13:01
  I feel like the story could trust itself a little
• 1:13:04
  bit more, Like we have that dialogue between our protagonist
• 1:13:09
  and then the guy who died who he was talking to,
• 1:13:12
  where they kind of have an explanation about the directors, like, oh,
• 1:13:15
  ivan Off says, this Coptev's a man that believes this
• 1:13:18
  and stuff like that. But honestly, you don't need that
• 1:13:20
  because it's that's present enough in their dialogue.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean also just having a character say, someone
• 1:13:26
  google the Smiling Ones.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: It's just that was rough. That was rough. Yeah, I agree.
• 1:13:30
  But it looks like in twenty eighteen, this story.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: Was supposed to know sleep in one Best Original Monster
• 1:13:38
  twenty eighteen.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: Ok.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: And then in twenty twenty.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 10: He expanded it into a novel et so like kind
• 1:13:46
  of a novella length e book.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: Okay, So so.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: I guess it is more a little bit more recent.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: So twenty eighteen first called The Smiling Ones. That's still
• 1:13:56
  around the time I think it was doing well. I
• 1:13:58
  would say, yeah, because I was in high school coming
• 1:14:00
  out of high school, So yeah, I think Smiling Ones
• 1:14:04
  probably helped it around that time. So I'll give him
• 1:14:07
  some levity there, I say, I give him some levity
• 1:14:10
  like I'm some grand jury on it. But I will.
• 1:14:13
  I will be mortioniful than Isaiah. Yeah, thank you, You're welcome.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Darius problem, Darius.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: Darius Pilgrim. I said it, yakavl Liv's former console, with
• 1:14:25
  the radio transmitter in hand, stealing myself against the task
• 1:14:28
  which lay before me. Someone had cleaned up the bloodstains.
• 1:14:32
  Thank god, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to continue.
• 1:14:35
  I could feel the huddle of directors hovering over my shoulder,
• 1:14:38
  staring daggers into my back and waiting breathlessly for me
• 1:14:41
  to begin. The room had fallen quiet once more. On
• 1:14:45
  the main screen above me, the white numbers and letters
• 1:14:48
  indicating timing and positioning of the mirror camera feeds glowed
• 1:14:52
  brilliant white against the inky darkness of the background. Took
• 1:14:55
  one final deep breath, and, bracing myself for the worst,
• 1:14:59
  flipped the radio receiver to the on position. The hiss
• 1:15:02
  of static filled the room, a warm and comforting sound
• 1:15:06
  in comparison to that horrendous, other worldly screech.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: This is Roskamo's mission patrol, intended to reach Cosma, not Lodowski.
• 1:15:14
  Do you copy over nothing?
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: Static?
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: I repeat, this is Roskamos Michigan Control, but Cosma not Lodowski.
• 1:15:23
  Do you read me, comrade?
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: More static or nothing returned to coptive.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: Keep trying. He has to be there unless the Smiley
• 1:15:32
  ones stopped torturing him and finally decided to kill him.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: But Markov bitterly Koptev opened his mouth to reply, the
• 1:15:39
  radio crackled Alive.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: Affirmative, I read your loud and clear Mission Control. It
• 1:15:45
  has been quite a while. Welcome back. Your voice is different.
• 1:15:49
  What happened to he is indisposed at the moment. I'm
• 1:15:55
  sorry to hear that, Michigan Control, but I hope you
• 1:15:58
  might have some good news for me. Roger affirmative. I
• 1:16:02
  just got off this line with the head of the
• 1:16:04
  crew over at launch pad. They've got to Soya's rocket
• 1:16:07
  all lined up, already to go, should be headed to
• 1:16:09
  their way with a D minus sixty minutes.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: Are you serious.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: As a heart attack. We'll get the champagne on ice
• 1:16:18
  for you. Done here, have gone red, Just get yourself
• 1:16:20
  squared away and ready to go. What do you say
• 1:16:23
  are ready to come home?
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: The hits of Silence returned. There was no reply.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: I bet I'm talking to him telling him how to respond. Yeah, maybe,
• 1:16:34
  or maybe they're throwing a little part to celebrate our stupidity.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: Finally, after what felt like at least a century, it
• 1:16:42
  was probably more like forty five seconds, Kadofsky's voice returned.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: They want to know.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: Transmission cutout momentarily hop to Evin Markov exchanged the plants.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, I want to know how long before the
• 1:16:56
  capsule arrives all said and done. Probably just under two
• 1:17:00
  days before the docking process is complete, possibly soon, they're
• 1:17:03
  depending on where an orbit you are when we launch.
• 1:17:07
  Oh really, okay, you're really coming?
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: His voice was thin and confused.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: Were really coming?
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: The line went dead once again for a minute, then
• 1:17:18
  two soft sound of static hurrying from the speakers. Then
• 1:17:23
  it roared back to life. This time Ladovsky was shouting.
• 1:17:27
  The transmission was quieter and muffled, as if he was
• 1:17:31
  turned away from the receiver.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 5: No more, it's been over, anyone else.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: Welled by complete silence, no static. This time Ladovsky was
• 1:17:48
  still keying the mind. I could hear the quiet hub
• 1:17:51
  of Meares oxygen generators in the background. It went on
• 1:17:55
  for about fifteen seconds. Then Ladowsky's voice returned, louder and agitating,
• 1:18:00
  with an edge of dark humor.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, does what you think? There's the one thing
• 1:18:05
  left I can do.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: Now the voice was even louder. Ladovsky was screaming directly
• 1:18:11
  into the microphone.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 5: You fool, you don't dit candle the nugget chip, don't
• 1:18:16
  send it, leave me here. You can do, you can do.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: Then the sound began again, impossibly loud, now impossibly harsh.
• 1:18:26
  The white hot drill in my head turned back on
• 1:18:29
  and it was screeching, piercing, burning, scrambling my brains to paste.
• 1:18:34
  I dropped the transmitter to cover my ears, but it
• 1:18:36
  seemed to have no effect. Suddenly a hand shot out
• 1:18:40
  and snatched the transmitter from my desk, and the coptab
• 1:18:42
  was shouting into it, screaming over the alien shrink and
• 1:18:46
  deep resonance of the bass.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: Who are the smiting ones?
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: And Ladovsky screamed back through a wall of suffering. He
• 1:18:55
  screamed to be heard, but also to overcome the agony
• 1:18:58
  he was in. His words were quick and panicked.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 10: No, what the parasites, they're the opposite of life, the
• 1:19:07
  abosence of life. They come from this other place, from
• 1:19:11
  the horror other place. They won't what we have, They've
• 1:19:14
  already taken it from so many, so so many. I
• 1:19:18
  know they want to us.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: His voice was fading and gurgling, growing thick, as if
• 1:19:22
  someone was pouring motor oil down his throat. He struggled
• 1:19:26
  or somehow and continued, take.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: Him, offer, turk him my way. Don't let them hurt
• 1:19:35
  the oils. Don't let them come to earth, to earth.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: Markof grabbed me by the shoulder and shook violently.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: Cut the feed, Cut the goddamn feed.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: No held Toptev pushing Markov away.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: Not yet, we need more, just a little more.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: Keyed the mic again.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: What what do they look like, Ladovski? What did they
• 1:19:59
  look like?
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 10: God, I have to know what the fuck did they
• 1:20:02
  look like?
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: But Ladovsky had no words left. He was crying, screaming,
• 1:20:07
  howling and pain. The piercing screech grew higher, the base lower,
• 1:20:12
  and the drill in my brain went into overdrive. It
• 1:20:15
  felt like my head was about to rip into two
• 1:20:17
  right in the middle of my face. Then Ladovsky answered,
• 1:20:21
  without saying a thing. The blackness of the main screen
• 1:20:23
  at the front of the room was substituted or a
• 1:20:26
  maelstream of color as the tape covering the camera was
• 1:20:29
  ripped away, but feeling the most abhorrant seeing my cursed
• 1:20:32
  eyes would ever fall upon. All Right, So, for one,
• 1:20:37
  you're an excellent voice actor. That was very cool. Good job. Also,
• 1:20:43
  that was a very cool segment. Yeah, of them screaming
• 1:20:46
  in him, like trying to get through, and that little
• 1:20:48
  like they've taken it from so many like it says
• 1:20:52
  a lot, but not too much, I think, especially when
• 1:20:55
  the guys like they've taken it from me and it's like, Okay,
• 1:20:57
  is that saying Ladovski or is this some thing else
• 1:21:00
  that's like in the form of Ladovsky, these things are
• 1:21:03
  puppeting to make him try to so they can invade
• 1:21:06
  another planet or something.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: I feel like a.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: Lot of people would have done something like yeah, but
• 1:21:10
  the thing's totally fine.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Why don't you just come up here and.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: Help me out at them, you know, like getting like
• 1:21:16
  really low and creepy.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: Like ooh, that's creepy. He you know that does that
• 1:21:20
  seems weird?
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: I liked it.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: They kind of took the rout of him, like just
• 1:21:22
  being like fuck it, I'm already dead.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: I'm dead. Yeah, they're gonna kill me regardless. I'm not
• 1:21:27
  gonna take more people with.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: That was a fun surprise.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: That was good. And then him not him like with
• 1:21:32
  his final moments, ripping off the tape that's been covering up.
• 1:21:35
  That's sick. The first thing I noticed was Zladovsky's face,
• 1:21:38
  the only familiar feature in the bizarre scene. Before me,
• 1:21:41
  he was young, blonde, and probably handsome ones Now his
• 1:21:45
  face was distorted like a newspaper ink image stretched across
• 1:21:49
  silly putty. Black tendrils swarmed around the edges of his face,
• 1:21:53
  sticking to the skin, tugging at his ears, wrapping around
• 1:21:56
  strands of hair and pulling them backwards into the dark
• 1:21:58
  mask behind. He tried to speak, his mouth opening and
• 1:22:02
  closing like a dying fish, but the invading tendrils squirmed
• 1:22:06
  around his lips and snaked down his throat, and all
• 1:22:09
  that came out was a sickening gurgle. One orange clad
• 1:22:14
  arm also protruded from the dark writhing mass, and his
• 1:22:17
  gloved hand gripped the radio transmitter as I watched a
• 1:22:20
  dozen black vines worm their way around his wrist and hand,
• 1:22:23
  creeping like spilled liquid before tightening like sinew, peeling his
• 1:22:28
  fingers from the microphone off one by one until it
• 1:22:30
  floated freely in the micro gravity of the space station.
• 1:22:34
  Piercing sound cut off abruptly, the hot drill my brain
• 1:22:37
  shut off, and the mission control room was bathed in
• 1:22:40
  a terrible silence as we washed Ladovski's arm submerge in darkness.
• 1:22:44
  So Ladovsky used his last minute to unplug the mic.
• 1:22:48
  That's hard, that.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: Goes unplugged the mic and reveal what the thing was?
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that goes hard? What ad g his shifting eyes
• 1:22:55
  with the last thing I saw bulging brown Eyris is
• 1:22:57
  filled with grim determination one moment, speakable horror the next,
• 1:23:01
  and then suddenly dead and glassy. As he finally let
• 1:23:04
  go and surrendered to the void, Ladovsky disappeared, absorbed into
• 1:23:08
  the squirming darkness behind him, nothing human left to hold
• 1:23:12
  my focus. I had no choice but to turn my
• 1:23:14
  attention to the rest of that MACP scene. The space
• 1:23:17
  Ladovsky had occupied just a moment ago was now filled
• 1:23:20
  with the grotesque and faceless monstrosity. It looked like a
• 1:23:23
  floating ball of liquid mercury, three feet wide and three
• 1:23:27
  feet tall, but blacker than the darkest night. Its surface
• 1:23:30
  seemed to constantly squirm and shift, and it shimmered with
• 1:23:34
  rainbow iridescence, like an oil slick on a rain puddle.
• 1:23:38
  At least eight thick tentacle like appinnages extended from its
• 1:23:41
  central mass, each wrapped around computer terminals, door handles, ceiling hooks,
• 1:23:46
  another equipment to keep itself in place in the station's microgravity.
• 1:23:50
  All over its surface, smaller tendrils appeared and disappeared, wiggling
• 1:23:54
  and curling in on themselves. Behind the creature that had
• 1:23:57
  once been Ladovsky loomed three exact duplicates, each devoid of
• 1:24:02
  any discernible face. The background was a tangled mass of
• 1:24:06
  floating tentacles, weaving through one another and twisting around each
• 1:24:09
  other like spaghetti noodles, some attached to equipment in the room,
• 1:24:13
  others gripping the first creature as if laying hands upon
• 1:24:16
  the shoulders of a troubled friend. Suddenly, all four creatures
• 1:24:20
  moved as one, swirming squidlike around one another and spreading
• 1:24:24
  into a line across the capsule. With a jerk, Their
• 1:24:28
  attention seemed to snap to the camera in the terminal,
• 1:24:31
  though without faces it was hard to tell for sure.
• 1:24:35
  Seeing froze like that for a horrifying moment, and I
• 1:24:37
  peeled my eyes from the screen where us Cosmosmission Control
• 1:24:41
  room was still in silent, each person petrified in place
• 1:24:45
  like a statue, slack jawed with eyes locked on the
• 1:24:48
  main screen. I turned my attention back to the video feed,
• 1:24:51
  and now the core of each creature was bubbling, boiling, churning,
• 1:24:55
  like the waters of a Maelstrom. Center of each opened
• 1:24:58
  into a tiny white hole which quickly grew in size,
• 1:25:02
  expanding to cover most of the creature's bodies. Then, stretching
• 1:25:06
  and twisting, each of the holes transformed into a shape
• 1:25:08
  I recognized all too well. Smile. No eyes, no ears,
• 1:25:14
  no nose, no face, just enormous, empty inhuman smiles. Then
• 1:25:17
  the noise was back. This time I wasn't hearing it,
• 1:25:22
  I was feeling it. It was inside of me, inside
• 1:25:24
  my head, and it was coming from them, from their smiles.
• 1:25:28
  It was coming from the smiling ones. I tried to
• 1:25:31
  look away, but I couldn't. My body felt completely paralyzed.
• 1:25:36
  Their smiles were growing. Sound was rising, screeching in my
• 1:25:39
  head like the billion swarming wings of a demonic locust plague.
• 1:25:42
  The drill in my head switched back on. But now
• 1:25:46
  the torque was turned up to the highest setting and
• 1:25:49
  was joined by the thrum of a jackhammer breaking concrete.
• 1:25:52
  It felt like the two hemispheres of my brain were
• 1:25:54
  being torn apart. I could smell burning electrical wires and
• 1:25:58
  taste copper in my mouth. My peripheral vision, I saw
• 1:26:02
  a flurry of movement. The men and women around me,
• 1:26:04
  the pride of the Ross Cosmo State Corporation for Space Activities,
• 1:26:08
  were hurting themselves. Some slammed their faces into their desk
• 1:26:12
  over and over again until blood poured from broken noses
• 1:26:15
  and shattered mouths. Some picked up pins and pencils and
• 1:26:18
  violently stabbed themselves deep in the ear canal, then pounded
• 1:26:21
  them further in with the palms of their hands. Others
• 1:26:23
  gouged their eyes or saw it at their wrists with
• 1:26:26
  any sharp object they could find. Then everything faded away,
• 1:26:29
  until my entire world was a white, hot ball of pain,
• 1:26:32
  and I lost consciousness. My snapped back open, and I
• 1:26:34
  stared at the screen. Smiling ones were gone, and in
• 1:26:38
  their place were four small, gray humanoid aliens buggy black eyes.
• 1:26:42
  My head I heard four distinct voices speaking together. Soon
• 1:26:47
  my vision went dark, and I was gone. Then I
• 1:26:49
  was back. Four giant bipedal lizards appeared on screen, oozing
• 1:26:53
  dark green slime likes. Okay, they're switching forms. I would say,
• 1:26:58
  the implications that Ladvsky wasn't, but no, he saved him
• 1:27:01
  at the eat, so anyway. Now, four giant bipedal lizards
• 1:27:05
  appeared on screen, oozing dark green slime like sweat. Black
• 1:27:08
  venom dripped from their jaws. Their reptilian eyes stared in
• 1:27:11
  my soul, and their voices shrieked in my mind. The
• 1:27:15
  tenebrous veil of an unconsciousness folded around me once again.
• 1:27:18
  Then I was back. Now four angelic beans floated on
• 1:27:22
  the screen, translucent, gleaming like the sun around the edges,
• 1:27:25
  and draped and flowing gowns of a million impossible hues.
• 1:27:28
  Their beautiful voices sang a harmony in my head. Scrim
• 1:27:32
  of shadow fell upon me once more, and I was gone.
• 1:27:35
  Then I was back. Now the inside of the space
• 1:27:37
  station was nailing forest, filled with a swirling fog of
• 1:27:40
  green and gold. Through the mist emerged four giant mushrooms.
• 1:27:44
  Rubbery skin was a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of psychedelic color. Explosions.
• 1:27:49
  Each swayed and shivered in a primeval dance, followed to
• 1:27:53
  the feet of their own secret music. Four spongy voices
• 1:27:56
  sprouted in my brain and fell once more, leaving me
• 1:28:01
  in darkness. Eternal darkness, infinite, perfect, timeless egoists uncarrying darkness.
• 1:28:08
  This was the void, This was their home, the universe.
• 1:28:12
  If nothing had ever existed, I'd always be here. I'd
• 1:28:16
  always be here. Then I was back, but not to
• 1:28:18
  ross Cosmo's mission control. I was on space station mirror.
• 1:28:23
  The noise was gone, The molten javelin of pain in
• 1:28:25
  my head had disappeared. Four human figures stood before me,
• 1:28:29
  three men and one woman, dressed head to toe in
• 1:28:31
  the bright orange spacesuits of the early Soviet space program.
• 1:28:35
  Through their clear bubble helmets, I could see their countenances, young, attractive, proud,
• 1:28:41
  full of vigor, smiling warmly. I recognize each face calling
• 1:28:45
  the pictures of the so called lost cosmonauts that our
• 1:28:48
  recent research had turned up. Is that a bear trap
• 1:28:51
  for me? Because I said, this is based on lost cosmonauts,
• 1:28:55
  but it was kind of just based on them.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: I would give it to you guards there, hold it up.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: Eh, I feel special award. They were Andre Mitkov, Sergeys shechborn,
• 1:29:10
  Maria Gromova, and the last, of course, was Alexei Ladovsky.
• 1:29:15
  Smiles on their faces remained, their lips did not move,
• 1:29:19
  and I could hear their voices in my head, kind
• 1:29:21
  of composed.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: Let us in, please, let us in.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 3: If it had a bit of my power, I think
• 1:29:27
  I would have. Then I watched their smiles grew larger
• 1:29:31
  and larger, contorting their faces in a massive inhuman grimaces.
• 1:29:35
  Skin of their lips and cheeks began to rip and
• 1:29:37
  tear away, revealing toothy, skeletal grins. Their hair fell out,
• 1:29:41
  their skin dripped away, Worms crawled from their empty eye sockets.
• 1:29:44
  The glass of their helmets shattered, their spacesuits deteriorated and
• 1:29:48
  fell away, and the smiles just kept growing. I tried
• 1:29:52
  to scream, but my body was still paralyzed. I heard
• 1:29:55
  the bones and their jaws snapped simultaneously, and the smiles
• 1:29:58
  engulfed their entire face, flipping them inside out. I closed
• 1:30:02
  my eyes, and in my mind I again heard their voices,
• 1:30:05
  now desperate and horrid, chanting.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: Let us in, let us in, let us in.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: Rising into a horrible crescendo. When I opened my eyes,
• 1:30:14
  I was back in rose cosmosbmission control. The writhing tentacle
• 1:30:18
  debomination still filled the mainscreen. My mind was filled with
• 1:30:21
  a horrible cacophony as the four voices morphed into four million,
• 1:30:26
  screaming in one hundred alien languages, but somehow all saying
• 1:30:29
  the same thing.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: Let us in, let us in.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: People around me seemed to be in some kind of
• 1:30:35
  hysterical religious ecstasy, some laughing, some weeping, some howling like
• 1:30:39
  wolves and tearing their flesh to shreds with their teeth,
• 1:30:42
  others seizuring violently in their chairs.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: Let us in, let us in.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: Then I heard another voice, this one nod in my head,
• 1:30:49
  but coming from the little ways behind me. It was
• 1:30:52
  the strong, clear voice of Director Coptive, crying out.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: Cut the feed, Cut the feed for the love and
• 1:30:57
  Blarussia and everyone you want to say.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 10: I could cut the coat damn feed.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: And I tried. My hand reached out for the button
• 1:31:05
  on the terminal which would cut all contact with mirror.
• 1:31:08
  It cinched closer, closer, closer. Then it wrapped around a
• 1:31:13
  pin laying on the desk. Pressed the button, extending the
• 1:31:16
  tip turned it towards me Washington whrror. As my hand
• 1:31:20
  brought the pin slowly towards my face, aiming directly for
• 1:31:23
  my eyeball, I was powerless to stop it. My hand
• 1:31:26
  felt like it was under someone else's complete control, and
• 1:31:29
  it moved closer, closer, closer, until it was almost touching
• 1:31:33
  my cornea, feeling my entire field of vision. Then something
• 1:31:37
  hit me hard in the side of the head. Stars
• 1:31:39
  danced and exploded before my eyes, and I was falling
• 1:31:42
  to the floor in slow motion. Somewhere far above me,
• 1:31:45
  Markov had pounded the button on the terminal, which cut
• 1:31:47
  the video feed. Then he had an officer chair in
• 1:31:50
  his hand, smashing the computer terminal to pieces. Mainscreen went blank.
• 1:31:55
  The piercing screech and wobbling bass disappeared, replaced by the
• 1:31:58
  weeping and wailing of the injured and dying, begging for help.
• 1:32:02
  Markov stood hunched, breathing heavily, still holding the office chair.
• 1:32:06
  Koptev was stood next to him. Why does a ghost
• 1:32:09
  I have? An Ov laid dead at his feet in
• 1:32:11
  a pool of blood, his throat torn out by his
• 1:32:13
  own fingernails. Markov grabbed my arm and pulled me to
• 1:32:17
  my feet. I blinked my eyes and surveyed the room.
• 1:32:20
  I was met by a scene of bloody carnage that
• 1:32:22
  looked more like a battlefield than a mission control room.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: Forgive me for hitting.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 3: You, Markov whispered. Then you straight in and turned to Koptev.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: Now will you believe me? Director? Now? Will you heed
• 1:32:33
  my advice?
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 3: Koptev nodded sadly, his eyes watering.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Markov, I should have listened. We shall proceed
• 1:32:41
  with your first idea. We deorbit Mirror as originally planned,
• 1:32:46
  and the world knows nothing. We burned them. We burned
• 1:32:49
  them all and prayed that it's enough, and Gold help
• 1:32:53
  us if it isn't.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: March twenty third, two thousand and one, the world washed
• 1:32:57
  in wonder is the space station Mirror re entered the
• 1:32:59
  Earth atmosphere near Naughty Fiji and disintegrated over the South
• 1:33:03
  Pacific Ocean. Official statement from ross Cosmos announced that mir
• 1:33:07
  ceased to exist at five point fifty nine gmt. At
• 1:33:12
  the time, mir was the largest spacecraft ever deorbited, and
• 1:33:15
  there were concerns that sizeable pieces of debris, particularly from
• 1:33:19
  the docking assembly gyrodynes and external structure could survive reentry.
• 1:33:24
  Officials in New Zealand issued warnings to ships and aircraft
• 1:33:27
  in the South Pacific, and the Japanese government warned its
• 1:33:29
  residents to stay indoors during the forty minute period when
• 1:33:32
  debris would most likely fall. Nothing came of it. Mir
• 1:33:36
  so ought to have burned up completely during atmosphere re entry,
• 1:33:39
  though rumors and speculation to bound no significant debris of
• 1:33:43
  the wreckage of mir wherever recovered, at least not officially.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: And that is the end of the story.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: And that's the end of the story.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: What a cool.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: So it's based on a like why did Russia diorbit
• 1:33:55
  an actual space station? That's really cool?
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: That is cool.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: That's really sick. I like that. It's a good detail. Okay, so,
• 1:34:02
  uh what did you think of the ending? A Yeah, eh, I.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: Don't really like the whole smiling motif. I think the
• 1:34:10
  whole like going crazy thing. I just like, I don't
• 1:34:12
  know the idea of it. I mean, I like the
• 1:34:14
  you swing for the fences and you have this big thing.
• 1:34:16
  I just like wonder if there's just ever any way
• 1:34:18
  to ever approach these monsters in a different way that
• 1:34:21
  isn't just like we all go crazy and we rip
• 1:34:24
  out our eyes and we're ripping out, we're ripping out
• 1:34:27
  our throat, Like can the horror of just like can
• 1:34:31
  the horror of just like the inevitable? I guess, just
• 1:34:35
  like something I don't know, So I mean like it's
• 1:34:39
  love crafting. It's just like the horror of the unknown.
• 1:34:42
  Is that enough of this thing of like instead of
• 1:34:44
  having it be like these footing things that are smiling
• 1:34:47
  and now I see this alien forest and I can
• 1:34:48
  hear these alien languages.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: I just wonder is it more? Is it always they
• 1:34:52
  always just kill you?
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's just kill you versus a thing of
• 1:34:56
  like is there something of like I don't know even
• 1:35:00
  I like mixing like science with spiritual stuff of like
• 1:35:05
  taking your soul like oh shit, like it's just like
• 1:35:07
  doing something that's different of like these weird aliens that
• 1:35:12
  exist out there are actually there because they collect souls
• 1:35:14
  and this is like how we perceive angels or just
• 1:35:17
  just something weird. Which that's a bad idea. I'm just
• 1:35:21
  saying that I don't I've seen that we've seen that
• 1:35:24
  are in Event Horizon the movie. That kind of thing
• 1:35:27
  like to me, I was honestly just more freaked out
• 1:35:30
  by the idea of, like I guess, like government officials
• 1:35:35
  making irrational decisions based off like pride and that kind
• 1:35:39
  of thing, and then also just the mystery of being
• 1:35:41
  like I don't know what is on there?
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: What is on there? You know what I mean?
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: I think. I think at the end of depart three
• 1:35:46
  it was at its strongest when Laktowski was on the
• 1:35:49
  other end and he was like, don't don't do it.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But then but then like starting it and
• 1:35:53
  it's like, oh, there's about black tendrils and he gets
• 1:35:56
  pulled in.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: I think after he pulls the tape, it loses me.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I almost wish it would have been a thing
• 1:36:01
  where it's like I pulled it, and I don't think that.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: Like what if he starts to pull it but then stops.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: I would the idea of him pulling in.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, like, for my subjective, like my own opinion,
• 1:36:12
  it is always so much more effective in these scenarios
• 1:36:16
  to just be like he pulled the tape and like
• 1:36:19
  what I saw was something crazy, and you just like
• 1:36:21
  leave it to where it's like, oh my god, Like
• 1:36:24
  the more you describe something, the more you're talking yourself
• 1:36:28
  out of interest, which which also makes it when you
• 1:36:32
  have a satisfying creature, it makes it that much better
• 1:36:35
  because you're like, that was awesome. But if you don't
• 1:36:38
  have that strong basis for something that just like, I
• 1:36:40
  mean really fits that scene. To me, it just like
• 1:36:45
  man like we were going straight up, and immediately in
• 1:36:48
  my mind, I was just like a there it goes. Yeah,
• 1:36:50
  you know, And I think everything before that great simple
• 1:36:54
  dynamic you have like all that you know, people back
• 1:36:56
  and forth, you have a bit of a power struggle thing,
• 1:36:59
  the idea of a guy from the forties, and now
• 1:37:01
  you have this like rose colored kind of goggle guy
• 1:37:03
  being like, oh my god, that's like a nation's hero
• 1:37:05
  or something.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: I think, all that's cool. I'm glad they didn't go
• 1:37:08
  into the thing of like we're up here we always
• 1:37:11
  have been.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: But even like the let us in kind of thing,
• 1:37:15
  like even the high pitched screech thing, to me is
• 1:37:18
  scarier than just having like, instead of having them say
• 1:37:21
  like let us in, let us in, just having like
• 1:37:25
  an ear piercing screech where it's like I don't know
• 1:37:31
  what that is, but just like you can kind of
• 1:37:33
  sense it. And it's fucking just disturbing.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: I kind of had the idea. I like the direction
• 1:37:41
  when the guy the next to him at mission control
• 1:37:43
  died and it says his face was in a joyless smile,
• 1:37:46
  and I thought the implication was like the face like
• 1:37:49
  the skins being pulled back, And I'm like, oh, that's
• 1:37:51
  kind of clever because it's not actually a smile. It
• 1:37:54
  just looks kind of like a smile because of like
• 1:37:57
  the stretching that happens, like it's changed in biologies. So
• 1:38:00
  I had the idea, what if the smiling ones that
• 1:38:03
  he's seen up there are like the other dead cosmonauts,
• 1:38:06
  like their bodies have been possessed by something or you know,
• 1:38:08
  And even if that's the case, I don't want to
• 1:38:10
  see it. But that's just a cool idea I have. Yeah,
• 1:38:12
  I mean, it's it's okay. I just I guess it's
• 1:38:14
  just I don't like to.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: Me, even something scary would be like when you fly
• 1:38:19
  a certain height in the air, you like you go
• 1:38:21
  in like that black void. You go into black like
• 1:38:24
  there is no like the space.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: The moonlanding is all fake whatever, And it's.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: Like if you go certain high up, you like enter
• 1:38:31
  your well, what's I thought that it was other stuff.
• 1:38:34
  It's like, no, we have no idea what's being the
• 1:38:36
  like it could have been like a reflective dome or
• 1:38:38
  someone like to me that like that's a that's a
• 1:38:43
  more interesting thing of like just like make you question
• 1:38:46
  these kind of things. Not that you don't really well
• 1:38:48
  that's bullshit, but it's just the idea of being like
• 1:38:51
  what if that was the case and it's not. It's
• 1:38:53
  less about and I you know, I love my body.
• 1:38:55
  Horror is my favorite thing ever. But in situations like this,
• 1:38:59
  just you don't need I don't think you need that.
• 1:39:02
  To me, I was like totally hooked with everything. I
• 1:39:04
  started off the podcast being a bit goofy and stuff,
• 1:39:07
  but I did get I mean, I was bought in
• 1:39:09
  over time. And it was unfortunate too, because at first
• 1:39:12
  I was sitting there and I like, while we're reading
• 1:39:13
  it and it was really good. I was like, God,
• 1:39:16
  people are gonna make me eat my words with this
• 1:39:17
  fucking beginning thing of the smiling ones and stuff, because
• 1:39:19
  I was like, this is good.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: But then it just immediately I was like, oh, there
• 1:39:23
  it is. It was like kind of like being like
• 1:39:25
  this is a diaper, and you're like, no, this is
• 1:39:26
  like a Chipotle burrito.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: It's pretty good.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: In the opening, you're like, no, that's shit. This is
• 1:39:31
  actually I don't know why I thought this was a
• 1:39:34
  or whatever.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: Well, it's like like the reason I bring up me
• 1:39:37
  thinking about the that lost cosmonods is in my head.
• 1:39:40
  I'm like, that's a cool idea. But then the story's
• 1:39:43
  like no, no, no, this is what it is, and
• 1:39:45
  this is what it is, and this is what it is,
• 1:39:47
  and it kept describing. It's like, okay, sorry, I thought
• 1:39:51
  of I've fun with you know.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: In the beginning of the episode, I talked about that
• 1:39:54
  Twilight Zone episode The Parallel Awesome, Like, if you guys
• 1:39:59
  were interest than this story too, I would really.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: Recommend watching that episode. It's fucking great.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: Literally, the guy goes up and when he lands on Earth,
• 1:40:05
  it's like a different world. I forgot the whole hook
• 1:40:08
  to it, but basically it's just a thing where it's
• 1:40:10
  just off and it's like he's existing in this world
• 1:40:13
  and it like freaks him out so much that he's like,
• 1:40:15
  I want to go back up.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: I want you to, I want you to fly back up,
• 1:40:18
  and like the world that he's in. They're not like evil,
• 1:40:21
  but they're like, well why, it's just.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 3: Like it's a little different.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: It's very like him just being like I like, I
• 1:40:29
  mentally cannot stand being here kind of thing, like it's
• 1:40:32
  just this is not where I'm supposed to be very unsettling.
• 1:40:35
  I don't know, it's just very It's it's just something
• 1:40:37
  with everything that we ever say. And I always say,
• 1:40:39
  you know, simplicity's the king, and it is like the
• 1:40:42
  more you can just simplify something and she just like
• 1:40:45
  a simple idea and you don't try to skew it out,
• 1:40:48
  because that's another problem with this is that you have
• 1:40:50
  the cool thing of.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: Like what's weird? Why did it re enter?
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: And then it's like and then also there's like monsters
• 1:40:55
  and they like make you do existential.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 3: Like and they smile at you.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: If it just would have been that, just focus on
• 1:41:01
  the space station thing and don't include other stuff, I
• 1:41:04
  think it would have been awesome.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 3: And conversations and that and that being said, and stuff
• 1:41:08
  was very cool. Yeah, I enjoyed that.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: And it was very well written. And that being said,
• 1:41:12
  it's not like this is a total flop or anything.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: This is good people like it.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: It's just verymed when we're doing these things, at least
• 1:41:20
  for me here, because I mean, I guess pretty I
• 1:41:22
  guess hard on it, but I would say that it's
• 1:41:24
  just you get done reading it, you're into it, and
• 1:41:26
  then it's just that rug pole moment just feels so unsatisfying,
• 1:41:30
  something like it's just a kind of a bummer versus
• 1:41:32
  a lot of the stuff. I think that, Like I'll
• 1:41:34
  think about it in a positive light whatever, but is
• 1:41:36
  it something where I'm like, oh, I wanted to like revisit.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 3: Afterwards Lenovsky being at the control panel and like talking
• 1:41:43
  to them and they can't see anything. That was awesome.
• 1:41:45
  I really enjoyed that.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like the tape and everything is just weird, but
• 1:41:49
  it's also but then it's like, okay, so then the
• 1:41:50
  weird holographic rainbow balls were.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: Like cover up the camera, the electrical.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: Tap over there, you know, like it's just like that
• 1:41:57
  or they don't they're they're entire there the smartest beings
• 1:42:01
  that have existed in like whatever. They don't understand Morse code,
• 1:42:04
  but they understand five hundred other alien languages word.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 3: And they're are and like the they're so smart that
• 1:42:10
  they he says, they are the land without time, there
• 1:42:13
  forever and it. But I assume at the end when
• 1:42:16
  they were transforming, every time he woke up, it's like
• 1:42:18
  all the different species they've okay, yeah, definitely, it's just
• 1:42:21
  so it's like they've conquested galaxies and then it's like.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: We're the only species.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 3: We're definitely sending ships up and they're like, Okay, go ahead,
• 1:42:32
  no tell him to that.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To me that it's just, uh, don't even go there,
• 1:42:37
  because you just that's the problem with a lot of
• 1:42:39
  sci fi horror stuff that I don't like, and I'm
• 1:42:42
  not a huge sci fi guy in general, but it's
• 1:42:45
  like even that movie Apollo eighteen Ears, that movie with Apologen, Yeah,
• 1:42:48
  I fucking hate that movie. Such a cool setup of
• 1:42:50
  like astronauts gone wrong, then they went missing whatever. Horrifying
• 1:42:54
  to be like, oh, yeah, it was the sixties or whatever,
• 1:42:57
  and now we're going up there and these are guys
• 1:42:59
  who just.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: Didn't make it.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: The idea of even just being on a space ship
• 1:43:02
  that's like you're going to crash and diy is insane.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: But then it's like, yeah, there's moon Rock.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: Aliens, Yeah, the little bug thing, Yeah, we can't let
• 1:43:10
  you come back to Earth.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: And it's like, oh yeah, the government blew it up.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: It's just like, can it not just be a thing
• 1:43:15
  of them going there and you know, maybe you do
• 1:43:18
  see something. I guess I'm just saying, like the aliens
• 1:43:21
  and stuff, this is already such a horrifying idea. You
• 1:43:24
  don't need the don't loading tentacle monster beforehand?
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: What if?
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: What if the entire thing was Ladovski on the other end,
• 1:43:32
  or someone who thinks they're Ladovski or ever. I mean
• 1:43:35
  I thought where it was going for a bit, once
• 1:43:36
  it set up the wormholes of space and time. Ladovski
• 1:43:40
  just passed through a wormhole from nineteen fifty seven to
• 1:43:43
  two thousand and one, two thousand and two, whatever it was,
• 1:43:46
  and he is just there and he's lost his mind,
• 1:43:49
  and he's just alone in there, being like Okay, they
• 1:43:52
  say they want, I mean, I say I want. And
• 1:43:54
  I thought to myself, like, that'd be crazy if this
• 1:43:56
  is just an isolated guy out I think.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: A crazed man.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, whatever, And then it's just a thing of like
• 1:44:01
  they say, they do send oh my god, we'll send
• 1:44:03
  this up somebody to help you.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: He's up there. It takes two days to get there.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: A docs it comes back to like, hey, just see
• 1:44:08
  how it's going, and it's just Ladotsky who answers and you're.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 3: Like, oh, the other guy.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: What that kind of thing where yeah, or even something
• 1:44:15
  of like a human body.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: Shit, he's sick.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: And now it's like, okay, well if we go like
• 1:44:20
  you can't go into you'll get sick and you can't
• 1:44:23
  bring it back.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: Down to Earth.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: So it's like this moral thing of him being like, please,
• 1:44:25
  don't feel good, like I think, just simplify it.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean even the scene where like they said
• 1:44:31
  that the Americans saw the ship go up and there
• 1:44:34
  was something that covered the stars. Right for a second,
• 1:44:36
  I'm like, oh, maybe whatever's that there's like a giant
• 1:44:38
  shape like almost like a kraken in space like some
• 1:44:41
  even then it'd be an alien, so I wouldn't like
• 1:44:44
  it as much. But the idea of something like a
• 1:44:46
  ship floating through space or like a bean the size
• 1:44:49
  of a ship. It's like consuming things, like I think
• 1:44:52
  there could.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: Have been all kinds of stuff. One of the scariest
• 1:44:54
  things I have ever seen in my life.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not even joking it, Like legitimately, I cried after
• 1:44:58
  I saw when I was a kid, the end of
• 1:45:00
  Men in Black, when when the milky Way is in
• 1:45:03
  a fucking marble thing.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: You how much that fucked me up?
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, you could do something like that where
• 1:45:10
  it's like a puppet master thing, you know, like that
• 1:45:13
  within itself. That's fucking horrifying. And it's like, I don't you,
• 1:45:17
  it's just the trope.
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: It's just as soon as you do creepy smile.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 3: The smile killed it.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: SMI was floating around. They came around and they're smiling.
• 1:45:28
  I'm like, you know what I would have done. I
• 1:45:29
  would have whipped out my and beat off on the screen.
• 1:45:34
  I would have get all over the fucking screen and
• 1:45:36
  like eat it. This is the reaction that's actually the scariest.
• 1:45:39
  That actually fucking scared the sh I did not see
• 1:45:41
  him walk up. Scared me so bad. He has a
• 1:45:44
  fucking like red blanket around. He looks like a little
• 1:45:46
  like he looks like a little Italian.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: Woman was a little yea Like this is the ending,
• 1:45:53
  by the way that you started by saying, You're like,
• 1:45:56
  you know what I would have done? I would have lived.
• 1:45:58
  I've got you fired up talking about it. I don't know.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, like all in all, it's just these are
• 1:46:03
  I fuck, this is the These are the stories that
• 1:46:05
  pissed me off the most because it they're done so well,
• 1:46:08
  and then all of a sudden, the guy was like,
• 1:46:10
  I have this awesome story. I wonder if it was
• 1:46:13
  like a flying like tendri old guy and they're smiling.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 3: And then they say let me in and everyone dies,
• 1:46:18
  everyone kills themselves.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just at the point where it there's all
• 1:46:20
  this creativity to the point to where it's I don't
• 1:46:25
  simple things can be just so much more effective and
• 1:46:30
  like actually, just like god damn that nerve the fuck
• 1:46:33
  with me. Like I said, even the fucking men and
• 1:46:35
  black guy have like an alien with a marble that
• 1:46:37
  like legitimately scared the fuck out.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: I mean when I was younger. So I don't know.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, in all, you know, I it's just if I mean,
• 1:46:45
  not to be a dig bit of a lead.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 3: Down everything you said that fair.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: To be fair, I did say with my gout on
• 1:46:54
  the screen, that's pretty rough. If you sat there though,
• 1:46:57
  and the guy was like trying to get in your
• 1:46:58
  head to let us in, like floating around like this,
• 1:47:06
  all right?
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: Are you freaked up by her? Even if I was
• 1:47:08
  floating in the void? What are you gonna do to
• 1:47:12
  a guy who's just like I'm bud.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: Floating there? The dose you dose?
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: You never thought to do this?
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 11: Ship nitty, I got a little lotion bottle, Okay, I like,
• 1:47:29
  I like, I mean, what.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: Would what would the aliens do?
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: And let us end? You come and get me. I'm covered.
• 1:47:39
  I am waffle house ash browns. I am smothered and covered, dude, seriously,
• 1:47:45
  onions and cheese all over it.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 3: That's what I am. I also like the idea that,
• 1:47:48
  like maybe the ship yourself. I also like the idea
• 1:47:51
  that maybe, like all the debt, all the lost cosmonauts
• 1:47:55
  went into the wormhole and then when mer went in,
• 1:47:57
  they all found their way to it at like the
• 1:47:59
  same point in time, So like maybe Ladofski was the
• 1:48:03
  only one living up there with all the dead bodies
• 1:48:05
  of the other lost cosmonauts and he losses. But there's
• 1:48:07
  so many cool elements here, and I just wasn't satisfied
• 1:48:11
  by the payoffs.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: The more that I think about it, the more I'm like,
• 1:48:13
  you just could have like pissed or ship yourself, and
• 1:48:15
  it's like, what would they have done? What they have pursued?
• 1:48:18
  You let us in and it's like just diarrhea all.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think they had the idea to
• 1:48:24
  stab themselves. It's like they're being forced to by.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: Imagine what did they gain out of that? That's why
• 1:48:32
  if I sat there and I was just like my
• 1:48:35
  dick off, I just shove things up.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: My arms, like, hey, what do I do now that
• 1:48:41
  that's crazy?
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: I'm just say, what is the what is the end game?
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: That's like the one thing it's like the It reminds
• 1:48:48
  me of this in Resident Evil three Extinction, the one
• 1:48:53
  of the dumbest movies of all time. The world is
• 1:48:57
  a desert planet and yet Umbrella is under ground being like,
• 1:49:01
  how do we control the or it's gone.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: There's zombies on a desert planet.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: That's like what It's like, we're intergalactic beings and we
• 1:49:08
  existed a plate And then he's like, hell, they exist
• 1:49:11
  in a time where there is no life. What do
• 1:49:13
  you mean You've came across how many thousands of aliens?
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: They clearly what do you you seem to be doing?
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: Pretty fuck good thing?
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 3: Exist? You know what else?
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: That's how all the alien species. It's like one you
• 1:49:25
  know what else.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 3: Apparently this this alien species that has conquered galaxies nebulas
• 1:49:32
  of people and creatures, need this one astronaut to convince
• 1:49:39
  them to send a shuttle up. They can't just go
• 1:49:42
  down to the planet themselves. And also, even if that
• 1:49:45
  is the case, why then start screeching and making everyone
• 1:49:50
  on the ship on the mission control center kill themselves?
• 1:49:54
  How does that help them sending a shuttle up? Like
• 1:49:58
  they're gonna scream half that we're gonna die in the
• 1:49:59
  other he we're gonna be like they raise a point,
• 1:50:02
  we should go get them.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Take a metal rod, put in your pick every time
• 1:50:05
  they screech your sounding.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's what the let us in is. It's like, oh,
• 1:50:10
  we'll stop if you send a ship up. But if
• 1:50:13
  they're super smart, they can't do that. If they all
• 1:50:15
  stab themselves in the eye.
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: If he just looked at me, You're like, I like this,
• 1:50:19
  what would they what.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 3: Would they do? It's like you're like, oh, well, I
• 1:50:25
  think it's supposed to make you kill yours like it
• 1:50:26
  compels you to kill yourself. I don't think they're doing
• 1:50:28
  it to relieve the pressure.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: It's like I thought that was I thought they did
• 1:50:31
  the screeching thing because it was like torturous.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, because remember he's reaching to turn it
• 1:50:35
  off and his hand grabs a pin and he's like
• 1:50:38
  resisting it.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: So I put a big pen in my eye with
• 1:50:41
  my gum off.
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: The point The point is, I'm just can you imagine
• 1:50:45
  the alien being like he stab me?
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: Is anybody still okay?
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 3: The point is the point is they their playing didn't
• 1:50:52
  make a lot of sense. What whatever, I don't I
• 1:50:55
  was about to say, I don't want to gome too
• 1:50:57
  hard at the ending, but we have gone so hard
• 1:50:59
  on the end of Look, it's the reason I'm fired
• 1:51:02
  up is because it was good and I wasn't satisfied
• 1:51:04
  by the way that.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's never there's never any point, Isaiah that I
• 1:51:07
  should come to the conclusion that you should beat the
• 1:51:09
  monster by.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 3: Okay, So there, Darius, I feel like you've raised that
• 1:51:13
  as a potential strategy, and multiple stories we've read.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: I don't think I think, I don't think I've ever
• 1:51:17
  said stick a metal rod.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 3: Up of words by the idea like you you pushing.
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 2: Some kind of flaw, But that's a flaw of the story.
• 1:51:26
  If my conclusion comes to I can beat your system.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 3: You know you you will. You present some sexually adverse
• 1:51:33
  scenario at the end of his sort.
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: And that's that's an issue because stories I do like that.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: You couldn't beat it that way.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 3: Okay. My point is I that there was good stuff
• 1:51:46
  here from the author.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: There there was like a lot of good writing pros.
• 1:51:50
  I would be interested to see what they do with
• 1:51:53
  other stories, because like if if that ending had like
• 1:51:56
  kind of ended at part three Stellar, I really liked it,
• 1:51:59
  but yeah, yeah it didn't. It didn't. So thanks for listening.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: If you're listening on the audio platforms like Spotify and
• 1:52:10
  Apple podcasts, I hope you give.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: Us a good rating. I'm sure we deserved it on
• 1:52:14
  this one. Uh and then and then the.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 3: Uh and also a patron, thank you also forgot to
• 1:52:20
  do an intro.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: That's a long weekend, long week man, long fucking We
• 1:52:25
  kind at least get a long week break on that
• 1:52:27
  one long week. Nick's not giving me anything. It looks
• 1:52:33
  like he smelled his own fart over there.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: Thanks to you patrons. We appreciate you. And also, uh,
• 1:52:40
  if you haven't signed up to the patron yet. We
• 1:52:42
  do have an interview with Dathan Auerbach coming out soon. Uh,
• 1:52:47
  it might already be out, but it is. Uh, the
• 1:52:50
  author of the pen Pal, author of pin Pal.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 3: What just everything you're saying is wrong and something way,
• 1:53:01
  just a little way, something you're saying is incorrect.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: Every time we have an interview with him, it was fun.
• 1:53:09
  It was much cleaner than this.
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: If you're in your car right now, listen to this
• 1:53:13
  and you're still just having both hands on the steering wheel,
• 1:53:16
  I want you to really wonder why didn't you click
• 1:53:18
  off or turn it down or turn it off?
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: Even now as you still don't click off. Why, oh go, dude,
• 1:53:25
  you need to click off, click off