Latest / INSPIRE STORY / The Moon Is On Fire

Transcript

The Moon Is On Fire · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to cream guest.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Today, we're going to be reading a story called am
• 0:18
  I the only one that sees that the moon is
• 0:20
  on fire? This is by M five to nine Gar,
• 0:23
  which is the author Psychosis. Also, we just read them
• 0:25
  again recently, didn't we.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we read them in the grab bag, we did.
• 0:29
  We read their story The Empty Prison, about the prison
• 0:33
  where there's the thing on the lower floors that keeps
• 0:35
  rising every week. But yeah, we've read there before. In
• 0:39
  Psychosis is one of like the all time yeah, because
• 0:42
  it came out of the early days and is one
• 0:44
  of the few that people look back on and they're like, oh,
• 0:47
  that was actually a good story.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: No, it's a it's a dynamite.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: It's like one of those yeah all star kind of
• 0:53
  like Mount Rushmore kind of titles for creepypastas.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so always happy to cover him. Which, by the way,
• 1:01
  I've that's a I've opened up a tab to try
• 1:05
  to explain who this guy was, and it was just
• 1:08
  a picture of myself, So don't know what that was about.
• 1:10
  His actual name is Matt Demerski uh and we are
• 1:15
  going to have a linked in the description his website
• 1:17
  ww dot Mattdmerski dot com. He also has books for
• 1:20
  sale on Amazon and smash Words, and he also has
• 1:24
  a Patreon, so there's a ton of waves to support
• 1:26
  this artist. Like I said, he's one of the Aldzheimer's
• 1:30
  and he's always writing something like if you go to
• 1:32
  his ready to account, he is like, oh, this book's
• 1:37
  and the works out books and the world. So it's
• 1:38
  cool to see people who have been writing this long
• 1:40
  and are continuing to do it and find success with it.
• 1:42
  So if you want to support him, he will be
• 1:44
  linked in the description. But as far as the story
• 1:46
  we're reading today, I mean, the titles too weird, you know,
• 1:49
  to not I love it, not do something with right?
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: It got me hooked. Well. I saw that someone commented
• 1:55
  I believe on we did that Catfish episode on Patreon
• 2:00
  and this is one of the commentary's suggestion, and I
• 2:01
  just I thought the name was really cool. And it's
• 2:04
  just always a pleasant surprise when you see an interesting
• 2:06
  title and you go and you're like, oh, fuck this guy,
• 2:08
  you know. So I'm excited to see what it's about.
• 2:11
  I wonder if it's gonna have a not necessarily some
• 2:15
  vanished vibe, But just like it feels like it's gonna
• 2:17
  be the surreal kind of I'm hoping for, almost like
• 2:20
  a bit of a cosmic horror kind of thing.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, as always you.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Know me love me, Oh yes, you love craft and stuff,
• 2:29
  but I'm hoping that I don't know, I love whenever
• 2:31
  people said up these things where uh I mean it
• 2:35
  is kind of like psychosis too, where the author is
• 2:39
  questioning his own sanity with things and like you know,
• 2:42
  seeing things that maybe aren't there that other people can't see.
• 2:45
  Always a lot of fun. So I'm excited to dive
• 2:48
  into this one. For people who are watching YouTube, consider
• 2:52
  checking us out on audio platforms like Spotify and Apple
• 2:55
  podcasts all that jazz and giving us a nice rating there.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: It does help.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: And if you want extra episodes, like I said, would
• 3:00
  just did the Catfish episode and we're going to be
• 3:02
  recording another one this week Patreon exclusive episode. If you
• 3:05
  want some more episodes on the side, feel freese to
• 3:07
  support the channel and get you some extra grub there, Isaia,
• 3:11
  are you ready?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: I think Grub's a good way to describe it. The
• 3:14
  Phil's fitting grub grub grub, Yes, I am ready. So's
• 3:19
  three part story we'll begin with part one. Part one?
• 3:22
  Am I the only one sees that the moon is
• 3:24
  on fire? I know this might be an odd question
• 3:27
  to ask on a mental health forum, but does anybody
• 3:30
  else see that the moon is on fire? But it
• 3:35
  doesn't waste any time? Gets right to the thesis of
• 3:37
  the story on a mental health I appreciate that. Yeah,
• 3:40
  our slash sleep, the famed mental health.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Is basically a mental forum from how people write. These
• 3:46
  are their fucking stories for sure.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: From lowly riders indestructible pedophiles. We care at our slash
• 3:54
  no sleep. I'm not joking. I'll run through this for
• 3:57
  a second. I know I'm not the most reliab, but
• 4:00
  I don't think I could imagine something like this. Hell,
• 4:04
  I remember the entire lead up to what happened. People
• 4:06
  were freaking out. It was the end of the world
• 4:09
  by all anybody knew. What did they call it? An
• 4:13
  unidentified object at near luminous speed. That's what the media
• 4:18
  said over and over for like the day and a
• 4:21
  half we had until it hit. I guess that meant
• 4:24
  it was going really fast, fast enough to destroy all
• 4:27
  life on the planet. Anyway, that was the part nobody misunderstood.
• 4:32
  They said somebody had to have created this object and
• 4:35
  aimed it at us. It was unlike anything natural they'd
• 4:39
  ever seen. They said, somebody had probably shot this thing
• 4:42
  at us billions of years ago, probably aiming to wipe
• 4:46
  out the competition before it evolved, aiming to wipe us
• 4:49
  out before we were anything more than barely living goo.
• 4:53
  But apparently it had been sent out. Hold on, let
• 4:56
  me check my scribblings about what they said between four
• 5:00
  point five four and four point five two seven billion
• 5:04
  years ago, because whoever had shot it at us hadn't
• 5:08
  taken the Moon into account. It couldn't have, because it
• 5:12
  didn't exist. Then, miraculously, the timing was just right and
• 5:16
  it hit the Moon instead. I remember the noise and
• 5:19
  the flash. How can I forget? Absolutely? Everyone was outside,
• 5:24
  watching and listening, thinking the world was about to end.
• 5:28
  But it was daytime here and the moon was on
• 5:30
  the other side of the planet. We only saw the
• 5:32
  edges of the blast springing up past the horizon. A
• 5:36
  sprawling cloud of flame and glowing dust erupted across the skies.
• 5:40
  I stood on the street among dozens of neighbors. I
• 5:42
  didn't know well, I knew crazy Donald, homeless guy who
• 5:46
  I sat with sometimes outside Windy's. He was there, muttering
• 5:50
  to himself and holding a plastic bag filled with plastic bags.
• 5:54
  But I don't think he knew anything was going on.
• 5:57
  He was just going around asking people for change, even
• 6:00
  before we knew that we were going to live for
• 6:02
  another day. I like him because he and I get
• 6:05
  along in a quiet and lonely sort of way. I
• 6:08
  followed him around and made sure he was safe. As
• 6:11
  the crowd grew confused, excited and loud, scaring him. Radios
• 6:16
  came alive and said we should probably stay inside for
• 6:19
  the next few days. We didn't need to be told twice.
• 6:22
  I urged Donald to move along somewhere safe, and then
• 6:25
  I hit in my apartment. The parties were absolutely insane,
• 6:29
  but I could hear through the walls. I imagine that
• 6:31
  people were amazed at being alive, and since they had
• 6:33
  nowhere to go until the all clear, it was party time. Me.
• 6:37
  I kept to myself mostly see that's why I'm asking.
• 6:41
  I remember all this very vividly. I could have sworn
• 6:45
  it was real. The thing is, even despite the pills,
• 6:50
  I have a tough time with reality. I can feel
• 6:53
  the rippling waters of dreaming. While I'm awake. Often I
• 6:58
  can't distinguish between the cold hearts lines of the real
• 7:01
  world and half formed concepts of waking imagination. I don't
• 7:05
  want to have my dosage upped again because the pills
• 7:08
  make my brain feel like cement, So I pretend I'm
• 7:12
  not crazy. I don't mutter to myself or attack people.
• 7:16
  My thoughts are still there, my faculties, as my brother
• 7:19
  will calls them, So I force myself to behave normally
• 7:23
  when I see something I don't understand, and I use
• 7:26
  logic to control what I do. I like music. Songs
• 7:31
  keep me grounded because they float through the air like
• 7:34
  mathematical chains. The songs that I know, I know by heart,
• 7:39
  and I know I'm solid as long as the notes
• 7:41
  keep making sense. I'm listening to Man on the Silver
• 7:45
  Mountain right now, trying to keep coherent, but strategy doesn't
• 7:49
  help memories of my hallucinations.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: And I wonder he's talking to the fucking old boy
• 7:52
  outside of Windy's. Dude guys sitting there begging, begging for frosties,
• 7:58
  and this guy's like seeing Mickey Mouse waking around.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: This guy's a nut. This guy's a fucking nut.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: He can try, you get me, He can be as
• 8:06
  eloquent as he wants, but this mother.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: He has hallucinations and he has to see everything the
• 8:11
  right way, and the notes have to make sense. It's
• 8:13
  like you visualize. It's like he gets ideas and stuff's
• 8:16
  visualized there. So that's why he's asking about the moon
• 8:18
  being on fire, because he's like, this is probably a hallucination.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. All I'm saying is that him
• 8:24
  and crazy Donald. You know, he's just like fivety. He's like, yes, Donald,
• 8:28
  He's like, do you see the giant purple man on
• 8:31
  top of the moon pissing on the fire?
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: I do that both. I uh, I don't know. It's well, actually,
• 8:38
  let me ask you this. Well, I you know, sorry,
• 8:41
  I'm going all over the place. I will say this
• 8:44
  is this is freaking me out the story because I
• 8:46
  keep getting fucking like reels and I keep seeing videos
• 8:49
  of like this asteroid is meant to hit Earth in
• 8:51
  the next blah blah blah blah blah.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Have you seen them? Have you seen those? I see
• 8:54
  those all the time. Yeah, that's fuck it. Did you
• 8:58
  know you're gonna die? And eate mine. It's like, Okay,
• 9:01
  I feel.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Like every scientist just wants the world to end. Have
• 9:04
  you felt that at all?
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always so like, did you know that we're
• 9:08
  just like an ant? Did you know the grand scheme
• 9:10
  of things? You're nothing and we could blow up right now?
• 9:13
  What if I do it right now? All of it?
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I think it's to me, it's less of that, But
• 9:16
  it's also them just being there's this there's a rock
• 9:19
  called B twenty four Z twelve and it's on its
• 9:23
  way Earth. It's not like it's not even like they're
• 9:27
  not even remotely upset by it. It's like there's a ship.
• 9:30
  They're always they always smirk when they're talking about It's
• 9:33
  never a frown. They're always like.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: It's traveling.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: It's such a rate that will blast of the earth,
• 9:39
  sitting us out a boardit freezing the world, destroying all life,
• 9:44
  and we'll all and it'll go us off our access
• 9:46
  and it's just kind of a magical thing in the universe.
• 9:48
  I'm like, I don't think that a giant rock fucking
• 9:51
  hit and us and killing all life is pretty fucking
• 9:54
  magical of the universe, dude.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's kind of a bummer. No, it's quite compelling.
• 10:00
  I don't know.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: It's just that kind of thing where I'm like, can
• 10:02
  we not act remorseful at all? That, like all loss
• 10:05
  of life would be a fucking a huge bummer.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's always like a smiling Bill n
• 10:12
  I kind of guy looking at the camera and they're like,
• 10:15
  there's a rock on its way right now, and when
• 10:17
  it gets here, it's gonna blow your domes smooth, like
• 10:23
  they're so excited. That's something that's traveling at the speed
• 10:27
  of light. It's like flying directly for us. Your kids
• 10:31
  are gonna die, You're gonna die that dark dead, your
• 10:36
  full block is getting it's gonna bounce off the moon
• 10:39
  when it that's just the universion. That's pretty sweet, and
• 10:44
  that's pretty fucking cool if you ask me, Yeah, it'll
• 10:48
  hit the core. I'll dive of heat death. It's like,
• 10:50
  all right, well, I'll thanks. I guess I'll worry about
• 10:54
  my four oh one k another day. Yeah, it's all.
• 11:00
  It's all. I just I don't like any I don't
• 11:03
  like it in stories. I don't like it with people.
• 11:05
  It's just like life sucks and then you die kind
• 11:09
  of thing, or it's like, yeah, you're gonna die any
• 11:12
  second now, You ever think of that? You should think
• 11:15
  about that more. It's just lame anyway. Is it a hallucination?
• 11:22
  I asked, because the media coverage of the molten moon
• 11:25
  dropped off pretty quickly over the last week. I mean,
• 11:28
  there's a massive cloud of glowing dust and flaming gases
• 11:31
  spread out across the sky like somebody thrust a burning
• 11:34
  spear straight through the moon. Because that's what happened, nobody
• 11:39
  seems to care today. I can't even find any mention
• 11:41
  of it. All the videos and pictures are gone. I
• 11:45
  can't find the articles anymore. It's been too cloudy here
• 11:48
  to see it myself, and I don't have any windows
• 11:50
  in my basement apartment, but I've ventured out a few
• 11:53
  times to look up. I still see the orange glow
• 11:57
  like a smeared second sun behind the clouds, and I
• 12:00
  have to wonder, why the hell isn't anyone talking about
• 12:04
  this anymore? Has our tension span really gotten that short?
• 12:08
  Are we right back to the next reality television drama
• 12:11
  and celebrity gossip already? A weird thing happened when I
• 12:15
  ran into my next door neighbor Dean. I normally avoid
• 12:19
  him like I avoid everyone, but this time was different. Hey, Elec,
• 12:23
  he said, smiling at me in the hall. Why would
• 12:26
  anyone smile at me? Grubby, unshaven, wearing a Megadeath T shirt.
• 12:32
  I was the epitome of that guy you ignore, who
• 12:34
  is fine with being ignored. I would have said hello
• 12:37
  back and moved on quickly, but I had a question
• 12:39
  myself this time. How about that sky? Yeah, yes, studying
• 12:44
  my face, tall, blonde and good looking in that annoying
• 12:48
  Abercrombie sort of way. He had no reason to so
• 12:52
  much as look at me. I wondered why he was
• 12:55
  even talking to me. God, dude, g fucking get a grip.
• 12:58
  Good fucking lit. I mean, very clearly, it's establishing we
• 13:03
  have an unreliable narrator. Yeah, I just feel like I'm
• 13:08
  watching I feel like I'm watching that. Actually, just I
• 13:10
  feel like whel grass Tyson.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: I'm watching a episode of I'm watching an episode of
• 13:15
  like Love on the Spectrum or something. I'm like, get
• 13:17
  fucking get over it. Did a good lord like and fine,
• 13:22
  what about it?
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I remember frowning slightly. Something seemed off about his interest.
• 13:27
  I wasn't about to make a huge social blunder, and
• 13:29
  mentioned the sky was on fire. If I was just
• 13:31
  hallucinated and the whole thing.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Either crappy weather's blocking the view the smaller than that, Yes,
• 13:37
  it's quite unfortunate.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: I nodded, laughed sheepishly, and hurried down the stairwell. I
• 13:42
  think he stood there watching me until I close the door.
• 13:45
  The more I thought about it, the more I was
• 13:47
  sure that he didn't remember that the moon was on fire.
• 13:51
  If I were a normal person, that's the first and
• 13:54
  only thing that would be on my mind. Hey, remember
• 13:57
  the time the moon freaking exploded? Have me too? Since
• 14:00
  it was last week? Because half the damn sky is
• 14:03
  still on fire. Every couple hours for several days, I'd
• 14:08
  go outside, but I kept missing the side due to
• 14:11
  the cloudy winter weather. From the pictures I remembered seeing
• 14:15
  the moon was a molten coin burning in between two
• 14:18
  jutting clouds, almost like a fiery eye, and I wanted
• 14:22
  to see it for myself. If I could just see it,
• 14:25
  if I could just start it for a time, I
• 14:29
  could finally convince myself one way or the other. I
• 14:33
  was becoming pretty certain that the moon would be just
• 14:36
  the same old silver dollar it had always been. The
• 14:38
  thing is thought i'd gotten a pretty good handle on
• 14:41
  my issues. If I've just imagined the entire thing, then
• 14:45
  I'm in serious mental trouble. I loved a few messages
• 14:49
  for my brother, but he hasn't called me back yet.
• 14:51
  I haven't texted my younger sister Laura, on the excuse that
• 14:55
  I just wanted to see how she was doing. She
• 14:58
  didn't respond either, that surprise. Though Dad's probably passed out
• 15:03
  trunk right about now. I might call Tracy if I
• 15:06
  get any worse, although I wouldn't know what to say
• 15:09
  to her. Really, he's probably busy taking care of Dad's
• 15:12
  mess anyway. I don't know. I'm sure I'll get over this.
• 15:15
  I just don't want to have to go to my doctor.
• 15:19
  She'll let my meds again. Then I'll be a zombie.
• 15:22
  You know. Maybe maybe sometimes maybe sometimes being a zombie
• 15:27
  is better than being convinced that the moon is on
• 15:29
  fire and everyone's eyeing it from me. I do like
• 15:31
  this idea, though, of like the concept's great, I'm really
• 15:35
  I'm into the story so far.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like the idea of this guy who can't
• 15:39
  understand that he has like these uh, like hallucinations. He
• 15:43
  understands that. He's like, I'm not all there, but I
• 15:46
  need to have this justification. It's just like it's like
• 15:49
  being unable to scratch an itch. I would assume is
• 15:51
  what it's like, because he's like, I feel like I
• 15:53
  feel like people are making me feel crazier than I
• 15:55
  already feel by not acknowledging like this very crazy thing
• 15:58
  that happened and I can't even see it for myself.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Whatever. I that's just a fun Uh that's a fun setup. Yeah, yeah,
• 16:07
  Like he might be delirious, but he can't tell you
• 16:10
  he can't even see the thing to know if it's
• 16:11
  an illusion or not.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Also a lot of great little things at the end
• 16:14
  there with like the dad passed out drunk, and I mean,
• 16:17
  like obviously he doesn't have a very great family life,
• 16:20
  which is probably also why he's like so weird about
• 16:23
  when people are like wanting to talk to him because
• 16:25
  his family never talks to him. Just a lot of
• 16:27
  great little characters set up stuff. It's time to talk
• 16:30
  about something scary, your health.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I know I don't go in the doctor as much
• 16:35
  as I should.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: If I'm feeling sick, I'll just lie in bed and
• 16:38
  sleep it away. But that's only because I don't want
• 16:40
  to have to deal with the appointments, insurance.
• 16:43
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  Speaker 2: Back to our spooky story.
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  com slash creepcast to get in on their fantastic offer today.
• 19:35
  Thank you Warby Parker for sponsoring the show. Their link
• 19:38
  will be in the description and we are back to
• 19:40
  the episode. Thanks for the responses, although now I'm just
• 19:43
  more confused. Some of you say the moon isn't on
• 19:47
  fire and to go look for myself, and some of
• 19:49
  you are just trolling and say the moon is on fire.
• 19:54
  Hope the mods oban you. This isn't a place to
• 19:56
  make fun of people. Some of you have asked about
• 19:58
  Will before. Yeah, he listens to me. He's the only
• 20:02
  family I have that takes me seriously at all. I
• 20:05
  think that he considers it his duty as an older brother.
• 20:09
  He takes care of Laura too, although she's got to
• 20:11
  get out on her shoulders. Mostly, I don't think Will
• 20:14
  would have to do nearly as much if Dad got
• 20:16
  a job or stop drinking. Tracy's nice and all, but
• 20:20
  we're not her kids, not her responsibility. But even Will
• 20:26
  isn't really returning my calls anymore. Not after the incident
• 20:30
  I posted about last month. He got mad that I
• 20:33
  woke him up in the middle of the night for
• 20:35
  a dream I had while I was sleeping. Waking hallucinations
• 20:38
  were one thing, he said, but dreams while I was
• 20:41
  asleep perfectly normal, and I had to deal with him
• 20:43
  on my own. He didn't seem to care how traumatic
• 20:47
  or horrifying the dream was. I mean, I can't blame him,
• 20:51
  I'm sure on balance, he's done so much for me
• 20:54
  and I've done so very little. For him. But I've
• 20:58
  had a terrible sense of impending doom ever since that night.
• 21:02
  I think about the kinetic terror I felt, and I
• 21:05
  still can't shake it. Tough part for me is that
• 21:07
  my dream seep into my real life. Like right now,
• 21:11
  I feel like I'm being watched. I'm looking up and
• 21:14
  there's a small mirror to the right of my laptop.
• 21:18
  I can't look away, even as I type or am
• 21:21
  I looking away and just believing that I'm looking at
• 21:24
  the mirror. I keep looking deeper and deeper, seeing further
• 21:27
  into the apartment behind me, and a sense of tension
• 21:30
  pulls at me, a building screamed to come that keeps
• 21:33
  rising to higher and higher intensity. I already see it,
• 21:38
  I already sense it, but I'm not consciously aware of
• 21:42
  what it is. Not yet. A grenade goes off inside me,
• 21:47
  throwing tear and adrenaline a thousand conflicting directions within the
• 21:51
  confines of my chest and libs. He's there. He's standing
• 21:54
  there in the shadows, watching me with hatred and intent.
• 21:57
  He sees me, he sees that I see, and he
• 22:00
  stalks forward, approaching me from behind. But he's not there.
• 22:05
  You can't possibly be there. Why would Dean be in
• 22:09
  my apartment? I just have to sit still, pre deepened.
• 22:16
  Oh my god, I don't know what to do. I
• 22:20
  think I killed Dean. But I had to. I had to.
• 22:25
  I have to make sense of this. I have to
• 22:27
  figure this out, Okay, step by step. I wasn't listening
• 22:33
  to music or I would have known that he was
• 22:36
  really there? Or was he? Is he really on the
• 22:41
  floor bleeding from his head? So secure in the matrix
• 22:45
  of logic I usually keep myself in, I was certain
• 22:48
  he wasn't really there. I kept believing that, even as
• 22:51
  the fear surged up right behind me and he grabbed
• 22:54
  me around the neck. He was trying to drag me
• 22:57
  toward the door. That's all I could tell. He didn't
• 23:00
  say a word. I don't know how I got out
• 23:03
  of his grip except by going limp and flopping down
• 23:06
  at a lucky moment. And then he lunged at me again.
• 23:09
  I scrambled away, pulled a lamp down and threw it
• 23:12
  out his face. A couple of bits of shattered light
• 23:15
  bulbs stuck out from his cheek, but he kept coming. Furious.
• 23:20
  He tried to tackle me, but I slipped and fell
• 23:22
  out of the way, and he smashed sideways into my table.
• 23:25
  I used his moment of disorientation and lift my printer
• 23:28
  and bring it down on his head. He fell, stopped moving.
• 23:34
  What do I do? What do I do? My condition,
• 23:39
  my pills would make me out to be a lunatic?
• 23:42
  Would they lock me up for this? It was in
• 23:45
  my own apartment, sure, But they just say that I
• 23:47
  invited him inside. Wait? Did I did I ask him
• 23:54
  to come look at something? Did I then attack him?
• 23:59
  If I'm hallosin things again, how can I know what's real?
• 24:03
  I've always hated him, hated his niceness. I always thought
• 24:07
  there was a smug arrogance behind it, even if he
• 24:09
  never showed it. I couldn't call the police, could I?
• 24:12
  But I did. I had to. This wasn't some movie.
• 24:16
  I couldn't hide the body or any such nonsense. Besides,
• 24:19
  that would just look worse. So I called. The first
• 24:24
  thing the cop on the other end asked was my location.
• 24:28
  It was very insistent on knowing where I was, even
• 24:31
  before I mentioned what I'd done. Something about his energy
• 24:35
  spooked me, and I hung up before giving any identifying information.
• 24:39
  Damn it will, where are you? He's moving Dean's movie.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Bough tell you what you got me all wrapped up
• 24:46
  in that. That was a great performance there.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: That was awesome.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: I will say the the uh, the way that that
• 24:52
  was written was so chaotically schizophrenic that that was uh insane.
• 24:58
  I'd like the sheer like the way that it transitioned
• 25:00
  from him just talking to Dean to then all of
• 25:03
  a sudden, he's like, by the way, I think I
• 25:05
  just bludgeed him with an HP printer, you know, yeah,
• 25:08
  pretty fucking well.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, like the transitions were so interesting where it
• 25:14
  starts with like I'm looking in the mirror? Am I
• 25:16
  looking in the mirror? There's someone in here with me?
• 25:19
  And then he kills Dean, but then he doesn't know
• 25:24
  if he killed Dean. Then calls the police, and he
• 25:26
  doesn't know if the police should know anything. It's it's
• 25:31
  interesting how chaotic gets written to where you're almost confused,
• 25:36
  but you keep just enough of a through line that
• 25:38
  you still understand what's happening. There's just a bit of
• 25:41
  a roller coaster with it. Yeah, it's very well done.
• 25:45
  Between this, it's like host is Matt here loves writing
• 25:51
  like crazy people?
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that he I wonder if he knows
• 25:54
  somebody that has, Like I wonder if he has dealt
• 25:57
  with that in his own personal life with like a
• 26:00
  family member or something where he's been around somebody that
• 26:03
  has talked to him extensively, or if he's dealt with himself,
• 26:07
  because it feels so natural.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Like I feel like.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: When people tend to write crazy or you know, people
• 26:14
  that are delusional or something, I feel like they go
• 26:16
  extremely overboard to the point where it's almost a characture
• 26:19
  of that kind of disease or something that mental disease.
• 26:22
  But this feels like a very earnest and honest approach
• 26:27
  to how somebody would probably speak if they had that.
• 26:30
  You know, I don't think that it would just be
• 26:32
  so black and white in its approach though, though. The
• 26:36
  peppering of how kind of chaotic the roller coaster has
• 26:39
  become does like it feeds itself well, you know, like
• 26:42
  I mean, it doesn't just totally like play it straight
• 26:45
  the whole time.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm I'm into it so far.
• 26:51
  I think this is sick, especially the way it Thrittin.
• 26:54
  Thanks for all the replies. Yes, Dean was alive, just unconscious.
• 26:59
  He woke up, staggered to his feet and mumbled an apology.
• 27:03
  It was the weirdest thing ever. No, he didn't explain
• 27:06
  what the hell he'd been doing. He seemed confused more
• 27:09
  than anything. He did say.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: That was really stupid of me. I'm sorry.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: About twenty minutes after he stumbled out through the wall,
• 27:19
  I thought I heard somebody berating him in his apartment.
• 27:22
  Now I'm more confused than ever. I don't understand what
• 27:25
  he was trying to do. It's satisfying, though, hearing someone
• 27:29
  shout at him for being an asshole and an idiot. Yeah,
• 27:33
  I know right. If I didn't have my own issues,
• 27:35
  i'd call the police on to myself or breaking it
• 27:37
  and entering. Sometimes mental problems make you feel like an outcast.
• 27:42
  You don't get to call the police, you don't get
• 27:44
  asked for help if there's a problem. You're the one
• 27:47
  in trouble. It's one of the many reasons I don't
• 27:50
  leave my apartment much. You guys ever feel like that.
• 27:52
  I just had the oddest experience. A girl came by
• 27:58
  Jan's girlfriend and asked if I wanted to take a walk.
• 28:02
  She wanted to apologize and explain what happened, so that
• 28:06
  I wouldn't bresh charges. I guess she had no idea.
• 28:09
  I was terrified of interacting with the cops. She was
• 28:12
  like dean, thin, blonde parky, like a fashion magazine model.
• 28:18
  I hated her immediately, even though she sort of reminded
• 28:21
  me of my sister. First thing that hit me, aside
• 28:24
  from the cold night air, was the blazing orange casting
• 28:28
  everything in eerie, burnt colors. The weather cleared up immediately.
• 28:33
  I could sense the molten moon and blazing veil above,
• 28:37
  but I avoided looking at it. It wasn't real, and
• 28:40
  I wasn't going to give in to my waking dreams.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Nice night out, isn't it?
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: She said, oblivious to the burning sky. She walked beside me.
• 28:49
  Something about that little nice night, isn't it? She said,
• 28:52
  oblivious to the burning sky. Just that little sentence right
• 28:54
  there is very I don't know how to describe it.
• 28:58
  I like the way that sentence is packed.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: It's just a really interesting way of like, I just
• 29:05
  can't tell this guy is fucking totally batshit crazy, or
• 29:09
  if everyone is just actually relieved. But it does make
• 29:12
  I mean, it just lends itself more to either being.
• 29:15
  She is a hallucination herself, or that he is hallucinating
• 29:19
  about the sky.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I can't. I also kind of expect we maybe get
• 29:23
  in Shutter Island here, you think, like somebody is like
• 29:27
  orchestrating this to test him in that way. Well, like
• 29:30
  he may be inside of like a facility or something.
• 29:34
  Oh interestingly, Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's why
• 29:37
  someone would come in there get hit there like sorry,
• 29:39
  and then a.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Woman will not necessarily not necessarily a Truman show, but
• 29:43
  something along those lines, like an orchestra.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Like Shutter Island, where he realizes that he's a patient
• 29:49
  the whole time, right right at the he thinks he's
• 29:51
  a detective. Yeah, well that I mean, spoilers.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: But at the at the end, at the end, he
• 29:55
  doesn't realize it though, does he he? Like, uh, I
• 29:59
  guess or maybe he does, I can't remember.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, he comes to at the end, again spoilers,
• 30:04
  he comes to the realization that he's not a detective,
• 30:07
  that he's one of the patients. And the whole thing
• 30:09
  was the police were trying to determine if he could
• 30:12
  come to terms with the murder so that he wouldn't
• 30:17
  have to be lobotomized. But then at the ending he lies. Well,
• 30:28
  it's presented that he doesn't know. He's still oblivious, doesn't
• 30:31
  know what's going on, so they come to lobotomize him,
• 30:33
  but right before he goes, he says the line back
• 30:35
  to the doctor or the detective that's like, what do
• 30:39
  you think is worse living with it or letting go
• 30:41
  or whatever, implying that he does know and he did
• 30:44
  come out of the illusion, but the reality of living
• 30:47
  with what happened is worse than being lobotomized. So he's
• 30:49
  letting them do it to him.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'd rather just fucking be mentally dead.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: He'd rather just be vegetative than what.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen that movie forever. I you know, fucking
• 30:59
  act which I love. It's in that movie. Is the
• 31:01
  guy who plays Rorshak in Uhatchman.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah?
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: The fuck is his name? Oh yeah, Jackie Earl Haley. Yeah,
• 31:10
  he's he's He's been in a lot of great movies.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Sidney will cry out save us and I will whisper
• 31:16
  no love, I love. I love Rorshak. Such a good character.
• 31:20
  I'm not trapped in here with you? Would you? Alan
• 31:23
  Moore actually wrote that character to be like a parody
• 31:26
  of like right wing guys that he hated because his
• 31:29
  whole thing was like he was like, oh, he's so
• 31:33
  committed to like what used to be that he's a fool. Right,
• 31:36
  that was the idea, But he incidentally made Rorshak the
• 31:41
  only character in the story that has principles and doesn't
• 31:48
  like sacrifice them at any point, because every other character
• 31:51
  like has beliefs and stuff. But they're like, well, I
• 31:54
  don't know, maybe Aussie Mandios is right, or they're like, well,
• 31:57
  you know, maybe we do lie to let this go on.
• 31:59
  But except Rorshak, he's the only one who lives by
• 32:02
  principles and then dies by them. So he accidentally made
• 32:06
  like a valiant character that was supposed to be a joke.
• 32:09
  So he hates the way people talk about Rorshak, which
• 32:12
  I think is funny because Rorshak's like the best part
• 32:14
  of that movie and the and the comic. But right,
• 32:18
  she walked beside me as we circled the neighborhood.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Look, I'll be honest with you, Dean's kind of a
• 32:24
  controlling asshole. He's never been violent before, but I think
• 32:27
  he got the idea that something's going on between you
• 32:29
  and me.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: What I laughed last note, rising awkwardly high.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: I don't think that we've even spoken.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: No, we haven't.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: But I saw you in the hall last week and
• 32:40
  I mentioned that I used to date dirty grunge types,
• 32:43
  you know, metal.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I suddenly it felt very warm. I'm sure my face
• 32:48
  was red to someone who saw a silver moonlight instead
• 32:51
  of orange. Oh oh see that those are that and
• 32:55
  the last one oblivious of the burning sky. Those are
• 32:57
  great sentences. I love that you did.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not really my type, crazy right, since they
• 33:03
  both look like long a old navy ad.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: He said it on me. Did I actually just make
• 33:08
  a joke. I don't think i'd ever gotten this many
• 33:11
  seconds into a conversation with a pretty girl. And she
• 33:14
  actually laughed out loud.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: I know, I know when I dress and act like this,
• 33:18
  I know what I'm doing. Call an experiment, if we're
• 33:21
  being honest. I had to get away from the drugs.
• 33:24
  I love me some Meganeth and Dio, but the scene.
• 33:26
  Wait what it's my two favorite bands right now? All right,
• 33:29
  he's fucking hallucinating. No fuck, no fucking way hallucinating.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Bro. Yeah, she blinked.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Really, I don't think anyone our age liked that classic stuff. Still, okay,
• 33:40
  I did come on.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: I opened my jacket and showed her my T shirt.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: No freaking way. Well, it's nice to meet you.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: She held out her hand, alec I said, shaking her
• 33:51
  hand to marveling at my own ability to actually hold
• 33:53
  a human conversation. I didn't feel numb or terrified. I
• 33:57
  just felt normal. The fact that she reminded me of
• 34:01
  my sister made it easier to deal with her.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Short for Alexander, Alexander, I'm Ashley.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: She looked up at the sky for a moment. I
• 34:09
  did not follow her gaze. Beautiful night out. Still didn't
• 34:13
  look I didn't want to face the flaming hallucination that
• 34:16
  was so insistently trying to ruin my first real connection
• 34:20
  with someone else in a long time. How about this,
• 34:23
  she continued after a moment, finally looking back at me.
• 34:26
  I'm done with Dean either way.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Such an asshole, but I mostly believe it's a one
• 34:30
  time thing from him. You don't press charges. I'll go
• 34:33
  on a date with you, bro. Delusion City. Yeah, the
• 34:38
  moon is actually fucking blown up. This is his actual hallucination.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, he's yeah, it's going to end. They're
• 34:44
  all just dead. The moon did explode. This is his purgatory,
• 34:47
  but I think, yeah, this is definitely a hallucination. Dean
• 34:52
  may be a real guy, but I think everything beyond
• 34:54
  that's not real. I mean, he described that this girl
• 34:56
  looks exactly like a female version of Dean, right, Uh?
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: That?
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Or and she reminds him of his sister. Yeah. Yeah,
• 35:03
  that part finally broke my scant coolness and made me
• 35:06
  clam up. I'd seen the moment enough times on television
• 35:10
  that I knew to force myself to say one word. Sure.
• 35:13
  I think she mistook my terseness for aloof confidence, a
• 35:17
  genuine and warm smile across her face, and then she
• 35:20
  took my cell phone and put her number in it.
• 35:22
  Ten minutes later, back in my apartment, and more shocked
• 35:26
  than when I thought I'd kill Dean. Now here's the
• 35:28
  part where I need some help from you guys. I
• 35:30
  know I'm posting a ton tonight, and I'm sorry. I
• 35:33
  just it's so hard to tell what's real. I keep
• 35:39
  thinking back on it and obsessing over our little walk.
• 35:43
  I can't help feeling she was trying to get me
• 35:45
  to look at the sky. Little details like her choice
• 35:49
  to talk to me outside and her long pauses to
• 35:53
  look over at the moon, and Dean had been trying
• 35:56
  to drag me to the door. I had her whole thing,
• 35:59
  our whole conversation been fake. Am I just being paranoid?
• 36:05
  How would they even know about my hallucination? Oh god?
• 36:09
  What if it's a cruel trick? What if they read
• 36:11
  my post and are messing with me? What do you
• 36:14
  guys think? Am I just psyching myself out for no reason?
• 36:18
  I hate this so much. I hate my brain, I
• 36:21
  hate my affliction, I hate myself. Why can't I just
• 36:24
  be normal? Thanks for the support. I am kind of
• 36:28
  freaking out, and you guys make me feel much better.
• 36:32
  Still a ton of trolls here, though, please shut up.
• 36:35
  Although I don't agree with the popular sentiment here that
• 36:39
  going out and looking at the moon to face my
• 36:41
  fear will help, I'm not going to do that. Ignoring
• 36:44
  my hallucinations has always worked for me. Hold on one second,
• 36:48
  another knock at the door. What the hell? I just
• 36:51
  got a visit from crazy Donald. Guess what? Though he's fine,
• 36:55
  he seems lucid. He looked at me with a clear
• 36:58
  and direct gaze that I've ever seen from him before.
• 37:01
  He knew my name too. I opened the door, and
• 37:04
  he stared at me for a moment before saying, Alec,
• 37:08
  you're all right. Yeah, I replied, confused, Donald, are you
• 37:13
  like actually there? He nodded.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: I'm feeling better, Father Brusi stops shouting at me.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Tapped his head.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: I think he's finally forgiving me after all these years,
• 37:25
  father Bruso.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Donald smiled and nodded.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: My mother stopped scolding me too. I'm feeling good, man,
• 37:32
  and I don't know anyone else.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: I stared at him. No family. He shook his head.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Somewhere the Troy last I can remember before I before
• 37:42
  the screaming got so loud, I couldn't think. When was that?
• 37:46
  I don't know, Man Black said, that was the last
• 37:49
  big thing I can remember. Glenn Hughes his own vocals
• 37:53
  that time.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I knew my medal trivia their nineteen.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Eighty six tour shit that they played Detroit that year.
• 38:00
  Out of it for thirty years, thirty years we use
• 38:03
  it now, twenty fourteen. It's October twenty fourteen. Damn, Can
• 38:09
  I look in the mirror.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Sure he's in the bathroom crying. Right now, I know
• 38:14
  how to handle this less than I knew how to
• 38:17
  handle talking to Ashley. I've always sort of gotten along
• 38:20
  with crazy Donald, well just Donald now, I suppose, but
• 38:24
  I never suspected that he was aware of me through
• 38:27
  the fog of his mania. I can't just kick him
• 38:31
  out either, do I have to let him live here?
• 38:35
  The thought of someone in my space, even if it's
• 38:38
  just for a bit, makes me nervous. This has been
• 38:41
  one hell of a night. I don't think I can
• 38:43
  take much more emotional stress. I'm already fragile in the
• 38:47
  best of circumstances, but tonight's been a trip. What do
• 38:50
  you guys suggest? How should I handle this? I think
• 38:54
  it's very telling that his only interest is metal, and
• 38:57
  everyone he interacts with just talks about metal. Yeah, yeah, yep.
• 39:01
  I didn't say anything to him. I didn't even mention
• 39:03
  it to him. I'm terrified beyond all logic right now.
• 39:07
  I stood outside the door and tried to calm him
• 39:10
  down the way some of you suggested, And you know
• 39:13
  what he said as he cried, it's the damn burning moon.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: I'd rather go back to the screaming than find out
• 39:20
  I've lost so much.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: In my life. I didn't say anything to him. I
• 39:25
  never told him about the molten moon. He said it unprompted,
• 39:29
  and I nearly had a panic attack. It wasn't just
• 39:32
  my imagination or we'd had the same hallucination.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Donald, do you remember having bad dreams recently?
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: He immediately quieted. I've always had bad dreams. My whole
• 39:47
  life has been a bad dream.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Serious Donald, in the last month, have you had any
• 39:52
  particularly horrible nightmares?
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: He breathed for a time from between pathetic sobs, and
• 39:58
  I heard him move a little on the bathroom floor.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even with father Brusso shouting at me and my
• 40:05
  mother hurting me, I saw him standing there on the
• 40:07
  outside trying to get in.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: Who him, he said, cryptically, the sleeper, the dream run high.
• 40:15
  He's on the outside looking in. He's always looking in.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I felt a terrible chill at those words. I didn't
• 40:23
  have a name for the shadow of impending doom I'd
• 40:26
  felt ever since that night. But I did have a feeling,
• 40:30
  the sensation of being watched. It felt like Dean's presence,
• 40:34
  had felt like someone was standing in the shadows at
• 40:38
  the back of the room and watching me with fury
• 40:40
  and hunger. Don, what did you mean? And you said
• 40:45
  it was the moon. I look, man, I looked up
• 40:49
  at it. It looked down into me. Oh oh wow.
• 41:02
  That was all he would say. I left him to
• 41:05
  his sobbing, figuring I could get more out of him
• 41:08
  after his first good night's sleep in thirty years. I
• 41:11
  left him a blanket too, And now I'm left with
• 41:15
  a terrible foreboding. There's a small pull of blood on
• 41:19
  my floor, and nobody seems to share my hallucination that
• 41:23
  the moon is on fire except another crazy person. Still,
• 41:28
  I called my brother one last time. Will I said
• 41:31
  to his voicemail, don't look at the moon. I don't
• 41:34
  know if you've looked, but don't. It's important. I don't
• 41:39
  know what else to do. How can I know? How
• 41:43
  does anyone know what's real? If something's happening? Who would
• 41:47
  I even turn to if it's not that? How do
• 41:51
  I shake this waking nightmare? And why do so many
• 41:54
  of you keep insisting I go outside and look at
• 41:56
  the moon. I'm not finding this funny anymore. I have
• 42:00
  a text from Ashley. She wants to go on our
• 42:02
  date now, which is way sooner than I expected. I guess,
• 42:07
  but who knows. I gotta go, But I'll be back
• 42:10
  with more updates when I can manage. Wish we luck, guys,
• 42:14
  I'm not gonna let this get to me. I'm not
• 42:16
  gonna let my issues get in the way of my life,
• 42:19
  not this time. End of part one. Man, what a
• 42:23
  first part, Dude.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: I really at the ending too, because yeah, I can't.
• 42:26
  I think you're right. It's almost like something is like
• 42:29
  predatory and it wants him to look up and see it,
• 42:32
  you know, And now the only other person that is
• 42:34
  making any sense is also a man who has been
• 42:38
  basically insane, So it's like, has their psychosis or has
• 42:42
  their mental blockage basically stop the effects of whatever this
• 42:48
  entity is that's looking down, you know what I mean.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: I think the idea is everything is trying to get
• 42:54
  him to look at it, But then that begs the question, like, okay,
• 42:57
  did something actually happen to the moon? Then was he
• 43:00
  right about you know? There was a comment coming and
• 43:02
  then everyone quit talking about it, like it basically took
• 43:05
  over everyone who was outside, and now they're trying to
• 43:07
  convince him. Very similar to the psychosis. Right. It also
• 43:11
  reminds me a lot of did you ever watch I
• 43:14
  don't think we did a creep TV video about it.
• 43:17
  But did you ever watch Local fifty eight?
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: No, I feel like you've told me about it, though
• 43:23
  we should do anything on Local fifty eight.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: It's like the first analog wre at least liked show
• 43:32
  that was like a dashboard cam. Right, there's one woods
• 43:37
  is that there. There's one episode of Local fifty eight
• 43:41
  called you Are on the Fastest Available Route, which is
• 43:44
  from a dash cam perspective. But I mean there's a
• 43:47
  bunch of different entries. Most of them are like PSAs,
• 43:50
  like tv UH cable network programs, hence the analog and
• 43:55
  analog core. But I mean Marble Hornets was arguably the first,
• 44:00
  but Local fifty eight was the one that made the
• 44:02
  framework that like the Mandela Catalog and stuff like that
• 44:05
  came off of. So I think that this is very
• 44:14
  similar to that because there's a whole thing in Local
• 44:16
  fifty eight where something's happening to the moon and all
• 44:18
  the PSAs are instructing everyone to come outside and to
• 44:21
  look up, and that in Local fifty eight there's an
• 44:26
  entity within the moon, like the moon's effectively a giant
• 44:29
  egg that some creatures bursting out of, which actually I
• 44:36
  feel like that happens in Monument Mythos too. No monument Mythos,
• 44:40
  it's the Earth. The earth was an egg for the
• 44:42
  giant George Washington serpent, which is another story. But yeah,
• 44:46
  I like this idea of like the moon being some
• 44:49
  great entity that there's something happening with it. It's very
• 44:51
  as you would say, Lovecraftian. So I think it's cool.
• 44:55
  It is cool.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: I was gonna say, the uh, just such a great hooking.
• 44:59
  I'm really excited to get into part two here. Very
• 45:02
  rarely does these I'm curious to see because very rarely
• 45:05
  do we at the end of these part ones the
• 45:07
  amount of times that we've been like this is really cool,
• 45:09
  and then it divulges into something kind of weird. I'm
• 45:11
  curious to see does it keep does it keep us intrigued?
• 45:14
  Does it keep us hooked throughout this next two parts?
• 45:17
  Because I think that it's it's three parts, right or
• 45:20
  is it just three parts? It's three? Yeah, I'm very
• 45:25
  curious to see it.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Let's let's fucking just jump in. Yeah, part two. As
• 45:29
  I was getting ready, I saw some of the replies.
• 45:32
  Many of you advised that I should secretly record my
• 45:35
  date if I could, and well, I gave into the
• 45:40
  paranoid for the first time of my life. I'm glad
• 45:42
  I did. It was already getting late by the time
• 45:44
  I managed to shave, shower, and fix my hair up
• 45:47
  the best I knew how. She drove and I tried
• 45:50
  to make small talk. To be honest, I had no
• 45:53
  idea what I was doing. She didn't seem to mind
• 45:55
  my awkwardness, and she took us to a nearby bar
• 45:58
  that she said was a favorite of hers. I don't drink, ever.
• 46:02
  My doctor had mentioned once that alcohol might interfere with
• 46:05
  antipsychotic medications, and I've been fearful ever since. Still, I
• 46:10
  was determined not to let my issues ruin my life.
• 46:13
  I ordered a beer and pretended that it was something
• 46:16
  I did all the time. I wasn't sure if she
• 46:18
  noticed my shaking hands, but I clenched my fingers together
• 46:21
  and put on a calm face. I said stuff, and
• 46:23
  she laughed. I didn't get it. Nobody had ever thought
• 46:27
  my sarcastic and bitter comments were funny before. I'd always
• 46:31
  just been that weird guy on the fringe. Why was
• 46:35
  this girl even talking to me just didn't make sense.
• 46:39
  That's when your comments started getting to me. I just
• 46:43
  couldn't believe that I was interested or attractive to anyone.
• 46:47
  So I left my phone at the bar, set it
• 46:49
  to record audio, and I said I was going to
• 46:52
  the bathroom. I did stand there quite a bit longer
• 46:56
  than I wanted to, but I was afraid to come
• 46:57
  back out. What if she noticed that I'd set my
• 47:00
  phone to record. What if I shook my head, messed
• 47:05
  with my hair a little in the mirror, and then
• 47:06
  finally went back out. Everything seemed normal, she said, at
• 47:10
  the chair, checking her phone. I used that opportunity to
• 47:13
  pick up my phone and pretend to do the same. Oh.
• 47:16
  A voicemail one second in, said I actually listened to
• 47:19
  the recording. I heard myself making a small excuse and
• 47:21
  walking away. A moment later, I heard her ask someone,
• 47:26
  how are you liking the weather? A voice I recognized
• 47:28
  as the bartenders followed it's fine. The reactions were odd.
• 47:34
  It sounded as if there was some sort of hidden
• 47:36
  meaning to the exchange, but that the two were unsure
• 47:39
  of one another. I looked over and noticed the bartender
• 47:42
  watching me. I hurdly glanced away. The recording wasn't much,
• 47:46
  but something about it felt off. I couldn't shake the
• 47:50
  feeling that something was very wrong, but I was on
• 47:53
  a date, and I was still determined not to let
• 47:55
  my pear nooia get the best of me. Even as
• 47:58
  I began to put the phone down, the last of
• 48:00
  the recording captured one more muttered sentence, He's not gonna
• 48:05
  look damn it? Had I really just heard? That was
• 48:08
  my mind playing tricks on me again. Feeling heavy, I
• 48:12
  lowered the phone. Everything all right, Yeah, I just forgot
• 48:16
  about something I have to give back to a friend.
• 48:18
  I lied. I put on a happy face and pretended
• 48:20
  like I hadn't heard anything, and had I really. I
• 48:24
  could feel ripples in my awareness, as if I was
• 48:27
  half dreaming, but I knew that I was awake. It
• 48:30
  was a familiar, in typically disconcerting sensation, and I hated
• 48:35
  that it was happening now of all times. Saying that
• 48:38
  I needed some are for a second, I stepped outside,
• 48:41
  thankful that nobody was out front smoking at the moment.
• 48:44
  I clutched my head and tried to breathe. In some sense,
• 48:49
  the sidewalk beneath my feet still seemed cast and burnt orange. God,
• 48:54
  why did I have to be like this? What did
• 48:57
  I have to suspect everything? Why did I have to
• 49:01
  see and hear things that weren't there? Feeling a rather
• 49:04
  strong bat of paranoia, an idea occurred to me. Going
• 49:08
  back inside, I sat down and put on a neutral face.
• 49:12
  I just looked at the moon. It's gorgeous tonight. She
• 49:14
  hesitated in the middle of a sip of drink and
• 49:17
  lowered it slowly. She watched me intently, her eyes and
• 49:22
  expression carefully balanced. Is it now? I had the distinct
• 49:27
  impression that she wasn't sure whether to believe me. Why
• 49:30
  would that matter if I was just talking about the moon?
• 49:34
  What's it like? I imagined, I heard a subtext of
• 49:37
  interrogation beneath her nonchalant question. I hadn't thought the idea
• 49:41
  through this far. But what if everything was fine? I
• 49:45
  sound like a weird asshole if I said what I
• 49:47
  really knew was up there full, very like bright silver.
• 49:52
  She locked gazes with me for a very long moment.
• 49:55
  But I had years of practice faking that I was fine.
• 49:58
  Long glass she saw, I thought you'd never look. Blast
• 50:03
  of panic tore through me, but my practiced fake calm
• 50:06
  kept me in place. I wanted to scream, what did
• 50:10
  you just say? Instead? I nodded, gave a weak laugh,
• 50:15
  and picked up my dream. So what now? I guess
• 50:20
  we wait, she replied, leaning against the bar.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: It's tough, you know, can't be certain about anyone these days.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: This is so well done because my.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Fished her jaw, I'd be like she loved I guess.
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: We just wait boom right to right to her temple. Boom.
• 50:43
  I'm out, dude. This story is so well done because
• 50:49
  it on the surface, it's just like, oh, well, he
• 50:54
  figured them out. He figured out they wanted to look,
• 50:56
  so he lied, and they're like, oh, well you did it.
• 50:58
  Now you're a part of the hive mind.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: But he's been established as so unreliable and hallucinating so much.
• 51:04
  This conversation may not even be happening. They may not
• 51:07
  even be in a bar. They might be, but she's
• 51:09
  not talking about this or this is a completely innocuous
• 51:12
  conversation that he's applying to. He is so unreliable that
• 51:16
  there are so many layers as to what could be
• 51:18
  going on here. And if that thing that Donald said,
• 51:21
  the shadow Man or whatever, is real and messing with
• 51:23
  his mind, this could all be his orchestration, right, he
• 51:26
  could be dreaming.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's continuously it's continuously throwing us off
• 51:33
  its trail. It's continuously like leading us down roads. Like
• 51:37
  you're like, okay, I think I get a Oh nope,
• 51:39
  no I don't. It's just I love the uh, I
• 51:41
  love the concept misdirection. But also this, this whole this
• 51:46
  whole creepy like hive mind or like kind of gives
• 51:49
  you that vibe of a uh invasion of the body
• 51:52
  snatchers where it's like all these plant people are trying
• 51:55
  to like scope out all of the uh, all of
• 51:58
  the humans.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, so it's it's it's I love that.
• 52:02
  Well again, it's like his other story, Psychosis, where throughout
• 52:07
  most of the story you think that he's just paranoid,
• 52:12
  but then the last sentence it's like, oh no, there
• 52:13
  was a conspiracy to try.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: I'm nervous for a main character, though, I will say that, yeah,
• 52:19
  nervous for the main character, because that boy is down
• 52:21
  so bad that I think he might even he might
• 52:23
  even dip into some moon pussy at some point. You
• 52:25
  gotta watch out for that boy.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean he if anyone would resist, it
• 52:30
  would be him, because he is paranoid enough.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Living living Levita Loca.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Yolo, Yolo before he died. From the way you from
• 52:39
  the way you just said that. I now have to
• 52:41
  picture that it's nick No, no, no, we have to
• 52:45
  give the man a bit more respect than that. It
• 52:48
  was specifically the voice like Yolo, like that, Yolo. She's
• 52:55
  just a little quirky. She just wants me to look
• 52:57
  at the moon eye.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: It's okay, the whole it's tough, you know, can't be
• 53:01
  certain about anyone these days. I'd be like, mm hmm,
• 53:05
  I'm telling man I by fucking my fist, her jaw,
• 53:09
  teeth dusted.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: It's a sippy queen.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'd say, what's that? She'd look over barely
• 53:18
  as soon as she looks back boom.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I nodded again and took a long gulp of beer,
• 53:26
  trying to understand what was happening. I couldn't be hallucinating
• 53:30
  this entire conversation, could I? And I couldn't ask questions
• 53:34
  without exposing the fact that I was what that I
• 53:38
  was myself, that I hadn't actually looked at the moon.
• 53:42
  Bartender came over and slid me another drink because I
• 53:44
  nervously finished mine I went to offer him some cash,
• 53:47
  but he shook his head. I couldn't help.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: But over here I wasn't sure, but I suspected.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Now I know persone's on me. Welcome to the club,
• 53:58
  and here's one for the lady to slid a second
• 54:00
  drink over. Ashley smiled at him.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks my god, God get me out. Actually, I'm fucking
• 54:09
  swallowing a shotgun barrel that night. I'm telling you that
• 54:12
  right now. I can tell you that you're gonna see
• 54:16
  my If I wasn't so fat, i'd be fucking triumph.
• 54:20
  That is my triumphant heroes ending. Yeah, exactly, that's my
• 54:23
  shutter island ending, not a lobotomy. It's me swallowing a
• 54:26
  shotgun barrel. God so it it's like a like a
• 54:33
  fucking twelve inch sub.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's so graphic. But like the load Tunes cartoon
• 54:38
  where their jaws get really wide.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: It's like gold, I look like I look like I
• 54:43
  look like Scooby eating a fucking foot long sub. That's
• 54:45
  I'm gonna look like chewing down that shotgun barrel tonight.
• 54:48
  Absolutely like sewing Scoops.
• 54:51
  Speaker 6: Who my god, Scoop killed himself, like so his brain
• 55:04
  matters all over the Mystery van.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Or the Mystery machine. This isn't a hand of Barbara
• 55:12
  cartoon at all. Jesus Christ, there's so much blood. There's
• 55:16
  so much blood, sCOD I would I would kill for that. You.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you always are fucking horrifying, Scooby Doo. One was
• 55:23
  that movie the one the it was like zombie Island?
• 55:26
  Is that what it's called with the werewolf? Yeah, that
• 55:29
  was fucked up. That's that's the one where that's the
• 55:32
  one where, Yeah, Scooby gets his brain blown off.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Jesus squashed. That's happens all the time while that song
• 55:42
  is playing because it's Timmy. It's yeah, it's like that
• 55:53
  that Cajun riverboat. Guys like quick could take this and
• 55:56
  just throws a shotgun on shore. Yeah, well have to
• 56:00
  take this one. Shell.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: They has to take fucking scoobs headless body down to
• 56:04
  the voodoo priest and reap to resurrect them.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: He's a bumpy road, Scooby. I can't wait for like
• 56:13
  the comments to be like, yeah, it was a good
• 56:15
  episode this, Scooby. We can we can we get it.
• 56:21
  We can't cut that, we can't cut that. We can
• 56:25
  we can cut a lot of things. We can't cut
• 56:27
  that us. It's turrible. Okay. I took a moment to
• 56:35
  text my brother my location and a message, please help me.
• 56:39
  It feels like I'm losing my mind. I don't know
• 56:42
  what's going on. There are people here acting strangely. I
• 56:46
  don't know if they're messing with me or what.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: And she know it's rude to text during a dayton, Ashley.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Said, and I she bishly dropped the phone. I could
• 56:53
  do nothing but act normal. Past the initial weirdness, nothing
• 56:56
  else strange seemed to be happening. Waffling back and between
• 57:00
  terror and self doubt, I did my best to keep
• 57:03
  up our prior level of conversation. After an hour or
• 57:07
  two of drinking and hanging out, I started a doubt
• 57:10
  I'd ever seen or heard anything strange. In fact, I
• 57:14
  was glad I ignored the few odd sentences I thought
• 57:17
  I'd heard from Ashley and the bartender. Alcohol did indeed
• 57:21
  make me feel weird? Was it interfering with my medication?
• 57:24
  Or did alcohol just naturally make people red, face, loud,
• 57:27
  and stupid. I knew I was starting to behave oddly,
• 57:31
  and I actively tried to reel myself in still, she.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: Noticed, Okay, time to get you home. You don't drink much,
• 57:39
  do you?
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: Shook my head? Good? I'm glad Dean's an asshole when
• 57:46
  he drinks. She helped me up and let us outside.
• 57:49
  This time three guys and a girl stood outside smoking
• 57:53
  across the street, heading for her car. She looked up
• 57:57
  as we got to the opposite corner, She said and smiled.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: Isn't he beautiful?
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: God? That's awesome? Scooby Dooby do? Where are you? We
• 58:15
  got to do it quick, now go, But I can't
• 58:22
  see the way you shake. And you know, Scooby, you
• 58:26
  gotta put the gun right right down your throat. That's
• 58:31
  no joke, Scooby.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: When you pull the trigger, you gonna you're gonna find
• 58:37
  that life is really whack.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: That's a that I know. You catch that villain. Oh,
• 58:50
  and then the remakes like what's your Scooby doo coming
• 58:53
  after you? Gotta gotta I don't know. I'm not as
• 59:00
  scared this as you are. Whatever the equivalent would be
• 59:03
  for what wow, real p creativity. Yeah, I'm an artist.
• 59:10
  I'm an artist in mindself over here. There's nothing that
• 59:15
  rhymes that fits those two concepts together in that opening.
• 59:21
  I froze. Did she mean the moon? There was no
• 59:25
  help in it. It only took a moment she knew
• 59:28
  I was purposefully avoiding looking. She backed away a step.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: You lied.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: She looked across the street at the smokers, and I
• 59:37
  guess that she was judging whether she could trust them.
• 59:39
  She half shouted something, but then changed her mind mid sentence.
• 59:43
  If there were other people in the know with whatever
• 59:46
  she was doing, was it possible that she didn't know
• 59:50
  who they were. She couldn't scream for help in that regard,
• 59:53
  so instead she shouted something much worse.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: Help.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: There's creep attacking me. What I screamed back? It was
• 1:00:02
  my worst nightmare to have my awkward interactions misinterpreted. It's threatening.
• 1:00:06
  But wait, that wasn't what was happening here. No, no,
• 1:00:11
  I'm not. Immediately, the three guys across the street frowned,
• 1:00:14
  assessed her fear, and then charged in my direction. I ran,
• 1:00:18
  but they were faster than me, and one took me
• 1:00:21
  down from behind with wide gripping arms. I hit the
• 1:00:24
  sidewalk roughly, barely keeping my face from slamming into concrete,
• 1:00:28
  and they rolled me over. I remember holding up my
• 1:00:31
  arms feebly trying to keep the punches from landing somewhere critical.
• 1:00:35
  But one did manage to leave a horrible pain in
• 1:00:37
  my eye socket. I was certain i'd have a black eye.
• 1:00:40
  They didn't just kill me. Someone tore them off, shouting
• 1:00:44
  at the top of his lungs, pushing and shoving them away.
• 1:00:48
  He kneeled next to me and helped me sit up.
• 1:00:50
  I'm not proud of it, but I did cry. There
• 1:00:53
  was blood and bruising all over me, and my date
• 1:00:57
  turned horrible in all the ways I feared most. What
• 1:01:01
  if I'd really attacked her. I couldn't believe anything, not
• 1:01:05
  with alcohol messing with my head, like Christ came to
• 1:01:09
  save your voice from above? What the hell's going on? Will?
• 1:01:14
  I couldn't believe it he'd actually come. I'm really confused,
• 1:01:18
  and she made me drink. But I don't look at
• 1:01:20
  the moon. Something's going on. He sighed and went to
• 1:01:22
  lift his head, but I covered his face with my hand.
• 1:01:25
  Oh look, Will, this isn't a joke.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: Remember how you said I had three promises I could
• 1:01:29
  ask you as a brother. Yeah, well I've got two left,
• 1:01:33
  and I want to use one for this.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Don't look at the moon.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: I can't explain why, but because it would sound crazy
• 1:01:40
  even for me. If it's important for you, fine, it
• 1:01:44
  probably hurt to look at anyway, since it's still burning
• 1:01:47
  so brightly.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: It's what I asked Stune out of my pain days.
• 1:01:52
  The moon's on fire, of course it is.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: Do you somehow miss all this craziness?
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Oh uh? Interesting? I couldn't talk anymore after that. It
• 1:02:02
  was to overcome by relief, as if I've been plucked
• 1:02:05
  right out of a nightmare and saved. The moon was
• 1:02:08
  on fire, at least in the memories of myself, Donald,
• 1:02:12
  my brother Will. It wasn't just to me. As long
• 1:02:16
  as it wasn't just to me, I was happy. But
• 1:02:18
  it did have to show him though online. I had
• 1:02:21
  to show him how all the articles, videos and pictures
• 1:02:24
  have been scrubbed. There wasn't a trace online. He'd met
• 1:02:27
  crazy Donald once before, too, and it shocked him to
• 1:02:30
  see the old man loose it and calm, well, mostly
• 1:02:33
  loo sit and calm. He still sat in the corner,
• 1:02:36
  stunned by the loss of thirty years of his life.
• 1:02:39
  And now I'm trying to figure out what to do next.
• 1:02:41
  My date went horribly, but I'm not convinced that something
• 1:02:44
  isn't really going on. Guys, is anyone acting strangely around you?
• 1:02:50
  Sorry for the delay in posting again, but I gather
• 1:02:53
  a bunch of you are feeling the same way. These
• 1:02:56
  people don't seem to know each other, but they're starting
• 1:02:59
  to talk and figure out who's who. I keep feeling
• 1:03:03
  like I'm being stared at in the grocery store, which
• 1:03:05
  is weird because normally I feel invisible. Will is staying
• 1:03:10
  for the time being. He's concerned for a lot of reasons,
• 1:03:13
  but mainly I think he wants to make sure I'm okay.
• 1:03:17
  Donald is sleeping on our couch and we've been keeping
• 1:03:20
  mostly to ourselves for the past few days. Every time
• 1:03:24
  we go out, conversations with other people feel strange and suspicious,
• 1:03:28
  like everyone suspects everyone else of either being in on
• 1:03:31
  it or not in on it. Nobody knows for sure,
• 1:03:35
  But what is it? What's going on out there? Donald
• 1:03:39
  keeps having dreams about a hateful presence watching us from
• 1:03:43
  a great distance. I can't help but think back on
• 1:03:45
  what Ashley said, isn't he beautiful? Who? Who did she mean?
• 1:03:52
  That object that hit the moon brings something terrible to
• 1:03:55
  our tour step. What would have happened to us if
• 1:03:58
  it had landed here instead? We thought we'd been saved,
• 1:04:02
  but were we really safe at all? All of these
• 1:04:06
  thoughts pushed the boundaries of the logic I usually use
• 1:04:09
  to keep myself saying. Will isn't talking much about this,
• 1:04:13
  but I can tell he's worried. He knows something's going on,
• 1:04:17
  but nobody can say for sure what it is. He
• 1:04:20
  did mention that he thinks ideas can be very powerful.
• 1:04:23
  The right kind of rumor could spread all over, making
• 1:04:26
  people fear each other. Maybe that was what we were
• 1:04:30
  feeling when we went out, people afraid of each other,
• 1:04:33
  suspicion of each other on the basis of rumor, not
• 1:04:37
  on the basis of some spreading secret agenda. The funny
• 1:04:41
  thing is, whatever's going on, it isn't affecting life as usual.
• 1:04:46
  I still see people driving and going to work. People
• 1:04:49
  are still shopping at the grocery store. I've been watching
• 1:04:52
  horror movies for ideas, which is usually ill advised given
• 1:04:56
  my condition, but it feels like research. And I've never
• 1:04:59
  seen an anything like this. These people aren't crazy, they're
• 1:05:03
  not fanatics, and they're not mind controlled there's something else. Entirely,
• 1:05:08
  they're completely themselves, but hold on, it seems like something's
• 1:05:13
  going on outside.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Again, I really like the structure of this. It feels
• 1:05:17
  like there's a bit more direction towards the idea that
• 1:05:19
  something is happening with the moon. It's not all like
• 1:05:21
  a shutter island. Like I said earlier, the especially with
• 1:05:25
  his brother.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: We can't really show probably can't really show it the
• 1:05:28
  way that we usually edit our episodes, but the way
• 1:05:32
  that these sections are written up, it does feel like
• 1:05:33
  there's a passage of time, like there's a break in
• 1:05:36
  the page. So it does feel like he's real. He's
• 1:05:38
  like coming into these forums after an unknown amount of
• 1:05:43
  time too, which is kind of interesting. Sometimes usually stories
• 1:05:46
  you read it'll say like the specific date and time
• 1:05:48
  of the posts. But I kind of like the way
• 1:05:50
  that this is broken up. It almost feels like a
• 1:05:52
  It does legitimately feel like a journal, diary, or just
• 1:05:55
  like somebody regurgitating information at their own convenience without ever
• 1:05:59
  really letting you know how much time has passed or anything.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is kind of fuck with me too, to
• 1:06:06
  be like, if he is just insane, these could be
• 1:06:09
  like days or months between. You know, these thoughts he's having,
• 1:06:12
  yet they're strung together like, uh, they're completely normal and cohesive.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, just how his brains putting together. But
• 1:06:19
  just a thought. No, I agree. Also, I didn't really
• 1:06:23
  mention it because there's so much going on, but I
• 1:06:25
  really like that thing in the beginning where it's like
• 1:06:27
  scientists estimate that this shot was fired at us four
• 1:06:29
  point five billion years ago.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: You know, and it was intentional, like it was aiming
• 1:06:33
  for us.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's also like I'm getting, which
• 1:06:37
  I may just be like super imposing, you know what
• 1:06:40
  I know over it, of course, but I'm getting kind
• 1:06:42
  of vibes of like Book of Revelation in time, so
• 1:06:47
  like the thing fired at Earth could be Wormwood the
• 1:06:50
  falling Star. And then you've got like the idea that
• 1:06:56
  this was set from the beginning of the universe like
• 1:06:59
  prophecies to maybe the he is like you know, the
• 1:07:01
  devil or whatever. But I don't think these are just ideas.
• 1:07:05
  I don't want it to go that direction, but right
• 1:07:08
  somewhere it might go anyway.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: Just I mean, it's just making connections. I mean, it's
• 1:07:12
  so open ended still right now that that's the fun
• 1:07:14
  part of this is that I still have no idea
• 1:07:18
  what to believe, which I'm really enjoying.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I agree. We barely got away a mob of people,
• 1:07:23
  maybe eight or ten guys, came looking for me. They
• 1:07:26
  said it was because of what I did to Ashley,
• 1:07:29
  or at least that's what they shouted. As we ran.
• 1:07:33
  We heard them coming and went out the back basement door.
• 1:07:36
  Will grip my arm hard the whole way, and I'm
• 1:07:39
  sure he was wondering whether I'd really hurt somebody. Nowhere
• 1:07:43
  else to go. Donald followed us, trembling.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: That's not why they're after us. They know I'm not
• 1:07:50
  one of them. They want us to look at the moon.
• 1:07:53
  I've got enough of that.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Talk, Well, replied as he hid in the bushes outside
• 1:07:57
  my building.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna because I promised it, But how can
• 1:08:02
  look at the moon change people?
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: Because Donald finally got through to him, I don't know you, man,
• 1:08:07
  but you need to wake up. You're a nice, strong lad,
• 1:08:10
  and I'm.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Sure life is going along rather well for you. You
• 1:08:13
  need to believe in the society that empowers you.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: I stared at him, surprised.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: Alec and I were mental heads outcast, anti establishment man.
• 1:08:23
  We don't have the same need to believe that everything
• 1:08:26
  is fine, and we're probably still free because.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: Of who we are. We felt the cracks like we
• 1:08:30
  always do. Okay, stop about the moon.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: I had a priest and a bit old woman screaming
• 1:08:35
  in my head for thirty years. I looked up for
• 1:08:37
  thirty seconds.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: And it all went away.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: There's a whispering in my brain that pushes back against
• 1:08:42
  the screaming in between.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: I'm free. Okay. So again this you will think, oh, well,
• 1:08:50
  maybe the moon stuff's real and this is actually happening.
• 1:08:52
  But then a sentence like that will happen that sounds
• 1:08:55
  like Donald is just reaffirming and everything he wants to hear.
• 1:08:58
  Then you're like, well, maybe he has great and all
• 1:09:00
  this is you know, well, I can't tell if it's
• 1:09:02
  that one collective illusion.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: The way that our protagonist looked up at the moon
• 1:09:06
  and he sees the clouds, I'm like literally wondering if
• 1:09:08
  that's like a like an actual manifestation of like a
• 1:09:10
  cloudy fogged like like basically like mental state to where
• 1:09:15
  when he looked up at it, it was able to
• 1:09:17
  pierce through and like open him up. But it wasn't
• 1:09:20
  able to like grip him right away, you know, so
• 1:09:23
  it just opened his psyche, But it didn't.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: You know, it didn't. You're talking about Hanald, yes, correct.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: But it's the same thing with Will where I'm wondering
• 1:09:30
  if he looks up, would he have the same effect.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting how like Donald didn't
• 1:09:35
  immediately become one of like the hive mind or whatever,
• 1:09:38
  but he is like the voices that were in his
• 1:09:42
  head are now contending with a new voice that came
• 1:09:44
  into his head. Right. Will took a moment away from
• 1:09:47
  peering at our building to stare him down.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: Then how do we know you're not one of them?
• 1:09:51
  That the moon didn't change you?
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: I'd have thought of that. Why hadn't I thought of that?
• 1:09:56
  I guess you don't know, But I've got nowhere to go. Sorry,
• 1:10:00
  He turned and shouted towards the building.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: Oh you dick, uh yep, yep, yep.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: So Donald, that's why he was okay, he was a
• 1:10:11
  uh in the uh so the sleeper agent. Not a
• 1:10:15
  sleeper agent, just a spy. I guess I read. That's
• 1:10:19
  kind of funny. Will's like, well, was like, wait a minute,
• 1:10:21
  what did that make you want them? And Donald's like,
• 1:10:23
  that's an excellent point. Here they are well cover blown.
• 1:10:28
  I remember screaming something in anger, but Will punched him quickly,
• 1:10:31
  knocking him senseless. It didn't matter. The mob had heard.
• 1:10:35
  They came storming out of the building in a flash.
• 1:10:38
  They'll find us, Bill breeze, grabbing my arm. We ran again,
• 1:10:42
  diving between bushes, climbing fences, and slinking through backyards. Did
• 1:10:46
  you hurt that girl? No, I didn't hurt anyone, He
• 1:10:50
  said nothing further, his expression focused. We seemed to have
• 1:10:54
  been making a large circle, and after two hours of
• 1:10:56
  exhausting sneaking, we found his car. I climbed into the
• 1:11:00
  passenger seat with a sigh, cloud covered come and hid
• 1:11:04
  in the moon, and I felt strangely more secure for it.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: We're going to make your Laura's all right, Dad, and
• 1:11:09
  Tracy too.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: We're in a coffee shop right now. I thought to
• 1:11:13
  bring my laptop when we ran, and I'm glad I did.
• 1:11:16
  It's our only lifeline to the world at large, news pages, forums, comics,
• 1:11:21
  they're all going on as normal. How much of the
• 1:11:24
  world's affected. Do the affected people even know something is different?
• 1:11:29
  People in the coffee shop here, aren't looking around suspiciously?
• 1:11:33
  Do they have any idea what's going on? Have they
• 1:11:36
  narrowly avoided looking at the moon somehow it has been
• 1:11:40
  rather cloudy? Or is all this going on in my head?
• 1:11:44
  How do you guys cope with feelings like this? I
• 1:11:46
  just can't trust myself. The tone of the conversation on
• 1:11:49
  this forum has definitely changed. I think they're reading our
• 1:11:53
  post and changing their behavior accordingly. If you're not affected,
• 1:11:57
  don't trust anybody. It's not just you, You're not crazy.
• 1:12:01
  I made at home, Dad's passed out trunk, and Tracy's
• 1:12:04
  making some coffee. Will is talking to them quietly in
• 1:12:07
  the other room. I wish I could hear what they
• 1:12:09
  were saying. I have this strange feeling that Will might
• 1:12:13
  be making the case to lock me up. If most
• 1:12:16
  of this is in my head, I must totally insane
• 1:12:19
  to him. Or what if he's been compromised, What if
• 1:12:23
  he's already looked at the moon. Oh god, guys, I
• 1:12:26
  don't know what to do. I panicked. I've only got
• 1:12:30
  like thirty in cash on me, and I ran. I
• 1:12:34
  ran away, I took my stuff and I bolted. I
• 1:12:37
  couldn't risk getting locked up. I've been hiding out in
• 1:12:39
  an abandoned house down the street for two days and
• 1:12:42
  using the neighbor's unprotected wireless I used to listen to
• 1:12:45
  music with the kid who lived here. He's gone, but
• 1:12:48
  the house is still in good shape. I don't think
• 1:12:51
  anybody will be looking for me indoors. This will work.
• 1:12:54
  It has to work. I'll figure out how to live.
• 1:12:57
  Is brother actually up to something or is it's all
• 1:13:00
  just his paranoia that's forcing him into a more complicated situation.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: Well, what I like about it is that it's all
• 1:13:05
  logical from the standpoint of somebody who believes in this,
• 1:13:08
  Like it wouldn't make sense.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: He's just like I.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: Need to flee. I feel like they're they're going to
• 1:13:12
  lock me up. I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but I'm like,
• 1:13:14
  I understand why. It doesn't feel like it's just random
• 1:13:17
  or that he's just absolutely out of his mind. But
• 1:13:20
  you kind of like at the same time, he could
• 1:13:21
  be out of his mind or like, I don't know,
• 1:13:23
  it's it's just, uh, it's it's it's a lot of fun.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: Fun. Yeah, other people were using this house as a
• 1:13:29
  hideout of Grahampton a basement closet and I've been here
• 1:13:33
  for hours. They're weird, cultish away. They're all dressed in
• 1:13:38
  plain brown clothes that look like someone's pissed. Poor attempt
• 1:13:41
  to be inconspicuous at the point that it's blatantly obvious.
• 1:13:44
  They're not normal. It's all funny too, but they seem
• 1:13:48
  just as wary of what's going on. I saw them
• 1:13:51
  peering out windows and hiding when a car drove by. Crap.
• 1:13:56
  Those people found me somehow, like they knew where I
• 1:13:59
  was hiding. But that was two weeks ago. They keep
• 1:14:02
  to themselves, and I still find them very strange. But
• 1:14:05
  they're trying to figure out what's going on too. I'm
• 1:14:08
  still not sure this isn't all just in my head.
• 1:14:11
  I've been trying to get a read on These people
• 1:14:13
  seem like foreigners, but they speak perfect English. If they're cults,
• 1:14:17
  I can't figure out what they're called. They seem to
• 1:14:20
  be worried about another half of their groups that got
• 1:14:23
  changed by the moon. I'm almost out of pills. I'm nervous,
• 1:14:29
  and I feel surreal all the time. I have a
• 1:14:32
  strong feeling I'm hallucinating. These people entirely. I sneak out
• 1:14:36
  and get food tonight. First I used cash, but I
• 1:14:39
  didn't like the suspicious looks I got from the people
• 1:14:42
  at the store. How much of this world is affected now?
• 1:14:46
  It seems like society is going on just fine without me,
• 1:14:50
  and I'm the crazy donald on the fringes? Am I
• 1:14:53
  standing around muttering to myself on a corner somewhere? Maybe not,
• 1:14:57
  but I'm still living in a basement and hallucinating and
• 1:15:00
  a bunch of brown clothed strangers. It's getting cold too,
• 1:15:04
  now that it's November. I noticed people replying less and
• 1:15:08
  less on here. I've got to steal food. Oh god,
• 1:15:12
  oh god, I don't understand. I can't believe it. I
• 1:15:16
  don't want to believe it. They found me, A dozen
• 1:15:20
  men and women and my dad, Tracy and Laura found me.
• 1:15:25
  They stood outside the house and shouted for me to
• 1:15:27
  come out. Come on out, son, my dad yelled, his
• 1:15:32
  face a little red from drinking. I peered out the
• 1:15:34
  window behind me, brown clothed people prepared to fight with
• 1:15:40
  makeshift weapons. I thought it hilarious that my hallucinations were
• 1:15:43
  preparing like they could do anything. Look, Tracy yelled, we know.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: You're scared because of what you did to that poor girl.
• 1:15:50
  Don't worry. We convinced her not to press charges. Come
• 1:15:54
  on out and everything will be fine.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: What were they waiting for? Why didn't they just storm
• 1:15:58
  the house? I had more than enough people, and the
• 1:16:01
  molten moon cast everything outside in laurad orange, making me
• 1:16:05
  terrified of even touching the light streaming in the window outside.
• 1:16:09
  They muttered among themselves, and then Laura took a turn.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: Alec we're all really worried about you. You need to
• 1:16:16
  come out of your o free will. It'll show us
• 1:16:18
  you're not violent.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: Don't do it, boys said beside me, turned and looked Will. Yeah,
• 1:16:26
  we're not going out for anything. They can rotten hill.
• 1:16:29
  I stared, When did you get here? What? He asked,
• 1:16:33
  frowning up. Been here the whole time, hiding out with you.
• 1:16:36
  We're not gonna get caught and get turned into one
• 1:16:38
  of them. Was I losing my mind? Rad? He just
• 1:16:41
  snuck in the back and set all this to confuse me?
• 1:16:44
  How could I have forgotten that he was here the
• 1:16:47
  whole time? I wished I had time to go back
• 1:16:50
  and read what I written down. Had I mentioned Will
• 1:16:53
  at all? Recently? A hell with it, my dad yelled.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: We don't have time for cat and mouse games anymore.
• 1:17:00
  We need to get readio for his coming.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: Come outside right now, No shouted back. He lifted a gun,
• 1:17:08
  not at me, but Tracy. She shouted next, Alec, will
• 1:17:13
  come out. Are you going to start paying the price
• 1:17:15
  for resisting? Don't do it, Will told me groughly. I'm
• 1:17:18
  going to count the three boy. My dad yelled, three, two, one.
• 1:17:25
  I didn't move. The gunshot rang out with a surprising
• 1:17:28
  auditory pitch, and I felt my awareness go numb. He
• 1:17:33
  really just Tracy fell to the ground, bleeding from the
• 1:17:36
  side of her head. He lifted the gun and pointed
• 1:17:38
  to Laura. Do you understand I'm going to count to three?
• 1:17:41
  I stared, horrified. Beside me. Will was crying behind me.
• 1:17:46
  The strange brown clothed people had used the opportunity to
• 1:17:49
  slip out the back door and escape if they'd existed
• 1:17:52
  at all. Will stood no, I insisted, trying to hold him,
• 1:17:57
  but he tore free and moved for the front door.
• 1:17:59
  Don't do it, he yelled, going out with his hands up.
• 1:18:02
  Don't kill her, My dad smiled, that's the one.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: Alec, come out now.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: Will face the house. His expression resigned. Come on, Alec,
• 1:18:12
  we don't have a choice. He was right in a way.
• 1:18:15
  I had no money, no allies, no idea what was
• 1:18:19
  really going on. Hesitantly, I stepped outside. Will grinned, and
• 1:18:24
  the dozen men and women snatched me. But he didn't
• 1:18:27
  look at the moon. He didn't look. He didn't need to.
• 1:18:31
  He'd already been changed. I'd been tricked. I've been tricked
• 1:18:35
  because I was easy and vulnerable. They held my head
• 1:18:39
  and forced me to stare up, and some even held
• 1:18:41
  my eyelids as I watched the blazing cloud of fire
• 1:18:44
  around the molten moon seemed to condense, swirl, and disappear
• 1:18:48
  into me, leaving behind a silver crescent. They let me
• 1:18:52
  go after thirty seconds, because they didn't need to hold
• 1:18:54
  me anymore. I was myself still, but no longer. It
• 1:19:00
  was like having access to another room in my mind.
• 1:19:03
  In one room, it was me, and the other I
• 1:19:07
  was also me, but to me that eagerly awaited the
• 1:19:10
  coming of the Dreamer on high. I hated the fact
• 1:19:15
  that some people did not believe in him, and I
• 1:19:17
  wanted to seek them out and make them see. They
• 1:19:20
  had to see his glory. They all had to see
• 1:19:24
  his glory, but a temple of self remained within. They
• 1:19:29
  didn't know. Slightest resistance kept the believer in me for
• 1:19:33
  mentioning that I was out of pills. It was utterly
• 1:19:36
  his for a week or two. Somewhere around the first
• 1:19:40
  or second of December, lack of pills began setting in.
• 1:19:44
  I write this to you now, friends, because we are
• 1:19:48
  all in this form for a reason. If all got
• 1:19:51
  our issues, and those issues can free us. I write
• 1:19:56
  to you now completely free. And they don't. No, they
• 1:20:00
  don't know that I'm myself once more. Just talk of
• 1:20:04
  his coming in one more cycle of the moon, which
• 1:20:07
  I think means something big is happening in the next month.
• 1:20:11
  December twenty fourteen is not going to be a good
• 1:20:13
  month for humanity. But I'm going to do my best
• 1:20:16
  to get close to whatever is going to happen. I'm
• 1:20:18
  going to make sure it crashes and burns. If you're
• 1:20:21
  out there and you're still reading any of this, you
• 1:20:24
  have to do the same. Don't let them know that.
• 1:20:28
  You know. They started out with deception and they were few,
• 1:20:32
  but they're not afraid to be violent now. If anyone
• 1:20:36
  else has left, lay low and wait for the right moment.
• 1:20:40
  I'll write again when I can. End of Part two.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: I really love this because it feels like it's going
• 1:20:45
  into like this cheesy cult like world. But really I'm
• 1:20:50
  almost reading it like he ran into medicine and he's
• 1:20:52
  completely insane and he's like the like his mind finally,
• 1:20:57
  like giving in. Is him just completely losing all control
• 1:21:02
  that he once had and now he's just completely gone
• 1:21:04
  into a psychosis or do you believe that it's this
• 1:21:07
  is all real?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: I lean more towards the psychosis, saying because of all
• 1:21:11
  the conversations about metal and his brother coming in there
• 1:21:15
  to trick him and walking out and stuff, and like
• 1:21:17
  him being so unsure of himself and the people in
• 1:21:19
  the brown suits, I feel like this goes more towards
• 1:21:23
  there's a psychosis element at play, or all of this
• 1:21:26
  is weird and he just can't trust himself, which is
• 1:21:28
  why it took him so long to get to it right.
• 1:21:30
  The conclusion he's at now, I'm not sure. Well Part
• 1:21:35
  three then final part Part three, I do. I do
• 1:21:38
  think it's interesting that I'm not sure. I really appreciate
• 1:21:41
  the way it's written. I was even gonna make a
• 1:21:42
  comment like, well, it is kind of lame that, you know,
• 1:21:45
  the dreamer you know, the Dreamer man or whatever was
• 1:21:48
  mentioned at the game but hasn't come up since. But no,
• 1:21:50
  there he is at the end. That's the first thing
• 1:21:52
  he saw when he looked at the moon, So that
• 1:21:53
  makes sense. So yeah, I really love this story so far.
• 1:21:57
  I think it's well done. I also want to point
• 1:21:59
  out that at the end of part to the top
• 1:22:00
  comment is someone who simply said some of Hitler's men
• 1:22:04
  used to wear plain brown clothes. Jesus, So it's his
• 1:22:10
  credit user like, maybe that's the s S God. Maybe
• 1:22:19
  the people, maybe the people trying to hide from the
• 1:22:22
  moon are part of the secret police. Is that what
• 1:22:26
  people said? Thank you? Thank you and themreditor? Good God, dude.
• 1:22:33
  Any of these no Sleep stories, you read through the comments,
• 1:22:36
  you'll get some gems like like, here's one, might I
• 1:22:41
  recommend some shotguns?
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: God, Jesus Christ, maybe perchance recommend he shotgun.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: Some shotgun? Mayhaps, Madam. Here's another one. Did you receive
• 1:22:59
  my email? Contact me asap? We need to figure this out.
• 1:23:05
  Is that just role playing? Shit? Yeah, it's like roll plane,
• 1:23:09
  But so did you see my email? So fun anyway, anyway,
• 1:23:15
  Part three, Part three. I never knew how hard it
• 1:23:18
  would be to set up a resistance movement. You can't
• 1:23:21
  trust anyone at all. I wish I'd had more time
• 1:23:24
  to watch spy movies. We had to come up with
• 1:23:27
  tactics on our own, especially because we didn't have the
• 1:23:30
  same tests that the change had. Eight is four. They
• 1:23:34
  could force someone to look up at the moon and
• 1:23:36
  then assume that person had become theirs. They didn't know
• 1:23:40
  that they could be wrong, and that those of us
• 1:23:43
  with mental issues were instead made whole by the conflicting
• 1:23:46
  energies and our skulls. But rumors were beginning to circulate
• 1:23:50
  to that effect, and for us, even if a person
• 1:23:54
  was free and sound of mind, that didn't mean they
• 1:23:57
  wouldn't defect out of self interest. Donald tad and resented
• 1:24:02
  him at first, but he taught me a valuable lesson.
• 1:24:05
  I've never met my co conspirators. We can't meet. I
• 1:24:09
  can't be sure they're on my side, and they can't
• 1:24:12
  be sure I'm on their side. I don't even know
• 1:24:14
  how many of us there are. All I know is
• 1:24:17
  that we've been passing messages through ridiculously elaborate methods or
• 1:24:21
  anonymously online, and I'm getting some sense of what's happening
• 1:24:24
  in the world at large. That's the weird part. Life
• 1:24:28
  is going on as normal. Farmers are farming, cab drivers
• 1:24:32
  are driving, office employees are lounging around, talking and taking
• 1:24:36
  smoke breaks every hour. The only difference is that any
• 1:24:40
  talk of religion has been replaced by praises. If the
• 1:24:42
  dream are on high and the world lies excited for
• 1:24:45
  the coming event, some believe it will be a rapture.
• 1:24:50
  Some believe the dreamer will simply come in person and
• 1:24:52
  rule over us for all time. Me I'm using my
• 1:24:56
  newfound clarity and solid sense of reality to work my
• 1:24:59
  way up the rings of trust. I feel smart and
• 1:25:03
  capable in a way I've never been. This is what
• 1:25:05
  normal people feel like all the time. I understand now
• 1:25:09
  that individual motivations have not changed. Will still thinks he's
• 1:25:14
  helping me in his own way. He thought tricking me
• 1:25:18
  out of the house and forcing me to accept him
• 1:25:20
  with saving me from the life of a homeless and
• 1:25:22
  mentally deficient outcast. He wasn't wrong, I suppose. Continues to
• 1:25:27
  pursue relationships with higher ups, and he continues to try
• 1:25:30
  to get us deeper in and trusted more.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: We're going to be his prime disciples.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: Will says often excited and determined. Brother.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: I always said I'd take care of you, You and
• 1:25:42
  Laura and Dad too. We're going to be at the
• 1:25:45
  top of the food chain when the new order comes,
• 1:25:48
  be taken care of.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: I would nod and smile, but secretly think tell that
• 1:25:53
  to our stepmom minutes or hours. It's funny that we
• 1:25:58
  all started out paranoid and suspicious of the change, and
• 1:26:02
  now the changed your paranoid and suspicious of us? Or
• 1:26:05
  is it sad rather than funny? The free human race
• 1:26:10
  is now the fringe. They had a funeral and bury
• 1:26:13
  Tracy and the cemetery and everything. Dad stayed sober for
• 1:26:17
  two whole days and cried publicly at the reception. You
• 1:26:21
  killed her, you psychopath, I remember thinking to myself. But
• 1:26:24
  he didn't feel guilty about it since it had to
• 1:26:27
  be done. Son. The double think. The change in genders
• 1:26:31
  brings hypocrisy. You want what you want for your own life,
• 1:26:35
  but service to the dreamer on high takes a precedent
• 1:26:38
  over all your desires, no matter how strong. It's why
• 1:26:42
  I know that I can't trust anyone, not even my
• 1:26:45
  own family. They wouldn't hesitate to murder me, and Passerby
• 1:26:50
  would cheer the silencing of another heretic. That's the crazy
• 1:26:53
  thing I remember people acting this way before. This isn't
• 1:26:57
  new to humanity, did heretics or the new second class citizens,
• 1:27:03
  the new victims of the witch hunt? Different race, different ideology,
• 1:27:08
  different religion. Now it was down to simply having a
• 1:27:12
  different mind. It's insane how scared they are of anyone
• 1:27:16
  who might not share their fanaticism. I gotta look at
• 1:27:20
  what their plan is. Yellow is blue. I understand now
• 1:27:25
  why their plan will actually work. They have among them
• 1:27:30
  members of the cult that I thought i'd imagined. They're
• 1:27:34
  called brown Shirts now because of their distinctively plain manner
• 1:27:37
  of dress, and they're among the top priests of the order.
• 1:27:41
  They've got abilities that I can't explain. They can sense
• 1:27:44
  electromagnetic waves of all sorts, and they hate computers and
• 1:27:48
  robotics of any kind. I don't know who they are,
• 1:27:51
  but I get the strangest sense that they're not human.
• 1:27:55
  They look completely human, and they eat, breathe and walk around,
• 1:27:59
  but the way they talk and move and pure things
• 1:28:01
  it's just wrong somehow, like somebody who never learned to
• 1:28:07
  be a person, which is unfortunate because I need to
• 1:28:10
  get into contact with at least one of them. If
• 1:28:13
  anyone out there knows a Brown Shirt that hasn't been changed,
• 1:28:16
  I need to meet them. Leave an overt of location
• 1:28:19
  yellow in eight minutes from the time of this post. Okay,
• 1:28:24
  so this is losing me pretty quick. I don't know
• 1:28:30
  if you feel differently, but it's suddenly becoming like a
• 1:28:35
  spy action thing is not nearly as interesting to me. Well,
• 1:28:38
  that's why I'm under the as he's just crazy.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: That's why I'm like legitimately under the belief that he
• 1:28:44
  is insane, and this is what his belief.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: Is, so well that would make sense.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: It's so it's so fantastical he's having this these he's
• 1:28:52
  like playing this whole thing of like, oh yeah, I'm
• 1:28:54
  pretending whatever. To me, it seems like almost like in
• 1:28:58
  the reality of the situation I'm ciphering so far, is
• 1:29:01
  that his family went to help him, got him out
• 1:29:04
  of probably some fucking homeless shack or whatever, you know,
• 1:29:07
  and he.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: Is the brown Shirts or just other junkies, yeah or whatever,
• 1:29:11
  whatever it is.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: But I'm under the interpretation that he is like just
• 1:29:15
  I mean he's gone, he's like mentally gone. Is kind
• 1:29:19
  of where I'm at too, But I don't know. I mean,
• 1:29:21
  I'm that's what I'm hoping, but I can't. I've been
• 1:29:25
  under the illusion now that or I'm like under the
• 1:29:28
  assumption now that he's uh just completely mentally gone. And
• 1:29:33
  now I'm just curious to see how he reacts to
• 1:29:35
  his family and stuff, like does he try killing them?
• 1:29:38
  Does he actually murder people?
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: We've been so back and forth with it, but I
• 1:29:42
  don't know.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: We can We'll just see. Yeah, yeah, I like that
• 1:29:48
  idea better. Like it's it's almost becoming like a Star
• 1:29:52
  Trek plot with the love of like, oh, the brown
• 1:29:54
  Shirts are not human and they can sense electromagnetic waves
• 1:29:57
  and they and it's a it's a double speak, and
• 1:29:59
  everyone is that they're members of the order, Like it's
• 1:30:02
  an over complication someone would make in their mind, right,
• 1:30:06
  someone who's unwell, and similar to all of the metal
• 1:30:09
  talk from earlier, it sounds like him just superimposing what
• 1:30:12
  he wants the world to be over what the world is.
• 1:30:14
  So what may be happening is everyone's going to work
• 1:30:17
  normally and acting normal because the world's perfectly normal. Yeah,
• 1:30:21
  but that's what I believe. I think he's just I'm
• 1:30:23
  going to choose to believe that until it gets rescinded,
• 1:30:26
  because that's far more interesting to me. So the meeting
• 1:30:30
  went well. There are two free brown Shirts still alive
• 1:30:33
  and present. From what they said, the rest of the
• 1:30:36
  free fled southeast over the mountains and to another universe.
• 1:30:41
  If you can believe that they're so strange, I kind
• 1:30:45
  of accept it when they say it so calmly. Also
• 1:30:48
  accept it because of what I've seen the changed building
• 1:30:51
  in the center of the city. Why Columbus, Ohio, This,
• 1:30:55
  I wondered often. The answer turned out to be very simple.
• 1:31:00
  Building the altar here because this is where the brown
• 1:31:02
  Shirts were and are My hunch had been right. The
• 1:31:07
  two said they remained behind try and save what members
• 1:31:11
  of their kind they could. They claimed to be from elsewhere,
• 1:31:15
  and that they were on an exodus to a place
• 1:31:17
  of safety, a place where they hoped old alliances were
• 1:31:21
  still in place. They would not elaborate, but they did
• 1:31:25
  say they would help have our first real allies now.
• 1:31:30
  They swore their assistance when I told them what i'd seen,
• 1:31:34
  a gigantic altar being built in front of the city
• 1:31:36
  capitol building. The base was mostly in place, but the
• 1:31:40
  rest seemed to involve strange biomechanical artifice and a row
• 1:31:45
  of Brown Shirts chained and integrated to the machine. They
• 1:31:50
  were aware and happy to be of service, save one.
• 1:31:54
  One remained free, perhaps due to the same effect that
• 1:31:57
  kept me so, and his face and arms were battered
• 1:32:00
  and bloody from torture. It's a week until Christmas, and
• 1:32:03
  somehow I feel like it will be humanity's last day.
• 1:32:07
  Irony has not lost on me. A holiday tale about
• 1:32:10
  the birth of religious savior will, in some twisted sense
• 1:32:15
  be made true. Ready, everyone, if the plan we've built
• 1:32:19
  together doesn't work, it's going to get bloody. They caught
• 1:32:22
  somebody skulking about the high rises downtown. They know for
• 1:32:26
  certain that we exist now, and they know why we exist,
• 1:32:30
  because he was an escape mental patient. I've come under
• 1:32:33
  intense scrutiny, but Will has been protecting me. I fear
• 1:32:36
  that they will force me to undertake some active loyalty
• 1:32:39
  to prove I'm not a heretic. They've been keeping Laura
• 1:32:42
  close of a feeling that they're going to ask me
• 1:32:44
  to kill her. She and I haven't been close since
• 1:32:47
  my illness started, but that's just one more reason I
• 1:32:50
  don't think I can bring myself to do it. She's
• 1:32:53
  still my sister. But the entire world's on the line.
• 1:32:56
  I've been watched and followed recently. Updates andmmunication are going
• 1:33:00
  to get sparse. Stick to the play, and everyone two
• 1:33:04
  days remain. The altar construction seems right on schedule. God,
• 1:33:09
  it's not going to work. I don't think even half
• 1:33:12
  of you will get this message in time. But it's
• 1:33:14
  not going to work. My brown shirt ally since it
• 1:33:18
  first and then an observatory contact of mine confirmed it,
• 1:33:22
  not that the Holy News isn't spreading among the change
• 1:33:25
  like wildfire. There are five more objects on the way,
• 1:33:29
  coming in at near light speed. They'll be in here
• 1:33:32
  in a day and a half, roughly same as the
• 1:33:35
  first took from detection to arrival. God, we've nearly lost
• 1:33:39
  it all to just one. It sits up there, mocking us,
• 1:33:42
  brainwashing us, and now five more coming. This can't be
• 1:33:46
  a coincidence. The timing's too neat. A day and a
• 1:33:49
  half to Christmas, a day and a half to the ritual,
• 1:33:52
  a day and a half to the arrival of five
• 1:33:54
  more apocalyptic near luminous objects. Will they hit earth? If so,
• 1:34:00
  we'll never know because we'll all be dead. Perhaps the
• 1:34:03
  moon saved us the first time. But if these five
• 1:34:06
  also hit the moon, the threat of the dream we're
• 1:34:08
  on high will grow sixfold. What are these god forsaken things? Seeds, embryos,
• 1:34:16
  brain matrices, portals, what I can only imagine, and theorizing
• 1:34:20
  is pointless. If we don't stop this before they arrive,
• 1:34:23
  we lose. We lose everything. We have to move up
• 1:34:27
  the plant. We have to strike now, but it won't
• 1:34:30
  work unless everyone's on board. We're in a serious bind here.
• 1:34:35
  Spread the word. We have to strike at the alternate
• 1:34:38
  time we discussed from the beginning.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I just think that I think to
• 1:34:42
  affirm what I was thinking earlier. He spent so much
• 1:34:45
  time before questioning his own sanity, and now he's saying
• 1:34:48
  everything with an utmost certainty, you know, Like, I mean,
• 1:34:51
  that's to me.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: It's also like.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: His peak level of delusion is that he's like lost
• 1:34:56
  that balance of what has made him sane to our
• 1:35:00
  now it's I think he's just yeah, he's just like
• 1:35:02
  letting go. And also even just all the religious undertones
• 1:35:05
  and stuff too. We see that a lot with like
• 1:35:10
  not necessarily not necessarily just like mentally ill or like
• 1:35:13
  cult like member of people.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: I just think it's like something.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: Where it's a grandeur, you know, it's like a delusions
• 1:35:18
  of grandeur or whatever, something big, prophetic, biblical, you know
• 1:35:22
  that he can that he's latched onto, it seems in
• 1:35:24
  my opinion.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, man, yeah, I think that uh makes the
• 1:35:32
  most sense going on just all the clues that have
• 1:35:35
  been like put out so far. I agree.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, it makes you seem it's hard for me
• 1:35:39
  to sorry, I was gonna say, like it makes it
• 1:35:40
  almost seem like he's going to do something horrible on Christmas,
• 1:35:44
  is what it's.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: It's is kind of the build up, is what I'm saying.
• 1:35:49
  The story ends, and this is all just prelude to
• 1:35:51
  that Nashville Christmas bomber who blew himself up in front
• 1:35:55
  of the the NSA Center.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, like even like that though, like that would
• 1:35:59
  be a fucking insanely fascinating ending, you know.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if it was just like a guy that
• 1:36:04
  went crazy and killed himself yeah, yeah, this is like
• 1:36:07
  what was happening in his head leading up to it.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: All of the eccentrically crazy and chaotic things that he
• 1:36:13
  wrote down online, especially like regurgitating all this shit in
• 1:36:17
  a forum, is so it feels so real to me.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: I've seen so many weird postman or emails that are
• 1:36:24
  sent to me off like very crazy ramblings where you're
• 1:36:27
  just like, what the fuck are you talking about? But
• 1:36:29
  to that person, how, I mean, how real is it
• 1:36:31
  to them? It's probably you know, it's reality.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's hard for me to think back on
• 1:36:38
  it all. Quite a few of you have asked me
• 1:36:40
  to detail exactly what happened on that day. Now the
• 1:36:44
  January's over and the months past, I think I can
• 1:36:47
  face it. News and understanding has been fragmented, obviously, but
• 1:36:53
  I do think I can paint a clear picture. As
• 1:36:55
  you know, are planned it at work. It's a really
• 1:36:58
  good try. But were amateurs and half of us were
• 1:37:01
  spies and defectors. It did help that absolute chaos broke
• 1:37:06
  out at the proper time. I went there on Christmas
• 1:37:08
  morning to the city center. Tens of thousands had gathered
• 1:37:12
  to see the coming of the tree were on high.
• 1:37:14
  My two brown shirt allies stood with me, wearing the
• 1:37:18
  normal clothes I've found for them. I trained them on
• 1:37:21
  how to act, and we worked together to mask or
• 1:37:24
  feel because they said their kin could send some otherwise.
• 1:37:27
  Will thought they were just two friends of mine. He
• 1:37:30
  was thrilled to see me making friends. Will was the
• 1:37:33
  highest priest assistant by then, but the old man didn't
• 1:37:36
  trust me very much. I had to stand a bit
• 1:37:38
  away from the altar in the dense crowd while the
• 1:37:41
  high Priest began giving a speech to thunderous cheers and applause.
• 1:37:45
  The weird thing is weird in many ways. As it
• 1:37:48
  turned out was the altar was already active. They built
• 1:37:53
  it and completed the first parts of the ritual of
• 1:37:55
  the Night before. The gigantic oval lay torn in space
• 1:38:00
  in the middle of it, kept open by the row
• 1:38:02
  of chained brown shirts. It was a portal, an honest
• 1:38:07
  to God portal in space. I saw the weird part,
• 1:38:11
  though my two allies whispered that it shouldn't be able
• 1:38:15
  to do what it was doing. It wasn't just a
• 1:38:17
  portal in space. Among the random flitting locations on Earth
• 1:38:21
  that displayed I recognized some as very ancient but bustling
• 1:38:26
  with life. It was showing other times too. I saw
• 1:38:30
  a tribe of cavemen, I saw the Colossus of Rhodes.
• 1:38:34
  I saw the crowd, our crowd, and then there from
• 1:38:38
  behind many of the sea of people waved themselves for
• 1:38:42
  a few moments, laughing and cheering. That should have been impossible.
• 1:38:46
  My allies told me the configuration of the altar was
• 1:38:50
  not just augmenting and focusing the abilities of the brown Shirts.
• 1:38:53
  It was fracturing space time too. Whatever might have intended
• 1:38:57
  to use that portal, they said it was some extraordinarily dangerous.
• 1:39:02
  They couldn't emphasize it enough. There was dangerous like a gun,
• 1:39:06
  really dangerous, like a nuclear bomb, extremely dangerous, like a
• 1:39:11
  universe eating swarm of machines. And then whatever this was,
• 1:39:15
  it was worse, worse than all that. They couldn't even
• 1:39:18
  hazard to guess as to what it might be. But
• 1:39:20
  it didn't make sense to me. The dreamer on high
• 1:39:24
  was on the Moon. That much had to be true.
• 1:39:27
  The object had hit the Moon, had gone molten and
• 1:39:30
  remained molten, so massive as it was casting lurid orange
• 1:39:34
  over my free senses, and the crowds and high rises
• 1:39:38
  around me, And then Dreamer on High had begun his
• 1:39:41
  insidious work. He was already here. He didn't need a
• 1:39:45
  portal strong enough to fracture space time. He was already here.
• 1:39:49
  He was just stuck on the moon. And now five
• 1:39:53
  more some things were coming to reinforce his power. So
• 1:39:57
  what was this portal for? I understood gravity of our
• 1:40:00
  airs the moment I saw him. A black robed figure
• 1:40:04
  moved through the crowd, parting disciples like waves. A hood
• 1:40:08
  covered his face, but I knew who it was the
• 1:40:11
  moment I saw him. He walked slowly up to the
• 1:40:14
  altar and faced his high priest. My brother Will stood
• 1:40:18
  to the side among many helpers and assistants, each dressed
• 1:40:22
  in flowing purple and gold. Next to them, and in
• 1:40:26
  many strategic places stood brutish men with guns. We'd add
• 1:40:30
  provisions in our plan to handle the men with guns,
• 1:40:32
  but the plan was on thin ice now. The Dreamer
• 1:40:35
  on High was already here. They'd summoned him the night before.
• 1:40:39
  They'd brought him to Earth somehow. The night before. We've
• 1:40:43
  been tricked. We've been out smarten. They hadn't cared about
• 1:40:48
  the holiday at all. They just used it to subtly
• 1:40:51
  dupe us. He moved past me, close enough to almost touch.
• 1:40:56
  I thought in my mind that I should pull my knife,
• 1:40:59
  leap forward and slice his throat, but chill waves kept
• 1:41:03
  me frozen in place. My two brown shirt allies looked
• 1:41:06
  away lest he sensed them. Had that been my chance?
• 1:41:11
  I began feeling my limbs again as he stepped up
• 1:41:13
  onto the altar. At that moment, the crowd murmured, and
• 1:41:17
  I turned to look. With the rest of humanity. A
• 1:41:21
  single man ran down the empty wake left by the
• 1:41:23
  dreamers passing. He looked wild and half homeless, but desperate
• 1:41:29
  and with guns after their weapons and began to aim,
• 1:41:31
  but they were too late to stop his simple attempt.
• 1:41:34
  He hurled a book at the portal that was all
• 1:41:37
  with twenty thousand other pairs of eyes. I watched its
• 1:41:40
  sail through the air. It wasn't a fiction book. It
• 1:41:44
  had no image on the cover. Must have been a journal.
• 1:41:48
  It looked like it was about to fall short, but
• 1:41:50
  the effect was an optical illusion. It curved up a
• 1:41:53
  bit in the rolling air and sailed into the vast portal.
• 1:41:57
  The moment it passed through the portal, flash to a
• 1:42:00
  dozen fractured images of other similar books sailing through the
• 1:42:04
  air behind them. We could all plainly see other individual
• 1:42:08
  men and women in other crowds completing throws. In the
• 1:42:11
  midst of ass crowds, and each alternate version of our scene,
• 1:42:15
  a dreamer stood, black robed, calm and unmoving. Instead of
• 1:42:19
  shooting him outright, the arm thugs grabbed the lone man
• 1:42:22
  and brought him to the ground. Whoever he was. The
• 1:42:25
  lone man screamed for help, half in gibberish, and no
• 1:42:29
  one helped him. How could they to do so would
• 1:42:33
  mean death. That's what it's for. One of my brown
• 1:42:37
  shirt allies whispered.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 7: He's accessing a different vector than we expected. He's not
• 1:42:42
  trying to access us in an erthen peril reality sense.
• 1:42:45
  He's trying to access different quantum choice trees up this universe.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: What I asked fiercely, sort of grasping what he was
• 1:42:52
  talking about. He was a little closer to speak without
• 1:42:55
  being heard by the crowd pressed against us.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: This could have happened in a thousand different ways. We
• 1:43:00
  could have come to other cities. A different man or
• 1:43:02
  woman would have thrown that book. That's what you're seeing
• 1:43:06
  all the other presents and futures of these.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: Events kept my expression positive despite my intense worry about
• 1:43:11
  what he was describing. We hadn't understood or planned for
• 1:43:15
  any of this. Why silence? A blasting tidal wave of
• 1:43:19
  utter quiet tour across the city center as one humanity froze.
• 1:43:24
  The dreamer turned to face us. The vast darkness comes.
• 1:43:28
  A cheer began swelling silence. The chill voice, as if
• 1:43:33
  someone were whispering directly into our minds, brought absolute stillness.
• 1:43:38
  I can since that not all of you loved me.
• 1:43:41
  I can feel your mind, I can feel your hatred.
• 1:43:45
  I gulped, kept my thoughts positive. Each my two allies
• 1:43:48
  clutched one of my arms and helped hide us from
• 1:43:51
  the probing energies. I felt roving around the air.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: I speak to you now, nonbelievers. A great darkness is coming.
• 1:44:00
  Oh never spin near, watching your food just outside the walls.
• 1:44:05
  Security is illusion, Safety is a self.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Impostumb I reeled under the icy cold of his words
• 1:44:13
  and my thoughts until something occurred to me. Why was
• 1:44:16
  he speaking to us at all? He would only address
• 1:44:20
  us in this manner if we were threats, if we
• 1:44:22
  actually stood a chance. The portal's destinations were starting to
• 1:44:27
  slow down, going from rapid randomness to slowing coherence, almost
• 1:44:31
  as if a spinning wheel was losing momentum. As someone
• 1:44:35
  applied the brakes, I could see the chained brown shirts focusing,
• 1:44:39
  and a thug near the one free brown shirt applied
• 1:44:42
  a shocking prod to him to force him to comply
• 1:44:44
  to If the Dreamer was addressing us at all, then
• 1:44:47
  we actually stood a chance. I lifted the flare gun
• 1:44:51
  I'd hid it under my shirt, wondering if it might
• 1:44:53
  be the last act I ever took. I pulled the
• 1:44:56
  trigger and an orange flare shot up, burning the color
• 1:45:00
  of the molten sky. As I said, absolute chaos did
• 1:45:04
  break out at the proper time. Two of the our
• 1:45:06
  men were with us. It turned out they rotated in
• 1:45:09
  place and immediately shot several of their fellows in the back.
• 1:45:13
  The crowd around us urged intensely, and fighting broke out
• 1:45:17
  all around. Nobody knew who the enemy was, changed or free.
• 1:45:21
  Everyone suspected everyone else. It was as we'd expected, but
• 1:45:26
  I hadn't anticipated the sheer violence. Blood sprayed through the airs.
• 1:45:31
  Friend murdered friend, as family murdered family a concert push
• 1:45:36
  aimed for the altar plateau, our plan actually taking shape.
• 1:45:41
  A knot of men, women, and even teenagers that I'd
• 1:45:44
  never seen before surrounded us, and we punched, sliced, and
• 1:45:48
  kicked our way to the staging area. While five blue
• 1:45:51
  stars grew brighter in the sky, the approaching objects blue
• 1:45:56
  shifted by their sheer speed. The goal wasn't to get
• 1:45:59
  me to the portal. It was to get our two
• 1:46:02
  allies close together. The two free brown shirts stared at
• 1:46:06
  the portal, and the space around it trembled from the interference. Somehow, though,
• 1:46:11
  it was me that the Dreamer turned to face stop.
• 1:46:15
  The command was inviable, and I froze as ordinary men
• 1:46:19
  and women massacred each other in a circle around the
• 1:46:21
  two of us order them to stop. I never felt
• 1:46:24
  pain like that, and I can still remember it vividly.
• 1:46:28
  The two rooms in my mind began cracking, as if
• 1:46:31
  their foundation was shifting. I remember shaking and seeing my
• 1:46:35
  vision brim crimson as blood began welling out of my eyes.
• 1:46:40
  Behind the dreamer, Will pushed his way through the fighting
• 1:46:43
  and reached me. Stop hurting him, he shouted, and the
• 1:46:47
  black robe figure turned his attention on my brother instead.
• 1:46:50
  That freed me, and I stumbled forward through misty red,
• 1:46:54
  lurid orange, and growing blue to feebly try to tackle
• 1:46:58
  the Dreamer on high fell right through him, fool The
• 1:47:02
  portal breathed, writhing on flat metal. How can you use
• 1:47:06
  it if you're not here.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: It's not for me, It's for you, all of you.
• 1:47:12
  I am your savior. There's a chain of events in
• 1:47:15
  which the human race of vivees that come in darkness.
• 1:47:18
  There is one future in which you escaped the crushing
• 1:47:20
  forces I approach. You will come to that land of
• 1:47:23
  plenty and be safe there under me.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: The Dreamer stood in place and looked up at the
• 1:47:28
  molten orange sphere hanging low above us. He lowered his
• 1:47:31
  hooded head as five streaks of vivid blue rapidly sliced
• 1:47:35
  across the sky. I turned my head as blinding, wide
• 1:47:39
  and orange exploded above. Even that wasn't enough, as successive
• 1:47:43
  impacts followed, and the sea of people fighting one another
• 1:47:46
  fell in waves against the sheer brightness. Ground trembled beneath us,
• 1:47:52
  and incredible winds began pouring through the channels between the
• 1:47:55
  high rises. Many began running without prompt and rest or
• 1:48:00
  and evacuation. I helped unchain the brown Shirts, all now free,
• 1:48:05
  and we ran. The Dreamer was gone, the portal was gone,
• 1:48:09
  and as you all know, so was the moon. A
• 1:48:12
  ring of molten rock arcs through the sky, now lighting
• 1:48:15
  each day and each night until it cools. The remains
• 1:48:19
  of the dream were on higher up there too, gobs
• 1:48:22
  of unidentifiable organic mass that many say looks like brain matter.
• 1:48:28
  I believe it. The thing is, we never understood what
• 1:48:31
  we were facing. The Dreamer hadn't come with that first object.
• 1:48:36
  It had always been there. It had an all likelihood
• 1:48:40
  formed the Moon by its arrival. That's why we have
• 1:48:45
  well had two moons, why one has always been so
• 1:48:49
  different from the other. The other moon lurks still beyond
• 1:48:52
  the molten ring, glimmering with reflected orange. I don't like
• 1:48:57
  that side at all, not one bit. I still feel watched,
• 1:49:02
  and I'll go back to staying beneath my horizon for
• 1:49:05
  three months soon, like it was from October to December.
• 1:49:09
  And I can't wait for that reprieve. Let the southern
• 1:49:12
  hemisphere take a turn. Feeling creeped out, Some unknown power
• 1:49:16
  shot those objects at us eons ago. Some power unrelated
• 1:49:20
  to the Dreamer. That's what we figure now, and I'm
• 1:49:23
  sure you've all heard the theories. The first object was
• 1:49:27
  a calibration test, possibly, and failed to kill the Dreamer
• 1:49:31
  on High. The next five were right on target and
• 1:49:34
  completely obliterated the moon. Just to make sure whoever had
• 1:49:39
  fired those objects hadn't been trying to kill us. They've
• 1:49:42
  been trying to save us. Had they suffered at the
• 1:49:45
  hands of the dream were on High or something like that,
• 1:49:48
  Had this incredible gift been their final act. Scientists turned
• 1:49:52
  their telescopes towards the origin point, but there was nothing
• 1:49:55
  left there now that started gone nova when Earth was
• 1:49:58
  in its infancy. Whatever they'd been, they'd saved us without
• 1:50:02
  a word, without a single thank you. Still we thank
• 1:50:05
  them the world over, but I can't help feeling like
• 1:50:09
  we're not safe. The words of the Dreamer spoke to
• 1:50:13
  me and to nobody else linger with me. Was it actually,
• 1:50:18
  in its own twisted way, trying to save us from
• 1:50:21
  something worse? Brown Shirts have moved on, but they left
• 1:50:26
  me and the other members of the resistance they trusted
• 1:50:28
  with a few concerns. First, if they can find the
• 1:50:32
  rest of their people, ones that moved on and if
• 1:50:35
  they can find the old Allies they spoke of, we'll
• 1:50:37
  come back first to make sure we're all right. Second,
• 1:50:41
  they left us with a small metallic chip, one of
• 1:50:44
  several they had, that will show us the way to
• 1:50:46
  some sort of safe haven if they never managed to return.
• 1:50:50
  The chip is very old. I'm not sure how to
• 1:50:52
  use it, but I'm certain we'll figure it out. And
• 1:50:54
  the coming darkness turns out to be real. Finally, now,
• 1:50:59
  this was the odd one. They warned that someone or
• 1:51:03
  something was hunting them. They didn't know who or what
• 1:51:07
  it was, only that they sensed it on their trail,
• 1:51:10
  and it had already passed through here following the rest
• 1:51:12
  of their kind. There's no guarantee the hunter would not return,
• 1:51:17
  they requested. If anyone came through here asking about them,
• 1:51:21
  lie gladly. I told them. This is why I give
• 1:51:25
  no specific descriptions in my tale here. I didn't want
• 1:51:29
  the hunter to know what they look like. As far
• 1:51:31
  as anyone else is concerned, they're just slightly odd humans. Me.
• 1:51:36
  I'm procrastinating. I have to go visit Will's grave with
• 1:51:40
  Lord today. Dad can't go, of course, because he drinks
• 1:51:43
  even more than before. This all happened before he killed Tracy,
• 1:51:47
  the only woman who put up with him, just me
• 1:51:49
  and my sister now and left to Will's place to
• 1:51:52
  take care of the tattered remains of our family. On
• 1:51:55
  the bright side, I don't need pills anymore. The Dreamer
• 1:51:58
  permanently gave me whole less of mind, even as it
• 1:52:01
  took away my older brother. He died there on that altar,
• 1:52:05
  taking the Dreamer's attack in my place. He died there
• 1:52:09
  a hero, along with the thousands of others who didn't
• 1:52:11
  survive Christmas Day, and the human race recovers from their
• 1:52:14
  shared hangover together with me as a new member. I've
• 1:52:18
  got a strong handle on myself now and a new
• 1:52:21
  confidence born of everything I went through. I'm even going
• 1:52:25
  on a second date with Ashley in a few days,
• 1:52:27
  and this time I think I won't screw it up
• 1:52:30
  silver linings, I suppose. Yeah, I'm finally a functioning member
• 1:52:34
  of the human race all right, Only I'm not sure
• 1:52:37
  I like this club. Can't help it to well. In
• 1:52:40
  the statistics that came out last week, going to the
• 1:52:43
  surveys and studies done after the fact, only eighteen percent
• 1:52:46
  of the population truly came under the Dreamer's control eighteen percent,
• 1:52:52
  that so many people were one hundred percent brainwashed, that
• 1:52:55
  so many human beings had completely whole minds. It was
• 1:52:59
  like a grain and social experiment. The lead scientist said
• 1:53:02
  on TV only eighteen percent. The rest were partially controlled
• 1:53:06
  or totally free. The rest simply fell in line out
• 1:53:08
  of fear of self preservation and paranoia. That's the thing.
• 1:53:12
  It's like so many eras in human history. Nobody knew
• 1:53:16
  who was who, nobody knew who to trust, lines of
• 1:53:20
  communication were controlled by key members of the change, and
• 1:53:23
  neighbors were turned against one another in classic fashion. It
• 1:53:26
  can't shake the dark despair that such news leaves in me.
• 1:53:29
  The Dreamer had no power except what we gave it.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: The end, the end, Wow, uh wow, Oh god, good lord,
• 1:53:42
  what a lot to take in on that last part.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know if if the author is wanting us
• 1:53:49
  to believe that that was all real, or if it's
• 1:53:52
  just a man who is Because this is the thing too,
• 1:53:54
  that he's still posting on a forum, and I think
• 1:53:57
  about all the shit that I've seen him, even my emails,
• 1:54:00
  where it's that detailed in that insane to where I'm
• 1:54:05
  curious to know because also he stopped responding to the replies.
• 1:54:08
  You know, if he's just if he's just mindlessly regurgitating
• 1:54:12
  shit that he's like that he's saying or believing.
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know, what do you think? Okay, so I
• 1:54:27
  think he's still crazy. I think that's what all that
• 1:54:31
  end part was, because if it's supposed to be literal,
• 1:54:33
  that's really lame. I don't like that. Wow, it's like, yeah,
• 1:54:36
  well it started as like, you know, an unreliable narrator,
• 1:54:38
  creepy thing, but then it became star trek out like that.
• 1:54:42
  But if you kind of take this to be he
• 1:54:47
  is no law, like we see if we interpret the
• 1:54:50
  stuff that's happening in the first two parts of this
• 1:54:51
  real world, like his brother takes him home and he
• 1:54:53
  gets into a big fight with his family and his
• 1:54:56
  stepmom quote unquote dies. Maybe she just leaves because she
• 1:54:59
  can't deal with this anymore. I know he's just so
• 1:55:01
  lost in the sauce. Because there's that mention at the
• 1:55:04
  end that he's completely off his medication. Maybe this is
• 1:55:06
  just what happens when he gets all the way off
• 1:55:08
  his medication, right, Well, he leaves reality to such an
• 1:55:10
  absurd degree.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: He said it earlier too, that he was like I'm
• 1:55:13
  running low or whatever. That was a while back. That
• 1:55:16
  was like in part two when he's like, I can't share,
• 1:55:19
  like you know, and I haven't even thought about how
• 1:55:21
  I have, like I basically have no medication left. I
• 1:55:23
  think he said that in part two.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I don't know.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, I like this idea of trying to decipher
• 1:55:30
  a guy with the fantastical illusion that is presenting in
• 1:55:35
  front of him versus the reality of like his family
• 1:55:38
  trying to help and him kind of slowly decaying mentally
• 1:55:41
  over time and giving into I don't know, not taking
• 1:55:46
  his meds or just you know, not having the support system,
• 1:55:49
  not being able to.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: Talk with people.
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: I really really really enjoyed parts one and two, specifically
• 1:55:54
  part one with how back and forth it was that
• 1:55:57
  kind of illusion that was breaking up. And I think
• 1:55:59
  that like a horror a horror story written from the
• 1:56:04
  perspective of a senile person that is like unapologetically like
• 1:56:09
  filtering their thoughts in a way that almost feels cohesive
• 1:56:13
  to where you know you can't decipher what is real
• 1:56:16
  and what's not real. I think it's a really interesting concept.
• 1:56:19
  I agree, though, I think that if it goes into
• 1:56:20
  this fantastical place with like you know, the ancient god
• 1:56:24
  and stuff, I think it's practically a bit a bit corny,
• 1:56:29
  you know. So I guess I choose to believe that
• 1:56:31
  it's Uh.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: I'll choose to believe that too, because there's enough clues
• 1:56:36
  for it, and I think that's far more interesting. I
• 1:56:39
  think it's just it's very well written. I think like
• 1:56:43
  Part one especially, I really liked the way Part one was.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: I liked Part two as well, with the date, and
• 1:56:50
  I liked like there was a lot of the way
• 1:56:53
  that it was written, the context clues and the continuous
• 1:56:56
  subversion of expectation or the subversion of like war going
• 1:57:00
  down this road actually just kidding, we're going down this
• 1:57:01
  road really did make me feel like I was reading
• 1:57:04
  something manic, and I am trying to carry that through
• 1:57:07
  with the end part because the end part is so
• 1:57:09
  heavy on lower and like this like almost apocalyptic future,
• 1:57:15
  almost like the fucking I have no mouth, I must
• 1:57:17
  scream like the am computer and like them living in
• 1:57:20
  this thing for one hundred and whatever it was eighty
• 1:57:23
  years or whatever the fuck it was, Like, Uh, it's
• 1:57:27
  so much to take in so quickly, even though we've
• 1:57:29
  been in this other place. You know that I can't
• 1:57:32
  help but feel like that is the actual conclusion is
• 1:57:36
  this man and once again like the kind of thought
• 1:57:38
  that I had earlier, of like each time we see
• 1:57:40
  these breaks, we have no idea the amount of time
• 1:57:43
  it is between him going.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: So to me, it's like this.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: I like to think that it's almost it's been months
• 1:57:49
  of him between post of almost you know, almost like
• 1:57:53
  he lost in this state, lost in the state, and
• 1:57:55
  he comes back as if no, nothing has stopped.
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think is interesting, but all in all, extremely
• 1:58:03
  well written, I just very fun. I'm very curious to
• 1:58:06
  see how people decipher it as well. I think it's
• 1:58:08
  impossible to not like parts one though, but part one
• 1:58:10
  was just phenomenal. Really loved how the story got set
• 1:58:14
  up and stuff. And I think that, like you know,
• 1:58:16
  when you're doing a story, the hardest part is like
• 1:58:18
  finding out how to end it or wrap it up.
• 1:58:20
  And I'm curious to see if people deciphered it the
• 1:58:24
  same way. Did they get too lost in it, you know,
• 1:58:27
  if grounding it more outside of this outside of the
• 1:58:31
  unreliable narrator would that have made it a stronger, more
• 1:58:35
  satisfying ending, because right now I can't tell. I can't
• 1:58:37
  tell if we're both just like the wind is out
• 1:58:40
  of our sails a bit and we're just kind of like, eh,
• 1:58:42
  you know, okay or not? Or how are you feeling?
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: So reading the comments, it seems that people are like, oh,
• 1:58:51
  the Brown Shirts connects to another story he did about
• 1:58:53
  blah blah blah. So it really feels like it's supposed
• 1:58:56
  to be the same thing with psychosis, that he was
• 1:59:00
  not actually insane and that this is all real and
• 1:59:03
  the stuff so that does that is depressing because that's
• 1:59:06
  way less interesting. I don't want to start reading a
• 1:59:10
  horror story and then it become a Star Wars spin
• 1:59:12
  offs the case, I'm just going to ignore it. Yeah yeah,
• 1:59:19
  well it's all on his head.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: But I think that you can do that if you
• 1:59:22
  want to, because at least the way that I was
• 1:59:24
  reading it is once it turns into like ramblings, I
• 1:59:27
  was almost trying to decipher like, Okay, he's at this
• 1:59:29
  alter I was almost like the same, he's at like
• 1:59:32
  a meeting, he's at like a halfway house.
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I thought my idea was because he kept talking
• 1:59:36
  about the one above all is coming and all he
• 1:59:38
  has armed guards. I was thinking that it was like
• 1:59:41
  a speech some politician was giving or something, and he
• 1:59:45
  had interpreted like this famous figure as like the person
• 1:59:49
  causing him pain. So I thought the reveal was going
• 1:59:52
  to be that, like he assassinated the president or something
• 1:59:55
  like that, because in his mind it's some multi dimensional
• 1:59:58
  beast thing, right.
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: Him killing his family or something would be interesting in this,
• 2:00:03
  like kind of like rough relationship he has with him
• 2:00:06
  already and then him kind of psychotically breaking and then
• 2:00:09
  feeling like his dad's a part of this. Or if
• 2:00:11
  he was a space cult is kind of fun.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or if he was in a hospital the whole time,
• 2:00:16
  it could be like it's like the superintendent of the
• 2:00:18
  hospital and he's been convinced that he's evil, and he's
• 2:00:22
  convinced other people who are equally as crazy as him
• 2:00:25
  that that's their evil. So they have this plot to
• 2:00:27
  assassinate him that doesn't work and he gets thrown in solitary.
• 2:00:30
  I'm gonna pretend that's what the Indian was because that's
• 2:00:33
  actually cool. All in all.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: I'm very very very curious to see what people say
• 2:00:38
  in what audio listeners think, but let us know in
• 2:00:41
  the comments. We appreciate it. And also, if you've hung
• 2:00:44
  out with us this long and you're maybe you're driving
• 2:00:46
  to work or you're just chilling out during your your
• 2:00:49
  break at lunch, then maybe consider listening to us on
• 2:00:53
  audio platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcast and give us
• 2:00:55
  a nice rating there. And if you want a little
• 2:00:57
  extra something on the side, we might be doing a
• 2:00:59
  little maybe some creep TV on Patreon and just reading
• 2:01:03
  more exclusive stories. Uh, and you want extra content, feel
• 2:01:06
  free to sign up for Patreon. It does help out
• 2:01:08
  the channel, and we appreciate it absolutely.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: I do appreciate it that the story really bummed me out,
• 2:01:18
  I know, I know. Well, I was like, well, maybe
• 2:01:21
  maybe if you think back, if you look at the
• 2:01:24
  brown shirts are representative of like the guards at facilities,
• 2:01:29
  and because there's a speech, they have armed guards. Maybe
• 2:01:31
  it's a prison. And I was like doing all this
• 2:01:33
  math and then people in the comments were like, oh cool,
• 2:01:36
  these are the brown shirts from your other space story
• 2:01:39
  and it's like, oh my gosh.
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 2: So I'm just well, you know, we at least got
• 2:01:43
  we at least got Scooby Doo swallowing a shot un barrel,
• 2:01:46
  and I think that that's at the price I'm filling
• 2:01:49
  a little retrow raggedy right now, I'm gonna fucking I'm
• 2:01:53
  parking the mystery machine in my garage and shutting the
• 2:01:56
  door and really revving the engine a couple of times.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really take me to that big Scooby snack in
• 2:02:02
  the sky. But I'm going to pretend like there's a
• 2:02:06
  paragraph at the end where it's like doctor's note, since
• 2:02:10
  going off medication, patient has gone further into delusion. I
• 2:02:14
  would have be seen for monitoring. That would be That
• 2:02:16
  would be great, that'd be awesome, even ending it with
• 2:02:18
  being like, hey guys, this is will Uh.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: My brother fucking walked and.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: Was shot train shot Obama.
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: Literally man, my brother shot John McCain uh, and he's
• 2:02:35
  gone crazy. I just want to say sorry for this
• 2:02:37
  rambling blah blah blah.
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: Even that would have been like, Okay, well there you go.
• 2:02:40
  I'd be like, great, awesome, perfect, that sounds fantastic. That's
• 2:02:43
  all I wanted. But as we were getting to the
• 2:02:45
  end and I was scrolling and I saw the bottom,
• 2:02:47
  I'm like, no, no, please, I know, I just sit there, No.
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: I know man, I could tell that the yeah, that
• 2:02:52
  the wind was out of your sails. It's that sucks.
• 2:02:55
  But well, until next time, give us a little, give
• 2:03:00
  us a quirky thing. You're a little last your last word,
• 2:03:03
  goodbye everyone.
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: You have you have to say, stay oh, stay creepd everyone,
• 2:03:07
  stay creeped. And if you have a mental illness, just
• 2:03:09
  look up. Don't look up at the moon. Look up
• 2:03:11
  at the moon. Rutro raggy rock shot instead of buckshot
• 2:03:19
  rock shot. That made me cringe. That was terrible. All right,
• 2:03:22
  Just ended there, Just ended there. M