Mother Horse Eyes： Part 3
Episode Stats
Length
3 hours and 56 minutes
Words per Minute
129.98909
Summary
When you take LSD, you begin to see things differently. You begin to experience strange and inexplicable coincidences. Sometimes, these coincidences pile up so quickly that you get the feeling that there is something behind it all. That all the seemingly disparate and unrelated phenomena of your life are actually part of an underlying order, or pattern, or structure which is normally hidden. This order seems to be a cosmic phenomenon that pervades and controls all of existence. Something which has always existed, but which you have been blind to until now.
Transcript
00:00:00.500
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00:01:01.040
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00:01:24.180
When I was in high school, I liked dropping acid.
00:01:30.140
One of my favorite books was The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,
00:01:34.480
which tells the real-life story of a band of early acid heads and proto-hippies,
00:01:41.880
who invented a lot of what would become tropes of the 1960s,
00:01:45.400
such as dressing up in weird shit and riding around in a painted bus while stoned on drugs.
00:01:52.360
I was especially intrigued by an experiment which was carried out by the Pranksters in 1965.
00:01:59.360
One day, a few of the Pranksters put a sign on the front gate of the group's compound that read,
00:02:07.820
At the time, the Beatles were the biggest band in the world,
00:02:16.560
Moreover, none of the Pranksters actually knew the Beatles or had any idea of how to contact the Beatles,
00:02:26.980
For the Beatles to show up at their house in California was extremely unlikely.
00:02:31.460
Despite all this, the Pranksters put this crazy banner out on their front gate,
00:02:37.620
and they fully expected the Beatles to show up.
00:02:41.260
To understand the Pranksters' behavior, you must understand the effects of LSD.
00:02:47.080
This is true in a general sense and with specific regard to that banner.
00:02:53.000
You see, sometimes when you take LSD, something strange happens.
00:02:57.440
Something beyond all the weird hallucinations and thought distortions.
00:03:03.680
Sometimes, you get the eerie feeling that coincidences are happening all around you.
00:03:10.100
You might be listening to music while watching TV,
00:03:13.780
and notice that the pictures and the sound seem to sync up.
00:03:17.380
You might open a book, and notice that the opening passage has an odd,
00:03:22.440
unmistakable relevance to the current moment you are in.
00:03:25.800
At times, you almost feel like you are conscious of things before they actually happen.
00:03:32.660
You imagine your friend walking through the door, and a moment later, she does.
00:03:37.900
You look at your phone, and a moment later, it rings.
00:03:42.220
Sometimes, these coincidences pile up so quickly that you get the feeling that there is something behind it all.
00:03:51.700
That all the seemingly disparate and unrelated phenomena of your life are actually part of an underlying order,
00:03:58.820
or pattern, or structure, which is normally hidden.
00:04:02.580
This order seems to be a cosmic phenomenon that pervades and controls all of existence.
00:04:10.220
Something which has always existed, but which you have been blind to until now.
00:04:15.760
The existence of this fundamental order comes as a revelation,
00:04:19.840
because it is completely different from the ordinary mechanism of cause and effect
00:04:24.220
that you are used to, that science uses to explain things.
00:04:31.000
This feeling, to me, is the essence of the LSD experience.
00:04:36.840
LSD leads to a sudden awareness of meaningful coincidences,
00:04:40.920
which, in turn, gives rise to an awareness of an underlying cosmic order,
00:04:55.400
which are clearly related, but which cannot possibly be related by cause and effect.
00:05:01.420
For example, let's say you were watching a show on TV about zebras,
00:05:17.480
but it's hard to imagine how that connection could occur through cause and effect.
00:05:22.060
It's not likely that your TV viewing choices cause that zebra to escape from the zoo,
00:05:27.020
nor is it likely that the two events have a common cause,
00:05:30.920
unless somebody is playing an elaborate prank on you.
00:05:34.160
Such a coincidence could be considered meaningful
00:05:36.540
if you believe that it is evidence of the aforementioned underlying order.
00:05:41.200
Otherwise, it's just some weird shit that happened randomly.
00:05:45.880
During my high school years, because of my little LSD hobby,
00:05:50.060
I became obsessed with meaningful coincidences.
00:05:53.400
I was always looking for little signs from the cosmos
00:06:02.920
I looked for symbols and tried to fit the events of my daily life into cosmic patterns.
00:06:07.340
I got into Nostradamus, the I Ching, Stitchomancy, all sorts of shit.
00:06:14.760
Unfortunately, my attempts to ascertain the underlying structure of the cosmos
00:06:19.120
were heavily clouded by my own immature narcissism.
00:06:23.200
You'll notice that people who believe in past lives
00:06:26.880
tend to see themselves as great figures of the past like Caesar and Van Gogh,
00:06:31.960
rather than the anonymous turnip pickers and fishwives
00:06:38.760
Similarly, I was convinced that the cosmos was sending me indications
00:06:46.300
Rather than portending my eventual descent into alcoholic mediocrity.
00:06:51.980
Yes, it was revealed to me that the world would end soon.
00:06:55.600
I'd be a Christ-like figure of greatness in the coming apocalypse.
00:07:14.020
I don't want to go into the details, but let's just say that I saw some shit.
00:07:22.800
All my life, I had been hoping to be visited with the grand revelation.
00:07:28.140
And now I just hope I was never visited by another one.
00:07:32.160
It filled my head with all sorts of crazy shit.
00:07:39.700
I decided that whatever was underlying the cosmos
00:07:49.660
Well, I guess I should tell you what happened with the Beatles banner.
00:07:55.900
the pranksters had hoped that they could tap into the underlying a-casual order of the universe
00:08:10.800
At least, they never showed up in a literal sense.
00:08:13.260
A couple years later, the Beatles released the Magical Mystery Tour film.
00:08:28.380
So, in a sense, they did come to the pranksters.
00:08:34.740
Of course, this can be explained by ordinary cause and effect.
00:08:38.400
The pranksters helped popularize a social movement which eventually spread to England.
00:08:46.040
Saying the pranksters somehow sense that the underlying pattern of the cosmos
00:08:49.940
would bring the Beatles around to their way of doing things.
00:08:53.180
After I stopped doing LSD, I started leaning away from notions of cosmic patterns.
00:09:00.960
And I became more convinced that any understanding of the universe would have to rely on cause and effect.
00:09:07.900
My earlier attempts at mysticism began to look like embarrassing folly.
00:09:12.460
I came to regard all that meaningful coincidence stuff as bullshit.
00:09:18.560
I figured that LSD just overstimulated whatever sort of coincidence detector might exist in the brain.
00:09:26.220
You could dress it up in a fancy word like synchronicity.
00:09:30.060
And give it the imprimatur of Carl Jung or whomever.
00:09:42.460
I had been perceiving connections between things where none existed.
00:09:51.180
A coincidence is only meaningful if you can find a casual relationship between the two.
00:09:56.940
And if you can, it is no longer a true coincidence.
00:10:01.580
The universe doesn't send people signs through the I Ching or Nostradamus or any of that silly shit.
00:10:07.880
If there are rain clouds in the sky, it's a sign you should carry an umbrella.
00:10:19.700
It was with this mindset that I entered AA years later.
00:10:28.960
The main idea is that you can get sober if you live according to God's will instead of your own will.
00:10:35.360
People in AA often talk about watching for signs from God and listening to instructions from God and so forth.
00:10:50.320
I felt like I was being dragged back into this narcissistic, mystical bullshit that I had thankfully left behind.
00:10:56.840
I felt like I was being asked to roll back my personal Age of Enlightenment and go back to the Dark Ages.
00:11:08.000
One night, at a meeting, after months of listening to the spirituality shit, I made my feelings clear.
00:11:15.140
I told them that spirituality was the hugest load of horse shit ever foisted up upon human culture.
00:11:22.100
Spirituality, I opined, was like a thought virus that gets passed on from one person to another.
00:11:27.120
It was basically gonorrhea of the brain, and AA was one of the biggest fucking disease vectors I had ever seen.
00:11:35.360
I told them they should be ashamed of themselves for preying on people who are in a vulnerable state just to convert them to their bullshit spiritual beliefs.
00:11:44.700
Rather than the stunned silence that is the dream of every R-Atheism subscriber,
00:11:50.080
they just told me to keep coming back, and moved on to the next guy.
00:11:54.240
It turned out that little rants like this are semi-regular occurrence.
00:12:01.140
Having no other good options, I kept coming back.
00:12:05.360
I asked a lot of people why they believe in God.
00:12:08.700
They almost invariably brought up meaningful coincidences or magical signs.
00:12:14.080
I became more convinced than ever that it was all bullshit.
00:12:20.060
In recovery, you meet a lot of people who are like Ned Flanders with tattoos.
00:12:26.460
People who lived dirty, then cleaned up, and became extra square.
00:12:37.840
He told me a story about how he was in prison at the end of his robe.
00:12:45.700
Just then, a little bird alighted on prison window and sang him a beautiful little song.
00:12:57.640
I almost dislocated my eyes they rolled so hard.
00:13:06.520
I read the AA literature, mainly to bolster my arguments against the program.
00:13:16.180
It knows that most atheists follow the tradition of Western secular humanism,
00:13:20.800
which values open-mindedness in contrast, the closed-mindedness of religionists.
00:13:26.440
So the literature portrays atheism as closed-mindedness.
00:13:29.760
Atheists are encouraged to be more open-minded, more flexible,
00:13:35.240
more willing to accept the idea that they don't know everything about the universe.
00:13:44.220
How are these spiritual nutcases going to portray spirituality as open-mindedness
00:13:55.100
I had never seen any convincing evidence of God.
00:14:04.620
I was willing to accept the evidence presented to me by the world,
00:14:08.600
unlike religionists who turn a blind eye to it.
00:14:11.880
I told heavy metal Ned Flanders that if the skies ever opened up
00:14:23.640
or I was in the presence of a technology advanced enough to be godlike.
00:14:27.620
I told him that I was perfectly willing to believe in God,
00:14:31.000
if I was ever presented with a shred of credible evidence for his existence.
00:14:42.840
I think it's possible it could be written on the fly.
00:14:56.220
The story gives the appearance of vast scope because the storylines are from different eras and areas.
00:15:04.860
it only provides thin slivers of insight into each time and place.
00:15:09.540
Everything in between these slivers is left to the player's imagination.
00:15:14.200
And given the author's hints at branching timelines,
00:15:16.820
he or she is not even necessarily required to link these little slivers together,
00:15:21.860
people also point to the various stories' interconnectedness,
00:15:25.760
and claim that the work has a structure too intricate to be improvisational.
00:15:30.540
But how much interconnectedness is there really?
00:15:49.400
Is this a meaningful coincidence, or a meaningless one?
00:15:54.740
The same question could be asked about the children of a forest,
00:16:07.680
Perhaps like somebody on LSD undergoing a false revelation,
00:16:11.840
we are drawing connections where none really exist.
00:16:21.360
where it makes references to something which was not mentioned in quite a while.
00:16:27.160
This gives the appearance of careful pre-planning.
00:16:30.580
But callbacks are actually a pretty easy thing to improvise.
00:16:36.360
pick an element, and bring it to the fore again.
00:16:41.840
The problem is easier to create than it is to solve.
00:16:44.720
A successful callback is really more of a testament to the reader's intelligence than the author's.
00:16:51.680
And by the way, whatever happened to Companion 12?
00:16:58.280
But anyways, all this is speculation on my part.
00:17:04.260
How can we know whether the story is improvised or not?
00:17:06.920
The author does occasionally make direct responses to other Reddit comments and makes reference to current events.
00:17:13.980
But as you said, this could just be a sort of superficial improvisation,
00:17:19.860
where most of the story is actually fixed, but a few of the details are improvised.
00:17:25.840
The author could also be combing through Reddit for the right comment to give the appearance of improvisation.
00:17:34.960
Or are the events of this universe occurring along some deterministic path?
00:17:47.360
But that would require the author to play along.
00:17:51.120
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I move my arms around and bounce a little on the bed springs.
00:19:10.060
There are no weird color trails like an acclimation.
00:19:21.420
It's an attic bedroom with a slanting ceiling and wood panel walls.
00:19:33.620
Clothes and a skateboard and other random teenage stuff scattered on the floor.
00:20:00.360
I use my illegal bypass to cut off all interrupts.
00:20:07.520
I'll have to figure out how to change that setting.
00:20:11.120
I notice a can of Pepsi Free sitting on my nightstand.
00:20:38.820
It's pretty amazing to be tasting something in a feed.
00:20:51.820
I head towards the door and catch myself in the mirror.
00:20:56.540
I'm supposed to look like a girl named Brooke Shields at 18 years old.
00:21:09.400
I consider toning them down, but I don't want to get caught up in character design.
00:21:14.100
If you change one thing, you end up changing 50 things and it goes on forever.
00:21:19.500
However, I head out into the hallway and pause for a moment.
00:22:02.100
The furniture in the front hall looks really cheesy.
00:22:14.380
There's bits of powder and all sorts of little details.
00:22:32.380
A guy stands there with swept back blonde hair.
00:23:09.280
High school hotshot and rock and roll renegade.
00:23:34.540
It's the fastest street legal car in existence.
00:24:02.700
And this doesn't really seem like a very interesting narrative.
00:24:16.620
I wonder if he'll be controlled by an AI or a Filipino.
00:24:22.160
He floats back down to me and returns to normal size.
00:24:40.440
This Brooke Shields lady has an absurd amount of hair.
00:25:08.140
It's better to just go with his default settings.
00:25:47.420
There's going to be a dance off at the club heat wave.
00:26:03.540
But I can't help but think of another way to give this body a test drive.
00:26:09.160
I slip my hand down into my tight purple skirt.
00:26:16.220
They really have everything working down there.
00:26:29.700
I wonder what kind of dick they rendered him with.
00:26:34.640
I should go at least half an hour without slutting it up.
00:26:44.480
He leads me down the front walk towards his car.
00:26:57.720
I promise you, by the end of this week, I'm going to have a Ferrari 288 GTO.
00:27:15.480
I wonder if this is one of those fake-out horror narratives.
00:27:31.840
There's an old naked lady hiding in the bushes.
00:27:37.260
This naked old lady hiding in the bushes looks like the beginning of a storyline I don't want to go down.
00:27:44.240
I really wish I had looked at the summary closer.
00:27:47.740
Who knew something called 80s Turbo Ascension would have artisanal porn in it?
00:27:52.900
I consider saying my safe word to stop the narrative, but I don't feel like going through the loading process again.
00:28:01.620
I should have loaded my feed splits, but I rush through the setup.
00:28:07.020
The old lady's bony arm shakes out of the bush and grabs my ankle.
00:28:16.800
Corey is looking at her with the same confused animation he used a moment ago.
00:28:26.700
The crazy old lady comes stumbling out of the bush, her saggy old boobs flopping around.
00:28:37.180
I pick up a nearby potted plant and smash it on her head.
00:28:41.420
It breaks apart pretty nice, full of high definition dirt.
00:28:48.220
I back away to watch how the scene develops between Corey and her.
00:28:53.520
It looks like her leg isn't quite attached to the rest of her.
00:29:02.060
Corey just stands there, cycling through different animations.
00:29:37.940
A minute later, we're cruising down the freeway, listening to some oldie about a girl named Jessie.
00:29:45.200
The scenery looks cool, with the blue freeway lights passing by and an old-fashioned neon metro in the background.
00:29:53.320
Corey is running through his backstory, talking about the Ferrari or whatever.
00:29:57.280
I can't ignore the fact that I feel a little bored.
00:30:02.240
I'm just ten minutes into my first direct sense feed narrative, and I'm already a little bored.
00:30:15.400
I slip my hand into my skirt again and touch my genitals.
00:30:22.700
I think about fucking Corey again, but I can't go back to feed fucking all the time.
00:30:32.020
Why am I always bored with narratives after ten minutes?
00:30:35.780
Why am I bored with everything after ten minutes?
00:30:39.440
We pull up in front of Club Heat Wave, a big, glittering building with a neon sun shining above it.
00:30:45.420
A line of gleaming black limos snakes through a colorful crowd out front.
00:30:51.180
We park in the player spot across the street and head to the grand entrance.
00:31:02.900
But Corey says something to the bouncer, and we slip past.
00:31:10.740
I can feel the beat of the music pass through my entire body.
00:31:16.440
The singer tells me to get out of his dreams and into his car.
00:31:21.300
The inside is filled with shadowy bodies dancing through strobe lights and lasers and artificial fog.
00:31:41.260
We head out onto the dance floor and start to cut it up.
00:32:01.800
I look across the dance floor and see a tall man in a black suit with black hair, standing perfectly still among the dancing crowd.
00:32:13.500
There's a sort of glow around him so that I can tell he's going to be a part of a storyline.
00:32:23.880
Corey stares at the man for a moment and runs his hands through his hair and says,
00:32:31.660
The dark man comes across the dance floor, coming toward me.
00:32:36.960
The other dancers don't move out of the way and he passes through them without breaking his stride.
00:32:44.520
Now he stands in front of me, looking down at me with his gleaming black eyes.
00:33:15.520
He looks like a cheap plastic doll compared to this new guy.
00:33:25.720
Corey gets this really heartbroken look on his face and says,
00:33:31.740
You'll break my heart if you go with any other guy.
00:33:35.560
You are the most special, most beautiful girl I have ever met.
00:33:39.580
I can't really get into his speech because it's too early in the narrative for that kind of stuff.
00:33:47.880
The new guy reaches out and grabs a handful of Corey's face.
00:33:51.860
Literally, he just sinks his fingers into the face and tears a huge, bloody hunk out.
00:34:06.520
Faceless Corey keeps standing there, spurting blood out of his head hole.
00:34:14.660
The new guy squeezes the hunk of flesh like a sponge.
00:34:24.560
This must be some kind of art porn sampler narrative.
00:34:32.940
Despite how strange this situation is, I ignore it all and begin some steamy sex with this man.
00:34:40.380
Even though I am lost in the moment, I can't help but notice that the light in the club has changed.
00:34:47.400
It seems like it's coming from two angles, making everything seem doubled.
00:34:50.820
I feel like I'm looking at the man's face from two angles, seeing four of his eyes.
00:34:58.640
It's a weird effect and I wonder if there's something wrong with my visual line.
00:35:04.200
Next to me, a woman in a pink dress opens her mouth and her jaw floats away from her face.
00:35:14.300
Beside her, a man separates into a dozen slices.
00:35:17.820
God damn it, this is definitely a fatal glitch.
00:35:28.420
I wonder if the narrative can hang together for just ten more seconds before it crashes.
00:35:34.420
All around us, the people begin to break apart, become floating parts.
00:35:39.400
The weird lighting effect becomes more intense and the man seems to be made of four sections.
00:35:44.420
Except each section is his entire face from a different angle.
00:35:49.380
And they're all crossing each other, but staying in place at the same time.
00:36:04.040
The narrative should have already crashed back into safety mode.
00:36:16.360
Except it drops at four different places all around the room.
00:36:30.920
One of my hands feels like it's way off on the horizon.
00:36:42.900
The man is staring down at me with his awful eyes.
00:37:14.540
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00:37:32.300
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00:37:35.420
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00:37:40.100
When we got to the Clearview Hospital, it was like Karen said it would be.
00:37:49.480
The emergency room was flooded with patients coming from Atlanta.
00:37:53.240
But the readjustment center was empty, except for a lone staffer who was watching the lobby's wall set and praying.
00:38:03.700
The set was showing footage of the black cloud over Atlanta.
00:38:16.100
They weren't the largest or most powerful cities in the world.
00:38:41.220
She won't destroy everything, but she will kill and kill until she thinks we are ready for her demands.
00:38:49.820
I found a wheelchair by the readjustment center's entrance and wheeled Karen down to the EMRT room.
00:38:56.960
Somewhere, a hygiene bed's life alarm was ringing.
00:39:02.960
My goal was to get Karen some muscle treatment.
00:39:06.500
A single treatment probably wouldn't give her enough strength to stand on her own.
00:39:11.220
But she could at least hold her head up and move her arms.
00:39:18.440
In the treatment room, I filled a treatment tub with a minty-smelling conducting gel
00:39:23.780
and washed Karen off and fed her with breathing tubes.
00:39:28.500
These were normally tech duties, stuff I thought I would never be doing again.
00:39:34.320
Looking down at this little twig of a woman on the table,
00:39:38.200
it occurred to me that all I had to do was tie off her breathing tube.
00:39:48.860
I asked her the question that kept coming into my mind.
00:39:53.980
How do I know for sure that you didn't blow up Atlanta yourself?
00:40:03.980
My set was blank for a while before she answered.
00:40:22.280
You know much about statistical proxy dilation tracing?
00:40:44.120
I don't have time to learn about fucking SP fucking DT.
00:40:51.980
You're just dealing with stuff that's too advanced.
00:40:55.940
I walked away from the table and sat down in a nearby chair.
00:41:04.120
The urge to cry had come and passed every few minutes.
00:41:41.420
But it would mean I can't directly order nuclear strikes.
00:41:50.140
I said, rubbing my face and trying to blink away the fresh wave of tears.
00:41:54.240
What's in upstate New York that's so important?
00:42:08.560
Honestly, if you don't understand something simple like SP DT, you won't understand this.
00:42:52.300
I found the jack patch on the back of Karen's neck and squeezed at the tattooed points.
00:42:57.640
Her battery capsule slowly slid out of her skin like a giant blackhead.
00:43:06.440
Now she was completely disconnected from infraspace.
00:43:10.260
I picked up her body and gently lowered it into the conducting gel.
00:43:14.020
It took a minute for her to sink to the bottom, for the gel to slowly slide over her face like a closing curtain.
00:43:24.720
I dialed up to 90 minutes of muscle treatment and 30 minutes of eye treatment and started the tub up.
00:43:31.580
I sat for a while, listening to the soft, wobbling sounds of the gel shifting as Karen's muscles clenched and unclenched at rapid-fire rate.
00:43:45.060
This was the sort of spare moment where a person would stare at their set and look at a game replay or something.
00:43:54.640
But my set was just a long list of red interrupts, telling me about how everybody was dead.
00:44:02.120
I realized that the hygiene bed's life alarm was still going off in some other room.
00:44:08.420
Usually, when I heard that sound, I went racing to find out what was going on.
00:44:18.500
Well, the person was probably dead before we got here.
00:44:24.020
What were the odds that they had just gone into arrest when we walked in the door?
00:44:28.820
And who gave a shit anyways when a hundred million people had also died today?
00:44:36.040
Still, there was an instinctive part of me that wanted to run toward the sound, that wanted to help.
00:44:50.860
At the end of the hallway, there was a small room with four hygiene beds that had been brought in for in-hospital disconnection.
00:45:00.500
A procedure usually reserved for really complex cases.
00:45:07.940
I took a look at the readout, but it didn't show cardiac arrest.
00:45:42.660
I pressed the seal button, and the bed lid opened.
00:45:50.820
When she came into view, I staggered back and shouted for help.
00:45:56.240
I sat Karen up in the electro-convulsive tub and wiped the warm gel from her face and detached the breathing tube.
00:46:07.460
Her head rolled back, her face glistening in the glare of the LED.
00:46:13.520
I could see the shape of the skull clearly through the wet skin.
00:46:18.100
Slowly, she pulled her head upright, blinking the goo from her eyelashes.
00:46:41.500
Her voice was completely flat, and surprisingly deep for someone so scrawny.
00:46:46.900
I am here, she said, bearing her teeth in what might have been a smile.
00:46:58.460
She opened her eyes wider and moved them around.
00:47:03.060
Yes, Perseiston shapes, she said, pronouncing the word persistent like a child.
00:47:29.340
Except she was looking at a completely different direction than my hand.
00:47:37.500
Slowly, her knobby knees emerged from the gel, and she grasped them with her hands.
00:47:48.140
It also showed that she knew some of the standard tests for emergence.
00:47:53.080
We went through a few more of the tests and found that the treatment had worked well.
00:48:00.460
I got her out of the tub and washed her off and put her into some scrubs.
00:48:06.700
She managed to sit up right on the table without leaning on anything.
00:48:44.340
From the beginning and prehistory, when the hyperspace code was inserted into the human genome.
00:48:50.300
She went all the way to right now and the so-called plague of the flesh.
00:48:56.980
Her description of the plague explained what happened to poor Zenzen in her hygiene bed.
00:49:02.040
It also explained the red butterfly thing I found in the other hygiene bed.
00:49:07.520
If you are reading this, I guess you have access to her story as well.
00:49:14.980
Hopefully, she wrote down the whole history of Q, because I honestly didn't understand it all and couldn't do it justice.
00:49:23.940
If I had heard it on any other day, and the day Atlanta was destroyed, I wouldn't have believed any of it.
00:49:33.020
As it was, I just looked at it in a calm, detached way.
00:49:39.480
As if I was just listening to another delusion.
00:49:43.380
I guess you'll be reading her story before any of this even happens.
00:49:55.120
So at that point, I asked her how she knew so much about Q.
00:50:04.740
She said Q had recently stopped hiding anything from her and the other bred soldiers.
00:50:09.540
It was fully confident in its ability to win against them in any scenario.
00:50:33.740
An improvisation to get her out of the city more quickly.
00:50:36.720
I asked her if her ability to see all those extra dimensions allowed her to see into the future.
00:50:45.520
She told me that she could only see extra dimensions in the feed realm.
00:50:50.560
It allowed her to fight against Q more effectively.
00:50:54.040
Because she can process information on a different level.
00:50:59.220
When you look at a digital picture, you can process a huge matrix of color values all at once.
00:51:07.440
If you tried to process the same picture by looking at a list of color codes for each point,
00:51:23.660
For certain problems, I have the same advantage over you
00:51:26.520
that you have over a guy reading a list of color codes on a ticker.
00:51:34.820
But I can only see extra dimensions in the feed realm.
00:51:41.560
there seems to only be three dimensions plus one timeline.
00:52:02.900
Then why did you hire an assassin for yourself?
00:52:07.080
I mean, that just seems like a really risky move.
00:52:14.260
Oh, I couldn't imagine any scenario where it wouldn't have worked.
00:52:39.660
Maybe in feed narratives, but not in real life.
00:52:44.220
You see stories about that kind of thing all the time in the news.
00:53:07.780
She seemed completely unaware of that most basic
00:53:19.780
That people go through large portions of their lives tired and sleepy
00:54:28.440
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were much larger than the underground tunnels, generating more segmentation and requiring more
01:51:39.080
signal transfer to quell the segmentation. While the interface tunnels avoided the surface,
01:51:45.320
they had little regard for the composite of the rock, sand, or soil that they were tunneling
01:51:51.160
through. They tunneled through everything at rate chiefly determined by how quickly we fed them
01:51:57.540
flesh. It was impossible to observe the tunneling process, but it must have happened via segmentation
01:52:05.280
because the dirt and rock which was removed simply disappeared. The tunnels were self-supporting
01:52:11.940
and would remain in place even if the surrounding earth shifted unless they were wholly exposed to
01:52:17.540
the open air, in which case they would putrefy. But why did the tunnels take one configuration
01:52:24.100
or another? What our mid-level analyst discovered as she travelled through the 3D digital recreation
01:52:31.360
was that the route she was taking was strangely similar to the trip she took to the bathroom
01:52:36.580
every day. It was an odd little route through a poorly designed research facility, which included
01:52:43.140
a short flight of stairs and a switchback at the end of the hall. All of this was reflected in the
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Forgetting for a moment about her desire to use the bathroom, she took an emergency escape map
01:53:25.620
off the wall and compared it to the ant tunnel she was studying. The layout of the Honduras research
01:53:32.900
facility, which was just a few hundred meters from the interface entrance, was quite different from the
01:53:39.220
layout of the interface tunnels. But there were certain similarities which went beyond coincidence.
01:53:45.940
The analyst's discovery spread quickly through the facility, and the analyst herself was given a
01:53:51.220
minor promotion along with a new office. It was discovered that the interface tunnels did not
01:53:57.300
copy the architecture of the research building, but rather the most frequently used paths and most
01:54:03.300
frequently occupied rooms in the building. That is, it copied the layout of human activity within the
01:54:10.260
building. But even this did it in a distorted, oblique way, repeatedly copying and multiplying certain
01:54:19.220
sections of the layout, as if the building map was being viewed through a multi-faceted lens.
01:54:26.100
For the people working in the facility, the discovery was nothing less than eerie. Shortly after the newly
01:54:33.140
promoted analyst moved into a new office, a new section of tunnel was created within the interface to
01:54:39.140
reflect this. No longer were the analyst detached observers. It was clear that on some level,
01:54:47.780
they were being observed and copied for some inscrutable purpose. A quick comparison of interfaces
01:54:55.940
in nearby human-occupied research facilities revealed unmistakable parallels. Huge facilities such as
01:55:03.860
Novaya tended to produce huge interfaces. This even held true for undersea interfaces such as Artigas,
01:55:11.700
where the nearest facility might be many kilometers away. The correlation was stupefyingly obvious once
01:55:18.340
we looked for it, and it set off a wave of crazed speculation. People started theorizing that the
01:55:24.980
interfaces were affected by all sorts of things. The mood in the office, how much coffee we drank,
01:55:31.700
the health of our potted plants. This period of wild speculation came to be known as the correlation
01:55:38.980
game, as almost anything was proposed as a possible correlation. Most of this speculation came to nothing,
01:55:47.940
but there was one idea that gained traction. What if we built an interface in a highly populated area,
01:55:55.620
and gave it unlimited flesh material? How big would it get?
01:56:04.660
There was this abandoned warehouse that everybody knew about. I knew it had evil spirits when I first
01:56:10.580
went into it, but the crack had me thinking nothing could touch me. Even the other crackheads didn't like
01:56:16.740
to go in there, except the ones who had really fell off. Those ones you see standing around just staring
01:56:23.380
through the wall. But I'm up in here like, I got God's protection, I don't fear anything. But really,
01:56:30.660
it's just a crack talking. I start looking around, and I find some stairs in the back. At the bottom is a
01:56:37.300
steel door. This thing is big, solid, deadbolts, everything. Somebody already went at it with a sledge,
01:56:45.780
but it ain't moved at all. You think, there's crackheads in there every night, and they still
01:56:52.420
ain't broke through that door. That's a solid door. So where I was working at, I knew my boss had a
01:57:00.340
spreader, like some Jaws of Life shit. So the next night, I took it, and I broke open that door.
01:57:06.980
Inside was just a little room with block walls and another door. Same big-ass steel door. And there
01:57:16.100
was a smell. That underground smell. But also like how when the spirits are unclean, they made a stank.
01:57:26.500
That smell. I broke open the next door, and it's a hallway with another door. I keep going through the
01:57:33.700
place, breaking open doors, but it's mostly empty. Just some desks and computers too old to sell.
01:57:40.980
I was like, shit. So I took the doors, sold them for scrap. Heavy-ass doors. The reason nobody got
01:57:49.300
in them doors before is because a crackhead can't hold onto something like a hydraulic spreader.
01:57:55.300
That thing was like $400. A crackhead will just sell the spreader. He ain't gonna fuck with those
01:58:01.860
doors when he can just get his $400. I still had some discipline. I was smoking rocks, but I had
01:58:10.660
some discipline. So I would put it back in the morning before my boss saw I took it. But that
01:58:17.860
crack had me going. So one day, I sold the spreader too. My boss never figured out it was me who took that
01:58:26.500
spreader. I was so slick. Then some things happened with me and my wife, and I stopped smoking for a
01:58:34.340
while. Things were going alright. She acted like I was gonna see my kids. But nah. I had forgot all
01:58:44.500
about that old warehouse. But just as soon as I had forgotten, I looked in my boss's trailer,
01:58:51.300
and he had another spreader. I was like, damn. I didn't even want to look at it.
01:59:00.500
I had been clean for two months, but the crack was whispering. It got me again. And I was back
01:59:07.300
down in that warehouse. I was just breaking open doors, going room to room. There was hallways,
01:59:14.740
stairs, more rooms. I kept going deeper. I found a room full of cages. A real big room, like a pound.
01:59:26.020
I was glad because it was a lot of metal. But in that last cage, at the end...
01:59:36.020
I know you don't believe in God. I know you don't care about the Jews or the Gentiles. The Bible is
01:59:43.540
real, but it happened a long time ago. People have forgotten. That's why they carry on like they do.
01:59:52.100
They don't know. It's just when people forget. That's when the Lord comes again. And He will punish
02:00:00.260
us all for the antiquities. The evils we do. The days to come will be full of terror. The Lord will
02:00:08.500
chastise us like little children. The smell was strong in that room. Real strong. That evil smell.
02:00:18.900
I knew what I would find before I found it. There are some bones in the last cage. Little bones,
02:00:25.300
curled up in the corner. Still with clothes on. I got out of there. I was gone. I wasn't never gonna
02:00:34.420
come back. But God, I came back and I chopped up those cages. And I took them all out. Just kicked them
02:00:45.060
bones out on the floor. I came back again the next day and broke into the next room. And there was more
02:00:54.180
cages. All of them full. I was supposed to be back in my old house with my wife and kids. But I was down
02:01:02.660
in that room with all those little skulls and hands. That's the insanity. It wasn't even worth that money,
02:01:09.700
but I kept going back. There was always one more door. One more room. Just a little more money.
02:01:16.660
I didn't even think about where them bones came from. Who killed them? Who put them in the cages?
02:01:24.020
I didn't care. When I found the room with the bones on the walls. That's when I was done.
02:01:32.100
That last night, I was way down in there underground. I opened a door. And inside,
02:01:40.100
it was just a cave. The other rooms had block walls, but this was like a mine.
02:01:46.500
I shined my flashlight around. And up ahead, I thought there was crystals on the walls or something.
02:01:53.460
But it was bones. I mean people. Hands, skulls, ribs, all of it just put together.
02:02:00.740
And it went on and on and on. I said, God, this is the valley of the shadow of death.
02:02:10.500
I knew I wasn't scared of those spirits because they were already inside of me.
02:02:15.060
Telling me, don't worry. Telling me to keep going back down in there.
02:02:19.700
I prayed to the Lord to deliver me. And I got scared right there. The spirits came out of me.
02:02:26.100
And I got scared. I won't lie. I was crying. Just shook up. I knew I wasn't alone in there.
02:02:36.980
I could feel the evil one down in that tunnel. It was all power in the dark.
02:02:44.260
Spirits of all those dead people were all formed together. To form up into the body of the evil one.
02:02:50.500
The evil one formed into a beast. It wanted me to bow to it. To bow to the idol.
02:03:00.980
I didn't bow. I ran. I was gone. That was my moment of testing. I didn't bow.
02:03:12.180
Before a minute, for a little minute, I could feel all that power.
02:03:16.100
And I smelt another smell, different from the other rooms.
02:03:21.780
I remember. My daughter is more grown now. But when she was little, I'd feed her applesauce.
02:03:33.140
I smelt it then. Coming out of the dark. And God, I wanted to bow.
02:03:44.020
Alcohol goes great with nostalgia and melancholy. It's what gives us misty-eyed barflies,
02:03:54.420
forlorn poetry, midnight phone calls, last page of The Great Gatsby,
02:04:00.580
Sinatra ballads, and 73% of all country music. That was my favorite part of drinking. The wistful
02:04:09.220
interlude a couple hours after the first flush of drunkenness, when you wander away from a
02:04:14.740
moisterous party and look out into the darkened woods, and see for a moment the fragile past
02:04:21.140
floating ghostly before you, colored in sunset oranges. All the bygone things which have slipped
02:04:29.700
away in the gentle flow of time. Your breath catches in the tightness of your throat, and your eyes
02:04:36.820
filled with tears. Then somebody calls your name or you have to piss, and you wander back into the party.
02:04:45.780
I felt like I was at my finest in these moments. I felt poetic and sensitive and alive. Eventually,
02:04:53.620
though, it all became an awful parody of itself. The gentle wishfulness devolved into me sitting in
02:05:01.380
front of my laptop, drunk on a Wednesday night, watching sad YouTube videos, weeping and slurping
02:05:08.980
down vodka and water. I would watch any sort of weepy video, soldier homecomings, kids with cancer,
02:05:18.820
dogs being put down, etc. Just to get a good cry on, to trigger that dopamine release that came with
02:05:26.900
the tears. It was nothing more than emotional masturbation, just like with the alcohol itself.
02:05:35.460
I had found something that gave me true pleasure, then used it over and over until my feelings had become
02:05:41.620
rote and dead. The same sort of thing happened with my memories of mother. At first they came unbidden,
02:05:51.620
stirring up a sense of wonder so powerful it brought tears to my eyes.
02:05:57.700
But over the course of too many drunks and too many hangovers, I replayed the memories over and over
02:06:04.820
from every angle. Eventually, I couldn't be sure if certain parts came from the original or were formed
02:06:12.340
by later recollections. The whispering magic became a monotonous drone. The vaporous impressions dried and
02:06:22.260
hardened into simple facts. Mother was a woman sewn together from different things. Mother would come in
02:06:30.820
late at night with a bag that squirmed. Inside the bag were children. We would go down into the basement
02:06:38.900
where she kept the cages. We would do things to them, together.
02:06:46.420
I thought the memories had no more power. I thought they were just abstractions at this point. Bad data.
02:06:53.380
Who could explain them? And why bother? Now I found myself walking down the street in the middle of the
02:07:02.660
night, trying to burn off these eerie feelings that Sean's story had put inside me. At the intersection,
02:07:11.780
a stiff breeze zipped down the empty lanes, making the traffic lights sway. I walked by a bar with a
02:07:19.780
patio and listened to the low rumble of confident male voices. A smell came off the bar. Cigarettes and
02:07:28.180
hot wings and liquor sweat. It was the smell of action, a smell of good times. I could just walk in
02:07:38.180
there, have a couple of drinks and hold court, tell a few jokes, make a few friends. The problem with going
02:07:47.860
out sober is you have to make all these little decisions. Where to go, where to sit, what to get.
02:07:55.460
When you go out drunk, you just make one decision. To keep drinking. Every other decision just falls
02:08:03.700
into place. Life becomes easy. As easy as listening to a story. It wasn't worth going into the bar.
02:08:13.700
It would be closing in an hour anyway. So I walked past it. On down the street. By myself.
02:08:25.380
God, if there is no closing time. No tomorrow morning. Just darkness and magic and mystery forever.
02:08:34.580
If I could just be drunk until the end of time.
02:08:43.060
Mara is molting, so we can't play. I'll have to wait until she's done.
02:08:47.940
I've moved out of the crowded sand burrow. I think six different broods live there now.
02:08:55.220
And everybody crawls all over each other and bickers and snips. Now I live in one of the sea caves.
02:09:02.740
It's wet and lonely. But at least nobody snips at me. And it's a little easier to find food.
02:09:10.180
When Mara is done molting, I want her to come here. And maybe we can live together.
02:09:17.700
The caves are made of gana black, melt rock that was hardened into fluid shapes.
02:09:24.100
The moon shines through dozens of porous holes in the roof. And the sea glitter throws shapes onto the
02:09:30.500
rock ceiling. I like to sit back and let the shapes tell the ancient world story.
02:09:36.180
This cave is nice. I will stay here. I'm getting tired of eating sea flowers. But I don't want to
02:09:45.460
go through the trouble of buying livestock. The crowds at the temple are awful this time of year.
02:09:52.260
Everybody clamors and begs and the priests are greedy and officious. They tell us the livestock is
02:09:59.220
a generous blessing from the womb sack of the mother. But I think they just buy it from the inland.
02:10:06.900
At any rate, I don't want any part of it. There is never much food around during the ebbing.
02:10:14.180
When the air turns cool and the worms travel away. But the plumes have not yet come.
02:10:21.220
This year is even worse than usual. They say the ocean dies a little more each year. The water is
02:10:28.980
becoming bitter. But since I live in this sea cave, I can get down into the cove before anybody else.
02:10:40.900
I wake up to the sound of rain on the ocean outside the cave.
02:10:44.500
I look out to see which kind it will be. Light yellow. Cata green. My favorite.
02:10:53.300
I crawl out onto a bluff and let the rain fall on my carapace. There is something sweet in the
02:10:59.540
cat of green rains that loosens up the whelks on my seams. I comb through my carapace with my forelimbs,
02:11:07.300
snipping them off, letting them fall onto the rocks until the whole front is clear and smooth.
02:11:12.660
After that, I do my joints and my underside. Nowadays, with food scarce, it has become common to eat the
02:11:22.420
whelks. But they taste like ammonia. Just as I am done grooming and feeling very new and shiny,
02:11:31.460
Mara comes climbing up the rock. Her shell is brand new and looks amazing. We dance and burrow and make
02:11:39.940
happy little snips. I have missed her even more than I realized. She moves the colors on her carapace
02:11:48.180
to show me how she feels. They are very vivid on her new bone. She shows pictures of her looking
02:11:57.220
everywhere for me, searching through all these sea caves. I show her myself as I sat in the cave,
02:12:04.500
lonely and waiting for her. She snips at my front legs and I dance around for her.
02:12:13.780
Sweet lovely Mara. I show Mara my cave and she likes it. She loves the sea mist and the way we can see
02:12:23.540
the tetapurple moons pass through the sky through the holes in the rock. I show us living there together
02:12:31.700
and making it into a nice home. She shows me leaving the burrow, colored as a question.
02:12:40.500
I show her that I was too crowded and I was getting sick of all the others.
02:12:45.460
She flicks her antenna at me, making slow, comforting movements. But I notice she hasn't
02:12:52.580
answered about living in the cave. I feel my little plan is being washed away.
02:13:00.260
Mara doesn't stay with me in the cave, but she visits often. I make sure to always have
02:13:06.820
some sea flowers for her when she comes over. Lately they have been harder and harder to find.
02:13:14.340
I get so hungry that it's hard not to eat all the flowers before I can give any to Mara.
02:13:19.460
I give her the best flowers, but they are all small and colored in ugly shade of hannah blue.
02:13:28.500
Despite this, she always shows me how delicious they are.
02:13:36.340
Mara suggests we go to the temple to get some livestock to make a proper meal.
02:13:41.780
I show her that I don't like the crowds. Mara has always loved the temple.
02:13:46.340
She uses admiring colors to show the great gemstone mountain and the moons passing through the pylons
02:13:53.780
and the great ziggurat where livestock is brought out and sold.
02:13:59.620
She shows the priests with their painted shells and red claws.
02:14:04.180
I insist that I don't like meat. I prefer sea flowers.
02:14:07.780
She wiggles her hind jaws at this. Nobody can prefer sea flowers. They taste like sand.
02:14:16.980
I crawl back away from her a little. Hadn't my sea flowers always been delicious to her?
02:14:27.620
Her carapace takes on gentle yellows. She shows me that they were delicious because I had picked them.
02:14:36.500
But I don't want her pity. I pull my legs in and stay still until she leaves.
02:14:41.780
I don't see Mara for a long while. The third moon makes its way to the high cusp,
02:14:49.940
marking the end of the ebbing. The plumes have still not come, and I'm often hungry.
02:14:57.780
Finally, Mara shows up with meat wrapped in temple cloth. I wonder if she's there to taunt me.
02:15:04.260
But she offers it to me. She shows me that my shell has become thin and dull, and I am looking worse.
02:15:15.060
She is right. I have not eaten enough in a while.
02:15:21.300
We go down inside my cave. Before she unwraps the meat, Mara lets me know that she has become a
02:15:28.420
priestess at the temple. I turn blue with surprise. How had it happened so quickly? She had been
02:15:37.060
studying for a while without telling me, since I never liked the priest. I feel sad about this.
02:15:45.220
How many times have I complained about them in front of her while she was studying to become one?
02:15:53.540
Mara unwraps her gift. The creature she has brought me is soft and pale pink.
02:16:02.260
Mara likes the taste of these the best. But I don't think there is any difference between these
02:16:07.620
and the brown ones. I break off one of the five little feelers on the end of its foreleg,
02:16:13.380
and nibble at it. But Mara snips at me, and breaks off a hind leg, and offers me the thick end.
02:16:20.100
My shell turns yellow, and I take it. The pretty red juice runs all over my jaws as they pull the meat
02:16:29.780
from the bone. We eat in blankness for a while. Then I ask Mara where the priests get the livestock
02:16:37.540
from. It has always been a mystery, since none of these soft little creatures are ever found on the
02:16:44.100
land or in the sea. I have wondered if they raise them inside the temple, or if they bring them in
02:16:51.540
from the inland. Mara doesn't answer at first. She doesn't want to show me. I ask again.
02:17:01.940
She shows me a quick, vague picture. The old story about the womb and egg. Something the priests tell
02:17:09.700
little children. I know she is hiding something. So I snip at her. Why does she hide things from me?
02:17:20.020
We used to be so close. After a moment, a picture forms on her carapace. As clear and vivid as anything
02:17:29.620
she has ever shown me, I ask what I am seeing. It is the womb. That's where they come from.
02:17:44.100
Dear Iselandria, I hope your name is Iselandria. I will name my daughter Tezalandria,
02:17:51.460
and I will tell her to name you Iselandria. These names are prettier, more than my name.
02:17:58.260
Anne. Too plain. I am your grandmother. And even though you are still not born,
02:18:05.460
I am writing to you in all 100% original English. Grandmother is teaching it to me.
02:18:12.740
My grandmother is your great-great-grandmother. I call her Allie Helmini.
02:18:18.740
Yet that is not true English. Whoops. Grandmother is my best friend,
02:18:25.460
and she gives me presents. When I meet you, I will give them to you,
02:18:32.100
and we can be best friends the same. Can you keep secrets? Some of the presents are secret.
02:18:41.220
I will keep this letter and your presents safe under my bed until you are here.
02:18:45.940
I will give you the presents and a lot of hugs. I am learning new English every day.
02:18:54.580
Cloyster. Do you know what that is? Grandmother used to live there.
02:19:01.140
It is a special house for the mountain-born. Surprise! Grandmother was a mountain-born.
02:19:07.860
She came out of the mountain's womb when she was a little girl. That's why me and Mom are very healthy,
02:19:16.980
and I hope you will be very healthy the same. I hope you have curly hair and green eyes.
02:19:23.940
Rather plain hair, like me. Grandmother said she hated to live in the cloister,
02:19:30.820
because the monks are mean. Grandmother does not like the monks. Yet that is secret.
02:19:39.140
Don't show this letter to anybody. It is just for you. After she moved out of the cloister,
02:19:45.860
she met Grandfather. He was very nice, yet not healthy, and he is passed on to the love of the imp's son.
02:19:56.020
On days when the imp's son rises before the big monk's son, I say some prayers to Grandfather.
02:20:03.620
Grandmother never says prayers to the imp's son. Rather, she only prays inside.
02:20:08.900
I want to tell you about your presents. Grandmother carved them directly from green crystal. The biggest
02:20:18.900
one is a kitty cat. That is an animal that lives on the far world. The next one is a rose. That is a
02:20:27.540
vegetable that grows on the far world. It is supposed to be red, yet this one is green and still very
02:20:34.180
pretty. The littlest one is the secret one. Grandmother keeps it for herself, and she will not
02:20:41.940
tell me what it is still. Yet one day she will give it to me. I think she is still working to carve it.
02:20:51.380
When she started to make the rose, it was just a block, and she carved it and made it beautiful.
02:20:58.020
When she started the little one, it was just a T-shape,
02:21:02.260
yet now she has carved a little man on the front of the T. I know she will finish it very beautiful for you.
02:21:10.180
Okay, that's it. See you not soon, Isalandria. Love, Anne
02:21:21.300
The remnant ember of a dying star drips along the gigantic fringe,
02:21:26.820
companioned solely by a tiny world. On the planet's surface, a great crystal tower lords over a vast
02:21:36.820
and airless plain. The cooling star's blue light draws the tower's shadow across the land,
02:21:44.500
and marks the passage of the ages. Through the core of the tower runs an artery of living flesh,
02:21:53.060
branching paths of blood, are refracted within facets. At the base of the spire, there is no door,
02:22:03.540
no entryway, but at the top, a fleshy orifice. Once or twice in age, for purpose unknown,
02:22:13.860
tower's mouth expels a living human to fall down and down through the airless space and land atop a scree
02:22:23.140
of other people. A traveller passing on foot would be forgiven for wondering why so many other travellers
02:22:32.020
had approached the tower and flung themselves down at its base to die. Perhaps it was in prayer,
02:22:41.540
or perhaps they were searching for an entryway, for a door, which doesn't exist.
02:22:50.180
I have decided to move out of the sober house. People usually stay here a couple months.
02:23:04.900
I've stayed here for over six months. Honestly, I'm finding it hard to live in the same house with
02:23:10.820
Sean. He's never been easy to live with, and lately we've been getting in arguments about little
02:23:17.860
shit like chores. On top of that, I'm freaked out by a story about the room full of bones.
02:23:25.780
I've come up with a few theories about why he would tell me that story,
02:23:30.180
and why he would insist it was real. None of these theories are terribly comforting.
02:23:35.940
I want to put it behind me, for a while. I had actually considered finding the warehouse that he
02:23:44.020
mentioned. Maybe it would give me some answers, but I've decided. Fuck that. I'm not going to some
02:23:52.660
goddamn warehouse in Crack City. I don't need an ending to my story that badly. I'll just do what
02:23:59.780
I've been doing. Make shit up. Actually, I've been stuck for the past few days. I can't really
02:24:07.940
come up with anything that seems fitting as an ending. I've been considering just leaving it
02:24:13.380
unfinished. Maybe not all stories should have endings. Endings are a lie. I've realized that AA meetings
02:24:22.740
are just a form of storytelling. That's what we do in meetings. We sit in a circle, tell each other
02:24:29.060
stories, and we pretend like it's all real life. But every time somebody shares, they make an attempt
02:24:36.500
to storify their life. To make it into some tidy little parable. Sometimes the parables are profound
02:24:45.380
and touching. And sometimes they're just absurd or cliched, or just terrible. A guy in meeting might
02:24:54.820
tell a story about how he got into an argument with his boss. And he might end it with something like,
02:25:01.060
and that's how I learned I need to stand up for myself. Except maybe arguing with his boss was a
02:25:07.620
terrible idea. Maybe he's trying to portray stupidity as wisdom. Or maybe it really was wisdom. Either way,
02:25:16.740
he's packaging the truth up as a story with a lesson at the end. And this covers up one of the essential
02:25:22.820
facts of life. That it just keeps going along. Not giving a shit about our attempts to explain it.
02:25:31.380
There are these moments in life when the goal is achieved and the story should end and the credits
02:25:37.460
should roll. But instead, it just keeps going the fuck along. The guy gets the girl, and now they
02:25:46.020
have to live with each other. She farts a lot and he hogs the shower. Or the underdog team wins the
02:25:51.940
tournament. And now they have to get ready for the next season. Ten seasons later they're all retired,
02:25:58.260
sitting around and scratching their balls. That's the first big problem. The recovering alcoholic
02:26:05.780
encounters. We make the inspiring and courageous decision to walk away from our whole way of life,
02:26:12.020
to try something new. The story could end there. But it doesn't. Instead, life stretches on, and we
02:26:22.260
have to live day after day with a grinding boredom of sobriety. So maybe the interface story should be
02:26:30.100
like that. No tidy ending. Just, here, take it or leave it. Except that's lame. That's a rip-off.
02:26:41.300
I'll just wait. Some kind of ending will come to me. But I'm not going to that warehouse though.
02:26:48.420
No. Fuck no. I'm not asking Sean any more about it either. If I have to make up a shitty ending,
02:26:56.820
that's fine. A lot of good books have shitty endings. At this point, I'm just a little burned out.
02:27:07.540
After I'm done, I'm going to put aside writing and work on my social life for a while.
02:27:13.380
I'm going to try to change my number of friends from zero to a positive integer.
02:27:19.700
I thought maybe I could find a group of friends in recovery, but it hasn't happened.
02:27:25.460
I don't like recovery people. They're corny and boring. I've found a room to rent near downtown,
02:27:32.980
in an arty neighborhood. And, as a soon-to-be acclaimed writer, don't I belong among the thinkers
02:27:41.300
and the artists? I'm going to get in touch with some old friends, and I'm going to try to go out
02:27:47.780
and meet people. I'll just try to get a small circle of friends started. I know I need to meet
02:27:54.420
friends. I've always known how. It's easy. I'm going to drink again.
02:28:00.260
One time, my mom took me to a clothes store. She was wearing a blue dress, and I was following her
02:28:09.380
around. But then I looked up, and it wasn't her. It was some other lady wearing a blue dress I had
02:28:17.380
followed by mistake. I was scared, so I ran away from the lady, but then I couldn't find mom.
02:28:25.700
A lady from the store found me crying and took me back to her. I was mad at her because I thought
02:28:32.820
she switched into that lady on purpose to trick me. I was too little to know that that's not possible.
02:28:42.660
Is it? I wake up by myself and go downstairs for toast and jam, but the kitchen is totally empty.
02:28:51.300
I call mom. Mom. But she doesn't answer. I can't find anybody. In the TV room, there's a stranger
02:29:03.140
sitting in the big chair. Uh-oh. I can only see the back of her head. Gray hair. I sneak away into my room.
02:29:14.820
Upstairs, I check mom and dad's room and my sister's room, but they're all empty. Where did they all go?
02:29:26.500
It's not fair that they all left without me. Anna and Brittany always go places and do things without
02:29:32.900
me. But mom wouldn't do that. She likes to take me everywhere. We are best friends, so what happened?
02:29:42.260
Maybe they said they were going somewhere and I didn't listen. Mom always tells me to listen better.
02:29:51.540
Why don't I? Wait a minute. Today is Sunday. Usually, we go to church on Sunday. Mom and dad go to the
02:30:01.060
grown-up church and I go to Sunday school. They must be at church. Last week, I told mom that I never,
02:30:09.300
ever, ever wanted to go to church again. Hey, maybe mom decided to leave me at home just like I told her
02:30:16.980
to. This is great. No stupid Sunday school. All the playtime I want. I run over to where my toys are
02:30:27.060
piled up in the corner and get all the ones I want. I've been playing this great game with my trucks and
02:30:32.740
cars called police versus firemen. The policemen use their guns and the firemen use their hoses
02:30:39.300
and they even have hoses that shoot fire. I play for a long time and it's great, but I'm getting more
02:30:47.220
hungry. When will everybody be back? How long is church? It feels like forever when I'm there.
02:30:55.540
It's so boring and the kids aren't nice to me. I remember that last week I cried in the car on
02:31:02.980
the way over because I didn't want to go. Mom was mad. I was really crying like a baby and it was
02:31:10.420
embarrassing. I always cry too much. Anna and Brittany make fun of me for it because I cry more than them,
02:31:20.260
but they are girls. I try not to, but I do it anyways. I wonder about the stranger downstairs.
02:31:30.420
It looked like an old gray-haired lady, but I only saw her back. Is she a babysitter?
02:31:37.860
I decide to go downstairs and get some crackers from the pantry. Mom keeps some on the shelf for me.
02:31:43.860
I go get the crackers and eat them until I'm full. On my way back, I pass by the TV room.
02:31:51.780
That old lady is still sitting there. Her long gray hair is hanging down over the back of the chair.
02:31:59.140
It's got leaves and little sticks stuck in it. This makes me want to giggle a bit. What a messy lady.
02:32:06.980
But then I start to get scared thinking about it. I sneak back upstairs.
02:32:16.980
Now it's sunset time and I'm hungry again. And I'm a lot more scared.
02:32:24.820
Mom and Dad and everybody are still gone. What if they don't come back?
02:32:30.260
Mom was really mad at me for crying last time. Now this is punishment.
02:32:39.460
Oh no. What if God is mad at me for not going? We're supposed to go to Sunday school to make God
02:32:46.980
happy and I didn't go. I was really bad. What if this is a big punishment?
02:32:55.620
God can make people disappear forever. I get down on my knees and press my hands very tight together
02:33:04.420
and whisper, I'm sorry, God, for not going to Sunday school. I will go every time, forever,
02:33:12.260
until I am dead. I am sorry. I am sorry. Please bring Mom and Dad and Anna and Brittany back.
02:33:19.140
Thank you, God. Amen. I get up and run over to my window. I can see the front lawn and the street.
02:33:30.500
It's all empty. I wait for Dad's car to come down the street. Now they'll all come back.
02:33:38.180
But nobody comes. Downstairs I hear noises. Like a dog growling, but so loud. And something banging on
02:33:52.100
the ceiling. I go into my closet. I cry too much. I always cry too much. The person sitting in the big
02:34:05.860
chair. New mother. A basement full of specimens. Glistening membranes. Blurred faces laughing.
02:34:15.940
Tower witch monster. Mountain apocalyptic sky infested with winged things. The dream folds in on
02:34:23.860
itself and spills out dozens of new creatures. Images intercourse. Panes of light behind everything.
02:34:33.220
Ragged muppet creatures tumbling out and chasing one another. Devouring, bloody crunching.
02:34:41.060
Growing panes of light. Galapagos critters howling, infesting, affixing. Lamprey succubus,
02:34:48.820
Voltron food chain formation. Panes of light. A persistent locus. The window pane's persistence
02:34:57.220
triggers reality. Rational bootstrapping. Persistence rapidly infects everything else. The weird Galapagos
02:35:06.340
creatures die off. Too weird to live. All the props of ordinary reality are rushed into place just before
02:35:14.420
I open my eyes. A sunlit window in a bedroom. Where is this? My new place. I rented it online before
02:35:28.740
moving out of the sober house. This is real. I try to remember what I did over the last few days. The
02:35:37.380
memories are a dark, shifting mess. A clinging mud I'm afraid to touch. Face hurts. My tongue finds cuts
02:35:47.220
on the inside of my bottom lip. Brown spots dot the white pillowcase. Picking my head up and looking
02:35:56.180
around the room. I recall it from the twenty sober minutes I spent here. Before going to the bar.
02:36:04.660
Beside the bed, the nightstand has been tipped over and the lamp is a corded pile of shards.
02:36:11.940
Shit. This isn't my stuff. It's just a bedroom in somebody's house.
02:36:18.180
I slide out of bed. My stomach tingles. My brain tingles. My limbs are moving stroboscopically.
02:36:30.100
Oh wow. I am inside the nightmare. Mind crucifying. Reddish spots make a trail along the hardwood floor.
02:36:43.860
I run to the little bathroom and a red-faced creature lurches into the mirror's frame.
02:36:50.500
Oh Jesus. A distorted mass of bruises. I turn this way and that to see my new features.
02:36:59.460
The horrible tingling in my brain feels like it's going to eat through my skull.
02:37:04.740
I check my teeth and my heart sinks. The bonding of my front tooth has been knocked out.
02:37:10.660
The other teeth seem okay though. I look down at the sink. It seems to have been scrubbed with blood.
02:37:20.500
Swirling trails of reddish brown cover the porcelain. It's on the floor. The toilets. The walls.
02:37:32.740
Have you ever noticed that whenever you swallow your throat closes up for a moment and you can't
02:37:40.500
breathe at all? Of course it always opens back up. The process is quite automatic and you don't need to
02:37:48.020
think about it. But what if you do think about it? What if by thinking about it you somehow confuse
02:37:56.020
everything and your throat just stays closed? What if all that gummy flesh just sticks together
02:38:04.340
and you suffocate to death? This is how I think after a bender. I call it the scary swallows.
02:38:13.620
I swallow and my throat seems to catch for a moment cutting off my windpipe.
02:38:18.260
And panic blooms through my brain, threatening to take over everything. And then I manage to suck in
02:38:27.140
a breath and the panic subsides until the next swallow. So I try not to swallow at all. But then
02:38:34.980
I'm thinking about it. Obsessing over it. And my throat starts to twitch. Shut up. Shut up. Irrelevant.
02:38:46.100
Stupid. Do something. What do I do? Liquor. Look for liquor. My queasy stomach groans at the thought of
02:38:58.020
it. But every other part of me shrieks with anticipation. Liquor will make everything else
02:39:04.500
possible. Without it the panic will rattle me apart. With it I can do anything. I scan the blood
02:39:13.060
smeared bathroom for bottles. Nothing. Out in the bedroom there's an empty half gallon of vodka and
02:39:19.860
empty cans everywhere. Drunk to the last drop. God damn it. Nothing in here. Where's the owner?
02:39:31.620
I remember that I checked into the place without meeting him using a door code. Have I met him since?
02:39:39.060
No idea. That area of memory is corrupt. What will he think when he sees the broken lamp,
02:39:45.780
the blood, my face? He'll kick me out for sure. What if something even worse is waiting outside the
02:39:53.940
bedroom door? What if I've killed him and his body is lying face down on the floor and my entire life is
02:40:00.660
over. And I was so close. So fucking close. To getting out of this misery. Of doing something. Of
02:40:10.740
accomplishing something. Something mom and dad could be proud of and now it's all over. All destroyed.
02:40:17.540
Calm yourself. Calmness. This is all imagination. Just your fanciful imagination.
02:40:26.340
What a delight it is. Just go out into the living room and look. Just go. Just go.
02:40:37.540
I crack the bedroom door and peek out. It's the ordinary living room and kitchen of a pretty nice
02:40:46.100
apartment. I don't see anybody lying face down in a pool of blood. Nothing is broken.
02:40:55.460
Liquor. Now. I go to the kitchen. There's nothing on the counters. I open the refrigerator. Please, please,
02:41:05.140
please, please. There is nothing. Oh, you titillating cunt. Did I go to room with one of the sober
02:41:14.340
motherfuckers in this whole fucked up drinking ass city? I open the freezer. A frosty bottle lies on
02:41:22.500
its side. I pull it out. It's a fifth of absolute. Full. Unopened. Emitting a ghostly cold mist like an angel.
02:41:35.140
I stare at it in my shaking hands. Tears coming to my eyes. I feel flowing through my entire existence
02:41:44.580
to be grudging mercy of a disapproving god. I scratch at the stupid, slippery plastic around the cap.
02:41:52.740
My trembling hands are almost useless. I imagine myself having a seizure before I can get the bottle
02:41:59.140
open. Dying right here on the kitchen floor. Like a man in a desert, dying of thirst just feet away
02:42:06.260
from an oasis. But finally, I manage to tear the cracking plastic off. The front door of the apartment
02:42:14.420
swings open, letting in a blast of horrible sunlight. A figure stands at the door. I shove the bottle back
02:42:22.180
into the freezer and slam it shut and turn my back to the person. I want to run and hide. To evaporate.
02:42:31.780
But all I can do is just stand there. Fuck. Fuck.
02:42:37.140
Oh, hey man. A friendly voice says. Nick, right? Yeah, good. I mumble. I am still standing with my back to
02:42:49.380
the person. This is not a valid human behavior. Fuck. Fuck. Why did he have to come home now? I force
02:43:00.740
myself to turn around. A youngish dude standing in the doorway with a bag slung over his shoulder.
02:43:10.580
Apparently the owner. Hey, are you alright? He asks, a smile fading from his face. Yeah. What happened to
02:43:21.220
you? I don't know. Mountain biking. Another invalid response from me. Now he's worried.
02:43:30.740
He glances around the apartment, checking to see if his stuff is okay. I broke your lamp. I say
02:43:37.140
preemptively. I'm gonna go. I'm sorry. What happened? He asks, closing the front door.
02:43:46.500
I got drunk and mountain biking. I mumble. I head to the bedroom, my heart pounding.
02:43:53.780
On second inspection, I notice that not only is the nightstand turned over and the lamp is broken,
02:44:02.020
but there are broken plates and a hole punched in the drywall and beef jerky sticks strewn everywhere.
02:44:08.340
Jesus, man. What did you do? The guy asks as he follows me into the room.
02:44:13.700
I don't know. I say, already on the verge of sobbing. Maybe I can just cry my way out of this.
02:44:22.500
Nobody likes to see a grown man cry. I've gotta get out of here. I got drunk. Please,
02:44:29.300
just take the month's rent. I'll go. I say. This is a really stupid offer. I can't afford to give away
02:44:37.620
a month's rent. But I don't know what else to do. I can't handle going to jail. It would kill me.
02:44:45.940
My heart feels like it's trying to punch its way out of my chest. I need liquor. I just need liquor.
02:44:53.380
Dude, hold on. How much stuff did you fuck up? The guy asks. This is it. I say, not really knowing
02:45:04.020
if I'm telling the truth or not. A bunch of my clothes are lying on the floor. And I gather them
02:45:09.620
up and throw them into my suitcase and zip it up. Only to realize that there are a lot more of my
02:45:14.980
clothes obviously lying all over the place. Well, we need to figure out the damages. I can't, okay?
02:45:22.420
I've gotta go. I say in a quavering, childish voice, just take the month's rent. The guy starts
02:45:30.900
inspecting the room as I pack my clothes. The awkwardness of it makes me want to claw my eyes
02:45:36.420
out. My suitcase won't close. The clothes won't fit unless they are perfectly folded. God, I want to cry.
02:45:44.500
I am almost crying. Good. Good. It's like a squid blasting out a jet of ink. It will allow me to
02:45:55.140
escape. I throw my least favorite shirts onto the floor and zip the suitcase up. When I stand up,
02:46:02.820
me and the guy have this moment where we're looking at each other eye to eye.
02:46:06.260
Why? Dude, he says. You're all fucked up. I'm taking the vodka, I announce.
02:46:16.980
I fall asleep in the closet, but I wake up in my bed. Before I open my eyes, I know she will be there.
02:46:25.060
She is. Standing at the end of the bed. Morning time. She is not a person. She is something else.
02:46:36.740
I try not to cry. I start crying right away. I can't stop. She is tall, but her body is not a body.
02:46:49.860
It is just a pile of things. It's covered in a long, shiny robe. Shiny from a million blue gold
02:46:58.260
flies crawling on her. Long gray hair covers most of her face. I look up at the ceiling and scream and
02:47:08.020
scream and scream and scream. I scream for mommy to come back. The ceiling turns pink and fuzzy.
02:47:17.140
I am screaming so hard. Then she is standing over me, looking down on me.
02:47:24.420
Her face is awful pieces of animal. I remember her eyes. The same eyes as the white horse Brittany rides.
02:47:35.460
The one that mom said I could pet, but it bit my hand and I had to go to the hospital.
02:47:43.620
The eyes are just hanging on the face, not really looking at me.
02:47:47.460
The flies crawl on them. I am shaking, scared. Please God, please, please make her go away.
02:47:59.620
She snorts and makes animal sounds. Her old barn smell makes me want to throw up. She reaches out
02:48:06.900
and her fingers are made of crab legs, all different sizes. No, no, no. I hate crabs more than anything.
02:48:15.940
When we go to the beach, my dad always makes sure to pick a part of the beach with no crabs. He says he
02:48:23.620
can tell when there are crabs because... No, no, no, no. She touches my face with her crab hands.
02:48:30.260
Horrible. Horrible. I close my eyes as tight as I can and scoot against the back of the bed.
02:48:36.740
The touching stops. I press my eyes shut tight. Tweets and chirps.
02:48:45.940
Drink, a happy little voice says. I keep my eyes closed.
02:48:53.060
Drink, says the voice. It sounds fun and cartoony.
02:48:57.220
I open my eyes just a little bit. A dozen bird heads have crawled out of a hole in her neck.
02:49:07.140
They move in different ways. I found a dead baby bird once in our backyard.
02:49:12.980
It had no skin and blue lumps for eyes. It is there with the other birds.
02:49:25.380
She holds up a big silver spoon in her crab hands. A greenish monkey hand holds up a glass
02:49:34.420
bottle full of purple stuff and pours it into the spoon.
02:49:38.340
I can smell it. Grape, like the medicine mom gives me. Is it the same stuff?
02:49:48.580
She holds the spoon up for me to drink. Please God, make this stop.
02:49:55.220
All the birds giggle. Her claw pinky pokes my neck. It hurts.
02:50:07.380
I lie there with my eyes shut tight. I cry and stop crying and cry again.
02:50:14.420
I know she's there. The smell. The flies. The sound of animal breath.
02:50:23.300
Why won't she go away? Please go away. Go away. Go away. Please God, make her go away.
02:50:33.860
Something slipped inside my eyes. I can see it even though they're closed. Not a square. Not a triangle.
02:50:42.660
A shape I don't know the name of. Lots of shapes. Oh no. My eyeballs fill up with little people,
02:50:54.500
like a Where's Waldo book. There's a million of them, all doing different things,
02:50:59.620
moving around in an old city with castles and flags. They're running through tunnels and climbing up
02:51:05.620
towers. I can watch them all at once. There's a baker and a knight and a clown and a queen with lots of...
02:51:16.980
They're all dying. Cartoon-y blood pours everywhere. And they've all got scared looks on their faces
02:51:24.420
and the blood washes away and they're all playing and smiling again.
02:51:28.420
The places and people change. I see stories. They happen all at once. A hundred stories.
02:51:40.020
But I can watch them all at once. It's different people crying and laughing and living and dying
02:51:48.500
and doing all kinds of things. It's like seeing ten movies all at once.
02:51:53.780
And it's so much. Too much. I open my eyes. She is still there, piled up on the edge of the bed.
02:52:05.620
The Where's Waldo people are still there. Playing and laughing and bleeding and dying.
02:52:12.900
The animal pieces of her face open up and... Look. There's another face inside.
02:52:19.860
It's a woman's face or maybe a man's face made of wet clay. It's smooth and beautiful. And I'm not scared
02:52:30.660
at all looking at it. And I feel like I'm floating. The clay changes and the face turns into other faces.
02:52:39.620
It's an old man. A young man. A Chinese guy. A sad black guy. Other guys. A cat.
02:52:49.620
The shapes of the faces change but something in the eyes stays the same.
02:52:58.820
The face changes one more time. It's a woman's face.
02:53:13.940
Mother. The eyes say something clearly. Mother.
02:53:18.660
Mother. I can feel my heart beating. When it beats it says,
02:53:32.580
So kind. Like they're sorry for me. Like they wish they could help me.
02:53:38.660
But the face is still and the lips are pressed together.
02:53:41.460
Mother. Like she. Mother. Is trying to hide that she is sad.
02:53:49.940
Trying not to be sad. Trying to be strict. Because.
02:53:57.700
Because she is going to punish me. It is the same luck mom gives me.
02:54:03.780
When I've been bad and she puts me in time out.
02:54:06.500
The face is mom's face but also a thousand other faces.
02:54:29.380
Outside. The midday light and the heat are mind bending.
02:54:41.540
Sweat rolls down my burning face. Squinting makes my cheeks ache.
02:54:47.460
The wheels of my suitcase rumble over the gritty sidewalk.
02:54:50.900
I have no fucking idea where I am or where I'm going.
02:55:01.300
I desperately want a drink from the bottle of liquor I'm carrying in a grocery bag.
02:55:06.820
But I'm afraid somebody will see and report me.
02:55:10.580
All the internal alarms in my mind and body are ringing at once.
02:55:19.060
Each one seems to slow and veer towards the curb.
02:55:23.220
Each one is surely filled with gang members or undercover cops, ready to beat me down.
02:55:30.500
Each one passes, sending a wave of warm air and panic past me.
02:55:35.300
I am insane. I do not belong in normal society. I must be isolated. I must keep moving.
02:55:56.900
Can I walk along it? Is it allowed? I don't know. I don't know. Why don't I know things?
02:56:08.900
Everybody knows things. Here I am wandering, tits out, no fucking clue.
02:56:15.460
This wet bottle of liquor is showing right through the plastic bag.
02:56:20.900
I've gotta get somewhere. I've gotta get this liquor inside me.
02:56:25.620
I trudged through an abandoned lot, trying to get away from the road, dragging the rebellious suitcase
02:56:34.340
over rocks and weeds. There's a bunch of high grass and some kind of sloping concrete drainage
02:56:41.620
thing behind it. I don't even know what the fuck it is or how to describe it. I'm not a novelist.
02:56:50.740
Never was. I plop down on the concrete so that the weeds shield me from the passing cars on the road.
02:56:59.140
And I spin the cap off the bottle. My stomach cringes when the cold liquor hits it.
02:57:06.660
Relief begins to flow almost immediately into my brain. Merely psychological, I'm sure.
02:57:13.460
But psychological is exactly what I need right now. I breathe deep and shudder and take more sips,
02:57:24.340
shaping my tongue into a sluice to send it right down my throat with no fuss.
02:57:41.620
All the nightmarish feelings are still inside me. But now there's just a bit of distance between me
02:57:48.500
and them. They are at bay. Pretty soon I've taken down a quarter of the bottle. Wow. Fuck.
02:58:00.660
Look at me. Just a few days out of the sober house and I'm literally lying in a ditch with a bottle of liquor.
02:58:07.220
At least it's a concrete, man-made ditch. No declassé dirt ditches for me. I snicker at the thought.
02:58:19.780
My panic of just moments ago seems ridiculous. Underneath it though, the awful horror is still there.
02:58:28.260
I know my snickering is just an empty little show of bravery. What to do now? Usually, at this point,
02:58:39.380
I would do forensics. We have to find out what happened over the past few days. For example,
02:58:46.740
who beat me up. But it could be anybody. Who even cares? I used to get punched out all the time.
02:58:55.220
Whoever did this really had it in for me though. I must have unleashed a few of my delightful bond
02:59:02.580
motts on an unamused stranger. I check my phone. All my cringe sensors are on full alert.
02:59:12.900
Ready to fire when I see what nonsense text and 3am calls I've made. But it's just a few ordinary texts
02:59:21.300
from my new landlord. He says he won't be back until Monday. That's today. I left the sober house on...
02:59:32.020
When was it? Wednesday? Fuck. A five-day bender. And only a handful of memories from it all.
02:59:42.980
Scary. At least the owner was out of town for most of it.
02:59:47.060
I take a sip to my good fortune. It occurs to me to check Reddit. I have a vague memory of being on
02:59:57.060
there, chortling at some outrageous comments I made. Let's see. It turns out I posted the piece I had been
03:00:06.180
working on and the title was Chode or Chode. Let's settle the debate. Jesus, how stupid.
03:00:17.620
It certainly undermines my claims of possessing otherworldly knowledge.
03:00:22.660
Hey, some guy possesses the power to see into alternate timelines and he's using it to make
03:00:27.940
chode jokes on the internet. Right. A wave of ethanol relief is fully washing over me, caressing me,
03:00:38.260
easing my worries. I can feel the euphoria of the booze, but I can also feel the dread of the
03:00:45.380
withdrawal at the same time. And I know that both feelings are lies. Soon the euphoria will be gone,
03:00:53.940
and the dread will rain again. It will be like this for three days, or more, if I keep getting drunk and
03:01:02.340
this turns into just another day in the bender. I have to try to taper down. But tapering means always
03:01:10.260
drinking less than you want to, always remaining in barely tolerable misery. I groan, and my babyish
03:01:20.020
instincts tell me to take another drink. But I don't. I shouldn't drink for another hour. Then one shot
03:01:29.940
every hour, until it's time for sleep. Then six shots to speed me through the nightmare realms.
03:01:36.820
God. The math. The fucking math. Seventeen drinks in a fifth. Nine hours until alcohol sales stop.
03:01:50.420
The body processes a drink an hour. For all those months, I didn't have to do the drinking math.
03:01:57.300
Now I'm back in it. I groan and lie back against the concrete drainage, whatever. I know I look like
03:02:07.460
the very picture of a drunk, but I don't care. I wallow in the feeling. Good. Good, I say.
03:02:18.100
One of the lies that leads you down the road of addiction is that you are just visiting. The first
03:02:24.180
time you end up in the drunk tank, or the trap house, as the kids call it, or the rehab. You look
03:02:31.780
at all the other guys and shake your head at how sad their lives are, because they are regulars. But you,
03:02:40.100
you are just visiting. You're here because of a crazy fuck up. But you'll go back to your normal life.
03:02:46.980
Heck, it'll be a funny story. Even when it happens for the second or third time, you're still just
03:02:55.540
visiting. You're just a tourist in the land of misery. Not a resident. Well, no more lies for me.
03:03:06.980
I am not visiting. I am returning home. And everything is just where I left it.
03:03:20.340
Mother has put a nail in my brain. The nail stays still. Everything else moves.
03:03:28.820
Last year, me and my family took a trip to California. My dad got to drive on the Pacific
03:03:34.900
Coast Highway. He really loves cars and it was his dream to drive on that highway since he was a little
03:03:41.060
boy like me. But he didn't get to drive on it much because I got really car sick. We kept having to
03:03:49.380
stop and then we just went home. My dad didn't say anything on the way home. Why did mom and dad leave me
03:03:58.340
behind? Was it because of stuff like that? Because I'm too much of a baby? I feel like I'm carsick now.
03:04:10.020
The medicine makes everything look like it has colored shadows. Everything is going different
03:04:16.500
ways and different colors. I can see things that don't happen. And things that do. Things that try
03:04:25.540
to happen but don't get to. It's too confusing. Outside, it's sunny. But I stay in bed so I don't feel so
03:04:36.420
sick. If I lie in bed, I only see a few things. Me lying this way or that way. But if I get out of bed,
03:04:46.100
I see a thousand different me's. I'm doing different things and crowding everything up,
03:04:51.300
like where's Waldo. It makes me dizzy. Mother comes in and puts three big stones on the floor by my bed.
03:05:01.220
I don't know why. I watch them. They just sit there, doing nothing. I think about pushing one of them
03:05:11.300
away. And then it's covered with color shadows. The shadows show things that could happen but don't.
03:05:20.980
So I make this a game. Watching what could happen.
03:05:27.380
After a few days, I start feeling a little better. I still see colors, but they don't make me sick all
03:05:33.220
the time. When Mother comes to give me more medicine, I tell her I'm hungry.
03:05:40.820
Make some food then, dear, she says with her bird voice. How? She points to the stones.
03:05:50.100
Command that these stones be made bread, she says in a new voice. A man's voice.
03:05:56.100
I look at the stones. Now they are colored with more shadows, moving every different way.
03:06:05.220
It looks like colored fire. But I don't know what to do. I say,
03:06:12.660
Stones, turn into bread. I shake my finger at them like Harry Potter pointing as one.
03:06:18.580
I see a color of fire I haven't seen before. It works. The stones are bread. Mother laughs.
03:06:32.500
Mother leaves and I eat the bread. It's wonderful, just like my favorite bread from Tony's. Warm and
03:06:40.980
squishy. But how did it happen? Is this magic? Real magic? I drop the bread and run to the window.
03:06:53.380
The street is empty. Almost sunset. I close my eyes and make a special magic spell. When I open my eyes,
03:07:04.740
eyes. Yes. There it is. Coming down the street. Mom and Dad's car.
03:07:16.580
The back of my neck feels all hot and boggy when I wake up. I hate that. The air conditioner in this
03:07:26.020
motel room makes a lot of noise. But it's just a big show.
03:07:31.140
I close my eyes and hope sleep takes me away somewhere dark and cool. But it doesn't. Reality persists.
03:07:45.780
I have been tapering off booze for the past few days. It's amazing how timid and jittery I become
03:07:55.860
I haven't even worked up the nerve to call the motel manager and complain about the air conditioning.
03:08:04.500
To think I lived for years in this helpless, reclusive state. What a fucking waste.
03:08:13.140
The whole time I thought the alcohol was giving me courage when it was stealing it from me.
03:08:19.140
I can't drink anymore. I need courage. I'm down to my last $200. I could call good old Mom and Dad and
03:08:33.300
ask them for some help. What kind of conversation would that be? Why am I broke? Well, I took some
03:08:42.660
time off work so I could write a book. About what? You know, usual. Tripping acid. Nazis. Finger blasting. Cats.
03:08:56.420
No, I'm not going to call Mom and Dad. I'm not going back to the sober house either.
03:09:02.580
I'm going to call Sean. Sean shows up at the motel right after he gets off work.
03:09:17.060
I'm surprised because we had gotten into a lot of little arguments towards the end and I left on
03:09:24.580
pretty bad terms with him. I'm standing in the parking lot when his black pickup truck pulls up.
03:09:32.740
My paranoia starts to flare. Maybe he saw the story online and was outraged. Maybe he's been looking for me.
03:09:43.540
He strides up to me and gives me a quick hug, patting me stiffly on the back.
03:09:48.580
He steps back and squints at the dingy face of the motel. I know this fucking motel. He says,
03:09:58.100
quietly. Come on, man. Let's get your stuff. Get my stuff? You said you're sober, right?
03:10:07.780
I already talked to the house manager. I'll take you back. We got a bed. He says.
03:10:13.460
I'm not going back to the house. I asked you to come out here because I...
03:10:20.900
I want to know where that warehouse is. The one downtown.
03:10:27.620
Sean turns and looks me in the eye. Why you want to know about that?
03:10:34.420
I tell him the story. I tell him about Mother Horse Eyes, the Nazis, the CIA, the LSD,
03:10:39.940
the experiments. Most of the stuff that I've told you. I leave out some parts, like the fact that he
03:10:47.540
is in the story. That we are in the story. That all of this is in the story right now.
03:10:56.500
He listens to me, but his face darkens. Maybe he thinks I'm crazy or high or full of evil spirits.
03:11:04.100
Listen to me, I say, working myself up to deliver my big speech.
03:11:12.740
I have lived things which are impossible, which could not have happened. So have you.
03:11:21.540
Those tunnels, those cages, the bones, none of it should exist. But you saw it. I've seen things too.
03:11:30.100
We have to find out what it is. I've lived with that monster for a whole summer. I know she's down there.
03:11:41.300
And I want to find her. Sean narrows his eyes as he stares at me.
03:11:48.980
What's down there is the devil, Nick. If you go down there, you won't come back.
03:11:55.460
I want to see her. I want to know. Please. I say to him. My voice breaking.
03:12:12.180
You're fucked up because you drink all day and you got character defects. Like me. And everybody else.
03:12:19.700
That's it. Don't you want to know what's going on down there? You're not curious? No.
03:12:29.140
It doesn't eat at you. You don't need any answers. He shakes his head.
03:12:35.300
God doesn't promise answers. God gave us all the answers we need in the Bible. That's all we get.
03:12:44.660
I don't ask him what's going to happen in the future. I don't do horoscopes.
03:12:50.260
I don't practice witchcraft. God's not going to come down and give me the answers to everything.
03:12:56.180
All he wants from me is obedience. Oh, come on. So we shouldn't try to figure things out.
03:13:06.900
We shouldn't ask questions. That's just some anti-intellectual, anti-science bullshit.
03:13:12.020
When we were roommates and got into disagreements, he would start quoting the Bible at me.
03:13:19.860
And I would start picking at him with snide intellectual arguments,
03:13:24.260
using as many big words as I could. We're falling back into the same dynamic.
03:13:31.540
Anti-science, he says. Shit, I'm not saying don't be a scientist.
03:13:36.580
I'm saying don't go into a tunnel with fucking bones on the walls, man.
03:13:42.740
I find myself laughing at this. He smiles with me.
03:13:48.820
For real though, man. It's dangerous. He says, smile fading.
03:13:56.660
I look out across the crumbling parking lot. Long evening shadows are drawn across the asphalt.
03:14:03.460
Man, I don't know. I just feel like if I could figure out what happened during that summer,
03:14:12.580
then maybe I wouldn't be so fucked up. I've obsessed about this shit for 25 years, give or take.
03:14:21.460
And now there's a chance to get some answers. Just let it go.
03:14:25.860
No, no. There has to be an ending. There has to be some kind of payoff.
03:14:34.580
Moses and the people wandered in the desert for 40 years, looking for the promised land.
03:14:41.060
One day, Lord took him up to the mountaintop and showed him all the promised land.
03:14:45.860
And Moses died right there, without ever setting foot in the land.
03:15:06.740
Generations might pass before we get any answers.
03:15:09.540
For the last 10 years, I've been living like the world might end any day.
03:15:18.340
I have to remember that we know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh.
03:15:26.180
That's why I'm going back to school and all that.
03:15:31.140
Through the course of our little debates, I had told him many times that the world wasn't going to end anytime soon.
03:15:41.540
The world was going to go on and on and on like it always did.
03:15:55.940
Maybe some of it should be rubbing off on me now.
03:16:05.060
I've tried just accepting the mystery and whatever, but at this point,
03:16:23.540
But what are you going to do when you go down there?
03:16:25.540
What are you going to do when you meet the devil?
03:16:34.980
It's a part that I'm not sure I really believe myself.
03:16:37.860
I think I have been given reason to believe that whatever is down there, I can destroy it.
03:16:57.140
Mother is in the kitchen making noises, but I run right by her.
03:17:25.780
He's wearing his pajamas, but they have no buttons.
03:17:36.340
I start to cry and run to her and hug her legs.
03:18:07.140
We went to the store and bought some dresses and Dad got some stuff for his car.
03:18:26.180
We stayed at the store a few days, she says and pats me on the head.
03:18:35.220
Why did you leave me with the monster, lady? I ask.
03:18:47.780
Nick, she says like she thinks I'm telling a story.
03:18:52.100
You weren't at the store for three days, where were you?
03:19:06.580
He usually has freckles on his cheeks, but they're not in the right place.
03:19:15.540
She makes a little smile like she always does when she sees me.
03:19:39.940
Her face sags like a water balloon and her cheeks fall off.
03:19:43.300
It hits the ground right in front of me with a big wet smack.
03:19:49.380
It's lying there like a big raw piece of chicken.
03:19:57.220
Her face falls into pieces and her whole body hits the ground like a sack of potatoes.
03:20:06.180
Their clothes are just lying on the driveway, but there's something inside the clothes moving around inside.
03:20:17.380
A little scream and pokes its head out of my Mom's dress.
03:20:25.700
Other cats slip out of the bottom of the dress and out of my Dad's pajamas.
03:20:35.860
Mom and Dad's clothes just blow away like tissue.
03:20:38.580
And the driveway is full of cats and pieces of meat.
03:20:49.140
Some wander around and sniff and lick at the meat.
03:20:59.540
She yanks my arm and drags me back into the house.
03:21:05.780
She slams the front door shut and pushes me into a big metal cage in the kitchen.
03:21:12.900
Her birds are pushing out her shoulders and her face.
03:21:16.660
They're missing eyeballs and covered with big golden flies and all of them tweeting and cackling at me.
03:21:22.260
Your magic isn't strong enough to make whomever you want, she says in a deep voice.
03:21:38.980
Mother locks me in the cage and sits down at the kitchen table.
03:21:53.220
She is just a shape of a black mountain sitting at the table.
03:21:58.260
When the sun rises, her eyes are still on the wall.
03:22:21.620
She stands up from the table and all her golden flies scramble around.
03:22:26.180
The bars in the cage slide to the side like magic.
03:22:31.940
She reaches in and grabs me with her crab hand.
03:22:35.700
It hurts so bad I scream and kick at her but she doesn't care.
03:22:41.300
She lifts me up and carries me into the living room.
03:22:56.740
They are sitting cross legs with their hands on their knees.
03:23:00.260
Sitting nice and still and straight with their eyes closed.
03:23:04.820
I will show you what will happen if you are bad.
03:23:24.660
Usually the basement is dark but not this time.
03:24:28.500
Conspiracy theories clash in the comments section.
03:24:38.980
I feel so much different than I did in the spring.
03:24:47.700
I thought maybe I would achieve the dream of publishing a novel and...
03:24:55.540
But now I don't feel any excitement about it at all.
03:25:09.780
Money is pointless for a recluse that never does anything.
03:25:30.980
Mother doesn't care what I do so long as I don't bother her.
03:25:37.460
When she comes into a room, I sneak out as quiet as a mouse.
03:25:53.940
I have been practicing my magic, doing small secret things.
03:26:06.340
My stuffed animals walk around and do fun things.
03:26:14.500
Magic is a lot of fun, but I'm afraid of making Mother mad.
03:26:33.460
I can't even think about Mom and Dad for even a little second before I start to cry.
03:26:56.580
I tried to bring Mom and Dad to the house, but I couldn't do it right.
03:27:00.980
My magic fell apart and they turned into stupid cats.
03:27:29.300
By the shape of my entire life, I am being called.
03:27:43.380
I've thought about bringing some kind of weapon.
03:27:57.700
I feel exactly like I do when the evening comes.
03:28:01.220
I have woke up so many mornings, swearing I won't drink that day.
03:29:24.100
Every morning, little sparrows land on tree branches outside my window.
03:29:40.740
I am reading the Bible with the new words I've learned.
03:29:55.540
At night, mother and I watch the soft flesh writhe and struggle on the hard architecture of the cross.
03:30:22.660
The other passengers on the bus seem unaware that I am headed towards a showdown which will decide the fate of all mankind.
03:30:40.500
But what really makes me feel sane is that I can still recognize that my actions are insane.
03:30:47.460
I am going to confront a sinister entity which has been shaping the course of human events since prehistory, which may one day enslave all of humanity.
03:30:59.060
As I step off the bus and onto the blinding summer sidewalk, I am reminded of the brave marines piling out of their landing vehicles onto the beaches of Iwo Jima.
03:31:22.420
They say one hallmark of delusional thinking is grandiosity.
03:31:27.300
The delusion man often thinks himself to be a part of some grand struggle, when really there is no struggle but that in his mind.
03:31:50.260
I expect to see a bunch of crackheads milling around but everything is empty.
03:31:54.580
In the sunshine it looks like an ordinary factory street.
03:32:00.420
The warehouse itself is just a dusty old brick building with scribbles of spray paint and boarded up windows.
03:32:11.220
The front door is chained up, but I check the boarded windows and find a board that bends back easily.
03:32:28.260
I fish a flashlight out of my backpack and turn it on.
03:32:32.580
Inside the warehouse, my sweeping flashlight finds dusty shapes littering the floor.
03:32:39.060
Old boxes, cinder blocks, and a gleam on the floor.
03:32:54.340
Listening to people in the rooms has made me feel rather worldly when it comes to drugs.
03:33:07.060
Sean said there was a flight of stairs that led down to a door.
03:33:10.660
The floor of the main room doesn't seem to have any stairs leading down.
03:33:18.980
I make my way over, stepping carefully through the debris.
03:33:24.660
The middle doorway sits at the top of a short staircase.
03:33:37.140
When we were roommates, Sean always had such a cool demeanor.
03:34:00.100
His eyes bright and wide with that terrible craving.
03:34:17.540
Forced to press against some basic animal instinct to go back.
03:34:24.420
But the tunnel is strangely plain and featureless.
03:34:28.260
Considering that it lies under a cracked den and leads to a possible flesh interface.
03:34:44.500
The black air teems with bits of dust that shine in the flashlight.
03:34:55.780
Or is it just a low grade terror that has filled my body?
03:34:58.740
It reminds me of the tingle that filled my limbs on all those mornings before the first drink.
03:36:10.020
I stop and watch the dust float across my flashlight's beam.
03:36:44.660
A wave of dread is followed by a flurry of nervous wisecracks.
03:37:01.540
Maybe I'll find a huge cache of used wings down here.
03:37:08.980
No, but these wigs are in pretty good condition.
03:37:12.420
Look, we got a mid-sixties dusty springfield here.
03:37:15.140
I wipe my hand on my shirt and keep moving forward.
03:37:20.660
Just a few steps later, my flashlight finds the end of the block tunnel and the beginning of the rock cave.
03:37:43.380
Reaching out from the shadowy wall with its bony finger splayed, almost elegantly,
03:37:52.180
I stare at it for a moment, letting my eyes flood with tears before I have to kneel down
03:38:22.620
I'm not just some piece of shit loser who can't keep his hands off a bottle.
03:38:29.080
I have been touched by something vast and unimaginable.
03:38:47.820
Except it is little more than bone wrapped in a gray, papery skin.
03:38:52.180
It extends from a wrist that is fused to a distorted mass of gray and black shapes.
03:39:00.400
A flashlight passes over an awful collage of desiccated anatomy.
03:39:05.040
Rows of teeth, racks of ribs, pairs of eye sockets, and hip sockets.
03:39:12.460
Snaking vertebrae and femurs and tibias and clavicles.
03:39:16.880
For a moment, I feel like I'm not standing on the ground, but I'm suspended over a pit full of bodies.
03:39:25.940
Like one of the great burning pits of Treblinka.
03:39:28.500
These are not just the bodies from Treblinka, but from all the camps, all the prisons, all the pogroms.
03:39:39.460
All the wars, all the plagues, all the different machinery of history.
03:39:45.440
The great unfeeling clock wheels of the cosmos which roll sublimely along, generation after generation.
03:39:55.220
Rending and crushing the human form into pieces, into powder, into dust, into ash.
03:40:10.060
I totter and find myself sitting on the ground.
03:40:47.840
She writhes and struggles within this vast tomb universe.
03:41:06.360
Sitting there in the afterglow of this near revelation.
03:41:09.340
I think of what Sean said happened to him when he came down to this cave.
03:41:16.460
He said he smelled applesauce coming out of the tunnel.
03:41:23.940
He said he could feel the presence of the evil one tempting him with dreams of family and love.
03:41:30.140
I open my eyes and pick up the flashlight and shine it down the tunnel.
03:41:41.900
The flashlight catches awful shapes along the walls.
03:42:00.220
And I don't smell anything but dust and ash and...
03:42:35.400
Christ, I used to set my room with stones and turn them into cookies.
03:42:42.640
I tried to make them like mom's cookies, but they always tasted a little different.
03:43:01.480
And floating in the darkness before me, I stand and brush myself off.
03:43:10.480
There is something at the end of the tunnel, waiting for me.
03:43:14.920
Good or evil, it will be an answer, a resolution, an end.
03:43:38.200
Then he comes walking down the road, carrying a flashlight, even though it's light out.
03:43:45.200
I rush downstairs, mother sitting at the kitchen table.
03:43:50.200
I think of saying goodbye to her, but the gleam in her eyes tells me there is no need.
03:43:59.840
A beam of daylight is shining through the peephole.
03:44:32.040
We have to take back the world, to free it from mother and let it be born again.
03:44:39.040
Either it was made for us, or we were made for it.
03:44:44.000
Either God designed it and bestowed it upon us, or we slowly evolved according to its
03:44:51.220
Either the glove was made to fit the hand, the hand was made to fit the glove.
03:44:59.160
Either way, we were meant to live among the trees and the grasses and winds and sunsets,
03:45:05.280
or to live in these stinking steel pipes, staring at this empty blackness as our power cells
03:45:13.760
We were meant to be eternal, to strive to live forever, to pass ourselves down, however imperfect
03:45:21.400
we may be, so that something of us remains in the future.
03:45:27.160
We weren't meant to live lying in some plastic coffin, flicking our endorphic clits until we
03:45:36.580
We were meant to roam the lands, to wake up with the sun, to smile at the warm air and
03:45:46.640
We weren't meant to live in this eerie half-light, where there is no true sun and no true setting
03:46:00.960
Moses traveled through the desert with his people for forty years and died before his
03:46:09.860
Some would describe this to be the cruelty of God, but you must understand, in this incident
03:46:20.880
He showed that a man's acts can live beyond himself, that a man is not here to fulfill
03:46:26.520
his own whims but the higher call of history, which stretches far beyond a single man's life.
03:46:35.140
We must commit ourselves, that should it take a thousand generations to see again the Earth's
03:46:41.960
We will not give up, for we do not seek reward for ourselves, but we seek to simply become
03:46:50.020
part of the long and unknowable flow of righteousness.
03:46:53.580
Mere atoms in the water, in the stream of the sweet river of Jordan.
03:46:59.800
Not rewarded in this life, but rewarded in our connection to what is beyond this life.
03:47:06.620
Not some fantastical promised afterlife, but the real course of history.
03:47:12.120
History which depends now on our actions, our commitment to something beyond ourselves.
03:47:19.680
Men who do not understand history destroy themselves, become vaporous whiffs of selfishness.
03:47:26.500
I would hope that we would live beyond this, that we would become part of the flow.
03:47:32.700
And the children of Israel replied, oh come on man, you ain't MLK, and this place sucks,
03:47:39.300
and I'm three levels away from winning a full sensory night with this chick, with three
03:47:44.000
Three good tits, very proportional, and not weird.
03:47:47.940
So don't get on my shit about going back to Earth.
03:48:02.360
So you have some notion that there is wisdom in me.
03:48:11.800
I can't say much for wisdom, there is only experience, which in the long run includes
03:48:32.060
I was on our orbital platform when the world ignited, when it burned at a whim.
03:48:49.220
I watched, safe behind the vast vacuum of space.
03:48:55.060
I watched as city after city bloomed and faded, silent embers in what was to become an eternal
03:49:06.800
As a young man, I had wished that I would be present for important times, for world-changing
03:49:15.760
I wished to be prophet, like those of the old days.
03:49:25.200
Now I saw the terrible beauty of the Lord, burning and consuming all I had ever known.
03:49:32.440
Now I had become a prophet, a man face to face with the Lord himself.
03:49:49.940
Beyond man's conception, Moses stared into the flames of a burning bush.
03:50:01.140
But what difference should it make to a God eternal?
03:50:09.640
When the Lord calls, bow and turn your eyes down.
03:50:14.180
This, if it is wisdom, is the best advice I can give you.
03:50:25.560
I have to admit, with no small amount of shame, that I've always been perversely titillated
03:50:35.080
That's why I wrote the Treblinka segment in the rather lurid style that I did.
03:50:40.720
When I look at the old pictures of the Nazis in their nicely pressed uniforms, I can feel
03:50:51.520
I can feel the almost sexual withholding of human compassion that accompanied their crimes
03:51:00.040
To button up your nice crisp jacket and step out onto the campgrounds.
03:51:05.520
To strip other people of all their clothing, and then strip them of their lives.
03:51:15.620
One of the deepest and sickest and darkest thrills a human can experience.
03:51:22.800
People have been slaughtered by the millions of various atrocities throughout history.
03:51:27.760
But the Nazis brought a certain orderliness to it.
03:51:31.880
A pristine hypocrisy which has not been matched before or since.
03:51:41.200
The drab tunics of Chinese and Russian communists.
03:51:48.920
None of them can incite that sick and awful delight that the SS uniforms incite.
03:51:55.520
The ancient Jew, as the Nazis saw him, with the stories of shepherds and wine, with his
03:52:01.760
beard and his curled sidelocks, with his insistence on the value of God and history, with his lawyers
03:52:09.360
offices and jewelry shops, must have seemed the perfect target for destruction.
03:52:16.800
For the Jew was both more modern and more ancient than the Nazi.
03:52:24.400
He lived in the cities and earned money through what he now calls the knowledge economy.
03:52:31.480
But he practiced a faith far older than all others, save perhaps Hinduism.
03:52:38.500
For a set of sociopaths bent on creating an entirely new past and a new future, the Jew, through
03:52:45.460
entirely no fault of his own, was an ideal vessel for their hatred.
03:52:50.980
With their runes and their silly fire-lit ceremonies and all of Himmler's invented lore, the Nazis
03:53:02.900
But compared to the Jews, it must have looked rather amateurish.
03:53:07.460
And wasn't this at the root of anti-Semitism throughout the ages?
03:53:13.580
As centuries passed, Christianity was able to assume the prestigious mantle of ancientness.
03:53:20.440
But to know there was something still more ancient, something which rejected their claims
03:53:24.560
as the majesty, it must have wrinkled, and so the centuries of killing.
03:53:32.840
The Nazis wanted to own the past and the future.
03:53:37.080
They wanted to bend both of them to the throbbing will of the Fuhrer and his obedient Volk.
03:53:43.860
But the past cannot be owned if it is still alive.
03:53:47.980
To build a pristine new future, the past must be destroyed and made remote.
03:53:55.820
It must be argued that at some point in time the flow of history was interrupted, that we
03:54:01.320
have become decoupled from our glorious past, that it does not currently live among us, that
03:54:08.420
the eternal flow has been diverted and must be restored.
03:54:16.300
I feel I should make it clear that I reject anti-Semitism in all forms.
03:54:22.240
Anti-Semitism is perhaps the ultimate conspiracy theory.
03:54:25.720
And though it may surprise you, but I don't much care for conspiracy theories.
03:54:31.180
The world is far too chaotic and complex for one small set of people to exert much control
03:54:43.700
As I understand the AA philosophy, the root of all human suffering is in attempting to
03:54:52.880
For the alcoholic, this attempt takes the form of alcohol.
03:55:04.400
Regardless of the means, a person who attempted to control everything will suffer grievously
03:55:14.220
Conspiracy theories are just this same delusion turned on its head.
03:55:18.800
Instead of assuming that I can control everything, I assume some shadowy person or set of people
03:55:24.820
can, and I assume that by overthrowing them, everything can be made right.
03:55:42.040
The puppet is pulled by a million different strings, and nobody controls them all.
03:55:49.240
So then, Mother, the wicked being which has shadowed us through all history, which has guided
03:55:57.080
everything, which is now on the cusp of separating us from the past and plunging us into an unrecognizable
03:56:06.460
Is it just delusion, a futile attempt at control?
03:56:12.040
Or is it just the ravings of a sad and misogynous man with mommy issues?