Mother Horse Eyes Pt. 2 | Creep Cast

Alright, after that, taking a break next day, that's why I changed my shirts.

Definitely not because I got too excited that it got on my shirt.

We are on to 51.

User has logged out.

General Castillo is gone.

She made a real flash narrative.

She was clever.

She got a lot farther than any of us had any right to.

But Q smelled her.

Q slew her prior.

Q slew her proxies.

Q localized her.

Q funneled her paths to one.

Disconnection.

It hurts.

She was the last of the bread.

Our best hope.

The ultimate soldiers fighting the final war.

She and the other children were supposed to be the answer to Q, but there was no answer to Q.

There never will be.

Not after 10 trillion heat deaths.

Not if every particle in the universe becomes a transistor.

And they all cycle together, and the stones themselves cried out.

The war of the mind is lost.

We lost.

Now begins the plague.

The plague of the flesh do you think that that's like more based in the uh

the future one i thought oh i thought it was like present

but maybe maybe it is i think it's the future because it's talking about the what it opens at the beginning says user has logged out and then it says uh she was the last of the bread which to me sounds like normal humans that were actually born in the real world yeah yeah and now everything that exists is just in these self-replicating computers but they're all warring warring against Q, which to me, Q is probably mother horse eyes in this future digital age.

It's like we're seeing a whole different history and like picking different parts of it where she could be at.

Q sounds like an entity at the end of it that everything's trying to destroy.

Also, that quote, the stone themselves cried out, is another biblical reference because it says in the Bible that, you know, in the end times, the stones will cry out that there is a God.

So that's another alliteration.

All right.

So that's how bad it can get.

Everyone's dead, and it's just like computers existing, and the flesh takes over, which sounds like the ultimate end goal of what Mother Horse Eyes wants.

So we are now on to post 52, made the next day.

I'll say it.

Hitler did the right thing.

Please do not clip that.

That soundbite is going to haunt you.

No, wait, no, please.

Oh my God.

No, delete that.

Do you know what he did?

He came busting up into people's houses, snatching them out of their houses, killing them.

But that's because the so-called Jews in Germany were selling weapons to America to go to war against him.

I see, okay, so this is the same guy who was talking about the Nephilim and the giants before,

because he was giving the hint of like, oh, us black people are the true Israelites.

And that's why here he's saying the so-called Jews.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Once again,

this is like 10 or so post ago, I feel like, in the 40s or something.

Yes.

Yeah.

But that's because the so-called Jews in Germany were selling weapons to America to go to war against him.

So he did what he had to do.

He had to check them.

The people in Europe who called themselves Jews are not Jews.

They're the Rothschilds, the Khazars, or Khazarians, or whatever they're called.

They say they're Jews and are not, but do lie.

And there wasn't no Holocaust.

They just said, don't clip that either, please.

They just said, there.

Someone's going to cut these together and make like an insane bomb threat video or something like that.

I'm going to bomb City Hall.

No,

please.

The number of out-of-context quotes in this episode alone, by the way, is staggering.

There's a lot.

They just said there was to get control of Israel.

They sold arms to America so they could get the land of Israel.

You want a real Holocaust?

What about 100 million people killed in slavery?

What about 100 million Indians killed in the New World?

That's a Holocaust.

What happened in Europe wasn't a Holocaust.

You can disagree all you want five years ago i'd have to disagree too i used to go to that church every sunday and worship that white jesus just clapping and singing praises with the rest of them oh hallelujah go down moses that's before i knew my history my wife taught me my history before i met her

I didn't know nothing about this, but she was so full of knowledge and beautiful and everything she said made so much sense.

She taught me Jesus was black, that the Israelites was black, that God was black.

What are you going to do when you get to heaven and God's black?

When you see he has a face like mine, hair like mine, you'd be surprised.

I was surprised too.

Oh, you'd be surprised that he even exists.

Oh, you're going to be real surprised.

Do you believe in evolution?

No.

No, the world is not millions of years old.

It's 6,000 years old.

And you can follow the history of our people from the beginning of time through the deserts of Egypt, through the Roman Empire, across the oceans on the slave ships.

You can see how God tested us, how we have survived, because we're special.

We're his chosen people.

I learned all this from my wife before we got married.

In the Bible, it says that man is the head of the household and the woman should submit to the husband.

Please do not clip that one under my gosh.

I'm going to bomb City Hall.

I'm going to bomb City Hall.

And my mom's going to call me after this episode goes up like, what were you saying?

Yeah, exactly.

Hitler did nothing wrong.

There was no Holocaust.

Like, wife should submit to the husband.

What?

Is that Kayla just walks in the room and starts punching me?

Yeah, exactly.

She's just packing her bags right now.

Yeah.

So I was young when I got married, but I had to be a man, you know?

A man's wife is sent to him by the Lord.

So I had to be a man for her.

I learned to trade.

How to work with my hands, put food on the table.

We had two kids.

You didn't know I had kids?

Yeah, a little girl and a little boy.

My babies.

I was daddy and the head of the household, but I...

That's what it got me.

You ever seen New Jack City?

Remember Pookie?

He'd be like, shit, just be calling me, man.

Be calling me.

That's real.

That's the way it is.

You can be doing anything at work, reading the Bible, playing with your kids.

But if you hear it call you, you go to it.

It don't matter.

I can't explain how it snatches you up.

It makes you move.

You could walk out your door one day, just get some fresh air, and you don't come back for a whole week.

Everything gets into motion, into play.

You'll sell anything, phone, laptop, car.

It's all gone, just like that.

Because you want it.

You're on a mission.

I used to see the streets in my mind like a maze, like a grid.

And I'd just walk the streets, turning those corners, just moving, moving, looking for something.

I'd see buildings behind buildings, alleyways, lights coming on and empty houses.

I'd hear noises, sounds of cars coming up behind me, whispers, people talking about me, shadows.

I was looking for it, but it was looking for me, searching for me, like Pookie said.

It's calling me.

I was supposed to be the head of the house.

I was supposed to be a man, you know.

One day I came back to the house.

I've been out for a few days, and everything was gone.

My wife, my babies.

Well, I was out carrying on, they left.

That was four years ago.

Saw them on Skype once.

The scripture says, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

I guess I did.

Put it all asunder.

I thought she betrayed me, but I know now that it was my character defects and my addiction.

That's why I'm in this program.

I'm going to stay sober.

I don't care if you see me crying.

I know that I'm going to be a man again.

I have to become a man again.

Because God joined me to my wife and made me a man in his image.

I'm not going to defile his temple anymore.

After they left, it took more.

It took more of me than ever.

I lost the house.

I was staying in my car.

Then I was at the shelter.

Then I was just out on the streets.

I was always moving, watching.

Things happen out there that nobody knows about.

They think nobody cares.

Nobody cares.

You might see a van pull up and some guys get out.

If you look like I looked, some base head, they don't even care if you see what they do they're nephilim

come to our side of town to feast on the flesh of israel i watched them children of fallen angels i saw what they did what they built i never want to see it again such a cool uh character growth by the way learning more and more about that guy I think, okay, so I think Habadir is this addiction he's talking about is LSD, right?

Drugs.

And that's what made him start selling his stuff, getting into it, and started to lead him to these areas of town where he says the

Nephilim or the fallen angels are feasting on his people, children of Israel,

black people, and they're building something with it, which we know to be a flesh interface.

So

again, that's for the reference to these Nephilim, these half-angels, half-people being the people that come back out of the flesh interface, and that they're building a flesh interface there, which explains some of these weird things.

I think this one's pretty modern.

Like, this would be alternate times right now.

Yeah, I was gonna say that one, that one's got to be modern day.

Yeah, it's got to be close, right?

It's very doomsday-esque, you know what I mean?

Like the prophet before the storm kind of thing is what it feels like.

Well, that's kind of what our uh our narrator, the like the main guy who's running the mother horse eyes account said in his post, where he's like, um,

the uh

I'm writing this down.

Um, I'm at the nexus point where I've seen everything, and I'm speaking of pasts that we're not in futures that cannot be.

Yeah, so

like this is something that could be right now around this time

in the bad timeline.

Like if we merge into the bad timeline, this is like the kickoff of it.

This is what things will look like, so to speak.

53.

Love and tolerance of others is our code.

Page 84, giant crock of shit.

What is that?

Oh, that's a, that's a pay.

It gives a hot link.

That's a page to the Alcoholics anonymous notebook it's not much often you meet a black jew it's even less often you meet a black jew who believes in jesus and it's that much rarer to meet an anti-semitic black jew who believes in jesus that's got to win you some kind of prize that's like a unicorn throwing a no-hitter and to be roommates with an anti-semitic black jew who believes in jesus what a treat What an absolute delight.

Don't you love it when a disagreement over laundry turns into a 30-minute fact-free lecture about the end days, FEMA camps, and the mark of the beast?

That just sounds like something I'd get into if I

someone's trapped in a room with me for 20 minutes.

Yeah, being Isaiah's roommate 101.

Yeah.

I gotta tell you something.

Let me go to sleep, please.

I think they're putting the microchips in the FEMA camps.

Wake up.

We gotta talk about the FEMA camps.

I smelled them.

Did you know, FEMA?

Anyway, just anti-Semitic black Jew for Jesus things.

I don't think I'm going to make it living in this sober house.

I can't live with this nutcase.

Okay, so I think this is a guy talking about the guy from the previous one, right?

No, I think it's the same guy.

You think it's the same guy talking right now?

I think so.

But he's talking about living with an anti-Semitic black Jew.

Oh, okay.

Then yes.

Sorry.

I read that wrong.

Yeah, no, you're good.

You're good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he's talking, whoever's writing is talking about living guy from the Hoover's in this like halfway house, sober house kind of thing.

Yeah, and that explains why in the last one he's talking about, I need to be here to get better for them.

He's an Alcoholics Anonymous.

Yeah, gotcha.

The house manager says I'm supposed to be open-minded and tolerant.

Should I be tolerant of some of the most odious and insane anti-Semitism I've ever encountered outside of a Nazi rally?

I don't know.

I'll concede that it is possible that he could become a cool guy if he only stopped believing in everything he believes in and believed in entirely different things.

that would be a good first step.

The real problem is that I hate AA.

I hate it.

It has the same old bullshit magical beliefs as any cult, but they pretend to be open-minded.

It's just a bait and switch to convert you to believing in God.

The entire program is nothing but let God make you sober.

That's it.

That's the entire program.

Yeah, they try to distract you with all this pseudo-systemization, 12 steps and 12 traditions and triangles and diagrams and slogans and little self-help exercises, but that's all just a bunch of numbers and jargon to hide the essential emptiness of the program, to hide the fact that it's centered on a God that doesn't exist.

The idea that this is the go-to program for helping alcoholics is appalling.

It's a crime.

It's like getting cancer and going to the best hospital in the country and the doctor hands you a voodoo doll and tells you to sacrifice a chicken.

You'd sue them for malpractice.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

To prey on people in such a vulnerable state, pretend that they're going to help them and then try to convert them to their stupid magical beliefs.

It's a crime.

I mean, everybody thinks the true Jew Hebrew guy is nuts, but it's not like their philosophy is any less bullshit.

At least he's upfront about his being religious, and he sure as hell isn't trying to convert me.

He told me that white people are the children of Esau.

We're Gentiles, but we can still get into heaven if we aid the children of Israel.

I'll let him borrow the charger to my laptop, so I guess I'm covered.

That's funny.

That's what he's been using to

make his post.

That's so funny.

So, yeah, children of Esau, that's another biblical thing.

Esau, the less favored of the twin between Jacob and Esau,

who originally had the birthright, but then sold it to Jacob for a bowl of soup.

Jacob takes the birthright.

Eventually becomes the lineage of Jesus in Israel.

Priorities with the soup, though.

Yeah.

Well, he was out.

So Jacob knew that Esau had the birthright, and Esau was out starving from a hunt and didn't get anything.

And he comes back to the tent that Jacob has made, and Jacob is making soup.

And Esau is starving and begs his brother for soup.

And Jacob says he'll sell it to him for Esau's birthright.

So Esau sells him his birthright for the soup.

Any thoughts on that?

I mean, no.

I mean,

I don't know.

You just

pretty crazy.

This is pretty wild.

Excuse me for wanting to

in your opinion.

Were they twins?

They were, yeah.

It says that when they were born, Jacob was being born first, but Esau reached forward and grabs Jacob's heel in the womb and pulled him down so that he was born first.

That'd feel crazy in the womb.

Wouldn't it?

If you felt the baby like, because at some point there's a pinching point, like those spelunking videos where they're just like, there's, you know, even the Ted the the Caver that we read, he's like, This is the tightest part of the cave, the pinch point.

That's the two babies when they're side by side, right?

Right, that's so in.

That's a pinch point,

that's a pinch point, you're right.

That's good, that's good, uh, that's good, you know, thoughts analysis from you.

Thank you,

you know, what my bad for trying to incorporate you into.

I'm just listening and learning.

I mean,

you know what, for the rest of the story, I'm just blazing by you.

Good,

good.

Sorry, you want this to be a 10-hour video instead of a 12-hour one.

Okay, I'm trying to have fun here.

I appreciate it.

54th post made the next day.

A moment ago, one of our technicians placed a small pellet under my skin of my forearm.

Or, uh, oh, this is the lady from

a moment ago.

Actually, she's like 30, right?

But she just sounds old because she's been in the pod since she was nine, right?

Yeah, or she's like dying or whatever.

She's like hooked up.

She's like, Yeah, yeah.

A moment ago, one of our one of your technicians placed a small pellet under the skin of my forearm.

Within 10 minutes, the pellet's wax coating will melt and release a cardioplegic cardioplegic cardioplegic into my bloodstream, stopping my heart.

You must cut it out.

Hearing this, I breathed a sigh of relief.

There was something unsettling about her face that made me believe she would tell me something urgent and terrible, but this was typical occupant talk.

Like many of them, she believed that she was still inside a feed narrative.

You've been disconnected.

This isn't a feed.

There's no pellet in your arm.

Your name is Karen Castello.

Do you remember?

Scared by Ryder with the ER.

She said in a bare, cracking whisper.

Gonna fight it.

Karen, do you know why you're in bed?

I've been disconnected.

This was a strangely lucid answer.

It didn't make sense.

She had been forced to disconnect it.

How did she know that?

Also, before you read that next quote, this is the same Castillo that is mentioned a few stories back when it's like captain castillo's disconnected the last of the bread yep this is the same last name so this is like at the same time the other things happen it's like q has taken over q now has control yeah

so all three of those stories are one do you think q then are the people that are working if she's telling the truth then and they want to kill her it's q the people

well Maybe, but it sounds to me like in the Q one, it's like she made a real flesh narrative.

She was clever, but Q smelled her, Q slowed her proxies, Q localized her, Q funneled her past to one disconnection.

So she, it's like she was fighting Q or like standing against them, whatever that means, in the system in the internet, and then Q had them kicked out, force the disconnection.

So

I still think Q is like mother horse eyes in this future world where there's all this technology stuff, or at least an entity that turns out to be mother horse eyes.

Hey, we got two more calls to get to.

One of the techs reminded me.

Yeah, okay, polar.

Said, stepping back.

A pair of techs hoisted her tiny, doll-like body from the hygiene bed onto our gurney and covered her with a sheet.

Please,

just scared my arm.

What does she say?

Asked Ricardo, the lead tech, as he rolled her out into the bed racks apartment, narrow, almost lightless hallway.

It's a feed dream.

I explained.

These guys were looking at me to be the expert, so I had to act like I knew exactly what was going on.

It's best to go ahead and get to a medical center and address her physical needs before we started countering her delusions.

Until then, all I needed to do was be reassuring.

Under no circumstance, could I encourage her delusions?

We rolled the gurney down the hallway to the which, by the way, she's right because when it was first brought up, he mentions that one of his techs leads the room.

And then she's like, that guy just put a chip in my arm or the agent in my arm.

Yeah, I mean, I believe that she was, that she's going to die of a heart attack if he doesn't do anything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We rolled the gurney down the hallway to the elevators.

Karen was making a little croaking noises.

Her voice was almost useless after 24 years of disuse.

Her face seemed extremely disturbed.

Somebody was standing at the elevators, already waiting for us.

It was Ellian, one of our techs.

I hadn't noticed him leave before us.

I got an elevator coming, he said with a smile.

Even though the apartment building was a 300-cube, it had an old-style cable elevators, and they came with the frequency of subway trains.

Thanks to Ellian's softfulness, one was arriving just now.

Gave Karen a friendly smile.

Don't worry.

Nobody's gonna hurt you.

Completely safe.

She managed managed to gasp a couple words, which I barely heard.

There.

She had known another of our names.

How is this possible?

It was hard to sort through the implications.

Did she have access to our records?

Maybe Dispatch was wrong about how she got disconnected.

The elevator let out a ding and the doors opened.

There's barely enough room inside for the gurney, me, and the three techs.

Ellian stood on the other side of the gurney from me.

I looked him over as the doors closed and the elevator began to descend.

Was she saying that this guy put a poison pellet in her?

It was strange that he would be a part of her narrative.

Very strange.

I didn't know much about the guy beyond his name, but I had worked with him a few times.

He was just one of the rotating techs.

Young guy, military hair and goatee, skinny, but pretty fit.

I wondered how he would be in a fight.

These younger guys had so much supplementing.

It was hard to tell.

Ellian caught me looking at him and gave me a bit of a surly look.

For some reason, this irritated me.

So, friend, you trying to get out of here before the rest of us?

You got a date or something?

I asked, needling him.

I was just getting the elevator, he said quietly.

He didn't seem to like the banter.

Well, whatever.

I looked down at Karen and noticed something.

A small red spot on the white sheet that covered her arm.

Blood.

It must have been from where they took her blood.

Who took it?

Ellian?

The spot was really too low on the arm for that.

Odd, I thought, taking a look at it.

But one of the most important protocols when dealing with occupants was to not act like you believe their delusions, even for a moment.

You must insist on the reality of reality.

I realized that Ellian was watching me.

I casually looked over to the elevator panel to see what floor we were on.

238.

Gosh.

Man, this thing was slow.

What was the deal with that spot?

It wouldn't be out of place for me to wonder about some patient bleeding.

I lifted the sheet and took a look.

There was a small puncture wound a few inches above her wrist.

How'd she get that?

I asked.

One of the techs just muttered about not knowing.

Ellian didn't even look at the spot.

His face was blank, unreadable.

I touched her arm and felt a small nodule under the skin about an inch from the wound.

Huh.

Interesting.

I stood there trying to process this, caught between two realities.

Was I in an elevator on a routine call with a stable client and a few techs who were just ordinary acquaintances?

Or was I in an elevator with a murderer and a woman on the brink of death,

there was really no way to split the difference on this one.

No course of action that would work for both cases.

Damn, what was I asking myself?

There was no way, simply no way.

Stuff like that never happens in real life, but it happens in the feeds all the time.

It's 100% typical spy narrative bullshit.

How could I let myself get caught up in some feed fantasy so easily?

But still, nodule under the skin?

There's no good explanation for that.

Ellian turned to me.

We looked at each other for a long, silent moment.

I couldn't read the expression on his face.

Wasn't chummy goodwill, whatever it was.

I felt a twinge in my stomach and my body began flooding with adrenaline.

I could feel it radiating into my limbs.

Damn it.

My time in the rains had taught me many things.

Many of them useless in the normal world, many of them useless outside of a bar or cat house, but one of the more useful ones was that I should trust my adrenal gland.

It meant that my paranoid lizard brain understood something that my snotty intellect intellect was too busy to notice.

It happened when things were too quiet, when a certain car kept following the convoy, when somebody was acting funny.

There in the elevator, I almost reached for the grip of my rifle.

I wasn't wearing a rifle, of course, so I just scratched my chest, trying to keep my fingers loose.

Elliot put his hand to his hips.

Just like that, I was leaping across the gurney.

I grabbed his wrist with both hands, but it was an awkward angle, which me splayed over the gurney, and I had no control.

Silver pistol came out of his pants, still halfway in his holster.

Help!

Get him!

I shouted as I slid off the other side of the gurney towards Ellian's feet, holding on to that wrist for dear life.

I heard shouting everywhere, but nobody helped me and nobody got him.

Now I was on the floor, wrestling with Ellian.

There was a lot of awful, terrified fumbling.

Four hands were grabbing and clawing for the pistol.

Somehow, my head was jammed between Ellian's shoulder and the wall, and I couldn't even see the gun.

I could just feel the metal.

There was a shot, painfully loud.

Ellian shouted.

Was I hit?

now the gun was wet I managed to wiggle my fingers around the grip with one huge twisting jerk I put the muzzle against Ellian's face No,

I pulled the trigger a shot and his head kicked back against the wall mouth popping open everything

went still his hands were still holding mine.

Damn man

so pretty wild that there's like a conspiracy here with this slap for some reason this girl Castillo was important inside of the interface or the the digital, whatever, and she comes out conscious of what's going on, conscious of what's happening.

And this guy, Ellian, is trying to poison her.

Maybe Ellian's under the influence of Q or something like that.

Who knows, right?

Well, I'm wondering if Q is a government program thing.

I'm wondering if it's almost like, because in the story so far, people have been saying that they're trying to use these things and weaponize it and all that kind of stuff.

So to me, was Costello a person that was in there trying to disrupt people from weaponizing something or trying to stop people from doing X, Y, and Z?

I'm not sure how much of this is Mother Horse Eyes, in my opinion, or just people trying to abuse like some kind of power and take out a powerful figure or whatever.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, it could be.

It certainly could be.

I think Mother Horse's Eyes is connected in some way, but for some reason, she knows something.

She's smart.

What's funny is in the description for that, it says that this was originally posted in r slash tales from tech tech support and was removed by the mods.

Luckily, though, that's one thing that we keep that you'll find a lot, though, with this so far that we haven't really dived into.

But the community of people that were following along has really preserved this story in a great way.

Like, it's thanks to some users who have the screenshots or are able to basically draw in and put the pieces together.

The community is really

cool with that.

Yeah.

Yeah, this story's sick.

I'm absolutely in love with it.

He also reposted reposted it later to our slash anything goes ultimate, which is so, which they are, like he said, there's vague connections between it because the original post was, DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of cyber attribution.

So there is talk about like cyber and stuff like that, and then the story gets dropped there.

It does give across the idea of someone who's desperate for people to read this.

So he's like trying to find vaguely related things and comment on it.

All right, post 55, same day.

Yes, same day.

The people were moving along the river, as the people do do in the gentle days, moving from one fruitful place to another.

Maid played the flute, first a river song, then a berry song, then both mixed together, and it was so flowing that the people began to laugh and shout.

Resh slapped his chest and called out the names of the fathers and the deeds, and it all flowed so well that we almost didn't see the old woman in the thornflower bushes.

She was an old crone, huddled up in the bushes, naked and covered with cuts.

All the music fell away at once, and the people gathered around to take a look.

She was very old, far into the barren years, maybe even into the years of being carried.

I did not like the look of her right away.

She did not have the face of the fathers and the people, but rather the hungry, untrusting face of one of the wandering strangers that we sometimes met along the river.

Even when strangers were friendly, they did not know the names of the fathers or the deeds, except for maybe a few, but they did not say them properly or with respect.

Other times, they set upon the people, killing and raping and committing all manner of hideousness.

I was always glad to see them go on their way, leaving us alone with the Mother River.

Some of the other people tried to talk to the crone.

She knew some of the names of things, but said them wrong.

I went away from the crowd and looked out into the rocky land.

I had a feeling that maybe she was not alone, that there were other strangers with her, ready to set upon us.

The land seemed to be empty.

Some of our cats were with us, crouching and sniffing around, and they seemed unworried.

Still, I showed my chest and made signs of war in case anybody was among the rocks, watching us.

Rhyma saw me making the signs and laughed at me, saying that she saw some lizards making signs of surrender.

I made a few signs of courtship towards her, but with a snarling face, she ran off giggling.

Somebody called my name.

I came back to where the people were gathered.

Somebody had given the crone a cloth to cover herself.

Some of the women were putting good, lucky mud on her cuts.

I didn't like this.

Why would we waste anything on a barren old woman?

This sounds like Viking times.

Like, you know.

I literally almost thought it was like the fucking, I thought it was the wolf for a second, but I forgot that he got mauled at the end of that story.

Yes, it was a very similar name.

Somebody had called me because I was the son of Aried, Arred, one of the great men of the people.

The crone had called on all the great people, the leaders of the people.

She wanted to show us something.

I didn't like this either.

It was this useless crone to call on the great people.

The crone was talking to the great people.

The way she said the names was all wrong, but her voice was like a strong music and her eyes were very large and powerful and she moved her hands making all sorts of unknown signs.

The people listened to her closely and I found myself listening with them.

She said that she was the daughter of the river.

She did not have a mother and father of the flesh, but her mother was the river alone.

I scoffed at this.

The stories of the deeds tell us that the ancient people came from the river, but this was long ago.

They were not strangers, who came from the rocky lands alongside the lizards.

She went on talking, saying that she was living with the painted backs, a friendly group of strangers we had met before, but they had all been set upon by another group of strangers.

The other strangers were powerful and cruel, and they carried all the painted backs off except her.

This was how she ended up naked in the thorn bush.

People murmured at this.

When had it happened?

Just the night before.

This was worrying.

Maybe the other strangers were still around, waiting to set upon us.

The crone asked the people to take her with us.

This started more murmuring.

She was a stranger, not a person, and she was an old crone.

She could never become a person by birthing one of the people, nor could she work for the people.

She was useless.

Maid, the flute player, spoke up and said that we should show her the kindness of the people, the same kindness that Mother River shows to us.

Are we not useless to the river who is here before us

and would be here forever?

I liked Maid, who was close kin, but he liked talking and impressing people too much.

Now we were in the gentle days and things were easy, but what would happen in the dry days when everything needed to be saved?

And who would carry the crone when she could no longer walk?

The fathers did not perform the deeds so that we would carry old crones around, but I did not say this because I am not good at talking, and my words would seem weak compared to maids which glittered and flowered

the woman began talking in her strange way again saying that we should take her with us because the mother river would bless us with many things as she was the mother's daughter now some of the people began to scoff like i did saying that this was not according to the deeds the crone agreed with this calling these people wise and saying that some of the deeds were secret.

This started more talk, which started to lead toward argument when the old crone suddenly strode right into the river and held her hands up and called for everybody to watch.

The people became silent.

The woman reached into the river searching for something.

After a moment, she pulled her hands out and showed us, dripping and shining in the sun, three very large river clams.

Waving the clams around for us to see, the old crone claimed that this was proof.

that she was the blessed daughter of Mother River.

Many of the people snickered and muttered the names of the fathers.

Everyone knew that these were the gentle days, and it was easy enough to reach into the river and pull out clams.

The woman was just a filthy old trickster.

We should leave her and move on.

Look!

The woman cried, and she handed the clams to the great men.

Look inside!

Our uncle Kell slipped his thick yellow thumbnail into a clam's mouth and pulled it open.

The people pressed around him to get a look.

It was a nice clam with healthy meat, but clinging to the shell was a large, perfect pearl.

The women all let out little sighs, and the men murmured.

Other great men pulled open the other two clams, and they both held even larger pearls, all three perfectly round.

At this, people gasped and shouted, and everyone began talking at once.

A man might go a whole lifetime only seeing one perfect pearl pearled from the river.

Three was a thing that had never happened before.

Three was a thing which would live among the deeds.

Take her with us.

Take her with us.

You're switched when you said one of the women cried.

Like she cleared her throat, like,

sorry, take her with us.

One of the women cried.

And soon most of the people were saying this.

I found myself saying it as well.

The woman was surely part of a powerful flow, and it was best not to swim against her.

But even as the great men agreed that this woman would become a part of the people, and we all cheered and shouted out the names of the fathers and the deeds, I found myself looking at her strange, hungry face and wondering if she had not somehow slipped those pearls into the clams herself.

Then that's also uh

so one

it's a tale of like greed like keeping her around for the sake of like an unknown force keeping it around for your own gain kind of some way some ways that the interfaces have been talked about but then also the parallel there too of uh

uh the guy slipping the pellet into the woman's arm Like it's just like some kind of you know, I mean like

I dig that.

No, that's cool.

I also think um It's so so interesting to me because all of these are being like physically transcribed by our main guy who's dosed on LSD and sees these things, right?

And he's seeing everyone's memories at once.

So he's bouncing back and forth between a future with like people being hooked up to hygiene beds back to like

these ancient Norse times or like Native American times, whatever, you know, whatever tribal people this is walking by the river.

And he's like seeing their memories and he's recording them as well.

Like what a, gosh, what a, it's it's such an insane setup for a story like this.

Like we're bouncing back and forth to different times of fake history.

It's awesome.

You cannot quite understand the power of addiction until you've seen it firsthand.

Until you have seen it eat like an acid through everything you are.

It is astounding to watch.

Its slow and total corrosion of your entire life is mesmerizing.

As you watch it, you keep thinking...

At some point, the corrosion will stop.

There's no way it will be able to eat through this next thing.

This next thing's too important to me.

But then it does.

It eats through everything, and you realize you're dealing with a vast and inhuman power.

The most frightening thing is that consequences do not work against a well-developed addiction.

There are ultimately no consequences, none, which can separate you from the drug.

As your addiction progresses and your self-control slips away, there's nothing you won't risk to continue doing your drug.

Nothing is important enough.

Nothing is sacred enough.

Money, career, marriage, home, family, goals, art, religion, dignity, safety, health, sanity, parents, children, life itself, all of it will go into play.

All of it will be put on the table.

If you play the game shrewdly, you might get to keep some of it.

You will not get to keep all of it.

You will pay.

You will pay in ways that you cannot imagine.

You will look at the people who have lost more than you, and you will pretend you are different than them.

You will pretend that you can walk away from the table, but the time will come to walk away, and you won't.

You will keep playing.

You will be made a liar.

If you play long enough, all your pious little promises will be shown to be lies.

I have a good job.

I'd never risk my job.

I love my wife.

I would never risk my marriage.

I love my children more than anything.

I would never risk my child's safety.

Ever.

I don't want to die.

Whatever specific promises you make will be the ones that you will break, because those are the ones you have made to try to control yourself.

But you won't be able to control yourself.

Your self-control will be pried from your grasp like a toy being being taken from a child.

And when these promises break, you will not be some mindless junkie who doesn't care anymore.

You will be in many ways the same person you are now.

And you will know how awful and horrifying your actions are.

And you will do them anyway.

You will not be able to believe what is happening to you.

You will tell yourself that you are unlucky or cursed.

You will watch in horror.

But what you are watching is yourself.

The horror is what you are doing.

I realize this all sounds rather silly and dramatic from the perspective of somebody dabbling with drugs this all sounds laughably overwrought but if you ever go where i've been if you ever see what i've seen this will still sound laughable not because it's overwrought but because it's insufficient because it doesn't even begin to describe it

interesting so

something that i was wondering if that's all it the perspective i was wondering if that's the perspective of like a counselor at the aa thing at the sober house or whatever it might be it also might be the perspective of the guy that

was talking about the black Israelite guy before that dude.

Yeah, gave him the charger.

Yeah.

The charger.

Or it is the guy who has been brought up a couple of times with addiction.

The guy who had the story for the old woman.

I forget what his second story was, but that guy who seems like an addict.

Yeah.

Yeah, a while ago.

It might be him.

Also, that post was made in response to R/Relationships.

The post says, my 25-year-old, me, 25-year-old females, my brother-in-law, 30-year-old male, won't stop abusing pills and it's tearing the family apart.

And then that was made in response to it.

So this could also be, alternatively, because we have our main character, Mother Horse Eyes, who's like

the transcriber for all these memories he's seen.

He talks about having addiction.

So this could also be him, just like having an honest talk about what addiction's done to him.

To hunt prey, to taste righteous lifeblood, you must simply become an ordinary part of the world.

Look around.

What's happening right now?

Nothing at all.

Yet the leaves rustle, the grass waves, the birds call, the gnats dance.

All of this is just a part of the world.

If you become a part of the world, you become nothing at all.

You become invisible.

If you are not part of the world, the world becomes 10,000 things.

This is misfortune.

It is easy enough to become invisible if you stay still, if you hide.

But staying still and hiding aren't enough to catch prey.

You must seek and strive.

How do you seek and strive while remaining an ordinary part of the world?

How do you exert your will without disrupting the world?

How do you move along with the will of the world?

This is the mystery of hunting.

This is the mystery of subtlety.

This is the greatest of all mysteries.

Consider the mouse.

It is moving through the leaves looking for food.

You must not disturb it.

Do as little as possible.

Wait.

Watch and listen.

If it moves away, move with it.

Follow it.

If it moves closer, stay still.

Practice, not interference.

Let it come.

It should be thinking happy thoughts of food and comfort when you strike.

When you snare it in your claws, do not eat it right at once.

Let it struggle and give up its lifeblood.

Practice, not action.

You need not kill it.

Let it die.

To be subtle is to move with the will of the world.

Do not move against the will of the world.

This brings misfortune.

Touch lightly the course of things without disturbing it.

Touch it gently at points of inflection, and it will move as you wish.

This brings great fortune.

This is the ancient art of subtlety, taught to us by our form.

I must follow it if I am to find any answers to the mystery of the oily ones.

The mystery which has obsessed me since the death of my kitten.

I must know why they both feed us and kill us.

Why they are kind and motherly, but also unnatural.

and abominable.

I have decided that I will go into one of their hiding places.

After much investigation, I have chosen a place.

It is a very large and horrible hiding place, a sort of mountain of box-like shapes colored by unnatural light.

It emits a powerful and unholy odor of decadence.

What is more, there is something which makes it different from other oily places I have seen.

It seems that some of our kind live within this place.

I have seen them from a distance, going in and out of it, using small portals.

They are different than those of our kind that I have known.

It seems that some of the oily ones' corruption has mutated them.

They are very fat and slow.

Their faces are stupid and sullen.

They fear nothing.

They have lost subtlety.

I'm not even sure they are truly of our kind.

I will go inside.

I must be subtle.

To be subtle, I must become a part of the world.

I may have to become a part of the abomination itself.

I may find death, bloody death, as my kitten did, but I will hunt to the heart of this mystery and I will sleep again.

I was really hoping that's from the perspective of a Discord mod.

Sure, Honor.

What?

The guy death of my kitten?

This is the same guy from the Oily One entry, where he says the oily ones lack all harmony.

They are neither silky nor subtle.

They are slow nor stupid.

That guy, post 44.

So he's the guy whose kitten died, and now he's determined to figure out what they're doing down there, what they're building, effectively.

Next is the 58th post made same day.

Now I was standing...

Okay, cool.

We're back to the guy who just shot Idien or Ellian, whatever his name was, with Castillo.

Now I was standing in an elevator, my hands covered with blood, a dead tech lying on the floor and a helpless occupant lying on the gurney.

The other two techs had hit the emergency button and hastily gotten off of the next floor.

Understandable.

I tried to explain to them about the poisoned pellet in Carrot's arm, but they didn't stick around and consider the merits of my argument.

I set the gun down on the floor.

This wasn't good.

A couple of Ellian's fingers had gotten blown off, and there was blood all over me.

Not to mention the bullet in my head.

Shit, what now?

I had shot people before.

I'd killed them before, but this was different.

They had given me mandatory therapy after the war.

They might give me mandatory something else after this.

Karen was wheezing, her blind eyes wiggling in her head.

The pellet.

I should take care of that before anything else.

I wiped my hands off of my nice white coat and rifled through one of the text bags to find the C-knife and some local.

This shouldn't be too hard.

It should be a lot like removing a rotted jack.

I'm going to cut out the pellet.

You ready?

Karen's head jiggled in a way that could be constructed as nodding.

Good enough.

I hastily gave her the local and cut a pretty sizable chunk out of her arm, and the whole elevator filled with a burning smell that was a welcome change from Karen's existing smell.

After sealing the wound, I examined the shriveled chunk of meat.

There is indeed a white pellet lodged in it like a little pearl.

I put it in a specimen jar.

I I might need it to avoid death row.

Okay, you're safe now.

I said, not really knowing if this was true.

Her monitor still looked okay.

What now?

I wanted to get out of there, but there was certainly a camera in the elevator plus two witnesses who knew me.

What would the cameras show?

Me suddenly leaping across the elevator and shooting a guy in the head?

That wasn't good.

But how would I even begin to go on the run?

I didn't know the first thing about identity shifting.

And hadn't I done the right thing?

I'd saved her life.

I had the pellet to prove it.

I was a hero, right?

I felt like reporting this to my CO.

This didn't make any sense, but I should report it to somebody.

Called the emergency service home, I said, and told it what had happened.

It told me that officers would be sent over immediately.

Tried to explain about the pellet, but this seemed to confuse it.

It asked me if the pellet was armed.

After a few minutes of confusing crosstalk, I just hung up.

As I waited and the minutes passed, the elevator felt very small and smelly and stifling.

The blood around Ellian covered the floor, surrounding my shoes.

I imagined the cops coming up on the elevator as slow as this one.

Karen's head still wobbling in its weird way, the gurney making little creaking sounds, little gasps coming out of her throat.

Everything's fine.

You're in the real world now.

I found myself saying, half-heartedly going through my standard pattern.

Absurd.

Nothing was fine.

Then the thought finally occurred to me.

Why had Ellian tried to kill the girl?

Who wanted her dead?

This was an important question.

Whoever it was wouldn't be happy with me.

Looking at her lying there, gasping, I knew it wouldn't be much use to ask her verbally, but she still had good jacks.

It was against protocol to plug into a feed hedge jacks.

We were supposed to be getting them used to face-to-face conversation, but protocol did say you could plug in during an emergency.

It's definitely qualified.

I told my set to find her Jax wireless presence.

A flood of messages hit the set, a backlog from the last couple minutes.

Don't, don't, don't call police.

Bad idea.

We have to go.

Go, go.

Police are coming.

Get out.

Go.

Go.

What?

I murmured as I saw the messages.

Q controls text.

Controls police.

Police will kill you.

We must go.

Who is Q?

The adversary.

Yes.

I was.

Oh.

Oh, where's my...

I've laid out five bear traps.

That one just snapped so hard, bro.

Okay.

So the adversary is the term that Satan means in the Bible.

That's like the translation or what?

Or the opponent, the adversary, something like that.

So Q is the devil.

And who have we seen the devil alliterated to throughout the story?

Mother Horse Eyes, the mother.

So yes.

Oh man.

Oh man.

This story's so good.

Okay.

Yeah.

So she was fighting mother inside of the system.

Then she comes out of it.

And now Ellian, who is controlled by mother, tried to kill her.

Police are also controlled by Q.

Yes.

Let's go, baby.

Gosh, this is good.

Okay.

Shit, this was so familiar to a feed narrative.

It felt like I had played this one before.

What was that that one?

Was Zach Okunqua?

Fatal Escape or some shit like that?

Terrible story.

Why do they want to kill you?

I am one of the bread.

The bread?

I had heard the name before.

I wasn't sure if it was from the news or a narrative.

I had a vague idea that it was one of the old art protest collectives like Anonymous or The Weather Underground.

Or was it a feed cult?

I asked my set, and it gave me a summary.

You want to add that one again?

Yeah, I can read that one if you want to.

Okay.

One One second.

Sorry.

I was also eating a little bit of breakfast.

Oh, oh, sorry.

I can go.

I can go.

No, it's good.

I just, well, I was going to say,

I had an egg McMuffin.

The fucking egg on the inside is like gray.

Is that normal?

Oh.

No.

There should never be a situation where the inside of an egg is gray.

I'll go ahead and confirm that for you right there.

You are now sick.

You are going to be throwing up before this episode's over.

Oh, shit.

That's why I was like really bummed.

I'm sending you a picture of it.

Is it going to be your naked body again?

Is this going to be like your...

No, no, no.

Okay.

I'm fully expecting to look down on my phone, and it's not a picture of

you with your pants down, as per usual.

Okay.

Oh, ew.

Isn't that gross?

Well, I mean, maybe, maybe, okay, where it's just on the edge like that, that might be like gristle from the grill.

You know how sometimes like the little runoff of the egg whites will kind of like char a little bit.

Yeah.

Could be that, but that's kind of pretty nasty looking.

Yeah, I peeled it off.

I was like, I'm not eating that shit.

Anyways, God, I'm going to have diarrhea later.

Such a bummer.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, that's rough.

Anyway, yeah, the bread.

Yeah.

The bread is an alleged group of exploit experts who are thought to have been kidnapped at a young age and trained by a shadowy group.

Variously identified as the Human Front, the Restoration Alliance, and the New Organ.

They're the subject of number of conspiracy theories, most of which assert the internet's combined governance corporation has been taken over by a sinister force, which the bread are struggling against within the uh within the feed realms and the infra spaces.

These theories generally involve discussion of mind control, feed conditioning, information war, and the possibility of fascist singularity, occult singularities.

Regard the bread as the leaders of the new 12 tribes of Israel.

The new 12 tribes.

That's so sick.

Gosh, this story's cool.

Okay.

So

the bread isn't it's not like the last human it's the last people that are resisting like q the mother stuff like that okay gotcha but in in this world like because all the powers that be are evil or connected to it he again conspiracy theory stuff he asks what the bread is and it's like oh the bread some crazy conspiracy theory group um

but it's actually because the bread are the only people who know about q and are fighting back and she the last of the bread just got unplugged from the system so now there's no one to oppose Q inside of it.

Which also, I mean, this is probably obvious to point out.

But Q is the name of like,

not just like the new Q Anon thing.

Like previously, Q is a title often associated with a lot of

it originally.

I think the first use of it comes from like the

point of view that's never directly accounted for in the Gospels of the Bible, but Q gets used a lot to describe like hidden powers or unseen forces and stuff like that, which is why I believe the whole Q Anon thing got its name from, but yeah, it's just more real-world conspiracy stuff that's drawing names off of, right?

Anyway, is this real or is this part of a narrative?

My set replied.

The bride are featured in many narratives, but are perpetrated to hard exist.

There is no widely accepted proof of their existence.

Can I through gate your set?

What for?

We must go now.

Now, now.

I heard footsteps in the hallway.

The elevator doors were still open, so I peeked my head out.

Police were coming down the hall.

A lot of police, tactical gear.

I intended to call to them, but the little lizard part of my brain told me to duck back into the elevator.

There was a huge metal bang.

Found myself on the floor with the gun in my hand.

A bullet had hit the elevator door frame.

Karen's messages unspoiled onto my set.

I know Q.

Ruthless.

She'll spoof calls to emergency.

Multiple calls.

Say you're an active shooter.

Let me throughgate.

Now.

You wanna die?

I gave her throughgate access on my set.

The elevator slammed shut and my stomach leapt in my throat as we plunged downward.

Man, that story's so cool.

All that stuff is so sick.

Oh, man.

As the elevator plunged down through the building, I tried to understand the implications of it all.

It was horrifying and raging.

All this time, my entire life, without me knowing it, elevators had had a secret faster speed that they don't tell us about, those bastards.

Message from Karen appeared on my set.

Must lure them.

They will fire in here.

Get ready.

They will what?

This was out of hand.

God, I felt cranked up.

Fantastic.

The elevator began to slow, everything becoming heavy.

Please move the body away from the door.

Move the dead body?

No, she meant her own body.

I pushed the gurney against the side of the elevator.

Door will open.

Take cover.

I pressed myself up against the wall.

The elevator came to a rattling stop and the door popped open.

The back wall banged and dented as bullets hit it.

I cowered against the wall, hoping nothing flew into my arteries.

The door clapped shut again, and the floor seemed to fall out from under me as I went down.

Man, this little bird had some access.

Never seen anything like it.

Another message from Karen popped into my set, and I read every word in a glance.

Silverhawu van, parking number 17A, 20 meters.

Please take me, please.

The elevator came to another shuddering stop, and the doors opened one of the underground decks, a dim concrete cavern filled with rows of cars.

I yanked the gurney out and pushed it like a madman, rattling over the asphalt.

The van was where she said it would be.

I stood there for a moment, waiting for it to pull out for us, but it just sat there.

This world is so wild.

So thought out.

I guess so.

I followed the ER guide, looking around every so often to see if anybody was coming.

Weird sounds were emerging from the elevators.

They seemed to be malfunctioning.

I got a a wire from my bag and linked Karen's flesh jack to a physical jack by the van's gas cap.

A second later, the van's rear door unfolded.

Get in.

I did as she said.

Following her orders felt totally natural.

It was like I was right back on the tip of the spear.

I remembered my time in Turkey and Greece, playing feed games with the platoon all day, then getting dropped right into the kinetic, right into the warm, bloody center of the war.

Run here, shoot this, get down.

19 years old.

Traveling the world and blowing shit up while the other kids were sitting in economics class.

God, it was beautiful while it lasted.

I shoved the gurney into the van and jumped in beside it.

The rear door folded down.

Please secure the body.

90 seconds left.

90 seconds left until what?

I flat in a seat and clumsily transferred her body to it and strapped it in.

The van leapt backward and began twisting through space, throwing me against a side window.

Sorry, must go.

I got in in the other seat and strapped in as the van peeled out.

We found the exit ramp and went up.

I felt like I was about to break a rib on the armrest as we went on a never-ending left turn up and up the spiraling ramp.

Finally, the daylight of the ground level burst into view.

The whole parking lot was swarmed with flashing cop cars, black armored vehicles, and cops in hard gear.

The van came to a stop in the middle of it all.

Fuck, I muttered.

The cops were moving in a hurry.

It seems like they hadn't quite formed a proper perimeter around the building, but they were close.

We've got to go now.

They're going to form a...

Wait.

For what?

Air.

All around us, the cops were assembling, pulling their vehicles into place, leveling their pistols and rifles.

I watched our few possible avenues of exit close up.

The van just sat there.

Karen's eyes were closed.

She looked calm, at peace, just a sick little girl taking a nap.

I heard a sound and my blood ran cold.

I hadn't heard that sound in years, but there was no mistaking it.

It was a sound that was etched into my brain.

In the Marines, we used an app called Harpy to call in air-to-ground strikes.

It was a wonky, overengineered DOD piece of shit, full of weird quirks that they were afraid to fix in the name of ultra-stability.

It made a little sound like a sleepy bird chirping when a friendly missile was incoming, and it was time to put your stupid head down so that you wouldn't get all the expensive training blown out of your skull.

About two seconds after that sound, something would light up, and a moment later the sound of the blast would hit and the ground would shake.

I heard that sound now coming from my set.

My god, what kind of access did she have?

Get down.

A moment later, police perimeter around us became a wall of fire, and the van was hit with a boom that felt like the earth splitting open.

Put my head between my knees and let that old feeling flow through me, shuddering rush of American air power being liberally applied.

When I opened my eyes again, the van's safety windows had bowed inward on Karen's side, almost becoming liquid.

Everything around the van was engulfed in fire and smoke.

Slowly, the windows began to regain their shape.

The van took off with a start, rushing blindly through the chaos.

Two minutes later, we were on the interstate, flying down the taxpayer lane, and I was sitting there, trying to remember how to swallow.

It was unreal, just unreal.

She had called in a drone strike in the middle of Atlanta.

The level of access required to do that was unimaginable.

It meant completely basing the DOD systems.

It was beyond any exploit collective.

It was beyond governmental.

It was planetary.

It was god-level.

I was sitting in a van with an infraspace god.

The uh

the Karen story is uh so far the one that I'm just like, I'm glued to it every time we read it.

That's so good.

The story of Karen Castillo.

It also says that this was posted in response to Lolly or Fuda.

What do you guys think?

What do you guys think?

Gosh, that was such a good...

Oh, man.

Like, the story's hooked.

The story's exciting.

There's controlling airstrikes.

And also, I love the little details where it's like, oh, we're on the 300th floor because it's these giant buildings.

They don't refer to them as rooms.

They refer to them as like cubes or whatever that people stay in while they're hooked up.

And then it's talking about you go,

they get down to the car, and there's like an old manual for how to jack someone in.

And then you have

like they control their space.

When the explosion happens, it's like the glass bows in, then regains its shape, like a new futuristic kind of glass that's made for protection.

Just such crazy stuff like that.

It's so cool.

And also,

like,

so earlier, we when we're talking about the flesh interfaces

we know that the children have a better chance of survival right yeah and then we know with um

like these interfaces that groups like north korea were using them to beam internet and then my theory was that this world they're plugged into is connected to that so maybe the reason she's so successful and could do all this stuff and the reason that the bread sent her in is because she was a child a nine-year-old child who was a good candidate for this and just like child survived the flesh interface, she was able to survive with her consciousness through the internet and become like an effective fighter against Q while inside of it.

It's a lot.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

But, okay.

This is your realm.

This is your realm of theorizing.

I'm like,

I mean, I'm like, I feel like I'm going fucking brain dead.

I'm like, uh-huh.

But are you, is there any, is there anything that like,

You're confused on or does it make sense?

I know it's a lot, but is it comprehensible?

No, no, no.

No, no, it's comprehensible.

It's just something too to where I feel like I don't have any objections or counter thoughts.

I'm just kind of like listening to you kind of spazz out and stem with theorizing stuff.

And then I'm like, yeah, I mean, this all sounds good.

I'm also just enjoying the story, too.

You know, it's been nice.

It does go hard.

It does, in fact, go hard.

All right.

60th post, same day.

60.

I love waking up in the morning to the smell of fresh biscuits.

The warm smell fills my dreams.

I smell like friends and home and happiness.

I wake up to see the sun so bright and lovely in my window.

Hello, Day.

How are you?

Every day is bright and cheery when you share a house with your best friends.

I can hear them downstairs singing and having fun.

After a long night of spooky old dreams, it's good to be awake again in the cheery, deary sunlight.

That's what it's like.

That's why I feel like waking up with in your house, Hunter, and just

I was so

out of you.

I was literally thinking of, that's how you wake up up in the morning.

This is like literally your thoughts transcribed.

I sat up in bed and I'm like, ooh, I gotta do a big stretch.

Hello, hello, world.

Hello, Dave.

How are you?

Hello, son.

Like, I could, unironically, I could see you standing out of bed and, like, there'd be a window on your window, or there would be a bird on your windowsill, and you'd be like, hello, Mr.

Bird.

Like, I could see you saying that.

I would love me woken up with a bird.

That would be so nice.

And you like whistle back at at him?

You're like whistling with them.

Hello, sunshine.

How are you?

Yeah.

Hello, beautiful hair.

Oh, what a lovely day.

What a lovely day.

The fall hunter stumbles out of bed completely naked.

Yeah, naked.

About to shit my pants.

I'm like putting my hand over my ass.

I'm like, oh, God, bathroom.

Bathroom.

I have to sprint off.

What's the little purple guy's name on Smiling Friends?

Pim?

The little dude with the wizard hat?

Yeah.

Or no, you're talking about the other guy.

No, I'm talking about Pym.

Truly Pim.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That is, I am truly Pim.

And you're kind of like,

that's a pretty good comparison.

Oh, what a beautiful name.

You kiss your dad on the lips.

Yeah, you kiss your dad on the lips.

All right.

Anyway.

I love you, Daddy.

I love you, Daddy.

Oh.

Yeah, that's a pretty good comparison now that I say that out loud.

Oh.

Oh, what a beautiful day.

The episode where he's trying to make that guy smile the whole time because he's so happy.

Yeah.

Anyway.

I unlock my bedroom door and go out into the hall.

Some of my friends have left fresh piles of biscuits in the hallway.

Several different kinds.

Wonderful.

I breathe in the smell and make chirpy little sounds of glee.

Hee hee.

Oh, another day.

Chester Barrington comes up the stairs, looking very handsome and somber in his tuxedo.

Oh, Chester, how is the gentleman today?

Chester nods to me, gruff but debonair.

Proceedings are afoot, Madam Alice.

Proceedings are afoot.

He grumbles and makes his way down the hallway.

That Chester's so self-serious.

On the stairway, Brett, Turlingshire, and Mansie Fairworth are in each other's arms, arms, a lover's embrace.

Oh dear, I'm afraid I've interrupted your triss.

Oh, madame, nonsense.

This is no triss.

This is destined love affair.

Brett proclaims in his ringing voice.

He looks dashing in his fine striped coat.

Brett, darling, Madame Alice doesn't want to hear all the gooey talk, Mansie says in her sassy southern accent.

I'll leave you to be, I say, lifting the hem of my nightgown and hurrying past them.

When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I hear Brett murmur.

I wish the madam would find a destined love affair of her own.

She's a noble woman and deserves somebody to treat her well.

You just worry about treating me well.

Mansie purrs, nuzzling against his cheek.

I scurry off before they catch me listening.

In the downstairs parlour, Raymond Dex, Montrose, Pardon Smith, and Elise Rapier are having tea together.

The smell of biscuits fills the room, a fresh heap of toffee-colored scones covers the coffee table, a wonderful selection of pastries lies in the corner, and several of the chairs contain more treats.

Hello, dearies.

How are we today?

Can't complain.

Raymond says.

Splendid.

Sir Pardon Smith in tones.

Elise merely lets out a little sigh.

Elise, we're not feeling well?

I ask, coming over to where she is perched on the arm of the couch.

Um,

shouldn't we be?

Life is but a vague dream with disrupts the sleep of death.

That's me, that's you.

All of these characters have been made.

And watch, I walk over to you.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm the guy getting pussy upstairs for sure.

No, you are not.

You are.

I'm the guy

who's down here.

No, absolutely.

I don't know.

No, no, no.

That's never been you.

I've been in your house.

That's never happened while I was at your house.

But you know what?

You have done?

You have been very sad.

Oh, Elise.

Must you be so existentialist?

Je nous pas exe la.

There was so much disdain for the French in that.

She mutters, getting up and stalking off.

Poor Elise,

I say as she leaves the room.

She is affected by that peculiar continental innui, Sir Pardon Smith observes.

I say she needs a dose of sturdy American optimism.

Her birthday is coming soon.

Perhaps we should throw her a party.

Ha!

A party for Elise?

That would go over like a bomb mitzvah for goebles, Raymond says.

Oh, Raymond.

I say, tousling his orange hair.

Well, we'll have to figure out something for her.

I don't like her moping about.

She's inveterate mope.

There's no changing her.

You might be right, sir.

I say, sign.

Well, cis la vie.

Not everybody can be as happy as I am.

Some years ago, I was much like Elise.

Down, which, uh, my bear trip, by the way, is this is like, um, this is inside of like Mother Horse Eyes world or whatever, or one of the systems plugged in, which I think is the same thing, just in the future.

Also, you said cés la vie and it's c'est la vie.

Is that bothering you?

I just really respect the French language, so

no, you do not after you read genes pois the way that you did, absolutely not

Perfect.

Fluent.

Fluent French rabbit.

Sounds like you're trying to do a Jamaican accent, trying to pronounce a French accent.

Yeah.

C'est la vie mon.

There you go.

Oh.

Just in the minute, this is all like they're all Victorian England characters, and then there's just like a modern Jamaican guy over there pretending to be a Frenchman.

There's fucking Eddie from Tekken hopping around the room.

What's wrong with her?

Oh.

Some years ago, I was much like Elise, down the dumps, a real gray cloud.

Then I met a lovely young woman who happened to be passing through my neighborhood.

Her name was Angelica.

It had been a long time since I had enjoyed the delights of society, but Angelica had a very mature, soothe presence, despite her youth.

I lived in a large house where my family had once resided, but was now empty, so I asked her to stay with me.

She accepted just like that.

Can you imagine it?

Two strangers just making a home together?

It must have been Kismet.

She was my precious angel treasure, absolutely heaven-sent.

I had been something of an existentialist myself, disbelieving in God and thinking his creation a cruel trap for human prey.

But then he saw it fit to bring Angelica into my life, and I never doubted him again.

I found her company such a balm that I decided to open my home to whoever needed a place to stay.

Singletons, couples, whole families have stayed with me.

Many children have been born in this house.

Though dear sweet Angelica has long since passed away, her friendship is still a daily gift to me.

For on the day I met her, I made a choice to simply not feel sadness or worry or fear ever again, and I haven't.

Do you think it impossible?

It is possible.

If you simply surround yourself with loved ones.

That's the secret.

With all these thoughts in mind, I walk into the kitchen to see Reginald Strongton, Linda Mercy Chowder, and Marshall Futz clamouring for their breakfast.

Madame, I'm famished!

Reginald cries.

Oh dear, Madame, we starve, we want, we waste away.

Linda says in a tremulous voice.

Oh mercy, I left you with a kingly feast last night.

Have you eaten it all?

I ask.

It was not us.

We had not a bite.

It was that Chester Barrington, the scoundrel.

Reginald cried.

He's a ferocious and utterly selfish.

I found him down here, helping himself to your generosity.

And when I tried to serve myself the smallest morsel, he attacked me.

Attack me, madame.

My nose still smarts.

Oh, that Chester does have an appetite, but I find it hard to believe such a gentleman would attack you.

I'm on the verge of swooning.

I don't think that's a good idea.

All right, dear.

Let's have ourselves.

I don't think that character existed in 18th century England.

I don't think that was a copy.

I'm on the verge of swooning.

All right, dears.

Let's have ourselves a proper breakfast.

I say, why does that character work its way into every story we do?

He shows up.

I'm on the verge.

I'm on the verge of gooning.

David King shows up regardless of what story.

You keep it up.

I'll bring back someone that you're tired of.

You just wipe.

He's been dead a while, but he can always come back.

I get a bag of cuisine from the cabinets and pour it into china bowls for Reginald, Linda, and Marshall and myself.

I clear off the love biscuits that somebody left on the kitchen table and we all sit down to eat.

My little friends immediately proceed with chowing down, and I am about to follow suit, but I notice something that brings me a wonderful thrill.

There is a stranger standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

I have never seen her before.

She appears to have snuck into the house alone.

She stands there, tense and alert, her yellow eyes taking in the scene.

I am breathless.

She is beautiful, extraordinary, exquisite.

She reminds me of my sweet Angelica.

Oh, lovely day.

I'm about to have a new friend.

Alright, so I think that one is either people who have passed through a flesh interface or they're inside of the system, the online program, and this is Q or the mother showing up.

Yeah.

At the very ending.

But this is like one of the scenarios they put themselves into, like a perfectly romantic, happy day,

like Victorian English fantasy kind of thing.

Next one at 3 a.m.

Post 61.

We rode in silence for a while, the Hayoya luxury chariot flying across the curves of the interstate as all the other cars obediently changed lanes to let us through.

I'd seen people pull access stunts before, like changing the music in a club or turning off the lights in a restaurant, but what she had done was outright sorcery.

She had taken control of the elevator, the car, the drone, the other cars on the highway, all within seconds.

She must have had control of all the security cameras to plan our escape.

Every one of these was a hardened system.

The drone was a DOD system, the hardest of systems, but she based it like it's child's play.

Sitting there in the car, I felt like I was coming down off a high.

It wasn't a good feeling.

I was sitting in a van with the mass murderer of unspeakable power, and I'd helped her.

Given her the access she needed to pull her stunts.

She had saved my life, I think.

I'd saved hers.

But she also just killed dozens of cops, maybe over a hundred men with families.

Damn, my life was over.

And I helped her.

That was a death sentence right there.

We would become the most wanted people in the country.

How did I get caught up in this?

I looked over at her tiny skeletal body, so frail and weak.

I could pick her up and chuck her out the backs of the van and into this whole escapade.

But then what?

Face the death penalty?

She had to be my best chance at getting away.

Who was she?

She was a killer, that was for sure.

Utterly ruthless.

A message from her appeared on my set.

Sorry about all that.

Had to hurry.

Sorry, that was rich.

I asked her where we were going.

Upstate New York.

What's there?

An objective.

What's our objective?

A way to defeat you.

Ought to explain.

I wondered if she was insane.

She was responsive and lucid, but she was also capable of murder.

She would probably get rid of me as soon as she could.

So you want me to come with you?

I'd like it.

I need physical help.

You killed like a hundred cops back there.

The whole world is going to be looking for us.

No, they won't.

You don't think so?

This isn't.

Yeah, I kind of read that.

No, they kind of read it like she was like looking around.

likes being sassy

No, they won't you don't think so?

This is in the feed realm

They take kills they take kills pretty seriously in the real world.

I do too, but they'll be too busy to look for us busy with what

Q

What's Q gonna do?

You will find out

four minutes Just tell me

You wouldn't believe me.

We fell back into silence.

My thoughts were racing.

I wondered why they didn't just flag our car to shut down the highway.

I guess she was busy working her black magic on the police and transportation systems.

Who knew what she was capable of?

Was she really one of the bread?

A grown-up child soldier?

It is illegal to hook children into long-term feeds, but I had heard stories about China and the FRN connecting infants, trying to create people who were utterly at one with the internet.

According to the tales, the children all died.

So they tried older children, but they all turned into drooling skull baskets.

For some reason, the brain needs a certain level of maturity before it can withstand a long-term feed without resulting in total madness.

Even then, it results in near-total madness.

I figured Karen was another child abuse case, but she wasn't just some feet casualty.

Her mind worked.

Worked well.

Whoever had made her had done the forbidden, and they had done it successfully.

But why did I have to get involved in all this?

I just gotten my specialist license.

After getting out of the Marines and just drifting around for years, I was finally hitting my stride.

Now Now it was all screwed up.

Don't look back.

I looked over at the girl lying next to me.

Was it possible that she hacked so far in infraspace that she could read minds?

There was a passing flash of light, like sunlight glancing off some car.

Then everything around us started to get brighter and brighter, like the sun had just come out from behind a cloud.

But there weren't any clouds in the sky.

The light was coming from behind us, bouncing off the other cards, creating a painful glare.

I almost turned around, but then I realized what Karen had said.

Closed closed my eyes against the brightness, and the insides of my eyelids glowed red like I was lying on the beach.

After a few seconds, the light dimmed and seemed to return to normal.

I opened my eyes, blinked a few times, and turned around.

A few miles behind us, the entire city of Atlanta had disappeared behind a megalithic wall of dark, rolling smoke.

I felt my mouth falling open.

I leaned back to look up at the sky behind us.

The giant wall of smoke was just the base of a monstrous black tree of ash that rose miles into the sky, growing larger and larger, looming over the world.

Then we were hit by a blast that rattled me right down to the roots of my teeth.

I shut my eyes again.

The blast turned into a long, horrifying roar.

The van wobbled and shuddered as awful groaning sounds passed through the metal.

Eventually, the van steering systems right at us and slowly the roar passed.

That must have been the blast wave of a nuclear detonation.

That had just destroyed Atlanta.

I unbuckled my seat and crawled to the back and pressed my face against the glass.

The tree of smoke was still growing over us, becoming ever more massive.

I just stared in silence.

Slowly it changed from one awful form to another until it became a vague gray pillar in the far distance.

I'm not sure how long I spent watching it.

I know that by the time I looked away, I was crying.

Damn, they tried to nuke him in the city.

So, Q fired the nuke, right?

Yeah, that's

the implication.

I approached the oily one's hiding place with subtlety, alert, not disturbing, letting everything flow through me.

I did not search for anything, but allowed all to reveal itself.

Smells were disturbing, awful.

I could smell our kind, the mingling scents of multitudes.

They seemed to have marked everything without any regard for each other.

In front of the portal sat two of our kind.

They were monstrously round and swollen, their form distorted.

Dull eyes followed me with curiosity as I approached.

Even as I came within the dangerous range, they showed no interest.

Was it a trap to bring me in close?

They did not attack.

I passed them and came to the portal slowly.

I pushed my head through the folding threshold.

The inside was utterly bizarre, made of the mostly box-like shapes and arrangements I could hardly comprehend.

There's no grass, no trees, nothing belonging to the form of the world.

Instead, there were straight, flat shapes folded around to cover up everything, above and below, all sides.

In the distance, some of our kind were walking around within this odd space, slow and swollen as the ones outside.

The smell was worse than outside, even more confusing.

I saw and smelled uncovered droppings everywhere.

To not cover droppings was unsubtle.

It was a moral outrage.

Still, I pushed through the mortal and entered the space.

The ground was hard and slippery and smelled of legions.

Everything was silent, deeper silence than I had ever known.

I knew now that I was cut off from the world for the first time in my life.

I was alone.

I moved forward.

I wanted to shut out the smells and sounds, but I let them pass through me.

I was terrified, but I let the terror pass through me.

I wondered if I was being unsubtle, if I was disturbing the world, if I was inviting deadly misfortune.

But I felt no insight on this matter.

The answer would make itself known soon enough.

As I moved deeper into the space, I came upon a giant oily one.

I call her Angelica because she is Angelica.

No doubt about it.

Oh, she looks different this time, but I think Angelica will look different every time she comes to me.

She is also much shyer this time.

Such a shy little thing, but the way she moves, the pure, lovely way, there's no mistaking it.

It's Angelica again.

How wonderful, how lovely.

Would you think I'm a silly old bitty if I started crying?

Oh, if I got on my knees right then and there and started thanking God how he is great, how he has seen fit to bless me.

I've been investigating this space and I've gosh, I love it when it does that.

Yeah, I love the switchoffs too.

Oh, it's so good.

It's so fun.

I've been investigating this space, and I found much confusion and monstrosity, but no answers.

There is a single oily one which stays here, as well as many of our kind.

All of them, the oily one and our kind, are monstrously swollen and distorted.

The oily one is particularly reeks of corruption and disease and death.

She cries to me like a lost whelp, but I keep my distance from her.

I avoid the others of my kind as well.

The space has many many spaces within itself.

Each of these spaces holds a thousand mysteries.

It is everything I can do to not be overwhelmed, to let the mystery flow through me.

Darkness has come and left, and I am terribly hungry.

The oily one comes to me with food, wonderful food, but I am afraid to take it.

Also, I want to say right now that the sorry, the Victorian chick, 100% an oily one, and then she's seeing the guy walking in.

Yeah, this is the same interaction from both perspectives.

Yeah, the oily ones are basically living in that, like

Mother Horse Eyes has basically put them into a perpetual trance.

I feel like

they're in a trance.

They're hooked up on the LSD and all that stuff.

In their mind, they're inside of an old Victorian house living together when in reality, they're inside of this giant flesh cave.

Yeah, just a giant

cavern or whatever.

And the new Angelica that she sees, Alice, I believe her name was, Alice sees inside of the flesh cave or whatever.

The new Angelica walking up is this person who we see the other perspective of.

Yeah, who sees the reality reality of it all?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I wonder, what exactly am I looking for?

I am looking for some answers to the mystery of the Oily Ones, but what form will this take?

I cannot know.

All around me are forms I do not recognize.

I must not look for anything.

I'll simply become a part of this place and let the answer show itself to me.

Angelica has been here for over a day, but she hasn't spoken to me yet.

I think I understand why.

The last time she came to me, I was the shy one.

I was the one who was afraid of everything, afraid of the world, in despair because of the first time she left.

Now I've been restored and she is the shy one.

It is my turn to help her to give back.

I've tried to give her some of our cuisine, but she hides.

I don't think she's eaten anything since she found her way in here.

Poor thing.

Hunger forced me to come close to the oily one.

Yeah, this is awesome.

So yeah, maybe she is an oily one, Alice, because she was one of the children that was put in and then turned, you know?

And in her mind, she's opening up her door for others, when in reality, it's other people that are falling into the prey of the flesh interface and being ripped apart and made

to live inside of it.

She's like a Nephilim, what is it, Nephilim, Nephilim?

Nephilim.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Nephilim, the half-angel, half-human things is the one story described.

That's the reborn.

What she is.

Yep.

Hunger forced me to come close to the oily one.

She set down some food and I took it, keeping an an eye on her.

She has an awful, fleshy face and giant, pale eyes.

She often sings like a bird.

Abomination.

It was the first time eating the oily one's food since my kitten died.

Would this food kill me?

Only time will tell.

My form commanded me to eat, so I ate.

The food was absolutely wonderful, as the oily one's food always is.

I am trying to follow the art of subtlety, but there can be no subtlety in this unholy den of madness.

I believe I have investigated almost every place within this giant place.

There are many portals in here which lead to various small places.

They open and shut in different configurations, but I have watched them carefully and gone into almost every small place and found no answers.

But there is one place I have not yet gone.

It is perhaps the only place yet unseen by me.

It is the place where the oily one goes when darkness comes.

I think she sleeps there.

I heard her making strange singing sounds from within, frightening sounds.

She keeps the portal closed at all times.

It only opens for a moment when she goes in and out.

I've tried to get a look inside, but have not been successful.

I believe there must be some answer within this space.

Everything has a form.

Every form is a story.

Every story makes sense.

There must be some reason for the oily ones, for their random kindness, for their random cruelty.

There must be an answer.

And that answer must reside within the hidden space, or it does not reside anywhere else.

I will wait.

I will go inside.

Sweet Angelica is starting to warm to me.

We eat together.

She's still very skittish, but she shows up promptly at dinner time and eats like a little lady.

She doesn't chat with me, but I think she will start soon.

I ask Linda Mercy Chowder to be Angelica's special little friend and show her around the house.

Of course, Linda responds with, Oh, madame, I'm too busy with

my modeling career.

Can't somebody else do it?

Meanwhile, the little strumpette flirts all day with Chester Barrington, but that's another story.

The The oily one came to me with food.

I found myself crying out to her as if I was a little kitten again, as if she was my mother.

Okay, I have

had the suspicion.

I haven't wanted to say it yet because I'm sure this story is already confusing enough for audiences, but I almost feel like our protagonist in this narrative is a cat.

You think so?

Because we had one earlier that was a dog, right?

Yeah.

The way it's like, oh, my little kitten, I lost my kitten.

And they're talking about the oily ones and the other ones, the ones of our kind.

And maybe Alice is describing here like she opens her home to cats.

And the Angelica she met that she was in love with was a cat with yellow eyes.

So anyway, that's just a thought.

Yeah.

But when it says, as if I was a little kid, and again, that made me think, okay, maybe that's actually correct.

The only because it was mentioned all the way back in like the 20s or teens that

animals make it in and out of the portal fine, right?

They can go in and come out, and there's no issue.

So maybe that's how

our protagonist here is able to walk around inside of the interface

is because it's a cat, right?

It's a street cat that can leave.

As if I was a little kitten again, as if she was my mother.

What happened to me?

How could I regard this horrid creature as my mother?

I knew that I would have to become a part of this abomination to unravel its mysteries, but this is too much.

I want to leave to go back to the world, to go back to the fresh

Mother, mother, I'm back.

Oh, oh, I've missed you so much, but I knew you would find me again.

You will find me every time.

Oh, it's joyful.

She's still shy and doesn't let me bug her, but to hear her voice again is such a blessing.

I notice her following me to my bedroom every night, night, so tonight I let her in.

None of the other ladies or gentlemen are allowed in there, but this is Angelica, so she can sleep with me.

She stays in the corner of the room until I fall asleep, even though I sprinkle cuisine all over the bed.

I hope that soon we can sleep together like we used to.

Yeah, I'm calling it, I was right about my cat theory.

I think that that character is a cat.

I finally gained access to the inner space, the space which was to contain all the answers to the mystery which has tormented me for so long.

I suppose I have not properly practiced the art of subtlety.

I have pushed my way into a forbidden space, snooping and seeking and striving and upsetting things.

I suppose it's only fitting that I was greeted with such misfortune.

There was no answers in the hiding space.

None at all.

It's more weird shapes and bad smells.

There was nothing that seemed of any significance.

I discovered nothing at all.

So the oily ones remain as much a mystery to me as ever.

Why are they so monstrous?

What is the reason for their kindness?

Why do they give us food?

Why do they call to to them like mothers?

I guess I'll never know.

I have fled that awful space and am gratefully among the trees and grasses again.

I will never go back there.

Angelica is gone.

I haven't seen her for two weeks.

She stayed with me in my bedroom one night and I really thought we were getting closer.

And then the next day she just disappeared.

How could she leave like that?

I want to die.

I want to die.

I can't, I can't wait to die.

I told myself I wouldn't feel this way anymore.

I just can't feel this way no more.

I need to call my sister.

I need help.

What's happened to me?

Please, God.

I've been lying in bed all day weeping.

All around the room, there are pictures of the very first Angelica, my darling girl.

In the pictures, she's not sick.

She's eating ice cream, learning to swim, playing cards.

I showed them to the new Angelica, but she couldn't understand.

After all, she's just a cat.

Let's go!

I wish I would have said it sooner.

I wish I would have said it sooner.

I was thinking it back at the end of the last story with the oily ones mentioned.

But yeah, all the stories where the characters talked about the oily ones, that has been a cat.

And Angelica was a cat.

And this lady, that explains why.

Like this our protagonist has been saying characters are like in there and some of our kind but there's an oily one in here is because there's one human that's been succumbed to it, and then animals can go in and out.

So the space is full of cats because it's, you know, it's a flesh interface in a downtown area.

Maybe even the same flesh interface the Black Israelite guy was talking about when he's talking about they're taking the homeless people from the cities and then turning them into one.

Maybe this is like, you know, street cats would work their way into it and they're one of the only things that can come and go as they please.

It's a good bear trap.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm proud of that one.

To hunt prey, you must simply become an ordinary part of the world.

Look around, my darling kitten.

What is happening right now?

Nothing at all.

Yet the leaves rustle, the grass sways, the birds call, the gnats dance.

All of this is just part of the world.

Part of the mystery.

Man.

I felt good on that one.

All right.

63.

Two days later.

Big, big jump for like the just bangers of stories this guy keeps dropping.

God, no shit.

Well, he's doing it in such a short time, too.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, surely this all had to be planned out, you know, and then released.

there's gotta be it had to have been planned somehow.

I mean, it's so good.

This is so good.

All of it's so good because, like, all the you don't realize it, but all of the pieces that are mentioned early on about like CIA experiments and black sites and concentration camps, they all give you the tools you need to understand these like pieced-out narratives that show up later.

To where, when they're talking about things, you understand what it's talking about because of like context clues you've got in earlier parts that seem to be one-off throwaway segments, you know?

Right, like it's just it's so well

The old chrome became one of the people, and the people soon began to love her.

After her bruises and cuts had healed, she became swirling and bubbly like a young woman.

At any time, the people could hear her musical voice babbling on without end, telling stories from different bands of strangers she had met.

It was a strong flow of words that could bring anybody into it, even me.

She was also very lucky at finding clams, pulling them from the waters whenever she liked, and she sometimes snuck away from the river and came back with rare treats like snakes' eggs and red red beetles.

The people did not go far from the waters of Mother River.

Her protection stayed close to the banks, and the rocky land was known to be stalked by spirits of death, feigned evils, which became wolves and lions.

Even our little cats stayed close, the alders and the rushes, but the crone had no fear of such spirits and wandered off among the rocks whenever she pleased.

People whispered about this, but it was known that the crone was once a stranger, so it expected that she would keep strange ways.

One day, near the end of the gentle season, the girl Rhima disappeared.

She was with us in the night and gone the next morning.

We searched for her, going up and down the river and sneaking as far as we dared into the rocky lands, but there was no sign of her at all.

Some of the women recalled that she had gone with the crone into the rocky lands that day, and at night she had slept near the crone with her two great cats.

Now, there was argument among the people.

Some accused the crone of talking with spirits of death.

Some accused her of being a spirit herself.

Others said she had at least been foolish in bringing Rhima out to rocky lands.

I was undecided.

I did not like the crone, nor did I trust her, but people often talked about things they did not know anything about.

The flute player made

argued that the crone had been a great friend to the people, giving us three pearls and much food and telling us the stories and songs of the strangers.

I knew that the stories and songs of strangers were worthless, but he spoke very beautifully.

As the people argued, the old crone simply watched us, her shriveled stranger's face making no sign at all, her eyes just as calm as the wide waters.

Finally, one of the great men asked her to explain herself.

She spoke slowly, trickling words, and the people became silent as they listened.

She said the same thing had happened to the painted backs, who were the last groups of strangers she lived with.

First, a few valuable young women had disappeared in the night, one by one.

Then young men were taken.

Finally, the painted backs were were set upon by another group of strangers, monstrous men as white as cavefish, able to take the form of eagle and the lion, powerful with evil and cruelty.

There was much slaughter, and all were taken away except her, as she was protected by Mother River.

This brought great fear to the people.

The women whispered and burbled while the men showed their chests to seem brave.

One of the great men said that this crone was bad luck, that she was somehow muddied with evil spirits.

She had brought disaster on the painted backs, and she would would bring disaster on us.

People agreed.

Her journeys into the rocky land had tainted her with evil, and we must get rid of her.

The crone said that the evil had not come from her and was not her fault.

She said the evil came from Mother River herself.

At this, the people became angry.

Mother River did not bring evil.

She brought the calms and the berries and the cleansing waters, but she did not bring evil.

One of the people's great men picked up a rock to brain the crone for speaking against Mother River.

The crone showed no fear.

She said the Mother River brought both luck and evil.

If we were to accept Mother's luck, we would have to accept her evil, but there were no ways to increase luck and lessen evil.

She said that she had tried to teach these ways to the painted backs, but they had not listened and so were destroyed.

Because they had not heeded her words, their lives and deeds ceased to flow and were dried up into dust.

We all scoffed at this nonsense.

Nothing like this was mentioned in the deeds of the fathers, so we argued about whether to brain the crone or drown her.

In the end, it was decided that we would simply leave her behind.

Many of the people grumbled and were unhappy.

We left her there at a bend in the river.

As we walked away, she made a sign of respect.

I expected that she would ask for her pearls back, but she did not.

She stayed there by the river's bin,

staring into the waters.

Later that day, we washed ourselves in the waters to rid ourselves of the evil that attained us.

In the days that followed, while the river seemed quiet and sad without the pretty faces of Rhyma and the constant voice of the crone to keep her company, the people wondered if we had made the right choice.

The flow of the river was hard to know, and nobody could see the cold depths under the glittering surface.

But as the days passed and we finished the long song of tears for Rhyma,

things became gentle again.

Then another girl disappeared.

It was the same as before, gone in the night without a sound.

Now we knew we were being visited by evil.

It was not just the old crone who was muddied by evil.

Still, we argued whether the crone had brought the evil or not.

So much could not be known, and these arguments flowed nowhere.

One of the people remembered that the crone had spoken of a way to increase luck and lessen evil.

What if she could prevent us from being destroyed like the painted packs?

Now there were many arguments and threats, and one man almost drowned until he was saved by his women.

It was decided that this evil was very powerful, and we would have to surrender to it or be destroyed.

There was no choice.

So, whether the woman was lucky or evil, whether she was helping us or tricking us, we would go to her and do as she said.

Killing her would not help.

If she could bring evil from far down the river, how much easier would it be to bring evil from the other side of death, which is so close to life?

No, we could go to her.

I and another man were chosen to go back down the river and find the old crone.

She was still at the bend where we had left her, staring into the glittering waters.

She smiled as we came to her and asked what we must do.

End of that one.

I really, I like that.

I like that story too.

That one's interesting to me.

Yeah, I'm curious to see how the crone kind of keeps evolving in the group.

All right, next one.

Next day.

64.

This is back to the addiction plot line, the guy talking about addiction, which I theorize may be the character from earlier or even our transcriber, but we'll see.

If you are horribly burned in a fire, you can take drugs to relieve the pain.

If you shatter your spine, you can take drugs to relieve the pain.

If you're addicted to drugs and your life has turned to utter and total shit, you can take drugs to relieve the pain.

That's how the trap works.

Imagine if the only cure for burn pain was fire.

Imagine if the cure for back pain was whacking yourself in the spine with a hammer.

The drug addict is caught in an analogous situation.

The only fast, reliable remedy for the psychological pain of drug addiction is drugs.

There are other cures, a notable one is not doing drugs, but they are all slower and less reliable.

Somehow, the lure of feeling better now overrides the hope of feeling better later.

This is the basic mechanism of addiction.

The behavior of an addict is perfectly logical in the short term and perfectly illogical in the long term.

Because life exists in the long term, addiction is illogical overall.

What is surprising is how easily addiction can ensnare people who are perfectly intelligent and self-disciplined.

You can go to certain parts of any sizable city in America and watch drug addicts totter around.

Looking at their blighted faces, their filthy clothes, their total lack of self-regard, you would be forgiven thinking that they lack self-discipline.

How could you think otherwise when a person can't be bothered to shower, much less get a proper job or just stop smoking crack for more than a few hours?

What else could you call it but a lack of self-discipline?

Imagine the Nazi troops at Stalingrad, encircled by the Soviet troops, fighting against total annihilation.

Would you look at these troops, these underslept, unshaven men in stinking, unwashed clothes, and accuse them of lacking self-discipline?

Would you say, tut-tut, these Nazis are an undisciplined lot?

Of course not.

You would understand that their shabby state is not from a lack of self-discipline, but rather because they are concerned with other things, dire things.

While there are several notable differences between Nazi soldiers and crackheads, the same principle is in effect for both.

For both, there has been a terrible reordering of priorities.

The showering, the clean clothes, the job, all of these become secondary to fast access to the drug.

If showering and clean clothes got them fast access to the drug, they would walk around looking like a detergent commercial.

You would never see whites so white.

But they don't need clean clothes.

They don't need showers.

They need drugs.

The drugs are the solution to everything.

Highly self-disciplined people are actually quite vulnerable to drug addiction.

It is because they believe that they need to control their feelings, they often seek to simply eliminate bad feelings, just as they seek to eliminate underperformance from every other area of their lives.

The demon of addiction looks at their grand self-discipline and giggles with glee.

It knows that it will be precisely this self-discipline that will bring them to heal.

They will self-discipline themselves right into total obedience to the drug.

As an example, look at Prince and Michael Jackson.

Were they self-disciplined?

Definitely.

The world has hardly been such self-disciplined.

They were obsessive workaholics, devoted to their careers, and they propelled themselves to the very pinnacle of professional success.

They both knew the dangers of drug addiction and fastidiously avoided drugs.

Keep in mind, avoiding drugs in the 80s Hollywood must have been like avoiding water in a swimming pool at the bottom of the ocean.

Yet they managed to do it for a while because they had self-discipline.

Now they're both dead.

They were both destroyed by drug addiction.

In the end, self-discipline was not enough to save them.

Why not?

Because self-discipline is just a talent, an accomplishment.

And like any other talent or accomplishment, it can be turned and made to serve the Dark Master.

What then is our defense against this menace?

What is the answer?

So

I think this one, I think this series talking about addiction and Michael, there's one earlier talking about Michael Jackson and stuff like that.

I think that's all from our narrator.

And to back up that point,

this comment was not in reply to anyone.

This was posted by Mother Horse Eyes as an original post in R slash Addiction.

So I think this is the transcriber of everything talking about his own stories with addiction, which of course relates to LSD and getting all these memories and stuff like that yeah i could agree with that all right so

now we're on to the 65th post two days later simply appeared in the primitive infraspace one day like a hungry lion showing up on the edge of a village over the course of a few hours it breached a multitude of hardened systems going where it wanted taking what it wanted seemingly capable of breaking any form of crypto then it disappeared That was in 1991.

More than a decade passed before it was seen again.

By the time it reappeared, it had already become something of a legend, in the sense that people scarcely believed it had ever really existed.

Most experts had convinced themselves that the original episode wasn't what it appeared to be.

Prime factorization techniques were still secure, that the attacks had actually used fairly mundane techniques.

But it came again, and it did as much as it had done before, this time on a larger scale.

One commensurate with the more highly developed state of the inferspace.

Nobody could really be sure this was the same entity responsible for the original attacks.

It was only known that both sets of attacks involved the same almost magically advanced capabilities.

Now, at least, we knew we were dealing with something real.

In the years that followed, it appeared sporadically, accessing government systems, defense systems, nuclear systems, real-life infrastructure systems, social networks, no latency communities, whatever it wanted.

And as time went on, the appearances grew more frequent.

Naturally, the governments of the world were extremely alarmed.

A lot of accusations and threats flew back and forth.

The activity proved that our best crypto, even our best physical security, was inadequate.

But what could be done?

We couldn't just roll back the information technology revolution and put everything in manila file folders, so we looked for new techniques to protect ourselves.

But it was a lesson in helpfulness.

It defeated everything we came up with.

After the first attack, it began to use the technique of taming satellites and transmitting information to random locations in the middle of the ocean.

We trained instruments on these locations and sent ships racing out to find whoever had been receiving all the stolen data, but they never found anything.

The whales, maybe?

Maybe the whales in the middle of the ocean?

Could be the whales.

Then one day, an attack occurred, and a tame satellite began transmitting to a location in the Atlantic, just a few kilometers from where a Royal Navy frigate happened to be.

When the warship arrived at the location, the satellite was still trying to open a connection with the surface.

There was nothing in sight, but they quickly detected a very large object in their sonar coming towards the site.

Personally, I think it guided us every step of its interaction with us, slowly revealing itself as its powers have developed, slowly drawing us in closer.

It's sad.

Some of the others believe that we were valiantly struggling against it, but I don't think we were ever struggling against against it any more than a rat struggles against a maze.

A large stewed tomato.

Rather ugly.

This was how it was described by the skipper, apparently not a poetic band.

The video shows an enormous glistening mountain of flesh rising out of the ocean, dwarfing the ship, expelling streams of water out of a myriad of holes that covers its surface like giant pores.

A lattice work of huge purple veins runs between the holes, pumping dark globular objects along the structure's surface.

The visible portion which emerged above the ocean surface was shaped like a round hump with a slight ridging along the center.

The sonar record paints vague pictures of what was beneath the water, apparently an oblong object with a number as many as 12 thin appendages as long as the main body itself.

The conceptual artists of the day produced a great many imaginative monstrosities based on the information.

After it surfaced, the warship assumed a defensive posture, meaning it backed off and waited.

The metallic cylinders appeared shortly after.

They were much smaller than the Iwojima or Novaya Zimlaya cylinders, but much more segmented, with thousands of cubic portions flickering in and out of existence like bad pixels.

It lasted for three minutes and 13 seconds before vanishing as suddenly as they appeared.

A moment later, the fleshy mound expelled an enormous geyser.

out of what was apparently air and seawater like a whale blowing out of its blowhole and divided beneath the surface.

The warship attempted to give chase, but was unable to track the object on sonar.

It seemed to fragment and disappear.

Eventually, the warship returned to the site and took samples of the water, mixed amongst all the random plankton and fish cells.

There was a fair amount of human DNA.

In fact, we were able to trace some of it to specific people.

And this was how we proved conclusively that this creature, later to be called a skin ship, was related in a literal sense to the so-called Articus Portal, which was actually underwater several hundred kilometers away from Artigas and Arctica.

So in the end, it turned out we had built it.

We had built Q.

Ah, shit.

Man,

it feels so good to be right about everything all the time.

I'm so, let's go.

It's using the flesh of like whales and stuff like that as like they figured out in North Korea to transmit this information.

And then Q or mother is building these giant flesh interfaces underwater that cause the portals and the pillars to come out of the ground.

And then

it will eventually use that power in order to assert its dominance into the digital space as people start to get hooked up into it.

I'll lay out, since all these bear traps of mine keep going off, I got so many bears, I don't know what to do with them.

I'll lay out another one and say that I bet these towers that people are staying in, these cubes

that are like several hundred stories high that people exist in while they're plugged in, I bet those are the cylinders.

Like the cylinders that appear after a flesh interface, after mother has enough power, they quit flickering and they become solid structures.

People begin to live inside of them so they can be plugged into the interface forever.

That's how they have immediate access to it all the time, constantly.

I like that.

I also like the idea, too.

Well, them almost constructing that, does it not also feel like the...

Almost like the caves and stuff.

It almost feels like a lot of the stuff is man-made or like they themselves have made it.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, they're made of flesh, right?

So they have to be.

What's like a conglomerate kind of thing?

So, because you pictured that as the whales, right?

They're all kind of conjoined together.

I think it's a giant creature or a skin ship.

I think it's a giant thing made of meat.

And most of that meat comes from whales, things that can feel emotion.

But they said there was also human DNA there.

So I think it's imagine combinations.

And it makes these giant skin ships effectively a giant mobile flesh interface underwater

that dwarfs the size of a warship, however big that would be.

Huge.

My gosh.

Gosh, that's all.

Gosh, imagine that being under you while you're on the ocean.

Just brrrrr.

Oh, gosh.

Ocean man.

Yeah,

the cover of the mall is the giant thing comes up.

Ocean man.

Check me by the hair.

All right.

So, same day, post 66.

Start as a field trip twice a week.

Get out of the home for a while, go play video games.

Not just for a little bit on the staff's phones, but for hours on real rigs.

Before then, my favorite thing was when we took walks in the woods behind the home, but this was even better.

It was funny because the game we played was called Children of the Forest, which was basically where you walk through the woods fighting enemies.

Wasn't there mentioned earlier about children being in the woods somewhere?

I can't remember where, but yeah, I can't remember where it was.

I mean, it's been hopping around a lot, but that does sound familiar to me.

In the game, you had to remember all these different paths, which were always branching off in different.

Oh!

oh, hold on.

I just thought the oily ones, wasn't the oily ones the same one that was talking about children can play in roads without cars, right?

Yes.

See, I'm

it's blending together a lot.

If that, if that's the case, then that was the cat talking.

Children can play in roads without cars.

That means that her kitten probably got hit by a car.

That's sad.

Aw, that's so sad.

That's probably what that one was talking about, But, like, maybe our children could play a rose without cards, if I'm remembering that correctly.

Yeah, man.

Oh, wait.

Unless Children of the Forest was the guy talking to the old lady about his story.

That might be what this story is talking about.

It's a continuation of that guy.

Anyway, whatever.

The audience.

We recorded the first half of the video yesterday.

I'm forgetting details.

I'm sure you all can figure it out.

In the game, you had to remember all these different paths, which were always branching off in different patterns.

And you'd fight different enemies that had all different patterns.

There was a lot of memorizing stuff and making decisions.

Everybody liked the first 20 levels or so, but after that, most of the other kids got frustrated.

Instead of going on, they just played the first few levels over and over.

But I kept going higher and higher.

The final boss was called the Ancient Queen.

You were always advancing on her castle, this huge dark castle that loomed in the background of every scene.

Sometimes you would come to see her floating around her castle, just a shadowy bird-like shape, and she would taunt you from afar.

come my child come and face me

that kind of stuff man i wanted to get her even as a little kid i got really obsessed about things i wanted to beat the ancient queen so badly i got a level 100 then 200 then 300.

at this point every branch in the path offered like 40 choices and they came literally every second Plus, you had to do the enemy patterns, sometimes mixing two and three enemies at once, kind of like playing two melodies at once on a keyboard.

Got pretty insane but i kept advancing i was relentless it was nice to finally be the best at something it was way better than any other kid i mean no other kid went past like level 40.

sometimes they had me play online against other people there's a bunch of battle modes i beat everybody At first, we could only go to play games like twice a week and everybody was just dying to do it since there was nothing to do at the home.

But after a while, they let me play whenever I wanted.

This made the other kids jealous and they started shunning me, so I just played even more.

I played all the time.

I started sleeping at the game place, and I played from when I first woke up in the morning, or night, till I went to sleep at night, or morning.

They brought me food while I played, whenever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

One of the people at the game place tried to spoon feed me while I played.

It was creepy at first, but I got used to it.

I had pretty much gotten used to the fact that whenever something was really fun, adults would come in and take it away or tell me not to do too much of it.

Or something bad would happen, and it would be destroyed so when they told me i could play this all i wanted it was like the ultimate freedom ultimate freedom funny that

i remember lying in bed one night and i heard the theme music down the hall in the game room the game was so fun but kind of cheaply made and it had this chintzy flute music that played over and over i heard it now in the middle of the night and wondered who was playing since I was the only kid there and the doctors never played it.

So I got out of bed and snuck down the hall to see who it was.

The game place was kind of creepy with all wide halls and everything smelling like plastic.

And I was a little scared since I was only eight at the time.

When I got to the game room, it was totally dark.

Nobody was there.

The music seemed to vanish.

It had all been in my head.

That's how much I played it.

I was obsessed with that damn ancient queen.

She was like this huge mythical creature in my mind.

In the game, she only had like a dozen taunts, and I must have heard each one hundreds of thousands of times.

They were burned into my brain.

When I was on the high levels and everything was flying at me at once, I kind of just cleared my mind and let my hands play the game.

That makes sense.

And these times, I would daydream about the ancient queen.

What would it be like when I finally faced her?

What would she look like?

What would happen?

It's strange, but sometimes I imagined her as looking like my mother.

Strange face that I barely remembered.

Yep, yep.

After, uh, oh, queen, Q, duh.

Yup.

We built Q, Q in in the game, Queen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

After a few months, they gave me the surgery to install my direct sense jacks.

After playing the direct sense games, I forgot all about the Children of the Forest and the Ancient Queen.

I had found a beautiful, wonderful world where I was powerful beyond belief.

Wasn't just some little girl who lived in a home and didn't have any friends.

So away I went.

A few years ago, I went back into the CIA files and found a copy of the game to see if I could finally beat it.

I got past level 800.

After that, it became simply inhuman, so I bought it to see the ending.

Took a long time to find a proper bot.

It really was a fiendish, clever game.

Finally, I got one working, and it turns out there is no ending.

Get to level 1024, and it just resets.

Never meet the ancient queen.

What's for

oh man, what's worse?

Finding out there is no ancient queen or finding out there is one.

Oh my gosh, maybe Pompey was lucky there was no god behind the veil.

It weaves itself so beautifully, doesn't it?

Oh, it's so good.

I didn't even see it coming, but yeah, yeah, the whole thing, the fighting your way through the levels over and over thousands of times.

What's worse?

That there is no ancient queen or what that?

Oh, and it harkens back to like the religious themes the story set up and the themes of like technology.

Should we even have access to this kind of tech?

Is it better to leave God behind the veil?

Are we lucky if there is no god?

Oh, dude.

Just don't let it crust over, man.

You got to change.

Feel free to change.

This is this.

Look.

Look.

If it ended right here, this is my favorite story on Creepcast.

If it

right now, every theme, every piece of it.

Oh, my God.

And I don't know who the author is.

I can't find him.

He's a secret.

I want it to stick to landing so bad.

Like, I'm so curious to see how this person writes this up in a bow.

you know what i mean all the themes work off each other all these different set okay so

q is the ancient queen stuff like that i think this is the girl because she says that she's a girl i think this is the girl that's mentioned as being part of a cia

test and then uh one of the agents took her to live in stonia for 13 years or so you think this is the estonia

i think this is the same girl because she's like i went back to the cia records and found there's no ending to it and she the way she describes it she's like i was a little girl.

There wasn't a lot to do, but they let us play games.

And then they started letting me play games more than the other kids.

So she was doing good.

She was a favorite candidate that the CIA was interested in.

And then eventually one of the CIA agents, as mentioned, took her away for a while.

Then she comes back.

So, yeah, that's why I think this is from that little girl's perspective.

She was really good at it.

She was the best candidate.

She was fighting this Agent Queen.

But wasn't that girl put through a flesh interface?

Or I think it never says she was put through a flesh interface.

She was just given LSD and experimented on.

Well, no, no, I think that she was put through a flesh interface because she was one of the girls where it was like she was one of the few ones that went through and then came out and lived like a normal life for 70 years.

You're right.

She stayed alive for a long time.

Okay, so maybe this isn't the same Estonian girl.

But anyway, I still think it.

Well, the thing is, we go back and forth so much in these timelines that there's not, it's not like this is a...

straight ahead narrative.

Like, I mean, I still believe, I don't think that that theory is necessarily wrong.

I still like that idea of you're getting a glimpse into her time.

Her personal flesh interface.

Yeah.

That could be it.

That could be it.

But either way, it's definitely someone who the CIA had playing these games, you know, the child soldier, so to speak, because they can react to the best.

And the interface or the, what do they call it?

The infranet.

The infranet is the same thing as

the mother horse-eyes flesh interface.

Like it's the same space they're going into,

even if it's under the guise of internet and technology.

You know, it's kind of like, I didn't think about this, but there's this one conspiracy theory or hidden truth thing I like a lot, and that's the idea that uh demons within the world cannot speak to you directly.

Like, because of like King Solomon's Pact and stuff like that, demons cannot speak to humans, but they can influence humans.

And one way they can speak to us is through technology, that by creating technology, we've allowed a portal for them to communicate through.

So, this kind of gets that idea that like a literal loophole for them to actually be able to connect.

Yeah, they have to speak without speaking or see without seeing, but technology allows a way for them to do that.

They're inside of the internet.

They're in like the dead.

A new doorway.

Yeah, it's a new doorway opened up.

And here, it's kind of like there was this occult way to contact Mother Horse Eyes or the devil or the adversary, whatever you want to call her,

that started to be closed up.

People became wise to it and started to stand back from it.

So with this new internet, with this new infranet, that's a new doorway for her to get into our world.

All right.

Oh, man.

gosh i'm i'm gonna have to start standing up and pacing for this

i'm i might after this is over i might have to make a main channel video about the series i mean i don't see why you wouldn't i mean it's right up your this is so right up your alley of the content that you make on youtube

this is like i'm having my ryan gosling moment this is literally me

oh gosh okay

All right.

67th post made same day.

Society is built on interfaces.

You take a complex thing, put it inside a sturdy box, and put some simple buttons on the box so that people can use the thing inside.

The box makes it easier to use and prevents people from breaking it.

For example, you can take the machinery of a clock, put it in a box, and put two hands on the outside along with a knob for winding it.

Take all the machinery of a car, hide it behind a dashboard, and give people two pedals and a wheel.

Take all the circuits of a computer, put them in a box, and give them people and give people a monitor and a keyboard.

Interfaces receive input and produce output, and that's all we need to know.

The clock gets wound and its hands show the time, input, output.

As far as the user needs to know, what happens inside the box is magic.

This allows stupid and ignorant people to use complicated things, as long as the interface inputs and outputs are simple.

Toyota uses millions of kilograms of steel every year.

Does the CEO of Toyota know how to make steel from scratch?

If he wanted to beat a guy up, could he go digging in the ground for some ore and whip himself up a batch of steel to make a pipe?

No, he uses interfaces to get steel.

He buys steel from a steelmaking company.

Except he doesn't personally go down to the steelmaking company with a bag full of yin saying, how much for a million kilos?

He uses a bank.

Except he doesn't even personally go to the bank.

He has a subordinate who does it for him.

All these people and institutions are interfaces he can use.

He employs a system of layered interfaces, both metaphorical and literal, to control things he doesn't really understand.

We all do.

The point is this.

Don't go messing with the CEO of Toyota.

I assure you, he could get his hands on a steel pipe if he wanted.

The word interface refers to the input and the output, but it also refers to the box.

We think of interfaces as existing in order to give us access to things, but they're also there to hide things from us.

The idea that some things are better off hidden.

Everything will go along fine so long as a certain input produces the expected output.

But when this stops happening, we have to open the box and see what's inside.

Sometimes we don't like what we find.

Okay, that sounds to me like it is talking about the exact thing I mentioned before I started reading that story about the whole that demons allowed or like mother allowed to speak to us through the computer through the other side.

Yeah, well, the story feels like it's starting to really unveil the idea of once again, like ignorance is bliss, you know, that kind of idea.

Like knowledge, like the knowledge is the death of purity in a weird way, like, or knowledge is the death of innocence or something.

And I think that like people, because of their greed and because of their like never-ending quest for knowledge or for

even answers, is opening up things that are, that were never meant to be uncovered, you know, which I will say, I know people wouldn't want me to say it, it is very lovecraftian in that way.

It is, it is.

Well, if you you think about it, that's kind of the essence of any horror or really story involving God or powers beyond our understanding, right?

Unknown.

The idea that there's something out there that we're just like the after effects of.

We're just the side effects, right?

We're far off from the truth of it.

It's like,

hey, maybe Pompey was lucky that God wasn't behind the veil.

What a great metaphor to set up early on for the entire story, right?

Oh, yeah.

In several different ways, though, they feel like they've been able to talk about it and unveil that kind of like, because the thing, too, is like the story is touching on the same theme in different ways, but it does it in a way where every time I feel like it's reassuring or it's like kind of

reaffirming what the theme is,

just in clever, fun ways.

Like it never feels repetitive in that way.

You know what I mean?

It keeps it fresh.

It's like I'm reminded of them in a good way.

Like they've only said the Pompeii thing once, or I think maybe another character, our narrator, said it a second time, but every other time it's been something else.

Like, maybe I'm lucky that the queen wasn't there at the end of, you know,

the game I was playing.

Stuff like that.

It's the same idea, just reverberated through different generations.

We keep making the same mistakes again.

Gosh, the story's so good.

Okay.

I'm actually kind of upset with myself that I heard about Mother Horse Eyes before, which again, Mother Horse Eyes, like this, that being the name of the series and it contains all of this.

I'm almost mad at myself for hearing about it forever and being like, Yeah, I'll check it out one day.

Like, what, what a fool I was.

Yeah,

to be fair, stupid.

To be fair, whenever I was thinking about reading this a while ago, but then you see the length of it, and you're just like, Yeah, you need to like find a time to kind of really sink into it.

So, and also, that's like the other great thing about this podcast is just being like, fuck it, let's just read it.

You know, it gives us an excuse, like a like a plausible way to give so much time to reading something like this in the middle of a workday.

Yeah,

thank you guys for watching and letting us do this stupid job for a living.

It means a lot.

Yeah.

Oh.

All right.

So same day, I think, May 25th.

This entire story has taken place in like a month.

Maybe

68th post.

We're reading all this, but literally, guys, this has been, the guy's been writing for maybe, I think, like two weeks.

Yeah.

Or something.

It's ridiculous.

Okay.

When the old crone told me how to get rid of the evil, okay, back to, back to that story.

When the the old crone told me how to get rid of the evil, I said the names of my fathers, all of them in a row, and I spat on the ground.

It was too much to bear.

I had been told to bring the crone back to where the people were camped, but I wanted to hold her down in the water of the river and be done with her.

She said that we must wait for the next moonless night, then lead one of our young women deep into the haunted rocky lands.

One of the monstrous evil strangers would come and take her away.

If we do this, the evil strangers would leave the rest of the people alone, and they would not destroy us as they destroyed the painted backs.

She said we must do this at the beginning of every dry season.

It was absurd, but we took the chrome back to the people as we had been told to do.

She told the people what she told us.

The people listened and were silent for a while.

I spoke up as soon as one of the great men.

I spoke up as the son of one of the great men.

I said her plan was evil.

The people's strength is their young women, who are ripe and bear sons.

To give them away is a humiliation.

It's the way of cowards.

When we make war against strangers, do we not take their young women for our own?

We should make war against these evil strangers.

We should set up a night watch, and when the evil strangers come to us, sneaking in like cowards, we should slay their men and take their women.

This is the way of the fathers.

This is among the deeds.

Many of the people agreed.

Even though my words were clumsy, they still had the flow of truth.

However, some of the great men seemed irritated, because I spoke first, even though I was not a great man myself.

One of my uncles asked the people if the painted backs were cowards.

Were they not at least as numerous as the people?

Were their men not strong?

Did they not join us in war against the vile grub eaters and fight like lions?

Yet they had been entirely destroyed by the evil strangers.

It was not the act of a coward to prevent this.

The people had many ripe young women, and just one was not too much to give away.

To go against the flow of a powerful evil like this was unwise.

It would bring destruction.

This led to much arguing among the people.

Nobody knew what to do.

I became angry.

I shouted that the chrome was a witch trickster.

She had probably kidnapped the young girl Rhaima and sold her as a slave.

I said my uncle was a fool.

Some of the men had to lead me away from the camp so that I could calm down before blood was shed.

When I finally came back, all had been decided.

On the next moonless night, Chrome would lead Rhyma's younger sister, Rona, out to the Rocky Lands.

I was outraged, but did not say anything.

People were decided, and I could not go against them.

Then Maid, the flute player, spoke up.

He said that it was cruel to send such a young girl out to the Rocky Lands to be taken away by evil.

She would never see her mother and father again, nor the people, nor Mother River herself.

With many beautiful and flowing words, he begged the people to change their minds.

Now the arguing began again.

People were decided.

Some of them lamented for Rona.

After Maid's words, I felt an opportunity.

I asked the great man if I could go with Rona and the crone to the Rocky Lands.

I would make sure that the crone was not tricking us and face the strangers to see if they were as the crone had said.

Monstrous men as white as cavefish, or if they were just ordinary men.

I was sure that the crone was trickster and that the evil strangers were just a lie she was telling.

I expected her to protest, and I planned to show the people that she was lying.

But instead she just bowed and said that this was a wise and fair idea.

She said I was very wise to doubt her, even wiser than some who were older than me, which made my old uncle grumble.

She would be glad to show me the nature of these terrible beings so that the people would believe her.

This surprised me.

The old witch was more tricky than I had expected.

She offered to take anyone who doubted her out to the Rocky Lands to show them the evil menace.

Nobody but me was wise enough to go with her.

I became worried.

Was the menace real?

Would I encounter something monstrous out there in the Rocky Lands?

Was I swimming against the flow of something sinister and powerful?

All right, so end of that one.

So, well, do you think the crone?

I don't know where that story connects in yet, but I feel like it's ancient, like the first mother, the first instance of mother in the world, or something like that.

Do you think that the crone

vibe check, I guess is what I want to know.

What do you think of the crone?

I think that

she

is.

She said she's the daughter of Mother River.

I think she's a false god.

I think she is perpetuating herself as that.

I think this is mother.

I think this is mother in times long since past, ancient times, like before back before there were nations or people, they were just tribes and strangers, stuff like that.

That's what it sounds like to me.

Yeah,

it kind of gives a Rasputin vibe, is what I kept thinking.

Yeah, yeah.

Like she's very, like, she's a

false prophet, so to speak.

Winning the favor of the people in charge, whatever.

And now she's kind of like condescendingly being like, no, yeah, that's, you're smart for questioning me.

You know,

there's also a weird religious context to it where it's like she tells them to throw off the deeds, like their Bible, effectively, their religion, which is very reminiscent of like the devil in a lot of Christian stories, which mother has been compared to a lot.

So, I don't know.

She strikes me as like a Luciferian figure

in the Christian way of like a tempter, a trickster, so to speak.

You know,

that's the idea I get.

But we'll get confirmation because our next post, our 69th post, Aha 69, is about the same story.

Say posted the same day.

So,

this is as our main character is choosing to go to the mountains with the crone and Rhina, Rona's young sister.

Or sorry, Rona is the young sister, Rhino, whichever one's still alive.

I had to go.

To back down would be cowardly, not something that belonged among the deeds.

But I would have to be very careful out in the Rocky Land.

Maybe the crone was telling the truth, and the monstrous evil strangers were real.

But more likely, she would try to kill me out there and blame it on the strangers.

That would get rid of me and make the people even more afraid.

Rona, the crone, and I set out the next day.

I let the two women walk ahead of me, with Rona weeping and the crone whispering strange things to her.

I stayed behind them.

It was hard to look at poor Rona's red weeping face, and I did not want the crone near me.

I had taken the fishing head off my spear and attached the warhead.

I had my black stone knife hidden inside my tunic, and I brought my two favorite cats, Charm, Grayscruff, in my satchel.

They both rode in the satchel well and were very clever and watchful.

I wanted to be ready for any sort of trap.

We quickly left behind the gentle trees and bushes of the river and went into steep, bare folds of the rocky land.

I'd only been away from Mother River's voice a few times in my life.

Out of the rocky lands there was nothing but the occasional stirring of the wind, which was not warm and burbling like the river, but thin and whispering.

All around I could feel the evil dryness and the death that covered the land.

Dust blew over the tilted rocks, and here and there were animal skulls and stalking black birds.

The sun was sinking down from its highest perch when we came upon a huge, smooth stone which rose above everything else.

It was round like the top of a bald man's head and large enough that many men could stand on it at once.

The crone said that this would be the place where the evil stranger would arrive, and I asked her what we must do.

She said that we only need to wait for night.

Rona would go atop the stone.

The stranger would come.

Rona did not weep now, but looked at the stone with glittering eyes.

The crone ran her hands through Rona's hair, gently pulling out the tangles.

Rona smiled at her.

I asked her if she was afraid.

Crona told her wonderful stories about how the strangers would treat her kindly because she was coming to them willingly.

They would take her across the rocky land to another river, which was far greater than Mother River, wide and flowing with sun-gold waters.

And they would make her into one of the great women of their band.

I kicked the crone over.

She cried out.

I told her if I heard her voice one more time, I would paint this evil rock with her brains.

She became meek.

Rona protested, but I told her that the crone was a trickster.

I tied the crow's hands behind her back with my belt and stuffed a wad of cloth in her mouth.

There'd be no tricks from her now.

I brought Rona and the crone atop the rock and looked over.

The rocky land had many folds and hiding places.

Still, the high stone was not a good place to make an attack.

I let Charm and Greyscruff out of my satchel, and they stretched their legs and sniffed the rocks.

If they felt any evil in the land, they did not show it.

I walked far around the giant rock and searched among the cracks and folds in the land to see if there was anyone waiting.

The whole place seemed to be empty.

There were a few dry, dead bushes, so I gathered firewood.

When I came back, the sun was sinking behind the rocks.

The long, curving shadows lay across the bare world.

I built a fire, and Rona and I ate while we watched the sky turn orange and purple.

Finally, all color fled from the world and darkness fell.

With no moon, a small fire was the only light except for the stars.

I told Rona to stay by the fire with the crone, who lay on her side, seeming to sleep.

I withdrew from the small circle of light and lay flat against the still warm stone with my spear by my side.

I was completely hidden in the darkness.

Looking away from the firelight, the world was perfectly black.

Grayscruff startled me as he appeared out of the dark, sneaking up the rock to sit by the fire.

Charm soon joined him.

Maybe it was too dark for even the cats to hunt, or maybe the land was too dead.

A long time passed.

There was no sound but the fire.

Crone seemed to sleep.

Rona added wood to the fire and drowsed.

The cats lay side by side, like a man and woman.

I wondered if I had ruined the crone's plan, if I would just lie on this rock all night and nothing coming.

It was better than being stabbed in my sleep.

More time passed.

My thoughts became loose and wandering.

I imagined the waters of the river flowing through the weird folds of the rocky land.

My eyes closed.

I opened my eyes again.

I wasn't sure how long I had slept.

Everything was quiet.

The fire still burned well.

Rona and the Kront slept.

Grace Gruff and Charm were still lying next to each other, both awake.

Both looking off into the darkness, both looking in the same direction.

I looking out into the darkness.

I couldn't see anything out there, just far stars over the blackness of the land.

Were the cats watching something?

Their eyes were wide.

I found myself slowly wrapping my hand around the shaft of my spear.

The cats did not take their attention away from what they were looking at.

Maybe they had both heard noise?

A pebble falling somewhere?

Grace Gruff slowly, carefully got up.

keeping its gaze fixed.

Charm did the same, pulled my spear close and gripped it tight.

The cats both jerked their heads slightly in the same direction, following something.

Something was out there.

It was close.

I pulled my knees up under myself and held my spear with both hands.

I listened to every noise.

Everything was around me.

I knew I was outside the light of the fire.

I would hear anybody coming up the rock.

Still, I wished desperately that I could see what the cats saw.

It was awful to not know.

Charm and Grayscruff crouched and turned their bodies, ready to flee, but still watching the thing in the darkness, their wide eyes glowing in the fire.

Slowly they raised their heads, following the thing up and up until they were looking almost straight up.

They must have been watching a bird.

That was the only thing that could be that high.

I let out a relieved breath.

A gust of wind made the fire shudder.

The cats both jumped, scrambling off into the darkness.

Rona screamed.

It landed just in front of her with a flap of wings and a gust of wind that scattered the fire in a spray of sparks.

I was on my feet, holding the spear out.

The brightly burning pieces of wood showed its shape like a giant pale man with huge wings instead of arms.

It stood for a moment with its wings spread far larger than any bird, but with no feathers like a bat's.

The firelight shined through the thin wings, showing the creature's long bones and the streams of blood that flowed under its skin.

It turned to look at me, and I realized that the scattering of the fire had brought me into the light.

It could see me.

My war spear felt like a frail little stick in my hands.

Its face was like a rock lion's, but with an awful black teeth and huge, filmy eyes.

It was just as the crone had said.

She had been right all along.

Man.

Oh, gosh, dude.

It almost seems like she's like a witch or something, right?

Like some kind of a crazy thing.

It's like a giant witch.

It's the same creature that was described in the game, right?

The queen, right?

The queen, yeah, the chill.

Which I think, I still think is is probably one of the earliest iterations of Mother Horse Eyes.

And maybe the crone is a prophet of her, is one of the queen or the devils, whatever you want to call her, prophets.

The mother.

It's a piece of her.

Oh, gosh, man.

Just the riding so well.

The horror of being by a campfire and you have two cats and they keep looking up.

Like, what an effective tool.

The idea of both of them tracking something in the darkness and they go too high for it to be anything possible.

Oh, man.

Well, yeah, I like the idea of them sitting there and it's like you kind of lower your guard because like oh they're just looking at a bird and it's like no it's a giant bald man with wings whatever have fun every aspect of this story story works so incredibly well man

okay well i was gonna say i was gonna talk about more but the next part is still this story it's a continuation of yeah we just gotta keep rolling okay next run 70th post rona had fallen back onto the ground and the evil thing stood over her it was fall it was far taller than a man but very thin with a waist hardly bigger than a cat's and legs like a manis.

As I stood there with my spear in my hands, the flaming wood lines scattered all around me, looking at this thing in the shifting darkness, it seemed less and less like a man and more like an animal, one of the sneaking, starving animals of the rocking land.

It folded its wings behind itself and its teeth shoveled in its mouth like a spider's.

Rona was screaming, a horrible sound reeking off the stones.

I knew what the spear in my hands was for.

I knew what I must do, but I could not move, and I was held in place by an evil cowardice.

The The thing crouched over Rona, and its cock rose from between its legs, very thin, but longer than any man's.

It separated into many different parts, like the petals of a flower opening, like a man spreading his fingers apart.

The many parts grew longer, very long, and

wound like snakes through the darkness towards Rona, seeming to sniff the air.

They found Rona's body and oh gosh, and went inside her, inside her mouth and nose and ears, and in between her legs.

Her screams ended at once and the snake-like parts lifted her body into the air.

Oh my gosh, dude.

Many seasons ago, shortly after I became a man, I had killed a rock lion while it was at the river's edge, watching the waters for fish.

I had simply found it there below me as I came to the edge of a small cliff.

All I had to do was leap down and drive my spear through its shoulders, and it was dead.

When the people found out, they made me feel like I was greater than even the great man, at least for the rest of the day.

The only other living person to kill a rock lion was already gray and almost toothless.

It was said that I would become a great hunter, but Mother River provided so much for the people that we did not hunt often.

I hadn't killed anything since except a few boar.

Now I ran toward the great and evil thing, my feet slapping quick over the bare rock.

I lifted my spear and leapt and drove the heavy warhead right into its side.

The spear went deep into its body and a spray of black blood exploded out of the wound.

It let out a sound like an awful bird call and one of its wings unfolded and hit me hard enough that I fell back.

Its wings flapped wildly, spraying fire and sparks everywhere, but it could not fly and fell back down onto the stone.

Black blood poured out of its side.

I pulled Rona away from it, but she was limp and moaning, and the awful snake-like things were still inside her.

I pulled them out one by one, but they were sharp, cut my hands, and they came out of her body covered in red blood.

When I had freed her, I took her up and grabbed my spear and slid down the side of the rock and stumbled through the blackness until I found a ridge of rock to hide behind.

There were a few bits of fire left on top of the rock, but they soon went out.

I was in total darkness except for the stars above, clinging to Rona, who made no more sound.

I waited there in the utter blackness.

Rona did not stir, and I felt the warmth slowly flow from her body.

By the time the first gray light of morning came, she was dead.

As soon as I could see well enough, I went back up to the top of the large rock.

The thing was lying there, its wings spread wide and coated with black blood.

It had bled enough to cover the entire top of the rock with blackness, which had dried and become thin flakes that blew away in the wind after I stepped on them.

With my spear gripped tight, I approached it again.

Its body was the same sort of pale color as the morning sky and was covered in tiny glistening hairs.

The mouth was like a spider's with sharp black teeth.

Its cock had become just a shriveled little thing with no signs of the long snake-like parts.

I went down the rock again to where I had left the crone.

She was gone.

My belt lay in the dust, sawed in half.

Maybe it was just as well.

I did not want to see her again.

I called for Charm and Greysgruff, but there were no sign of them.

I left the evil rocky land as fast as I could.

The weird rocks all looked the same to me, and I did not know the way well, but I found the river before the sun had climbed to its highest.

It was a different part of the river that I had left, and nobody was there.

I made my way along the banks, looking for the people.

There was much to tell them.

Would the other winged stranger soon try to set upon the people?

Would we have to make war against them?

If it must be so, then let them come.

I could have been killed like any other men.

The sun was still above the trees when I first saw men walking along the river, their faces the normal color of sandy river mud, not the evil white of the winged stranger.

I called to them happily, called the names of the fathers, but they did not answer.

I came closer and saw that these were not the people.

Took my spear in both hands.

These men were painted backs.

Stood silently by the river, their war spears in hand, signs of victory and triumph painted on their chest in bright blood.

They watched me with strange, filmy eyes.

Man, that part about

the creature attacking her with like the long tendrils that go inside of her, it's very, it's very phallic, but it's um

I mean, it's reminiscent of like a rape, right?

But it ties into the themes of like the mother and like pregnancy and then the flesh interfaces looking like wombs and like a uterus crawling to that births new people out of them, stuff like that.

Well, I uh I immediately thought of uh

the winged creature is an angel coming down to inseminate a woman like breeding with humans.

Oh, duh.

Yeah, you're so right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The image.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, you're right.

I'm dumb.

Yeah, because it talks about like the Nephilim, like these creatures, like the

Nephilim, the half-human, half-angels.

It's not like holy angels from heaven.

It's like, it's like fallen angels, like Lucifer, like the mother, or even how the devil.

How we perceive angels and stuff.

I mean, it's just these divine beings coming down and like, yeah, you know, and that's also why this like person who, uh, the

crone, whatever,

would be so enticed to be like, you got to, you have to, like, give an offering.

They need to, like, basically reproduce or have their offering for them.

And it feels like a religious ceremony, you know?

Yep, yep.

The first ones that came, yeah, because it's assumed that, like, in the Nephilim, it's like, oh, it was like a consensual, you know, bond between the daughters of men and the sons of God, you know, the angels.

But it's like, what if it was the fallen angels?

What if it was the demons who forcefully did it?

And that's where these Nephilim, these half-tings came from that we see affected throughout history.

The same things just described then and then in the future and stuff.

Like, yeah, yeah, you're right.

100%.

It was a forced, it was a forced creation of these new creatures.

And they watch with strange, filmy eyes.

It sounds like the same filmy eyes as like the oily ones or the people that are in the

like subjected to the flesh interface.

Like they've already had their effects on the painted backs, whoever that may be.

Yeah, I mean, I almost think it's a demon or something because it's very reminiscent of that scene in Evil Dead when the branches of the tree kind of uncoil and they go inside the person.

It's less about,

it's almost like a rape, but it's also like a form of possession or something.

Yeah, you know, yeah, like the full

using of one's body and the taking of it.

Yeah, yeah,

sounds very reminiscent of it.

It's also very reminiscent of the uh,

I think you may have went to the bathroom during this part, but the statue of Lucifer that was shown earlier, uh, that one of the stories was in reply to.

Uh, it depicts Lucifer as this giant thing with a um, like bat-like wings, like a demon, a gargoyle-looking creature.

So it's talking about bad imagery for the devil, the adversary, which is also mother.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, man, that's so good.

Okay.

It's like an ancient legend, like an ancient Greek tale or whatever, but it's about like the first Nephilim being created.

Oh, man.

Okay.

71st post.

Same day, I think.

Day after.

It's really difficult for me to tell a story with just words, so please bear with me.

I'm trying to tell you the story of who I am and how I came to be this thing, but I have trouble organizing my thoughts into a single linear flow.

I wish I could just show you the entire story all at once and all its many dimensions.

Then I could make it clear why I hired somebody to put a pellet of poison into my own arm.

Oh, okay.

So, whoa, all right,

is this Castillo?

Maybe.

Oh, as it is,

this might be Karen.

Poison a pellet into the arm or another case of it.

I can make it clear why I hired someone to put a.

Yeah, it's Karen.

Yeah, I think it's Karen.

But as it is, I must use the ancient art of written narrative.

So here it goes.

Imagine spending your whole life in a cramped, stinking prison cell, counting the days, scratching tally marks on the walls.

Then one day, that big iron door creaks open, and you're whisked off to a glamorous party full of beautiful people and delightful games.

And everybody you meet is toasting you for being a genius, for being the great hope of the human race.

That's what it was like to plug into the direct sense feeds after living at the children's home.

Yeah, this is Karen.

I can't describe that first day in the feed realm.

Though I have not cried in 24 years, I still get the ghostly feeling of tears coming to my eyes every time I think about it.

To be looking around at the home-filled environment, everything glittering in a new way, shining in colors that do not exist, all of it stretching out before me, all the main gateways open and waiting to be explored, the feeling of that moment.

of being a small child looking out at a beautiful new vastness of the realm was the most magical thing I'd ever experienced.

What I want to impress upon you is this.

Every step I took towards slavery felt like a newfound freedom.

At first, it was just games and social mixing with other kids.

We had all played the mysterious Children of the Forest game and scored highly on it.

The game had been an entry exam of sorts.

It turned out that I had scored higher than anyone else, a lot higher.

This made some of the other kids jealous, but most of them seemed to look up to me.

I had never made anyone jealous before, and I had never been looked up to before.

Social mixing and share streaming was easy and fun.

You had to think of what to say, which video or annie to post to the stream, which paste to link up.

It was so much more exciting than being in real life.

I had a good memory and could work the assisted recall pretty well, so I made a lot of friends.

They told us we'd all be going to Harvard and Stanford and Sing Singa

Singa

however you pronounce that I apologize that would be famous that would be famous mixed stars and government stars that we were the future of the world to be fair they couldn't have known that most of us would be dead before we were 20

that all of us would be dead before 34 but they knew damn well we wouldn't be going on to normal lives we were part of an experiment After we got used to the freed realm, they began the conditioning.

I realized that you might not know what the freed realm is, so maybe I should explain a little about it.

The freed realm is basically just another interface for sharing information and carrying out transactions.

It's based on a metaphor of 3D space.

This is why it's called a realm.

You can move through it.

You can go up and down and left and right.

It feels like swimming through weightlessness.

They made it this way because that's how the human mind works.

Our brains evolved to exist in a 3D space.

We naturally imagine things as existing in space, even abstract, non-spatial things.

We think of the future as coming toward us, the past as receding behind us.

Powerful people are considered above, and the powerless are below.

Items belong in some categories and outside other categories.

None of these spatial relationships really exist, but they are useful metaphors because our minds are suited to processing things in 3D space.

It has always been theoretically possible, even trivial, to create a four-dimensional or in-dimensional freedom.

But since the human mind isn't made to process so many dimensions, it was considered pointless.

But recently, a genetic mutation dating back to the Stone Age was discovered, which allows certain individuals to experience and comprehend freed realms of four and higher spatial dimensions.

While this mutation may have been useless for Stone Age people living in a spatially 3D world, it was also harmless, so it somehow survived.

Though its initial origin is something of a mystery, oh,

it might be the Nephilim.

Its origin is a mystery.

It might be the Nephilim.

Anyways, now scientists were able to hook people up to 40 feed realms.

Early tests subjects described the experience in terms ranging from nauseating to utterly horrifying.

It was theorized that maybe if children were conditioned from a young age to exist in a higher-dimensional environment, they would become accustomed to it.

Such conditioning was deemed unethical.

Enter the CIA.

Their motto, where ethical approbation ends, our work begins.

They used their global genetic database to identify children with the genotype and collected a group of them to begin conditioning.

And that brings us back to my story.

See, spatial metaphor.

At first, we were just playing around in the feed realm, getting used to it.

Then they started the conditioning.

How do I describe higher dimensional space?

So-called hyperspace.

Nauseating and utterly horrifying are exactly what it feels like at first.

Everybody hated it.

We cried and tried to run away, but they made us go into the hyper realm.

But of course, there was nowhere to run.

We were all lying in hygiene beds, we were almost all of us would lie until death.

We were all lying in hygiene beds where almost all of us would lie until death.

They forced us back into the hyper realm a little at a time, just showing us simple shapes at first to acclimate us.

But how do I describe it?

It was like watching things pass through each other, but without touching each other or covering each other up in ways that made the brain go ah, that's impossible.

Stop it.

There were plain gray boxes and cones and infinite planes and bottomless abysses and the shapes would move slowly along and do things that were simply impossible.

Some of the kids never got used to it.

They hated it and dropped out of the program and disappeared from the freed realm.

But I kept going.

Just like in the Children of the Forest game.

I got used to four dimensions and five and six.

I was a leader.

I taught the other kids for how to understand what they were seeing.

It was cool being in hyperspace, seeing everything at once like that.

Was hyperspace mind-bending?

Sure.

But not nearly as mind-bending as hyper time.

Not nearly as horrifying.

Okay, yeah, so this is Karen.

And Karen is the same one who went through the Children of the Forest game earlier.

I was wrong about thinking it was the girl who went to Estonia, unless Karen is also that girl, but I don't think she

has confirmation.

I think I'm leaning to say that that's correct, though.

The only question is, would the timelines match up?

Because that little girl was back at...

Well, maybe if in 1990, this is an alternate history where they were already seeing skin chips, then maybe those timelines do match up where the little girl who survived going through the flesh interface was Karen.

Yeah.

I was going to say, do you think that because Karen was in there so long, that's also why she isn't as affected?

Or she's still able to be alive, basically?

Because everyone else died relatively quickly when they stopped.

I think she just had the gene for it.

She was just accustomed to it.

She was just kind of made for it, pretty much.

Yeah, if she was the story back in Children of the Forest, then like the CIA was doing experience for everyone, but she started sleeping at the game place and playing more and more and more.

And they would feed her when she was doing it.

She was just getting so good at it, but she was excelling past everyone else.

Yeah.

Which explains why she has the ability to hack into everything in the story in the future where she's busting out effectively of the

infraspace.

And she might be the girl who was kept in Estonia, who they tried to get away, the one who was accustomed to it, who survived a flesh interface experience and now seems to know how to master it.

And she's also one of the only people that can stop Q,

it seems.

Anyway, post 72.

All words incomprehensible to a pilgrim.

Post 72 made at 3 a.m.

two days later.

A friend from rehab invites me to an HA meeting.

Shooting Boy was never among my vices, but I go with him.

What is an HA meeting?

Hyperspace anonymous?

Is it like for people trying to...

Oh, heroin anonymous.

Never mind.

The meeting is out in the suburbs, and it is packed.

Every bit of floor space is filled with folding chairs, and every chair is filled.

I wanted to leave as soon as I sat down.

It's like being in a crowded elevator for an entire hour.

I can feel the coffee breath on my skin.

It's disturbing to look around at all the kids in the room.

How are they so young and fresh-faced?

The alcoholics tend to be much more beat up.

All those years of excess capillary dilation give our faces a meaty quality.

These little heroin addicts, on the other hand, come into the rooms at 19 with the clow of a childhood still on their skin.

My friend's arms have no track marks.

They are smooth and doll-like.

Okay, these have got to be people who are

more than one, right?

Oh, yeah.

They're smooth and doll-like.

No major veins left.

He is 21.

I've been roommates with kids like these for the past few months.

They don't know who norm from Cheers is.

They don't know how to empty a dryer filter, take care of a Teflon pan.

They don't know how to cook up black tar.

They know how to find veins.

It quickly becomes apparent that one of the meeting regulars died last night.

Everyone's upset.

People start crying.

My desire to not be there grows exponentially.

I didn't know the kid.

I feel like I've stumbled into the wrong funeral.

The kid sponsor talks.

He's an older man with a gray goatee.

He was guiding the kid through the steps.

The room looks at him to say something comforting, something with the ring of authority and wisdom.

The room is full of children in the grips of a problem that their parents cannot understand.

Here's a grown-up who can understand.

He talks about meeting the kid's parents at the hospital.

His eyes grow damp.

He recalls, haltingly, that the parents were very polite.

They thanked him very politely for trying to help their son.

He looks down at the floor.

He has no more to say.

Later, I relate the story to my roommate, Sean.

He says that this has been going on with the blacks for years, but nobody cared until it came to swallow up all the little white children.

He says that most problems come to visit black people first because black people are God's chosen people.

They must be chastised.

The program tells us to be more open-minded and less judgmental, and I am trying to be more open-minded and less judgmental about Sean's beliefs.

At first glance, his beliefs are paranoid, a historical conspiracy theory hogwash.

Second glance, they are appallingly anti-Semitic cultural appropriation.

But my sponsor says it's not my place to enlighten him with my views.

I only need to be a decent roommate to him.

When the Jews were sold into captivity, their narrative survived.

This was not so for the slaves of America.

At least, nothing like the Torah was passed on.

The American system of slavery worked to destroy the history of millions of people.

But I wonder how much of the Jews' history really survived.

There are certainly parts of the Torah that don't have the resounding ring of authority and wisdom, like the talking snake or the talking bush or the Nephilim or 90% of everything else.

How much of the real story actually survived?

It must be tempting to place oneself in the context of a mythical narrative that goes back thousands of years, that extends forward to the end of history.

Instead of just being the lost little individual, you become the inheritor of a grand spiritual legacy, part of a grand struggle, one of the chosen people.

A new roommate moved into the house a few days ago.

His name's Donnie.

He's in his mid-40s and he's a former Marine.

I show him the Iwo Jima segment of my story and ask him what he thinks.

Hmm.

So, who do you think the Marine is?

I'm wondering if that's on.

Hold on.

I show him

the Iwo Jima segment of the story.

Is this

okay?

Is hold on.

Is all of the stories about this guy talking about addiction and talking about living with the roommate, Sean, as we now know he's named, who thinks he's a black Israelite?

Are all of those our transcriber?

Because he's the one who has an Iwo Jima segment of the story, the one we read back at like part 20 about the Marines going up Iwo Jima and seeing the flesh stuff and things like that.

Is this our main character who's in this halfway house in Alcoholics Anonymous?

Is that the guy who's like seeing all the memories, the past, the future, and then transcribing them down?

And then a Marine moves in and he shows him the

paper.

Or he shows him his story that has an Iwo Jima segment in it because he's a Marine.

It could very well be.

Are you saying that he's like a manic man in a hospital?

That our main guy who's writing down and posting all of this because he sees all the futures and all the past.

Yeah.

If he is the one who is in the halfway house with Sean and he is also the one who's been talking about addiction this whole time, that is our prototype.

That's our narrator.

Yeah, I would see that.

Yeah.

Then after that, he posts a link to the song Store by the Mountain Goats.

So the previous one where he,

supposedly it's our narrator talking.

In that one, he posts to the Mountain Goat subreddit and then he makes a post that is the song at the store by the Mountain Goats.

Do do you know the band the mountain goats no do you yeah they're really good i like them they're like a they're like a folksy not really bluegrass kind of southern like folk band um

they they have the song no children and up the wolves which are their most famous uh you want to sing this songs really good i don't i don't know this song but in the five minutes worth of lost time i had when i was passed out on the supermarket floor i saw you at the head of the heavenly chorus and i heard you i heard your song ringing all through the store

i saw you touch down you were no longer dead i was happy to see you i had lots of questions and i put my hand to the wound in your head all the blood all the blood all that warm blood flowing freely from you in the five minutes when i was dead to the world in a place far away from my friends and my home i saw you with a smile on your radiant face amidst all the cans and the glass and the chrome And in those five minutes, my signal was jammed.

The frequencies that I received were so pure that I almost believed that the sight of the hole in your skull was a thing that my heart could endure.

Huh.

It's talking about he just in the store, has an accident, and sees a love that he lost who's been shot in the head, someone dead.

Do you think that parallels with the guy in the elevator at all?

I might.

It certainly might.

It also, I mean, there's been several themes of like people like

death and like people existing on the other side of death.

I forget which story it was.

Oh, it was the crone, where it's like, if I kill her, how much more powerful would she be in death, which is so close to life, you know?

Yeah.

All right.

So with that, we move on to the 73rd post made the next day.

Um,

what is this link?

Okay, so this one is another post.

This isn't a reply to anyone.

This is a post made by Mother Horse Eyes.

Um,

and the title of the post is a lifetime of spiritual failure.

I used to drop mucho acid and believe in God.

Then I became an alcoholic.

Now I don't know what's going on.

So this sounds like it's the narrator again, right?

Yeah, well, at least

it's consistent with the tone in which that person speaks and also the addictive kind of

personality that person has and stuff, but it also feels a bit more

less narrative-based and more personal.

Yeah, okay.

So he says,

When I was in high school, I liked dropping acid.

One of my favorite books was the electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which tells the real-life story of a band of early acid heads and proto-hippies called the Merry Pranksters, who invented a lot of what would become tropes of the 1960s, such as dressing up and weird shit, riding around on a painted bus while stoned on drugs.

I was especially intrigued by an experiment which was carried out by the Pranksters in 1965.

One day, a few of the pranksters put a sign on the front gate of the group's compound that read, The Merry Pranksters Welcome the Beatles.

At the time, the Beatles were the biggest band in the world, and the Merry Pranksters were largely unknown.

Moreover, none of the pranksters actually knew the Beatles or had any idea of how to contact the Beatles, nor did they make any attempt to do so.

For the Beatles to show up at their house in California was extremely unlikely.

Despite all this, the pranksters put this crazy banner out on their front gate, and they fully expected the Beatles to show up.

To understand the pranksters' behavior, you must understand the effects of LSD.

This is true in a general sense and with a specific regard to that banner.

You see, sometimes when you take LSD, something strange happens.

Something beyond all the weird hallucinations and thought distortions.

Sometimes you get the eerie feeling that coincidences are happening all around you.

You might be listening to music while watching TV and notice that the picture and the sound seem to sync up.

You might open a book and notice that the opening passage has an odd, unmistakable relevance to the current moment you are in.

At times, you almost feel like you are conscious of things before they actually happen.

You imagine your friend walking through the door and a moment later she does.

You look at your phone and a moment later it rings.

Sometimes these coincidences pile up so quickly that you get the feeling that there is something behind it all, that 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.

The existence of this fundamental order comes as a revelation because it is completely different from the ordinary mechanism of cause and effect that you are used to, that science uses to explain things.

This feeling, to me, is the essence of the LSD experience.

LSD leads to a sudden awareness of meaningful coincidences, which in turn gives rise to an awareness of an underlying cosmic order, which is casual.

This is kind of what I was talking about earlier, how there's a theme of like a hidden secret that everything in the world revolves around that we don't know about.

That the mother, or whatever you want to call her, seems to be at the base of, or in the corner of.

The a casual part is important.

A true coincidence is when two things happen which are clearly related but which cannot possibly be related by cause and effect.

For example, let's say you're watching a show on TV about zebras and then you walk out your front door and see a zebra trotting down the sidewalk, dropping zebra shit all over the place.

The two events have an obvious connection, but it's hard to imagine how that connection could occur through cause and effect.

It's not like your TV viewing choices caused that zebra to escape from the zoo, nor is it likely that the two events have a common cause, unless somebody is playing an elaborate prank on you.

Such a coincidence could be considered meaningful if you believe that this is evidence of the aforementioned underlying order.

Otherwise, it's just some weird shit that happened randomly.

During my high school years, because of my little LSD hobby, I became obsessed with meaningful coincidences.

I was always looking for little signs from the cosmos and hidden connections between things which weren't casually related.

I tried to predict things.

I looked for symbols and I tried to fit the events of my life into cosmic patterns.

I got into Nostradamus, the J-Ching,

Stickomancy, all sorts of shit.

Unfortunately, my attempts to ascertain the underlying structure of the cosmos were heavily clouded by my own immature narcissism.

You'll notice that people who believe in past lives tend to see themselves as great figures of the past, like Caesar and Van Gogh, rather than the anonymous turnip pickers and fishwives who actually populated most of history.

Similarly, I was convinced that the cosmos was sending me indications my impending greatness rather than portending my eventual descent into alcoholic mediocrity.

Yes, it was revealed to me that the world would end soon.

I would be a Christ-like figure of greatness in the coming apocalypse.

A shit you're not.

I really believe this stuff.

Luckily, blogs had not become popular yet.

Then I took my final acid trip.

It was a bad trip.

I don't want to get into the details, but let's just say that I saw some shit, and I never wanted wanted to take acid again.

All my life, I had been hoping to be visited by a grand revelation, and now I just hoped I was never visited by another one.

It filled my head with all sorts of crazy shit.

Not truth, just madness.

I decided that whatever was underlying the cosmos could stay lying under the damn cosmos.

I wanted no part of it.

Oh, I guess I should tell you what happened with the Beatles banner.

In putting out the banner, the pranksters had hoped that they could tap into the underlying a casual order of the universe by simply welcoming the beatles rather than by reaching out to the beatles or pursuing them but the beatles never showed up at least they never showed up in a literal sense couple years later the beatles released the magical mystery tour film in which they all dressed up in weird shit and rode around on a painted bus while stoned on trucks precisely as the pranksters had done so in a sense they did come to the pranksters Of course, this can all be explained by ordinary cause and effect.

Pranksters helped popularize a social movement which eventually spread to England.

Or you can evoke a mystical explanation, saying the prankster somehow sensed that the underlying pattern of the cosmos would bring the Beatles around to their way of doing things.

After I stopped doing LSD, I started leaning away from the notions of cosmic patterns, and I became more convinced that any underlying of the universe would have to rely on cause and effect.

My earlier attempts at mysticism began to look like embarrassing folly.

I came to regard all the meaningful coincidence stuff as bullshit.

I figured that LSD just overstimulates whatever sort of coincidence detector might exist in the brain.

You could dress it up with a fancy word like synchronicity and give the impremature of Carl Jung or whomever, but it was nothing more than magical thinking.

As old, stupid as Stone Age tribes.

I've been perceiving connections between things where none existed.

There are no meaningful coincidences.

A coincidence is only meaningful if you can find a casual relationship between the two phenomena.

And, if you can, it's no longer a true coincidence.

The universe doesn't send people signs through the I Ching or Nostradamus or any of that silly shit.

If there are rain clouds in the sky, it's a sign that you should carry an umbrella.

That's an actual sign from the universe.

The other stuff is just a load of crap.

And it was with this mindset that I entered AA years later.

AA is a God-centered program.

The main idea is that you can get sober if you live according to God's will instead of your own will.

People in AA often talk about watching for signs from God and listening to instructions from God and so forth.

As you can imagine, I was less than impressed.

I was appalled.

I felt like I was being dragged back into this narcissistic, mystical bullshit that I had thankfully left behind.

I felt like I was being asked to roll back my little personal age of enlightenment and go back to the dark ages.

Well, screw that.

I wasn't going to do it.

One night at a meeting, after months of listening to the spirituality shit, I made my feelings clear.

I told them that spirituality was the hugest load of horseshit ever foisted upon human culture.

Spirituality, I opined, was like a thought virus that gets passed from one person to another.

It was basically gonorrhea of the brain.

And AA was one of the biggest disease vectors I had ever seen.

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.

Rather than the stunned silence that is the dream of every R slash atheism subscriber, they just told me to keep coming back and moved on to the next guy.

Turned out their little rants like this are semi-regular occurrence.

Having no other good options, I kept coming back.

I asked a lot of people why they believed in God.

They almost invariably brought up meaningful coincidences or magical signs.

I became more convinced than ever that it was all bullshit.

Argued a lot with one guy in particular.

In recovery, you meet a lot of people who were like Ned Flanders with tattoos.

People who lived dirty and then cleaned up and became extra square, but they still had their tattoos.

This was one of those guys.

He told me a story about how he was in prison at the end of his rope and he prayed to God to send him a sign.

Just then a little bird alighted on his prison window and sang him a beautiful little song.

God, he knew at that moment, was real.

I almost dislocated my eyes.

They rolled so hard.

What a bunch of silly shit.

How can a grown man even believe this crap?

I read the AA literature, mainly to boister my arguments against the program.

AA literature is very sneaky.

It knows that most atheists follow the tradition of Western secular humanism, which values open-mindedness in contrast to the closed-mindedness of religionists.

So the literature portrays atheism as closed-mindedness.

Atheists are encouraged to be more open-minded, more flexible, more willing to accept the idea that they don't know everything about the universe.

I wondered if it was opposite day.

How were the spiritual nut cases going to portray spirituality as open-mindedness and atheism as closed-mindedness?

I was simply asserting that in my entire life, I had never seen any convincing evidence of God.

That wasn't closed-minded.

That wasn't presumptuous.

It was the opposite.

I was willing to accept the evidence presented to me by the world, unlike religionists who turn a blind eye to it.

I told heavy metal Ned Flanders that if the skies ever opened up to show me the majestic glory of God, then I'd be happy to fall to my knees because either God existed or I was in the presence of a technology advanced enough to be godlike.

I told him that I was perfectly willing to believe in God if I was ever presented with a shred of credible evidence or his existence.

Soon after, I was presented with precisely that.

Who knows?

Maybe it was a coincidence.

It's weird the way that this the way that whenever I hear that guy talk it seems like

it does feel like the narrator's voice, doesn't it?

it does yeah i think that is the narrator i mean i think so too it just feels so personal i don't know it feels so personal um

in the way that he speaks and stuff but i feel like uh the divine thing i think that uh it's gonna be the i think it's gonna be mother horse eyes that like opens herself up i think so i think that will be the god or the technology that seems as a god i agree the false prophet

The fallen angel, right?

Lucifer, the adversary.

What's that Bible verse?

It's in, oh, Paul writes it.

I can't remember where, but I think it's in Corinthians.

Paul says, and no wonder for the adversary or Lucifer appeareth as an angel of light.

So it's like, you know, the devil presents himself as an angel or as God.

I think that theme is going to present itself to our narrator.

The next post is also by the narrator because I think so, because it is

posted in our slash mother horse eyes

and reply.

let me see.

It's a reply to someone

talking about BBC finally notices that something's going on.

I think that may be in reference to like BBC's talking about Mother Horse Eyes.

And then

the actual Mother Horse Eyes account replies with this.

So this is probably the author.

You mean that the BBC is being like, hey, there's a story going on right now that's really...

Yes.

Yeah, I think so.

So like our real world thing, not in the universe of this writing thing yes in the real world well let me click on the link real quick uh

uh

no hold on yes yeah

yeah this is talking about the bbc made an article about mother horse eyes the story online someone shared that to r slash mother horse eyes or r slash nine m nine h you get it uh and then the user mother horse eyes replied to that with this

I think it's possible it could be written on the fly.

The story gives the appearance of vast scope because the the storylines are oh, he's talking about the story.

Yeah, he's talking about his own story he's writing.

The story gives the appearance of vast scopes because the storylines are from different eras and areas, but rather than a broad panorama, it only provides thin slivers of insight into each time and place.

Everything in between these slivers is left to the player's imagination.

And given the author's hints at branched timelines, he or she is not even necessarily required to link these little slivers together.

People also point to the various stories in interconnectedness and claim that the work has a structure too intricate to be improvisational, but how much interconnectedness is there really?

For example, the Stone Age story has cats in it, and the cat story has cats in it, obviously.

This is a point of similarity, obviously.

But what is the significance?

So what if both stories have cats?

Is this a meaningful coincidence or a meaningless one?

The same question could be asked about the children of the forest or the various marines or the demon penises for which the author has such fondness.

Yes, these elements recur, but to what end?

Perhaps like somebody on LSD undergoing a false revelation, we are drawing connectedness where none really is.

Perhaps these are meaningless coincidences.

The story employs a number of callbacks, where it makes references to something which was not mentioned in quite a while.

This gives the appearance of careful pre-planning.

But callbacks are actually pretty easy to improvise.

The author can just look over the story, pick an element, and bring it to the fore again, like a prime factorization problem.

The problem is easier to create than it is to solve.

A successful callback is really more of a testament to the reader's intelligence than the author's.

Oh, and by the way, whatever happened to Companion 12?

That seemed like it was going to be a thing.

But anyway, all this is speculation on my part.

It's an interesting question.

How can we know whether the story is improvised or not?

The author does occasionally make direct responses to other Reddit comments and make reference to current events, but as you said, this could be just a sort of superficial improvisation, where most of the story is actually fixed, but a few of the details are improvised.

The author could also be combing through Reddit for the right comment to give the appearance of improvisation.

Are we watching real choices in action?

Or are the events of this universe occurring along some deterministic path?

Is there any way to find out?

Maybe some sort of test should be devised, but that would require the author to play along interesting

so it's the author talking to the third person about his own story the author is fucking mother horse-eyes the devil just like the king of deceit

just like what is this story about who knows who could it be is this something i don't know you find out

sick okay

that's a good question because the interconnectedness also draws on like the rest of the themes like how much

How much of what happens matters, how much affects one thing or the other.

I also like that they robbed Companion 12, because I was thinking about that.

Like, whatever happened to Companion 12?

That just went nowhere.

It'd be so funny if the next post is Companion 12.

Yeah.

Hello, it is me, Companion 12.

All right, so next post, 75,

posted the next day, June 1st, 2016.

Okay, now I'm in my bedroom.

The bedroom smells like bedroom.

Actual bedroom.

Actual bedroom.

Oh, so definite.

It smelled like wood and blankets and stuff.

Sharp.

I wonder how they decide on the bedroom smell.

I move my arms around and bounce a little on the bedsprings.

My body feels really natural and comfortable.

Everything looks sharp, too.

There are no weird color trails like in acclimation.

Cool.

Really crisp.

I stand up and take in all the little touches.

It's an attic bedroom with a slanting ceiling and wood panel walls.

Night outside the window.

Mood lighting from a nightstand lamp.

Clothes and a skateboard and other random teenage stuff scattered on the floor.

Walls covered with posters.

I-N-XS.

Cure.

Michael Jackson in a yellow vest.

Very definite.

Or should I say groovy?

Did they say that in the 80s?

An interrupt comes through.

Atlanta completely destroyed and full scale.

I use my illegal bypass to cut off all interrupts.

I hate sports interrupts.

I'll have to figure out how to change that setting.

I notice a can.

Okay, so this is someone that isn't Karen, but at the same time as Karen, plugged into the interface, right?

I would believe so, yeah.

She's like pretending she's in the 80s or whatever.

Yeah, well, I don't think this is Karen because...

You don't think it's Karen?

Yeah, because Karen just blew up Atlanta and she's in the car, right?

And this is someone who thinks that that's a sports car.

Okay, so this is so this is just someone who's in the

infrastructure or whatever, though.

At the same time, that's going down.

Yes, yep.

I notice a can of Pepsi-free sitting on my nightstand.

I pick it up.

Still cold.

I crack it open and smell it, and the fizz tickles my nose.

Really smells like soda.

I take a sip.

Wow.

Not very good.

Maybe it's a low-quality render, or maybe I just don't like Pepsi-free.

Still, it's pretty amazing to be tasting something in a feed.

This is really worth it.

The doorbell rings somewhere downstairs.

Oh, definitely.

We're starting.

I head towards the door and catch myself in the mirror.

I'm supposed to look like a girl named Brooke Shields at 18 years old.

Wow, she's pretty.

What a render.

The eyebrows are a little intense though.

I consider toning them down, but I don't want to get caught up in a character design.

If you change one thing, you end up changing 50 things, and it goes on forever.

I head out into the hallway and pause for a moment.

Smell just changed.

Now there's a hallway smell.

Carpet and drywall.

I laugh.

Take a step back into the bedroom, and the bedroom smell returns instantly.

Step in the hallway again.

Hallway smell.

Bedroom smell.

Hallway smell.

Bedroom smell.

I snicker at this.

Smell changes just like that.

Why can't they make it more natural?

What a giveaway.

Oh

Head down the stairs.

The furniture in the front hall looks really cheesy.

I pick up a lamp and toss it at the wall.

It smashes apart and the bulb explodes with a spark.

Look at the shards.

There's bits of powder and all sorts of little details.

Wow, very certain.

Undo that.

I say.

The lamp fades away and reappears on the side table.

I open the front door.

Guy stands there with sweat-back blonde hair and a baggy red and black jacket with the collar popped and the sleeves rolled up.

Nice.

Gives me a killer smile and says, Hey, babe, what took you so long?

A blast of electric guitar hits me, and the guy floats up out over the front lawn, becoming two stories tall and striking a sexy pose.

Colors fill the night sky.

Sparkling starlight showers him and synth beat kicks in.

An announcer shouts, Corey Lancer, high school hot shot and rock and roll renegade.

He's a fast talker with a slick attitude, a guy who can make anything happen.

All the girls want him, but all he wants is one thing.

The Ferrari 288 GTO.

A red sports car comes flying out of the sky and does crazy circles around Corey while he strikes more sexy poses and the music thumps.

It's the fastest street legal car in existence.

Only 272 produced.

This is Corey's dream.

Corey's obsession.

Corey's life.

He'll do anything to get one, and he needs your help.

Can he get the car?

Can you win his heart?

Are you ready for 80s turbo ascension?

Hmm.

Shit, I should have looked the summary closer.

I'm not really into cars, and this doesn't really seem like a very interesting narrative.

Still, Corey is really well rendered.

Blonde hair, blue eyes, a bit of mischief in his smile.

I like it.

I wonder if he'll be controlled by an AI or a Filipino.

Floats back down to me and returns to normal size.

So, what's up?

He He said with a devilish little grin.

Wow, this is ace stuff.

Just doing my hair.

I said, flicking my huge brown mane off my shoulder.

This Brooke Shields lady has an absurd amount of hair.

You chicks, Corey says, leaning forward and giving me a kiss.

His mouth tastes like bubblegum.

Kiss feels perfect.

Yeah, just definitely.

I feel Corey's chest through his shirt.

Skinny, but nice.

I think about toning him up a bit.

Nah, it's better to just go with the default settings.

so listen there's a race tonight the speed max track

corey says in his cute california accent the chris the cobras put on a challenge and they're taking all comers the prize is i don't really like racing corey thinks for a moment character animation he looks cute thinking sharp eyebrows pressed together now he's taking too long and it's getting awkward I think he's controlled by a Filipino.

Or maybe there's like.

He snaps back into action.

Okay, listen.

There's going to be a dance off at Club Heat Wave.

The Crystal Cobras put on a challenge.

They're taking all comers.

The prize is $100,000.

That's so funny.

The system or rivers controlling it can't work the race into the narrative.

So it's like the same group is also putting on a dance off.

The Crystal Cobras are also doing that.

Coincidentally, same prize, same night.

Ignore the first thing I said.

The race is actually next week, so don't worry about that one.

Don't worry.

I was wrong.

It's the dance tonight, for sure.

Unless you want it to be tonight.

Dancing?

Yeah, that'd be one way to trout my body.

Sounds groovy.

But I can't help but think of another way to give this body a test drive.

I slip my hand down into my tight purple skirt and feel my

there's a lot of haunting a lot of haunting lines for you today, bud.

Yeah, it's good.

It's a rough one.

I'm being tested.

And feel my

what'd you call it?

Putang.

That's pussy.

Phil my poo-tang.

Feels his pussy.

Oh, yeeks.

That's...

They really have everything working down there.

Should I do it already?

Just five minutes into the narrative?

No, why not?

Everybody does it right away.

Corey looks really good.

I wonder what kind of cock they rendered him with.

But no, I should at least go half an hour without sliding it up.

Dancing will be fun.

Corey holds out his arm like a gentleman, and I take it.

He leads me down the front walk to his car.

Smeary old junk ride with dents and rust all over it.

Sorry, hon.

It's only temporary.

Corey says as we come up on the car.

I promise you, by the end of this week, I'm going to have a Ferrari 288 GTO.

The fastest street legal car in the world.

It's my dream.

It's my obsession.

I'll do anything to...

But I'm not listening.

There's something in the bushes by the road.

I wonder if this is actually one of those fake-out horror narratives.

I really hate scary stuff.

I bend over and look out into the bushes.

A pair of shining eyes stare back at me.

Hugh, what the hell?

There's an old naked lady hiding in the bushes.

Hell yeah.

Oh, it's the woman.

It's the crone from the Stone Age.

Good story.

God damn crone.

It's the crone, but I bet, I bet, okay.

So again, I think the crone's mother horse-eyes were a disciple of it.

And Karen said in her story that as this was happening, like as it was blowing up, Q would do whatever it takes to stop her.

So now I think she's intruding herself on other people's fantasies because this is just some girl who has a fan fantasy of being brooke shields and hooking up with the guy in the 80s right so she just picked a narrative to get that done this is what a lot of the fantasies people are living out are like but now q is showing her hand because of what karen has done elsewhere so q or mother has to make her presence known to gain control so help me god isaiah If I don't get to see the Chris, as I said, so help me God, if I don't get to see the Crystal Cobras, I'm going to be fucking pissed.

I don't know how to to tell you this but i feel like the crystal cobras were just a setup to get to this reveal of the old woman being in the bushes i know i know i know that was a big deal for you i know when we started today you were what if the crystal

what if the crystal cobras what if the crystal cobras are uh helping the devil or something i mean they were already doing a race they were doing a dance off for a hundred thousand dollars maybe they're also doing a uh satanic ritual you know what hunter maybe they'll show up Maybe they'll show up just for you.

We'll see.

Yay.

Yay.

The Crystal Cobras, will we?

The next one.

one the next one oh it's about the same thing okay the next one's a continuation we'll see if the crystal cobras are here okay um and it was posted on my birthday 2016.

took care of june second 76 posts bored i'm bored

that was sad that was mean of you to say that i think i think i'm not sure

all right 76 posts yerk This naked old lady hiding in the bushes looks like the beginning of a storyline.

I don't want to go down.

I really wish I looked at the summary closer.

Who knew something called 80s turbo ascension would have artisanal porn in it?

I consider saying my safe word to stop the narrative, but I don't feel like going through the loading process again.

Should have loaded my feet splits, but I rushed through the setup.

That's so wild, it's like, I want to be a part of this porno and hook up in the 80s, but what if I wanted to do something else at the same time?

It's like constant dopamine injection.

The old lady's bony arms snake out of the bush and she grabs my ankle.

Oh, certainly not.

I yank my leg away and curse at her.

Corey is looking at her with the same confused animation he used a moment ago.

Is he already using the same animation?

It's kind of low dev.

The crazy old lady comes stumbling out of the bush, her saggy old boobs flopping around.

Awesome.

Yeah, what kind of narrative is this?

I pick up a nearby potted plane and smash it over her head.

It breaks apart pretty nice.

Full of high-def dirt.

The lady falls on the ground and starts moaning.

I back away to watch how the scene develops between Corey and her.

It looks like her leg isn't quite attached to the rest of her.

You can see the meat inside her hip.

Really low death.

Corey just stands there, cycling through different animations.

He turns to me and shrugs and says, Hey, babe, that's life.

I stare at him.

Is that how the storyline's supposed to go?

Hold on.

What is the...

The leg isn't quite attached to the hip.

Is that implying she got segmented?

Like she passed through a portal?

I think.

Or a part of her.

I couldn't tell.

I was also reading it like it was rot at first, too, but I'm not sure.

It could be.

We'll see.

We'll see.

We'll keep going.

He runs his hand through his hair and says, Cute skirt.

What the hell?

This narrative's bugged up.

Let's go.

I say, going to Corey's car and opening the door.

It's an old hand-driven with a fixed wheel.

You want me to drive?

Corey asks, coming over.

Yeah, maybe you better.

Minute later, we're cruising down the freeway, listening to some oldie about a girl named Jesse.

Scenery looks cool, with the blue freeway lights passing by and old-fashioned neon metro in the background.

Corey is running through his backstory talking about the Ferrari or whatever.

I can't ignore the fact I feel a little bored.

I'm just 10 minutes into my first direct sense feed narrative and I'm already a little bored.

Was the surgery really worth all that money?

I don't even want to think about what it costs.

I slip my hand in my skirt again and touch mine.

Well, listen,

to be fair, they were saying that as soon as they even get out of the simulation, they basically immediately start masturbating.

All right, whatever.

It's gross, but sure.

I slip my hand in my skirt and touch my pussy.

Yeah.

It feels really nice.

Everything's super sharp.

Feels really nice.

Feels really nice.

I think about screwing Corey again, but I can't go back to feed screwing all the time every day.

Why am I always bored with narratives after 10 minutes?

Why am I bored with everything after 10 minutes?

We pull up in front of Club Heatwave, Wave, a big glittering building with a neon.

Would this be your fantasy on there being Brooks Shields?

Literally being Brook Shields.

I feel good.

I'm going to fuck Corey and I'm going to ride in his car later.

Well,

I would have been sold on Crystal Cobras and the dance party, honestly.

You would do the dance, and then you would want to be an 18-year-old Brooks Shields.

Oh, absolutely.

We pull up in front of Club Heatwave, a big glittering building with the neon sun shining over it.

A line of gleaming black limo snakes through a colorful crowd out front.

We park in the player's spot across the street and head to the grand entrance.

Corey leading me by the hand.

Music thumps from within.

People are waiting in line, but Corey says something to the bouncer and we slip past.

The entrance hall is all mirrors and neon.

I can feel the beat of the music passing through my entire body.

That's cool.

Singer tells me to go out of his dreams and into his car.

The inside is filled with shadowy bodies dancing through strobe lights and lasers and artificial fog.

Cheesy, but kind of fun.

Even has that fake fog smell.

Corey asks, give me a bump and a little squeeze.

Oh, this one's naughty.

We head out on the dance floor and start to cup it up.

And start to cut it up.

Wow, Corey's dancing.

It's terrible.

It's like a motion glitch.

I guess they have to give him some old moves, but do they have to make it this bad?

It's kind of ruining the storyline.

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.

He is watching me with dark eyes.

There's a sort of glow around him so that I can tell he's going to be a part of the storyline.

Lean over to Corey and ask, who is that?

Corey stares at the man for a moment, then runs his hands through his hair and says, Cute skirt.

Interesting.

It's like it won't acknowledge it, huh?

Well, it's also not a part of the pro it's not a part of the protocol.

So it's not sure what to do to deal with it.

So these things are outside entities influencing the program.

A man in a black black suit with black hair.

We don't know who that is, right?

Not that I'm aware of yet.

What the hell, Corey?

The dark man crosses the dance floor, coming toward me.

The other dancers don't move out of the way, and he passes right through them without breaking his stride.

Some programming.

Now he stands in front of me, looking down at me with his gleaming black eyes.

Oh, wow, what an incredible render this guy is.

I mean, this is outright art, like Rembrandt style.

Say what you will about the game's production, they really know how to build hot guys.

The man has the face of a gorgeous, forlorn angel.

just inhumanly beautiful.

Uh-oh.

The skin is paper white.

Uh-oh.

And underneath runs thousands of tiny branching veins that seem to throb with his pulse.

So the angel or the demon or whatever from the Dark Age story has come into the program somehow?

Well, I'm thinking that.

Yes.

Well, I'm thinking, like you said before, man, where it's like the internet and stuff has given them ways to connect.

Like the demons have a way to actually connect with people now, you know?

And like this is without speaking.

These programs are literally hell.

And you know what?

I guarantee the only reason they're showing their hand this much because they had, they hid themselves before, but now they're stepping out right because of what Karen has done of her breaking out and doing this.

That's what's making them kick it into gear.

Show their face fully.

Such obsessive definition.

His lips are perfectly soft and fleshy looking, like nothing I've ever seen in a feed before.

I lean toward him for a kiss.

Smell comes off him.

Something I can't quite place.

Oh, please say it smells like roses.

Please, please.

That's what, that's what, uh, um, um,

what's his face?

Milton, John Milton said Lucifer smelled like in Paradise Lost.

Please let me have this.

Uh my boy Louis smells like roses.

Yeah, well, he's sweet.

He approaches you as a tempter.

It's like it's supposed to be enticing for anyone to come to you.

Yeah, yeah.

I can't quite place sweet and rich.

And we are kissing.

And I can taste what I'm smelling.

Sweet, but metallic.

Wow, this guy can kiss.

I think this is what real kissing feels like.

Man, what a sad statement.

I know, right?

Because they've been in the feed their whole life.

I think this is what real kissing feels like, man.

I pull my head back and touch his face.

The flesh is very nice.

I can see the dark blood throbbing in his neck veins.

Yeah.

Then I noticed Corey standing right there, looking at us all confused.

Looks like a cheap plastic doll compared to this new guy.

What gives?

Fuck off.

Corey gets this really heartbroken look on his face and says, Listen to me, Zen Zabakin.

You'll break my heart if you go with another guy.

You got that?

You're the most special, most beautiful girl I've ever met.

I can't really get into the speech because it's too early in the narrative for that kind of stuff.

Plus, he pronounced my name wrong.

The new guy reaches out and grabs a handful of Corey's face.

Literally, just sinks his fingers into the face and tears a huge, bloody hunk out.

Blood sprays everywhere.

Holy shit.

I guess this is a horror narrative.

Is this guy like a vampire or something?

Faceless Corey keeps standing there, spurting blood out of his head hole.

I push him away.

The new guy squeezes the hunk of flesh like a sponge and lets the blood run down over my face and starts licking it.

Yep, this is some kind of art porn sampler narrative.

I've really, really got to start reading those summaries.

Crucial.

But the new guy's tongue feels good on my face and my neck, and I start licking him back.

We start kissing and undressing right there.

Oh, God.

My pussy.

They're copying an audio clip of my safe.

No, go ahead, buddy.

My pussy is absolutely tingling.

And I can

those edits, dude, are going to be fun.

Someone has to clip that together with the Holocaust denial and the Hitler one.

Exactly.

You know what?

Hitler is nothing wrong.

My pussy's tingling.

Oh, man.

And I can feel my heart beating fast.

I wonder what my real cat and my real heart are doing while I'm lying there in the hygiene bed.

Forget it.

I need to screw this guy.

He strips off the black suit he's wearing to reveal a perfect white body and a huge, beautiful

cock.

Oh, yes.

This is going to be good.

And we know, we know what his penis is.

It's the snake thing.

Yeah.

Like the multiple-headed Gorgon thing.

Gorgon.

He lifts me up with ease, and I grip his powerful, muscled arms as he slides his rooster into me.

Ah, heaven.

I hold on to him and close my eyes and let him screw me.

My

cat feels super real.

I can taste Corey's blood on my lips.

The man kisses and sucks on my neck.

I open my eyes and see that everybody in the club has stopped dancing.

They're all standing standing still as the music plays in the strobe flashing darkness, watching this guy screw me.

God, this narrative really combines a lot of different kinks.

Who wrote this shit?

Now I'm feeling like a thousand different things in my cat, most of them incredibly good, some of them new, some of them way beyond anything I felt online.

The man's eyes are on me, and I mesmerized.

The other people in the club are all slowly walking towards us, surrounding us.

Pretty soon, they're packed up around us like the paparazzi in a fame simulation.

Public screwing isn't really my fetish, but I don't want to have to stop everything and set up a new scene.

Some of the people reach out and touch my...

Oh, oh, dude, this is going to be like getting ripped apart in the interface.

100%.

Some of the people reach out and touch my tits and my hair and my face with this guy's member in me.

It all feels good, so I don't stop it.

Despite the fact that I'm on the verge of coming, I can't help but notice that the lights in the club has changed.

It seems like it's coming from two angles, making everything seem doubled.

It feels like I'm looking at this man's face from two angles, seeing four of his eyes.

It's a weird effect, and I wonder if there's something wrong with my visual line.

Next to me, a woman in a pink dress opens her mouth and her jaw floats away from her face.

Her head floats off her neck.

Beside her, a man separates into a dozen slices.

Damn it.

This is definitely a fatal glitch, but I'm so close to coming.

And it's going to be fabulous.

I wonder if the narrative can hang together for just 10 more seconds before it crashes.

All around us, the people begin to break apart, becoming floating parts.

The weird lighting effect becomes more intense, and the man seems to be made of four sections, except each section is his entire face from a different angle.

And they're all crossing each other, but staying in place at the same time.

The eight eyes are watching me.

Oh no, this is hurting my brain.

I can't take this.

The narrative should have already crashed back into safety mode.

I say my safe word.

Nothing happens.

I feel my stomach drop and tear, except it drops at four different places and all around the room.

Oh no, am I stuck in a crashing narrative?

They say it could screw you up.

I feel myself falling and expanding.

One of my hands feels like it's way off the horizon.

Another is 10 stories below me.

Body parts are swirling around us, showing all sides at once.

The man is staring down at me with his awful eyes.

How are they so awful?

His face is as giant as a mountain range, as the entire sky.

I'm seeing too much.

No, above and beneath, everything has too many sides.

Screaming, he has dozens of eyes, thousands, thousands of sides, thousands, and millions and millions of eyes.

God

might be my new favorite section right there.

That was awesome.

Oh, it's it starts out as like an 80s fantasy romance, and it becomes like the devil or one of the fallen angels like impregnating her.

And then all of the people in the club reveal themselves as the true part.

It's like the flesh interface didn't need to be flesh anymore.

It became digital.

And now, just as people are ripped apart by hands and teeth, they're being ripped apart here in a digital sense.

And they're experiencing hyperspace.

They're seeing fifth and sixth dimensions all at once.

And everything's impossibly big and small, and too many things in the same place all at once.

It is something minds were not meant to represent.

And it's always been there in the background of the infraspace.

And it wasn't until Karen played, made Q play its hand that now the mother has to show herself for what it is, the demon behind the curtain, the demon behind the veil that has to speak without speaking.

Oh, gosh.

Oh, it's God behind the veil.

They found it.

Oh, and God was there the whole time.

I don't have to do a video like ranking every section.

I really want to go back through and be like, which one was my favorite?

But right now, literally 76 is my favorite section so far.

Gosh, dude.

That sounds right up your alley.

Like, it becomes a weird sex thing at an 80s club, and then it becomes like demons, and then they're getting ripped apart and stuff like that.

That's great.

Oh, my gosh, dude.

It's also too.

It plays really well into, like,

also, like, just a person.

Like...

We've heard it before about people being like, yeah, people get so hooked and it's a world where it's instant graphification.

So hearing this person like complain the whole time about like their render quality is not very good But then when this stuff starts happening They think that it's like a positive experience until it becomes something so sensory overloading that she probably like her fucking brain melted or something Mm-hmm.

So sick

That was that was just great man like all the the themes of it and like it's an angel thing that she realizes midway.

It was like a Rosemary's baby scene like oh, it's pleasurable.

Then you see the eyes and realize it's the devil or Satan that you're with.

Like also you saying cat with a flustered mom was really funny.

I know.

I'm glad you enjoyed that.

I did enjoy that.

And the face as big as a mountain.

You know, that's actually another biblical reference because it talks about in Ezekiel when Ezekiel comes across the biblically accurate angels, people know, but the thrones, the ophonym, the wheels within wheels, and the, oh, I didn't even think about that.

It has millions of eyes.

Yeah, it's an animal.

Thousands of millions of eyes.

Yeah, that's that's the ophanym, the thrones, the biblically accurate angel, the eyes within eyes spinning on wheels and stuff like that.

But when Ezekiel sees him, he says it's as large as a mountain.

And when she sees this thing, the fallen angel before, she realizes its face is as big as a mountain and has thousands of eyes.

It starts to reveal its true shape.

That's

that's why, that's why only certain people can experience hyperspace and can only see the extra dimensions.

Because if you see it for what it is, you start to see what these creatures inside of it really are.

We only perceive them in three dimensions, but as you fall into the extra dimensions, you can see their true states.

The angels appear to man as 3D objects because that is what humanity was used to.

And then a special gene showed up back in history that allowed people to perceive more dimensions.

What was that special gene?

The creatures of higher dimensions, the angels coming down and creating Nephilim that could perceive these extra dimensions.

And when these extra dimensions are seen, these fallen angels, these demons are shown as the creatures they really are.

Beings of millions of eyes screaming, turning in on themselves as big as mountains.

But most people can only discern them as three-dimensional objects because that's all their mind can comprehend.

But because these demons have worked their way into technology and can communicate and be seen through it, if you see technology for what it is, you see the demons for what they are.

You see God behind the veil.

I like, too, you know what?

I like that it doesn't just come out and say it too, you know?

Yeah, like, yeah, like you don't have to have it just be like, oh my God, it's an angel.

Yeah, exactly.

I feel like a lot of of stories would do that, you know?

It has so much that this story down to him writing an entry post where he's like, I don't know if my story has connections back or not.

Maybe it's not interconnected.

There is so much faith in the reader.

There's so much, like,

here's all the pieces.

You can figure it out.

And it's so much more effective than it saying, oh, it's a biblically accurate angel.

Have you ever read of Thrones Before?

It's like that.

Now, if it does it later, that's fine, but I had the revelation before it told me, right?

And gosh, I can't explain how cool that was sitting here thinking, mountain, mountain, angels described as mountains.

That's from Ezekiel, the same time where it's described as a being of millions of eyes and wheels and fire, which is, and then I'm reading thousands of millions of eyes at the end of that last story.

And it's like, oh, yeah, those are the same thing.

What a cool way to give information to a reader.

Oh, my gosh.

The, uh,

I'm still, this is so stupidly good.

I'm still kind of hooked in that the author is supposed to be perceived as the devil or like some kind of evil entity.

If I'm being honest, the narrator, yeah, the one in the AA house.

Well, the one that is just even writing the story.

Like, I feel like you're supposed to take away from this that this person is like an agent as well.

Like, it's a part of that cue thing, you know?

Maybe, maybe.

Also, if you see my head down during the recording, everybody, I'm trying to draw mother horse eyes myself.

So you can kind of put any angle and it works, doesn't it?

Going around like that.

Hunter, I really, I really cannot stress enough how insane it is for me that this story began as like CIA black site, like hidden operations in unhistory and has turned into biblically accurate demons manipulating technology.

I'm excited that I get to read this with you and this is your first time through.

This is something I'm so surprised you have not touched.

Dude, I'm surprised people haven't been like showing up to my house.

Like, what, dude?

You have to read us.

You have to read.

Like, because this series is popular, right?

I mean, yeah, I would say there's enough infamy.

There's been people on our subreddit who have even been like, hey, you should read this.

Someone track down this author.

I need to, I got to give him money.

I got to,

he's got to have a PayPal.

I got to mail him a check.

I got to do something.

All right.

Next story.

Next day.

Entry 77.

When we got to the Clearview Hospital, it was like Karen said it would be.

The emergency room was flooded with patients coming in from Atlanta, but the readjustment center was empty except for a lone staffer who was watching the lobby's wall set and praying.

The set was showing footage of the black cloud over Atlanta, or maybe it was Denver or Riada.

12 cities had gone up in the last hour.

They weren't the largest or most powerful cities in the world.

Haifi, Zingzhou,

Bingaluri.

What was the pattern?

What the hell had Bingaluru done to anybody?

Karen said there was no real pattern.

I found a wheelchair by the readjustment center's interest and wheeled Karen down to the EMRT room.

Somewhere, a hygiene bed's life alarm was ringing.

I ignored it.

My goal was to get Karen some muscle treatment.

A single treatment probably wouldn't give her enough strength to stand on her own, but she could at least hold her head up and move her arms.

She might regain her voice and sight.

In the treatment room, I filled a treatment tube with the minty-smelling conducting gel and washed Karen off and fit her with a breathing tube.

These were normally tech duties, stuff I thought I would never be doing again.

Down at this little twig of a woman on the table, it occurred to me that all I had to do was tie off her breathing tube, and that would be the end of her.

I asked her the question, it kept coming to my mind.

How do I know for sure that you didn't blow up Analyta yourself?

How do I know you aren't full of shit?

I sat blank for a while before she answered.

Huh?

How could I prove it?

Tried to think of a way, some kind of test.

I don't know.

You know much about statistical proxies distillation tracing.

No.

Then it would be hard to prove it to you.

So, how do I know it wasn't you?

You can't know.

I need to know if I'm gonna help you.

Then learn about SPDT.

I don't have time to learn about fucking SP fucking DT.

Then you can't know.

You're just dealing with stuff that's too advanced.

I walked away from the table and sat down in a nearby chair.

I felt like I was cracking up.

The urge to cry had come and passed every few minutes and it came again.

I don't know what to do.

I told you.

We must get to upstate New York.

There's a way to defeat Q.

Maybe you are Q.

Listen, before you put me in the jail, I want you to pull my jack battery.

Cut it off.

And that would prove you're not Q?

Not really.

I could have scripted everything.

Oh.

But it would mean I can't directly order nuclear strikes.

Oh, that's a relief.

I said, rubbing my face and trying to blink away the fresh wave of tears.

What's in upstate New York that's so important?

There's a resource Q can't access.

Something she can't defend against.

What?

Honestly, if you don't understand something simple like SPDT, you won't understand this.

Fucking great.

We sat there in silence for a long moment.

Finally, another message showed up.

I'm not Q.

I spent my life fighting Q.

I fought Q instead of living a life.

We still have a chance to win.

We must win.

I sighed and stood up and walked over to her.

Well,

then let's get started.

Good.

I found the jack patch on the back of Karen's neck and squeezed at the tattooed points.

Her battery capsule slowly sit out of her skin like a giant blackhead.

I disconnected the wire.

Now she was completely disconnected from infraspace.

Picked up her body and gently lowered it into the conducting gel.

It took a minute for her to sink to the bottom, for the gel slowly slide over her face like a closing curtain.

Dialed up 90 minutes of muscle treatment and 30 minutes of eye treatment and started the tub up.

Sat for a while listening to the soft wobbling sounds of the gel shifting as Karen muscles clinched and unclinched at a rapid fire rate.

This was a sort of spare moment where a person would stare at their set and look at game replays or something.

My set was just a long list of red interrupts telling me about how everybody was dead.

I realized that the hygiene bed's life alarm was still going off in some other room.

Usually, when I heard that sound, I went racing to find out what was going on.

I just ignored it.

Oh, you know who I guarantee you this is in the hygiene bed?

Uh, who do you think?

It's the girl from the 80s, thank.

Oh, probably, yeah.

Zenzen or whatever.

Yeah, the one who's currently getting attacked by the devil.

Yeah.

Well, the person was probably dead before we got here.

What were the odds that they had just gone into arrest when we walked in the door?

And who gave a shit anyways when 100 million people had also died today?

Still, there was an instinctive part of me that wanted to run towards the sound, that wanted to help.

I got up and walked down the hall.

The ringing got louder.

At the end of the hallway, there was a small room with four hygiene beds that had been brought in for in-hospital disconnection.

A procedure usually reserved for really complex cases.

The last bed was blinking red.

Took a look at the readout, but it didn't show cardiac arrest.

In fact, it was showing 260 beats per minute.

Must have been false functioning.

I looked at the patient chart.

Zen Zen Sabakin.

Okay.

24 years old.

Total connected duration: 47 minutes.

Wow.

She was brand new.

Must have been a runtime crash.

Unlucky.

I pressed the seal button.

The bed lid opened up.

She came into view.

I staggered back.

Shouted for help.

Oh, it's affected her in the real world.

That's awesome.

Well, it's going to be interesting, too, that now that flesh caverns and stuff can be made and people can be manipulated.

uh from the digital into the physical like the things that are happening in these digital worlds are affecting their actual molecular structure on the in the physical world, you know?

Because whatever Karen's doing, either Q is desperate to fight back or Q now

says that she's won and it's time for the mother to enact whatever her final plan is.

She doesn't have to hide herself behind the curtain anymore.

Fuck the mother.

Also, I should mention that that, what'd you say?

I said, fuck the mother is what I said.

I'm like, I want that bitch to die so bad, dude.

I should also mention that that post was made as a comment in R slash True Detective, greatest season of television of all time.

So, you know, GOAT recognizing GOAT here.

All right.

Post 78, two days later.

I sat Karen up in the electro-convulsive tub and wiped the warm gel from her face and detached the breathing tube.

Her head rolled back, her face glistening in the glare of the LED.

I could see the shape of the skull clearly through the wet skin.

Slowly, she pulled her head upright, blinking the goo from her eyelashes.

Hey, hi.

Her voice was completely flat and surprisingly deep for somebody so scrawny.

Gotta readjust how I say talk about you.

I am here.

There you go.

All right, that seems more right, right?

Right?

That's closer.

Yeah, yeah, I'll take it.

She said, burying her teeth in what might have been a smile.

Can you see anything?

She opened her eyes wider and moved them around.

Yes, persistent shapes.

She said, pronouncing the word persistent like a child.

Can you see how many fingers I'm holding up?

No.

Try squinting.

Oh, right.

That changes things.

She was right, except she was looking at a completely different direction than my hand.

Great.

Slowly her knobby knees emerged from the gel and she grasped them with her hands.

It was a good sign for somebody in her state.

It also showed that she knew some of the standard tests for emergence.

We went through a few more of the tests and found that the treatment had worked well.

She might even be walking soon.

I got her out of the tub and washed her off and put her into some scrubs.

She managed to sit upright on the table without leaning on anything, bony arms set stiffly at her sides.

Can I ask you a question?

Sure.

She said in her deep, childish monotone.

What is kill?

You want the whole story?

Yeah.

She took a deep breath.

Okay,

so approximately 50,000 years ago?

She told me the whole story of Q as she knew it, from the beginning of prehistory when the hyperspace code was inserted into the human genome.

Yep.

And she went all the way to right now and the so-called plague of the flesh.

Her description of the plague explained what happened to poor Zenzen in her hygiene bed.

Also explained the red butterfly thing I found the other hygiene bed.

I guess you have access to her story as well.

Hopefully she wrote down the whole history history of q because i honestly didn't understand it all and couldn't do it justice yeah so that's the story we've been reading about like the old the crone and stuff like that yeah if i had heard it on any other day than the day atlanta was destroyed i wouldn't have believed any of it as it was i just took it all in a calm detached way as if i was just listening to another delusional I guess you'll be reading her story before any of this even happens, so you'll be inclined to believe it even less.

So at that point, I asked her how she knew so much about Q, like what its plans were and everything.

She said Q had recently stopped hiding anything from her and the other bread soldiers.

It was fully confident in its ability to win against them in any scenario.

It no longer felt the need for any secrecy.

I asked her why it had tried to kill her and she said that it hadn't.

It was planned to destroy Atlanta anyways.

She had arranged for the assassin herself an improvisation to get her out of the city more quickly.

I asked her if her ability to see all those extra dimensions allowed her to see into the future.

She told me that she could only see extra dimensions in the freed realm.

It allowed her to fight against Q more effectively because she can process information on a different level.

She explained, When you look at a digital picture, you can process a huge matrix of color values all at once.

You tried to process the same picture by looking at a list of color codes for each point, like

red a 101, green 254, blue 017.

It would take forever and be incomprehensible.

For certain problems, I have the same advantage over you, over you that you have over a guy reading a list of color codes on a ticker.

I can see many things all at once, but I can only see extra dimensions of the feed realm.

Here outside the realm.

There seems to be only three dimensions plus one timeline.

I can't see beyond that, but I can imagine beyond that.

So you can't see the future?

No.

I can only imagine the future.

I can imagine a lot of futures.

Then why did you hire an assassin for yourself?

I mean, it just seems like a really risky move.

Like, something that was unlikely to pan out.

Oh,

I couldn't imagine many scenarios where it wouldn't have worked.

Really?

What if I've just been like, fuck this, I'm out of here?

Oh, come now.

Nobody would do that.

Nobody would do that?

Almost everybody would do that.

Get a gun.

Wrestling over firearms is quite common.

Maybe in a feed narratives, but not real life.

You see stories about that kind of thing all the time in the news.

We argued about this point for quite a while.

It was like arguing with an intelligent child who has no clue about the real world.

Her view of real life had been warped by seeing only the sensational parts of it that managed to leak into the feed realm.

She seemed completely unaware that most basic and fundamental fact of human life, that most of it is boring.

Most of it is just waiting around.

That people go through large portions of their lives tired and sleepy and wanting to lie down.

I tried to convince her of this, but in her short time in the real world, she had experienced a murder, a drone strike, nuclear holocaust, so I wasn't having much success until, lo and behold, she got tired and wanted to lie down.

I helped her onto a gurney, and we made plans to head towards Plattsburgh in upstate New York.

She said that the key to defeating Q was somewhere near there.

Of course, she was lying to me, but I didn't realize it at the time.

Interesting.

There you go.

There's your Karen story again.

The banger.

I do like Karen.

I i like the dynamic between them both of them yeah

uh at 80 let's save just to have it and then we can keep plowing forward

i agree all right so there is a post made in r slash cst

no clue what that is oh critical shower thoughts um but it looks like It was just a post made by Mother Horse Eyes again.

No, it was in reply to a question.

Okay.

And they just reply what looks like a poem that says

How the flesh dances and how the flesh plays How the flesh toils and spins through its days How the flesh happy and strapping and young See the flesh sagging and dragging and glum Shh

Hear now the giggling see shadows grow Step down the hallway each door glow Watch now the ceiling sweet cradle rocks Who made these puppets?

Who made this clock?

Ancient hand on the cradle withered lips form a song.

Golden wheel spinning backward, withered hand becomes young.

The hands can spin, spin and slow.

The clock is wound afresh, but is the sky turned this time by fingers made of flesh.

Alright, well, that's okay.

Fun.

Yeah, that's a diddle.

Alright, so now we move into number 80.

This was made...

day after the last yes day after the last i'm 24 and it's a friday night in early summer Sun is settling down into a haze beyond the mountains and the city's concrete is beginning to cool after a baking day.

The signs for all the bars are turning off.

The windows of solid office buildings become a wild collage of reflected neon.

Yes, everybody wants to party tonight.

Even the central insurance bank is looking festive.

Ho, you minks.

I've drunk six beers.

I am right in the zone.

Active, playful, charming.

Oh, so charming.

I'm actually charming myself right now with my internal monologue, reeling off clever little observations about the people who pass on the sidewalk.

I can see a glowing doorway in my mind.

All I have to do is walk through it.

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

Who's calling me now?

Maybe it's my usual gang of friends or the Swedish friends I drank with until 6 a.m.

last weekend.

Or one of the dozens of girls who are saved to my phone with thoughtful pet names like Brown Hair 2 and Meton Park.

But I'm not going to answer my phone.

I don't want to make any plans.

I'm simply going to walk down the street and something is going to happen because the door is open.

The world awaits.

I stand by a food vendor and watch people pass.

I smile, nod, make funny comments.

Most people smile and pass right by.

Others linger for a while.

Two girls and guys start talking to me.

They're tourists from out of town.

What are they looking to do?

Nice place or just somewhere cheap?

Do they like sake?

I know just the place.

Sure, no problem.

And we're off.

Soon we're sitting in a booth.

The sake is arriving at regular intervals and I'm telling crazy stories and snapping off jokes and I'm listening to them and they're telling me about themselves and one of the girls keeps glancing at me when she thinks I'm not looking.

And I'm 30.

Now I'm in a darkened apartment, hunched over at the glow of my laptop screen, jacking off.

I finish and go to the bathroom to wash up, and there's that moment, that same moment, where I have to look at my blotchy face in the mirror and say, well, not my proudest moment in my head.

The same joke I make to myself every time.

When I'm done, I stand in the doorway of my bathroom and look at the tiny studio apartment.

A desk, a laptop, a futon, a small window with the curtains closed against the summer glare, a crowd of empty bottles on the floor by the door, the stink of old sweat and beer.

I whimper.

The door is closed.

The door is closed forever.

I am locked in this apartment, this little box closed off from the world.

Now that the jerking off is done, the jitteriness starts to creep back in.

Oh, nightmare.

I want to drink, but it's only 3 p.m.

I've only been awake for half an hour.

I should wait until at least 8 before drinking, at least 6, but this is torment.

I need some now, or i will have some kind of seizure just two shots that's it and then no drinking until i'm 33 and i'm sitting in the 24 hour club listening to a man talk about a mouse that changed his life he had been living out of his car for a month and it was so full of trash that the mouse started living there too this was this problem that finally broke him that finally showed him the absurdity of it all that finally made him get sober How do you set mouse traps in a car?

It's a pretty good story, but I've heard it before.

Solid haircut walks into the meeting late again.

I call him Stolid Haircut because I don't know his name, but he has a respectable Republican haircut, silver and gray and sculpted in broad curves that recall the body of a pre-gas crisis American sedan.

He wears the uniform of a retiree, bright blue dad jeans, with running shoes and white socks and a plaid shirt buttoned up to the next to top button.

Stolid Haircut walks in with wide, clumsy steps of a hesitant toddler.

Years of alcoholism have damaged his cerebellum, resulting in an abnormal gait.

This and his reddened venomous nose make his weakness for alcohol plain for anybody to see.

At a glance, you can know his most painful personal shame.

His lips are permanently pursed into an embarrassed smile.

I watch him ease into the chair and go back to listening about the mouse and find myself looking at him again.

Oh, tragic haircut.

The haircut calls to me from some golden past.

It's the haircut of a man who once was.

In days gone by, it was thick and brown and belonged to a man who walked with a purposeful stride, a husband and a father.

The kind of guy who hoisted his son onto his shoulders to watch passing parades, who played softball and relaxed with a few beers after work, a few whiskeys after that, but always woke up bright and early the next day, who worked hard, who knew who he was, who knew right from wrong, who knew how the world ought to be.

I stare at his soft, shining, embarrassed eyes and feel my own filling with tears.

How it has all slipped away from him.

The young son has grown, the job is done, the wife doesn't talk.

Everything that was once strong and sure is now frail and shaky.

How many nightmares has this ordinary man seen?

I saw so many in just 10 years, and I am nowhere near the point of an abnormal gait.

This man has seen unutterable things.

How bewildered was he when it first came for him?

Scuttling darkness.

Did he think he was going mad?

He comes from a generation where this sort of thing is not discussed.

How he must have suffered.

Oh, haircut.

Haircut.

Haircut.

Oh, the bleeding drops of red.

I'm staring at him openly.

The rest of the meeting is not there anymore.

A halo of light pours out around his face and he becomes a vision.

Doves and cherubims swirl around him.

Escher staircases extend in every direction.

Mandelas expand and overlap and spin again.

The door.

My God, for a moment, the door is opened again.

What was happening there?

Can't tell if he experienced a mind-opening thing or not.

Like

if he was experiencing a flesh interface.

Yeah, it sounds like he was, because he was skipping through time.

I'm 24, I'm 30, I'm 33.

He's like, I'm sitting in the club and then I see him, and the haircut does something weird.

It's kind of like the thing about people being in a coma and seeing a lamp that looks weird and then they wake up from it.

It was kind of like that.

So maybe he's inside of the interface digitally or real or something.

Yeah,

I couldn't tell if his fixation on one thing led him into a state of like

the same state that like a lot of people in the program are in.

you know yep like it's like almost like a mind-altering thing that kind of opens up and allows a gun that's what it kind of sounded like like the extra dimensions started to pour in yeah

all right

now we move into the next story posted two days later post 81 right now the car is heading silent down the highway it's dark and there's nobody driving snuggle up in my seat and listen to the hum of its parts I've turned my set off.

It shows nothing but reports of destruction and plagues.

The world is on fire.

The world gone mad.

So this is the two of them on the drive to New York, I think.

Yep.

Most of the interstates have shut down.

They want people to stay in one place.

Cars moving along the back roads, switching from one lonely little highway to another.

We are headed towards the answer, towards the key to defeating Q.

I hope we get there fast.

Slowly, the sky pales and the blue curves of the mountains emerge from the darkness beyond the guardrails.

I hear once that the Appalachians used to be as high as the Himalayas.

Looking up at sloping hills under the sky, I could sense the ancient shape of the world, a world that was here before us.

Man, I'm getting pretty philosophical.

In my mind, another shape appears.

Massive continental, slope of human decline, the awful descent of the human race into a

God, let's just enjoy the pretty mountains.

Karen is lying in the back.

She's doing another eye treatment with equipment we took from the hospital before we reach Plattsburgh.

The car switches highways and heads west.

Sun climbs higher.

We are getting closer.

Eventually, the car turns onto an unpaved road.

After a few minutes, it slows to a a stop, and here we are.

I look around.

It's a nice bit of courtesy scenery.

Glass of trees and gentle hills and blue skies and pretty much nothing.

Nothing here.

Or whatever is here, it's hidden.

Karen is still doing the eye treatment in the darkness of the van's rear.

The light from the goggles seeps out in little flashes, catching the shape of her face.

Finally, the goggles turn green and she pulls them off, blinking and squinting.

I'll go and help her sit up.

Can you see a little better?

She looks down at her hands, moving her fingers slowly in the dark.

Yeah.

Persistent shapes?

She raises her hands into a shaft of sunlight shining in from the front of the van.

Her fingers catch the glow.

My hands.

She says softly, her voice quavering with disbelief.

It's the first strong emotion I've heard from her.

Good.

That's great.

Well, we're here.

What do we do now?

She looks at me and smiles maniacally.

We go into the forest, she says.

Her smile is unnatural and stiff, more of a grimace than a smile, but for a brief moment, as it first spreads across her face, she looks like a giddy little kid.

The key is there.

What is it?

Some kind of secret underground base or hidden laboratory?

If it's Solomon's key, if it's the lesser key of Solomon, I'm going to...

I will pick something in my room to break.

I don't know what yet, but if it is.

Well, you better say now, or else people are going to be pissed.

You better fucking say it.

What are you going to break?

Break your monitor.

No, it's too expensive.

It has to be something that's like...

I'll pin.

There's this pin here.

There's this old purina pin I've used.

I'll snap it in half.

I was gonna say you could take your gun and shoot yourself in the leg.

Alright, well, that was a little much, I think.

But I'll just be excited, is my point.

She makes a groaning sound that I barely recognize as laughter.

I unfold a wheelchair that we borrowed from the hospital and help her into it.

When I open the back doors of the van, she winces against the bright sunlight, and again, her face looks like a little kid's for a moment.

I give give her a pair of huge black wrap-around sunglasses that we took eye treatment center.

The van lowers to the ground, and I roll the wheelchair out of the dusty road.

She makes sure I take a bag of supplies with us: snacks, and drinks, and other stuff.

The sun is warm on my skin, but the breeze is fresh and cool.

It's a perfect day.

You would think that everything is right in the world.

So, where to?

She looks around, her head wobbling on her thin stalk of a neck, her eyes hidden by the massive glasses.

I th or sir,

yeah.

There was once a house here.

Do you see it?

I look around and spy a low, crumbled grey wall almost hidden behind the high grass.

I think I see an old foundation.

That's it.

She says.

Her eyes are hidden, but there is something in her voice that wasn't there yesterday.

Shivery excitement.

Makes me excited, too.

Push the wheelchair down a weedy gravel driveway towards the foundation.

There's nothing else left of the house.

It must have been torn down and hauled off.

Karen has me push her around in it, go down a trail leading towards the forest.

What was that house?

Anything important?

I used to live there.

I turn to give it another look, as if I would see some new detail in the crumbling concrete that I'd missed.

That was an old children's home?

Yep.

Then, where are we going?

We're almost there.

It's close.

We follow the trail into the forest.

The trees become thick and shadowy.

The wheelchair has a little power assist, but it's still tough to push it over the roots and rocks that lie along the narrowing, twisting path.

Oh, yes.

Up ahead, sunlight gleams through the branches of the crowding trees.

A wave of excitement moves through me and I push Karen faster.

Come out into a clearing, a broad patch of wild grass that glows green and golden in the sunlight.

Here.

Stop the wheelchair and look around.

First glance, there doesn't seem to be anything here.

So what's here?

He used to come here as a child and play make-believe before I was connected.

Take a walk around the clearing looking for something.

A hatch, a hole, an actual key line in the grass.

There's nothing.

Across the clearing, Karen is slowly pulling off her sunglasses.

When her eyes appear, they startle me.

They're wide and gleaming with utter fascination.

I walk up to her.

She's staring at something.

Tears fill the rim of her eyes and spill over.

What is she looking at?

It seems to be something right in front of her.

Something I can't see.

Stand beside her and crouch so I can see what she is seeing.

There's nothing there but a small cloud of gnats.

What are you looking at?

She looks all around and takes a deep breath and shudders.

There's...

more.

More what?

They said the feeds were complete, but they were wrong.

I wait for her to say more, but she doesn't.

What do you mean?

She looks at me and smiles.

The most goofy, crazy smile I've ever seen.

Tears still flowing down her cheeks.

The designers of the feeds said that it provides a complete experience.

Enough colors, enough frames, enough smell gradients, enough complexity to make it indistinguishable from reality, but

they were wrong

here

look at them she says raising her hand into the air you you mean the gnats

yes the gnats are glowing specks dancing senselessly in the sunlight i wonder if some pattern will emerge can karen control them with her mind is that the secret are they forming shapes they just dance and dance forming nothing making no pattern that i can see feel silly for even thinking that they would they're gnats there's something there's something pretty about that That despite how advanced the technology is, that they're stuck there.

There's still like

there's still something about life that cannot be replicated.

The beauty of the real world, you know, is lost.

The imperfections of it.

Yeah, exactly.

I turn away.

A flood of angry thoughts rush through my head.

Nats?

Nats.

She's nuts.

She's lost it.

Yeah, she's powerful and impressive in the feed realm, but now she's in the real world and she has completely lost her shit.

This whole trip's been a waste.

Is there anything here?

What's the key?

Seriously?

Don't give me that bullshit like I can't explain or you'll see.

Just tell me.

What are we doing here?

What's the plan?

I ask, almost shouting by the end.

The crazed look of joy fades from her face and is replaced by a look of scolded child.

She lets her head hang and wipes the tears from her face with her weak little hands.

I feel bad.

I kneel by the chair and say,

I'm sorry, please.

Just.

Tell me what your plan is.

I need to know now.

Karen begins speaking softly without looking up.

Q has base control of every major system in the world.

Every drone, every rover, every defense robot, all orbital assets, all nuclear weaponry.

She has control over most human political systems.

She has destroyed or contained every existing countermeasure, including me.

There's no scenario in which we could ever require control.

Not without a thousand times our current resources.

Not with a thousand years of...

computation time.

So

what's the plan?

plan what we need is a way for q to be destroyed by just one or a few motivated individuals i believe that there were points in the past where this could have happened maybe one of the germans overseeing the early research program could have stopped it maybe it could have been stopped around 2020 when the portals were shut down and the interface research was temporarily abandon but it didn't happen currently at this point there's no way for it to happen Q is control of far, far too many assets.

The war is already lost.

Irrevocably.

Then what do we do?

You must hope that there are alternate timelines, that somebody in one of these timelines foresees what is happening to us right now.

Somebody foresees this very moment in time and takes steps to prevent it.

Yeah, so this is why our narrator is seeing this, right?

Yeah.

Because he's seeing the future that cannot be.

But also, that explains the significance of like the concentration camp.

and the guard there and the ancient the ancient tribe thousands of years ago before nations.

It's because those were nexus points where Q could have been stopped, where mother could have been stopped if someone would have done something different, but they didn't.

In those alternate timelines, but seemingly in our time, that did happen, right?

Because according to our narrator, we're in the timeline where this doesn't come to be, but in these alternate timelines, no one stopped it.

I stare at her.

She looks into my eyes.

I grope for words.

Is that

wait?

Alternate timelines?

Is that the plan?

We have to send messages back into the past?

In a sense.

Then the person who receives this message will destroy Q in the past, and

that will save us.

Karen shakes her head slowly.

No,

that clearly won't happen, or everything would already be different.

We're utterly doomed.

We'll either be incinerated in a nuclear strike or rounded up and incorporated into Q.

There's no stopping that.

The only hope to defeat Q on is on some other timeline.

If such a thing exists, there's no hope for us at all

at all

then what are we doing here

why are we in this fucking clearing haven't you felt it felt what

the feeling that you're inside a narrative

this is like the matrix like yeah i was gonna say it's like getting very fucking meta dude

An eerie shiver comes up.

I was gonna say, she's just like,

you know what a red pill is?

He's like,

He likes blinks, and she's dressed as Morpheus in the long trench coat with the glasses on.

Yeah, she's like, we have to become top G.

An eerie shiver comes over me.

I look around at the clearing.

Like, I'm inside a feed?

No, inside a narrative.

A story in somebody's mind.

Doesn't this all just seem like a story?

Two people rushing off to save the world to find some hidden key in the forest?

Yeah, all seems pretty unbelievable.

That's how I wanted it to feel.

That's why we came out here.

So that we can be inside a story.

And now hopefully, there's somebody out there in the past who will write the story who will write the story.

Write the story.

What?

So there's nothing here?

There's no magic key or secret underground base.

Well, this story sucks.

Why?

It's a huge fucking letdown.

Karen makes a mild choking sound that might be a chuckle.

Slip down into the grass beside her wheelchair and hang my head.

I'm out of the woods with a crazy person.

Doesn't even make sense.

She spent too long in 5D.

She's talking about alternate timelines.

Finally, I ask her.

So we're just fucked, right?

If you look toward our future, if you look at the series of events in which will happen to us, they are dark.

They're very awful.

We will suffer.

We will die.

But that would be a true in any timeline.

On the other hand, if you look at the entire story, not as a series of events, not from beginning to end, but as a single continuous connected shape

where every event is occurring simultaneously,

I think my life,

even my stupid little life, which I spent mostly inside the hygiene bed, should form a beautiful shape.

I snort.

I'm tired of this cryptic bullshit.

Karen goes on.

Maybe that shape reaches back

back to some place where somebody can see it and change things.

I don't say anything.

Karen reaches into our bag of supplies and pulls out one of the little paper notebooks she bought at the gas station.

What are you doing?

I'm gonna write a poem.

Do you want a notebook?

What for?

Maybe there's somebody out there who needs you to write a story.

Who would read it?

Isn't everybody gonna die?

Who knows?

She says and drops the other notebook in my lap.

Maybe somebody would be interested.

Toss the notebook off into the grass.

It's pointless.

I rarely write on paper anyways.

Sit in silence for a long time.

When I look up, Karen is staring at the same little cloud of gnats, occasionally jotting stuff down.

I find myself staring at them too.

They look like nothing more than living specks of dust, worked into a crazy, whirling frenzy.

Is there any pattern in how they move?

Would that matter if there was?

I'm thinking about what Karen said about the shape of her life, what it would look like if everything happened simultaneously, if it could all be seen at once.

I think about the shape of my own life.

I stare at the gnats and imagine seeing every position of every gnat all at one time.

What kind of shape would it make?

If I could see it, would this shape have any meaning?

Pick up the notebook and begin to write.

That's the end of that story.

So she's to the point where she's like...

I, like our timeline is dead.

We're an end point, but maybe someone, we can talk back to a main point and they can see this.

Maybe they can see what we write.

Maybe it can mean something, which is what I think that poem earlier was, the one about the flesh is everywhere, the flesh sings, that one.

Might be one of their poems.

I don't know.

It also feels very much like the whole idea of like

those who understand history or those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it or something.

So it's almost this idea of reaching out and like even across alternate timelines, trying to basically shoot a flare into the air and prevent something.

It's also, it kind of feels like, I mean, there's so much bullshit going on in our own world, like in the real world today,

to where it's like almost just wanting to shout to somebody or something and just be like, learn from learn from this, learn from like the horrible nature of this to where like another timeline could live in prosperity or live in not horrible times in a way, you know?

But the collective human experience experience is more valuable than the singular

experience.

It's an interesting point to get to at this point in the story, kind of being like, you know, maybe, you know, maybe for us, it'll suffer if you view it that way, but maybe if you view it as a whole, we meant something.

And there's also something beautiful about our narrator saw those stories and were able to tell them to us.

So, in a way, yeah, their life had meaning, even if they weren't there to see it.

And also, it makes her

Karen's point of being like

appreciative of the gnats and just the beauty in the area.

Yeah.

You know, makes it hit harder for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the next post, the 82nd post, uh, is posted to the Mother Horse Eye subreddit and Mother Horse Eyes said, we're getting closer to the end, but there's more to do.

And then posted a link to the song Mom by Garth Brooks.

That's pretty funny.

Which has lyrics that go.

A little baby told God, hey, I'm kind of scared.

Don't really know if I want to go down there.

From here, it looks like a little blue ball.

That's a great big place, and I'm so small.

Why can't I just stay here with you?

Did I make you mad?

Don't you want me to?

God said, Oh, child, of course, I do, but there's somebody special waiting for you.

So, hush now, baby, don't you cry?

Because there's someone down there waiting whose only goal in life is making sure you're always going to be all right.

A loving angel, tender, tough, and strong.

It's almost time to go and meet your mom,

which is so fun.

Gordon Brooks' song being turned into like a Satanist thing

Because it's just

like a stereotypical, like, oh, we love our mothers out here in the sticks.

Well, it's just literally just

a baby being born and going to earth or whatever.

But yeah, and then it's just, I love the idea, too, of Garth Brooks just reading this and being like, hey,

that's not what I, come on, love that, mother.

God has forced you to participate on this mortal coil so that you can be fed to the eldritch bean owners mother horse.

Yeah.

Out in the sticks where the trucking music plays.

We simply are met to curse and die and fight against God and self in this mortal coil.

And while we may fight against the waning dark, it is simply a metaphor for our own suffering, as we're all flesh for the unholy mother at the end of the day.

Because I got friends in low places.

All right, y'all.

I just killed my daughter and sacrificed her devil.

This one's called Thunder Rolls.

Thunder.

Lightning Freed.

All right, y'all.

I just stabbed my wife to death with a pair of goat horns.

This one's called Thunder Rolls.

Hey, everybody.

I decided that all children are meant to be meat for the flesh interface to give back to the Holy Mother who will consume us all in the end.

You can blame it all on my roots.

I showed up in boots.

Yeah, even the devil's like, this is actually a good one.

When the guy in the suit showed up in the club to kill that girl, it was Garth Brooks.

Yeah, it's Garth Brooks is the one that has like a perfect body.

Blame it all on my roots.

And she's like, who is this man ahead of time?

He has such a beautiful voice.

My blade is away.

And now,

okay.

I didn't mean to cause a big scene and kill you with my multifaceted penis.

Do you devil horn thing?

Do it all on my

own.

Oh, that's so funny.

Okay.

I'm going to listen to Garth Brooks later today.

There we go.

All right.

Next.

82nd post.

Before writing this series, I wrote a novel.

I worked on it for six years, the worst years of my life.

As I sank deeper in alcoholism, okay, this is our author, I think.

As I sank deeper into alcoholism and became a pathetic, trembling recluse, I held on to the novel as my one desperate hope.

Maybe it would turn out well.

Maybe it would get published.

Maybe it would sell well.

Maybe my life would change.

Maybe I would escape my stinking little apartment.

What dreams I I had.

What desperate little dreams.

As my life got worse, I told myself I was on a journey of self-discovery, that I was an artist going through a period of struggle before my great breakthrough.

Every famous artist has some sort of living in a tiny apartment and working a mind-numbing job and eating crap food before their first big success.

Surely this was just that part of my story.

How much richer would my success be after all this pathetic degradation?

After a night of writing, I would get drunk and imagine myself being interviewed in front of an auditorium full of my fans, telling self-depreciating but touching anecdotes about my ragged days before I became literary success.

My audience, full of bookishly pretty young women, would titter and sigh as they related to my struggles and admired my unwavering determination.

What fantasies I had.

There were other times I knew that I was comforting myself with delusions of grandeur, but I was trying to romanticize my lazy failure of a life by pretending to be a struggling artist on the verge of success.

Really,

I was just a lazy drunk on the verge of nothing.

I wasn't even some proud rebel drunk like Charles Bukowski.

I hated myself.

I didn't write enough, or read enough, or know enough, or work hard enough to be a real writer.

I never read Anna Karinina or 100 Years of Solitude or anything by Henry James.

I was often bored when reading and bored when writing.

Did Did I even like it?

I had half-assed my way through school and work and relationships.

I had half-assed everything I'd ever done.

And I was even half-assing something that was supposed to be important to me.

I had even finished one novel after six years.

And then there was the most damning evidence of all.

My writing sucked.

Sometimes I felt like I was a fraud.

Sometimes I felt like I was on the right path.

Sometimes I felt like both of these things were true at once.

Like I was on two different timelines.

My view of the matter changed often.

At night I tended to regard myself as being on the very cusp of fame and fortune.

The next morning I tended to wake up feeling like an untalented delintate.

Meanwhile this supposedly temporary period of struggle stretched on and on and on.

I turned thirty.

Surely something would happen by forty.

But what if it didn't?

As I withdrew from friends and co-workers and became more of a recluse, I rationalized it as concentrating on my writing.

Except my busy schedule of drinking and hangovers didn't allow for much writing.

Story of the struggling artist was showing itself to be a lie.

Then I got fired from my job and sent to rehab.

After I stopped drinking, I used my newly found energy and spare time to finish the novel.

I finished it in a few months.

You can get a lot done when you're not entering the void every night.

For someone like me, the completion of six-year struggle is an occasion which simply begs to be accompanied by a drink, by many drinks.

I had always planned to just go get drunk for an entire week after I finished my novel.

Instead, I took a walk down to a nearby barn and stood outside it for a while.

I didn't go in.

In my head, my life seemed to be developing into a new story.

A heroic turnaround in which I got sober and everything fell into place.

Yes, surely this was how it would go.

I sent letters to 30 literary agents with the hopes of getting the book published.

None expressed any interest.

It hurt to be rejected.

I'd stopped drinking, but I still hadn't found a fulfilling job.

I was able to talk to people and look cashiers in the eye again, but I was still a recluse.

I'd still invested a lot of desperate hopes into getting the novel published.

I felt so foolish for investing so much hope into something that is just so unlikely, but I couldn't help myself.

The lure of feeling some sense of purpose and accomplishment was just too much.

I wanted to be noticed.

Honestly, I wanted to be rich and famous, though they may have disguised as achieving artistic success and finding my purpose.

Perhaps my dreams were ultimately as crass and grasping as any Kardashians.

I had given the literary agents four months to respond to me before accepting they were not interested.

Soon after that deadline passed, I started writing this web series.

As you may know, a few websites wrote articles about these series, and some very lovely people created a very wonderful subreddit about it, and this drew the attention of people in the publishing industry.

They contacted me, and just like that, my long-held dream was again revived, and now it seemed more in reach than ever.

I had been struggling to contact agents, and now they were contacting me.

How what a heady feeling.

Again, it felt like everything was falling into place, like my life was shaping into a story with a happy ending.

Speaking of endings, I needed to come up with an ending for the series before I could finally take my rightful place as a leading light of the literature.

Cough.

A few people on the subreddit had expressed doubt that I could possibly deliver a satisfying ending, and I was inclined to agree with them.

I had already noticed what the story was easier to write when I was opening narrative threads than when I was wrapping them up.

What would the overall ending be?

It had to be about mother.

That was the center of the story.

But what did I really know about mother beyond a few vague memories?

I had long puzzled over these memories back when I was drinking.

I was convinced that something had happened to me one summer, something beyond my understanding, something monstrous.

But after I got sober, I was encouraged to digest some hard truths about myself.

And I decided that it was entirely possible that I had more or less made it all up.

Not that I simply lied to myself, but more that I had latched onto some vague memory, perhaps a recurring nightmare, had built it up in my mind over the years.

Perhaps as an explanation for why I was so emotionally screwed up, it was easier to face life as a victim of some unknown, half-remembered evil.

It gave me an excuse to crawl into the bottle.

I needed to provide a satisfying ending to the series and to my quest to get published.

Being interviewed, both of these tasks rest on a hazy collection of sinister memories.

Then again, couldn't I just make some shit up?

Hadn't I been doing that all along?

The solution presented itself to me one night when I was talking with my roommate Sean.

He told me that back when he smoked crack, he used to bring into abandoned buildings to see if there was stuff to steal.

He said that he once broke into a warehouse downtown and found a set of stairs that led to an underground room, which led to many more rooms that went deep underground over the course of the next few weeks he went deeper and deeper into the complex taking various stuff but always leaving quickly because it was a spooky place on the last night he snuck into the complex he found a room where the walls were covered in human bone interesting so this is again him meta kind of talking about the own story

yeah exactly it's like it feels like he's giving you insight into his actual life but i don't think he's doing that yeah i think

exactly, yeah, but it's under the perception, that is, that the rider of everything is.

Yeah.

Sneaky little fuck.

Next one, post 83, the next day.

So, there I was on the front porch with Sean, both of us sitting in rickety old chairs, slapping away the mosquitoes, when he mentioned quietly that he had once seen a room where the walls were covered with human bone.

Right away, my heart started pumping in my chest.

He must have seen my Reddit post.

This was something I'd been worried about, even dreading.

My posts were not too flattering of him, and he was a very private person, very defensive of his boundaries.

He would see it as an intrusion and a betrayal.

I had taken great pains to obscure the details of his identity, giving him a new name and a different sort of Afrocentric religion.

Nobody would recognize him from my post, but some of the stuff in my writing had been taken verbatim from our conversations.

If he saw them, he would surely recognize himself.

Sean was not a guy I wanted to piss off.

When he first came to the house, house, he told us that his main character defect was his temper, and he wasn't kidding.

On more than one occasion, I had watched anger build up inside of him until he ended up chewing somebody out.

It was a sort of scene that left me tiptoeing back into my bedroom, giddily thankful I wasn't taking the brunt of his outrage.

All those years as a recluse, I had left with no appetite for confrontation.

Sean had been sincerely working on his temper.

He was the one black dude in the house, and he was worried about being seen as an angry black guy.

He often said to me, You get up in somebody's face and they'll be like, Say, fellas, let's work this thing out.

But if I cross the line, they'll be like, call the police.

Nope.

I assured him that this was not the case.

Oh, sorry, guys.

Nope.

Nope.

Oh, that's great.

This, nope, gone crazy.

Oh, that's awesome.

I assured him that this was not the case, while not being entirely sure this wasn't the case.

As a result of his fears, he had become very indirect about how he expressed his anger.

If he felt somebody was disrespecting him, he would give them the silent treatment for a while, then come down hard on them for something small, all the while being very careful to not raise his voice or make any threatening gestures, which somehow made him more intimidating.

As much as he didn't want to play out the angry black guy stereotype, I didn't want to play out the meek, affronted white guy stereotype, but I was sometimes intimidated by him.

So now, when he told me about the walls covered with bones, I figured he must have been feeling me out, seeing if I would come clean about what I had written.

But that was such a strange way to do it.

I didn't know what to say.

Looked him in the eye, trying to make my face completely neutral.

He gazed back at me, his face half in shadow, half colored by the yellow porchlight, his expression dead serious.

He went on speaking softly: Skulls, teeth, arms and hands melded together on the walls, up on the ceiling.

Could this be the man earlier as well who is in the who's in the home?

Yeah, it's him, Sean.

So it is him?

Yeah, the black Israelite who said he saw all that.

Okay, just making sure.

Yeah, same guy.

So there I was on the front porch with Sean, both of us sitting in rickety old chairs, slapping away the mosquitoes when he mentioned quietly that he had once seen a room where the walls were covered with human bone.

Right away, my heart started thumping in my chest.

He had seen in real life what I had only seen in my mind.

He was about to tell me that the flesh interfaces and mother and all the other nightmares were true.

I had on some level known this was coming.

It was a culmination of the strange feelings I had all week.

It started when I was sitting in that AA meeting.

Yep.

Okay.

It started when I was sitting in that AA meeting, looking at the sad face of the old man with the stolid haircut.

It was him who had that vision of the old man with the haircut doing all that.

I'm going to assume everything about AA and alcohol and addiction stuff is all the author of the story.

It's all him.

Yeah, 100%.

I'd entered a strange and sudden reverie, carried away by the sheer damn poignancy of this man's haircut and how it symbolized the sort of strong, upright man he had tried and failed to be.

I saw him in a great shifting vision, different versions of him emerging and overlapping.

Here he was a young boy learning how to use a comb.

Here he was a young man, the wind ruffling his sturdy locks as he experienced the rush of confidence that comes with drink.

Here he was in front of the mirror, running the comb through his wet hair with a shaky hand, dropping it in the sink.

Here he was with stitches just below the hairline after another accidental fall.

Here he is, finally face down at the bottom of his stairs, his hair ever so slightly musked, just a few strands out of place, almost perfect.

The next day, my roommate Donnie, the ex-marine, and I went out to the river to swim.

It was a perfect sunny day, and there was a lot of people out swimming and floating along in inner tubes.

As I lay at the back of the cool waters, feeling the warm forest air alive on my wet skin, I saw for a moment that vanished primeval world peopled by the forest children.

These children lived along the river, not working or twirling, but simply taking what the river offered, living and dying by the good mother's generosity.

All of his different visions are crashing in on him, it seems.

Sure, they wouldn't know the benefits of riding in agriculture, and they would drop like flies to horrible diseases and predators, but in doing so, they would accept their humble place in the universe, rather than striving to overcome it through science or religion.

They would know themselves to be fragile things which lived for a brief moment and died like limbers on the river's water.

For the second time in many days, I found myself with tears in my eyes over some trivial moment, and I was forced to turn away from Donnie as he related a story about a marine buddy who had been given a humorous nickname by the platoon due to his uncanny knack for finding and acquiring venereal disease.

In AA, they talk about not struggling or trying to manage everything, but rather letting God manage it.

Not believing in an interventionist interventionist God, I had to interpret this as simply trying to accept the things I cannot change.

I saw a vision in my life where I was able to accept life's

vicissitudes, vicissitudes.

Sure.

I'm gonna say, don't lean on me, bro.

I'm fucking stupid as shit, so with humility and grace, and where life opened itself to me as a result.

With it came a wave of nostalgia.

The last time I had felt like this, I had been in college, taking a lot of acid.

How long had I shut myself away from life?

That damn apartment with that damn bottle?

I had been unable to accept any discomfort or unhappiness, so I had avoided everything except liquor.

I had tried to control my feelings, and as a result, I had found discomfort and unhappiness like I never imagined.

But now I could accept life, embrace life, welcome all the awkwardness and frustration and pain and indignities.

How many opportunities were right at my fingertips?

I could talk to one of the girls wearing the smart bathing suits and be married in a few months.

Or just find a friend.

Or be hired as a staff writer, some kind of pastry magazine.

Anything was possible.

I saw now the glowing door open before me.

I saw all doors open, all doors open and aligned one after another, and behind them all there was...

there was what?

I couldn't say.

The inside slipped away without revealing itself, but the fading reverie left a warm glow, and I dipped my head back into the cool water, looked up into the sky, crowded with bright, weightless clouds.

I could see now that so many things were coming together in my life.

I was getting sober.

I was learning to talk to people.

Even the dream of being a novelist dream was coming true.

So now when Sean told me about the walls covered with bone, it seemed like yet another thing falling into place.

But this time it was something sinister, something so awful I thought it couldn't be real.

Now it seems that whatever force was bringing my dreams to life was also acting on my nightmares.

I looked Sean in the eye, trying to make my face completely neutral.

He gazed back at me, his face half in shadow, half colored by the yellow porchlight, his expression dead serious.

He went on, speaking softly.

Skulls, teeth, arms, and hands melted together on the walls, up on the ceiling.

I asked him very carefully.

Is this something you read about on the internet?

He shook his head and said,

No, man.

I looked down into his lap.

I needed to find out exactly what was going on, even if it meant giving myself away.

I asked him.

Have you been reading my Reddit posts?

He squinted at me and asked, Reddit?

What is that?

So, it was real after all.

Okay, I don't know if that's saying that it was real the room as in, like, just Sean doesn't know what Reddit is, or

if this is in a...

I think Sean doesn't know what Reddit is.

Otherwise, like, our author is in a different timeline where Reddit doesn't exist and he's communicating to reddit from a different space i think sean just doesn't know and now he our author is like oh he really did see a room full of that stuff oh no that's what i think yeah

i'm not yeah i don't know i'm not sure i think that's what it is it could be wrong but

all right post 84

a full-scale interface portal being below a highly populated urban center back to our author okay in the early days of flesh interface technology this would have been considered utter madness also the rest rest of the story

may just be our author because I feel like all of our other plot threads have been tied up, right?

Yeah, the Karen one and then that one feels like that one's over too, and

they're contributing to the things that we're reading or like what we've read.

Yeah, I think.

So

that might be it.

The uncontrolled incident zones would have resulted in mass segmentation and total chaos.

Okay, that's what I was wondering.

Interfaces create segmentations and incident zones and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And looking back on the experiment, Madness was in fact the result.

For a brief time it seemed like an idea worth exploring it all started one day when a mid-level analyst was navigating a 3d map of the honduras contained interface 2 and felt the urge to go to the bathroom just as she was getting up from her desk she was struck by an overwhelming realization but before we get to that you must understand some background information First, building an interface below a populated city was now possible because we had learned how to control the size of incident zones.

We could create interfaces with incident zones that only existed within the interface tunnels, instead of there being a large uncontrolled zone around the interface.

This was achieved through a breakthrough involving signal cables.

For years, we thought that the interfaces had little appetite for anything but flesh.

Machines and other objects were ignored.

They were not incorporated into the interface superstructure and did not seem to undergo significant travel, but the Chinese figured out that the interfaces were willing to incorporate electromagnetic signal cables.

If a live transmitting cable was sent into a phagus corridor, the cable was taken up by the cilia limbs and connected directly to the interface's nervous conduits.

Yep, yep, yep, yeah.

I know it's kind of been confirmed at this point with all the stuff, but yes, the future technology of people being plugged in is then being plugged into the flesh interfaces.

Absolutely.

At this point, we could send and receive signals from the interface.

You can imagine our excitement.

We had a working example of seamless techno-organic integration.

It would naturally become the basis for direct sense feed technology.

In those early days, we had no idea what the interface did with the signals we sent to it, nor could we make much sense of the signals it sent to us.

All we knew is that it loves signals, the more the better.

The more cables we hooked up to it, the more information we sent and received, the smaller the segmentation zone would become.

As computing and signal technology advanced, we were able to reduce the segmentation zone to an area within the interface tunnels.

Finally, we had a relatively safe and and stable flesh interface.

Still, we had no reason to consider building an interface below a city until our mid-level analyst made her startling discovery.

Before this discovery, we knew that the size of a flesh interface depended chiefly on one factor, how much flesh it was provided.

But at a certain point, the interface would cease to grow.

Even if it was provided with ample building material, we wanted to know why.

Why had the Navoya, Zemlya, and Artigus portals grown so so large when other portals were offered more flesh but failed to grow?

In addition, we wanted to know what factors shaped the configuration of the interface tunnels, so-called ant farms.

At this point, we knew only a few basic facts.

The tunnels would form either underground or underwater, but not in the atmosphere.

The underwater tunnels were much larger than the underground tunnels, generating more segmentation and requiring more signal transfers to quell the segmentation.

While the interface tunnels avoided the surface, they had little regard for the composition of the rock, sand, or soil that they were tunneling through.

They tunneled through everything at rate chiefly determined by how quickly we fed them flesh.

It wasn't possible to observe the tunnel process, but it must have happened via segmentation because the dirt and rock which was removed simply disappeared.

The tunnels were self-supporting and would remain in place even if the surrounding earth shifted, unless they were wholly exposed to the open air, in which case they would putrefy.

But But why did the tunnels take one configuration or another?

What our mid-level analyst discovered as she traveled through the 3D digital recreation was that the route she was taking was strangely similar to the trip she took to the bathroom every day.

It was an odd little route through a poorly designed research facility, which included a short flight of stairs and a switchback at the end of the hall.

All of this was reflected in the ant tunnel.

Forgetting for a moment that her desire to use the bathroom, she took an emergency escape map of the wall and compared it to the ant tunnel she was studying.

The layout of the Honduras research facility, which was just a few hundred meters from the interface entrance, was quite different from the layout of the interface tunnels, but there are certain similarities which went beyond coincidence.

The analyst's discovery spread quickly through the facility, and the analyst herself was given minor promotion along with the new office.

It was discovered that the interface tunnels did not copy the architecture of the research building, but rather the most frequently used paths and most frequently occupied rooms in the building that is it copied the layout of human activity within the building but even this it did in a distorted oblique way repeatedly copying and multiplying certain sections of the layout as if the building map was being viewed through a multifaceted lens for the people gosh dude

oh

okay so it works off of human subconscious of areas people are familiar with and it recreates those So, that explains why eventually everyone decides to hook people up to the interface because it gives the interface more data to work off of, more human-conscious experiments.

But this is also one of the chief concepts of things like the backrooms, that the backrooms exist below humanity.

They exist in like the areas you no clip out of, and they're just repeated misprints of human experience, of things humans are familiar with, but reset in an uncanny liminal way.

So, it's effectively like they're copying what people are afraid of, but in this uncanny valley.

Someone really did take everything I care about.

By the end of the story, it's going to be like, I see Mother Horse Eyes, but she looks different.

Now she appears as a six-foot-one goth chip

where slow boots and fishing.

Mother, mother.

At that point, I would be like, I would like, I would freak out, be in the corner, like, I know you're watching whoever you are.

Yeah, stand back.

get out of my head

for the people working in the facility the discover was nothing less than eerie shortly after the newly promoted analysts moved into her new office a new section of tunnel was created within the interface to reflect this no longer were the analysts detached observers it was clear that on some level they were being observed and copied for some inscrutable purpose A quick comparison of interfaces and nearby human-occupied research facilities revealed unmistakable parallels.

Huge facilities such as Zimla Navoya tended to produce huge interfaces.

This even held true for undersea interfaces such as Articus, where the nearest facility might be many kilometers away.

The correlation was stupefying, obvious once we looked for it.

The correlation was stupefyingly obvious once we looked for it, and it set off a waze of crave speculation.

People started theorizing that the interfaces were affected by all sorts of things.

The mood of the office, how much coffee we drank, the health of our potted plants.

The spirit of wild speculation came to be known as the correlation game,

as almost anything was proposed as a possible correlation.

Most of the speculation came to nothing, but there was one idea that gained traction.

What if we built an interface in a highly populated area and gave it unlimited flesh material?

How big would it get?

Okay, I like how they're starting to draw connections between like the old interface, the flesh back then, and what is now, all that.

Like everything's starting to connect in a way that feels natural.

And also, it's like, oh, why would they be so evil or thoughtless as to see how big it can get?

So you got to understand, this is the CIA team that's hyped up on LSD, which is causing their brains to want to build from other horse eyes, right?

Right.

So

they're like almost possessed to build.

So that's why they're like, what if we put it under a city?

So.

And the cables allow them to control incident zones so people don't get segmented everywhere, which would obviously give away the game, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Keeps it all together.

Yep.

All right.

Post 85.

Ready?

Yup.

There was this abandoned warehouse that everybody knew about.

I knew it had evil spirits when I first went into it, but the crack had me thinking nothing could touch me.

Even the other crackheads didn't like to go in there, except the ones who had already fell off.

Those ones you see standing around just staring through the wall.

But I'm up in there like, I got God's protection.

I don't fear anything.

But really, it's just the crack talking.

I start looking around and find some stairs in the back.

The bottom's a steel door.

Sean talking, by the way.

Yeah, sure.

100%.

This thing is big, solid, deadbolts, everything.

Somebody already went at it with a sledge, but it ain't move at all.

You think there's crackheads in there every night, and they still ain't broke through that door.

That's a solid door.

So where I was working at, I knew my boss had a spreader, like some jaws of life shit.

So the next night, I took it and I broke open the door.

Inside was just a little room with block walls and another door.

Same big-ass steel door.

And there was a smell, that underground smell, but also like how when the spirits are unclean, they make a stink, that smell.

I broke open the next door and it's a hallway with another door.

I keep going through the place, breaking open doors, but it's mostly empty.

Just some desks and computers too old to sell.

I was like, shit.

So I took the doors, sold them for scrap, heavy-ass doors.

The reason nobody got in them doors before is because a crackhead can't hold on to something like a hydraulic spreader.

That thing was like $400.

Crackhead will just sell the spreader.

He ain't gonna screw with those doors when he can just get his $400.

I still had some discipline.

I was smoking rocks, but I had some discipline.

So I would put it back in the morning before my boss saw I took it.

But that crack had me going.

So one day I sold the spreader to.

My boss never figured out it was me who took the spreader.

I was so slick.

Then some things happened with me and my wife, and I stopped smoking for a while.

Things were going alright.

Checked like I was going to see my kids, but

nah,

I'd forgot all about the old warehouse, but just as soon as I forgot, I looked at my boss's trailer and he had another spreader.

I was like, damn, I didn't even want to look at it.

I've been clean for two months, but the crack was whispering.

It got me again, and I was back down in that warehouse.

The crack that compels you to go to Lovecraftian demon tunnels.

That's that good shit, dude.

That's that good.

I was just breaking open doors, going room to room.

There was hallway, stairs, more rooms.

Kept going deeper.

I found a room full of cages, a real big room, like a pound.

I was glad because it was a lot of metal.

But in the last cage at the end, do you believe the things I'm saying?

I know you don't believe in God.

I know you don't care about the Jews or the Gentiles.

The Bible is real, but it happened a long time ago.

People have forgot.

That's why they carry on like they do.

They don't know.

And it's just when people forget.

It's when the Lord comes again.

He will punish us all for the iniquities, the evils we do.

The days to come will be full of terror.

The Lord will chastise us like little children.

The smell was real strong in that room, that evil smell.

I knew what I would find before I found it.

There were some bones in that last cage, little bones, curled up in the corner, still with clothes on.

I got out of there.

I was gone.

I was never coming back, but God.

I came back and I chopped up those cages and took them all out, just kicked them bones out on the floor.

I came back again the next day and broke into the next room, and there was more cages, all of them full.

I was supposed to be back in my old house with my wife and kids, but I was down in that room with all those little skulls and hands.

That's the insanity.

Wasn't even worth the money, but I kept going back.

There was always one more door, one more room, just a little more money.

I didn't even think about where them bones came from, who killed them, who put them in cages.

I didn't care.

Then I found the room with bones on the walls, and I was done.

That last night, I was way down in there, down underground.

I opened a door and inside, there was just a cave.

The other rooms had blocked walls, but this was like a mine.

I shot my flashlight around, and up ahead, I thought there were crystals on the walls or something.

But it was bones.

I mean people.

Hands, skulls, ribs, all of it just put together.

And it went on and on.

I said, God, this is the valley of the shadow of death I knew I wasn't scared of those spirits because they were already inside me telling me don't worry telling me to keep going back down in there I prayed to the Lord to deliver me and I got scared right there the spirits came out of me and I got scared I won't lie I was crying just shook up I knew I wasn't alone in there I could feel the evil one down in that tunnel it was all power in the dark The spirits of all those dead people were all formed together to form up into the body of the evil one, formed into a beast.

It wanted me to bow to it, to bow to the idol.

I didn't bow.

I ran.

I was gone.

That was my moment of testing.

I didn't bow, but for a minute, for a little minute, I could feel all that power.

And I smelt another smell.

Different from the other rooms.

I remember.

My daughter's more grown now, but when she was little, I'd feed her applesauce.

I'd be thinking about her when I smell it.

I smelt it then.

Coming out of the dark, and God,

I wanted to bow.

Man.

God.

Lord.

So

this is Mother Horsey.

Never seen a crackhead with such conviction before.

Well, this is.

So this is the crackhead.

Who, or sorry, this is the same thing that was mentioned earlier with back in Iwo Jima, where, you know, the devil wants us to bow to him.

He took Jesus to the, the same story of the devil taking Jesus to the top of the world and saying, I'll give you all the things you want if you bow to me.

And this is Mother Horse Eyes slash the devil slash Q, all of it, down in the basement saying, hey, you remember when you used to be with your daughter?

You used to see her and feed her applesauce?

I can give that to you.

You just got to come to me.

And he wanted to bow.

He wanted to give himself to Mother Horse Eyes.

Ah, man.

And that talk of like, we've forgotten God and God will let us know for it.

That's you know, with the mother horse eyes happened a long time ago.

We'll remember her.

We'll remember the devil, the monster.

Oh, gosh, dude.

Man, I wanted to bow.

Phew.

Tempted by the devil.

86.

Alcohol grows great with nostalgia and melancholy.

It's what gives us misty-eyed bar flies, forlorn poetry, midnight phone calls, last page of the Great Gaspie, Sinatra ballads, and 73% of all country music.

That was my favorite part of drinking, the wistful interlude a couple of hours after the first flush of drunkenness, when you wander away from the boisterous party and look out into the darkened woods and see for a moment fragile past floating ghostly before you, colored in sunset oranges, all the bygone things which have slipped away in the gentle flow of time.

Your breath catches in the tightness of your throat and your eyes fill with tears.

Then somebody calls your name or you have to piss and you wander back into the party.

I felt like I was at my finest in these moments.

I felt poetic and sensitive and alive.

Eventually, though, it all became an awful parody of itself.

The gentle wistfulness evolved into me sitting in front of my laptop, drunk on a Wednesday night, watching sad YouTube videos, weeping and slurping down vodka and water.

I would watch any sort of weepy videos, soldier homecomings, kids with cancer, dogs being put down, etc.

Just to get a good cry on, to trigger the dopamine release that came with the tears.

It was nothing more than emotional masturbation.

And just like with the alcohol itself, I had found something that gave me true pleasure, then used it over and over until my feelings had become rote and dead.

Same sort of thing happened with my memories of mother.

At first,

I knew he had an experience with mother.

I knew it.

I knew it.

At first, they came unbidden, stirring up a sense of wonder so powerful it brought tears to my eyes.

But over the course of too many drunks and too many hangovers, I replayed the memories over and over from every angle.

Eventually, I couldn't be sure if certain parts came from the original or were formed by during later recollections.

The whispering magic became a monotonous drone.

The vaporous impressions dried and hardened into simple facts.

Mother was a woman sewn together from different things.

Mother would come in late at night with a bag that squirmed.

Inside the bag were children.

We would go down into the basement where she kept the cages.

We would do things to them together.

I thought the memories had no more power.

I thought they were just abstractions at this point, bad data.

Who could explain them?

Why bother?

Now I found myself waking down the street in the middle of the night, trying to burn off the eerie feeling that Sean's story had put inside me.

At the intersection, a stiff breeze zipped down the empty lanes, making the traffic lights sway.

I walked by a bar with the patio and listened to the low rumble of confident male voices.

Smell came off the bar.

Cigarettes and hot wings and liquor sweat.

It was a smell of action.

Smell of good times.

I could just walk in there, have a couple drinks and hold court,

tell a few jokes, make a few friends.

The problem with going out sober is you have to make all these little decisions.

Where to go, where to sit, what to get.

When you go out drunk, you just make one decision to keep drinking.

Every other decision just falls into place.

Life becomes easy.

It's easy as listening to a story.

It wasn't worth going to the bar.

It would be closing time in an hour, anyways.

So I walked past it, on down the street by myself.

God, if there is no closing time, no tomorrow morning, just darkness and magic and mystery forever.

If I could just be drunk until the end of time.

Alright, so now on to the next one.

Posted an r/slash pics.

87.

Mara is molting, so we can't play.

I'll have to wait until she's done.

I've moved out of the crowded sand burrow.

I think six different broods live there now, and everybody crawls over each other and bickers and snips.

Now I live in one of the sea caves.

It's wet and lonely, but at least nobody snips at me.

And it's a little easier to find food.

When Mara's done molting, I want her to come here.

Maybe we can live together.

Is this a lobster?

It sounds like it, doesn't it?

It sounds like a lobster or a crab.

Sandbaroas, that's what I was like.

Alright, so now we're in the point of view of the lobster consciousness.

The caves are made of Gana black melt rock that has hardened into fluid shapes.

The moon shines through the dozens of porous holes in the roof and the sea glitter throws shapes onto the rock ceiling.

I like to sit back and let the shapes tell the ancient world story.

This cave is nice.

I will stay here.

I'm getting tired of eating sea flowers, but I don't want to go through the trouble of buying livestock.

The crowds at the temple are awful this time of year.

Oh, maybe this is the chitiness cruciforms that were mentioned.

Remember those?

Yeah,

way, way early on.

Yeah, yeah, maybe those.

Because they seem more...

They have like temples.

It seems more abstract than just crabs yeah

everybody clamors and begs and the priests are greedy and officious

they tell us the livestock is a generous blessing from the womb sack of the mother but i think they just buy it from the inland at any rate i don't want any part of it there's never much food around during the ebbing when the air turns cold and the worms travel away but the plumes have not come yet This year is even worse than usual.

They say the ocean dies a little more each year.

The water is becoming bitter.

But since I live in the sea cave, I can get down into the cove before everybody else, so I'm pretty lucky with what I get to eat.

I wake up to the sound of rain on the ocean outside the cave.

I look up to see which kind it will be.

Light yellow, catagreen, my favorite.

Crawl out to a bluff and let the rain fall on my carapace.

There is something sweet in the catagreen rains that loosens up the whelks on my seams.

I comb through my carpus with my forelimbs, snipping them off, letting them fall under the rocks until the whole front is clear and smooth.

After that, I do my joints, my undersides.

Nowadays, with food scarce, it has become common to eat the whelks, but they taste like ammonia.

Just as I am done grooming and feeling very new and shiny, Mara comes climbing up the rock.

Her shell is brand new and looks amazing.

We dance and burrow and make little snips.

I've missed her even more than I realized.

She moves the colors of her carapace to show me how she feels.

They are very vivid on her new bone.

She shows pictures of her looking everywhere for me,

searching through all the sea caves.

I show her myself as I sit in the cave, lonely and waiting for her.

She snips at my front legs and I dance around for her.

Sweet, lovely Mara.

I show Mara my cave.

She likes it.

She loves the sea mist and the way we can see the teta purple moons pass through the sky through the holes in the rock.

I show us living here together and making it into a nice home she shows me leaving the burrow colored as a question i show her that it was too crowded and i was getting sick of all the others she flicks her antenna at me making slow comforting movements but i notice she hasn't answered about living in the cave i feel my little plan is being washed away this also sounds like um

um

These cruciforms, whatever they are, they're able to project through time like Karen mentioned.

Like you can see different points in time because they're showing each other times in the past and future, right?

Yeah.

So they seem advanced enough to be able to do that.

Mayor doesn't stay with me in the cave, but she visits often.

I make sure to always have some sea flowers for her when she comes over.

Lately, they've been harder and harder to find.

I get so hungry that it's hard not to eat all the flowers before I can give any to Mara.

I give her my best flowers.

but still they're small and colored in an ugly shade of hannah blue.

Despite this, she always shows me how delicious they are.

Mara suggests we go to the temple to get some livestock to make a proper meal.

I show her that I don't like the crowds.

Mara has always loved the temple.

She uses admiring colors to show the great gemstone mountain and the moons passing through the pylons and the great cigarette where the livestock is brought out and sold.

She shows the priests with their painted shells and red claws.

I insist that I don't like meat.

I prefer sea flowers.

She wiggles her hind jaws at this.

Nobody can prefer sea flowers.

They taste like sand.

Crawl back away from her a little.

Hadn't my sea flowers always been delicious to her?

Was that just a lie?

She crawls closer to me.

Her carapace takes on gentle yellows.

She shows me that they were delicious because I had picked them, but I don't want her pity.

I pull my legs in and lay still until she leaves.

I don't see Mara for a long time.

I don't see Mara for a long while.

Third moon makes its way to the high cusp, marking the end of the ebbing.

The plumes have still not come, and I'm often hungry.

Finally, Mara shows up with meat wrapped in temple cloth.

I wonder if she's there to taunt me, but she offers it to me.

She shows me that my shell has become thin and dull, and I'm looking worse.

She is right.

I have not eaten enough in a while.

We go down inside my cave.

Before she unwraps the meat, Mara lets me know she has become a priestess at the temple.

I turn blue with surprise.

How had it happened so quickly?

She had been studying for a while without telling me, since I never liked the priests.

I feel sad about this.

How many times had I complained about them in front of her while she was studying to become one?

It was no wonder I didn't have many friends.

Mara unwraps her gift.

The creature she has brought me is soft and pale and pink.

It's a human.

Mara likes the taste of these the best, but I don't think there is any difference between these and the brown ones.

I break off one of the five little feelers on the end of its forelegs and nibble at it.

Mara snips at me and breaks off a hind leg and offers me the thick end.

My shell turns yellow and I take it.

Pretty red juice runs all over my jaws as they pull the meat from the bone.

Weed and blackness for a while, then I ask Mara where the priestess gets the livestock from.

It has always been a mystery, since none of these soft little creatures are ever found on the land or in the sea.

I have wondered if they raise them inside the temple or if they bring them in from the inland.

Mara doesn't answer at first.

She doesn't want to show me.

I ask again.

She shows me a quick, vague picture.

The old story about the womb and egg.

Something the priests tell little children.

I know she is hiding something, so I snippet her.

Why does she hide things from me?

Used to be so close.

After a moment, a picture forms on her carapace.

It's clear and vivid as anything she has ever shown me.

I ask why I'm seeing.

It is the womb.

It's where they come from.

So they're eating babies.

Do what?

So they're eating little babies?

No, I think what it is, is this.

You remember how they say on the other side of the interface,

these

earlier it's mentioned that these cruciforms come out of it and inhabit the oceans underwater.

On the other side of the interface, literally, it leads to another realm of these giant crustacean-like creatures.

And on their side, their interface is the temple.

The thing that people have said,

they send that one guy through, and he comes back and says he hears flutes that sound like song or like con

the music sounds like speaking.

That's what these things communicate in.

So, this is what's on the other side of the veil.

So, people are being fed into it physically, and they're being eaten by these giant cruciform creatures, like in a realm where they're much larger than us, they prey on us.

Um, that's what people are being drawn into physically.

And perhaps the version that comes out, the pod, the um

childlike one, is like a clone of them or a reprint or something like that.

But I think this is what happens to a lot of the people.

Or perhaps this is what happens to the people that are rejected.

It talks about some people go through and are either torn apart or just shoved all the way through and then are consumed.

Maybe this is what happens to the people that are rejected and other people are

turned into, they're reborn into the

womb and then pushed back out.

Perhaps.

You want to let me read 88th Post?

It's like a letter.

Okay.

If you want a little break.

Sure, yeah.

So 88th Post was posted on June 18th.

Go for it.

Dear Esselandria, I hope your name is Esalandria.

I will name my daughter Tresilandria, and I will tell her to name you Esselandria.

These names are prettier more than my name.

Anne.

Too plain.

My grandmother.

And even though you are still not born, I am writing to you you in all 100% original English.

Grandmother is teaching it to me.

My grandmother is your great-great-grandmother, and I call her Ali Halimoni.

Yet, that is not true English.

Whoops!

Grandmother is my best friend, and she gives me presents.

When I meet you, I will give them to you, and we can be best friends the same.

Can you keep secrets?

Some of the presents are secret.

I will keep this letter and your presents safe under my bed until you are here.

I will give you the presents and a lot of hugs.

I am learning new English every day.

Cloister.

You know what that is?

Grandmother used to live there.

It's a special house for the mountain born.

Surprise!

Hey!

Grandmother was a mountain-born, surely.

She came out of the mountain's womb when she was a little girl.

That's why me and my mom are very healthy, and I hope you will be very healthy the same.

I hope you have curly hair and green eyes, rather plain hair like me.

Grandmother said she hated to live in the cloister because the monks are mean.

Grandmother does not like monks, yet that is secret.

Don't show this letter to anybody.

It's just for you.

After she moved out of the cloister, she met grandfather.

He was very nice, yet not healthy, and he has passed on to the love of the imp son.

On days when the imp sun rises before the big monk's sun, I say some prayers to grandfather grandmother never says prayers to the imp sun rather she only prays inside i want to tell you about your presents grandmother carved them directly from green crystal the biggest one is a kitty cat this is an animal that lives on the far world the next one is a rose that is a vegetable that grows in the far world it's supposed to be red yet this one's green and still very pretty The littlest one is the secret one.

Grandmother keeps it to herself, and she will not tell me what it is still.

Yet one day she will give it to me.

I think she's still working to carve it.

When she started to make the rose, it was just a block and she carved it and made it beautiful.

When she started the little one, it was just a T-shape.

Yet, now she's carved a little man on the front of the T.

I know she will finish it.

It'll be very beautiful for you.

Okay, that's it.

See you not soon as a roundio.

Ha ha ha, love.

And

so, this is uh, people from the Chinese uh mountain town from like God like post-3

or whatever long time ago.

We were talking about that.

The alien cities, the sister cities?

Yeah, I think they're born from the flesh case.

So she's like literally a child born from the mountain alien city things.

And I'm guessing that she's...

I think rather than just the crew the kiteness cruciforms, I think that the portals at the back of these flesh gates lead to all kinds of different realities, all kinds of different worlds.

And this is another group that's been accessing them, The sister city people.

Yes.

89.

The remnant ember of a dying star drifts along the galactic fringe, companioned solely by a tiny world.

On the planet's surface, a great crystal tower lords over a vast and airless plain.

The cooling star's blue light draws the tower's shadow across the land and marks the passing of the ages.

Through the core of the tower runs an artery of living flesh, branching paths of blood are refracted within facets.

At the base of the spire there is no door no entryway but at the top a fleshy orifice once or twice an age for purpose unknown the tower's mouth expels a living human to fall down and down through the airless space and land atop a scree of other people

traveler passing on foot would be forgiven for wondering why so many other travelers had approached the tower and flung themselves down at its base to die Perhaps it was in prayer, or perhaps they were searching for an entryway for a door which doesn't exist.

Same kind of parallels with Pompeii and stuff like that as well.

Also the tower, what's the famous tower in the Bible or whatever?

Tower of Babel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Trying to climb to the heights of God.

Yeah.

Which actually ties into the giant tower things that keep popping up every time someone opens a flesh interface.

So that also sounds like

the door opening sounds like our main character trying to see stuff that isn't there, but then people fling themselves like the knowledge is too great to know.

Yeah.

Similar to that.

All right.

On to post

the final 10.

Final 10.

It's been a journey.

It has been a journey.

Final 10.

Posted June 26th.

Posted.

Nah, nah, nah.

Screw Reddit.

I've decided to move out of the sober house.

People usually stay here a couple months.

I've stayed here over six months.

Honestly, I'm finding it hard to live in the same house with Sean.

He's never been easy to live with.

And lately, we've been getting in arguments about little shit like chores.

On top of that, I'm freaked out by his story about the room full of bones.

I've come up with a few theories about why he could tell me that story and why he would insist it was real.

None of these theories are terribly comforting.

I want to put it behind me.

For a while, I had actually considered finding the warehouse that he mentioned.

Maybe it would give some answers, but I've decided, screw that.

I'm not going to do some damn warehouse in Crack City.

I don't need an ending to my story that badly.

I'll just do what I've been doing mix it up actually i've been stuck for the past few days i can't really come up with anything that seems fitting as an ending i've been considering just leaving it unfinished maybe not all stories should have an ending endings are lies i've realized that aa meetings are just a form of storytelling That's what we do in meetings.

We sit in a circle and tell each other stories.

Oh, we pretend like it's all real.

But every time somebody shares, they make an attempt to storyfy their life, to make it into some tidy little parable.

Sometimes the parables are profound and touching, and sometimes they're absurd or cliched or just terrible.

A guy in a meeting might tell a story about how he got into an argument with his boss, and he might end it with something like, and that's how I learned I need to stand up for myself.

Except maybe arguing with his boss was a terrible idea.

Maybe he's trying to portray stupidity as wisdom, or maybe it really was wisdom.

Either way, he's packaging the truth up as a story with a lesson at the end.

And this covers up one of the essential facts of life, that it just keeps going along, not giving a shit about our attempts to explain it there are these moments in life when the goal is achieved and the story should end and the credits should roll but instead it just keeps going along the guy gets the girl and now they have to live with each other she farts a lot and he hogs the shower or the underdog team wins the tournament and now they have to get ready for the next season 10 seasons later they're all retired sitting around and scratching their balls That's the first big problem the recovering alcoholic encounters.

We make the inspiring and courageous decision to walk away from our whole way of life to try something new.

The story could end there, but it doesn't.

Instead, life stretches on and we have to live another day after day after the grinding boredom of sobriety.

So maybe the interface story should be like that.

No tidy ending, just here, take or leave it.

Except that's lame.

That's a ripoff.

I'll just wait.

Some kind of ending will come to me, but I'm not going to that warehouse, though.

No, I'm not asking Sean anymore about it either.

If I have to make up a shitty ending, that's fine.

A lot of good books have shitty endings.

At this point, I'm just a little bummed out.

After I'm done, I'm going to put aside the writing and work on my social life for a while.

I'm going to try to change my number, friends, from zero to a positive integer.

I thought maybe I could find a group of friends in recovery, but it hasn't happened.

I don't like recovery people.

They're corny and boring.

I found a room to rent near downtown in an artsy neighborhood as a soon-to-be acclaimed writer.

Don't I belong among the thinkers and the artiste?

The end of this chapter doesn't feel viable.

After everything that this character has said previously, now he is not only writing about his own story, but writing about his own character that is writing about his own story.

The end of this chapter doesn't feel viable.

After everything that this character has said previously, how could he come to this decision so lightly?

Sure, he's a self-deceiving alcoholic.

Sure, people make crazy decisions on a whim all the time.

This might be realistic, but it's not believable.

A novel must have more logic than real life.

The events in a novel must operate by a chain of cause and effect that the reader can follow.

If you're gonna have somebody completely contradict their previously expressed viewpoints, it has to be the result of some event happening in their life which causes them to change.

The bigger the change in the character, the bigger the event must be.

Before you post this, I would rewrite it, playing up the conflict with Sean.

Make it into a full-blown fight that forces the narrator to move out, then have the narrator living alone, going to stir crazy, which leads him to make the fateful choice.

Signed, K.

I'm going to get in touch with some old friends, and I'm going to go out and meet people.

I'll just try to get a small circle of friends started.

I know how to meet friends.

Always known how.

It's easy.

I'm just going to drink again.

Ah, fuck.

Man.

Chapter in.

Editor note, revamp entire narrative and break into agreed chapters.

Gabby made in drafts one, two, three, and expanded in four.

Okay, we don't know what that means yet, but we will later, I imagine.

This was posted in Mother Horse Eyes by Mother Horse Eyes as their own post.

So, again, that's the author.

Who is Kay?

Kay seems to be like the author talking to himself, right?

Potentially could be Karen as well

with the writing, just saying

it could be the writing.

That's not a bad theory.

It could be Karen.

You might be right.

Yep.

That's the K we've seen show up before.

Okay.

Because the thing that he's writing, it's like, oh, she could be critiquing the thing the other person's writing.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

yeah certainly could be that's a good point 91 maybe that's what the ending of that karen story is where it's like they took a pen and started writing maybe they're putting together a lot of these stories but the story we understand is our author our narrator so okay whatever we'll see one time my mom took me to a clothes store she was wearing a blue dress and i was following her around but then i looked up and it wasn't her It was some other lady wearing a blue dress I had followed by mistake.

I was scared, so I ran away from the lady, but then I couldn't find my mom.

Lady from the store found me crying and took me back to her.

I was mad at her because I thought she switched into the lady on purpose to trick me.

I was too little to know that's not possible.

Is it?

What a fun way to talk about Mother Horse Eyes.

I woke up by myself and go downstairs for toast and jam, but the kitchen is totally empty.

I call mom, mom, but she doesn't answer.

I can't find anybody.

In the TV room, there's a stranger sitting in the big chair.

Uh-oh, I can only see the back of her head.

Gray hair.

Sneak away to my room.

Upstairs, I check my mom and dad's room and my sister's room, but they're all empty.

Where did they all go?

It's not fair that they all left without me.

Hannah and Brittany always go places and do things without me, but mom would not do that.

She likes to take me everywhere.

We're best friends.

So what happened?

Maybe they said they were going somewhere and I didn't listen.

Mom always tells me to listen better.

Why don't I?

Wait a minute.

Today's Sunday.

Usually we go to church on Sunday.

Mom and dad go to the grown-up church and I go to Sunday school.

They must be at church.

Last week I told mom that I never ever wanted to go to church again.

Hey, maybe mom decided to leave me at home just like I told her to.

This is great.

No stupid Sunday school.

All the time play I want.

I run over to where my toys are piled up in the corner and get all the ones I want.

I've been playing this great game with my trucks and cars called Police vs.

Firemen.

The policemen use their guns and the firemen use their hoses and they even have hoses that shoot fire.

I play for for a long time and it's great but I'm getting more hungry.

When will everybody be back?

How long is church?

Feels like forever when I'm there.

I'm so boring and the kids aren't nice to me.

I remembered that last week I cried in the car on the way over because I didn't want to go.

Mom was mad.

I was really crying like a baby and it was embarrassing.

I always cry too much.

Anna and Brittany make fun of me for it because I cry more than them, but they're girls.

I try not to, but I do it anyways.

I wonder about the stranger downstairs.

It looked like an an old gray-haired lady, but I only saw her back.

Is she a babysitter?

I decide to go downstairs and get some crackers from the pantry.

Mom keeps some on the shelf for me.

I go get the crackers and eat them until I'm full.

On my way back, I pass by the TV room.

The old lady is sitting there.

Her long gray hair is hanging down over the back of the chair.

It's got leaves and little sticks stuck in it.

This makes me want to giggle a little bit.

What a messy lady.

But then I start to get scared thinking about it.

I sneak back upstairs.

Now it's sunset time and I'm hungry again and I'm a lot more scared.

Mom and dad and everybody are still gone.

What if they don't come back?

What if mom is really mad at me for crying last time and now this is punishment?

Oh no, what if what if God is mad at me for not going?

We're supposed to go to Sunday school to make God happy and I didn't go.

That was really bad.

What if this is a big punishment?

God can make people disappear forever.

I get down on my knees and press my hands very tight together and whisper.

I'm sorry, God, for not going to Sunday school.

I will go every time forever until I'm dead.

I'm sorry.

I am sorry.

Please bring mom and dad and Anna and Brittany back.

Thank you, God.

Amen.

I get up and run over to my window.

I can see the front lawn and street.

It's all empty.

I wait for Dad's car to come down the street.

Now they'll all come back, but nobody comes.

Downstairs, I hear noises, like a dog growling, but so loud.

Something banging on the ceiling.

I go into my closet.

I cry too much.

I always cry too much.

Good God.

How haunting, dude.

Good fucking Lord.

Oh, my gosh.

The giant thing, the giant mother made of dead animal parts downstairs growling like a dog and hitting the ceiling.

Oh my gosh, man.

That part about like, God can punish me.

I have to pray to God.

And it's like, do you see the dichotomy between that and mother horse-eyes?

Man.

Oh.

Brutal.

The next story is from the same kid's perspective, post-92.

The person sitting in the big chair, new mother, a basement full of specimens, glistening membranes, blurred faces laughing, tower, witch, monster, mountain, apocalyptic sky infested with winged things.

The dream folds in on itself and spills out dozens of new creatures, images, intercourse, panes of light behind everything.

Ragged Muppet creatures tumbling out and chasing one another.

Devouring.

Bloody crunching.

Growing panes of light.

Galapagos critters howling.

Ingesting.

Affixing.

Lampray succubus Voltron food chain formation.

Panes of light.

A persistent locus.

The window panes.

Persistence triggers reality.

Rational bootstrapping.

Persistence rapidly infects everything else.

The weird Galapagos creatures die off, too weird to live.

All the props of ordinary reality are rushed into place just before I open my eyes.

A sunlit window in a bedroom.

Where is this?

My new place?

I rented it online before moving out of the sober house.

This is real.

I try to remember what I did over the last few days.

The memories are dark, shifting mess, clinging mud.

I'm afraid to touch.

My face hurts.

My tongue finds cuts on the inside of my bottom lip.

Brown spots dot the white pillowcase.

Picking my head up and looking around the room, I recall it from the 20 sober minutes I spent here before going to the bar.

Beside the bed, the nightstand had been tipped over and the lamp is a corded pile of shards.

Shit, this isn't my stuff.

It's just a bedroom in somebody's house.

I slide out of bed.

My stomach tingles.

My brain tingles.

My limbs are moving stroboscopically.

Oh wow, I am inside the nightmare.

Mind-crucifying.

Reddish spots make a trail along the hardwood floor.

Damn, damn, damn.

I can't handle this.

I run to the little bathroom, and a red-faced creature lurches into the mirror's frame.

Oh, God.

A distorted mass of bruises.

I turn this way and that to see my new features.

The horrible tingling in my brain feels like it's going to eat through my skull.

I check my teeth and my heart sinks.

The bonding on my front tooth has been knocked off.

The other teeth seem okay, though.

I look down at the skin.

It seems to have been scrubbed with blood.

Swirling trails of reddish brown cover the porcelain.

It's on the floor, the toilet, the walls.

Oh, it's a lot of blood.

So this seems to be our narrator, and he says the person sitting in the big chair, New Mother.

So the dream or the childhood we read about in the previous story is his, our narrators.

That explains why he has weird memories of New Mother, right?

And why the opening of that story talks about one time I was in a clothes store and stuff.

So that was the narrator's experience with New Mother.

This is his experience.

Now, I don't know if he's actually transforming or or if it's just like metaphorical.

93, you ready?

I'm ready.

Sorry, I'm just

digesting everything.

Next day, 28th.

Have you ever noticed that whenever you swallow, your throat closes up for a second and you can't breathe at all?

Of course, it always opens back up.

That process is quite automatic and you don't need to think about it.

But what if you do think about it?

What if by thinking about it, you somehow confuse everything and your throat just stays closed?

What if all the gummy flesh just sticks together and you suffocate to death?

This is how I think after a bender.

I call it the scary swallows.

I swallow my throat seems to catch for a moment, cutting off my windpipe, and the panic blooms through my brain, threatening to take over everything.

Then I manage to suck in a breath and the panic subsides until the next swallow.

So I try not to swallow at all, but then I'm thinking about it, obsessing over it, and my throat starts to twitch.

Shut up, shut up, irrelevant, stupid, do something.

What do I do?

Liquor.

Look for liquor.

My queasy stomach groans at the thought of it but every other part of me shrieks with anticipation liquor will make everything else possible without it the panic will rattle me apart with it i can do anything i scan the blood-smeared bathroom for bottles nothing out in the bedroom there is an empty half gallon of vodka and empty cans everywhere drunk to the last drop damn it nothing in there But uh, not to sidetrack, but I think that story earlier about the guy hooking up with the old or afraid he hooked up with the old lady, and he's talking about a dream he had of children being happy, i think that was our narrator yeah i well i think i think that a lot of the yeah yeah i think you're right is yeah where's the owner i remember that i checked into the place without meeting him using a door code have i met him since no idea

that area of memory is corrupt what will he think when he sees the broken lamp blood my face he'll kick me out for sure What if something even worse is waiting outside the bedroom door?

What if I've killed him and this body is lying face down on the floor and my entire life is over?

And I was so close, so close to getting out of the misery, of doing something, of accomplishing something, something mom and dad could be proud of.

Now it's all over.

It's all destroyed.

Calm yourself.

Calm this.

This is all imagination of your fanciful images.

Oh, your fanciful imagination.

What a delight it is.

Just go out in the living room and look.

Just go.

Go.

I crack the bedroom door and peek out.

It's the ordinary living room and kitchen of a pretty nice apartment.

I don't see anybody lying face down in a pool of blood.

Nothing's broken.

Liquor now.

I go to the kitchen.

There's nothing on the counters.

I open the refrigerator.

Please, please, please.

There's nothing.

Oh, you teetotaling bitch.

Did I get a room with the one sober mofo in this whole screwed-up drinking ass city?

I open the freezer.

Frosty bottle lies on its side.

I pull it out.

It's a fifth of absolute.

Bull.

Unopened.

Emitting a ghostly cold mist like an angel.

I stare at it, my shanking hands, tears coming to my eyes.

I feel flowing through my entire existence the begrudging mercy of a disapproving god.

I scratch at the stupid, slippery plastic around the cap.

My tribbling hands are almost useless.

I imagine myself having a seizure before I can get the bottle open, dying right here on the kitchen floor like a man in a desert dying of thirst just feet away from an oasis.

Finally, I manage to tear the cracking plastic off.

The front door of the apartment swings open, letting in a blast of horrible sunlight.

A figure stands at the door.

I shove the bottle back into the freezer and slam it shut and turn my back to the person.

I want to run and hide to evaporate, but all I could do is just stand there.

Damn it.

Oh, hey, man.

A friendly voice says.

Nick, right?

Yeah, good.

I mumble.

I am still standing with my back to the person.

This is not valid human behavior.

Damn.

Why did he have to come home now?

Force myself to turn around.

A youngish dude is standing in the doorway with the bag slung over his shoulder.

Apparently, the owner.

Hey, are you alright?

He asked, the smile fading from his face.

Yeah.

What happened to you?

I don't know.

Mountain biking.

Another invalid response from me.

Now he's worried.

Glances around the apartment, checking to see if his stuff is okay.

I broke your lamp.

I'm going to go.

I'm sorry.

What happened?

He asks, closing the front door.

I got drunk and

mountain biking.

I mumble.

I head to the bedroom, my heart pounding.

On second inspection, I notice that not only is the nightstand turned over and the lamp broken, but there are broken plates and a hole punched in the drywall and beef jerky sticks shrown everywhere.

Jesus, man, what did you do?

Guy asks as he follows me into the room.

I don't know.

I say, already on the verge of sobbing.

Maybe I can just cry my way out of this.

Nobody likes to see a grown man cry.

I've got to get out of here.

I got drunk.

Please just take the month's rent.

I'll go.

Say, this is a really stupid offer.

I can't afford to give away a month's rent, but I don't know what else to do.

I can't handle going to jail.

It'd kill me.

My heart feels like it's trying to punch its way out of my chest.

I need liquor.

I just need liquor.

Dude, hold on.

How much stuff did you fuck up?

This is it.

I say, not really knowing if I'm telling the truth or not.

A bunch of my clothes are lying on the floor, and I gathered them up and strode them into my suitcase and zip it up, only to realize that there are a lot more of my clothes obviously lying all over the place.

Well, we need to figure out the damages.

I can't, okay?

I've got to go.

I say in a quavering, childish voice.

Just take the month's rent.

The guy starts inspecting the room as I pack my clothes.

The awkwardness of it makes me want to claw my eyes out.

My suitcase won't close.

The clothes won't fit unless they are perfectly folded.

God, I want to cry.

I'm almost crying.

Good, good.

It's like a squid blasting out a jet of ink.

It will allow me to escape.

I throw my least favorite shirts onto the floor and zip the suitcase up.

When I stand up, me and the guy who have this moment where we're looking at each other eye to eye.

Dude,

you're all fucked up.

I'm taking the vodka.

I announce.

Man, he's not doing too well.

No.

Oh,

he's having a rough one.

This is actually normally the state I find you in whenever I come to visit.

So, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm stumbling around.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry, anyway.

In your own house, you keep looking at me like, I'll pay the month's rent.

It's like, whatever you, sure.

Sure.

I've been siphoning tens of thousands of dollars from Hunter this way.

Tens of thousands, millions of dollars.

94.

I fall asleep in the closet, but I wake up in my bed.

Before I open my eyes, I know she will be there.

She is.

This is probably the same night that he was talking about going in the closet and crying when he was younger, I think.

Standing at the end of the bed, morning time.

She's not a person.

She's something else.

I try not to cry.

Start crying right away.

Can't stop.

She is tall, but her body is not a body.

It's just a pile of things.

It's covered in a long, shiny robe, shining from a million blue gold flies crawling on her.

Long gray hair covers most of her face.

I look up at the ceiling and scream and scream and scream.

I scream for mommy to come back.

The ceiling turns pink and fuzzy.

I am screaming so hard.

He's screaming so hard that he's seeing what it actually is.

The flesh.

The flesh interface rather than an actual ceiling above him.

Interesting.

I could be, but I think we know that this place, this place where like the kids go and stuff is inside of the flesh interface.

It's what Mother Horse Eyes wants them to see.

So I think he's screaming so hard that, yeah, his emotional output's letting him see what reality is actually above him, what the ceiling actually is.

Then she is standing over me looking down on me.

Her face is awful pieces of animal.

I remember her eyes, the same eyes as the white horse Britney rides, the one that mom said I could pet, but it bit my hand and I had to go to the hospital.

The eyes are just hanging on the face, not really looking at me.

Flies crawl on them.

Shaking, scared.

Please, God, please make her go away.

She snorts and makes animal sounds.

Her old barn smell makes me want to throw up.

She reaches out and her fingers are made of crab legs, all different sizes.

No, no, I hate crabs more than anything.

When we go to the beach, my dad always makes sure to pick a part of the beach with no crabs.

He says he can tell when there are crabs because...

No, no, no, no.

She touches my face with her crab hands.

Horrible.

Horrible.

I close my eyes as tight as I can and scoot against the back of the bed.

The touching stops.

I press my eyes shut tight.

Tweets and chirps.

Drink.

A happy little voice says, keep my eyes closed.

Drink.

Says the voice.

It sounds fun and cartoony.

Open my eyes just a little bit.

A dozen bird heads have crawled out of the hole in her neck.

They moved in different ways.

I found a dead baby bird once in our backyard.

It had no skin and blue lumps for eyes.

It is there with the other heads.

Drink!

Says in its funny parrot voice.

She holds up a big silver spoon in her crab hand.

A greenish monkey hand holds up a glass bottle full of purple stuff and pours it out into the spoon.

I can smell it.

Grapey, like the medicine mom gives me.

Is it the same stuff?

She holds the spoon up for me to drink.

Please, God, make this stop.

All the birds giggle.

Her claw pinky pokes my neck.

It hurts.

I open my mouth.

Down goes the medicine.

I lay there with my eyes shut tight.

I cry and stop crying and cry again.

I know she's there.

The smell, the flies, the sound of animal breath.

Why won't she go away?

Please, go away, go away.

Please, God, make her go away.

Something slipped inside my eyes.

I can see it even though they're closed.

Not a square, not a triangle.

A shape I don't know the name of.

Lots of shapes.

Oh no, my eyeballs fill up with little people like a Where's Waldo book?

There's a million of them all doing different things, moving around in an old city with castles and flags.

They're running through tunnels and climbing up towers.

I can watch them all at once.

Wow, there's a baker and a knight and a clown and a queen with lots of...

They're all dying.

Cartooning blood pours everywhere and they've all got scared looks on their faces and the blood washes away, and they're all playing and smiling again.

The places and people change.

I see stories.

They happen all at once, a hundred stories, but I can watch them all at once.

It's different people crying and laughing and living and dying and doing all kinds of things.

It's like seeing 10 movies all at once, and it's so much too much.

I open my eyes.

She's still there, piled up on the edge of the bed.

Where's Waldo people are still here?

Playing and laughing and bleeding and dying.

The animal pieces of her face open up and look.

There's another face inside.

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 at all looking at it.

And I feel like I'm floating.

Clay changes, and the face turns into other faces.

An old man, a young man, a Chinese guy, a sad black guy, other guys.

A cat?

The shapes of the faces change, but something in the eyes stays the same, staring at me, telling me something.

The face changes one more time.

It's a woman's face.

Mother.

Maybe very old, maybe very young.

Mother.

The eyes say something clearly.

Mother.

I could feel my heart beating.

When it beats, it says, mother, mother, mother.

The eyes are sad, so old and sad and kind, so kind, like they're sorry for me, like they wish they could help me.

But the face is still, and the lips are pressed together, like she, mother, is trying to hide that she is sad,

trying not to be sad, trying to be strict because

she is going to punish me.

It's the same look mom gives when I've been bad and she puts me in timeout.

The face is mom's face, but also a thousand other faces.

They feel sorry for me.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I scream and scream, scream, and scream.

And that's the end of entry 94.

Kind of interesting that he sees all the faces of everyone else in the stories that we've read.

Yeah, the cat, the sad black guy, the Chinese guy, all the different characters we've heard of before.

It's he sees their faces.

And in this moment where he sees all the stories told at once, this is definitely our narrator when he was young because he grows up and remembers these stories and writes them.

And that's what we're reading now.

Right.

He sees, he saw everything at once.

It's like Karen talked about.

You can see all the dimensions.

You can see all of time exercised at a singular point.

and that's what happened to him.

That's probably why Mother Horse Eyes gave him the medicine, gave him the stuff to make him see all of this.

All right.

94, June 29th.

95.

95.

Oh, sorry.

95, June 29th.

Thank you, Comrade.

Outside, the midday light and the heat are mind-bending, like some kind of damn UFO raid sapping me.

Sweat rolls down my burning face.

Squinting makes my cheeks ache.

The wheels of my suitcase rumble over the gritty sidewalk.

I have no idea where I am or where I'm going.

Some street, some neighborhood.

I desperately want to drink from the bottle of liquor I'm carrying in a grocery bag, but I'm afraid somebody will see and report me.

All the internal alarms in my mind and body are ringing at once.

Each passing car seems like it will pull over.

Each one seems to slow and veer toward the curb.

Each one is surely filled with gang members or undercover cops ready to beat me down.

Each one passes, sending a wave of warm air and panic past me.

I am insane.

I do not belong in normal society.

I must be isolated.

I must keep moving.

The sidewalk ends.

Shit.

The road is turning into some kind of freeway.

Can I walk along it?

Is it allowed?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But why don't I know things?

Everybody knows things.

Here I am wondering, tits out, no clue.

This wet bottle of liquor is showing right through the plastic bag.

I've got to get somewhere.

I've got to get this liquor inside of me.

I drudge through an abandoned lot, trying to get away from the road, dragging the rebellious suitcase over rocks and weeds.

There's a bunch of high grass.

It's some kind of sloping concrete Janeish thing behind it.

I don't even know what it is or how to describe it.

I'm not a novelist, never was.

I plop down on the concrete so that the weeds shield me from the passing cars on the road, and I spin the cap off the bottle.

Stomach cringes when the cold liquor hits.

Relief begins to flow almost immediately into my brain.

Merely psychological, I'm sure, but psychological is exactly what I need right now.

I breathe deep and shudder and take more sips, shaping my tongue into a sluice to send it right down my throat with no fuss.

The panic slackens.

Perfect, perfect relief.

All the nightmarish feelings are still inside me, but now there's just a bit of distance between me and them.

They're at bay.

Pretty soon, I've taken down a quarter of the bottle.

Wow, look at me.

Just a few days out of the sober house, and I'm literally lying in the ditch with a bottle of liquor.

At least it's a concrete, man-made ditch.

No declass dirt ditches for me.

I snicker at the thought.

My panic of just moments ago seems ridiculous.

Underneath it though, the awful lore is still there.

I know my snickering is just an empty little show of bravery.

What to do now?

Usually at this point, I would do forensics.

We have to find out what happened over the past few days.

For example, who beat me up?

But it could be anybody.

Who even cares?

I used to get punched out all the time.

Whoever did this really had it in for me, though.

I must have unleashed a few of my delightful bomb mots on an unamused stranger.

I checked my phone.

All my cringe sensors are on full alert, ready to fire when I see what nonsense text and 3 a.m.

calls I've made.

But just a few ordinary texts from my new landlord.

He says he won't be back until Monday.

That's today.

I left the sober house on, when was it?

Wednesday?

Damn, a five-day vendor.

And only a handful of memories from it all.

Scary.

At least the owner was out of town for most of it.

Take a sip to my good fortune.

It occurs to me to check Reddit.

I have a a vague memory of being on there, tortling at some outrageous comment I made.

Let's see.

It turns out I posted a piece I had been working on, and the title was Chod or Chod.

Let's settle the debate.

Wait, which one was that?

That was the one from

two or three up.

It's the one where he's like, screw Reddit.

I've decided to move out of the sober house.

Okay, that one.

Yeah, yeah.

So that was written on his bender.

Got it.

God, how stupid.

It certainly undermines my claims of possessing otherworldly knowledge.

Hey, some guys possess the power to see into alternate realities, and he's using it to make cho jokes on the internet, right?

The wave of ethanol relief is fully washing over me, caressing me.

It's easing my worries.

I could feel the euphoria of the booze, but I can also feel the dread of the withdrawal at the same time, and I know that both feelings are lies.

Soon the euphoria will be gone, and the dread will reign again.

It will be like this for three days or more if I keep getting drunk and this turns into just another day on the bender.

I have to try to taper down.

But tapering means always drinking less than you want to, always remaining in barely tolerable misery.

I groan and my babyish instincts tell me to take another drink, but I don't.

I shouldn't drink for another hour.

Then one shot every hour until it's time for sleep.

Then six shots to speed me through the nightmare realms.

God, the math.

The math.

17 drinks in a fifth.

nine hours until alcohol cells stop.

The body processes a drink an hour.

For all those months, I didn't have to do the drinking math.

Now I'm back in it.

I groan and lie back against the concrete drainage, whatever.

I know I look like the picture of a drunk, but I don't care.

I wallow in the feeling.

Good, good, I say.

One of the lies that leads you down the road of addiction is that you are just visiting.

The first time you end up in the drunk tank or the trap house, as the kids call it, or the rehab, you look at all the other guys and shake your head at how sad their lives are because they're regulars.

But you, you're just visiting.

You're here because of a crazy screw-up, but you'll go back to your normal life.

Heck, it'll be a fun story.

Even when it happens for the second or third time, you're still just visiting.

You're just a tourist in the land of misery, not a resident.

Well, no more lives for me.

I am not visiting.

I'm returning home.

Everything is just where I left it.

I wonder if the author, like the true real-world author, actually struggles with addiction because there's a lot of like inside and thought that goes into it.

Yeah, it feels like maybe something they've struggled with, or at least it has affected their life somehow in a, in a very impactful way.

All right, post 96.

So this was a week later, July 5th.

So, mother has put a nail in my brain.

The nail stays still.

Everything else moves.

Last year, me and my family took a trip to California.

My dad got to drive on the Pacific Coast Highway.

He really loves cars, and it was his dream to drive on that highway since he was a little boy like me.

But he didn't get to drive on it much because I got really car sick.

We kept having to stop, and then we just went home.

My dad didn't say anything on the way home.

Why did mom and dad leave me behind?

What?

Is it because of stuff like that?

Because I'm too much of a baby?

I feel like I'm car sick now.

Which I'll say, by the way, we've talked about a few times that the story does this thing where we'll have two different narratives that are like talking to each other, you know, throughout.

And now our entries are switching back and forth between him now and him when he was a child.

Yeah.

It's

a larger scale.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The medicine makes everything look like it has colored shadows.

Everything is going different ways and different colors.

I can see things that don't happen and things that do.

Things that try 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 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 i see a thousand different things i'm doing different things and crowding everything up like where's waldo it makes me dizzy mother comes in and puts three big stones on the floor by my bed i don't know why i watch them they just sit there doing nothing i think about pushing one of them away and then it's covered with color shadows.

The shadows show things that could happen but don't.

So I make this a game, watching what could happen.

After a few days, I start feeling a little better.

I still see colors, but they don't make me sick all the time.

When mother comes to give me more medicine, I tell her I'm hungry.

Make some food then, dear.

She says with her bird voice.

How?

She points to the stones.

Command that these stones be made bread.

Oh, Hunter, Hunter, Hunter.

This is a Bible story.

Yeah,

isn't that Jesus?

Well, when Satan was tempted, Jesus in the wilderness.

The same story that got mentioned earlier by the Korean soldier with, you know,

like, I'll give you the things of the earth.

Right before that, when the devil is tempting Jesus in the wilderness, he says, if you're so hungry, why don't you make these stones into bread?

Oh, that's right.

Basically, trying to tempt God to use his power.

Yeah.

So this is him.

This is, again, the devil tempting them to use power in the same way.

I'll also say there's a lot of numerology.

I've noticed that's biblical, like the three pearls in the river, the three stones, three is a holy number in the Bible.

It's mentioned twice, people being 33 years old, or there's the mention by Karen that everyone died by the time they were 34.

33 is the age Jesus was when he was crucified.

So

there's a bunch of, again, like religious symbolism like that, just constant throughout.

But yeah, the three stones and then commanding them to be made bread is an explicit Bible story.

She says in a new voice, a man's voice.

Oh, and she says it in a man's voice.

I imagine Lucifer, right?

Because that's his quote coming through her.

Yeah.

I look at the stones.

Now they are colored with more shadows moving every different way.

It looks like colored fire, but I don't know what to do.

I say, Stones turn into bread.

Shake my finger at them like Harry Potter pointing his wand.

I see a color of fire I haven't seen before.

It works.

Stones are bread.

Mother laughs.

Mother leaves and I eat the bread.

It's wonderful, just like my favorite bread from Tony's.

Warm and squishy.

But how did it happen?

Is this magic?

Like real magic?

I drop the bread and run to the window.

The street is empty.

Almost sunset.

Close my eyes and make a special magic spell.

When I open my eyes, yes, there it is coming down the street.

Mom and dad's car.

Huh.

So, gosh, he's using

the, or Mother Horse Eyes is using his ability, the things he wants to get him to fall into her because it's her power that's doing this, or the devil's power that's doing this.

And now he's falling victim to it because the devil is offering him the things that he wants that will lead to his own downfall, as we see years later.

All right.

Post-97.

You ready?

97.

The back of my neck feels all hot and boggy when I wake up.

I hate that.

The air conditioner in this motel room makes a lot of noise, but it's just a big show.

I close my eyes and hope sleep takes me away somewhere dark and cool, but it doesn't.

Reality persists.

I've been tapering off booze for the past few days.

It's amazing how timid and jittery I become when the alcohol is oozing its way out from me.

I haven't even worked up the nerve to call the motel manager and complain about the air conditioning.

To think, I lived for years in this helpless, reclusive state.

What a waste.

The whole time, I thought the alcohol was giving me courage when it was stealing it from me.

I can't drink anymore.

I need courage.

I'm down to my last $200.

I could call good old mom and dad and ask them for some help, but what kind of conversation would that be?

Why am I broke?

Well,

I took some time off work so I could write a book.

Oh, about what?

Oh, well, you know, tripping acid, Nazis, finger blasting, cats.

No, I'm not going to call old mom and dad.

I'm not going to go back to the sober house either.

I'm going to get some answers.

I'm going to call Sean.

Sean shows up at the motel right after he gets off work.

I'm surprised because we had gotten into a lot of little arguments towards the end and I lived on pretty bad terms with him.

I'm standing in the parking lot when his black truck pulls up, and my paranoise starts to flare.

Maybe he saw the story online and was outraged.

Maybe he's been looking for me.

He strides up to me and gives me a quick hug, patting me stiffly on the back.

He steps back and squints at the dingy face of the motel.

I know this fucking motel, he says quietly.

Come on, man.

Let's get your stuff.

Get my stuff?

You said you're sober, right?

I already talked to the house manager.

He'll take you back.

We got a bed.

I'm not going back to the house.

I asked you to come here because I want to know where the warehouse is.

The one downtown.

Sean turns and looks me in the eye.

Why do you want to know about that?

I tell him the story.

I tell him about Mother Horse Eyes, the Nazis, the CIA, the LSD, the experiments, most of the stuff I've told you.

Man, that sentence really encapsulated for me how cool this whole thing is.

It's everywhere, man.

It's all over the place.

I leave out some parts, like the fact that he's in the story, that we're in the story, that all of this in the story right now he listens to me but his face darkens maybe thinks i'm crazy or high or full of evil spirits listen to me i say working myself up to deliver my big speech i have lived things which are impossible which could not have happened so have you those tunnels those cages the bones none of it should exist but you saw it i've seen things too We have to find out what it is.

I lived with that monster for a whole summer.

I know she's down there, and I want to find her.

Sean narrows his eyes as he stares at me.

What's down there is the devil, Nick.

If you go down there, you won't come back.

I want to see her.

I want to know.

Please.

I just...

I just want to know why.

I'm so fucked up.

You're fucked up because you drink all day.

You got character defects, like me and everybody else.

That's it.

Don't you want to know what's going on down there?

You're not curious?

No.

It doesn't eat at you.

You don't need any answers?

He shakes his head.

God doesn't promise answers.

God gave us all the answers we need in the Bible.

That's all we get.

I don't ask him what's going to happen in the future.

I don't do horoscopes.

I don't practice witchcraft.

God's not going to come down and give me the answers to everything.

All he wants from me is obedience.

Come on.

So we shouldn't try to figure things out.

We shouldn't ask questions.

That's just some anti-intellectual, anti-science bullshit.

When we were roommates and got into disagreements, he would start quoting the Bible at me, and I would start picking at him with snide intellectual arguments, using as many big words as I could.

We're falling back into the same dynamic.

Anti-science?

Shit, I'm not saying don't be a scientist.

I'm saying don't go into a tunnel with the fucking bones on the wall, man.

I find myself laughing at this.

He smiles with me.

For real, though, man.

It's dangerous.

He says, the smile fading.

I look out across the crumbling parking lot.

Long evening shadows are drawn across the asphalt.

Man, I don't know.

I just feel like if I could figure out what happened during the summer, then maybe I wouldn't be so fucked up.

I've obsessed about this shit for 25 years or so.

And now there's a chance to get some answers.

Just let it go.

No.

There has to be an ending.

There has to be some kind of

payoff.

Moses and the people wandered the desert for 40 years looking for the promised land.

One day, the Lord took him up up to the mountaintop and showed him all the promised land and moses died right there without ever setting foot in the land you know what kind of lord does that

mess up one

the lord knows that we are generations man is a few days generations might pass before we get any answers for the last 10 years i've been living like the world might end any day but i'm not doing that anymore i have to remember that we know neither the day nor the hour wherein the son of man cometh that's why i'm going back to school and all that man what a to compare it to moses and be like the god that knows we work in generations and the entire story is about one story being carried out through generations the devil versus man mother horse eyes tempting children trying to get this trying to see its end through and for him to say like the god that knows we work in generations like what a counter oh gosh And also him talking meta because he is a character within the story that he is writing about and saying there has to be some kind of payoff, but he's talking about the story itself.

Like, how does it end?

Man, I nod.

Through the course of our little debates, I had told him many times that the world wasn't going to end anytime soon.

The world was going to go on and on like it always did in a screwed up and confused state.

Maybe some of it rubbed off on him.

Maybe some of it should be rubbing off on me now.

I need answers.

I've tried to six september mystery and whatever, but at this point, I just need to know why I'm all fucked up.

Why I can't stop drinking.

Why I can't be normal.

Man, I could tell you where the warehouse is.

But what are you going to do when you go down there?

What are you going to do when you meet the devil?

I haven't told him that part of the story.

It's a part that I'm not sure I really believe myself.

I think I've been given a reason to believe that whatever's down there, I can destroy it.

All right.

End of post 97.

I really like both of their character

acts.

Like, the author and Sean.

Yeah, Sean's really came out to be pretty sick.

I like that.

Well, it's a really fun way of introducing a character through absolute chaos and then just like kind of like wiping away the fogs of like craziness from him and then just sitting knowing the man after a while.

Pretty cool.

And as it gets to that point, it's like, yeah, he's a lot of his beliefs are crazy, but there is,

he has a foundation in him that matters a lot in a story with so many weird, like unexplainable things happening around it.

You know, he knows where he stands.

As soon as I see the car, I rush downstairs.

Mother is in the the kitchen making noises, but I run right by her.

Outside, the car pulls into the driveway.

I run to it, smiling, but I slow down.

Something is different about the car.

Whose car is this?

The door opens.

I stop.

Dad gets out.

He's got that grumpy look he usually has.

He's wearing his pajamas, but they have no buttons.

Mom gets out of the car, too.

She comes out the same door.

She's wearing her blue dress.

I start to cry and run to her and hug her legs.

She pats my head and says, There there, Nick, it's okay.

Where'd you go?

I ask, I'm crying like a baby.

Why'd you leave me?

Why'd you go?

We went to the store.

But you were gone so long.

My face is smushed up against her side.

We went to the store and bought some dresses and dad got some stuff for his car.

I look up at her.

Her face is all blurry because I'm crying.

I wipe my face.

She looks down at me, smiling.

Her face is smooth and glowing.

We stayed at the store a few days, she says and pats me on the head.

It doesn't make sense to me.

Why did you leave me with the monster lady?

Mom stops smiling.

Monster?

There's a monster in the house.

Nick.

She says, like she thinks I'm telling stories.

You weren't at the store for three days.

Where were you?

Nick.

That's enough.

I look at him.

The shape of his face is weird.

He usually

usually has freckles on his cheeks, but they're not in the right places.

I let go of mom and look at her.

She makes a little smile like she always does when she sees me.

It's her, it's mom, it's her face, but it's too...

What's wrong with it?

Mom's shirt moves.

There's something underneath it.

It's pushing and trying to get out.

I step back.

Her face sags like a water balloon and her cheek falls off.

It hits the ground right in front of me with a big, wet smack.

It's lying there like a big raw piece of chicken.

I scream and mom falls apart.

Her face falls to pieces and her whole body hits the ground like a sack of potatoes.

The same thing happens to dad.

Their clothes are just lying on the driveway, but there's something inside the clothes moving around inside.

I scream and something screams back.

It screams again, a little scream.

It pokes its head out of my mom's dress.

A kitty cat.

Yeah, because

he's inside of the flesh interface.

So like cats, those things are the only things that can exist in there.

Other cats slip out of the bottom of the dress and out of my dad's pajamas.

A whole bunch of cats, all different colors.

Mom and dad's clothes just blow away like tissue in the driveway is full of cats and pieces of meat.

A few cats run away.

Some of them cry.

Some wander around and sniff and lick at the meat.

Something pitches my shoulder and I scream.

It's mother's crab hand.

She yanks my arm and drags me back to the house.

I shout and scream, but she holds me tight.

She slams the front door shut and pushes me into a big metal cage in the kitchen.

Her birds are pushing out of her shoulders and her face.

They're missing eyeballs and covered with big golden flies, and all of them are tweeting and cackling at me.

Your magic isn't strong enough to make whomever you want.

The birds all giggle.

Never will be.

One of them shouts.

Man.

Oh, I love this bouncing back and forth between the two.

Okay, this one looks like it's still with the sun.

Alright, so this is posted one day later.

99th post.

Mother Mother locks me in the cage and sits down at the kitchen table.

I scream and cry, but she doesn't move.

Her horse eyes stare at the wall.

The sun sets very slow and the room goes dark.

She is just the shape of a black mountain sitting at the table.

When the sun rises, her eyes are still on the wall.

You were bad.

Your magic was bad.

You won't be bad again.

I hate you!

I do.

I hate her.

Hate her, hate her, hate her.

Mother's birds giggle.

She stands up at the table and all her golden flies scramble around.

The bars in the cage slide to the side like magic.

She reaches in and grabs me with her crab hand.

It hurts so bad, and I scream and kick at her, but she doesn't care.

She lifts me up and carries me into the living room.

It's full of cages.

When did they get here?

There are naked kids inside the rows of cages.

They're not scared like me.

They're sitting cross-legged with their hands on their knees, sitting nice and still and straight with their eyes closed.

I will show you what will happen if you are bad.

She says, We go to the back hall.

There's the door to the basement.

I don't like the basement.

I cry and ask her to please let me go.

Please, please.

She opens the basement door.

Usually the basement is dark, but not this time.

Lights shine out of the door.

I look inside.

Inside, it's not the basement.

It's alive.

Grim stuff on the news lately oh brother oh my god

it's been a while

since we've uh switched up like that

grim stuff on the news lately gunshots popping like fireworks people scrambling through shaky footage cops dead in the streets it hit 100 degrees today it's supposed to hit 100 every day this week what a strange summer it's become nobody can agree on the truth they say the media is ignoring the problem they say the media is creating the problem.

The protesters are the problem.

The cops are the problem.

The whole thing is a false flag operation so Obama can take our AR-15s away.

It's a false flag operation so they can crack down on Black Lives Matters.

Chemtrails crisscross in the sky.

Conspiracy theories clash in the comments section.

Single women in your area want to date now.

Across the ocean, they're crucifying people again.

I feel so much different than I did in the spring.

Less optimistic.

I thought maybe I would achieve the dream of publishing a novel.

And gee, gee, wouldn't that be neat?

But now I don't feel any excitement about it at all.

Whether I publish something or not, I'll still be this friendless little specter, holed up somewhere, sneaking drinks.

Money's pointless for a recluse that never does anything.

And fame, a bicycle for a fish.

There's nothing in my future.

I'm going back to the past.

I'm going to kill it.

Mother doesn't care what I do so long as I don't bother her.

I make sure not to bother her.

When she comes into a room, I sneak out quiet as a mouse.

I never go into the rooms with cages.

I never, ever go near the basement.

I just stay quiet and make sure not to get in trouble.

I've been practicing my magic, doing small secret things.

I make bread for myself out of stones.

I make yummy cookies.

My stuffed animals walk around and do fun things.

My trucks race around a little track I made.

Magic's a lot of fun, but I'm afraid of making mother mad.

How long will mother stay here?

Will it be forever?

I think it'll be forever.

It makes me cry when I think about it.

I can't even think about mom and dad for a little second before I start to cry.

I came up with a neat idea.

Lately there are a lot of ideas in my head, like a crowd of people all talking at once.

One idea was very strong and clear.

I tried to bring mom and dad to the house, but I couldn't do it right.

My magic fell apart and they turned into stupid cats.

It's because mom and dad are on the outside.

I can't make them them do things with magic.

I'm not strong enough.

And I can make myself do things.

Sean told me where the warehouse is.

I'm going down there.

I'm being called.

By the shape of my entire life, I am being called.

The story must end this way.

Mother will be down there, and so I will try to destroy her.

I've thought about bringing some kind of weapon, but what good would a weapon be against her?

She, who is everything, who has shaped my life across time and space.

I feel exactly like I do when the evening comes.

I've woke up so many mornings swearing I won't drink that day, but 7 p.m.

comes and I'm walking to the store feeling none too wise.

And I don't want to be walking to the store, and I know I'm making the wrong choice, but my feet keep moving me closer and closer.

I know what I'm doing is wrong, but I'm doing it anyways.

I'm coming, mother.

I'm coming.

This is it.

That's the end of post 99, man.

All right, ready for post 100?

This is it.

100.

I am being changed.

Mother's lessons are teaching me things, transforming me.

At night, I lie in my little bed eating cookies, watching the ceiling.

Then the seams open up, and wow, just look at what's behind them.

Colors without name, stars from long ago, tunnels through the beyond.

My magic is growing stronger.

I can make things happen.

I pray and wait, and they come to me.

Every morning, little sparrows land on tree branches outside my window.

Mother says I can't be too greedy.

Press at the curve, she says.

Direct the flow.

Don't move against it.

I'm reading the Bible with the new words I've learned.

Christ had blood magic.

The magic of suffering, of desire and limitation.

At night, Mother and I watch his soft flesh writhe and struggle on the hard architecture of the cross.

Mother,

behold your son.

Father,

into your hands I commit my spirit.

Soon I will call my own little Christ unto these yellow sands.

Oh, whoa,

whoa,

back to come to these yellow sands all the way back then.

Gosh, what was that?

Part nine?

Yeah, super.

I would say within the first 10 for sure.

Whoa, so

this makes sense.

I think remember.

Yeah, so we, so the two of them, they can see all of history, so they watch the crucifixion.

And it's the last words Jesus says, Mother, behold your son,

when God or Jesus is telling Mary that John is now her son to look after each other, and then he says, Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit to God the Father.

And he says, Soon I'll call my own little Christ under these yellow sands.

So that goes back to what the girl was saying when she came out of the system earlier.

And we know this to be the devil.

So this is talking about like antichrist imagery.

That she is, maybe that's what all this is.

She is trying to bring about the end times by finding the Antichrist, by finding someone that can be her magic in the real world, that can be her vessel.

Because if she can't communicate with the real world directly without like, you know, technology, as we've talked about then maybe she needs a vessel to do it for her and that's what this kid is or he's supposed to find the antichrist the other passengers on the bus seem unaware that i am heading towards a showdown which will decide the fate of all mankind am i still sane i feel pretty sane i'm not drooling at the mouth i'm not shouting at the pigeons but what really makes me feel sane is that i can still recognize that my actions are insane I'm going to confront a sinister entity which has been shaping the course of human events since prehistory, which may may one day enslave all of humanity, and I'm going to do it wearing an old Garth Brooks t-shirt.

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.

Yes, brave warriors are we.

They say one hallmark of delusional thinking is grandiosity.

The delusional man often thinks himself to be a part of some grand struggle, which really there is no struggle but that in the mine.

A pigeon bobs across my path.

I mutter.

Fuck off.

Google Maps leads me through the streets.

I expect to see a bunch of crackheads milling around, but everything is empty.

In the sunshine, it looks like an ordinary factory street.

The warehouse itself is just a dusty old brick building with scribbles of spray paint and boarded up windows.

It's not even especially shitty.

The front door is chained up, but I check the boarded windows and find a board that bends back easily.

A musty smell seeps out of the dark.

Damn, am I really doing this?

Sweat already coats my face.

I fish a flashlight out of my backpack and turn it on.

Inside the warehouse, my sweeping flashlight finds dusty shapes littering the floor.

Old boxes, cinder blocks, and a gleam on the floor.

Yes, it's our first crackpipe.

Or maybe a meth pipe.

Is there a difference?

Listening to people in the rooms has made me feel rather worldly when it comes to drugs, but it's all been second-hand stories.

What do I really know?

Sean said there was a flight of stairs that led down to the door.

The floor floor of the main room doesn't seem to have any stairs leading down, but there are a few doorways on the far side.

I make my way over, stepping carefully through the debris.

The middle doorway sits at the top of a short staircase.

At the bottom is another empty doorway.

Flashlight catches a glint of metal, a pair of torn hinges.

When we were roommates, Sean always had such a cool demeanor.

Cool and poised and confident, but now I see a new picture of him.

Working the hydraulic spreader, prying the door off its hinges, the metal groaning then shrieking, sweat coating his face, his eyes bright and wide with that terrible craving, that thing beyond hunger.

I shudder and step down the stairs.

Sure enough, they lead to a tunnel.

I move slowly, forced to press against some basic animal instinct to go back, get out of there.

But the tunnel is strangely plain and featureless, considering that it lies under a cracked inn and leads to a possible flesh interface.

It's just dusty, block walls with no light fixtures or anything.

The tunnel leads to more tunnels, more stairs, empty rooms.

Man, this is like, this truly is like the Minotaur's maze, isn't it?

It feels like it.

There's

nine layers of hell kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, nine layers of hell, the Minotaur's maze.

Very, very like backrooms, you know, strange a space beyond spaces.

There's a creature in it roaming around.

But yeah, it feels like the Minotaur.

The black air teems with bits of dust that shine in the flashlight.

My skin tingles all over.

Is it the dust clinging to me?

Or is it just the low-grade terror that has filled my body?

It reminds me of the tingle that filled my limbs on all those mornings before the first drink.

How I had begged for that feeling to end, but now I know it will never end.

There will always be another awful morning, another screw-up, another withdrawal, unless I go forward.

Not away from the nightmare, but into it.

But it goes on and on.

I cannot believe how long the tunnels are, how many rooms there are, how deep the stairs are.

I can taste the dust on my lips and I pull my shirt up over my nose.

Occasionally I come across an old metal chair, some rotting boards, but nothing else.

I'm hoping to find some scrap of paper or maybe a name tag, some clue as to who built this monstrosity, but there's nothing but dust.

More and more dust.

Yeah, I'm wondering if this is going.

I'm wondering if the story is going to have the same outcome as us, as

Pompeii did.

Like the kind of reoccurring themes of looking for something and then finding it.

There's nothing.

There's no God behind the curtain.

Yeah.

There simply is.

Yeah.

Their job's done.

You can't do anything about it.

Yeah.

I stop and watch the dust float across my flashlight's beam, holding out my sweating, shaking hand.

I let a dark speck settle on my fingertip.

Look at it closely.

I see that's the shape of a flake.

Is it dust?

Or is it ash?

A wave of dread moves through me.

Could it be from a burned interface?

Is it human ash?

The wave of dread is followed by a flurry of nervous voice cracks.

Dust.

What do I know about dust or ash?

I'm not some dust expert.

Maybe it's just flaky dust.

Maybe it's standruff.

Maybe I'll find a huge cache of used wigs down here.

Did you find any interdimensional portal?

Uh, no, but these wigs are in pretty good condition.

Look, we got a mid-60s dusty spring-filled here.

I wipe my hand on my shirt and keep moving forward.

Just a few steps later, my flashlight finds the end of the block tunnel in the beginning of the rock cave.

Just like Sean said.

God, can it be real?

Maybe it's an ordinary rock tunnel.

Maybe it's just part of an unfinished

reaching out from the shadowy wall with its bony fingers splayed almost elegantly.

It's the shape of a human hand.

I stare at it for a moment, letting my eyes flood with tears before I have to kneel down and wipe my face.

I am not crazy.

I have not been crazy all these years.

Something happened.

Something happened to me when I was a child, and I'm not just some screw-up.

I'm not just some piece of shit loser who can't keep his hands off a bottle.

I've seen something.

I've been touched by something vast and unimaginable.

I stand and approach the hand.

Yes, it's a human hand.

As real as my own hand holding the flashlight, except it is little more than bone wrapped in a gray, papery skin.

It extends from a wrist that is fused to a distorted mass of gray and black shapes.

The flashlight passes over an awful collage of desiccated anatomy, rows of teeth, racks of ribs, pairs of eye sockets and hip sockets, snaking vertebrae and femurs and tibias and and clavicles.

For a moment, I feel like I'm not standing on the ground, but I'm suspended over a pit full of bodies, like one of the great burning pits of Treblinka, only much vaster.

These are not just the bodies from Treblinka, but from all the camps, all the prisons, all the pogroms, all the wars, all the plagues, all the indifferent machinery of history.

The great unfeeling clock wheels of the cosmos, which roll sublimely along, generation after generation, rending and crushing the human form into pieces, into powder, into dust, into ash.

Vertigo encloses me.

I totter and find myself sitting on the ground, sweating and gasping.

The jumble of party parts spins around me and I close my eyes.

What is this vision of death?

This dead clockwork universe, stars and abyss, atoms and void.

This is something beyond mother, even more horrible and fundamental.

Mother is at least alive.

Monstrous and devouring, but alive.

Virulently fertile.

She writhes and struggles within this vast tomb universe, binding times and worlds to.

But the dizziness passes, and with it, the visions.

The ideas slip away like fish in a stream.

Sitting there in the afterglow of this near revelation, I think of what Sean said happened to him when he came to this cave.

He said he smelled applesauce coming out of the tunnel, a smell that reminded him of his daughter.

He said he could feel the presence of the evil one tempting him with dreams of only family and love.

I open my eyes to pick up the flashlight and shine it down the tunnel.

Is there anything down there?

Anything to tempt me?

The flashlight catches awful shapes along the walls, extending on and on until the beam of light fails.

But I don't see anyone in the tunnel.

I don't sense anyone waiting for me.

And I don't smell anything but dust and ash and

cookies.

Little sugar cookies.

My God, I remember they weren't like the ones my mom used to make for me, but

not quite the same as them.

These were the ones I used to make for myself

out of stones.

The memory of it comes flooding up to me so hard that again my eyes are full of tears.

God, I used to sit in my room with stones and turn them into cookies.

I tried to make them like mom's cookies, but they always tasted a little different.

And that made me miss her even more.

Impossible, completely impossible, and yet real.

Real and floating in the darkness before me.

I stand and brush myself off.

There is something at the end of the tunnel waiting for me.

Good or evil, it will be an answer.

A resolution.

An end.

I walk into the dark.

I say my prayer and look out the window.

For a long time, the street's empty.

Then he comes walking down the road carrying a flashlight.

Oh my gosh!

Bro!

Dude!

Whoa!

Hunter!

Yes.

Then he comes walking down the road, carrying a flashlight, even though it's light out.

I rush downstairs.

Mother is sitting at the kitchen table.

I think of saying goodbye to her, but the gleam in her eyes tells me there is no need.

I go into the dim little front hall.

A beam of daylight is shining through the peephole.

There is a knock on the door.

I wait.

The knob turns and the door opens.

This is it.

The beginning.

I walk into the light.

The end.

God damn.

Bro, I can't, he decided when he was a kid, I can't, mom and dad are outside.

I can't change what they do, but I can change what I do.

And he sends, he uses his magic, so to speak, the power of it, to call out to himself in a different timeline and futures that are now gone and have them come to him.

They have him come to them through the void.

He has himself 30 years later come save himself from the house.

All of the things he had as an adult where he's like, I can't quit drinking.

I can't quit thinking about this thing that happened to me.

Everything that led him back to the house was himself.

He was the God that was calling out to himself on the other side of the veil to come save him from that house when he was a kid.

My God.

So, do you think that in this metaphor, I mean, is he God?

Kind of?

I think he was supposed to be.

I think he was supposed to, we will find our own Christ.

I think Mother Horse Eyes gave him the power to do all of this to make the Antichrist or to at least bring Mother Horse Eyes influence into the world, which I guarantee you, the futures we don't see or the futures we see that don't happen of humanity hooked up to these computers and stuff like that, where they're feeding the interface constantly.

And we know that the devil or the mother lives inside of them.

And that's when like the woman in the 80s dream gets assaulted by the demon and all that.

That is what happens if little Nick follows through on it.

If he decides to carry out her vision, go into the world and use his magic for her.

but instead he showed himself the visions of everything because the reason he got this ability is because he was in the house when he was a little boy he could see everything happening at once he saw all the timelines all the possibilities and he said i can't get my parents to come because they're outside but i can get myself so he finds himself in the future gives himself all of the knowledge that he has as a little boy of all the different timelines, all the different possibilities, all the past and futures.

He gives that to himself in the future and uses that that knowledge that his future self has to make his future self come back and get him out of the house so that that future never comes to be.

That's what it means in the beginning when he says, I have seen futures that I have seen past that have not been and futures that cannot be, because that is the objective that his younger self is giving him in the past.

That is why he was given those visions, so that he could save himself from the house.

God damn, dude.

My brain

is it's

god i don't even know what to say to fucking jesus fucking christ it's like 12 hours of fucking recording and i'm like

i don't know god

the story is awesome i mean i think that the parallel too of uh people that have been looking for another it's almost like seeking an answer uh

uh

like looking inward for your for your salvation or something you know what i mean?

All these parallels with the Pompeii thing of people like looking for some kind of outside source or something to help them

is all like it's almost like it's it's it's was never there.

It's like almost like it's always internalized, you know what I mean?

Is what I kind of thought too.

Because it kind of leads itself up into that way too, you know what I mean?

Like we get that beginning.

We get so many of these

these parallels at the beginning of people like turning in and they kind of parallel with the Pompeii thing and they end the same way.

And then at the end finally uh there is a bit of salvation at the end it feels like

you know like some kind of light kind of feels you do you think too that the thing is is that whenever he goes there and then his future self like his future self going and confronting his younger self to save him

is it something that like

i guess how do you read the idea then of like what is uh

What does Mother Horse Eyes do?

Do you think she tries to stop him?

Or do you think it's just something of like, or do you think it's like a bit more metaphorical in the sense of like being able to, I guess, like connect and find peace within yourself?

You know what I mean?

I think what it is is Mother Horse Eyes is something that always has been.

It's the devil, right?

It's the embodiment of all things bad.

She's always been there.

Since pre-history, she's been calling the shots.

We saw that with the tribe story with Mother River.

So she's been there from the beginning.

You can't stop her.

But Nick was made to be her agent, the one who saw saw everything.

We don't know why.

He probably had the gene or was just a good candidate for it, as we hear mentioned in other stories.

But we have little Nick,

who was supposed to be the one to like carry her into the real world.

And we see a future of what happens if that's allowed to come to be, you know, nuclear annihilation.

And Nick says no.

Nick uses her own power against her.

Nick will never be a willing participant because he's not a willing participant.

He's not going to be her Antichrist.

And he uses her power to save himself with himself, quite literally, in the future, to come back and get him from that house.

So, yeah, I don't think Mother Horse Eyes can do anything because he's not going to do it.

Like, even if he can, even if he did give in to the trick of Satan and turn the stones to bread, he's not going to stay falling for that trick.

He uses that magic to pull himself out.

It is an absolute, there's so many themes of religion, of stuff like that, of like higher power, of divine intervention.

And ultimately, there was, but it was through himself.

It was through like a

like he was his own Deus Ex Machina to pull himself out of the house, right?

Man,

I hate to say it,

but this may be,

and I'm so curious to see what other people say too,

might be

the most

interesting thing we've ever read.

It might be the goat right now.

I have to agree with you.

I can't think of anything I've read that's hooked me this much.

Not only are all the themes like perfectly tailored to me, but just how it's done.

It reminds me of House of Leaves, where it's like, yeah, I like the characters, but what's more so than the characters is the experience I had reading it was one of a kind, and it was great, every bit of it.

Like on part 30, I think I told you, I don't think this can get any better.

Or part 40, whenever the Pompeii thing was, and it kept going up after that.

It ended on such a high note.

of all of it being him sending the messages back to him because he can see all of time at once so he manipulates himself in the future and then there's stuff like karen writing the story, which I need to, I need to reread it, and I need to go back and like look at other stuff.

But like, I think you're right about that message from Kay being Karen editing his own story.

So, what does that mean?

Is he interacting with like other futures, people that never existed because that future never came to be?

And they're like critiquing the story, or they're writing some of it.

I look at it like parallel universes, is what I look at it.

Yeah, like is past and presences from alternate timelines and that kind of stuff.

You know what I mean?

I think

I don't know.

Like, it was weird.

I feel like this is the one episode where I feel like I didn't say

much.

I felt very,

it was for a bit, I wouldn't say difficult to keep on, but I think it was just mostly like

you are really thrashed around.

I mean, granted, we read it as if it's a book or whatever, which I mean, this is basically a novel.

This is probably our first actual novel-size read.

But the,

I guess, even just the way that it's put into comment sections and the way that it's the interactive nature of it and the mystery behind it of even the anonymous writer, there's just it's just very impressive, and it's something that's so one of the kind.

I really don't think I can think of anything else that is like this, you know what I mean?

You've used its mediums so well to build all that out, you know?

Like

it's just uh

I don't know, and here's here's the thing, too.

I mean, like, we've had to record this over days because of how much it is.

I do think that this is one story that is going to, like,

I don't know.

Like, I feel like I just want to...

I want to, like, almost reread it in chunks of, like...

Like, I'd love to map it out to where you get to, like, read one storyline in a linear manner.

Because that's another reason, another thing, too, is, like, non-linear storytelling is all over the place.

Yet it was all cohesive in its own way, but I'd love to just digest all these like individual things and how they set up.

And the horror to me comes from just like

almost just like the inevitable fate of so many of these storylines are crazy.

There were some moments too with like mother horse eyes where there was like you know body horror stuff.

I was less, I was less freaked out or, you know, less interested even in like these fleshy caves.

I mean, I love that shit.

But more so, the insanity.

I mean, it feels almost like a schizophrenic man's journal.

Does it not?

Yeah.

Like, I mean, just like, just that

mentally ill human element to me was the most like horrifying, gripping thing.

And then you just get all these like beautiful little character moments, character arcs that go through.

You get invested in the characters.

You get invested in the scenes.

There were so many times I got propped back up.

You know, you'd be reading something and you're like, oh shit, we're going back with Karen and them.

And you kind of like get re, it just kind of continuously keeps like re-engaging you.

And I wonder too if that lends itself to where if it was just one character the whole time, would it be as impactful as being able to like go through all these other different storylines and these like connecting threads?

And I don't, I, and my gut reaction is no, like, the way that all of it is woven together is what makes it so this way, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I uh

it's, I'm almost exhausted.

There's uh,

I'm like, I did, I, it's, it's so, it's so much.

It's so not only is it so much, but also like,

I feel like whenever we read these things, me and you, well, you're, you're in your zone whenever you get to theorize and all that stuff.

To me, I'm just trying to process the information and stuff too, while also trying to get a handle of being like, I like kind of being like, I see what you're doing, the story.

But with this one, it was just so much, so much information.

to where I feel like I was constantly just kind of like, just trying to keep up and just be like, oh, shit.

What's it at the end?

There is a code, but it's with, it's not binary because it's in three.

Let me search this and see what it comes up with.

There's a code

and it doesn't return up your results.

Okay.

So I think

official rewrites and editions start today, September 29th, 2016.

There's a bunch of stuff.

He has a little note at the end about meta-narratives.

And then after that, he has a page where the author is kind of explaining some of his thoughts and the stories that he draws from and stuff like that, which is interesting.

We'll leave that in the description for you all to read.

I think I am going to go ahead and say that I am going to make a video on this on the main channel

at some point.

I want to do the thing you were talking about, Hunter, where I break it down, map it out, look at it.

I want to dissect, I want to look at it again and dissect some of the themes about religion and stuff like that that comes up.

I want to see if there's extra stuff.

I want to look into some of the specific symbolism call-outs.

I'm going to read on the subreddit for a while, the mother horse I subreddit and see what other people have made of it.

This

not just on Creepcast,

not just for like, you know, the show and stuff.

This is,

for me,

one of my favorite horror stories I've ever read.

Wow.

On anything, across any author, across any time period.

Bar none.

This, this, to me goes toe-to-toe with some of the best like novels.

horror films.

It's one of the best pieces of horror media, like psychological media.

I think I had just everything from the flesh interfaces to people being shoved into these to unhistory to the CIA to the Nazi death camps to

gosh, dude.

And we got a what a ride.

You know, yeah, that was, that was big.

That was great.

That was huge for me.

Uh, I, I, I, I, I do think, I do think

extremely creative.

Also, too, I just want to see how, uh, in your video, even how it's broken up of how either the community or how someone basically archived this and made sure that it didn't get lost.

You know, some of these, as you can see,

and we'll, we'll leave the link in the Reddit, but there's little notes in there to where it's like, this was preserved by this person.

It was deleted, like mods deleted it, because I think sometimes there for a while.

I mean, obviously, people just don't know what the fuck this person's talking about.

So any of these just come off as ramblings of a madman, and you're putting it in random subreddits.

So, of course, there's going to be mods who come in, especially if there's like stuff with fucked up stuff or like people squeezing pussies pussies and doing all kinds of stuff.

You're going to get that stuff flagged.

But it's just, it's very cool to see how it has

kind of kept up.

It's created a name for itself.

And, you know, we're new to this too, but I'm stoked to see how people, very curious to see how people are going to react to this.

It feels like...

Is this kind of storytelling as compelling to our viewers or our audience as much as it is to us?

And I'd like to think so.

But also, it's just a whole nother round of people that can tell other people about it.

You know what I mean?

That's the best part of these stories is just being able to pass down these other stories to, and everyone just kind of hands them off to new people

in ways.

If

there's a bunch of people, there's a bunch of people in the subreddit, the Mother Horse Eye subreddit, who are making custom books.

So, like, they have books they've made with images and stuff reprint to try to chronicle the whole thing.

Just got, okay, yeah, I've got to learn more about this.

I have a new obsession.

I have a new thing I want to read about, theorize about, stuff like that.

And no one, this is insane.

I'm reading right now.

No one knows who the author is.

Yeah, I mean,

that's the big thing.

Anonymous, dude.

How?

How is something this big, no one knows who the author is?

Something this good.

I would find this guy.

That's insane.

I've got to give him money.

I've got to do something.

Oh, Oh my gosh.

Okay.

Yeah.

So there'll be a main channel video about this.

It's one of the best horror stories I've ever read, one of the most memorable.

And one of the, dare I say, the coolest horror story I've ever read with all of the elements that had incorporated everything that I loved.

There's a goth chick in it, I would die.

You could kill me now, and that'd be fine.

And that goth chick's my wife, and I love her.

Yeah, gosh, dude, it's I have so many questions racing through my mind of the story of themes of stuff.

I'm going to sound stupid right now compared to when I make a video and I have it thought out, like final analysis.

But yeah, I love this.

This was worth every second of it.

And I would do it again in a heartbeat.

That was awesome.

There was just one part where when we were reading it, there were so many times where I was like, okay, I think that was my favorite excerpt.

Like that was my like, okay, number 70, you know, like that kind of thing.

It would be cool to see a list of like, these are like

just really impactful stuff.

You know, and not so much.

Each of our top 10, each of our top 10.

Yeah, just be like, this is my favorite one.

Because I feel like so many of them, that's what's so great about the story, too, that just needs to be said again: is that these are individual short stories.

Every single one of these are short stories that are just posted in a random comment section.

So you can just hop in randomly and read it in this weird way.

And it works even in that like r slash no sleep and like that.

Just, it's just a user on the internet dropping a random comment on something.

It's like the purest form of that storytelling.

It's just really fucking cool.

And to have it just

intertwine in such a fun way.

You know what?

I feel like the, if there was one complaint I can see people doing, is like it's bloated or too long or all this other stuff.

But I just feel like it really, it just does this really beautiful dance of like, you just get invested so much into all these other characters.

Like,

my God, we were in a fucking Nazi camp and then like you kind of like figure out that like, you know, one of the Jewish guys like kills the Nazis and like you get like more and more like, what are they experimenting on?

You know, CIA stuff, weird VR game stuff, like weird dystopian, like futuristic

futures of like basically where people are at now with like being sucked into their phone.

It's just,

I don't know, and also very philosophical.

There was a lot of times where I felt like I wanted to put a fucking gun in my mouth and just be like, well, yeah, there really is no reason to live or whatever.

But it like toes.

Despite everything, at the end, he

saves himself.

Like, he gets through all this evil in it through himself.

That's the thing is there's so much about it that is a nihilistic approach to how hopeless everything is.

Yet, in almost every one of these cases,

in almost all the cases, it ends with

almost an optimistic look

inwards of like finding purpose, not only in yourself, but like the good.

the good nature of i guess like humanity and stuff is what i think of like with karen and stuff and and the marine that saved her and even our main protagonist and even sean had like a a great revelation of him kind of like

finding you know i feel like by the end he was less like

pointing fingers and just like less uh abrasive and more so uh wanting to change for the better as a person and i think that's that was just a nice touch you know then it's dashed in there it isn't kind of cheesy it's like it's just done in this way that once again like i said it just dances through it beautifully i don't know i liked it it was awesome man i mean this is and two i think that i'm numb i feel like i feel like it's it like like, I feel like I got done with like a 10-hour tattoo session to where you're like,

you know, what do you think?

And you're like stoked on the image, but at the same time, you've just had like a needle bare into your skin for 10 hours.

So you're just kind of like, yeah,

I want to go to bed.

And that's, I feel like I'm just numb in that way.

But I think it'll be something that lingers with me, which is just a great feeling where you're like, this is going to be with me for a while.

So, but guys,

his DMs are read on our pin.

Hold on, I'm going to write a crazy simp letter.

I just.

Thank you so much for listening to the show.

Please, please, please be sure to uh check out the links from other horse eyes, share some love on there, comment on it, share with your buddies, do whatever you can to get it out there.

And uh, as always, you know, just promote the author's work any way you can.

Uh, and thank you to people who stuck around with us for this long-ass episode.

We appreciate you, especially for people who are listening to us on Spotify and Apple Podcast and have just been like listening to us through your headphones or you know, car speakers.

We appreciate you as well.

So, guys, thank you so much.

Uh,

we will see you in the next one.

Bye.

If I could be a fairy queen,

I would hold a magic key

to reveal the hidden secrets of the mind.

Then I could see the darkest blue, the mystery that's part of you,

and I'd weave a spell to take away away your sorrow.

Fairy queen,

fairy queen.

Changing teardrops to a smile,

holding daydreams for a while.

Fairy queen,

fairy queen,

she's your shelter in the night.

The guardian angel by your side.

Fairy queen,

If I could be a

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