I Talked To God

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Welcome back to Creepcast.

Today we are doing a little double-headed feature, starting off with one of the stories that is in our subreddit, r slash cut creepcast, called esoteric isotopes, which I don't like that.

Isotopes are yee, yucky, yucky, num-num-time.

Yewee, yeoee, yucky time.

Yeah, isotopes.

Isotopes are like the little, the little fucking fish bugs, right?

No, that's isopods.

Oh, well, okay.

Well, then you see, we're now we're out of yucky yucky fun time.

We're out of yucky yucky nasty time.

I thought it was like esoteric.

No, no.

An isotope is a variant of an element that has a different number of neutrons compared to the standard.

They're also the little bugs that are in fish's mouth whenever you see them.

No, that's not.

No, no.

You ever see the movie?

I don't even think it's.

You ever see the movie The Bay?

Yes,

that's the story we're reading.

That's the story we're reading.

Esoteric Yucky Bug.

That's what the story should have been called.

Already giving it a docket for not calling the story esoteric yucky bug.

Already docking points from it.

I literally know nothing about it.

It's not all isopods that do that.

It's just like the one louse.

No, no, no.

All of them do that.

That does that.

All of them do that.

Okay.

Have you seen the picture of a bunch of isopods around a bag of darks?

And they're extremely esoteric there's a bunch of isopods rodoritos i mean do you blame them hold on this is an important image i don't i feel sometimes i feel like i'm on the show with my grandfather i don't know i if i'm being completely honest i don't really i i don't think i really know what esoteric means

teacher isaiah could you tell me what esoteric means no all right then i'll ask my real teacher ask jeeves esoteric okay intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.

That's kind of funny.

That's ironic that you wouldn't tell me that, too.

Feels like you were being esoteric yourself.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Dude, I know.

I like the picture.

I want to eat them.

I want to boil them and eat them.

The giant roly-poly looking thing?

Because they're the good lobster, dude.

What do you mean?

They're the good.

The lobsters are the rats of the sea and these isopods that have obviously good taste next to this vintage bag of Doritos, I think would taste delightful.

You're telling me that if you cooked up an isopod that had a belly full of Doritos, that it wouldn't taste good?

I don't know.

Okay, so this has nothing, the story that we're reading today that has nothing to do with isopods, was written by user Project Fade Touched.

I think this is the only story they've posted to the subreddit,

but had some upvotes and Harry on our team said that we should check it out, that we would like it.

So we are are going to be doing that now.

So Project Fade Touched.

Thank you for writing.

Thank you for putting it in our subreddit.

It means a lot to us.

For anyone who wants to read it or support the author, we'll have it linked in the description.

And thank you so much to our beautiful audio listeners on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Appreciate you for the amazing ratings there.

And also thank you to our beautiful patrons.

And guys, just want to let you know too, here before too long, new merch is on the way.

Not sure if it's this week, can't really.

I don't know.

But a new merch is coming.

So all the people that have been fiending for some new fabric, let me tell you, the new fabric we have is

quite legit and it is very isopod coded.

So

without further ado, let's get into it.

Esoteric isotopes.

Esoteric isotopes.

Oh, dude, it's going to kill you to say this first line.

All right.

I was never a very religious man.

Clip that.

I made a joke a while back that you're the person Betchy Tales warned me about, but you are in like the Saturday morning cartoon way of like, go ahead, say the bad word, say the bad word, where your mom will hear.

I was never a very religious man.

Hell, I wasn't even a man.

God, please clip that.

Most of my life is lived.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the clippers for doing that.

All right, that's the last time I'm saying it.

Unless there's another great one, but that's just awesome.

Well, you just want a clip of me saying I'm not the good man.

I wasn't a very good man.

Oh,

hell, okay.

Most of my life was lived in direct contrast to almost every tenet of any religion.

I sat there listening to the raspy breath escaping my lungs.

I was never a religious man, and even now in my final hours, I reached out to no God.

I said no prayers to fall upon absenteeers.

All I could think about was my life and the events that put me here.

Spring of 1969.

Ooh, is this a little Vietnam story?

I hope so.

I awoke in the morning after a night of terrible sleep and stretched out as far as the space of the small cot would afford me to.

I slid myself up and over its edge, slipping my feet into my black combat boots.

Oh, it is!

The chatter of over a dozen other men drowned out any private thoughts I might have had, which was fine because a strange feeling of sadness had overcome me.

Popping open a small trunk, I retrieved my uniform and donned it, buttoning the olive green shirt over my white undershirt.

Slay.

As I walked over to the edge of the tent, What?

I just said slay after the the uh it just seemed like he was serving real there with the olive green shirt over the white undershirt.

I just thought he thought he was slaying

I don't like I don't like you saying that um

don't do that again.

Thank you

As I walked over to the edge of the tent one of the older men shouted dick Hey, Dick!

I glanced in his direction to see the sergeant in charge of the platoon ever since our first lieutenant bit the dust coming towards me.

Sir, I said snapping into an attentive stance.

I felt have you been wanting to be like

a sergeant really?

I've wanted to do that stupid fucking, well, I'm not going to say stupid because I don't really know.

I just, whenever they're sitting there like, boy,

they throw their gun around, they do,

I've always wanted that.

I've always wanted to not only know it, but I've wanted to lead one so long and to hear all the little.

You know what I mean?

People throwing the gun around.

It's oddly satisfying.

It's stemming from my tisms, is what I would say.

Did you have something this morning?

Is there a reason that you're in this state?

What?

What did I do?

You're just so amped up.

You've jumped me on the first sentence for everything.

You've ran like three micro bits by yourself, completely unaided.

I'll stop.

You're like,

just firing on the fucking stop.

I fell to the at ease stance and looked expectantly at him.

Need you out on the horn.

Apparently something's happened that requires your attention.

I raised an eyebrow only to be met with a shrug as he turned to go chase down some of my other squad members.

I walked to the tent's edge, pulled across the lip to open it, and exited into the heavy air thick with moisture.

Mornings in Vietnam were always like this.

Hot and muggy.

The intense rain through the night hadn't helped as a blanket of fog had settled upon the ground almost so thick, it felt like you were wading through water.

I hurriedly made my way to the radio tower, stomping through the muddy ground along the way.

At the top of the tower, I found the radio telephone operator waiting for me with a solemn look on his face.

Upon seeing me, he stood and shook my hand.

Son, Will.

I think I'll just let you have this.

He handed me the receiver from the radio, and after fiddling with the console, I could finally hear a voice through the static.

Richard?

Richard, can you hear me?

The voice belonged to my mother, Congresswoman from my home state.

Mom?

Richard, I'm pulling some strings and bringing you home.

It's...

It's your father.

He...

The grief was so latent in her voice that I didn't even need her to finish the sentence.

Honestly, I don't think I even needed this call to know.

The night prior, I had the strangest dream.

It was hard to recall all of it.

It had started with me locked inside a dark room.

I could see just a slit of light coming from a very far distance away from me, leaking into the room ever so slightly.

I could tell the space I was in must have been enormous.

In the dream, I could see figures pacing outside of the door.

I could hear them arguing and yelling, but I couldn't make out the words they said.

It was then that the door swung open to reveal my father, dressed in a lab coat, which to me felt strange because my father had been a stay-at-home father for most of his life.

Something almost unheard of in those days, of course, but he was adamant to support the political career of my mother.

He strode over to me for what felt like eons.

Each step echoed in the space around us.

And as he finally arrived, I was looking down at him from dozens of different angles at once.

I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do.

I've tried.

I failed.

Please tell him I tried.

The dream warped, and I was now looking down on my father in bed.

from just one angle this time, looking far too old, much more frail than he had when I left.

He looked back up at me, and his face contorted into horror.

He tried to wriggle out of the bed, but it was like his limbs simply wouldn't function.

As he struggled to move, he opened his mouth to speak.

No sound escaped him, but from the movement of his lips, I could garner the words,

he said no, no sound escaped him, so

I guess that is what it would sound like then.

Just moaning.

From his lips, I could garner the words, I'm sorry, again and again.

Then I woke up.

Richard, honey, are you there?

The voice of my mother brought me back to the present moment.

Yes.

Sat there numbly.

Listen, you'll be home by the end of the day, okay?

We need you home.

Sharon is

inconsolable, and Michael, well, he's Michael.

In 1969, they're going to have him home by the end of the day.

I just want to say, I didn't, I didn't want to stop the flow, but it was very funny to me that there's words like my dad came out in a lab coat, and it made it seem like he's like, which was strange because he was a guy who landscaped yards or whatever.

It's like the way that they presented the lab coat thing was funny.

Yeah, I don't know.

I, I, um,

I get unless it's like

unless the base is nearby.

I don't know, right?

Or is he in?

No, he's in V.

He's in Vietnam.

Is he in Vietnam?

Oh.

Yeah, he said the Vietnam mornings.

Yeah, but combat boots.

He's talking to a platoon sergeant because the lieutenant got killed.

So,

yeah, he's in combat.

What if his mom lives in Vietnam?

Well, I guess.

Was it C-130s back then?

What was the transport plane?

I don't know if the C-130s been around that long.

Unibomber.

Bomber.

Well, I don't think.

Yeah, the unibomber.

Is that the name of that big black one that's like, it looks sick?

What's the name of that one?

That's a unibomber, right?

The unipomber is Todd Kaczynski.

All right.

That was the nickname you got.

What's the big black one?

Okay, well, it was the C-130.

It says that the two transport aircrafts were the C-130 and the C-141.

Okay.

So, okay, yeah, you could get there in one day then.

I think like the flight over the ocean is like 11 hours or something like that.

I just, I just literally Google, I just, I just googled could you fly to Vietnam to America in one day in 1968 and said, No, you cannot fly from Vietnam to the United States in one day in 1968.

Just want to say that.

That's what, yeah, that's what Google says.

It says, it says airtime would be 26 hours.

I like how this guy made a story for our subreddit and was like really pumped about it.

We're immediately like, I don't think this timeline's right.

I think this is wrong.

Incorrect.

Yeah.

Now, if he was flying on the Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski,

flying through the air.

What is that?

It's a Unibomber.

What is that?

What is that?

What is the actual airplane called?

Which plane are you talking about?

It's the fucking big black one.

That's like kind of flat and wide.

Oh, the B2.

Is that what it's called?

B-2 bomber?

That's what I was talking about.

Yeah, that's what he flew home.

I'm like, sick.

The stealth bomber?

The stealth bomber?

He's sneakily going to break the laws of time and get home from Vietnam to America in one day.

Okay, so the B2

production ended in the year 2000.

So I don't think in 1969 he would have

had access to one.

No, they still make them.

I'm saying that they that's when they started.

It was first made in 1988, and the production was from 1988 to 2000.

You know, those things cost over a billion dollars.

Yeah, easy.

Chum change.

Anything to get our boys home, right?

What could we be carrying that's worth a billion dollars?

It's two billion, actually.

It's two billion.

That seems like such an excessive amount of money to put into a stupid fucking plane.

To get our boys home, just randomly getting like really political about it.

So

someone crashed one during a test flight, too.

Was he fired or killed?

I mean, he had to, he had to have been killed.

I'm sure he was fired, but it was on landing.

He lived the crash, but like the plane was destroyed.

Just $2 billion.

Wrecked.

Yeah, I think $2 billion for a stupid fucking plane is

not worth it.

Think about what you could do for $2 billion, man.

Think about how many Davenbusters you could open with $2 billion.

That's

how...

How many days?

It costs a minimum of $11.8 million with a requirement of a significant portion around $4 million to $6 million to open a Davin Buster's.

All right.

Okay, hold up.

With $2 billion, you could open about 400 company-owned locations.

I just want to say that

that's what we're missing.

I mean, like, I'm not trying to get political or anything, but that's what we're missing.

I thought you said anything to bring those boys home.

Well, I mean, you know, that's before I knew.

I mean, even though, even though the B-2 bomber wasn't really bringing anyone home, it was a bombing plane.

I thought that it dropped the people off.

That's why they called the bomber.

It's like a big parachute plane.

No, it drops bombs.

That's why it's called a bomber.

It's got to be that kind of like sour cadence.

It's very obvious now, but, you know.

Do you think the ones people jump out of, the carriers, would be called bombers?

I mean, God, it's sick.

Isn't it?

Isn't that kind of cool?

If you're like, bombs away, boys, and you dropped all the people, it'd be fucking cool.

Okay, I'm pretty sure every aerial combat unit jumps out of C-130s.

So it's just like the standard, the back door drops open and they run.

What the fuck is this?

Is this the unsub podcast?

Why don't we get back to fucking this horror story?

Okay, all right, all right, all right, yeah.

Okay,

okay, whatever, whatever, whatever.

Okay, I'm not gonna get mad.

I'm not gonna get mad.

Sharon, my younger sister by five years, was only 18, and she had absolutely been a daddy's girl from the time she could speak, so I could imagine she was devastated.

Michael was our younger brother, and he was only 15.

I'd been in Vietnam for four years at this point, so I missed his becoming a teen era.

I'd gotten letters, though, describing how difficult he had become from my mother.

Apparently, he was a real rebel, having been caught drinking, smoking reefer, even got himself in some hot water when he burned down an abandoned factory.

All right.

I stood up and I could hear my mother saying something on the radio, but all I could think about was my father.

I wasn't there in his final moments.

The worst part of it for me was that I wasn't even drafted.

I chose this, stupidly, of course.

Instead, I should have stayed home.

I should have let my parents get me set up with a cushy government job.

I hadn't seen them in four whole years.

Now I never would again.

My mother was accurate with the information.

It wasn't long after a helicopter landed to evacuate me to the nearest friendly airport and out of Vietnam altogether.

Some 16 hours after waking up, I was home.

Some 16 hours after waking up, I was home, stolen from the war into the dead of night.

Upon landing in Washington, D.C., I was greeted by a driver holding a sign with my name on it.

We rode quietly through the night to my family's townhouse in the city.

If I thought the air in Vietnam was thick, it was nothing compared to the somber stillness that awaited me in the house.

Despite it being one one in the morning, I could hear Sharon upstairs crying, layered into the far too loud song, Fortunate Son, blaring from Michael's room.

My mother was sitting on the stairs, awaiting my arrival.

Her eyes were puffy and red as she strode over to embrace me, and the moment my arms wrapped around her, she began to sob.

I held my mother there for some time before I went to comfort Sharon.

I noticed Michael's door was plastered with anti-war stickers, peace signs, and other hippie shit.

After I got done trying and failing to pacify my sister, I went to his door, which was locked.

I sighed and went to my parents' room.

I glanced at the ceiling where I had looked down at my father in my dream, expecting nothing, only to be shocked by what looked like someone had taken a torch or a lighter and held it just below the spot, enough to cinch the plaster only in the shape of a ring.

I walked over and got onto the bed.

reaching out on my tippy toes to brush the circular ring spot.

Soot or ash came off onto my finger, which I rubbed together and smelled.

It didn't smell like soot or ash.

It smelled like oranges and pine needles if you burned them together.

Buried my father that weekend.

The entire time I was back home, Michael wouldn't so much as look at me, let alone speak to me.

He was a lot different from when I had left, gangly and taller, with long hair down past his shoulders.

He was sprouting peach fuzz along his lip, and he always wore an olive green jacket with a graphic band tee underneath it, even to the funeral.

A few weeks passed, and eventually my mother began to insist I take that cushy job instead of going back to Vietnam.

Ultimately, I decided she was right.

She began to plead for Michael's sake.

She had me honorably discharged and set me up a lab in the city.

SO Terratronics.

It was a

what kind of

cushy government job is that?

You have a lab called SOTERATRONIC.

It was a leading government-funded research site for electronics.

Something I had actually shown surprise with as a kid in the army.

Time out.

It was a leading government-funded research site for electronics, and it's called S-O-T-Ertronics.

It's like being like, I worked at an artillery place called Boomy Big Bombs.

It was a governmental lead.

It was a governmental leading-funded artillery.

I mean, to the story's credit, if it was a public business that the government was just using and funding, then it could be any name.

But if it's an actual government job like he's describing and not just funded, then

yeah, I feel like the government calling it the big boomy, big, big fun time house.

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It really does mean the most.

And we are back to the episode.

I was constantly fixing up radios and other gear, so it fit me well.

I began pretty small there, mainly doing office administration type of work.

Over the course of the next few years, however, I went back to college and graduated.

This resulted in a bump up the ladder, so to speak, so I was now able to take on more advanced tasks.

Winter of 1984.

I paced the length of my office, staring at a blackboard across the room.

Currently, I was working on coming up with a solution to infant mortality and a

the solution to infant mortality.

The one, the secret code.

Infant mortality and unpredictability in integrated circuits.

Are those two things interlinked?

Circuits and

infant deaths?

He's just sitting at his desk holding like a baby doll and a computer chip.

And he's like, there's got to be be a way.

But technology just isn't there yet.

If only I had more time.

Just

he has it.

He has a desk covered in baby dolls.

He just like swipes it off.

The chips would pass a benchmark test in the lab, only to fail once released to consumers or placed in lab equipment.

Despite this issue, my higher-ups seemed too worried about it.

Don't worry about it, Richard.

I'm sure the answer will come in time.

Just keep at it.

They would say to me nonchalantly.

Not a very expeditious mood for a company whose profit margins were being harmed by these chip failures, I would think to myself.

I gave up for the night and decided to leave it for another day.

I left the office behind, returned to my home, that same townhouse where my parents raised my siblings and I.

Mom had passed away four years back and left it in my name.

Probably because no one even knew where Sharon was, Michael was in prison for repeated counts of arson.

I pulled my escort into the driveway where I noticed a light on one of the upstairs windows.

Quickly got out of the car and headed up the steps to the patio.

The door was ajar, having been clearly kicked open.

I quietly pressed on the door, making sure to tiptoe as slowly as I could to avoid making any noise.

Glancing to the side table, I equipped myself with a heavy silver candlestick, carefully placing the candle onto the table.

As I crept along the hall, I began up the stairs, and in my moment of nervousness, I forgot all about the loose step a few steps up.

Upon pressing my full weight down on the floorboard, let out a loud groan.

I froze, looking up past the banister towards the light coming down the hall.

Nothing, no sound.

As I continued to make my way up the stairs, a familiar scent assaulted me, causing me to freeze again.

Citrus and pine needles.

They had been burned together.

I had to press on, trying to find the source of intrusion into my home.

Once I approached the top of the stairs, the smell was stronger, much stronger.

Rounding the banister at the top, I finally saw the light's origin was from Sharon's old room.

The door was cracked, and light smoke was coming from the room.

I dropped the candlestick holder, which clattered to the ground with a thud and ran to the door, swinging it open.

Sharon lay across the bed that once belonged to her, in her room, which was completely unchanged from the day she left.

To her side, her outstretched arm had a rubber hose ripped from somewhere in the house tied around it at her bicep.

A needle hung from the vein at her inner elbow.

To her side was a small plastic baggie of a yellow powder accompanied by a spoon and lighter.

Heroin.

I looked on in horror at my baby sister who had come home to what?

Die?

I ran over to her and pressed my finger to her neck upon seeing her eyes rolled back into her head.

No pulse.

She was dead.

I sank to my knees and began to sob, holding her head against my chest.

It was quite some time before I found the strength to move, and when I did finally come back to my senses, the room around me was almost as nightmarish as her body.

Holes had been punched into the walls, and it seemed Sharon had taken red lipstick and written all over them.

I scanned some of the writings.

Dreams and eyes, father lies.

Rings so round and round and round.

Can you smell the oranges too?

Take me to the forest.

I can't save you.

I'm sorry for what he did.

I'm sorry, Sorry.

I couldn't make sense of the insane scribbling and scrawling she had left on the walls, but the smell of oranges was all too familiar.

When it hit me, it hit like a truck sinking into my gut.

Hesitantly, as if my body refused to obey, my eyes dragged to the ceiling above Sharon's lifeless corpse.

No,

it can't, but it was.

A small ring of soot and ash was imprinted onto the ceiling.

I stood now, my legs shaking, climbed onto the bed beside Sharon.

My hand extended towards the spot.

Only this time it was hot.

Hotter than a stove eye.

I could barely get close enough without it feeling as though I was going to burn me.

What was this?

What's this stuff?

Was it something from heating the heroin?

Was this how my father had died?

Was he secretly an addict?

I got back off the bed and removed the needle from Sharon's now cold arm.

Took the heroin and flushed it down the toilet before calling 911.

They came fairly fast to remove her body.

No need to check if it was laced or you know tag or anything like that, just get rid of it.

They came fairly fast to remove her body and didn't ask about the writing on the walls or obvious lack of drugs.

The police came and asked me questions.

I answered honestly and told them what I had done with the heroin, offered condolences and then left.

The house that had already felt empty now felt like a pit of endless darkness and despair.

This place had claimed two of the people I had loved.

I decided it wouldn't claim me two.

Within a few months, I had listed the house for sale, and within a few more, it had sold.

With it came a change for my life, because in the spring of 1985, I both met my wife, who lived within the same complex I had moved into, got a huge promotion at work for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Interesting thing of it, it jumped like

what it jumped like it jumped five years and now two years.

Two years, yeah.

Interesting.

And pretty much this.

Oh, wait, no, no, no.

no 15 years because it went from 69 to 88 yeah yeah so a long time

and the big thing is he's basically fallen into this i wouldn't say mundane but kind of like formulaic life comes back home and his sister has died of a heroin overdose

i guess i'm wondering

also the mom has passed too now

So it's just, it's just, it's just the only one still alive is his brother.

Yeah, him and his brother.

Yeah, him and his brother.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm trying to see.

Yeah.

After that, we get another jump of two years, spring 1986.

My life was slowly coming together now, it felt like.

Better late than never at all, I suppose.

I was now married to my beautiful wife, Elaine Cook.

She quickly became my whole world.

She inspired me to do better, to be better.

Despite having been abandoned as a child, orphaned at the age of two, she was incredibly strong-willed and persistent.

She had worked herself to the bone, getting ahead in life, making sure her past never defined her.

Things at work had taken a turn in March of 85 when I was both taken off the Infancy Mortality Project and assigned to finding a way to deal with high-temperature diffusion and chipsets.

This promotion came with a higher clearance than before and I gained access to portions of the building I didn't know existed.

Originally, I had worked in the labs found in the second sub-basement.

to my assumption, the last basement.

To my surprise, when my new clearance came, I was informed I would be in the 11th sub-basement from now on.

I remember the conversation pretty vividly.

My manager, Timothy Ruths, who was also a high-ranking army general, had come into my office in the morning.

Still, no luck on the infancy mortality, Dick?

No, unfortunately, not.

Well,

he just has, he just has a bunch of baby dolls.

He's like,

there's got to be a clue.

No, just a bunch of

dead battery babies on my desk.

he's just he's just like

he has a slingshot yeah

all the babies all the

baby dolls have like goggles and helmets on and like a giant bullseye on the wall

he's just hurling them into the wall they're still they're still dying on impact sergeant

At ease, Dick.

Just all night,

he's got a clipboard and he's like walking over to the dolls and writing notes and then putting it back in the slingshot

that's all right not every problem is gonna get solved immediately that said we're out sourcing this problem

i'll keep trying sergeant thank you sir

Just uh, not every problem is gonna get solved immediately as they're flying in between the two of them, like straight into the walls.

His smile was friendly, but there was a twitch in his brow.

Something in his voice.

I've poisoned this scene for me.

I apologize.

It's something in his voice like annoyance I hadn't heard before.

Wait.

Am I being fired?

No, no, no, no.

A brilliant mind like yours?

No, no, no, no.

That's the most

condescending shit I've ever heard in my life, dude.

No, no, no, no.

A brilliant mind like yours?

Slingshotting the babies into the wall with goggles and helmets?

No,

you're actually being promoted.

Getting a nice fat bonus to your pay, plus new security clearances.

I nodded my head and then asked.

Will I still be in this office and in the same lab?

General shook his head.

No.

Son, you'll have the new office and a lab, both on sub-basement 11.

My eyes grew wide.

Sub-11?

Wait, there aren't even buttons for that on the elevator.

Ha- When?

Put his hand up to stop me.

You'll be using the elevator you didn't even know existed before now.

You'll need this.

Reduced a new badge, this time with a magnetic strip running along it.

Follow me.

I did as I was told and followed the general out of my office, which was immediately flooded by a few men who proceeded to grab anything that belonged to me and tote it after us.

Just Just arms full of baby dolls.

Leave the baby dolls, Dick.

I can't.

It's my life's work.

I'll never know.

I looked back and began to object when one

looked back and began to object and one of them started manhandling sensitive equipment.

Yeah, the slingshot.

But the general waved as we continued down the corridor.

It's just that infant mortality is so far removed from cybernetics that

I'm sure sure it's going to come into the story somewhere, and that's why, but it's so abrasive initially.

Well, we've had, we've only had, we've had so far, we've had three deaths of,

but not, but none of them have been infants, so just it just feels jarring, I think.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

We rode the elevator back up to the ground floor and passed a few more hallways up to a door I had seen a few times, but never paid a second glance to.

It was labeled Supply Closet Omega, which now that I read it, it seems somewhat odd.

Now that I see the closet was labeled Omega, that was suspicious.

Hmm.

A closet labeled Omega in a giant building called Esoterictronics.

Seems kind of weird that there's an Omega here in this building called Esoteric Tronics, and I've been firing children at the wall for the past 13 years.

Every single room, there's just babies flying over there.

These babies keep dying.

God damn it.

When will it be enough?

Yeah, we need more babies.

The general inserted my keycard into a slot beside the door, which unlocked with a hiss and swung open.

Inside the room was a series of computers with men and women sitting at them working intelligently.

Across the room, a set of elevator doors awaited me.

You'll be working alongside these men and women here when it comes to contacting us with project updates.

Through the elevator, you'll find an access to sub-levels 3 through 11.

Go ahead and head down to your lab, and you'll be briefed by your colleagues.

Your office is just there.

And he pointed to another door, which now had my name on it.

I walked up to the office door and opened it.

The scent of oranges and pine needles wafted out of the office, which seemed old and unused.

When I closed the door again, glass rattled slightly.

I could see that the lettering used to spell my last name was much older than the lettering used to spell my first.

And I could also see the outlines of residue and the shapes of letters spelling my father's name underneath it.

You think he's just being tested on?

Uh, no, I think the idea was that he thought his father was staying at home, didn't have a job, but he was actually part of this program.

Flash forward a year, and I was no closer to a solution to this problem than I was infancy mortality issues.

He gotta quit mentioning them.

The babies won't stop falling.

Damn you, baby!

Damn you to hell!

No matter what I tried, what combination of elements were used or methods of cooling, helium still seemed like the best option.

I left the office on a cool spring night, air damp from recent rain, and drove home to my two-bedroom apartment I shared with Elaine.

My wonderful world greeted me as I came into the living room, slipping off my shoes and sinking into the couch.

She sat down beside me and crawled up to me, stroking my face tenderly as it let out a long sigh and pressed my fingers to my temples.

Rough day?

She asked.

I nodded.

Well, tell me about it.

Not particularly, it's just that we're no damn closer to a solution now than a year ago.

She stroked my chest now almost nervously.

Well, I have some exciting news.

I looked up and she reached behind her, slowly pulling.

She reached behind her, slowly pulling out a pregnancy test.

My eyes honed in on the blue shade of the tip.

I stammered over my words.

Wait, are we?

We- I'm gonna be a dad!

She nodded her head excitedly, and I wrapped her up in my arms and I jumped off the couch, picking her up and dancing around.

This baby is gonna.

I hate to say it, but this baby is fucking dead, dude.

It's such a bummer.

It's such a bummer to be like, we're so happy.

Just to know I'm like, there's no fucking way in hell that baby is lasting.

They've mentioned

mortality three times.

They've mentioned

infant mental mortality rates far, far too often to to have any kind of, to have any kind of hope that this baby's going to make it to fucking two.

Yeah, right, bro.

God.

Daddy wants to introduce you to my slingshot.

Yeah, that's why I was going to make a joke about how

the story now enters an interesting moral complexity because it's like, you know, his whole career is slingshotting babies.

But now that he has one of his own, will he be able to put it in the slingshot?

I think what's going to happen if I can try to set up my own bear trap is that the dad,

which by the way, by the way, bear trap with the baby dying thing.

I know the story brought it up, but it's mine.

It's mine now.

That's fine.

I think that we're heading in an area where the dad tested on something on

the main character when he was a baby, and it's getting ready to be like, you know, like the cycle continues kind of thing.

Yeah.

I don't know what that experiment is, but I do think that it's like a generational kind of meme.

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

That's why he's able to see it.

And I think all of his kids, it's probably why his sister and brother are so messed up.

Yeah.

They're older than him.

Or no, his sister was five years younger than him, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think they all were, but I think all of them have been experimented on.

We kissed deeply and went to the bedroom to celebrate.

That night, for the first time in a year, I dreamed.

In the dream, I was floating once again in that black room where only a sliver of light could be seen.

This time, there were no figures moving in the light beyond.

The light began to fade, and soon I was enveloped in nothing but a pitch-black darkness.

It's if I shut my eyes tightly.

In the void, I could see small dots.

No, clusters of dots, with rings rotating around them, and each ring containing its own dots.

I recognized these as atoms.

As the dots floated freely above my head, I counted the electrons.

Around me floated atoms of melanithum, barium, copper, and oxygen.

Soon the metal atoms would dance around me, combining in pairs with the oxygen ones to form powders and solids, then fire,

blazing hot from underneath, as if a portal to hell had opened up.

And I could feel the flames lick me from underneath.

It came and it burned everything around me until all at once it disappeared.

What was left was a shiny black floating disc disc of monanthinum barium copper oxide, perfect material for my problems.

A superconductor capable of handling the heat of hell.

I woke up in a sweat with the lane beside me and jumped out of bed, which garnered a groggy response from Elle.

So excited, I didn't even recognize that all too familiar smell in the air.

I ran into the living room and dragged out a blackboard where I hastily wrote down the formula of this new inorganic compound:

CUBA0 15LA 1.85 oxygen 4.

But you have a 1 point?

A point?

Whatever.

I sketched out the structure and stepped back to look at my work.

Yes, this was it.

The solution to my problems.

I quickly went over to the phone and began to dial the number to the lab before a clock on the stove caught my eye.

It was only 3 a.m.

No one was even awake or there right now.

I couldn't sleep.

When Elaine woke up around 5, she came to the living room where I had sat staring at the blackboard the entire time.

Richard?

I smiled at her.

Elaine, this is it.

The solution to the heat.

Point eagerly at the blackboard, which she glanced at and gave me a groggy thumbs up before going back to the bathroom.

Another hour passed and Elaine left to go to the hospital she worked at as a nurse on a base in Maryland.

Finally, I was able to get ready and head out myself for the lab.

I was so eager to share my discovery that I had to drive back 10 minutes in and get my keycard.

When I got to the lab, I could hardly contain myself.

I entered the supply closet and revealed my findings to my colleagues and team of workers who relayed the information to the general.

It was a few hours later when he would arrive, coming down to the 11th sublevel and into the lab.

Richard!

Good news, I hear.

He opened his arms wide and then came in to shake my hand.

His grip was tight on my hand.

Yes, sir, very, very good news.

A breakthrough.

I said excitedly, clasping the open hand and shaking it.

I've discovered the key to our heating problem.

This is wonderful, son.

Tell me, how'd you do it?

The doors were shut.

For the second time in my time here, I saw men entering the lab to take things out.

Sir,

what do you know about your father, son?

Stared at him in stunned silence before asking quietly, My father?

The elevator lurched and its doors opened.

We couldn't have gone farther than a floor or two.

Yes, son, your father.

I understand he was a stay-at-home father for most of your life.

What do you know about before your life?

I raked my memory for stories about him before me being born, only to be slightly shocked.

I knew absolutely nothing.

I responded as much, and the general nodded.

I suspect they'd keep it quiet.

It was their duty, after all.

Stepped out into an enormous room with computer towers and monitors active, all of them stationed by men in radiation suits.

Two of the men got up and brought us suits of our own.

The general indicated for me to suit up, and I did.

Looked at one of the men and said, Make sure all that info from upstairs gets out to IBM.

They'll know what to do with it.

The man nodded, got on the elevator, and sent it.

Strode over to some consoles, which showed on its black screen a dot surrounded by interlocking rings, each ring itself containing multiple dots.

An Adam, sir?

The general chuckled.

Well, kind of, but no.

We walked to a door on the far side of the room and entered a hallway which shot out for a few hundred feet before turning sharply to the right.

Your father worked here.

Is some sir you noticed by the door?

In the late 30s and early 40s, he worked on a top-secret project.

You know it as the Manhattan Project.

Down here, we just called it another part of Project Gabriel, as we will with your superconductors.

Unofficially.

Officially, that information is on its way to IBM.

I know it's saying like I was a part of a greater test, but that's just funny.

That it's like, yeah, to me, the Manhattan Project is just another project.

That's what it's like in this sick and twisted mind of mine.

Still remained silent until we neared the corner.

But why, sir?

He stopped just before the

Turned the corner to yet another hallway.

This time a single door lay on the right side of it, all the way at the end.

There's no light coming from under it, and a feeling in my stomach, like waves against the bow of a ship, hit me hard.

My legs felt like iron as I dragged dragged them along after the general.

The door at the very end of the hall had a keypad to its side, and the general stepped in between me and the pad to enter a code.

With a green flash of light and a very loud thud noise, the door hissed and swung open.

Inside, lights began to cut on one by one, revealing an even more enormous room than the first.

In the middle, when my eyes finally saw it, My jaw fell open and I sank to the ground.

The general just stood there, arms crossed.

Son, this is Project Gabriel.

The center of the room, suspended mid-air by some sort of electromagnetic energy field, being propelled by several giant obsidian-colored pillars.

In the center of the room, suspended mid-air by some sort of electromagnetic energy field, being propelled by several giant obsidian-colored pillars.

It's a tarnished set of interlocking rings, upon each of which had dozens of bloodshot eyes.

Oh, it's an angel.

They have an angel

inside of

electromagnetic prison.

At its center, a ball of hot, energetic plasma was cracking and spitting electricity, which would contact the field around it and dissipate.

My God,

what is that thing?

General put a hand on my shoulder and shook, prompting me to stand up.

According to it,

it's the angel Gabriel.

Looked on in horror at this tortured being.

General walked closer to the obelisk on the far right, which had wires coiled around its base leading to a console.

General typed something in and then stood back as crackling beams of plasma shot from the obelisk and into the center of the angel.

Let out the most unearthly wail of agony.

A wail that pierced my brain and caused it to rattle in my skull.

I grabbed my head and fell once again to the ground.

Stop!

Stop it!

The general came to my side and helped me up to my feet.

Sorry.

Had to be sure.

You see, Richard, you are special.

Your father was special too.

You can understand.

Communicate with the angels.

We aren't sure why.

We don't know why only some people can, and why some people seem entirely removed from them.

But we suspect it has something to do with bloodlines dating back to the very oldest peoples.

We'd know more only.

Well,

no matter the pain we inflict, Gabriel won't reveal all his secrets.

I swayed on my feet, the pain in my head dying down, but remaining present.

But why?

Why do this?

The general looked at me with a straight and unfeeling face as he answered.

Because we were losing the war, son.

We were losing the war, and Germany was going to bring about the book of Revelations.

He told us.

Pointed at the angel now.

He came to your father one night and told him of the impending end of the war, and that soon your father would be and then and that soon your father would impregnate your mother with the second coming of Christ, who would grow to lead the Christians in a movement called the Rapture, a mass exodus to the last livable place on the planet.

There, God would come and give us the tools to start again to make a heaven on earth.

The general just cracked out of his mind.

You

are Jesus.

Are you serious?

That's awesome.

What?

Me?

Wow.

I'm Jesus.

Are you saying that?

I'm Jesus Christ.

Meanwhile, the angel's like, oh!

Yeah, the angel's just like,

why do you think it's a good thing

if you had an angel there?

I like how the angel flew up one day, his big stupid fucking eyes floating around.

He's just like, hey, no, seriously, by the way, Hitler's going to blow up the world.

And they're like, imprison that thing.

They're like, lock it away!

Yeah, like he came down to visit him and they all jumped on him to hold it down.

Like, quick, quick, put it in the time prison.

Put it in the time prison.

And then immediately the general is like, yep, your father impregnated your mother and brought about.

Well, then your father totally

totally filled your mom up and your Jesus.

Okay.

No, no, no.

Yeah,

you're the main character.

No, you don't have to.

No, seriously.

That's what I...

No, you don't need to.

I get it.

I understand how that works.

How funny would it be if he's like, why do you think it was?

Do you ever think it was weird that you were born with a beard?

Yeah, it's just like, he's just like, that explains how I always walk on water.

Or what?

Do you ever thought it was strange how you have holes in your hands and feet and that you were born with a beard?

Well, they just said I was, they just said it was a birth defect.

No,

you're Jesus Christ.

Yeah, the entire story, he's he's wore like the purple sash and like the white rubber.

And he's like, wow.

He's got a white rub and everything.

And he's just like, I can't believe I got a job at Esoteratron.

And they've imprisoned the angel Gabriel, apparently.

Yep,

also, the angel was like, Hey, you guys should probably stop Hitler, and then they caught him.

I mean, like, that's what I mean.

What I mean is, they like he came up and he's like, No, seriously, I'm telling you, this guy's gonna like fucking blow up the world or something.

Like, he's like, He's like giving them like a kind of a cool heads up, and they're like, Uh-huh, that sounds good.

Sedate him!

And they're like,

Like,

why?

Why do this?

uh-huh it's like uh-huh, yeah, tell me more.

And behind the

crazy note, they have a frying pan that they're gripping.

Ding!

The uh,

the uh

the uh what you know what's kind of weird is like I mean, they're we're probably getting to this, but it's like it's not even like they're trying to harness his power.

The guy literally just flew in and he was like, No, seriously, if you should seriously like fuck, you should like watch out because it's going to be crazy.

Because he's just like, why, why do this?

Because we're losing the war.

And it's just like, well, all he did was tell you that Hitler was going to blow up the fucking.

I assume what it's saying because they're like, Project Manahattan was just a part of Project Gabriel.

I assume it's

for that.

They gave the Americans the ability to create nuclear weapons.

I think is what's being implied.

The look on my face was pure incredulity, despite the evidence.

They looked at some like old scrolls.

They saw a giant butterfly net.

Of course.

the dad went and stood underneath

the dad

went

and stood underneath a giant cardboard box with a stick, propping it up.

And he's like,

Gabriel,

Gabriel, I can't hear you.

Can you come over here?

I need you to be closer.

It's nothing.

Just come here.

You gotta tell me.

Right next to the box, they have a giant spinning frying pan.

As soon as the box drops, just

go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.

So we scoured ancient text, and we found a way to trap Gabriel.

Your father called to him, and as you can see, he came.

Glancing back, I could see each bloodshot eye was on me now staring as if asking pleading for help i looked back at the general gabriel here gave us the secrets to cracking the atom open

he gave us the power of god himself he gave us the language of god it was that he walked over to and gently patted the monitor by the obelisk microchips processors The etchings on the boards.

Sigils of the heavens designed to move and control energy, to manipulate God's power.

I think I've talked about that on this show before, right?

You know, people like will make that connection that microchips look like ancient sigils, like they are entrapping supernatural powers, and that's how they work.

I think I've talked about that before.

Cool concept, definitely cool.

There's also some other stuff in here that yeah, I'm picking up on.

It's just a lot of information happening at once.

Like, we believe that people that can speak to Gabriel dates back to ancient times.

So that's likely in reference to the Nephilim, right?

Half human, half angel hybrids.

Those are something we saw in Mother Horse Eyes, another adaptation of that idea.

And then there's stuff like,

well, lead us, there's going to be a rapture, but we need a new Jesus to lead us.

But then the quote-unquote Christ figure that appears around the time of the rapture is actually the Antichrist.

So perhaps it's a negative instead of a positive.

But like I said, there's just a lot being divulged at once.

In a flash, I recalled my dream during my time in the war.

Dark room, my father's face pleading and apologizing.

He

tried to stop you

to free Gabriel.

General looked at me with a raised brow.

So he did tell you something.

I dreamed it in Vietnam before my father died.

The general nodded.

I see.

Yeah.

Your father became quite the autistic.

So that's how that said, autistic.

Sorry.

I see.

I see.

Yes.

Your father became quite the altruist.

At some point, decided what we were doing here was unethical, disturbed.

He tried to make a case saying how we won the war, we diverted the rapture and stopped the end of our world.

A fool's thought.

How could he know that?

Maybe we only delayed it.

And then if we, and if, even if we did avoid it, there was so much more Gabriel had to tell us.

Still has to tell us.

The giant butterfly net people.

I puffed out my chest defiantly now.

My father's son.

No!

This has to stop, General.

This is wrong.

You know it.

I know it.

Do you know what evil you're bringing down on this world?

What if God, son,

God

is

dead

cabriel himself told another dreamer we used to have under our thumb she was so in tune that she could sit in this very room for hours alone with him and bring back so much information only none of it was particularly useful so we cut her loose

he says that he says that you should always like you should always like take meat out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator if you want it to frost properly god damn it, Gabriel.

We already know that.

He says that Hot Wheels are a lot better than matchbox cars.

Okay.

All right.

We have got to find someone.

We got to find somebody new.

He says, Gabriel says, be sure to check your credit history before you apply because if you do it at the application, there could be some unseen things.

And you know, you trust the company.

So, Gabriel says to always ask the car dealership for the car facts on the car before you actually buy it.

And Gabriel said, Simon says, is

a little better than Boppit, but he says he likes to play both.

I like to say that she's the person, because it's obviously a sister, right?

Right, right.

That's talking.

So it's like, it's like sisters sitting there and for like 17 hours just having this.

Yeah, Gabriel says that she, Gabriel said that his favorite comedy of all time is Kung Pao.

They're like,

what about is there anything cool with like solving cancer?

Let me ask.

No, no, nothing about that.

No, no, he says, no, no.

But he does have Boppet.

He does have Boppet if we want to play that.

But he does have a pretty killer streak on Boppit.

God damn you.

I like

the idea that as soon as Sharon got out, she's like, well, I should probably overdose now.

It's probably all I got.

left going forward.

Or

was it the existential crisis of being like, God's dead?

I can't handle it, so I'm just going to fucking get high.

Yeah, but if you don't trust anything they're saying and they don't have good info, then why would you trust the God is dead thing?

I thought because she said Gabriel said that

that's what he said.

Is that not what Gabriel said?

Oh, oh, yeah.

Gabriel's giving her good info.

It's just not useful to them.

Yeah, so he's like sitting there.

He's like, no, seriously, like.

The best way to do mac and cheese is to bake it in the oven and have like a little crispy layer on top.

Also, God's dead.

You also want to figure out that that, like, when you're reseeding your lawn.

Hey, what is that last word?

When you reseed your lawn, you want no, the one for the, oh, yeah, God's, he's been dead, he's dead, he's gone.

Yeah, yeah, he's been gone a while.

Why do you think I'm down here?

You know what I mean?

What the fuck do you think I'm doing?

Why do you think I'm stuck inside of this box?

Do you think that that would happen otherwise?

Flashes in my mind of my baby sister sitting here in the dark with the angel before her.

Sharon?

General simply stared back and then said, Correct.

She threatened to tell on us.

So we

she threatened to tell on us is such a funny line.

Correct.

She threatened to tell on us.

So we did what had to be done.

Unlike your father, she had no family we could threaten to keep her in line.

I like the idea that

a local beat cop could take down the government angel operation hey so my job at uh esoteric tronics they have a giant angel down there who's telling talk to me about bopp it and reseating my lawn oh

okay

i also like because they said that the way they started this program is his father who was already working for the government came to them and was like hey an angel told me we have to stop hitler and they they didn't just like fire him they were like really

and then now imagine they think it's fake the whole time and then they get him there, and the angel actually shows up, and they're like, oh my God.

Is there a way that this connects in with Joseph Smith at all?

Because does this not read like Joseph Smith?

Yeah, look, you can, I take enough lack from the Mormons.

All right.

If you want to start a fight there, you go right ahead.

I'm just saying that Joseph Smith, he talked to the angels like that.

That was a legitimate question.

It could be no.

I was just wondering.

I thought Joseph Smith talked, well, okay.

Yeah.

Sure.

You know what, buddy?

This is the Joseph Smith story, just for you.

Better be careful making jokes like that than we'll.

Okay, cut that.

Oh, God.

Cut that from the episode.

Oh,

wolf.

That's such a historic moment.

That's a historic moment.

That's the first time you've ever had a spastic cut that.

Usually I'm the person that says cut that.

Cut that or bleep that or do something.

Do not bleep that in the episode.

The rush of heat to my head overwhelmed me, and I rushed the general in anger.

I didn't think first, I could only act.

He sidestepped and I rushed past him in the field of electromagnetic energy, which reacted violently.

Time seemed slow as the rotating rings beyond me came to a near halt.

A booming voice within my head echoed out, Help me!

Help me!

Help me, please!

Suddenly, time returned to me and I was ejected outwards back onto the floor.

The general shook his head.

Now, son, please.

Let's be pragmatic and reasonable, shall we?

You do have a family.

You wouldn't want anything to happen to your lovely wife and soon-to-be baby, now, would you?

I froze.

How did he know about the baby?

Is my house wiretapped?

Are they surveilling me?

I stood to my feet, shaken to my very core.

You sick bastard.

Leave them alone.

Then work with us, son.

Work with us.

Think of all the discoveries to be made.

The advancement for humanity.

I rocked back and forth, woozy.

Looked again to Gabriel, whose eyes bore sadness and pain I could scarcely imagine.

Decades of torture, unnatural capture, decades more to come.

No, I wouldn't do it.

I wouldn't condemn this being to an eternity of torment.

I couldn't.

I stood tall with the false bravado.

Well,

I've never been a very religious man.

The general smiled warmly and then I replied.

But I won't let you do this.

The smile faded, turning into a grimace of annoyance.

I made a run for the console this time, aiming to smash it or grab the wiring.

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out, echoing through the chamber.

Warm blood read down my back and chest.

I looked down to see a bullet hole directly through me.

I clutched my chest and turned slowly, gurgling and coughing up blood, expecting to see the culprit of my death.

The general stood there, arms folded behind his back with a look of disappointment.

I swiveled my head around, and there at the door was Elaine, pistol in hand, no tear in her eye.

I felt to the floor, no air in my lungs to protest or inquire.

I heard the sound of her footsteps as she walked up to the general's side.

Too bad you didn't agree, Daddy.

The general nodded.

Yes, well,

we always have the backup.

And he placed his hand on her stomach.

Don't worry, I got pregnant by Jesus.

So now I will have Jesus too, or three.

Back of Jesus.

Back of Jesus.

As I lay there, I listened to the raspy breath escape from my lungs.

I was dying, no doubt about it.

I really wasn't a very religious man, and I offered no prayer to God in my end.

Despite this, as I lay there, life fading away, I could see the bright and warm light at the end of the tunnel black.

There stood my father, smile on his face with the hand extended, my mother and sister at his side.

Despite ever being a religious man, I was going home.

And that's the end.

That's the end.

So I

like the concept.

I don't really know how isotopes come into it.

I guess because

I guess it's kind of drawing that atoms look like biblically accurate angels, which is a cool concept.

And it brings up the thing that I like about like circuitry being sigils and stuff like that or runes.

Yeah, the microchip thing.

Yeah, the microchip thing.

I like all that.

I like the

stuff about an angel being imprisoned.

And, like, I like the details about the family when it was kind of a mystery as to what they were writing about, what the burned hole in the ceiling means, how they're able to communicate with each other.

All that was interesting.

I felt like it got bogged down with a lot of the like general details, a lot of the exposition at the end.

Like, the things about him being Jesus never came into play.

Amazingly, the infant mortality never came into play either.

That didn't pull up, like that just got brought up a lot, didn't go anywhere.

The only thing I can think is that do you think

rapture never came up, stuff like that?

Do you think that the infant, the infantile mortality rate thing, do you think that was at all linked into us supposed to be like

that?

They have tried to bring back like the second coming of Christ before, but they keep dying?

Or something?

You know what I mean?

It's too vague.

It sounded like he was trying to solve the cure to like SIDS, like Sud.

Well, that's fit.

I mean, I or something.

I thought that it was something like that, too.

I'm just, just, you know,

food for thought.

I'm trying to see how it ties in because there's a lot of themes that tie in.

The idea of like the capturing the angel.

The problem, I think that, like, my biggest stipulation with it is that the general, it's just when someone is so overtly evil and the motive just seems so just kind of silly.

It just, it's like the sheriff and Baraska.

I wouldn't say it's, as, you know, bombastic and fucking crazy as that, but it is this thing where it's just like, it's this angel came down and warned us about Hitler, so we captured him.

And it's like, I get man is inherently evil, but I guess I just wish that there was more.

Like the idea of like, well, he has so many secrets to tell us.

I think that like that's, I think that's fair.

I just, I don't know.

I just, I, I guess it just wasn't totally bought in on that.

And that like kind of like crazy motive.

And then

this idea of like, well,

you know what?

I'm, I won't do it.

I'm going to stop you, whatever.

And then you can just get shot.

And that's just kind of the ending.

I guess just like if you're introducing that thing, it'd be nice to have him

just kind of play around with it more.

It was just kind of very quick, I guess.

You know what I mean?

It's a lot to take in.

Very abruptly.

A lot of it given more time, I think, would do better.

I think maybe instead of the general explaining a lot of those things at the end,

since our main character is a scientist, he can kind of figure stuff out as he goes a bit.

Vietnam didn't even really factor in to the story like I thought it would.

Maybe he had some experience or vision in Vietnam that related to combat or something that like

his father's visions of World War II, perhaps, or something like that.

Yeah, the only thing that I think was supposed to be there.

The only thing that I think that Vietnam helps with is that it's just the parallels with his father.

I think his dad was like active during World War II or whatever.

But then also I'm wondering if like, oh, because he had this military job, if that's literally the justification to why he would get this government job.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Versus it being like, well, I don't know.

I just, I got hired because like maybe that's just

because my mom's a politician, which didn't really come into, except for mentioning maybe that because his dad was in this program, his mom was given political favor, maybe.

But

I also don't think you need the ending where he's going to heaven and seeing everyone.

Also, him being like, I'm not a religious man.

It's like you have undeniable evidence of the supernatural in God.

You're looking at an angel.

So maybe you become that really quick all at once.

Yeah.

I don't know.

There's a lot of good elements.

I think if you cut a lot of the fat and use that time to expand more on stuff the general reveals at the end so it comes more natural and isn't dumped all at once, I think it would read more naturally because I like the concept of like humanity imprisoned an angel, which is actually

a concept in an ARG that's been floating around, I say ARG, a YouTube series that's been floating around called Angel Engine that is about

a group of scientists that imprison an angel and use it to try to make like a perpetual energy system.

And then like, it's about

heaven like

I haven't watched it and I'm not that big of a fan of it because all the art for it's AI, which I think is really lame and dumb.

But the concept of it is interesting.

The idea of humanity imprisoning an angel and then like the supernatural war behind the scenes.

Which I saw, I was listening to one YouTuber talk about it, and he raised the point that maybe it's actually kind of smart in a meta sense because the series is about

like humanity imprisoning a power they can't understand to try to get things that they want and it's using AI.

So maybe it's like a statement about about AI because it does it, but it doesn't directly critique AI and the whole thing's like made itself off of AI.

So that may just be accidental like irony, you know?

But anyway, I mean, I doubt it.

I doubt it has that many meta layers behind it.

I think that this story, though, like, I like the, like, I agree.

I like the idea of the,

you know, capturing.

a spiritual essence and that has like that's the thing that's been like progressing technology and all this other stuff forward for the past like hundred years or decades or whatever you know in the uh

or the yeah decade because it's only the 40 or the 80s but uh

i and i i and i tell you i like that elaine is in on it i think that i just

i think to do something that makes it feel satisfying because her coming in It's just like there's a bunch of kind of cheesy things where you come in and it's like, oh, my wife is here.

And it's like, sorry, daddy.

I guess, you know,

he's a fucking idiot.

And he's like, that's okay.

We have all that.

I think, like, it would have been interesting if he's, like, stressed, and if she would have made a really big emphasis on, like,

repro reproductive, like, being like, we need to have a kid.

Like, we need to have a kid.

And, like, putting a big emphasis on that to where you could have developed some of that kind of like weird

just kind of like some of the things in the background to where if you reread it, you're like, oh, fuck, that's why she was being so pushy with this or whatever.

I think there's a lot of ways that you can get that going.

Also, I think you could have had Gabriel trying to talk to you or something.

You work at this job and you're getting all these signs and these different things.

I'm still wondering where, like, the orange scent came in.

Remember, they kept putting an emphasis on the screen.

The orange and pine.

Yeah, the orange and pine.

Maybe that connects back.

You could connect that back to some memory he has or some visual.

Because, again, the mystery phase was the best part of it.

And it had some,

you know, that's the best phase of any

story is the discovery or, you know, the adventure of everything of like basically just all these clues being left around for you and stuff.

It just felt like a bunch of pieces that just a lot of loose ends that just didn't really feel like they came together.

Once again, though, I think that that's it's pretty fun.

Also, I mean, did you like the fact that it was an actual angel?

Um

you know what I mean?

Like, could it have been something where it's like what they thought was an angel?

If the story was about that, then that'd be fine, I think.

Like Angel Engine, if it was about humanity imprisoning an angel.

But where it's kind of like set dressing amidst everything, it's like,

well, how did they imprison it?

Like, what does that mean to imprison an eternal being of infinite power?

You know, like, did they use angel capabilities to imprison it?

Probably not, because...

It had to talk to them first.

So it's like...

Maybe if if it turned out to be something that isn't an angel or like a fallen angel, if it was if it said it was Gabriel, but it turned out to be like

who's Abaddon, the demon of the pit or whatever, another powerful demon or something.

That could be interesting.

And it used the angel powers to imprison it, but humanity thought they had an angel.

That could be cool.

But if humanity thought they had an angel and like also it wasn't trapped, but it was just there on its own will

and it was feeding stuff to where then you could be like, is this like is this good you know what i mean like is this a thing that we is is that you like this idea of trapping something just feels kind of i don't know it just isn't it's not hit me hit me super well or even like how in uh i don't know if you've ever seen evangelion but uh the way that they did the the way that they show or the way that they like uh basically show angel sometimes is just in human form in this one character it'd be kind of cool if it was just one character or it was just like one humanoid person that was in like a cell or something that's like trapped somehow.

Just the back and forth.

It's just the biblically accurate angels things are just, they're huge.

It's just such a loud thing.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm rambling by this point.

At the end of the day, it's an interesting idea, but it just, it was a little all over the place for me.

I think.

I like the ideas.

I think there was good writing bits in there.

I think that

maybe just workshops of the way the details come out of stuff.

Because I liked it.

I enjoyed it.

I thought it was a good read.

Made me think of.

And I would want to see more done with it.

I'd like to see more from this author.

Makes me think of

Jacob's Ladder meets angels in the outfield.

So it makes me think of.

Actually, it reminds me of Jacob's.

I thought that was going to lean more into that side of, you know, like it turns out he's back in Vietnam.

Yeah, or just like this whole idea of like, just, you know, such a huge thing of faith and the afterlife and all that kind of stuff, but it really plays into

his death in the war and stuff like that.

All in all, though, fun story.

Also cool to see it come from our community and stuff.

A lot of fun.

Yeah.

Thank you guys so much for watching this week's episode.

Thank you to all the audio platform listeners on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

We appreciate it.

And thank you to our very supportive and very beautiful patron supporters as well.

It really does help us out.

If you're interested in writing, And you're interested in just being fucking creative in like a storytelling aspect and you want somewhere to show it, put it on our subreddit.

It's awesome.

Not everything needs to be gold.

You know, it's just fun seeing where people's minds are coming from and seeing how people are getting inspired by each other here.

And I think that we have, we've read a lot of really great shit.

So please be creative and start writing.

We will see you next week.

Bye-bye.

And if the angel Gabriel ever tells you to hurl babies into a wall with a slingshot,

you know, I'm not your dad.

So do what you want.