Speaker 1: Following the production of my art raining. This episode contains
Speaker 1: depictions of strong violence, drug use, and sexual coercion. A
Speaker 1: second oil rage. I'd barely climbed out of the airlock
Speaker 1: well before the proteus suit disgorged me. It opened up
Speaker 1: like a great clam and spilled me out onto the
Speaker 1: dive room floor. I glanced back just in time to
Speaker 1: see the armored shell cave in on itself, melting back
Speaker 1: down the well as a column of slime, warning security breach,
Speaker 1: Please proceed to the nearest, coated in a patina of
Speaker 1: alien fluid. I rose to a crouch and marked the
Speaker 1: rhythmic blinking of alarm strobes, the smell of blood over
Speaker 1: by a cluster of lockers, The dive boots of a
Speaker 1: corpse poked out from behind an overturned bench, A smashed
Speaker 1: graph ink pro lay by its side. Hoffman, I rose
Speaker 1: to my feet and took a cautious step forward. The
Speaker 1: severity of his wounds made me grimace. Blood and hemorrhaged
Speaker 1: brain tissue pooled beneath his shattered skull. A burn in
Speaker 1: the shape of a human hand branded his upper face
Speaker 1: and forehead. It wasn't the work of Triton or neread.
Speaker 1: It could only be the other, the void walker, the
Speaker 1: thing that wore veils consciousness as a mask. I studied
Speaker 1: his frozen expression, his eyes brimmed with vacancy. Did the
Speaker 1: thing wear Hoffman? Now, I wondered? Did it? Rushed aboard
Speaker 1: a departing sub with his face his communit his we
Speaker 1: have a story for you. What had happened here? While
Speaker 1: I hunted for Bouklan and apathists tested their handiwork something
Speaker 1: from the outside, something nearly mythic, even to the Triton's
Speaker 1: lashed out at both surface and deep. In doing so,
Speaker 1: it framed me and, by extension, dux itself. My escape
Speaker 1: only cemented the presumption of guilt. What version of the
Speaker 1: truth would it bring to the surface? In Hoffmann's guise,
Speaker 1: I could guess its ends might be uncertain, The methodology
Speaker 1: was clear, So division set uncertain allies against each other.
Speaker 1: What better place than here? I checked the lockers and
Speaker 1: found a dive knife. It wasn't engineered for zero spin throwing.
Speaker 1: It didn't sharpen at my touch, but it would do
Speaker 1: the job against all but one. I stepped over Hoffman's
Speaker 1: body and left him for the inevitable clean up crew.
Speaker 1: The room's only door unlocked and slid into the wall.
Speaker 1: At my approach, triggered by Jack's communit, a vacant corridor
Speaker 1: opened up before me. Blinking emergency lights played off the
Speaker 1: naked pipes and wires. I knew what I needed to do.
Speaker 1: I knew what Veil would have done. I had to
Speaker 1: bring the truth back to the surface. It might be enough.
Speaker 1: I wormed my way through the vacant halls. I followed
Speaker 1: the blood past body after body, Land spoke and recombined
Speaker 1: the like dismembered with unmistakable precision, though none of them
Speaker 1: bore the Burnemark Hoffman head. They slumped against walls and portholes,
Speaker 1: all reduced to the same lifeless meat. I felt the
Speaker 1: tug of the black drug's absence as I passed the
Speaker 1: first crew cabin cluster. I wondered if they'd had time
Speaker 1: to search my room, where there's still two vials of
Speaker 1: Basilisk tucked away in my bag, an umber black blade
Speaker 1: wrapped in a spare shirt. If I could just tighten
Speaker 1: my will and reactions, upgrade my weaponry, then a head
Speaker 1: a hatch flew open, and two Youdex security guards slumped
Speaker 1: out into the hall, entangled in sensual embrace, hands pawing, searching, lips, frothing.
Speaker 1: They hit the opposite wall and slid down to the floor.
Speaker 1: Fetis emerged behind them. I ducked down a converging hall
Speaker 1: and froze against the bulkhead. I readied the knife in
Speaker 1: one trembling hand. Now I didn't have to see to
Speaker 1: know good. My breathing is too loud. My heart, I
Speaker 1: knew she'd hear me, reach out to my mind before
Speaker 1: I could strike. I was no match, not like this.
Speaker 1: Closer and closer. Another door rolled open. When it closed,
Speaker 1: I moved. I leaped over the two doomed guards as
Speaker 1: they chewed into each other's faces, moaning with the cross
Speaker 1: wired pleasure of mutilation, eyes rolling back like something from
Speaker 1: the poles of Hell. I didn't look at that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: m hmmm, Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Booklem, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: I know you've heard a lot of great speakers today.
Speaker 1: You've heard a lot of amazing ideas about how we
Speaker 1: can change course, how we can harness the forces of
Speaker 1: innovation for a better world, for brighter tomorrow. And no,
Speaker 1: I don't mean deeper oil wells. I don't even mean hydrothermal,
Speaker 1: which I realized is something of us prize coming from me.
Speaker 1: I do believe that's the future of energy. It sustained
Speaker 1: the Triton's from millennia, and it can do the same
Speaker 1: for all of us. But now what I want to
Speaker 1: suggest to you goes beyond even benign exploitation of our
Speaker 1: planet's resources. Today, I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: the science of despeciation, the necessary process by which two
Speaker 1: species become one. Depis the horrible transt. They'll call me
Speaker 1: through our word later tomorrow. Want this silent later written
Speaker 1: a word on traditional specifical well Satis patrols persons around yan.
Speaker 1: I cut through the bazaar. Its empty alleyways, wet from
Speaker 1: the rain of sprinklers, A burned out fry shop and
Speaker 1: a looted storefront told me all I needed to know.
Speaker 1: A worker lay in two halves beside a glitching tero machine.
Speaker 1: Empress and scepter flashed across the blood splattered screen. I
Speaker 1: pushed on through the alley of saints and oceanic gods,
Speaker 1: their altars washed in the blood of their last attendance.
Speaker 1: The triton shaped bust of mother hydra lay toppled and
Speaker 1: shattered across the grated floor. There was still no theetis
Speaker 1: to block my path, but she knew where I'd go.
Speaker 1: If not my quarters, then the subs I sprinted the
Speaker 1: remaining lengths of hallway, ignoring my wound, more blood, more
Speaker 1: abandoned gear, and baggage, to mark an increasingly frenzied evacuation
Speaker 1: footprints in the gore A technician clutching a dive knife.
Speaker 1: There's spinal column laid bare. Please proceed to the nearest
Speaker 1: evacuation hub. I reached the docking station module. The door
Speaker 1: rolled aside to grant me entrance, and there it was
Speaker 1: one remaining docked vessel, the very Gladious class sub I'd
Speaker 1: arrived on, and no fetis. I ran across the cargo bay,
Speaker 1: weaving among its stacked and sordid crates shipments from the
Speaker 1: surface compressed garbage tubes bound for return. I shot into
Speaker 1: the Gladious sub's open cargo bay and slammed the manual
Speaker 1: switch to close it behind me. Please, great community, The
Speaker 1: great door rolled into place, and I caught one last
Speaker 1: glimpse of Atlas station alarm lights gleaming in trails of blood,
Speaker 1: and just a hint of movements before the door blocked
Speaker 1: my view and the locking bolts shot home. A pale pursuer.
Speaker 1: Welcome passengers are Hanka Jacks. I stalked across the empty
Speaker 1: cargo hold to the crew module. Even without my own community,
Speaker 1: the automated system would recognize Jacksons and follow evacuation protocol. Okay.
Speaker 1: I opened the door and saw two blood smeared communits
Speaker 1: on the cot, and she stood beside it. Blonde hair
Speaker 1: fell to shoulder length, the jeans and jacket of a
Speaker 1: surface pedestrian now soaked in gore. She held one human
Speaker 1: arm out to the side, blood still dripping from the fingertips.
Speaker 1: My knife hand tensed the muscle, memory of training and instinct.
Speaker 1: It would have given me a chance against any other
Speaker 1: foe veil. She turned casually, as if this was but
Speaker 1: a social call. She regarded me with those same eyes,
Speaker 1: flawlessly human eyes. I know you're in there, I know
Speaker 1: you're more than just a mask. We can stop this.
Speaker 1: Why would we stop it? It wants us at war
Speaker 1: with each other, at war with ourselves, wants only silent death,
Speaker 1: no life across a billion world, silence in the mind veil. Tabitha,
Speaker 1: you came for the truth, a message of change. Her
Speaker 1: face twitched, her eyes trembled. I want to try it. I.
Speaker 1: Her flesh loosened like an unraveling shroud, dry membranous wings
Speaker 1: of indeterminable shape, shredded her blood soaked clothes, and fanned
Speaker 1: the stagnant air of tune and all ruin. Within the
Speaker 1: whirlwind of flesh, I caught the scarcest glimpse of its
Speaker 1: true form, the thing that lurked beneath the layers of semblance,
Speaker 1: and enacted it's inhuman will. It's because your mind's had
Speaker 1: a turning place. The eyes were still veils, but the
Speaker 1: swirling tissue was already reforming in the likeness of a
Speaker 1: woman's bloodied and bruised rows of horizontal black bars tattooed
Speaker 1: over scalp, forehead and throat the one who would deliver
Speaker 1: its message. You're stronger than this thing. You're the one
Speaker 1: who believes. I know you can resist. She moved, and
Speaker 1: I felt the burn of her palm against my forehead.
Speaker 1: And history is a spiral m m m M. The
Speaker 1: second oil age was produced by Robert Lamb Alex William
Speaker 1: Slowen's Vogel Bomb and Josh Than. This episode featured on
Speaker 1: Joe Masters as SnO Khan, Lauren vogelbaumb as Tabotha Veil,
Speaker 1: Helen Lorn as Thetis, and Nicholas Dacosti as Peter Gluckman,
Speaker 1: supporting voice work by Gina Rakii and Josh Clark intro outro,
Speaker 1: and supporting music created by a weird in Module. Learn
Speaker 1: more at Module dot dom camp dot com. Mm HM
Speaker 1: from more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or when I may listen
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