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Speaker 1: Following a production by r point of this episode contains

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Speaker 1: depictions of drug use a second oil. Someone told me

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Speaker 1: once that history is a spiral, a vortex, the shell

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Speaker 1: of a vaulted nautilus. It has a beginning, it has

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Speaker 1: an end, it has a shape. There's an impression of narrowing.

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you what happened. This is where I entered

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Speaker 1: the spiral. Gladious class sub automated. The Udex Oil Company

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Speaker 1: uses them to relay cargo between the surface and their

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Speaker 1: deep grid stations on the ocean floor. Sometimes they haul garbage,

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Speaker 1: a maintenance team or in this case me. My name

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Speaker 1: is sinove Pan. They sent me down to Atlas Station

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Speaker 1: to find a missing person. I found something else. In

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Speaker 1: the subs cramped modular cabin. I bowed my head in

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Speaker 1: the sink and let the tap batter my skull as

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Speaker 1: hot and violent as the sub's plumbing allowed. It numbed

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Speaker 1: my mind. It held me over till the treatment kicked

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Speaker 1: in and found its groove in the bloodstream. It began

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Speaker 1: to settle my nerves. The fear melted back into something

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Speaker 1: more manageable. They called it the basilisk. The black drug,

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Speaker 1: an anti psychedelic of the highest order. I'd packed four

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Speaker 1: applicators plus two subdermal doses that could be deployed at will,

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Speaker 1: enough for a five day trip six if I rationed

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Speaker 1: it out. The water dripped from my chin. A few

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Speaker 1: streams ran down my neck and darkened the corners of

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Speaker 1: my shirt. I turned my head and let the water

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Speaker 1: hit the tattoo on my forehead, one of twelve identical

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Speaker 1: symbols on my body. You dex covers everybody in my

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Speaker 1: line of work with markings like this. For my protection,

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Speaker 1: they said, elder signs something like a star exploding into

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Speaker 1: a labyrinth. Command insisted they did the job. That's why

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Speaker 1: I had them on my crown, brow, throat, chest, and

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Speaker 1: on and on. Every little advantage counts. I cut the

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Speaker 1: water and rubbed one of the cabin's yellowed towels over

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Speaker 1: my scalp. I stepped away from the sink, suddenly lightheaded.

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Speaker 1: Part of it was the heat, and part of it

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Speaker 1: was the basilisk sinking its claws into my amygdala, a

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Speaker 1: familiar swoon before the tightness took hold. I braced one

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Speaker 1: hand against the hull and felt the rumble and groan

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Speaker 1: of the sub's carapase adjusting to external pressure. It was

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Speaker 1: still descending, still sinking along its terrible trajectory toward Atlas,

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Speaker 1: a place that shouldn't be. My vision blurred for a moment,

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Speaker 1: I could sense the enormity of the ocean, the teeming,

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Speaker 1: scuttling expanses, the crushing debt. It's the distant dirge of

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Speaker 1: the world's last whales, singing the song of their extinction.

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Speaker 1: It was probably a hallucination. Sometimes they leak in at

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Speaker 1: the peaks and pits of the black drug's influence, sounds, voices, lights.

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Speaker 1: I peeled my hand away from the hall and stepped

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Speaker 1: back towards the cabin's lone cot. My equipment still laid

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Speaker 1: out like surgeons tools, the applicators for umbra, black throwing knives,

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Speaker 1: my scrubbed communit. Suddenly I saw something movement in the

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Speaker 1: steam covered sink mirror. For a second, I thought it

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Speaker 1: was just a trick of the light, some flickering of

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Speaker 1: the drug through my visual cortex. But there was no

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Speaker 1: mistaking the intruder. Eight hours into the journey, leagues upon leagues,

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Speaker 1: into the alien depths. Somehow she'd hidden on a vessel

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Speaker 1: no larger than a surface tug. I moved in a heartbeat.

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Speaker 1: I'd slipped two of the knives up from the cot.

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Speaker 1: My fingerprints on the handles tightened the nanoparticles at the

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Speaker 1: edge of the blades to sublime sharpness. I flicked my

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Speaker 1: wrist and let one fly intentionally wide. It quivered in

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Speaker 1: the bulkhead behind the intruder. Then I was on her.

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Speaker 1: I slammed her against the bulkhead, forearm against the flesh

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Speaker 1: of her throat, blade tensed to slice. I looked into

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Speaker 1: her fearful eyes, and I hesitated independence, ambition, in infinite potential.

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Speaker 1: The modern world offers possibilities that previous generations would only imagine.

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Speaker 1: And you DEX Petroleum is proud to provide the energy

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Speaker 1: for your ascension. Through the use of the deep grid

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Speaker 1: system and patented Proteus well and subsea template technology, we're

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Speaker 1: able to safely harvest the Earth's deepest petroleum riches without

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Speaker 1: endangering ocean or inland environments. Thanks you, DEX, Thanks you X,

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Speaker 1: Thank you X. You're the flame. We provide the fuel.

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Speaker 1: You Dex Petroleum, Welcome to the second oil Age. If

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Speaker 1: your skin is blank, are you even really fair? Where's

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Speaker 1: your ink? Where's it? Don't worry about your job. Don't

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Speaker 1: worry about forever. You don't have to. With graphic tattoo tech,

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Speaker 1: you change your ink as often as you like, manipulating

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Speaker 1: the pigment particles under your skin, and do exactly who

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Speaker 1: you want to be. Tribe up with your crew, dragon

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Speaker 1: sleeves for the weekend, black bars on the job. Let

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Speaker 1: the crowd know if you're looking for love, looking for trouble,

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Speaker 1: looking to be left alone. Your flesh is a canvas.

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Speaker 1: Graphic applicators are compatible with all com unit models and

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Speaker 1: graphics software. Just press all into the skin and watch

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Speaker 1: it change. Master your flesh, make it graphic recreation. Graphicking

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Speaker 1: technology is not compatible with graphic kings. Pro Removal of

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Speaker 1: our citing tattoos is a violation of federal and international law. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it would have been easy. A stiff head butt to

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Speaker 1: the bridge of our nose, disorient her just enough to

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Speaker 1: drag her back into the gladious cargo bay and restrain her.

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Speaker 1: Or I could have simply opened up one of her

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Speaker 1: carotid arteries where we stood. The basilisks would have made

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Speaker 1: it too easy. But I hesitated. Maybe it was the

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Speaker 1: fear in the blonde woman's eyes. The quivering weakness in

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Speaker 1: her body, and of course I needed to know. I

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Speaker 1: unpinned her from the wall, pointed to the cot with

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Speaker 1: the black tip of my knife. Sit, Sit, Who are you?

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Speaker 1: I'm press a journalist. Your name Tabitha Veil. I write

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Speaker 1: for the New Humanist, the New York doesn't matter. How

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Speaker 1: do you get aboard? I stowed away in a shipment

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Speaker 1: of farm tab mules. It's a big crate. We followed

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Speaker 1: out of space beneath the top layer of packages. Who's

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Speaker 1: we members of the Mariner's Guild. They liked my story

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Speaker 1: pitch and you stumbled out? Just now? What bathroom brake?

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Speaker 1: Neighborly visit? They told me the cabin was empty, there

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Speaker 1: was no passenger manifest This much was true. I didn't

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Speaker 1: think I'd have to get out of the crate, but

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Speaker 1: my leg cramped, and well, let's have it. I have

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Speaker 1: what your pitch, the one the mariners liked the whole time.

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Speaker 1: The tip of my knife never wavered. I drilled into

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Speaker 1: her with my eyes tight, with the drug pupils gleaming

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Speaker 1: beneath the sigel on my forehead. She also had a

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Speaker 1: clear view of the mark on my throat and half

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Speaker 1: of the one on my sternum. They make quite a statement.

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Speaker 1: The various symbols on my arms just added a little

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Speaker 1: extra flare. Old fashioned ink, a dagger, a skull, a

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Speaker 1: fractured world tree. I had em all from the old

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Speaker 1: days before my current line of work. Veil mostly studied

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Speaker 1: the floor, cast a nervous glance or two at the

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Speaker 1: other knives laid out beside her on the cot, But

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Speaker 1: when I asked about her work, she finally looked me

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Speaker 1: in the eye. I want to bring back a first

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Speaker 1: hand account of Alasta San Why. It's the biggest underwater

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Speaker 1: habitat ever constructed, and nobody knows anything about it all.

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Speaker 1: We've got our some schematics and a few photos of

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Speaker 1: unassembled modules. Hundreds of people live and work there. It's

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Speaker 1: a central hub for deep work, and we know next

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Speaker 1: to nothing about the place outside what they feed us

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Speaker 1: and press releases. Some call that corporate espionage. Do you

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Speaker 1: I thought I was asking the questions land spoken recombined,

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Speaker 1: working side by side, even representatives of the deep Myriads

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Speaker 1: and the Tritons themselves. You've never been there either, have

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Speaker 1: you my first visit? I smiled? This one was sharp, bolder,

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Speaker 1: than I judged at first. I flipped the knife around

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Speaker 1: in my palm and laid it beside the sink, then

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Speaker 1: grabbed a pair of disposable plastic cups from the medicine cabinet.

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Speaker 1: I want to reveal the conditions there. We all know

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Speaker 1: what it's like on the surface. But if the rumors

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Speaker 1: are true, Atlas is one of the few places where

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Speaker 1: recombined workers have equal footing with landsfolk, shared culture, even

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Speaker 1: And what can we learn from a place where a

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Speaker 1: recombined person is more in tune with their environment. It

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Speaker 1: won't play well with the heartland because they're so out

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Speaker 1: of tune with theirs. They need it more than anyone.

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Speaker 1: You've seen the conditions they enable. She was right, of course.

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Speaker 1: I had seen the recombined populations of the surface, the

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Speaker 1: endless sprawl of the coastal communities where the rising tide washed,

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Speaker 1: the ruins of metropolis, where a swelling population teemed beneath

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Speaker 1: the walls of inland governments amid those ruins, the New

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Speaker 1: California Coast, the Florida Stump, Atlanta, Mumbai, guang Zoe, Gothenburg.

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Speaker 1: Those were just the ones I'd seen with my own eyes.

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Speaker 1: But it was the same all over a new people

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Speaker 1: live at the edges of the old, a product of

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Speaker 1: the bargain you dex made to save the world. It

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Speaker 1: was the price of the second oil age. I walked

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Speaker 1: over to my bag and pulled out a half empty

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Speaker 1: bottle of whiskey. I splashed a little into each cup

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Speaker 1: and held one out to her. You'll get caught, you

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Speaker 1: know that. Maybe When she reached out to accept the drink,

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Speaker 1: I grabbed her forearm and twisted it just enough to

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Speaker 1: make out the black tattoo on the inside of her wrist,

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Speaker 1: a ten character serial number starting with the letters r CEO.

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Speaker 1: You're recombined. Yeah, we both took a sip of our

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Speaker 1: lukewarm liquor, and you can look at these marks without flinching.

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Speaker 1: If she were pure blood Triton, she'd be in convulsions.

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Speaker 1: Even some recombined individuals can experience a mild episode at

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Speaker 1: the sight of an elder sign. They call it the

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Speaker 1: Watts effect, the tendency for certain combinations of lines and

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Speaker 1: angles to induce seizures in the triton brain. Scientists claim

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Speaker 1: it's some kind of photosensitive epilepsy. The legacy of a

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Speaker 1: species long adapted to an undersea world in its own

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Speaker 1: mysterious architecture. But then again, I've heard supernatural explanations as well.

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Speaker 1: Pick your poison. I guess yeah, we're all different, you know.

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Speaker 1: Part of the human condition birth is obscure, and men

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Speaker 1: are like rivers whose origins are often unknown. What's that

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Speaker 1: from the Mahaparata? What happens now? I'm just a passenger.

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Speaker 1: They're not paying me to deal with stowaways. As long

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Speaker 1: as you don't get in my way, you're not my problem.

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Speaker 1: I downed the rest of my whiskey and tossed the

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Speaker 1: cup in the sink. I considered dragging her into the

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Speaker 1: cargo hold anyway, it would have simplified things, but we

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Speaker 1: were still eighteen hours from our destination. Maybe I wanted

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Speaker 1: the company, the sound of some one else's voice. I

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Speaker 1: figured i'd probably hand her over once we arrived. But

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Speaker 1: for now, what's your business on Atlas Station? A missing

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Speaker 1: person's case? Who goes missing on the bottom of the sea,

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Speaker 1: some one who should have known better. For now, she

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Speaker 1: was another way to distract myself from the weight of

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Speaker 1: my destination. Atlas Station, threshold of the Triton Kingdom, the

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Speaker 1: bottom of the World, m M m m H. The

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Speaker 1: second oil Age was produced by Robert Lamb, Alex wood S,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum, and Josh Stank. This episode featured en Jo

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Speaker 1: Masters as Sinov Pond and Lauren Vogelbaum as Tabitha Veil.

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Speaker 1: Supporting voice work by Annie Reese, Matt Frederick, Ben Bolan,

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Speaker 1: Alexander Williams, Alison louder Milk, and Sebastian Lamb intro outro,

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Speaker 1: and supporting music created by the Weirding Module. Learn more

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Speaker 1: at Modules dot band camp dot com. Music for the

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Speaker 1: graphing Media segment Fourth Way by a Lith provided by

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Speaker 1: King de Luxe Records. Learn more at King de Luxe

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Speaker 1: dot c A form more podcasts from iart Radio, visit

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Speaker 1: your favorite shows