Speaker 1: Oh. The following is a production by r reading of
Speaker 1: this episode contains depictions of drug use and strong violence.
Speaker 1: A second oil age. Who were the Tritons? Were they
Speaker 1: the underwater beings described in our myths? Or did they
Speaker 1: simply emerge into a world conveniently primed to accept them.
Speaker 1: Were they our ancestors, our distant cousins, something else? A
Speaker 1: path has had honed me to endure them and their
Speaker 1: narread forms, so I knew as much as anyone about
Speaker 1: their abilities. I recognized the whorls and the wet stone
Speaker 1: beneath me for what they were, the work of the Proteus,
Speaker 1: the Triton bio techniq, so coveted by UDX, so necessary
Speaker 1: to its undersea megaprojects. The things toiled in the darkness,
Speaker 1: far from observation, but footage existed, frightful and amorphous masses
Speaker 1: that bored through stone and huge drilling templates and foundations
Speaker 1: from the sea floor itself. Everywhere they left this pattern,
Speaker 1: I drifted in and out of consciousness. I heard the
Speaker 1: rumble of the Proteus in the stone halls around me,
Speaker 1: but it might have just been the nadier of the
Speaker 1: black drug's influence. Unreality bleeding in with the uncertainty and fear.
Speaker 1: But I woke at last, not to the drone of
Speaker 1: some writhing alien burrower, but to the wine of surface technology,
Speaker 1: the scan of a graph Inc tattoo applicator. I felt
Speaker 1: it pressed cold against my chest tattoo, the tingle of
Speaker 1: the particles realigning beneath my skin. I lashed out. Jesus
Speaker 1: calmed down. I swung wildly and tried to spring to
Speaker 1: my feet, but the shackle on my ankle caught, chained
Speaker 1: to a loop in the stone. Hoffman, dressed in a
Speaker 1: black skin suit, backed away from me to just outside
Speaker 1: the limits of my leash. He had a graph Inc
Speaker 1: applicator in hand. I caught movement to my left and
Speaker 1: saw Jack's as well, identically dressed and armed with her
Speaker 1: taped squid gun. A vicious slash wound bisected of face,
Speaker 1: which had been hastily stabled back together with suit. Youre, Jill,
Speaker 1: Are you done, unchained me? You're going to make the
Speaker 1: last ones difficult, aren't you. I glanced down at the
Speaker 1: mark on my chest and saw that it was now
Speaker 1: a series of meaningless black bars. The lower marks were
Speaker 1: the same, Fastard, do you think I'm happy with this.
Speaker 1: Do you think I wanted to squeeze into one of
Speaker 1: those things and come down here? I ask you. You promised,
Speaker 1: and then you went ahead and exceeded even my most
Speaker 1: pessimistic expectations. You are barely here a day, and we've
Speaker 1: slid from a carefully calculated piece to the threshold of disaster,
Speaker 1: incalculable productivity loss, multiple fatalities, trite, and relations set back
Speaker 1: fifty years. And you know what, I was really looking
Speaker 1: forward to our town and now that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, all you had to do was going there
Speaker 1: and put on your show and report back to the surface.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know if you're just an apathist burnout
Speaker 1: or an actual traitor, but you're not my problem anymore.
Speaker 1: As soon as we get those last two elder signs off,
Speaker 1: let me that's not how I do things. You forced
Speaker 1: everyone's hand here upon. It wasn't me. It was that
Speaker 1: thing posing as a journalist. A journalist, not the drug
Speaker 1: dup maniac for the crazy knives. You did this. You're
Speaker 1: the one who answer to them. We'll see about that.
Speaker 1: I flexed the other phantom muscle in my body. But
Speaker 1: instead of an explosion of basilisk A sharp pain cut
Speaker 1: through my thigh. I reached down and felt blood and
Speaker 1: suit your Joe. We cut that out as soon as
Speaker 1: we got here. We also extracted the neurotoxin cap, the
Speaker 1: one that busts if your cortisol levels get too high.
Speaker 1: They probably didn't tell you about that one, did they
Speaker 1: anti interrogation measure. But we can't have your stroking out
Speaker 1: on our hosts. They're sending someone new up early, just
Speaker 1: for you. I came here for Buchlan, that's it, not
Speaker 1: as an apathis weapons test, not to assassinate anyone. You're
Speaker 1: the one disarming a DX agent and a Triton dungeon.
Speaker 1: I am risking everything for you, Dex right now, for
Speaker 1: our world, our children, not that you care anything about it.
Speaker 1: As I stared up at him, the purple orbs pulsated
Speaker 1: behind him, or seemed to twisting. The recesses of the
Speaker 1: proteus is carved whorls. Hoffman's shadow lengthened. I saw the
Speaker 1: shadowed Saint Bob and its depths like something drowned. Chane me.
Speaker 1: I need those last marks, No, you need me. I'm
Speaker 1: your only shot at getting back to the surface alive,
Speaker 1: warning you dex about what really happened, and if you
Speaker 1: that's when the butt of Jacks's squid gun connected with
Speaker 1: the back of my head and I saw no more. Hello,
Speaker 1: this is Sandy Holland and you're listening to. By the way,
Speaker 1: joining me in the studio is Cameron Lack, author, techno
Speaker 1: shaman and leading novelty theory proponent. Thanks for joining us, Cameron.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Sandy. Before we go any further,
Speaker 1: I feel like we have to get this out of
Speaker 1: the way. Is novelty theory or religion? Uh No. And
Speaker 1: we don't hold Terrence McKenna to be a prophety there.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the last things he would
Speaker 1: have wanted, of course, But I understand the temptation to
Speaker 1: call us by the R word, because we do what
Speaker 1: religions do. We look for order in the cosmos, and
Speaker 1: we do have a few sacred texts and programs, and
Speaker 1: of course some of our central ideas go back thousands
Speaker 1: of years. You're talking about the eaching, the ancient form
Speaker 1: of Chinese divination. Yes, but it's not just that. It's
Speaker 1: more than rare divination. The Book of Changes at least
Speaker 1: from our perspective, from a human perspective, is an uncertainty engine.
Speaker 1: We truly analyze it specifically, there's a sequence in it
Speaker 1: called the King Wind sequence, and it reveals the way
Speaker 1: time flows through our world. And this is the time wave. Yes,
Speaker 1: and just like a wave, it has peaks and valleys,
Speaker 1: and when we look at those peaks and valleys, we
Speaker 1: find they line up just right, just right with major
Speaker 1: events human history. Now, critics point out that during his
Speaker 1: own lifetime, McKenna believe time would end in How do
Speaker 1: you respond to that he was wrong? I mean, McKenna
Speaker 1: died in the year two thousand. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: important to note here. Yes, of course, and he was
Speaker 1: making a prediction, ultimately an inaccurate one based on a
Speaker 1: limited computing power. They didn't have what we have back
Speaker 1: in the bay. But what he observed and what he
Speaker 1: measured that was all real. There's a fractal pattern in
Speaker 1: the flow of time, the rate of change in our lives,
Speaker 1: in our universe, as we are pulled toward a singularity
Speaker 1: of infinite complexity, infinite interconnectedness. It's the hidden part of
Speaker 1: the future. It's what's over the wave, and you still
Speaker 1: believe that the time wave will reach its zero point.
Speaker 1: Oh yes it will. Very autopsy findings here on the
Speaker 1: number of need not open on from ports. Post mortem
Speaker 1: lividity matches up with reports of the corpsus position in
Speaker 1: the has found by the mariners. Female blonde, mid thirties.
Speaker 1: Cause of death appears to be severe cranial cerebral injury.
Speaker 1: Clear science of traumatic intercranial hemorrhage. Some of the exposed
Speaker 1: brain tissues unlike anything I've ever seen before. Only two
Speaker 1: full brain autopsy here. First agreed Mike. We have burn
Speaker 1: marks to the forehead and scalp, seemingly in the shape
Speaker 1: of a human hand. Curious, no communit, no physical documentation,
Speaker 1: I think we need no no. I was only out
Speaker 1: long enough for them to wipe the last of the
Speaker 1: elder signs from my skin, leaving rows of impotent black
Speaker 1: bars in their place. I looked up, fresh blood dripping
Speaker 1: from my scalp, just in time to see Jack's vanished
Speaker 1: through a nearby tunnel aperture. I marked it. That was
Speaker 1: the way. Probably not a direct physical connection back to Atlas,
Speaker 1: but at least do you think I wanted to squeeze
Speaker 1: into one of those things. The tunnels had to connect
Speaker 1: to a subport or an airlock, but suits didn't work
Speaker 1: this deep, at least not for landsfolk. I tugged on
Speaker 1: the chain, but it was set into the stone, and
Speaker 1: I realized now that the chain and shackle weren't metal
Speaker 1: at all, but something else. Triton manufacture, something excreted by
Speaker 1: their blob like automatons. The lynx felt ceramic that held
Speaker 1: like steel. They'd cut away my outer clothing, leaving me
Speaker 1: nothing but a vest in shorts. I was unarmed and
Speaker 1: pharmaceutically bare, chained like an animal, and what little at
Speaker 1: this would be recalled counting backwoods. Now ten nine, I
Speaker 1: heard a sound in the gloom. I recognized the silhouette
Speaker 1: of a Triton standing just outside the glow of the
Speaker 1: floating lamps. I caught the faintest glimpse of its dark
Speaker 1: eyes watching me, but it didn't advance. Instead, another emerged
Speaker 1: from the shadows beside it and stalked toward me across
Speaker 1: the great domed chamber. She was an aread. That much
Speaker 1: was obvious by her stature and the symmetry of her features,
Speaker 1: But there was something unfinished in her appearance. Her skin
Speaker 1: had all the pallor of a corpse near translucent. Her
Speaker 1: black hair clung like beached kelp. She wore a purple
Speaker 1: biotechnic skin suit, and the body beneath it seemed preternatural,
Speaker 1: as if she had too many ribs. She regarded me
Speaker 1: with bloodshot eyes and grinned. So you're the one sinof pan.
Speaker 1: I'm an official Eudex agent. Hush, you'll have your chance
Speaker 1: to talk for the purposes of our time together. You
Speaker 1: can call me fetus, another name from your myths. I'm
Speaker 1: an official Eudex agent. I invoke ambassador status in the
Speaker 1: terms of the oceanic cicle. Doesn't matter anymore. Were be
Speaker 1: on that. You've crossed the line. You belong to the
Speaker 1: deep now. I felt her terrible waves begin to move
Speaker 1: through my mind, teasing the pleasure circuits a path this
Speaker 1: worked so hard to deaden. The oilman prepared you well.
Speaker 1: Do you feel it shadows of what it felt to
Speaker 1: be human? I feel nothing before they carved it out
Speaker 1: of you in order to shield your desire from the
Speaker 1: likes of me. It intensified and I collapsed, trembling, ripping
Speaker 1: the spirals in the floor. She stood over me now
Speaker 1: just beyond the limits of my chain, but close enough
Speaker 1: for me to smell the fragrance of sea water, and honey,
Speaker 1: now tell me, tell me are The second oil age
Speaker 1: was produced by Robert Lamb, Alex Williams, Lauren Vogelbaum, and
Speaker 1: Josh Stain. This episode featured an jel Masters as sinov Pon,
Speaker 1: Robin Bludworth as kin Hoffman, Annie Reese as Jack's, Eileen
Speaker 1: Loyd as Thetis, Joe McCormick as Cameron Lack, and Dylan
Speaker 1: Fagin as Sandy Holland supporting voice work by Holly Fry
Speaker 1: and Scott Benjamin intro outro, and supporting music created by
Speaker 1: the Weirding Mondule. Learn more at Module dot bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 1: M from more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.