Speaker 1: Following a production by r pointing of this episode contains
Speaker 1: depictions of drug use. A second Oil Atlas station, take
Speaker 1: a lifetime of tension between landsfolk and recombined, and seal
Speaker 1: it all up in the depths, crush it beneath three
Speaker 1: D atmospheres worth of pressure, see what happens close quarters
Speaker 1: and an extreme environment. Those factors alone were probably enough
Speaker 1: to generate a certain amount of enhanced cohesion US, no
Speaker 1: matter how long the download lines, no matter their thirst
Speaker 1: for surface media, Atlas was cut off, perhaps not so
Speaker 1: much the bottom of the world as the very edge
Speaker 1: of it. I began to see what Veil was after,
Speaker 1: and despite all the crap, maybe it really was there
Speaker 1: for the finding. I left Hoffman to his atrium. I
Speaker 1: expected to run right back into Jack's, but it appeared
Speaker 1: I was chaperone free, not that they needed a physical
Speaker 1: guard to keep tabs on me. There were cameras everywhere,
Speaker 1: which of course made the situation with Bouklyn all the
Speaker 1: more grating. Footage existed, or had existed, to tell us
Speaker 1: just where Golden Boy had gone. Command suspected the Triton's.
Speaker 1: They'd been pretty explicit. I wasn't sure what Hoffman had
Speaker 1: to do with it all, but he knew more than
Speaker 1: he led on. I ignored his advice on the virtues
Speaker 1: of cleanliness and a good night's sleep. The basilisk drug
Speaker 1: wouldn't let me settle just yet. Anyway, I headed back
Speaker 1: to the bazaar and squeezed my way into the barrel eye.
Speaker 1: It was as much bar as you could possibly cram
Speaker 1: into a space so narrow, just bar and stools and
Speaker 1: a wall of glittering bottles, all beneath the neon glow.
Speaker 1: I poured myself through the crowd. They eyed me with suspicion.
Speaker 1: Even with my tattoos covered, I stood out in such
Speaker 1: a tight knit community, and word had likely spread. Perhaps
Speaker 1: that's why a spot opened up at the bar so
Speaker 1: quickly I took it and caught the bartender's double lidded eyes.
Speaker 1: What are you having whiskey? You want the good stuff
Speaker 1: with the cheap stuff? You have good stuff down here? Well, hey,
Speaker 1: you never know when a fresh face is going to
Speaker 1: show up, probably with a company spending account. Sure top shelf.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's more middle a double then, gotcha. Before
Speaker 1: I could ask him anything more useful, he moved over
Speaker 1: to another patron, so I drank. It didn't matter how
Speaker 1: confident the black drug made me feel. I still needed
Speaker 1: something to do with my hands, a prop, a reason
Speaker 1: for squirming into a place like this and asking inconvenient questions.
Speaker 1: I had another. I showed off one of my blades
Speaker 1: to a plastered a u V Tech, but refused to
Speaker 1: do a knife trick. That's more of a drink six thing.
Speaker 1: The crowd swelled, hot with mingled sweat and the saccarin
Speaker 1: breath of the Inebriated, I brushed off a bramble bearded
Speaker 1: worker's offer for an other drink and rose to follow
Speaker 1: the bartender out through the bead curtained rear exit. The
Speaker 1: room was tight. I worked my way out into the
Speaker 1: bazaar's back alley, just in time to watch him slip
Speaker 1: into a toilet pod. I stalled and pretended to check
Speaker 1: out a handful of ragged flyers plastered to the rear
Speaker 1: of the bar addiction services, a prayer group of some kind.
Speaker 1: I glanced back down the row of pods and saw
Speaker 1: a familiar face. It stared back at me from the crowd,
Speaker 1: behind a trio of cavorting drunks by a tobacco machine.
Speaker 1: It was vail. I kept a poker face, but began
Speaker 1: moving my way toward her through the crowd. After all,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't a nosy newcomer like me chat up a
Speaker 1: random blonde with a staring problem. I was just glad
Speaker 1: she'd made it out of the crate. I'd scarcely closed
Speaker 1: half the distance before she ducked away. I followed, pushing
Speaker 1: my way through the drunks, but I lost her almost immediately.
Speaker 1: I stood there a moment, scanning the crowd as it
Speaker 1: moved around me, until the jostle of bodies became too much,
Speaker 1: and I just moved with them. I didn't blame her.
Speaker 1: Chatting with me was trouble. Chatting with her was trouble.
Speaker 1: I was just a little too intoxicated to think about it. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I was a little too intoxicated in general. I gave
Speaker 1: up on the bartender and whatever dead end tips might
Speaker 1: have come of it, and I had no interest in
Speaker 1: anything else he might be peddling. I kept walking. Mm Hmmtoric,
Speaker 1: ye heaven, and ye that dwell in them, whoa to
Speaker 1: the inhabitors of the earth and of the sea, for
Speaker 1: the devil is calmed down? Unto you, Having great wrath,
Speaker 1: because he knoweth that he has but a short time.
Speaker 1: And I stood upon the sands of the sea, and
Speaker 1: Saul beast rise up out of the sea, having seven
Speaker 1: heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns,
Speaker 1: and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. See, my children,
Speaker 1: it is all foretold the inhabitors of the earth, the
Speaker 1: inhabitors of the sea. The Book of Revelation spoke to
Speaker 1: this very day and age, as we gather as a
Speaker 1: people on the very threshold of armor, getting for it
Speaker 1: is written. And the second Angel poured out his vial
Speaker 1: upon the sea, and it became as the blood of
Speaker 1: a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea.
Speaker 1: And the fifth Angel poured out his vial upon the
Speaker 1: seat of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness.
Speaker 1: And they gnawled their tongues in pain. For in one hour,
Speaker 1: so great riches has come to night the Word of God.
Speaker 1: Praise Jesus and blessed him who rocked above the water,
Speaker 1: and not blow these the Holy book. God is still
Speaker 1: speaking to us. Can I get an amen? Can I
Speaker 1: see those calm units in the air? God, He's still speaking. God,
Speaker 1: he still seeing God. He speaks, He speaking God's silos
Speaker 1: speaking sickle speed, still sickness, God sick is sleeping. Jana
Speaker 1: Bari first made her splash in Atlanta's art world five
Speaker 1: years ago. Her latest work explores the recombined experience in America.
Speaker 1: Tabitha Vale has more. Jana Bari Studio in South Atlanta
Speaker 1: occupies the gymnasium of a former elementary school. Look closely
Speaker 1: and you can still see the lines of a basketball
Speaker 1: court on the wooden planks. It also once provided shelter
Speaker 1: for climate refugees. Now it's home to a series of
Speaker 1: six concrete wall fragments from around the country, each once
Speaker 1: part of the nation's coastal fortifications against a growing recombined population.
Speaker 1: This one's from Louisiana. So I'm trying to incorporate the
Speaker 1: right mixture of immigrant cultures and the murals. So it's
Speaker 1: a lot trickier than you might think. You've got centuries
Speaker 1: of cross cultural and multi lingual heritage there, all before
Speaker 1: the oil crisis. Of course. A Bori made her name
Speaker 1: in the art world with the use of decay primed
Speaker 1: meta pigments, creating murals that aged and eroded mere minutes
Speaker 1: after exposure. For her walls project, however, she's depending on
Speaker 1: traditional paints and practical materials. This wall segment is my favorite.
Speaker 1: See this smugglers doors board right through the concrete and
Speaker 1: that's why they discarded it. The boy grew up in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: one of some ten thousand transgend children legally adopted by
Speaker 1: sister and parents before the outlaw of the practice. Through
Speaker 1: her art, she attempts to communicate the transgend experience to
Speaker 1: a wider audience, and in doing so, explore her own roots.
Speaker 1: I never fit in anywhere growing up, and when people
Speaker 1: found out, they treated me like I was exotic, or
Speaker 1: told me that I belonged on a trawler at least
Speaker 1: on the other side of these walls. I mean, even
Speaker 1: friends tried to convince me that I should just be
Speaker 1: content and be grateful. But I'm not. I mean, are you,
Speaker 1: I'm not content. I wandered through the crowded avenues of
Speaker 1: the bazaar, A complex I came to realize wasn't a
Speaker 1: single large module, but three of them lined up beside
Speaker 1: each other, all within the vast sprawl of Atlas. The
Speaker 1: second elongated chamber was much like the first, composed of
Speaker 1: overlapping spheres and stuffed with cheap, prefabricated structures to create
Speaker 1: the semblance of a crowded cityscape. It was mostly more
Speaker 1: of the same food stands and vending machines. A stall
Speaker 1: where a recombined tattoo artist inscribed someone's back with a
Speaker 1: graph inc scanner a noisome arcade. But it wasn't all
Speaker 1: commerce and consumption. In the Atlas Bazaar, I passed by
Speaker 1: divination machines as gaudy as any pachinko or slot. Their
Speaker 1: palm raiding panels and ore a lens is smudged with
Speaker 1: the oil of countless fingerprints. The mechanical hands of an
Speaker 1: e ching machine moved beneath a plexiglass bubble to flip
Speaker 1: coins and position yarrow stalks. A mere app couldn't cut it,
Speaker 1: we like our ancient fortune telling physical the machines gave
Speaker 1: way to slender alcoves devoted to deities and spirits from
Speaker 1: a dozen cultures. Recombined Jesus as well as his predecessor,
Speaker 1: the Schwissien lords of Water, Mary, Ganesha, Ma Trea, and
Speaker 1: the Buddha. Their gold leaf glistered in the light of
Speaker 1: glow sticks and artificial candles littered round their bases. I
Speaker 1: even spied an altar to the mother and father. Abstract
Speaker 1: coral figures not worshiped till the advent of the Second
Speaker 1: oil Age. The faithful clustered about. They were all races,
Speaker 1: all creeds, all genders, both branches of human genetic lineage.
Speaker 1: Bald heads bowed into gild necks, just stalls away from
Speaker 1: their landsfolk, compatriots, all reaching out for something to hold
Speaker 1: their hand through the chaos. I admired their devotion, their
Speaker 1: ability to find solace in a demon haunted world and
Speaker 1: distill hope from silent stone. And at the same time
Speaker 1: I despised them for their certainty, the very strain of
Speaker 1: madness that my mother absconded with to the Christ of
Speaker 1: the wilderness society and their landlocked compound to await some
Speaker 1: fabled rapture or return. I stopped and caught my breath
Speaker 1: beside an empty vestibule. It's God removed for repairs, no doubt,
Speaker 1: I meaned against the wall. The basilisk was wearing thin.
Speaker 1: I felt for the applicator in my jacket, and since
Speaker 1: the subdermal doses inside me each just a mental exercise
Speaker 1: away from deployment. But no, I needed actual sleep. If
Speaker 1: I was going to face marsh and keep her naiads
Speaker 1: out of my head apatheis conditioned or not, I needed rest.
Speaker 1: I looked up into the darkness of the alcove. For
Speaker 1: a fleeting second, I sensed someone lurking watching me from within.
Speaker 1: I strained my eyes and saw that the stall was occupied.
Speaker 1: After all, A shadowy saint stood in the murk. The
Speaker 1: substance of the statue somehow geologic eroded, like something warped
Speaker 1: in the deepest thermal vents. I pushed myself up off
Speaker 1: the wall and left her. I let the communit guide
Speaker 1: me out of the bazaar through twisting corridors and past
Speaker 1: recombined workers, still glistening with seawater, just returned from their
Speaker 1: toils in open ocean. I reached the habitat module and
Speaker 1: scanned my way into a spherical room. In doing this,
Speaker 1: from the perils of the design, weapons and were imperfections.
Speaker 1: You didn't think of it as a control the se
Speaker 1: an ideal of tentative to No, not now, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing this now. I stripped out of my gear and
Speaker 1: stumbled into the rooms shower pod. I let it wash
Speaker 1: over me, burning the grind him and sweat from my
Speaker 1: body in a cloud of billowing steam. They are relentless.
Speaker 1: They open is very fun, but you too have been
Speaker 1: pretty men. Stop stop a rash, exceed, come off just
Speaker 1: a bit more. No, I'm not ready. Three, No kud
Speaker 1: I need now. The second oil Age was produced by
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, Alex Williams, Lauren Vogelbaum, and Josh Thain. This
Speaker 1: episode featured on Joel Masters as snow Pond, Lauren Vogelbaum
Speaker 1: as Tabitha Vale, Julie Douglas as Janny Bory, Jed Drummond
Speaker 1: as Pastor Obelisk, and Chuck Bryant as the Bartender. Supporting
Speaker 1: voice work by Gina Rakiki and Alexander Williams intro Altro,
Speaker 1: and supporting music created by the weirding Mondule. Learn more
Speaker 1: at Module dot band camp dot com, pass Shire Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the Heart radio app, Papple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.