Episode 2: Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang

(upbeat music) - All right, welcome to Unresolved. I'm Dezi Ian, today, what's on the schedule? - We are reading The Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang. - And this particular story is his first published short story. He came out with a bang, published in 1990. It was nominated for the Hugo and it won the Nebula Award. And it is an astonishing story. I'm kind of nervous actually going into this that I've been not gonna do it justice. - I think we can have a good crack at it, why not? - I'm super grateful for doing this particular episode. One is it, like I pushed me to Revy Genesis, like I've been like postponing getting through the Bible for like two years. And the second is, I don't think I really appreciated how good this story was the first time I read it. I think because it's the first story in the book and it was my first encounter with Ted, maybe I rushed it a bit, but yeah, goodness, really. Some of these lines are amazing. - So The Tower of Babylon is a retelling of a story that is more commonly referred to as the Tower of Babel, the story in Genesis where man seeks to make a name for themselves by building a tower unto the heavens. God sees us, he's not too happy. God decides to scatter them abroad and mix up their languages. And that's why we all speak different languages according to Genesis. - And where we get the word Babel from. Which is Hebrew for Babylon. Babylon is between the Euphrates and the Tigris River in Iraq, about 75 kilometers south of Baghdad. It is believed that the original Tower of Babel was a temple to Marduk, which was a Ziggurat. And most of the depictions of Babylon, they have like the Euphrates River and then directly against the walls of Babylon and then like this massive Ziggurat, which is the temple of Marduk. The more famous image of the city of Babylon are its gates. There's the gate of Ishtar. And usually this is the bright blue, vibrant faience tiles. - Ooh, but it laps just largely, are you so? - If you go there today, the blue faience tiles are actually fake, the real ones. Some Germans, they moved it to Berlin, actually in the Pergamon Museum. So you can go there today and see like the original gate of Ishtar. It's huge. It's basically a wonder of the world. I'm actually booked in to go see that in a couple of days. - Nice, that sounds good. - Put an undertaking though to like disassemble massive gate and rebuild it in a museum. - People have done that with whole palaces. - So this is a story, what is this a story about? So this is a retelling of the story of Genesis, the Tower of Babel, where in ancient Babylon and in this story the Tower of Babel is being built and they've reached the heavens and they've sent for a minor from the East, the protagonist of the story and the Egyptians from the West and their job is to mine through the ceiling of heaven. Our protagonist climbs up the tower and then begins his work mining through the top of the tower into the ceiling of heaven, at which point he hits a reservoir of the heavenly waters and ends up going through the top where he realizes he's back where he started at the bottom. And the story leaves us with the protagonist racing towards his people to tell them the shape of the world. It is a wonderful story with incredible world building. The pain that Ted goes to, to make this tower real. I totally believe this tower exists. I think it does have the themes of the original. Tower of Babel, the story of hubris, the story of defiance of God, but it also speaks to how that defiance is achieved through science, through technology, through engineering and the kind of devotion that it would take to barge in, essentially, barge into the realm of God is I think what this story is about. But we'll get to all of that. I believe that for Ted writing it, he was aiming to do an atheistic approach to the original story. But yeah, I have mixed opinions on how atheistic it actually ended up being. - In the back notes, it's described that it is Babylonian science fiction. And it reminds me of Ursula Laguin, her first science fiction story, called The Masters. It's said in ancient times where there are these masters who invent or discover the decimal system. She argues that it is an authentic, genuine science fiction story, a story in which the existence and the accomplishments of science are in some way essential. At least that's what I mean by science fiction on Mondays. On Tuesday, sometimes I mean something else. So I fit this into that category of science fiction where this is science fiction that may have been written in Babylonian times. Would you like to read out the first paragraph? - Certainly, with the tower to be laid down across the plane of Shania, it would take two days journey to walk from one end to the other. While the tower stands, it takes a four month and a half to climb from its base to its summit. If a man walks unburdened. But few men climb the tower with empty hands. The pace of most men is slowed by the cart of bricks that they pull behind them. Four months passed between the day a brick is loaded onto a cart and the day it is taken off to form part of the tower. So Ted starts off the story by telling us in three different ways how big this thing is. But this describing of this immense city in different ways to make the size of this unbelievable tower real is something that Ted will do again and again. - Indeed. And I think the inclusion of bricks in this is very important because in the original story, bricks is used as a symbol of the hubris, the of men trying to bake bricks and to take that hubris far enough to the heavens, basically. - So in Genesis, in the Tower of Babel's story, it's written, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly and they had brick for stone and slime they had for water. So the Tower of Babel itself was made of brick and there's like an obvious reason for this. This is a river land. This is a Mesopotamia. This is between the Tigris and the Euphrates. They haven't got stone around here like the Egyptians. They have clay. So clay bricks are being used here, almost out of necessity of the geography they're in. - Yeah, and it notably compared to stone, it's very man-made. Like you have to make the whole form of the brick after bake it rather than cutting out the stone from where it is. - Yeah, you're right. Clay is something you form. - Additive manufacturing is the clay and the subtractive is the sculpting from the blocks. - After this, we are introduced to the protagonist of the story, Hilalum. Hilalum had spent his life in Elham, a new Babylon only as a buyer of Elham's copper. So here's from Elham, it's on the east of Babylon and what is today Western Iran. And it's interesting that he mentions copper. The faience blue bricks that are on the Gatorvish Tower and which used to decorate the Babylon walls, they're bright blue and the way that was done in ancient times was with copper. - Really? I thought they'd been coating the outside with lapis lashling. - If you look into Egyptian faience tiles, although faience was made in a range of bright colors, the turquoise blue color, so characteristic of the material is created with copper. - It's your target. The bricks and the gate are covered in a blue glaze meant to represent lapis lazuli. - So Hilalum is coming from the east and he's traveling down the Karun river. The river that goes from Iran down to the Persian Gulf. From there, they travel up the Euphrates to head towards the city of Babylon. Also, this is reminiscent of Genesis as well. And it came to pass as they journeyed from east. They found a plane in the land of Shanar and they dwelt there. Describing how the Tower of Babylon was first started. Ted Sonny's work. Ted stresses and this is a very clever writing device. None of them had seen the tower before. So we get to experience their first impression. It's also our first impressions. And in fact, as the story progresses and they climb the tower, we're getting Halum's impression again and again and again. When you think of that name, Hilalum, Hilalum. - I had not looked into that. I hadn't, have you got any thoughts on that? - I found a few potential translations. It can be reference to the moon. But when I read it, I hear helium. - Okay. - I think I get helium, which gives me this notion of rising. I don't know. I don't know if that's intentional, but certainly when I think of it, I think of helium going up. - Hmm, I like that. I wanted to describe their first impression. It became visible when there were still leagues away, a line as thin as a strand of flux rising up from the crust of mud that was babbling on itself. As they drew closer, the crust grew into the mighty city walls, but all they saw was the tower. When they did lower their gazes to the level of the river plain, they saw the marks the tower had made outside the city. The Euphrates itself now float at the bottom of a wide sunken bed, dug to provide clay for the bricks. The heads are tilted back. The tower rising so high that it shrinks into invisibility. Helalem's friend, Nani, Pogsimine says, wait to climb that to the top. Going up to dig, it seems unnatural. - Yeah, I do really appreciate the painting with scale that he does instantly with the tower, and then taking it right down to the human level and then the emotional reaction to that. - It seems unnatural. There's a hesitation. This is something that should not exist, and they're doing something which they ought not to do. So they get to the wall and the gates closed, and they shout up top. We are the miners summoned from the land of Elham, and the gatekeepers are delighted. You are the ones who are to dig through the vault of heaven? We are. This sending up of miners who are greeted as heroes up to the top, it gave me arm again vibes. You know, the Bruce Willis. We're like, this thing's going, we're sending the miners up to save the day. - I don't know. - I can do that too. I like that. They're arriving and there's a celebration, and there's a celebration because they have finally done it. They have reached the vaults of heaven. Elham is celebrated. He's the hero that is going to come and help him take the next step. And here we're introduced to two kinds of traits here. They're the brick makers and the cart pullers. Those whose legs were roped with muscle from climbing the tower. They operate in a kind of, like a relay, where the cart pullers will go up for four days with their load of their equipment and tools, and then they will come back down. So four days up, one day down. And they pass on their equipment to the next crew, and this repeats. And it is four months from the top with a cart. So there are 30 odd crews on the way. - And I like the fact that when you have to switch over, there's also almost a sense of more movements going on than if it was just you had to go all the way to the top and then come all the way back down. - It's like Ted has thought of the engineering problem of how would you build this? And he's realized that this would be like an assembly line style where there'd be this division of labor. This is also where we're introduced to Lugutum. And I like that Lugutum is a puller, like he lugs. - Yeah, I think you're right on the meanings of the names because Lugutum is like Lug A ton. - This is where they get to the miners, the other might miners, they get to have a chat to the locals. And there's like a urban legend around this. So Nani asks, "Someone told me that the brick layers who work at the top of the tower will wail and tear their hair when a brick is dropped because it will take four months to replace. But no one takes notice when a man falls to his death. Is that true?" And Lugutum, he shakes his head and he says, "No, that's just a story, that's silly." But there is something that they value more than a man's life, which is a trial. If a brick layer drops his trial, he can do no work until a new one is brought up. For months, he cannot earn the food he eats so he must go into debt. But for man falls and the trial remains men are secretly relieved. The next one that drops his trial can pick up the extra one and continue working without incurring a debt. This is awful. I immediately thought of these war times when a man dies and everyone's eyeing off his boots. - The part that had really come through for me was the part where one of the, all of the pullers roared with laughter after Hilarlump had pointed out that this couldn't possibly be the case. And so why wouldn't you just bring up another trial? And then they all roared with laughter, saying we cannot fool this one. So it being just like with workmen groups where you'd always do a little bit of banter, trying to fool the new guy. And as a kind of, well, if you can laugh at yourself, then you'd be accepted with us. You don't take yourself too seriously trying to put yourself above anybody else when these are the people who are quite literally going above everybody else. - The ones who pull the carts are pulling his leg. And it reminds me in Australia, we often joke around with foreigners. We tell them that there are drop bears, so you shouldn't put your tents too close to the trees. And I don't know, every Australian is kind of, you know, on this joke. I've wrote some notes on this. I actually think there's more going on here. I don't think it is accidental that there is this urban legend, there is this myth. And most people accept it. Hilarlump, he confronts this with reason. And this does remind me a lot of like religious text where it's someone's like, wait a second. So for example, the great floods, wait a second, mountains are higher than 15 qubits and not of water on the earth for the flood. I think this is very clever of Ted because he makes us consider this point and hold this in our head. And even though we backtrack from it, it does say something that in this world, the tower is so immense that people take this myth seriously. - I mean, if it is something that, well, of the size that it's speaking about of stretching up through the stars, why would it not have a almost quasi religious myth structure to it? - Even to the Elamites and foreign lands, they talk about this and they believe these urban legends. And Hilarlump drinks his beer and he says, I heard that will be joined by miners from a Western land. Yes, they come from a land called Egypt, but they do not mine or as you do, they quarry stone. - And I think this is a nice little nod to the respect that the Egyptians commanded. It does seem to be this global project uniting and bringing the people together. You have the Elamites, you have the Egyptians, you have the locals. It's unclear if they're speaking the same language or not, even if they're not, they're springing together of multiple people, some multiple lands to work on a common thing together. I did pick up on that. - Do you feel that that's a reference to the original one where it's talking about if all of the people shared the same language that they could be, that there would be nothing left to oppose them? And that's why God scrambled up their languages so that they would have to disperse. So this was a coming together of different people and places despite possibly not even speaking the same language. - So the language element I think is, I mean, the Bible is fine, but I think this idea of language being a barrier to cooperation. And I think the cooperation is the bigger deal, like it wasn't necessarily the fact that the same language is so much as the barrier of language interfered from them, building whatever it is they imagined. And this is something that even is difficult to imagine that they are building and they are working together. So language or not, I think this does fit the theme of that. The section ends where Hilaram asks Luggy. He asks if Luggy will accompany them and he says, yes, only for the first four days, then we must turn back while you lucky ones go on. I long to make the climb to the top. I envy you that you will touch the vault of heaven. And Hilaram feels uneasy at this. Touch the vault of heaven. To break it open with picks, Hilaram felt uneasy this idea. He says this recurring motif of unease about the task they've set upon, that some part of him cries out that this is wrong, that we shouldn't be doing this. It's building a sense of danger to him. It's more of a moral danger, like a profound danger that what I like is in the talk of evidence later that comes into this, whether or not God wants them to do this or not, in their hearts, they feel this is wrong. And that's the thing they're ignoring. Daily climb is such a thing. To break open the vault of heaven with picks, there's a guilt to it. You wonder where this guilt comes from. How do they just in their hearts know this is wrong? Somehow they do. Mm, yeah, that does repeat throughout. That might be the evidence. The fact that part of you recognizes that this is wrong. But this is evidence that we obviously dismiss in the realm of science. We say, well, that's unfulsifiable. I can't measure that. We can get into like a huge conversation on this maybe another day. The next morning, Hill Allen went to see the tower. There was a temple off to one side that would have been impressive, if seen by itself, but it stood unnoticed beside the tower. For some reason, I imagine this is a Wes Anderson film, where it starts off in frame as a huge tower. And then it pans a bit to the side, and you hear that music playing. I can see that shot. I know exactly what you've been. Do not edit that out. That is exactly perfect. If up until this point, the tower is some abstract idea, he says, he could sense the utter solidity of it. According to the tales, the tower was constructed to have a mighty strength that no Ziggurat possessed. It was made of baked brick all the way through. He's saying, this is a solid thing. Force your mind to reckon with that. In this universe, I don't need to depend on magic and fantasy here. This here is a work of science. - Very grounded. - It reminds me of the School of Athens, the Raphael piece, where you have Plato and Aristotle in the center. Plato is pointing upwards, and Aristotle is more grounded with his hand level. There's two concepts in one. So on one hand, you've got the grounding, and on the other hand, you have this transcendent view. I think the tower, in a some way, is a representation of those two. - So it's both grounding it and lifting it to the level of metaphysics, almost. - Literally, to the realm of the heavens. It was 60 qubits on a side and rose like a square pillar that bore the weight of heaven. Around it wound a gently inclined ramp cut into the side that banded the tower like a leather strip wrapped around the handle of a whip. Did you like that similarly as well? He stumbles back with a couple of steps, turns away with a shutter. - This thing is scary to him. - That incredible speed that it goes from the banding of the tower to the handle of a whip. Yet again, it's going from the largest straight into something you can hold in your hand. - I immediately thought of like religious flagellation as like the thing that we use to punish ourselves. He thought of the story told to him in childhood, the tale following that of the deluge. Men had sailed to the edges of the world and seen the oceans falling away into the mist to join the black waters of the abyss far below. So the deluge is talking about the great flood. The waters falling into the abyss, I don't think as a biblical reference. I don't think there's any illusion that there's an edge of the world that feels more like the earth on the four elephants on the total stack. - Is it not pointing towards what they would have thought or that the time is being the world's SATA top of disk at the time? - It's more like in Ron Salem myths. Men had thus realized the extent of the earth and felt it to be small and desired to see what lay beyond its borders. They looked skyward and wondered about Yahweh's dwelling place. Above the reservoirs, they contained the waters of heaven and how many centuries ago they began the construction of the tower. A pillar to heaven, a stair that men might ascend to see the works of Yahweh and that Yahweh might descend to see the works of man. This is another two references to Genesis, by the way. So one is this idea of the waters above the heavens, as is day two, when God separated the waters by the firmament, the waters above and the waters below. But also this idea of the stairway to heaven, not the Led Zeppelin reference in Genesis, Jacob's dream, where Jacob, he dreams about the stairway whereby angels can ascend and descend from heaven. - And the inclusion of the desire to see what lay beyond its borders. This for me is Ted starting to introduce the curiosity element, like the human curiosity that creates technology, that explores, that tries to reach the heavens. I think it's being very hopeful about the general state of humanity being one that is driven by curiosity. - He says that it always seemed inspiring to Helalum, a tale of thousands of men toiling ceaselessly, but with joy, for they worked to know Yahweh better. This reminds me of the religious scientists that talk about that through science. They understand God better and understand God's work better. There is a fucking terrific line in this story about this. They gave thanks that they were permitted to see so much and beg forgiveness for their desire to see more. - If you were aware of say something like the vault of the heavens, they're being a ceiling, if you well, that could break through and knowing the nature of that ceiling a little bit more, would that not be, in a certain sense, just as profound a realization as seeing the face of God, if you will? - It could well be the case that we've realized in our own world that there was a ceiling, and we would just explain that away. Like, oh, that's just the nature of the universe that happens to be a ceiling. There's one sense where we read this and go, oh, in this world, if there was a ceiling, then of course there's more evidence of God. But actually, if that was real, I imagine we would have signed to say, oh, yeah, there's a certain height, that's where the granite begins. And then it wouldn't be seen as a remarkable miracle, it would just be seen as part of the world. - Yes, I certainly agree with you there, that there is no for sure evidence that Yahweh exists inside this universe. But what I'm meaning is, if you're experiencing or finding out something of that scale, is that's not almost a kidn to finding out that there is a God, because there is a ceiling of the universe of which we perceive it, divine in the sense of God-like, rather than an existing form of a God in the universe. - Maybe, but I mean, I could throw it right back and say that, would we not have felt that exact same way the first time we looked through a telescope and beheld the heavens, like this immensity of space? One way to interpret that is the confronting of God's face. I'm sure for a lot of people that did, the tyranny of science here, we stripped that away of any kind of religious wonder, there's a scientific wonder that this intricacies that we get to understand. I think, the first time I read this, I definitely thought, oh, it's much easier for these people to be religious when they actually hit the ceiling of God, and then I realized how many things in our own world also could be that wonderful, but we just consider that that's just a nature of things, that's just how things are. - Yeah, that's a fair point, that is a fair point. But back to what you were saying about the telescope and I would almost put that akin to a religious revelation of this vastness of space of which we'd considered there only being, well, a ceiling before, you know, almost like a dome in the sky where the stars are painted on, if you will, and suddenly there's this massive expansion of existence, it's like the world's being created in front of you, even though we're only improving our perception of it. - It's really interesting how the people in this time, they see everything as evidence for God, but it just as well could be seen as evidence that there is no God, although I don't think there's a single atheist in this story. I think God has taken for granted in this time. Yet now that he's stood at the base of the tower, his senses rebelled, insisting that nothing should stand so high, should he climb such a thing? There is a trepidation that he's feeling, like a profound unease that this is an abomination, this is somehow in a front to the divine. Like man should not stand so high, there's not something that we should have, there should be some humility, some respect, which I think is like the antithesis of science, which anything is fair game. Everything is to be explored and to be dissected and torn apart, one way. - Okay, but one sentence that you did miss there was the line he didn't feel as if you were on earth when he looked up along that tower. It goes back to that idea that you had with the School of Athens, with Plato, with his hand up, and Aristotle with his hand level. It was an almost a transcendent moment of him looking up at that tower to the point that he didn't even feel like he was on earth anymore. - On the morning of the climb, the second platform was covered edge-to-edge, with carts arranged in rows. Many were loaded with nothing but food of all sorts, sex filled with barley, wheat, lentils, onions, dates, cucumbers, loaves of bread, dried fish. There are now on the second platform of the ziggurat. At this point, there's a regular old ziggurat, but now they're at the actual tower, this whip handle that they're about to ascend. There was also a fatten ox and a goat that some priests were fitting with hoods so they could not see to either side, it would not be afraid on the climb. - It's no mistake that he's added so many different kinds of foods and these tiny, tiny items, like a buffet of different items that are going onto this cart, and then taking us up to the scale of the entire tower because it talks about the blinders that they put onto the oxes so that they wouldn't look over and go, "Oh my God, what am I doing?" - But it's like an entire world in this tower. I'm reminded of the Givery, the magic far away tree by Inid Blatton. It's a story about like in this wood and these kids go to this tree and this tree, it's like the biggest tree in the wood, and at the very top of the tree there's always a different magical land. Each chapter is like, "Oh, this particular magic land that they visit." All these people live in the tree and it's like as they climb the tree, they go through moon face and all these people that live here and there and there are all these personalities but there's an economy of things being brought up. - That's an almost Yig-Drasil reference, isn't it? The tree of life, the Norse idea of the tree of life and then they had a plane above which is inhabited by people. Yig-Drasil will come up a lot in motifs that we do especially with different religious and mythological work because it's cross-cultural as well. Everybody's got that big old tree. - Legutum stood next to the cart securing the ropes that held the wood. He let them walk up to him from where did this wood come? There was a forest of trees to the north which was planted when the towers began. You planted an entire forest? Again, they're draining the Euphrates for clay. They're failing entire forests. This is kind of funny. So they haven't even started climbing it and Nanny walks over to them staring at the streets of Babylon. He says, "I've never been even this high that I can look down upon a whole city but Legutum simply laughed." In these foreigners who were so easily impressed and they're like, "I ain't seen nothing yet." This reminds me of the Simpsons when Abe is in the plane and they haven't taken off yet and he's looking out the window and he's like, "Oh, the people are so tiny." Remember I said, Legutum, "Stay about 10 cubits behind the cart in front of you, now pull." So he's clearly the form and he's the leader of this brigade. They're pulling along and he let them notices. The surface was paved with brick with two grooves worn deep by centuries of wheels, getting the sense of the age of this. It reminds me of, if you watch those videos of like the Kung Fu masters, they do like their, I don't know if Carter's right word for Kung Fu. They do like these training sequences and you see the impressions in the stone where they've been stamping their foot for centuries and you get a sense of the age and tradition that they're a part of. So they are their climbing and this is the first leg of the climb, the first four days where they're with Legutum and they start to get an appreciation for the height. There is a cry, what's happening down there? One of your fellow miners fears the height. There is occasionally such a man among those who climb for the first time, such a man embraces the floor and cannot ascend further. - I would definitely be the same, even though I've done plenty of things that involve a lot of heights like skiing and everything. I am very anxious while I was going towards the edge. - And Legutum says, "How do you feel about the height?" And he's like, "Fine, fine, not afraid." And then Danny comes up and he goes, like they both know the truth, like they both shit scared. He says, "Baphs, we should get hooded like the oxen, the goat." Do you think that we too will fear the height when we climb higher? And this is a really nice response. He says, "We will have months to grow used to the height. By the time we reach the top of the tower, we will wish it were taller." - I don't see this part as being hubris. I see this as being a human reaction to it because what would you do if you were, say, ascending these sort of towers and things like that? And I was like, I was exactly how I said, like looking over the side, my stomach drops, I dropped the floor, flat as a pancake. What would you be saying to me? This is, for me, it's a human interaction between the two. You'd be like, "Ein, come on." By the time we get to the top of it, we've got months to get used to this. We're going to take a moment, that's absolutely fine. But by the time you get to the top, we'll wish it's taller. You see, it's comforting, it's a reassurance. - I don't feel hubris from hell on once throughout this. I feel a constant sense of unease. So, I think you're right, I think this is for the benefit of Nani. - When they woke the next morning, the miners were scarcely able to walk, so sore with their legs. - They're still with a logarithm at this point. This is still the first leg of the journey. By now, looking down the side, turn Hillelheim's knees to water. He wondered if anyone had been blown off the tower in a moment of carelessness. A man would have time to say a prayer before he hit the ground. Hillelheim's shattered at the thought. That, again, is a really, really clever way to put ourselves in that fear, even though we're not there. - So, they're reaching the end of the first leg and they're being handed off to the next crew. Like, they're like the baton that's being passed along. I like what the Guttam says when he bids farewell. He says, "Take care of your car." It has climbed the entire height of the tower more times than any man. - What's that in the Olympics where they do that? How far is that baton carried? They're on the second leg of their journey. This is such a beautiful moment. This is the part where they look at the sun setting. So, they're new form and kura. So, kura stops the train and he says, "You've never seen the sun set at this height come look." And the puller just sits on the edge. His legs hanging over to the side. The Hillelheim didn't want to see him afraid, but he still was terrified. So, if he lays down on his belly, then he's head over to the edge. - I'd be flat as a pancake, because you'd barely get me there that I would not be able to handle that. - So, Hillelheim will answer down with it and he asks, "What is different about the way the sun sets here?" It's a picture of this. So, you've got the puller who's sitting like legs dangling and totally at ease and you've got Hillelheim who's lying, the fight is a pancake, trying not to look terrified. He's head sticking over the edge. And you see that the sun starts to set and they can see it beyond the mountains. And he sees the shadow slowly moving across and then slowly creeping up the tower. And then as it gets closer, it increases in speed until it rushes past them in half a second. Hillelheim said nothing. For the first time, he knew night for what it was, the shadow of the earth itself cast against the sky. - Incredible. That's one of my favorite parts. - I feel like where Kuda interrupts Hillelheim. I feel like Ted's interrupting us to the reader and be like, "Hey, before we go any further, check this out." Like, everyone loves the sunset. And this is probably the most beautiful sunset we've ever seen and he's letting us take the time to appreciate it before continuing on with his story. I really appreciate that Ted's done this for us. Okay, so now we're entering the end of the second leg of the journey with Kuda. He can bear to stand up at the edge of the rap. He's getting used to it. Looking up the tower, there's like balconies that he sees. And he asks, "What are these balconies for?" And Kuda says they have soil spread of them so people may grow vegetables. This high water is scarce. So onions are most commonly grown. Higher up where there is more rain, you'll see beans. And then he asks, "Why is there more rain up top?" How can that be? The rain doesn't then fall here. And then Kuda says, "But dries in the air as it falls." Of course, now this is a phenomenon called verga. So you know when you see like rain clouds at a distance and you can see like these wisps coming from the clouds and there's no rain in the bottom though. That's because as rain falls, typically it dries up. So we only actually get rain on the earth when it's fishing enough that it actually gets down. But in general, the higher up you go, the more rain there is due to this phenomenon. Which means the people at this level they get this stuck with onions. And I like how Kuda is surprised. To them, this is like rain of course is more common up than below. Whereas to the earth dwellers who are only ever experienced rain or one dimension really, it's new. So this area with the balconies, he says that their children chase each other up and down the ramps, weaving amidst the pullers' carts and running along the edge of the balconies without fear. Gosh, I don't read this. I'm like, "Oh, imagine kids running along the edges and their parents are totally fine." Like they live here. He says actually to them, "Have you ever visited Babylon to Kuda's family and Kuda's wife?" She answers, "No, why would we? It's a long climb and we have all we need here." "You have no desire to actually walk on the earth?" Kuda shrugged. "We live on the road to heaven. All the work that we do is to extend it further. When we leave the tower, we will take the upward ramp, not the downward." "I immediately got the ascension vibes." So Jesus ascension, the story. "Once you've completed your earthly mission, you will ascend." And back to the devotion that you were talking about before as well. Hallelujah. And on the 8th with the family of Kuda, they enjoyed a fine meal of dried fish, bread, wine and fruit. So they're breaking bread and they're sharing wine. They're having communion, essentially. He described this area as a tiny town laid out in a line between two streets, the upward and downward ramps. There was a temple in which rituals for the festivals were performed. There were magistrates who settled disputes. There were shops which were stocked by the caravan. It's a little world within a world. It's like the Wild West where the little towns develop with their own individual little communities. I really like that. So assisting an onion is a bit grim. Onion soup every day would be a bit rough. So presumably they must do trade. But their primary staple is the onion. Oh, like French onion soup? I'm just trying to imagine, actually. So they've got this labor of people carrying and lugging all day, plus the onions. Their breath must be-- I hope they're bringing up toothbrushed. I don't think that was a thing back then. That's true. The standard default is bro, bad breath. I've already cut out the bad breath. I don't want to disrespect these people who are living in a life of devotion. We haven't been particularly irreverent so far. Why not have a little bit of that? As the miners ascended in the course of time, they came a day when the tower appeared to be the same when one looked upward or downward from the ramp's edge. So they're halfway. They're two months into this journey. And this is where they start to be able to see the lights of the foment. They can see the moon and the sun. To look up or down was frightening. The tower might have been a thread suspended in the air unattached to either Earth or Heaven. It's a killer line as well. There's another killer line immediately after. It was as if the Earth had rejected him for his faithlessness while Heaven disdained to accept him. There's that guilt, there's that doubt. I get vegetable vibes as the people who are not welcome into the heaven and also not welcome into the below. I don't think that's the accusation, but it is as being in this never space. Now they're in nor out. Yeah, I can see that. This is where doubt creeps in. So he mentions he wish Yahweh would give a sign to let men know that their venture was approved. Otherwise, how could they stay in a place that offered so little welcome to the spirit? This is, again, this feeling that Helan has the whole way throughout that in some way they're doing something they shouldn't be doing. He contrasts this to the tower dwellers who at this altitude thought knew our knees with their station. They never feared this was an improper place for men to be. The people never knew a moment's doubt. These are devout believers. Imagine being this height halfway up to Heaven, essentially. Surely there must have been some people that had doubt. Like imagine being born there and being like, you know what, I'm not so convinced. What are the atheists going to descend? Well, there's no sign of atheists in this story so far. Then anyone detectable is Ted probably. Yeah, the atheist is kind of beyond the page. For an atheist, he writes a pretty mean biblical interpretation. Oh, yeah, he's done a hell as the absence of God. There's a perfect example of that where he deliberately took a Bible story and he thought, do you know what? I think this could be a little bit better. A lot of Ted stories have allusions to the biblical scripture and like, I like exhalation itself. We'll get to all these stories. I'm really excited for this series. But I think that's an important point to mention about the Ted using the frameworks of religions to already plant you in somewhere. So it doesn't take more world building than it needs to. You've already got something to play with that at least establishes many different symbols of stories that you've got them all loaded into one already to play with and he sort of just needs to remove one part or add in one part and bring it into the real world that he really shines at. OK, so they're going, they're ascending. There are, it says, with the passage of weeks, the sun and moon peaked lower and lower in their daily journeys. The moon flooded the south side of the tower with its silver radiance glowing like the eye of Yahweh peering at them. Before long, they were precisely the same level as the moon when it passed. They had reached the height of the first of the celestial bodies. They squinted at the moon's pitted face, marveled at a stately motion that scorned any support. You know that it smithered a word or two, Ted. So as they approached the sun, it's like scorching hot this area of the tower. So they climbed at night. And the miners, the elemites, are afraid. They worry that if they did manage to sleep, they'll be baked to death before they work. Him comparing the moon to the eye of Yahweh as well as somebody watching over them. It's paranoia, it's a-- Accusing them in some way. And I think they're feeling that. Now the light of day shone upward, which seemed unnatural to the utmost. So that's the level of the stars now. And this is when there's like this wizened elder who's talking about this star that, in his grandfather's time, hit the tower and lodged itself in the tower. Nanny rushes in and says, a star is at the tower. And he let him panic, so cool. Nanny then says, oh, no, no, no, they're talking about it happening. Bloody hell, Nanny. They say that it burned and sizzled and was too bright to look upon. Many consider prying it out so that it might resume its course, but it was too hot to approach closely. And they did not quench it. And one of the miners says, and I've heard of this story, it was a transgression, something not spoken of. He's worried about the eye of Yahweh looking over him, the doubt, the guilt, the thin line that they're walking on between what they think they should be doing in the eyes of God and what they shouldn't be. So these are like celestial spheres you've interfered with. You've stopped a star, something that has been there since the fourth day. They're the horror, the way the Hololom reacts to the thought of this being turned into tools, is I think legitimate concern. Did not try to hammer it into tools, did you? I like this also that they went down for four months, and they're waiting for a sign from Yahweh that they had done something wrong, as if the star itself wasn't a sign. So they somehow have the ability to determine which signs are signs and which signs are not signs, which raises the question like, why wait for a sign? It seems quite capable of making your own judgment yourself. If that event would be dismissed as not a sign, I wonder what sign would other than God himself coming down and being like, hey guys, come on, not cool. Well, they do think that a flood, like the deluge, the original deluge should be a sign of it. The consequences of that retribution is like everyone on earth except for a single family is killed. So if that's the sign they're waiting for, they've waited too long. As they continued to climb, they were startled at how near they actually were. Now instead of climbing into the sky, they climbed up to a featureless plane that stretched endlessly in all directions. Here, I'm reminded of the term intro. He's reached the edge of the world and he's realized that the horizon is just this massive wall. It had an oppressive weight. As heavy as all the world, yet utterly without support, and he feared what he had never feared in the minds that the ceiling would collapse upon him. So the miners' perspective, if you start mining upwards, there is a definite possibility that this all could just come down on you. That's a very real fear that they'll have on a day-to-day basis and put all sorts of supports and what have you around it to make sure that doesn't happen, but what would you do with the sky? If it's one that's large enough of the sky, if I'm going to break into this thing, how much comes off exactly? Hello and wonders what kind of people were forward by living under such conditions. How do they escape the madness? Would children born under a solid sky scream if they saw the ground beneath their feet? Oh, that line. Ted, what are you doing? What are you doing to me? That's my favorite line of the entirety of the thing. Perhaps men were not meant to live in such a place. If their own nature's restrained them from approaching heaven too closely, then men should remain on the earth. Just above them hung the roof of the world itself, the absolute upper demarcation of the sky, guaranteeing their vantage point as the highest possible. Here was as much of creation as could be apprehended at once. Before they dig, the priests let a prayer to Yahweh gave their thanks that they were committed to see so much and begged forgiveness for their desire to see more. It's just really beautiful writing. Now, why are they begging for forgiveness? They know that something about this is forbidden and yet they do. Well, for me, it points towards the exact opposite of what Socrates used to believe. If man knew how to do good, then he would. But we don't experience that. We do plenty of things all of the time. When we know that it's not good for us, but we go ahead and do it anyway. This is one of my favorite metaphors in the whole thing. The earth was growing a limb into the sky. I mean, Berlin. And there's the sky in it, all the TV tower. And I was looking at that and trying to imagine that as a limb. And it's way too tiny. And I tried to imagine what a limb would look like. I'm reaching out to heaven. And it was the only time I could really appreciate the immensity in my mind's eye. So this is where Hilalum is kind of in his element. He's arrived basically at the site of a dig. So the Egyptians have just arrived and they're now surveying the site. They're looking upon the granite and its utterly featureless. And they're in lay the problem. So I imagine Hilalum like blocking up his good. It's hard hat on. And he's looking around and going up. This is not good. He's examining the featureless part. He can't find the sluice gates. These are those gates in like dams or canals. They get block off water for one section to the next. So these sluice gates, they're like these water valves, essentially. Long ago, Yahweh had released the deluge unleashing waters from both below and above. The waters of the abyss had burst forth with the springs of the earth and the waters of heaven had poured through the sluice gates in the vault. I love how he does this. And he doesn't talk about the windows of heaven. He talks about the sluice gates. I think he imagined God as an engineer. So Hilalum's looking at this and he's not thinking of windows to heaven. He's thinking that there must be sluice gates. I mean, that's how water is held back by these big massive slabs that release water. So here's the mining problem. So I imagine you're digging down and there's pockets of gas or some liquid you're trying to avoid. And that's what he's worried about in the opposite direction. He can't see the windows of heaven, the sluice gates. He can't, therefore, like reason about, are they right below a huge reservoir of water? So he's concerned like, how do we approach this as engineers? How do we dig into this? If we hit upon a reservoir, it'll empty until there is no water left in the reservoir, but there's no way of knowing how much water that will be. It might cause another great flood. It might destroy the tower. So it's a real technical problem. That's his job, though. - I wonder how they test for things like aquifers and things as miners. - The only evidence he has to work from would be these sluice gates. And he hasn't even got that. He's just got a sheer, smooth wall. It's a bit of a tricky problem. So as they're debating about how to proceed, one of the Bricklay, as he says, surely Yahweh will not wash away the tower. If the tower were sacrilege, Yahweh would have destroyed it earlier. Yet in all the centuries we've been working, we have never seen the slightest sign of Yahweh's displeasure. Neglecting the little star incident, which we don't speak about. We labor for our love of Yahweh. We have done so for all their lives. And so have our fathers for generations back. Hill alone could not keep his doubts silent at such a time. Yahweh may not punish us, but Yahweh may allow us to bring our judgment upon ourselves. Amen, probably my favorite quote in the entire story. It is true that we work with the purists of Ames, but that doesn't mean we have worked wisely. - The road to hell being paved would good intentions. - Did men truly choose the correct path and they opted to live their lives away from the soil from which they were shaped another Bible reference, from dust their art and from dust their shalt return. - I like that one too. - Another play on the interpretation of the ending. - Of life. - That is grim. - No, from the dust you came and from the dust you shall return. - So yeah, they're sitting here debating how to best approach this dig. And the Egyptians, he says, "He has shown me design which they have employed to seal the tombs of their kings. I believe their methods can provide us with safety when we begin digging." - For me, that's a sort of self comforting statement. Well, if they've got to seal the tombs of their kings then surely we're going to be all right. We're going to be all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be all right. For me, that's fretting that sounds like. - So they sacrifice an oxen of goats in the ceremony and then they start digging. They dig on an angle. And then they have these narrow corridors, which after weeks of slowly and painstakingly carving up these big round stones, they slide them up into the corridor. This is like Indiana Jones style. These large boulders that roll into place. And then they prop up the stone door with, I think they use brick. And the idea is that when they damage the brick, the stone will roll down into place and cover the door. They don't do this once, they do this again and again and again. So the idea being that if they do encounter water, they're only to trigger the higher most sliding door that would close and then they could resume their dig in a different direction. It's really quite a believable little strategy. There was a distant sound of shattering. The sound of a mountain of stone being split through in a steady growing roar. And then a torrent of water came rushing down the tunnel. They had hit a reservoir. This is very like a titanic sinking moment. - Iceberg with it. - All the while he was certain that the tunnel would collapse and crush him or else the entire vault was split open. The sky would gate beneath his feet and he would fall down to earth and midst the heavenly rain. Yahweh's punishment had come, a second deluge. So he was immediately like forgotten about the sliding doors and it's just like game over. So he was virtually running down the steps at this point and then he reached one of the chambers with the sliding stones. He stood and he saw two fellow miners standing in front of the stone that already blocked the exit. So he was rushed down. They've already triggered the safety system and he stuck on the other side. It's hopeless. The three of them stood in the rising water praying desperately, but Hillelum knew it was in vain. His fate had come at last. Yahweh had not asked the men to build the tower or to pierce the vault. The decision to build it belonged to men alone and they would die in the endeavour just as they did in any of their earthbound tasks. Their righteousness could not save them from the consequence of their deeds. So he's abandoned all hope. He's realized that this is not good and he says let us ascend and he decides that. We can't go down, we can go up. So they climb up past the wooden steps until they reach the smooth stone slope and there they waited for the water to carry them higher. Hillelum imagined that he stood in the black gullot of Yahweh as the mighty one drank deep of the waters of heaven ready to swallow the sinners. - That's amazing. - When this chamber is filled, we can swim heavenward. He would die closer to heaven than any man had ever before. Oh, the writing is so good. So Hillelum has gone into the fissure and he's stepped up furiously by a current and he's numbing cold, he can't, it's all blackness now. He could not distinguish any directions not even up or down. He thought as if his lungs were burst, he was drowning and the blackness around him entered his lungs. Suddenly the walls opened away from him. He is being carried along on a washing stream of water. He felt air above the water and then he thought no more. So the pierced heaven, water is filled up. Indiana Jones moment and he's being pulled along and there he's being spacked back out somewhere where he feels air and we're in the last part of this. - Yeah, the writing's absolutely amazing. For me, it reminds me of hearing about these cave-diving stories, the claustrophobia of that, the inescapable doom of it, if you will. It's incredibly exciting and absolutely terrifying on many levels, it's claustrophobic. You've got a fear of drowning in there. You've got the fear of God all of that. He's riddled with fear, the entirety of it. And it's such a, like you say, in Indiana Jones action moment that it's-- - The pacing change as well. It's gone from this very patient, slow ascent to this. I read this maybe four times faster than I read every other chapter. I was just being pulled into this. I was just desperate to know what happens next. So Halalam has woken up now with his face pressing against the stone and he's in this massive chamber. Then he follows a tunnel upwards. Eventually, he saw light and raced to the outside. Was it the radiance of Yahweh? Could his eyes bear to see it? Minus later, he could open them and he saw the desert. He sees a caravan moving along. He runs to it and a figure of the caravan approaches him. He turned to the man and gas, where is this place? We're heading to a wreck. Halalam stared, "You would deceive me." The man drew back on what it seemed as if you were mad from the sun. Do you know Babylon? Oh, is that your destination? That is north of Erich. It's an easy journey between them. So this caravan is heading north to Erich and northern still is Babylon, where it's from. So this trip through there has taken him quite a distance, past another city, essentially, south. I did not detect that Erich sounds so much like Iraq. Well, Iraq is apparently reference to Uruk, which is where the story of Gugmech is. The tower. Have you heard of it? Certainly. It is said men at the top are tunneling through the vault of heaven. Halalam fell to the sand. This is like a final of the ape's vides, big time, where he sees the statue of Liberty and he realizes he's back at home. It was Earth all along. He was in Chennai. He had returned to Earth. He had not experienced any miracle that Yahweh had performed a place in here. As far as he can see, he had merely sum up from the vault and entered the cabin below. Halalam's headhurt trying to think about it. Then it came to him, a seal cylinder. The world was wrapped around in some fantastic way so the heaven and earth touched. So when you read that statement, what did you imagine being the form of the universe? So it's like when you're playing one of those games on a 2D screen and when you go out the right side, you enter the left-hand side. He reasons that Yahweh had not struck down the tower and not punish them because the longest journey would merely return them to the place once they'd come. Centuries of labor would not reveal to them any more of creation than they already knew. And the story ends. He would go back to Babylon. He would tell them about the shape of the world. And that's the end of the story. So when he's saying that, there would learn nothing more about creation, my interpretation of this is, yeah, science might tell you the shape of the world. He might tell you what's here. We can explore as much as we want but we are not breaking into heaven. Even if we work together over centuries to build the most profound monument of all time, you will be returned back to us. These are your limitations. And this does remind me of Job when Job calls out God for being unkind and God goes on his rant to say, "Do you know who I am?" It's this kind of, you're not supposed to understand what I'm about. I wonder if God even noticed that I'm building the tower. I'm an atheist, as you know. I sound very religious in this, but I'm not. - So does Ted in many ways. So I don't think God's that bad. Ted obviously is an atheist, but in this, you wouldn't believe that he didn't have the mindset of, or at least some kind of idea of what it would be like to be enveloped in that religion whilst experiencing these things is shown immense empathy to the atheists. So I'm rereading Genesis for this story, actually. I read it, I don't know, 10 years ago, and I was not very impressed by it. I think I approached it wrong. But reading it deeply to try to understand this and now that I've gone through some very symbolic pieces of literature meanwhile, I was struck by our beautiful "The King James Version" of Genesis is. And the story is a very, like, they're very highly symbolic and very difficult. I think we'd have a ball going through each book, by the way. I think a ball is going through Genesis, but I don't think we're qualified for that. No, I don't think we are, but I would be quite fun to do, even if we didn't release it, going through the whole of that, maybe another day. Very bad wizards, podcasts, shout out. They did Ecclesiastes and they did Book of Job. And they did it so well from this literary perspective. They opened up this text to me. Like, whenever I read Book of Job over many years ago, I found it tedious and a slog to get through and very weird and strange and I didn't make sense. But their interpretation, it's just like, "Oh, wow, it's beautiful." There's a lot going on in here. There's a lot we can play with if we allow ourselves to play with it. So what I feel like, if you read in Genesis, the Tower of Babel's Story, it is very symbolic and it is a bit confusing and it's a bit strange what's going on and obviously a lot of culture has been built upon this since then. And I think this is a text contribution and I think it's a beautiful contribution. I think there's an important difference between the story that Ted's saying and the story that the Bible is talking about. I think Ted is much more concerned about putting the phenomena of the Tower and the anxiety and hubris of humans and putting it in a lot more forgiving light than the Bible did, let's say. So what is his position? Does he have a position? I don't think he has a position in this. I think it's an absolute mirror. It's just like all good abstract art. It's given very, very solid things for you to play with. The idea of he does it with scale with this. It goes right down to the customs, to the items of a human and then building it up all of these different inventions that go along this colossal tower, including the tower itself. And then it talks about breaking through the top of the universe and meeting themselves on the other side. It's a fantastical story, but it's not taking a standpoint of, well, this is clearly what is going on. I think it's welcoming your own idea of what that would be. It gives you a meditation of what you think the structure of the universe is. I think Ted has something to say here. I think it's quite straightforwardly a commentary on science, progress and technology, our quest for knowledge, how we find meaning. It's hubris, this act of going too far. This comes up a lot when we talk about like, whether it's genetic engineering, just because we can, should we? Just because we can build this tower to the heavens and pierce the vault, should we? And that is mentioned in Genesis where God, the reason he scrambles a language is, or at least the reason that's given, is less they'd be able to do whatever it is they imagine. As though we humans, we don't know it's good for us. If left to our own devices, we will go beyond that which we should. Our curiosity is insatiable. It's almost like the Mars project in a way. Think of how many achievements and how many people have needed to work together to escape this. And we look to the heavens and we don't want to be earthbound. We don't want to be abandoned to be alone is a scary thing. And whether we find religion or whatever, we want to ascend. We demand to be noticed, we are here. And we want to know why we are here. And I like that in the end. There was no God. Well, at least not explicitly. I mean, that's, you're free to put God into this just as everyone in the tower found a way to put God in the story. Everything was interpreted through the lens of their being a God. I think this is a story right about that. And it's very poetic that in the end, he returns to the dust, unto dust, they'll shall return. So he's a minor, he is of the earth. Would you, if you're, yeah, you're a hill of them. You've realized how vain this endeavor is. Do you go back and tell them? Yeah. Definitely. I've just found out what the universe is formed like. I would definitely go up and I'd run there as quickly as I could, in the same way. He's an interesting one here. What do you think happens when he does? Oh, I like this. What happened, what happened in the actual story? The Lord scattered them abroad from dance upon the face of all earth and they left off to build the city. So you've got this huge undertaking where people are all united. And you go back there and tell them that it's in vain. I imagine it creates a huge division. I imagine the people all disperse, return to whence they came, and resume speaking their own languages. And thus the tower of Bable's story is complete. Oh, so this is the dispersal. Remember the argument the Elamites had with the top brick layers. This like profound devotion that what they were doing was on the brink of getting into heaven. You are going to go there and you're going to shatter what their whole life has been spent doing and the generations before them. This is existential. This is going to cause some pain. I think everyone is like Elam where they're excited by the shape of it. I think this would break them apart and they would be like, this is wrong. There's anger. There's a-- Confusion. Yeah, a complete confusion. Everything that they believed in is up to question, up to doubt. Everyone they've worked with, and they're all in such peace and harmony working together for a shared cause that has been taken from them. This is like centuries of work to reach heaven. This is not centuries of work to understand the shape of the universe. That is not why people have devoted their whole lives to this. Generations of like pulling these fucking carts up and the wheels into the rail of the centuries in vain. And I think they would disperse and return back to their own lands. I think that's a nice way to imagine this ending. Yes, yeah, and fully with you there. That I hadn't in the slightest considered there. That's absolutely brilliant. Maybe this is the way God would have achieved it in Genesis, which is the best way to get them to disperse. It is to send them back and let them realize all of this has been in vain. Yeah, well, you've swayed me on that interpretation. What do you rate this one out of ten? For me, this-- it's a perfect story. It's got incredible-- Wait, is it-- for me, it is a perfect story. You've got the human element to it. You've got the fantastical element of it. You've got the believability of it. For me, when it comes to something like a fantasy, a sci-fi, this is up there. Why, I would go so far. I think this is a ten for me. I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be. If not the strongest of nines possible. I don't see anything else that I would want to see. It's got philosophy in it. You've got an amazing painting with scale that he does. I can't get over the sense of scale, of movement, of life that he brings to this story. For me, that's a ten. I am going to go ahead and say, it's a ten. What do you think? For me, I'd give this a nine. Maybe a week nine. It is a wonderful retelling. The writing in this is very beautiful. Some of these greatest one-liners get it throughout this. The writing is very precise. For a short story, the well-built isn't incredible. The themes and the running motif. The subject matter? Amazing. It's a master class in writing. And why do I give it a week nine? It's missing something for me. I very much saw this the end in coming. And I think the criticism is a little bit on the note. You can refer it to the absence of God. The hell is the absence of God. But something about this didn't challenge me enough. I wasn't wrestling over difficult concepts here, like hell is the absence of God maybe do. I really had to work at that story. Saying with house taken over, it challenged me much more than the story did. For me to give something like a strong nine or, you know, certainly a ten, I demand a bit more than just beautiful and poetic writing. I need something that will challenge me. I didn't put down this book and have to, you know, reconfigure my worldview. And I mean, that is a lot to ask of a story. Besides giving me an appreciation for an ancient story, I don't know how this would change my life or change my worldview. I didn't necessarily have that after house taken over, but I did in some regard. House taken over really challenged me. It was a very difficult book to understand. And through the process of understanding it, I had to reason about some ideas that I found very beautiful. And also it was much, much shorter. And I think four pages was house taken over. This is actually we spent just as much time going through this as we did house taken over. We did, we did. I've read this so many times now, especially in preparing for this. And I would read it again. And I would recommend everyone read it. But in terms of like, I need to, I need to work to challenge me. But the writing in this was gorgeous stunning. Just not quite, not quite the challenge that I demand of a ten. So are you comparing this against? This story does remind me in spirit of an Assamov story. Have you read the last question? I think I've passed that on to you. When we were discussing AI, you think that we're making the thing that made us in a cyclical manner. Yes, it has like this huge undertaking and technology and advancement. It has this idea that through technology, in the very, very end, we return back to whence we came, it definitely has a similar writing flavor to Ted, although I think Assamov perfected a slightly different style. But yes, for me, that's the work that I'm comparing this to. How about you? I compare this story to another one of Ted's being "Hell is the absence of God". In the sense of "in hell is the absence of God", it's taken the Christianity as a framework again and it's giving you the thought experiment of if there were such things as angels and you could actually see them, but you were still not privy to the thinking of a God figure or even the angel figures. What would that mean for humanity? I cannot wait until we get to hell as the absence of God. We're going to have a ball with that. I'm so pleased with this first installment of our series on Ted. We do intend to do these in sequence, so if you're listening and you decide to read along, next we will cover "Understand". Or we might do a few other episodes in between. Anything else, Ian? It's been great. We've kept awake alive. Thanks everybody and join us next time on Unresolved. See you later, guys. (upbeat music)