I Talked To God | CreepCast

[Music] Welcome back to CreeCast! Today we are doing a little double-headed feature starting off with one of the stories that is in our subreddit, our SashCreeCast, called esoteric isotopes, which I don't like, that isotopes are yui-yucky-yucky-num-num-time. Yui-yui-yucky-time. Yeah isotopes are like the little, the little fucking fishbugs, right? No, that's isopods. Oh, well okay, well then I say we're never proud of yucky-yucky-fun-time. We're out of yucky-hucky-nasty-todd. Guess what, right now. I thought it was like isopods, yeah. No, no, an isotope is a variant of an element that has a different number of neutrons compared to the standard. There are also the little bugs that are in fish's mouth whenever you see them. No, that's not. No, no. You ever see the movie? You're not. I don't even think it's- You ever see the movie The Bay? Yes. That's the story we're reading. Yes, I've seen The Bay. Esoteric Yucky-bug. [Music] The story should have been called. Already giving it a docket for not calling the story-esoteric-yucky-bug. [Laughter] Already a docket point from it. Literally nothing had it- It's not all, it's not all isopods that do that. It's just like the one loud thing. No, no, no. All of them do that. All of them do that. Okay. Have you seen the picture of a bunch of isopods around the background? They're extremely esoteric. There's a bunch of isopods. Ron Doritos. I mean, do you blame him? Hold on. Yes. An important image. I feel, sometimes I feel like I'm on the show with my grand father. I don't know. If I'm being completely honest, I don't really, I don't think I really know what esoteric means. [Laughter] Teacher Isaiah, could you tell me what esoteric means? No. All right. Then I'll ask my real teacher about your goals. Esoteric. Okay. Intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest. That's kind of funny. That's ironic that you wouldn't tell me that too. Because you were being esoteric yourself. [Laughter] I know what you're talking about. Dude, I know. I like the picture. I like the picture. It's a freaking picture. I want to eat them. I want to boil them and eat them. The giant, roly poly looking things. Because why? They're the good lobster, dude. What do you mean? They're the good. The lobsters are the rats of the sea and these isopods that have obviously good taste next to this vintage bag of Doritos, I think would taste delightful. You're talking to me that if you cooked up an isopod that had a belly full of Doritos and it wouldn't taste good. I don't know. Okay. So this has nothing, the story that we're reading today that has nothing to do with isopods. It was written by user project fade touched. I think this is the only story they've posted to the subreddit. But had some upvotes and Harry on our team said that we should check it out that we would like it. So, we are going to be doing that now. So project fade touched. Thank you for writing. We're putting it in our subreddit. It means a lot to us for anyone who wants to read it or support the author, we'll have it linked in the description. And thank you so much to our beautiful audio listeners on Spotify and Apple Podcast. Appreciate you for the amazing ratings there. And also thank you to our beautiful patrons. And guys, just want to let you know to hear before too long, new merch is on the way. Not sure if it's this week. Can't really. I don't know. But a new merch is coming. So all the people that have been fiending for some new fabric, let me tell you the new fabric we have is quite legit and it is very isopod coded. So without further ado, let's get into it. Esoteric isotopes. Yes. Oh, dude, it's going to kill you to say this first line. All right. I was never a very religious man. Can I kill you? Can I clip that? I've made a joke all back that you're the person that she tells warned me about. But you are in like the Saturday morning cartoon way of like, go ahead, say the bad word. Say the bad word for your mom will hear. I was ever a very religious man. Hell, I wasn't even a very good police clip that my life has lived. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for the clippers for doing that. All right. That's the last time I'm saying it unless there's another great one. But that's just awesome. Why you just want to clip me saying I'm not the good man. Most of my life was lived in direct contrast, almost every tenet of any religion. I sat there listening to the raspy breath, escaping my lungs. I was never a religious man. And even now in my final hours, I reached out to no God. I said, no prayers to fall upon absenteers. All I could think about was my life in the events that put me here. Spring of 1969. Oh, is this a little Vietnam story? I hope so. I awoke in the morning after a night of terrible sleep and stretched out as far as the space of the small cop would afford me to. Slid myself up and over its edge, slipping my feet into my black combat boots. Oh, it is. The chatter of over a dozen other men drowned out any private thoughts I might have had. Which was fine because a strange feeling of sadness had overcome me. Popping open a small trunk, I retrieved my uniform and daunted, buttoning the olive green shirt over my white undershirt. Slay. As I walked over to the edge of the tent, what? I just had slay after the, the, it just seemed like he was serving real **** there with the olive green shirt over the white undershirt. I just thought he, I just thought he was slaying all like, I don't like you saying that. Don't do that again. Thank you. Slay. As I walked over to the edge of the tent, one of the older men shouted, "Dick, hey, dick!" A glance in his direction to see the sergeant in charge of the platoon ever since our first lieutenant pit the dust coming towards me. "Sir?" I said, snapping into an attentive stance. "Eddy, is my wife?" I felt, have you been wanting to be like a, like a sergeant, really? "I've wanted to do that stupid **** and well, I'm not going to say stupid because I don't really know. I just, whenever they're sitting there like, "Waah, boom, boom!" They throw their gun around to do. "I've always wanted to, I've always wanted to not only know it, but I've wanted to lead one so long. They hear all the little, you know any people throwing the gun around?" It's oddly satisfying. It's, it's stimming for mitisms is what I would say. "Did you have something this morning, is there a reason that you're in this like state?" "What's that, what? What did I do?" "You're just so amped up, you've jumped me on the first sentence for everything. You've ran like three micro bits by yourself, completely unated." "I'll stop. You're like a fucking star, just firing on all of your stuff." I fell to the Addy's stance and look expectantly at him. "Need you out on the horn!" Apparently something's happened that requires your attention. "Race and eyebrow only to be met with a shrug is he turned to go chase down some of my other squad members. I walked to the tense edge, pulled across the lip to open it and exited it into the heavy air, thick moisture. Mornings and Vietnam were always like this. Hot muggy. The intense rain through the night hadn't helped, as a blanket of fog settled upon the ground almost so thick, it felt like you were waiting through water. I hurriedly made my way to the radio tower, stomping through the muddy ground along the way. At the top of the tower, I found the radio telephone operator waiting for me with a solemn look on his face. Ponzi and me stood and shook my hand. "Son, will. I think I'll just leave you have this." He had to be the receiver from the radio and after filling with the console, I could finally hear a voice through the static, "Richard, Richard, can you hear me?" The voice belonged to my mother, congresswoman for my home state. "Mom?" "Richard, I'm pulling some strings and bringing you home. It's your father." He. The grief was so late in her voice that I didn't even need her to finish the sentence. Honestly, I don't think I even needed this call to know. The night prior, I had the strangest dream. It was hard to recall all of it, and it started with me locked inside a dark room. I could see just a slit of light coming from a very far distance away from me, leaking into the room ever so slightly. I could tell the space I was in must have been enormous. In the dream, I could see figures pacing outside of the door. I could hear the arguing and yelling, but I couldn't make out the words they said. It was then that the door swung open to reveal my father dressed in a lab coat, which to me felt strange because my father had been a stay-at-home father for most of his life. Something almost unheard up in those days, of course, but he was adamant to support the political career of my mother. He showed over to me for what felt like a yawns, each step echoed in the space around us. As he finally arrived, I was looking down at him from dozens of different angles at one. "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do, I've tried, I've failed. Please tell him I tried." The dream warped and I was now looking down on my father in bed, just one angle this time, looking far too old, much more frail than he had when I left. It looked back up at me, and his face contorted into horror. He tried to wriggle out of the bed, but it was like his limbs simply wouldn't function. As he struggled to move, he opened his mouth to speak. No sound escaped him, but from the movement of his lips I could garner the words, "You said that no sound is. escaped him. So I guess that is what it would sound like. Just moan. From his lips, I could garner the words I'm sorry again and again, then I woke up. Richard, honey, are you there? The voice of my mother brought me back to the present moment. Yes, set there, Numbly. Listen, you'll be home by the end of the day, okay? We need you home. Sharon, Sharon is inconsolable. And Michael, he's Michael in 1969, they're going to have him home by the end of the day. I just want to say, I didn't, I didn't want to stop the flow. But it was very funny to me that there's more words like my dad came out in a lab coat. And I made it seem like he's like, which was strange because he was a guy who landscaped yards, whatever, it's like the way that they presented the lab coat thing was funny. Yeah, I don't know. I get, unless it's like, unless the bass is nearby, I don't know, right? Or is he in? No, he's in, he's in Vietnam. Oh, yeah, he said the Vietnam mornings. Yeah, put combat boots. He's talking to a platoon sergeant because the lieutenant got killed. So yeah, he's in, he's in combat. What does his model is the anonymous? Well, I guess, what were they, was it C-130s back then? What was the transport plane? I don't know, 130s been around that long? Unibomor, bomber? Well, I don't, but you have a uniformer. The name of that big black one that's like, it looks sick. What's the name of that one? That's a Unibomor, right? The uniformer's cousin. All right, what's the nickname? What was the, what's the big black one? Okay, it was the C-130. It says that the two transport aircrafts were the C-130 and the C-141. Okay, so yeah, okay, yeah, you can get there in one day, then I think like the flight over the oceans, like 11 hours or something like that. I just, I just literally Google, I just, I just googled, could you fly to Vietnam to America in one day in 1968 and said, no, you cannot fly from Vietnam to United States in one day in 1968. Just want to say that. That's what, yeah, that's what Google says. It says airtime would be 26 hours. I like how this guy made a story for our subreddit. I was like, really pumped about it. Really like, I don't think this timeline's right. I think this is wrong. Incorrect. Yeah, now if he was flying on the Unibomor, Ted Kazinsky flying through the air. What is that? It's a year in a bomber. What is that? What is that? What is that actual airplane called? Which plane are you talking about? It's the fucking big black one. That's like kind of flat and wide. Oh, the B2 is that was called B2 bomber? That's what I'm talking about. That's what that's what he, that's what he flew. Yeah, that's what he flew home. That makes six. The stealth bomber, the stealth bomber, sneakily going to break the laws of time and get home from Vietnam to American one day. Okay, so the B2 production ended in the year 2000. So I don't think in 1969 he would have. We don't make him anymore had access to one. Yeah, no, they still make him. I'm saying that they, that's when they started. It was first made in 1988 and the production was from 1988 to 2000. You know, those things cost over a billion dollars. Yeah, easy. Chum change. Anything to get our boys home, right? We'll be carrying that's worth a billion dollars. It's two billion, actually, it's two billion. It seems like such an excessive amount of money to put into a stupid fucking plane to get our boys out just randomly getting like really political about it. So someone, someone crashed one during a test flight too. Was he fired or killed? I mean, he had to be killed. I'm sure he was fired, but it was on landing it like he lived the crash, but like the plane was destroyed, just two billion dollars. Right. Yeah, I think two billion dollars for a stupid fucking plane is not worth it. Think about what you could do with two billion dollars, man. Think about how many Dave and Buster's you could open with two billion dollars. That's how many day it cost a minimum of 11.8 million dollars with a requirement of a significant portion around four million to six million to open a Dave and Buster's. All right. Okay, hold up with two billion dollars, you could open about 400 company on locations. I just want to say that that's what we're missing. I mean, like, I'm not gonna try to get political or anything, but that's what we're missing. I thought you said anything to bring those boys home. Well, I mean, you know, that's before I knew. I mean, even though even though the B2 bomber wasn't really bringing anyone home, it was a bombing plane. I thought that dropped the people off. That's what they called the bomber. I think it's like a big parachute plane. No, it drops bombs. Bomb, man. That's why it's called a bomber, like sour cadence. It's very obvious now, but, you know, do you think the ones people jump out of the carriers would be called bomber? They got it. It's sick. Isn't it? Isn't that kind of cool? If you're like, bombs away, boys! Did he drop all the people? It'd be fucking cool. Okay. I'm pretty sure every aerial combat unit jumps out of C-130s. So it's just like the standard, the backdoor drops open and they run out of this. Is this the unsub podcast? Why don't we get back to fucking this horror story? All right. All right. All right. Yeah. Okay. Get whatever, whatever. Okay. I'm not going to get mad. Sharon, my younger sister by five years, was only 18. She had absolutely been a daddy's girl from the time she could speak, so I could imagine she was devastated. Michael was our younger brother, and he was only 15. I've been in Vietnam for four years at this point, so I missed his becoming a teen era. I'd gotten letters, though, describing how difficult he had become for my mother. Apparently, he was a real rebel. I've been caught drinking, smoking, reefer, even got himself in some hot water when you burned down in a band and factory. All right. I stood up and I could hear my mother saying something on the radio, but all I could think about was my father. I wasn't there in his final moments. The worst part of it for me was that I wasn't even drafted. I chose this stupidly, of course. Instead, I should have stayed home. I should have let my parents get me set up with a cushy government job. I didn't see them in four whole years. Now I never would again. My mother was accurate with the information. It wasn't long after a helicopter landed to evacuate me to the nearest friendly airport and out of Vietnam altogether. Some 16 hours after waking up, I was home. Some 16 hours after waking up, I was home, stolen from the war into the dead night. Pun landed in Washington, D.C. I was greeted by a driver holding a sign with my name on it. I broke quietly through the night to my family's townhouse in the city. If I thought the air in Vietnam was thick, it was nothing compared to the somber stillness that awaited me in the house. Despite it being one in the morning, I could hear sharing upstairs crying, layered into the far too loud song, fortunate sun, blaring for Michael's room. My mother was sitting on the stairs, waiting my arrival. Her eyes were puffy and red as she strode over to embrace me, and the moment my arms wrapped around her, she began to sob. I held my mother there for some time before I went to comfort Sharon. I noticed Michael's door was plastered with anti-war stickers, peace signs, and other hip shit. After I got done trying and failing to pacify my sister, I went to his door, which was locked. I sighed and went to my parents room. I glanced at the ceiling where I looked down at my father in my dream, expecting nothing. Only to be shocked by what looked like someone had taken a torch or lighter and held it just below the spot, enough to cinch the plaster only in the shape of a ring. I walked over and got on to the bed, reaching out on my tippy toes to brush the circular ring spot. Sut or Ash came off onto my finger, which I rubbed together and smelled. It didn't smell like Sut or Ash, smelled like oranges and pine needles if you burned them together. Bared my father that weekend, the entire time I was back home, Michael wouldn't look at me, let alone speak to me. He was a lot different from when I had left gangily in taller with long hair down past his shoulders. He was sprouting peach fuzz along his lip and he always wore an olive green jacket with a graphic bandit underneath it, even to the funeral. A few weeks passed and eventually my mother began to insist I'd take that cushy job instead of going back to Vietnam. Ultimately I decided she was right, she began to plead for Michael's sake. She had me honorably discharged. It set me up a lab in the city. S.O. Tarotronics. It was a, what kind of watching government job is that? You have a laugh called S.O. Tarotronics. It was a leading government funded research site for you like S.O. Tarotronics. It's something I had actually shown some profits with. Time out. It was a leading government funded research site for Electronics and it's called S.O. Tarotronics. It's like being like I I worked at an artillery place called Boomi Big Bombs. It was a, it was a governmental lead. It was a government leading funded artillery. - It's, I mean, to the story's credit, if it was a public business that the government was just using and funding, then it could be any name. But if it's an actual government job, like he's describing and not just funded, but yeah, they like the government calling it. The big, the big Boomi, big, big fun time house. Want to take a quick break from the episode to thank today's sponsor, Zockdog. I don't go to the doctor as much as I should. And if you are spending this much of your time listening to a podcast about fictional monsters, then you probably don't either. But really, I can't blame you because everything from booking appointments to insurance to find out what's wrong with you can be pretty scary. But that's where today's sponsor, Zockdog, is here to help. Zockdog is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors. 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Zockdog.com/creepcast to get in on this incredible offer today. Thank you all so much to Zockdog for sponsoring the show. It really doesn't mean the most, and we are back to the episode. (upbeat music) I was constantly fixing up radios and other gear, so it fit me well. I began pretty small there, mainly doing office administration type of work. Over the course of the next few years, however, I went back to college and graduated. This resulted in a bump up the ladder, so to speak. So I was now able to take on more advanced tasks. Winter of 1984. I paste the length of my office, staring at a black port across the room. Currently, I was working on coming up with a solution to infant mortality and a (laughs) the solution to infant mortality, the one, the secret code, infant mortality and unpredictability and integrated circuits. Are those two things in our length? Circuits and infant deaths? (laughs) He's just said he had his desk holding like a baby doll at a computer chip and he's like, there's got to be a way. The technology isn't there yet. If only I had more time. He has a desk covered in baby dolls, he just like swipes it off. The chips would pass a benchmark test in the lab, only to fail once released to consumers or placed in lab equipment. Despite this issue, my higher ups seem too worried about it. Don't worry about it, Richard. I'm sure the answer will come in time. Just keep at it. They'll say to me not just a lot, Lee. Not a very expeditious mood for a company whose profit margins were being harmed by these chip failures of think to myself. I gave up for the night and decided to leave it for another day. I left the office behind, turned my home, that same townhouse where my parents raised my siblings and I. Mom had passed away four years back and left it in my name, probably because no one even knew where Sharon was, Michael was imprisoned for repeated counts of arson. I pulled my escort into the driveway where I noticed a light on one of the upstairs windows. Quickly got out of the car and headed up the steps to the patio. Door was a jar, having been clearly kicked open. I quietly pressed on the door, pictured a tiptoe slowly as I could to avoid making any noise. Clancing to the side table, I quicked myself with a heavy silver candle stick, carefully placing the candle onto the table. So I crept along the hall, I began up the stairs, and then my moment of nervousness. I forgot all about the loose step a few steps up. Upon pressing my full way down on the floorboard, let out a loud groan. I froze, looking up past the banister towards the light coming down the hall. Nothing, no sound. As I continued to make my way up the stairs, a familiar scent assaulted me, causing me to freeze again. Citrus and pine needles, they had been burned together. I had to press on, trying to find the source of intrusion into my home. Once I approached the top of the stairs, the smell was stronger, much stronger. Rounded the banister at the top, I finally saw the light's origin was from Sharon's old room. The door was cracked, light smoke was coming from the room. I dropped the candle stick holder, which clattered to the ground with a thud and ran to the doors, swinging it open. Sharon lay across the bed, that once belonged to her and her room, which was completely unchanged from the day she left. To her side, her outstretched arm, had a rubber hose ripped from somewhere in the house, tied around it at her picep. Needle hung from the vein at her inner elbow. To her side was a small plastic baggy of a yellow powder accompanied by a spoon and lighter. Hair went. I looked on and wore it my baby sister, who had come home to what? Die? I ran over to her and pressed my finger to her neck upon seeing her eyes, rolled back into her head, no pulse. She was dead. Sanked to my knees and began to sob, holding her head against my chest. It was quite some time before I found the strength to move and when I did finally come back to my senses, the room around me was almost as nightmarish as her body, all as if it punched in the walls, it seemed Sharon had taken red lipstick and written all over them. I scanned some of the writings, dreams and eyes, father lies, rings so round and round and round. Can you smell the oranges too? Take me to the forest. I can't save you. I'm sorry for what he did. I'm sorry, sorry. I couldn't make sense of the insane scribbling and scrolling she had left on the walls, but the smell of oranges was all too familiar. When it hit me, it hit like a truck sinking into my gut. Exitantly, as if my body refused to obey, my eyes dragged to the ceiling above Sharon's lifeless corpse. Now, it can, but it was. A small ring of soot and ash was imprinted onto the ceiling. I stood now, my leg shaking, climbed onto the bed beside Sharon. My hand extended towards the spot, only this time it was hot, hotter than a stove I could barely get close enough without it feeling as though I was gonna burn me. What was this? What's this stuff? Was it something from heating the heroin? Was this how my father had died? Was he secretly inatticked? I got back off the bed and removed the needle from Sharon's now cold arm. Took the heroin and flushed it down the toilet before calling 911. They came fairly fast to remove her butt. No need to check if it was laced or, you know, a tag or anything like that, just get rid of it. They came fairly fast to remove her body and didn't ask about the riding on the walls or obvious lack of drugs. The police came and asked me questions. I answered honestly and told them what I had done with the heroin, offer condolences and then left. The house that had already felt empty now felt like a pit of endless darkness and despair. This place had claimed two of the people I had loved. I decided it wouldn't claim me two. Then a few months, I had listed the house for sale and within a few more it had sold. With it came a change for my life. It was in the spring of 1985. I both met my wife who lived within the same complex I had moved into. Got a huge promotion at work for absolutely no reason, whatsoever. - Interesting thing about it. It jumped like, what did jump like? - It jumped five years and now two years. - Two years, yeah. Interesting and pretty much just. - Oh wait, no, no, no. - 15 years 'cause it's like. - 'Cause it was 16. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So a long time and the big thing is he's basically fallen into this. It wouldn't say mundane but kind of like formulaic life comes back home and his sister has died of a heroin overdose. I guess I'm wondering also the mom has passed two now. - So it's just, it's just the only one still lives his brother, him and his brother. - Okay, yeah, I'm trying to see you. - Yeah. - After that we get another jump of two years, spring 1986. My life was slowly coming together now, it felt like. Better late than ever at all I suppose. I was now married to my beautiful wife, Elaine Cook. She quickly became my whole world. She inspired me to do better, to be better. Despite having been abandoned as a child or even at the age of two, she was incredibly strong willed and persistent. She had worked herself to the bone, getting ahead in life, making sure her past never defined her. Things at work had taken a turn in March of '85 when I was both taken off the infancy mortality project and assigned to a finding a way to deal with high temperature diffusion and ship sets. This promotion came with the higher clearance than before and I gained access to portions of the building I didn't know existed. it. Originally, I had worked in the labs found in the second sub-basement. To my assumption, the last basement. To my surprise, when my new clearance came, I was informed I would be in the 11th sub-basement from now on. I remember the conversation pretty vividly. My manager, Timothy Ruth, who was also a high-ranking army general, had come into my office in the morning. Still no luck on the infancy mortality dick? No, unfortunately not. Well, he just has. He just has a bunch of baby dolls, he's like, "There's got to be a clue." No, just a bunch of dead-battery babies on my desk. He's just like, "Yes, it's sling." Yeah, all the babies. All the babies also have goggles and helmets on and a giant bullseye on the wall. He's just rolling the video now. They're still dying an impact, Sergeant. Eddie's dick. Just all night. He's got a clipboard, and he's like walking over to the dolls and riding notes and then putting it back in the sling shot. That's all right. Not every problem is going to get solved immediately. That said, we're outsourcing this problem. I'll keep trying, Sergeant. Thank you, sir. All right, dude. Just that, not every problem is going to get solved immediately after flying in between the two of them, like straying in the walls. His smile was friendly. There was a twitch in his brow, something in his voice. I've voice in the scene for me. I apologize. It's something in his voice like a noise hide and hurt before. Wait, am I being fired? No, no, no, no. Am I like yours? No, no, no. That's the most condescending shit I've ever heard my life, dude. No, no, no, no. Am I like yours? Slingshotting the babies into the wall with goggles and helmets? No, you're actually being promoted. Getting a nice fat bonus to your pay. Plus new security clearances. I nodded my head in the nest. Well, I still be in this office and in the same lab. General shook its head. No. Son, you'll have the new office in a lab, both on sub-basement 11. My eyes grew wide. Sub-eleven? Wait, there aren't even buttons for that on the elevator. When? But it's hand up to stop me. You'll be using the elevator you didn't even know existed before now. You'll need this. Reduced a new badge. This time with the magnetic strip running along it. Followed me. I did as I was told and followed the general out of my office, which was immediately flooded by a few men who proceeded to grab anything that belonged to me and towed it after us. It just starts all the babies. Leave the baby doll's dick. I can't. It's my life's work. How will I'll never know? I looked back and began to object of one of them started manhandling sensitive equipment. Yeah, the same shot. But the general wave, just we continue down the corridor. It's just that infant mortality is so far removed from cybernetics that I'm sure it's going to come into the story somewhere. And that's why, but it's so abrasive initially. Well, we've had, we've only had, we've had so far we've had three deaths of, but not, but none of them have been infants. So just, it just feels jarring, I think. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. We rode the elevator back up to the ground floor and passed a few more hallways up to a door. I'd seen a few times, but never paid a second glance to. It was labeled supply closet Omega. It's now that I read it. It seems somewhat odd. Now that I see the closet was labeled Omega, that was suspicious. A closet labeled Omega and a giant building called esoteric tronics. It seems to be aware that there's an old omega here in this building called esoteric tronics that I've been firing children at the wall for the past 13 years. Every single room, there's just babies flying at the door. These babies keep dying. God damn it. When will it be enough? Yeah, we need more babies. The general inserted my key card into a slot beside the door, which unlocked with a hiss and swung open. Side of the room was a series of computers with men and women sitting at them working intelligently. Cross the room instead of elevator doors waited me. You'll be working alongside these men and women here when it comes to contacting us with project updates. Through the elevator, you'll find an access to sub-levels 3 through 11. Go ahead and head down to your lab, and you'll be briefed by your colleagues. Your office is just there. And you pointed to another door, which now had my name on it. I walked up to the office door and opened it. A set of oranges and pine needles wafed it out of the office, which seemed old and unused. When I closed the door again, the glass rattled slightly. I could see that the lettering used to spell my last name was much older than the lettering used to spell my first. And I could also see the outlines of residue and the shapes of letters spelling my father's name underneath it. You think he's just being tested on? No, I think the idea was that he thought his father was staying home didn't have a job, but he was actually part of this program. Flash forward a year, and I was no closer to a solution to this problem than I was infancy mortality issues. You got to quit. The babies won't stop falling. Damn you baby. Damn you to hell. No matter what I tried, what combination of elements were used or methods of cooling helium still seemed like the best option. I left the office on a cool spring night, air damped from recent rain, drove home to my two bedroom apartment I shared with Elaine. My wonderful world graded me as I came into the living room, slipping off my shoes and sinking into the couch. She sat down beside me and crawled up to me, stroking my face tenderly as it let out a long sign, pressed my fingers to my temples. Rough day. She asked, I nodded. Well, tell me about it. Not particularly, it's just that we're no damn closer to a solution now than a year ago. It's sharp to my chest now almost nervously. Well, I have some exciting news. It looked up and she reached behind her slowly pointed. She reached behind her slowly pulling out of pregnancy test. My eyes honed in on the blue shade of the tip. I stammered over my words. Wait, are we? I'm gonna be a dad. She nodded her head excitedly and I wrapped her up in my arms and I jumped off the couch picking her up and dancing around. This baby is guy. I hate to say, but this baby is fucking tall. I'm like, there's no fucking way in hell. There's no fucking way in hell. They mentioned it. They mentioned it. They mentioned it to mortality rates far, far too often to have any kind of any kind of hope that this baby is gonna make it to fucking too. Yeah, right, bro. God, he introduced you to my slingshot. Yeah, that's why I was gonna make a joke about how the story now enters an interesting moral complexity because it's like, you know, his whole career is slingshotting babies. But now that he has one of his own, will he be able to put it in the slingshot? I think what's gonna happen if I can try to set my own bear trap? Is that the dad? Which by the way, bear trap with the baby died. I know the story brought it up, but it's mine. It's mine now. So that's fine. I think that we're heading in an area where the dad tested on something on the main character when he was a baby, and it's getting ready to be like, you know, like the cycle continues kind of thing. Yeah. I don't know what that experiment is, but I do think that it's like a generational kind of meme. Yeah, yeah. I think so that that's why he's able to see it. And I think all of his kids, it's probably wise sister and brother or so messed up. Yeah. They're all they're older than him or no, his sister was five years younger than him, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think they all were, but I think all of them have been experimented on. We kissed deeply and went to the bedroom to celebrate that night for the first time in a year. I dreamed in the dream. I was floating once again in that black room where only a sliver of light could be seen. This time, there are no figures moving in the light beyond the light began to fade soon. I was enveloped in nothing but a pitch black darkness. It's if I shut my eyes tightly. In the void, I could see small dots. Now clusters of dots, three rings rotated around them and each ring containing its own dots. I recognize these as atoms. So dots float freely above my head. I counted the electrons. Rami floated atoms of lannathum, barium, copper, and oxygen. Soon the metal atoms would dance around me, combine in impairs with the oxygen ones to form powders and solids, then fire. Blazing hot from underneath as if a portal to hell had opened up. And I could feel the flames licking me from underneath. It came and it burned everything around me until all at once it disappeared. What was left was a shiny black floating disc of the nannathum, barium, copper oxide, perfect material for my problems. A superconductor capable of handling the heat of hell woke up in a sweat with the lame beside me and jumped out of bed, which garnered a groggy response from hell. So excited. I didn't even recognize that all too familiar smell in the air. I ran into the living room and dragged out a black board where I hastily wrote down the formula of this new and organic compound. C U B A 0 15 L A 1.85 oxygen 4. You can have a 1 point point whatever. I sketched out the structure and stepped back to look at my work. Yes, this was it. The solution to my problems. I quickly went over to the phone and began to dial the number to the lab before a clock on stove caught my eye. It was only 3 a.m. No one was even awake or there right now. I couldn't sleep. When the lame woke up around 5, she came to the living room where I had sat staring at the black board the entire time. Richard. I smiled at her. Elaine. This is it. The solution to the heat. Point eagerly at the black board, which she glanced at and gave me a groggy thumbs up before going back to the bathroom. Another hour passed and Elaine left to go to the hospital she worked at as a nurse on base in Maryland. Finally, I was able to get ready and head out myself for the lab. I was so eager to share my discovery that I had to drive back 10 minutes in and get my keycard. When I got to the lab, I could hardly contain myself. I entered the supply closet and revealed my findings to my colleagues and team of workers who relayed the information to the general. There's a few hours later when he would arrive coming down to the 11 sub-level and into the lab. Richard. Good news, I hear. He opened his arms wide and then came in to shake my hand. This grip was tied on my hand. Yes, sir. Very, very good news. A breakthrough. I said excitedly, clasping the open hand and shaking it. I've discovered the key to our heating problem. This is wonderful, son. Tell me. How'd you do it? Oh, sir. That's the funniest thing about it. It was a dream, actually. Got a glance between the general and one of my colleagues, followed by a small nod. Then he turned his gaze back to me. Walk with me, son. I did as I was told and fell into a step beside this general. A dream, huh? We approached the elevator. The doors opened and we stepped inside. The doors were shut. The second time of my time here, saw me entering the lab to take things out. Sir, what do you know about your father, son? Stared at him and stunned silence before asking quietly. My father? The elevator lurched and its doors opened. We couldn't have gone farther than the floor, too. Yes, son, your father. I understand he was a sted home father for most of your life. What do you know about before your life? A rate to my memory for stories about him before me being born, only to be slightly shocked. I knew absolutely nothing. I responded as much in the general nodding. I suspect they keep it quiet. It was a duty after all. We stepped out into an enormous room with computer towers and monitors active. All of them stationed by men and radiation suits. Two of the men got up and brought us suits of our own. General indicated for me to suit up and I did. Looked at one of the men and said, "Make sure all that info from upstairs gets out to IBM. They'll know what to do with it." Man on it got on the elevator and sent it. Strode over to some consoles which showed on its black screen of dots, rounded by interlocking rings, each ring itself containing multiple dots. And Adam, sir, the general chuckled. Well, kind of, but no. We walked to a door on the far side of the room and entered the hallway which shot out for a few hundred feet before turning sharply to the right. Your father worked here. Is him sure you noticed by the door? In the late 30s and early 40s, he worked on a top secret project. You know it as the Manhattan project. Down here, we just called it another part of Project Gabriel as we will with your superconductors. Officially, that information is on its way to IBM. I know it's saying like I was a part of a greater test, but that's just funny that it's like, "To me, the Manhattan project is just another project." That's what it's like in the sick and twisted mind of mine. Still remain silent until we near the corner. "But why, sir?" we stopped just before the corner. The general turned to look at me directly, sizing me up and down. "Son, what you're about to see is highly classified. With your dream and this new information you've brought us, I think it's finally time to let you in on this project." Turn the corner to yet another hallway. This time, a single door lay on the right side of it all the way at the end. There's no light coming from under it, and a feeling to my stomach like waves against the bow of a ship hit me hard. My legs felt like iron as I dragged them along after the general. The door at the very end of the hall had a keypad to its side, and the general stepped in between me and the pad to enter a cone. With a green flash of light and a very loud flood noise, the door hissed once open. Inside, lights began to cut on one by one, revealing an even more enormous room than the first. In the middle, my eyes finally saw it. My jaw fell open, and I sank to the ground. General just stood there, arms crossed. "Son, this is Project Gabriel." The center of the room suspended mid-air by some sort of electromagnetic energy field being propelled by several giant obsidian colored panels. In the center of the room, suspended mid-air by some sort of electromagnetic energy field being propelled by several giant obsidian colored pillars. So, a tarnished set of interlocking rings upon each of which had dozens of bloodshot eyes. Oh, it's an angel. They have an angel inside of an electromagnetic prison. At its center, a ball of hot, energetic plasma was cracking and spitting electricity, to contact the field around it and dissipate. "My god, what is that thing?" General put a hand on my shoulder and shook, prompting me to stand up. "According to it, it's the angel Gabriel." looked on and horror at this tortured being. "What?" General walked closer to the obelisk on the far right, which had wires queiled around its face, leading to a console. General typed something in and then stood back, his crackling beams of plasma shot from the obelisk and into the center of the angel, led out the most unearthly whale of agony. A whale that pierced my brain and caused it to rattle in my skull. I grabbed my head and fell once again at the ground. "Stop! Stop it!" the general came to my side and helped me up to my feet. "Sorry. I had to be sure. You see, Richard, you are special. Your father was special too. You can understand. Communicate with the angels. We aren't sure why. We don't know why only some people can and why some people seem entirely removed from them. But we suspect it has to do with bloodlines dating back to the very oldest peoples. We'd know more only. Well, no matter the pain, we inflict Gabriel won't reveal all his secrets." "It's way down my feet. The pain of my head dined down by remaining present." "But why? Why do this?" The general looked at me with a straight and unfeeling face as he answered. "Because we were losing the war, son. We were losing the war and Germany was going to bring about the book of revelations. He told us. Boy, not the angel now. He came to your father one night and told him of the impending end of the war. And that soon your father would impregnate your mother with a second coming of Christ. Who would grow to lead the Christians in a movement called the Rapture, a mass exodus to the last livable place on the planet. There, God would come and give us the tools to start again to make a heaven on earth. The general just cracked out of his mind. You are Jesus. Are you serious? That's awesome. What? Me? Wow. I'm Jesus. Are you saying that? Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, the angel is like, "Ahhh!" Yeah, the angel is like, "Ahhh!" Why don't you take it? If you had an angel there, I look at the angel flip one day. His big, stupid, fucking eyes floating around. He's like, "Hey, Dorsus, why don't we hit where it's going to blow up the world?" And they're like, "Empresson that thing!" They're like, "Logging away!" Yeah, like, he came down to visit him and they all jumped on him to hold it down. Like, "Quick, quick! Put it in the time, prison! Put it in the time, prison!" No! And then And then he made it like the general's like, yeah. your father impregnated your mother and your father totally, father totally filled your mom up. And you don't have to, okay, no, no, no, no, you're the main, you're the main character. No, you don't have to, no, seriously, that's what happened. No, no, you don't need to, I get it. I understand how that works. I heard that. How funny. How funny would it be? It was like, why do you think it was, do you ever think it was weird that you were born with a beard? Yeah. It's just like, he's just like that explains how I always walk on water. Yeah. Or what? You thought it was strange, you have holes in your hands and feet and that you were born with a beard? Well, they just said I was, they just said it was a birth defect. No. You're Jesus Christ. Yeah, the entire story, he's, he's wore like the, the purple sash and like the white shirt and he's like, wow, I can't believe I got a job at S.O. Darryl. They're, and they've imprisoned the angel gay role, apparently. Yep. And also the angel was like, hey, you guys should probably stop Hitler and then they caught him. I mean, what I mean is they like, he came up and he's like, well, sure, she made a story and she's like, he's like, he's like, given him like a kind of a cool heads up. And they're like, how the show's good to date him. No. Like, why? Why? Why? Do this. Uh-huh. It's like, uh-huh. Yeah. Tell me more. And behind the back. Also, too. No. They have a fine pan that they're. Yeah. Teen. Me. The, uh, the, uh, what, you know, it's kind of weird. It's like, I mean, they're probably getting to this. But it's like, it's not even like, they're trying to harness his power. The guy literally just flew in and he was like, no, seriously, if you, if you, seriously, like, fuck, you should, like, watch out because it's going to be crazy because he's just like, why? Why do you do this? Because we're losing the war. And it's just like, well, all he did was tell you that Hitler was going to blow up the fuck. So what it's saying, because they're like, project man to happen was just a part of project to Gabriel. I assume it's the energy that they gave the Americans the ability to create nuclear weapons. I think is what's being implied. The look on my face was pure incredulity, despite the evidence. Your father, the diligent short soldier he was, came to me and reported what he had been told. We couldn't allow that. So he scoured ancient text and we found a way to the trap and we found a way to trap Gabriel. They looked, they looked at, they looked at some like old scrolls. They saw a giant butterfly net, of course. That's what the dad would have said underneath the cardboard box with a stick prop in it up. I was like, Gabriel, Gabriel, I can't hear you keep going over here. I did you think love sir. So we scoured ancient text and we found a way to trap Gabriel. Your father called to him, and as you can see, he came. Glancing back, I could see each bloodshot I was on me, now staring as if asking, pleading for help. I looked back at the general, Gabriel here gave us the secrets to cracking the atom open. He gave us the power of God himself. He gave us the language of God. It was that he walked over to and gently patted the monitor by the obelisk. Microchips, processes, the etchings on the boards, sigils of the heavens designed to move and control energy to manipulate God's power. I think I've talked about that on this show before, right? You know, people like, we'll make that connection that microchips look like ancient sigils. Like they are entraping supernatural powers and that's how they work. I think I've talked about that before. Cool concept, definitely cool. There's also some other stuff in here that, yeah, I'm picking up on just a lot of information happening at once. We believe that people that can speak to Gabriel dates back to ancient times, so that's likely in reference to the Nephilim, right? Half human, half angel, hybrids, those are some of the we saw on Mother Horsesize, another adaptation of that idea. Then there's stuff like, well, lead us, there's going to be a rapture, but we need a new Jesus to lead us. But then the quote unquote Christ figure that appears around the time of the rapture is actually the Annie Christ, so perhaps it's a negative instead of a positive, but like I said, there's just a lot being divulged at once. In a flash, I recalled my dream during my time in the war, dark room, my father's face, pleading and apologizing, he tried to stop you to free Gabriel. The general looked at me with a raised brow, so we did tell you something. I dreamed it in Vietnam before my father died, the general nodded, "I see, you father became quite the, oh, that's not the statistic, sorry, hmm, I see." I see, yes, if father became quite the altruist at some point decided what we were doing here was unethical, disturbed, he tried to make a case saying how we won the war, we diverted the rapture and stopped the end of our world, a full thought. How could he know that? We only delayed it, and even if we did avoid it, there was so much more Gabriel had to tell us, still has to tell us. The giant butterfly that people puffed out my chest finally now, my father's son. No, this has to stop, general, this is wrong, you know it, I know it, do you know what evil you're bringing down on this world, what if God, son, God is dead, Gabriel himself told another dreamer we used to have under our thumb, she was so in tune that she could sit in this very room for hours alone with him and bring back so much information, only none of it was particularly useful, so we got to lose. He says that he says that you should always like, you should always like take meat out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator if you want to put it in the frost properly. God damn it, Gabriel, we already know that. He says that Hot Wheels are a lot better than Matchbox cars. Okay. All right, we have got to find someone, we got to find somebody. He says, Gabriel says, be sure to check your credit history before you apply, because if you do it at the application, there could be some unseen things. Trust the company, so Gabriel says to always ask the car dealership for the car facts and the car. And Gabriel says Simon says is a little better than Bob it, but he says he likes to play both because it's obviously a sister, right, right, that's like it's like sister sitting there in like 17 hours just having this, yeah, Gabriel says that Gabriel said that a straight for comedy of all times, Kung-Pow. Like, they're like, what about, is there anything cool with like, solving cancer? Let me ask no, no, nothing about that, no, no, but he does have Bob it. He does have Bob it if we want to play that, but he does, he does have a pretty killer streak on Bob it. I like the idea that as soon as Sharon got out, she's like, well, I should probably over those now. It's probably all I got left going or was it the existential crisis of being like God's dead? I can't handle it. So I'm just going to fucking get high. Yeah. But if you don't trust anything they're saying and they don't have good info, then why would you trust the God is dead thing? I thought because she said, Gabriel said that, that's what, that's what, that's what he said. Is that not what Gabriel said? Yeah. Gabriel's giving her good info. It's just not useful to them. Yeah. So he's like sitting there. He's like no seriously like the best way to do Mac and Jesus to bake early oven and have like a little crispy layer on top also God's dead. You also want to figure out that like, what are you receiving? You're lawn. Hey. What is that last word? Oh, yeah, God, he's been dead. He's gone. Yeah. He's been gone a lot. Why do you think I'm down here? I mean, well, what the fuck do you think I'm doing? What? What do you think I'm stuck inside of this box? "Do you think that that would happen other ones?" Flashes in my mind and my baby sisters sitting here in the dark with the angel before her. "Sharing?" General simply stared back and then said, "Correct. She threatened to tell on us, so we. " "She threatened to tell on us, such a funny line." "Correct. She threatened to tell on us, so we did what had to be done. Unlike a father, she had no family we could threaten to keep her in line." "I like the idea that like a local beat cop could take down the government angel operation." "Hey, so my job at SOT Eric Tronics, they have a giant angel down there who's talking to me about Boppet and receding my lawn." "Oh, great." "I also like because they said that the way they started this program is his father who was already working for the government, came to them and was like, "Hey, an angel told me we have to stop Hitler and they didn't just like fire him." They were like, "Really?" The imagine they think it's fake the whole time and then they get them there and the angel actually shows up and they're like, "Oh my God." "Is there a way that this connects him with Joseph Smith at all?" "Because does this not read like Joseph Smith?" "Yeah, look, I take enough flack from the Mormons, all right, if you want to start a fight there, you go right ahead." "I'm not sure if I'm just saying that Joseph Smith, he talked to the angels like that. That was a legitimate question." "It could be no." "I was just wondering." "I thought Joseph Smith talked well, okay, yeah, sure." "You know, buddy, this is Joseph Smith's story just for you. But if you're careful making jokes like that, then we'll. Okay, cut that. Cut that from the episode. Oh, God. Oh, God. That's a genist story moment. That's the first time you've ever had a spastic cut that. You just have to first let's just cut that. Cut that or believe that or do something. I'll leave that in the episode. The rush of heat to my head overwhelm me and I rush the general in anger. I didn't think first I could only act. Besides stepped and I rushed past into the field of electromagnetic energy, which reacted violently. Time seemed slow as the rotating rings beyond me came to a near halt. A booming voice within my head echoed out. Suddenly, time returned to me and I was ejected outwards back onto the floor. General Shook has had. "Now, son, please. Let's be pragmatic and reasonable, shall we?" "You do have a family. You wouldn't want anything to happen to your lovely wife and soon to be baby now, would you?" "I froze. How did you know about the baby? It's my house wire tapped. They surveil me. It stood to my feet, shaking to my very core." "You sick bastard! Leave them alone! Then work with us, son. Work with us. Think of all the discoveries to be made. The advancement for humanity." I rocked back and forth, boozy. Looked again to Gabriel, his eyes bore sadness and pain I could scarcely imagine. Decades of torture, unnatural capture. Decades more to come. Now, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't condemn this being to an eternity of torment. I couldn't. I stood tall with the false bravado. "Well, I've never been a very religious man." General smiled warmly and then I replied, "But I won't let you do this." Small faded, turning into a grimace of annoyance. I made a run for the consoles this time aiming to smash it or grab the wiring. Suddenly, a gunshot rang out, echoing through the chamber. Warm blood read down my back and chest, looked down to see a bullet hole directly through me. I clutched my chest to turn slowly, gurgling and coughing up blood, expecting to see the culprit of my death. The general stood there, arms folded behind his back with a look of disappointment. I swiveled my head around and there at the door was a lane, pistol in hand. No tear in her eye. I fell to the floor, no air in my lungs to protest or inquire. I heard the sound of her footsteps that she walked up to the general side. The general nodded, "Yes, well, we always have the back up." I didn't place his hand on her stomach. Don't worry, I got pregnant by Jesus. So now I will have Jesus too or three of those boys. Back up, Jesus. Back up, Jesus. As I lay there, I listened to the raspy breath escape from my lungs. I was dying, no doubt about it. I really wasn't a very religious man and I offered no prayer to God in my hand. Despite this, as I lay there, life fading away, I could see the bride and warm light at the end of the tunnel, black. I've stood my father, smile on his face with the hand extended, my mother and sister at his side. Despite ever being a religious man, I was going home. And that's the end. That's the end. So I like the concept. I don't really know how isotopes come into it. I guess it's kind of drawing that atoms look like Biblically accurate angels, which is a cool concept. And it brings up the thing that I like about circuitry being sigils and stuff like that or runes. Yeah, the microchip thing. I like all that. I like the stuff about an angel being imprisoned. And I like the details about the family when it was kind of a mystery as to what they were writing about, what the burned hole in the ceiling means, how they're able to communicate with each other. All that was interesting. I felt like it got bogged down with a lot of the, like general details, a lot of the exposition at the end, like the things about him being Jesus never came into play. Amazingly, the infant mortality never came into play either. That didn't pull up. Like that just got brought up a lot didn't go anywhere. The only thing I could think is that do you think that rapture never came up, stuff like that? So do you think that the infant the infant trial mortality rate thing? Do you think that was at all linked into us supposed to be like that, they have tried to bring back like the second coming of Christ before, but they keep dying or some, you know, it sounded like he was trying to solve the cure to like, SIDS, like, sudden, I mean, I, I thought that it was something like that too. I'm just, just, you know, food for thought. I'm trying to see how it ties in because there's a lot of themes that tie in. Did you have like the capturing the angel? The problem, I think that like my biggest stipulation with it is that the general, it's just when someone is so overtly evil and the motive just seems so just kind of silly. It's just, it's like the sheriff in broska. I wouldn't say it's as, as, you know, bombastic and fucking crazy as that, but it is this thing where it's just like, as this angel came down and warned us about Hitler. So we captured him. And it's like, I get man is inherently evil, but I guess I just wish that there was more like the idea of like, well, he has so many secrets to tell us. I think that like that's, I think that's fair. I just, I don't know, I just, I guess it just wasn't totally bought in on that. And then like kind of like crazy motive. And then, and then this idea of like, well, you know what? I won't do it. I'm going to stop you whatever. And then you can just get shot. And that's just kind of the ending. I can't, like, I, I guess it's just like if you're introducing that thing, it'd be nice to have him just kind of play around the more. It was just kind of very quick, I guess, you know what I mean? It's a lot to take in. Very abruptly. A lot of it, a lot of it given more time, I think, would do better. I think maybe instead of the general explaining a lot of those things at the end, they like, you know, since our main character is a scientist, he can kind of figure stuff out as he goes a bit. Vietnam didn't even really factor in to the story like I thought it would. Maybe, maybe he had some experience or vision in Vietnam that related to combat or something that like, the only thing that I thought there's visions of World War II perhaps or something like that. Yeah, the only thing that I think was supposed to be there, the only thing that I think that Vietnam helps with is that it's just the parallels with this father of like, I think his dad was like active during World War II or whatever. But then also, I'm wondering if like, oh, because he had this military job, if that's literally the justification to why he would get this government job. Yeah, you know, yeah. I think I think, well, I don't know, I just, I got hired because like, maybe that's just because my mom's a politician, which didn't really come into, except for mentioning maybe that because his dad was in this program, his mom was given political favor, maybe. But I also don't think you need the ending where he's going to heaven and seeing everyone. I go, also him being like, I'm not a religious man. It's like you have undeniable evidence of the supernatural in God. You're looking at an angel. So maybe you become that really quick. All at once. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's a lot of good elements. I think if you cut a lot of the fat and use that time to expand more on stuff, the general reveals at the end. So it comes more natural and isn't dumped all at once. I think it would read more naturally because I like the concept of like humanity and prisoned an angel, which is actually a concept in an ARG that's been floating around SA ARG, a YouTube series that's been floating around called Angel Engine that is about a group of scientists that imprison an angel and use it to try to make like a perpetual energy system. That's cool. And then like, it's about I haven't watched it and I'm not that big of a fan of it because all the art for its AI, which I think is really lame and dumb. But the concept of it is interesting, the idea of humanity imprisoning an angel and then like the supernatural war behind the scenes. Which I saw, I was listening to one YouTuber talk about it and he raised the point that maybe it's actually kind of smart in a medicines, because the series is about like humanity imprisoning a power they can't understand to try to get things that they want and it's using AI. So maybe it's like a statement about AI because it does it, but it doesn't directly critique AI and the whole thing's like made itself off of AI. So that may just be accidental like irony, you know, but anyway, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I doubt it has that many metal layers behind it. I think that the story though, like I like the, like I agree, I like the idea of the, you know, capturing a spiritual essence and that has like, that's the thing that's been like progressing technology and all this other stuff forward for the past like 100 years or decades or whatever, you know, in the, or the decade, it's only the 40 or the 80s. But I, I, and I tell you, I like that Elaine is in on it. I think that I just, I think to do something that makes it feel satisfying because her coming in, it's just like, there's a bunch of kind of cheesy things where you come in and it's like, oh, my wife is here and it's like, sorry, daddy. I guess, you know, he's, he's a fucking idiot and he's like, okay, we have all that. I think like it would have been interesting if he's like stressed and if she would have made a really big emphasis on like reproduct, like being like, we need to have a kid, like we need to have a kid, like putting a big emphasis on that to where you could have developed some of that kind of like weird, uh, just kind of like some of the things in the background to where if you reread it or you're like, oh, fuck, that's why she was being so pushy with this or whatever. I think there's a lot of ways that you can get that going. Also, I think you could have had Gabriel trying to talk to you or something. You work at this job and you're getting all these signs and these different things. I'm still wondering where like the orange sit came in. Remember they kept putting like an emphasis on the orange and pine, yeah, the orange and pine. Maybe so I don't expect you could connect that back to some memory he has or some visual because again, the mystery phase was the best part of it and it's bad. Which is, you know, that's, that's the best phase of any of any story is the discovery or the adventure of everything of like basically just all these clues being left around for you and stuff. It just felt like a bunch of pieces that just a lot of loose ends that just didn't really feel like they came together. Well, it's again, though, I think that that's, it's pretty fun. Also, I mean, did you like the fact that they, that it was an actual angel? Um, you know, I mean, like, could it have been something where it's like what they thought was an angel or if the story was about that, then that'd be fine. I think like Angel and if it was about humanity and prison in an angel, but where it's kind of like set dressing amidst everything, it's like, well, how did they imprison it? Like what does that mean to imprison an eternal being like infinite power? You know, like did they use angel capabilities to imprison it? Probably not because it had to talk to them first. Um, so it's like, it's something maybe if it's something that isn't an angel or like a fallen angel, if it was, if it said it was Gabriel, but it turned out to be like, um, uh, who's Abedon, the, the demon of the pit or whatever, another powerful demon or something that could be interesting. And it used the angel powers to imprison it, but humanity thought bad and angel. That could be cool. Yeah. If humanity thought they had an angel and like also it wasn't trapped, but it was just there on its own will. And it was feeding stuff to where then you could be like, is this like, is this good? Like is this a thing that we, is that you like this idea of trapping something just feels kind of, I don't know, it just isn't, it's not hit me, hit me super well or even like how a net, I don't know if you've ever seen Evan Galeon, but, uh, the way that they did, the way that they show or the way that they like, uh, basically show angel sometimes is just in human form in this one character. It'd be kind of cool if it was just one character or it was just like one humanoid person that was like a cell or something that's like trapped somehow, um, just to, just the back and forth. It's just the, the, the Biblically accurate angels things are just, they're huge. It's just such a loud thing. I don't know. I mean, I'm rambling by this point. At the end of the day, it's an interesting idea, but it just, it was a little all over the place for me, I think, I like the ideas. I think there was good riding, uh, bits in there. I think that, uh, maybe just workshops of the way the details come out and stuff because I liked it. I enjoyed it. I thought it was a good read. Maybe think of, uh, and I would want to see more down with it. I'd like to see more from this author, so makes me think of, uh, Jacob's ladder meets angels in the outfield, so makes me think of actually reminds me of Jacob's, I thought it was going to lean more into that side of, you know, like what turns out, he's back in Vietnam. Yeah, or just like this whole idea of like just, you know, such a huge thing of faith in the afterlife and all that kind of stuff, but it really plays into, uh, his death in the war and stuff like that. Um, although fun story, also cool to see it come from our community and stuff. A lot of fun. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for watching this week's episode. Uh, thank you to all the audio platform listeners on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I appreciate it. And thank you to our very supportive and very beautiful patron supporters as well. It really does help us out. If you're interested in writing and you're interested in just being fucking creative and like a storytelling aspect and you want somewhere to show it, put it on our sub write it. It's awesome. Not everything needs to be gold, you know, it's just fun seeing where people's minds are coming from and seeing how people are getting inspired by each other here. And I think that we have, we've read a lot of really great shit. So please be creative and start writing. We will see you next week. Bye bye. Uh, and if the angel Gabriel ever tells you to hurl babies into a wall with a slingshot, um, you know, I'm not your dad, so do what you want. Bye. Bye. Bye.