Transcript
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's been around for a very long time and it's in North Carolina.
Speaker: So still producing, still produces grapes.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: It's really weird.
Speaker: And I'm going to taste one of those grapes.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: You're going to you're going to make a wine out of one of those grapes.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to steal it.
Speaker: I'm going to steal the wine.
Speaker: That's that's actually your version of of what was that?
Speaker: Nicolas Cage.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: National Treasure.
Speaker: That's your version of National Treasure is stealing the 500.
Speaker: We're going to steal the oldest grapevine in the world.
Speaker: My impression of Nicholas Cage is basically just a male version of anyone else's impression of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs.
Speaker: Yes!
Speaker: I was about, I was like, that's a really good Nick Cage.
Speaker: And then you said the Jodie Foster thing.
Speaker: And I was like, oh shit.
Speaker: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker: That's all it is.
Speaker: I just, I just make it a little lower.
Speaker: Dr. Lecter.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: Oh fuck.
Speaker: I'm only, I'm realizing this just now as I'm saying it out loud.
Speaker: That is absurd.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: Hey there everybody, welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin alongside Phil.
Speaker: Hello!
Speaker: And we're still reading Dead Space Martyr.
Speaker: We got your emails, we got your requests for us to practice some self-care and stop, but we are not going to.
Speaker: I'm smoking cigarettes again.
Speaker: Phil had quit for a year, damn it.
Speaker: Ted Space Murder pushed me over the edge.
Speaker: I did not start smoking again.
Speaker: No, no, that's good.
Speaker: I will say, it is, honestly, though, I was thinking about it, it is terrific.
Speaker: It's been a minute in real lifetime since we recorded an episode.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm really glad to be recording another one with you, Kevin.
Speaker: Do you know why?
Speaker: Why is that?
Speaker: Because it means that there's going to be one less episode of Dead Space for us to record.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: It's just the law of averages.
Speaker: It's just the law of averages.
Speaker: One fewer chunk of Dead Space to get through.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm not sure if that's what the law of averages is, but it is now.
Speaker: It is now.
Speaker: What is it is now?
Speaker: What is what we say on this podcast?
Speaker: It becomes law.
Speaker: So that's true.
Speaker: We have to be careful with what we say on this podcast.
Speaker: I know it's a dangerous world we live in.
Speaker: It's a dangerous power.
Speaker: We are irresponsible with this ability.
Speaker: We wield it like Michael Altman wielding a tranquilizer.
Speaker: Oh, and what a tranquilizer he wields, Kevin.
Speaker: Well done.
Speaker: Well done.
Speaker: Yeah, we left off.
Speaker: He was going to be going down in that bathysphere a whole lot more.
Speaker: And the whole reason his main request for that wasn't, I need you to give me more money or I need, like, I need, you know, this kind of protection.
Speaker: He just wanted a tranquilizer gun.
Speaker: Yeah, that's all he wanted.
Speaker: That's all he wanted.
Speaker: And that's all he got.
Speaker: And the first, so the first line of part five, which is titled Collapse, and not the nooses tightening even more, but Collapse.
Speaker: It says he took two trips and had to use a tranquilizer gun once.
Speaker: Now that is an economy of storytelling that we have yet to see in this book.
Speaker: I gotta tell you, man, this book, as we've discussed, is all about tell and not show.
Speaker: But this is a new low, even for them.
Speaker: Although, and that was, I even have a note here.
Speaker: I have a note where it's just like, that sounds like it would have been fun to watch.
Speaker: But then I thought about some of the other things that we have been forced to watch.
Speaker: And maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker: Maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's in any case.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, he's he's going down with people, you know, various people.
Speaker: At one point, he's going down with the psychologist who has electrodes to his head, you know, monitoring his brainwaves because they're trying to figure out why Altman doesn't really get affected that much.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's kind of the main, they're all different missions on some level or another, but really the theme seems to be, why is it when he gets close to the marker, he doesn't, he just, he gets a headache, but that's about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He doesn't lose his mind.
Speaker: Um, uh, but what's the, what's the line from the, the Simpsons version of the, of the shining, uh, no beer makes Homer go crazy.
Speaker: Something, something, something, something,
Speaker: Go crazy?
Speaker: Don't mind if I do!
Speaker: I'd really appreciate it if we don't talk about good media while we're going through our bad media.
Speaker: So I highlighted in the next chunk of the chapter, there's a scene with this guy, Kimball.
Speaker: Don't worry about Kimball.
Speaker: Don't worry about Kimball.
Speaker: Literally do not worry about any other character other than Altman after this point, because who cares?
Speaker: So he's going down with Kimball and they're retrieving the other...
Speaker: sub because it is still down there.
Speaker: So this is the one that has the corpses of Dantec and what's his face?
Speaker: The guy who killed Dantec and wrote the runes all over the walls.
Speaker: They're going down and they're basically like looking at it from different angles.
Speaker: They're like, hey, you think it's as bad as it's going to look or whatever?
Speaker: The thing I highlighted in all of this
Speaker: was the phrase vid cameras.
Speaker: Vid cameras.
Speaker: I am going to lose my mind.
Speaker: It's like ATM machine, isn't it?
Speaker: ATM machine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Vid cam.
Speaker: Your vid cameras.
Speaker: Like, come on, man.
Speaker: Just take this.
Speaker: Just find and replace vid cameras and chronometers.
Speaker: I was just going to say, at least it's not chronometer.
Speaker: Get them out of the book or holovids or whatever.
Speaker: Just we already have words for these.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Well, that's just it.
Speaker: It's like you forget that this movie takes place in the future.
Speaker: I don't know if it's if it's far future or near future, but it's definitely the future.
Speaker: And half the time.
Speaker: Oh, excuse me.
Speaker: Oh, Lord.
Speaker: See, see, that's what this book does to me.
Speaker: Half the time, the only thing that reminds you is every now and then they say things like,
Speaker: you know, the moon wars or holovid or chronometer and you go, oh, right, right, right.
Speaker: Future.
Speaker: That's fun.
Speaker: It's like it's like it's like 1997 meets 2000 2500.
Speaker: Right, right, right.
Speaker: Just it's the it's the 80s view of the future.
Speaker: It's like it's like it's like demolition man in here.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's, it's RoboCop.
Speaker: It's all that shit.
Speaker: It's RoboCop.
Speaker: It's all that shit.
Speaker: There's the three seashells and the rat burger and I'd buy that for a dollar.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's pretty much what we're dealing with here, but it's the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker: Bottom of the ocean.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So, yeah, what happens next?
Speaker: They get the they get the thing they get and and Altman steals the chunk out of the core sampler.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In the next chapter, he steals the chunk of the marker that the previous one had had drilled.
Speaker: everybody was too preoccupied with it it's like it's a repeat of this of the previous time when he scraped off the the the pink stuff the the the pink goo it's the same exact thing and just like the i'm stealing this important pink goo sample
Speaker: He like leaves like when they get up there.
Speaker: It's I've got a note here.
Speaker: It's Markov quickly had the area quarantined, but not before Altman had gotten away with a sample.
Speaker: And I'm just like, look, even an incompetent military leader of some kind, even even a shitty cop is going to be able to, like, get everybody quarantined away in time to stop you like.
Speaker: So many moments in this book happen simply because someone sucks at their job.
Speaker: It's yeah, it's it's plot suckage.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: It's because yeah, there's no good reason for half the shit to happen.
Speaker: It just does.
Speaker: It's not a surprise that they're coming back up.
Speaker: It's never a surprise.
Speaker: It takes them time to get up there like Markov can easily.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was very specific what they sent them to do.
Speaker: In the very beginning, I was surprised at the level of honestly.
Speaker: And here's the thing.
Speaker: If the Far Cry 5 book was kind of like written in the style of Cormac McCarthy and done pretty well in that style, then this is a shitty retelling of a Michael Crichton novel.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Like I'm getting a lot of sphere.
Speaker: This is shitty sphere.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly what this is.
Speaker: And you get those moments where it's just like, this is nonsense.
Speaker: This is this is not how this is not how shit works.
Speaker: And it's not even done well done.
Speaker: It's it's so frustrating.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So Altman gets away like like, oh, sorry, that's what I was getting at.
Speaker: They.
Speaker: Every now and then, the author puts in these moments of detail that if this were a better novel, it would just be kind of part of the book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Part of the craft of the book.
Speaker: But because it's not such a good novel, it kind of stands out as...
Speaker: This is competent enough that it's almost a waste of time.
Speaker: Basically, what happens is they got to get down there to the drilling bathysphere, the one that, yeah, the two guys died in.
Speaker: It's still down there.
Speaker: It's full of ballast, which is, for anyone who doesn't know, with ships and submarines and stuff like that, to keep underwater, it'll take on heavy stuff, usually water, you know, in many cases.
Speaker: It takes water itself, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And it weighs you down in a sailing ship.
Speaker: It takes on a lot of water, stuff like that.
Speaker: It's how we get like invasive species like zebra mussels.
Speaker: You know, it fills up with that water and then they let the ballast go.
Speaker: The ship goes way higher up in the water and it releases all those animals.
Speaker: Anyway, that's basically what they're there.
Speaker: They have to get down there and release the ballast in this bathysphere so that they can guide it upwards.
Speaker: And I remember stopping and going,
Speaker: That's that's like that's like a smart bit of of writing like that.
Speaker: That's a detail.
Speaker: That's like a scientific detail.
Speaker: That's an engineering detail.
Speaker: That's that's Tom Clancy talking about, you know, spending a chapter to talk about the ballots on the red October, you know.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's and it's like and it's like and if this were a if and if it matched up with the rest of the book, well, the irony, of course, is if it matched up with the rest of the book, it would just be a detail and you'd go, OK, cool.
Speaker: It would be Ian Malcolm slowly explaining chaos theory to you in Jurassic Park.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It would be that kind of thing where you're like, oh, that's a really neat detail.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: But because the book is so.
Speaker: just kind of rushed and clearly and I'm convinced of this now.
Speaker: I mentioned this before.
Speaker: I thought that maybe
Speaker: somebody came in and fucked with the original book because they, I don't, for whatever reasons, just to match it up with the game somehow or something, I'm convinced of it now because it just, it feels like it was written by two different people sometimes.
Speaker: And that's a detail where it's like, this is really neat.
Speaker: That's a cool detail.
Speaker: But because of how poorly written the book is, you just wanna go, why are you trying?
Speaker: Why are you doing this?
Speaker: Why are you trying?
Speaker: Stop trying.
Speaker: Just let us- Stop trying.
Speaker: Just let us slide into the end.
Speaker: It just feels like padding at that point.
Speaker: You're like, well, let's just get through this together, man.
Speaker: Yeah, let's let's make a lean novel here.
Speaker: This is this book has no business being 500 pages long.
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: This is you know what it is.
Speaker: It's like what you said earlier is on is spot on is that this book and this universe needed a Michael Crichton touch.
Speaker: It needed it needed specifically that it needed that that detailed sci fi, you know, the with all the all the fixings to really ground it.
Speaker: And then when the horrors come, it's you're like, oh, yeah, I believe it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The hard science.
Speaker: It's like sci fi.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you're going to go into that, you know, then then, you know, do it.
Speaker: Honestly, if you if they had the budget, if you if you wanted to get a famous writer to write your dead space prequel, I'd probably tap Michael Crichton.
Speaker: It's not a bad decision.
Speaker: Was he still alive when this was written?
Speaker: I believe so, yeah.
Speaker: I don't remember.
Speaker: He died a little while back, but I'm pretty sure he was still alive, yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it's it's there are a lot of moments like that that make you think of it.
Speaker: And unlike again, unlike Far Cry Absolution, the comparison is only there.
Speaker: Unlike that, to remind you of better books, I swear it made me go.
Speaker: I want to read Sphere and I never read Andromeda Stray.
Speaker: Maybe I should read that.
Speaker: You know, it's that kind of thing.
Speaker: Sphere is good.
Speaker: Sphere's good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've read it in years, but I remember being good.
Speaker: You guys should go out and read Sphere.
Speaker: Go read Sphere.
Speaker: Don't watch the movie.
Speaker: The movie is like, the movie's kind of lame compared to the book.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Read Jurassic Park.
Speaker: I read that every two or three years.
Speaker: That's one of my favorite books ever.
Speaker: Michael Crichton, kind of problematic dude.
Speaker: Kind of a piece of shit in many ways.
Speaker: But he wrote some good books.
Speaker: Yeah, good writer.
Speaker: What can you do?
Speaker: Can't take that away from him.
Speaker: He was also six foot nine.
Speaker: Did you know that?
Speaker: I did not know that.
Speaker: He was a tall man.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So we now would like to announce that we are taking this podcast and it's going to be a Michael Crichton fan cast from here on out.
Speaker: Michael Crichton fan cast.
Speaker: I'm not prepared for that.
Speaker: So like so basically after all this Altman pretends that he is another scientist and fan.
Speaker: To find out that they are designing a winch to lift the marker up into the room that they have always been planning to lift the marker.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: He kind of acts like this is a surprise, but I was like, wasn't this always the idea is to lift it?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And also, can you...
Speaker: I can't believe it starts with basically, just like I said before, this person who's an idiot pushing it like he literally literally a scientist thinks that he's somebody else.
Speaker: Another person being bad at their job is why he gets this information.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He like, are you telling me that he gets this super important information because some fucking intern didn't know who they were talking to?
Speaker: Like, like, you're not Perkins and be like, no, my name tag clearly says Altman.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, never mind, says scientist.
Speaker: Forget I said anything like that's that's that's the plot line, guys.
Speaker: I said is people calling Altman and saying, forget I said anything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The storyline progressed because a guy mistook another guy for another guy.
Speaker: What in God's name?
Speaker: Insert clip of insert clip of I'm a dude playing a dude pretending to be another dude.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Oh, we.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get we get a reminder, by the way, that violent incidents are on the rise.
Speaker: in the labs, I don't know, wherever they are, the fucking station.
Speaker: Nearly double, they're double what they were a few months ago.
Speaker: And the suicide rate has skyrocketed.
Speaker: Skyrocket, assault rates climbed considerably.
Speaker: We see none of that.
Speaker: No, we see none of that.
Speaker: We see none of the- We're just told.
Speaker: We're told, and Altman says, it's a tense time, playing devil's advocate, maybe that's all it is.
Speaker: He's a Reddit message board troll.
Speaker: I'm just playing devil's advocate.
Speaker: I'm just asking questions.
Speaker: Just asking questions.
Speaker: He's simultaneously the hero and the villain.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: He could be your hero or he could be your devil or your angle.
Speaker: He could be your devil or your angle.
Speaker: Aaron Henson, I think, was the one.
Speaker: It's the guy in that.
Speaker: So he's talking to Ada and they're like, we're fucked.
Speaker: So Altman is on another descent and this time with a researcher by the name of Torquado.
Speaker: Stupid name.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Well, what I was about to say is my assistant band director in college was Frank Torquado.
Speaker: Are you shitting me?
Speaker: It was that exact name.
Speaker: You can't be serious.
Speaker: Frank Parquato.
Speaker: That's a fake name.
Speaker: That's a fake name.
Speaker: No one knows that's not a real name.
Speaker: He's an Italian-American guy from Scranton, PA.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: When you lose, you lose.
Speaker: You take your L like a champ.
Speaker: I would like to apologize to all our Turquato fans.
Speaker: He is a, he was a, he was a large man.
Speaker: He was, well, not large in height.
Speaker: He was about like five feet tall.
Speaker: He was like, he was a good five feet, 500.
Speaker: He was a five by five type of guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was about to say he was one of those, one of those just as tall, easy as wide.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's, he was, he was, he's a, you know, very boisterous spherical man.
Speaker: So what brings Torquato down in the bathysphere that time around?
Speaker: He's a member of Markov's inner circle.
Speaker: And he has a black box homemade with a single knob on it and a needle readout.
Speaker: And it's like we vacillate between sci-fi with all the dials and stuff.
Speaker: And then this is like Stanley Kubrick sci-fi where there's nothing.
Speaker: There's no detail.
Speaker: Or like 1950s sci-fi where it's it's like it's like, what are we looking at?
Speaker: Just a bunch of the dobs and the knobs and dials are situated here, friend.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The bleeps, the sweeps and the creeps.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: You're some kind of scientist.
Speaker: Torquato shrugged.
Speaker: You could call it that.
Speaker: Geophysics, geology, volcanology It's hard to explain claim Torquato and not very interesting Just say it I don't care anymore about these villain vague characters So yeah, he's down there and he's taking some measurements with his box that has a single knob on it and the needle is moving back and forth
Speaker: And it descends into comedy because it's like Altman's basically trying to trick him into telling anything that's going on.
Speaker: And at one point, like there's some irregular movement on the needle and Torquano clearly reacts to it.
Speaker: And Altman says, what is it?
Speaker: And Torquano says, hmm, did you say something like, oh, fuck you?
Speaker: You're not even trying.
Speaker: I was like, oh no.
Speaker: Yeah, take it lower.
Speaker: And then Torquato loses his mind.
Speaker: And then we get another guy who lost his fucking mind.
Speaker: And basically a repeat, it's a rinse and repeat of one of the previous scenes where somebody loses his mind, except this time Altman doesn't like...
Speaker: He's not able to tranquilize him.
Speaker: Torquato beats him up and then is trying to... He's disabled the oxygen circulator.
Speaker: So they're going to be running out of air.
Speaker: And Torquato is trying to open the hatch.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Which and if anybody's not a great idea, it's not a great idea.
Speaker: But also, if anybody's tried to open like a hatch.
Speaker: Well, I haven't.
Speaker: But just I can imagine if you're trying to open an outward opening hatch underwater under all that pressure, you're not going to.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Like that's you're not going to be able to do that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's just not going to happen.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: At least at least not with you.
Speaker: Just all you're doing is like trying to push the door open.
Speaker: That's really not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're kicking water uphill.
Speaker: That's not going to do.
Speaker: There's too much pressure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's, he's muttering to himself constantly about the necessity for convergence.
Speaker: And there's that word again that we've been hearing over and over again, convergence with a capital C. And we are here.
Speaker: We are over halfway through the book and we are no closer to knowing what the hell that is meant to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, so this chapter, this whole sequence with Torquado is surprisingly long.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's just a lot of back and forth.
Speaker: And yet surprisingly familiar.
Speaker: Surprisingly familiar and boring.
Speaker: Altman does manage to subdue and kill Torquado.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, he actually has to kill the son of a bitch.
Speaker: He knocks him out first.
Speaker: Yeah, he knocks him out first, and then he just murders him.
Speaker: I mean, it's weird.
Speaker: It goes from a self-defense thing to a full murder.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I will say it's actually decent writing, you know, that we get an interesting moment here where because Altman was is and will continue to be a just a just a Mary Sue self insert character who is always good at anything that he puts his mind to really isn't going to have a lot of failures that he's going to have to deal with at all.
Speaker: He always seems to succeed, even when it comes down to it being because of like some intern mistaking him for his lab partner.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But the moment where he because he strangles the guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and he has a lot of this internal monologue of thinking, like, well, this is not as easy as I thought it was going to be.
Speaker: And this is actually horrifying.
Speaker: And, you know, and the guy wakes up and starts to kind of flail.
Speaker: And so he's he can't just he can't just pull a fucking, you know, chief from one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He actually has to fight him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and and you know what?
Speaker: It's actually pretty effective writing.
Speaker: It is effective writing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then he Torkwato starts talking to him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's just the best.
Speaker: It's just the best because he's just like, oh, my God, it just he this will happen again and again as the book continues.
Speaker: And every time I never get tired of this, whatever, someone dies and then their ghost just starts talking to him again.
Speaker: He just he seems kind of nonplussed every single time.
Speaker: You know, hello, Altman Torquato said, go back to being dead.
Speaker: Altman said to him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's like the
Speaker: And then he saw, then he's, yeah, then he sees Ada's mother and he goes, but that's impossible.
Speaker: He thought Ada's mother is dead.
Speaker: And he's like, dude, you've dealt with this already several times.
Speaker: Like, right, right.
Speaker: Why is that where you're, where you're, why are you drawing the line?
Speaker: I'm hallucinating again.
Speaker: Just like with Torquato.
Speaker: Like, yeah, it was five.
Speaker: It was like five sentences ago.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That just happened.
Speaker: It just happened.
Speaker: We don't need to, we don't need to, you know, eh, eh.
Speaker: Yeah, he makes it back up to the surface, though.
Speaker: He gets he's able to resurface the sub before he gets it.
Speaker: He gets resurfacing before he passes out because he is running out of air and he wakes up and doctors are basically all over him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Ada's mother's ghost basically tells him the same shit.
Speaker: Convergence.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: Don't do the convergence.
Speaker: Don't do convergence.
Speaker: Not even once.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Don't fuck with the marker.
Speaker: You know, only dopes do marker.
Speaker: Only dopes do marker.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like a combination of three different like dare phrases I learned when I was a kid.
Speaker: Just say no to Marker.
Speaker: Just say no.
Speaker: Just say no to Devil's Tale.
Speaker: This is your brain.
Speaker: This is your brain on Marker.
Speaker: This is your brain on Marker.
Speaker: Boring, huh?
Speaker: I'm thinking specifically of the Pee Wee Herman one.
Speaker: Oh god, this is crack.
Speaker: This is crack.
Speaker: This is marker.
Speaker: This is marker.
Speaker: It's not worth converging.
Speaker: Leave the marker alone.
Speaker: Marker.
Speaker: That's the word of the day.
Speaker: We need to get our new avatar.
Speaker: It's winter to be Pee Wee Herman with blood runes covering his face.
Speaker: I need people to know what the marker saying.
Speaker: oh god just like it's like it's basically if if uh if you crossed peewee herman and bobcat gold weight yeah
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: See, I would buy it.
Speaker: I would buy it if Bobcat Goldthwait came out and was like, you know, don't touch the marker.
Speaker: Like, I can't do him.
Speaker: I don't think anybody can do.
Speaker: I don't think anybody can do a good Bobcat.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's such a specific voice.
Speaker: It's such a very specific voice.
Speaker: I would totally buy it.
Speaker: You can tell that Bobcat's been through some shit.
Speaker: Like, he knows stuff.
Speaker: Like, he would know.
Speaker: He would know.
Speaker: I would, like, you know what?
Speaker: I would listen to him.
Speaker: I would listen to Bobcat in a second.
Speaker: He lived through Boston comedy in the 80s.
Speaker: You gotta be careful.
Speaker: Uh, no.
Speaker: Yeah, because now he just directs the shows.
Speaker: He doesn't even he doesn't.
Speaker: He's not right.
Speaker: He's like, I'm not getting on stage.
Speaker: He's a smart man.
Speaker: He got the fuck out of there.
Speaker: He was like, no, no, thank you.
Speaker: I'm going to make weird ass movies by myself, please.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So Altman wakes up.
Speaker: Altman wakes up.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Surrounded by doctors.
Speaker: uh he made it he's alive and he starts talking about the marker uh and markov is like and the thing is like i guess we did did we not uh did we not has nobody else called it the marker yet like because mark markov says the marker what marker he's talking nonsense give him another shot and i'm like yeah i i that doesn't make any sense at all i know people have been calling it the marker of course maybe it's just been ghosts
Speaker: Telling it's just ghosts and I, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: It's, it's one of those little things like we could have just assumed everybody's calling it the marker.
Speaker: We didn't need that line.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It's also another sign of like, and we'll see it some more, but.
Speaker: You know, Markov represents a very specific kind of villain.
Speaker: You used to see this villain a ton in the eighties before you weren't allowed to make fun of people in the military.
Speaker: And you certainly weren't allowed to have them be the bad guys.
Speaker: But, you know, your E.T.
Speaker: or, you know, your real genius, the people, you know, just the eighties movies where the bad guy had some connection to the shadowy government.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, the government, the military, that was a bad thing to be involved with the military.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And and they were often played as incompetent, but not in this sense.
Speaker: They're usually played in the sense of like, you're playing God.
Speaker: Your hubris is going to get you killed.
Speaker: And you moron, don't you see what's right in front of your face?
Speaker: And of course, they don't.
Speaker: And Markov is actually just shitty at his job.
Speaker: No, he's terrible.
Speaker: He's the worst.
Speaker: He's the worst.
Speaker: And this is a great example.
Speaker: Instead of like going, Altman, tell me what you're talking about.
Speaker: Like, like we're here for an alien artifact based on what we're seeing.
Speaker: Like, so any little bit of information is going to help.
Speaker: It stays like knock about.
Speaker: I want them unconscious till Christmas.
Speaker: You know, OK, so before I think I think Markov, I was I was giving him too much credit for the creepiness factor.
Speaker: you know who he is he's he's played by um he's played by gw bailey gw bailey gw play bailey played lieutenant harris in the police academy movies oh there you go yeah nailed it pretty much move it
Speaker: So we get a we get a new villain, Officer Cracks, who basically said.
Speaker: Officer.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: This guy is.
Speaker: He's a lot.
Speaker: He's a lot.
Speaker: He's basically like he's like, if Dan Tech wasn't dead, this is basically just a continuation of Dan Tech.
Speaker: Right, right, right.
Speaker: He's just kind of picking up where he left off.
Speaker: He's picking up that Dan Tech man.
Speaker: Like, yeah, it's.
Speaker: Oh, oh, oh, here's another.
Speaker: There's a little moment in here, too, before we get too close, because I want to talk about that guy.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: Because he's a weird character.
Speaker: But before we get into it a little bit, there's a moment that it's like.
Speaker: suddenly competent writing out of the clear blue sky.
Speaker: And, you know, we've been talking about how they just love to repeat themselves.
Speaker: And they'll instead of just saying he said that he they like they have to give us like the whole line for line exchange.
Speaker: There's this great moment moment here where we're introduced to Officer Cracks.
Speaker: And and he's he's telling him, you remember, Stephen, said Markoff, this is this is Officer Crax.
Speaker: Altman nodded.
Speaker: It's very simple, said Markoff.
Speaker: I want you to tell me everything.
Speaker: This is how this is the response to that.
Speaker: He did, starting with the moment that Torquato had suddenly attacked and moving through to his hallucinations.
Speaker: How hard was that?
Speaker: How hard was that?
Speaker: Like he could have like written that the entire time.
Speaker: Dude, there were like 37 moments in this book where you could have just done that and it would have been better writing and it would have saved you about 100 goddamn pages.
Speaker: 37 in a row?
Speaker: In a row.
Speaker: It all happened in a row.
Speaker: It all happened in part two.
Speaker: I'm surprised you don't remember those ones.
Speaker: Maybe you blacked them out.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Like, how is it you know that you know what you're doing?
Speaker: You know that that's the right thing to do.
Speaker: You came to this moment and you said, that's pretty boring to go over all that again.
Speaker: I'd better just wrap it up here in a tight little bow so we can get on with the rest of the story, which is the right thing to do.
Speaker: And why is it that you could do it for that one, but not the other moments?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I'm just that's what I mean when I say it feels like this book is written by like two different people sometimes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's that's the bummer of it all.
Speaker: So strange.
Speaker: So so and after after all that, you know, they he he talks a little bit more like says Stevens is your man.
Speaker: You got to tell Stevens everything.
Speaker: everything you see steven's the psychiatrist has to know um and then we get to chapter 45 and now things are starting to get a little spooky on the if it wasn't get spooky already with all the suicides now it's spookier because it's um he's like he said he's in a ghost uh in like a ghost world where he's starting he's he sees a lot of dead people he sees his father um
Speaker: um he sees his father his his sister a teacher uh a friend killed and they were all talking to him about the convergence um and then uh that he's he's wasted his time it's too late and then whoa ada saw her mother and she is there it is ada is now uh
Speaker: Ada is gone.
Speaker: Say bye bye to Ada.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: After this point.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Ada is the bear that went over the mountain to see what she could see.
Speaker: She's never coming back.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: It was her said Ada with a sense of conviction that worried him and I need her.
Speaker: I need her back.
Speaker: Oh Ada you sweet summer child you.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: She is never going to mark this point in the book because you're never going to get the same Ada as you did before the bright and if confusing
Speaker: character, right?
Speaker: Who talked about stories changing all the time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And Altman and her have a big exchange arguing about whether or not these ghosts are real now.
Speaker: And I think this is another moment that I'm going to give the author credit because the author talks about being in a ghost world here.
Speaker: He sees his dad.
Speaker: He sees his old friend who's dead in a car crash.
Speaker: And at first,
Speaker: I still had that instinct to go, well, that would be interesting to learn a little more about.
Speaker: But he makes a point of saying all they do is keep repeating themselves.
Speaker: They're all just talking about the convergence.
Speaker: And he starts to realize these aren't the ghosts of these people.
Speaker: This is just something that's manipulating my brain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Trying to get this message across.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's just going into his brain and taking a form of somebody he knew at some point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And and trying to communicate with him.
Speaker: um this message um after that we we have a brief scene where a scientist named meyer uh kills himself using a laser scalpel uh which laser scalpel a laser future it's the future um and there's there's a
Speaker: The last two sentences are amazing.
Speaker: What happened, Altman asked.
Speaker: Myra went crazy.
Speaker: He started screaming in the lab about the end of the world.
Speaker: Then he stabbed Westerman through the arm with a broken pipette.
Speaker: Then he grabbed that laser scalpel and ran here.
Speaker: And I'm like, how do you stab somebody?
Speaker: Have you ever tried to stab somebody with a pipette?
Speaker: It's not a very sturdy item, piece of glass to...
Speaker: to be stabbing.
Speaker: You're far more you're far more likely to, you know, smash it in your own hands and like shred up your hand with that.
Speaker: But you know what, Kevin?
Speaker: I think here's the thing.
Speaker: Here's what you haven't taken into account.
Speaker: It's the future.
Speaker: So it's it's probably some laser.
Speaker: It's a laser pipette for laser laser laser and piping liquids or something.
Speaker: So it ends with this brilliant line.
Speaker: Altman says, but why?
Speaker: And the man shrugs, who knows?
Speaker: It's just like when that guard shot a technician last week for no reason, then shot himself.
Speaker: These things just happen.
Speaker: Wait, what?
Speaker: When did that happen?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: You're gonna tell me about that, buddy?
Speaker: Are you sure you want to end your section that way?
Speaker: It's like that onion headline.
Speaker: I wish there's got to be a way to stop this from happening.
Speaker: Asks only country in the world where it keeps on happening.
Speaker: Right, right, right.
Speaker: My God.
Speaker: Yeah, the whole thing is once again, just like this.
Speaker: This is probably a this is a masterclass.
Speaker: This is a two page masterclass in the difference between telling and showing, because it's like they do have some brief moments where the action is active and happening before you.
Speaker: And then you get a lot of moments of like, hey, it happened this way.
Speaker: This happened, too.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: You should have been there.
Speaker: Yeah, that would have been nice.
Speaker: Yeah, that would have been nice if we were there.
Speaker: That's nuts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the the proceeding scenes kind of taken as a chunk are like basically people are now are just getting more and more unhinged.
Speaker: They're starting to like, I don't know, praise the marker.
Speaker: Ada is starting to become one of the true believers and has now threatened to leave him because she
Speaker: Altman just won't see the light.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's getting real culty.
Speaker: It's getting real culty in there.
Speaker: And it's interesting.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: You know, I think.
Speaker: There's a moment which is a little too early for this realization.
Speaker: Obviously, you see where it's getting, especially if you played the game.
Speaker: But there's like this group of people in front of Altman.
Speaker: He's just trying to get through them.
Speaker: And they're all just this cluster of people.
Speaker: This is early on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they're all just acting weird like they've been talking.
Speaker: They see him.
Speaker: They get quiet.
Speaker: And so he starts hearing what they're saying.
Speaker: And they're talking like weird, culty, religious, psychobabble.
Speaker: Freeing themselves from the flesh.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And his inner monologue is a religious meeting of some kind.
Speaker: Some crazed sect, no doubt.
Speaker: Why is that so blasé?
Speaker: Why...
Speaker: If I if I were on, I know that the station they're on is enormous.
Speaker: We've made it clear that everyone and their mom knows, you know, about this top secrets classified thing.
Speaker: But it's still small enough that if I saw a group of people that I lived with in this little community, I wouldn't be like, hmm, it seems that they're starting a weird ass religion over there.
Speaker: It would be like the fuck are you people doing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like he's just like, I remember those days.
Speaker: It was crazed, sick days, the salad days, I tell you.
Speaker: And this is this is like another like this is like background of Markov incompetence, right?
Speaker: Because it's like
Speaker: It's time to call it right.
Speaker: This is like it's like just just just end it.
Speaker: This is this this character has has you have people.
Speaker: People are killing themselves.
Speaker: People are killing each other.
Speaker: And then you have people starting a cult like.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: End it.
Speaker: Wrap it up.
Speaker: Go take the ball and go home because it's not right now.
Speaker: You're you're you're you're on a powder keg Markov.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he doesn't.
Speaker: I mean, they're still they're still doing it.
Speaker: And then Field finds Field finds Field.
Speaker: Field, who is he has lost his mind.
Speaker: Just if anyone does field is the is the the frumpy scientist that Altman used to.
Speaker: He shared a lab with him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Isn't that what it was?
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: He just didn't like him.
Speaker: Just didn't like him.
Speaker: I thought we were done with Field.
Speaker: I didn't realize we were going to see Field again.
Speaker: And Field is back and he is back with a group of people to ask Altman to be his prophet because he has seen the marker.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The one guy who's seen the marker, he's gone down there a thousand times.
Speaker: Therefore, they want him to be their profit.
Speaker: Altman, the one guy who's qualified to be a profit because he knows how to pilot the sub.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, I got to tell you, at first, there's that part of me, though, it's to be like, this is stupid.
Speaker: Nobody's ever chosen their profit based on such an arbitrary and never mind.
Speaker: Actually, that's
Speaker: Maybe this is one where the authors just fucking nailed it to the wall.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So the cult, you know, approaches Altman and says, we want you to lead us.
Speaker: You should lead us.
Speaker: You cannot abandon us.
Speaker: And, and, and he's, and he's basically just like, it's, it's, it's very stereotypical.
Speaker: He's like, he's like, fuck you guys.
Speaker: And it's, it's very fight club.
Speaker: You know, not, not leading you guys.
Speaker: And they're like, Oh, it's a test.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We'll sit out front for three days.
Speaker: You know, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, so he just he kicks them out and he finally, finally, maybe the first one of the first times anyway, is that Altman like actually is like reacting appropriately.
Speaker: He doesn't have like a smart ass cute thing to say.
Speaker: He's like, OK, this is actually really fucked up.
Speaker: This is actually not looking so good.
Speaker: He's not being quippy.
Speaker: He's not.
Speaker: He's no.
Speaker: He's any.
Speaker: I mean, we we get almost zero emotion about his like his his.
Speaker: Almost break up with Ada like we we don't know what he there's no feelings to Altman in any sense other than none being inconvenienced by people by a cult that wants him to be.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: You couldn't have put it better.
Speaker: You couldn't have put it better.
Speaker: That's and that's why I brought up the whole scene with him killing the guy and feeling weird about it, because it's the first time that any of this insane shit happens.
Speaker: And it will be the last, I believe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where any look, shit is going to get even crazier from here on out.
Speaker: It's just where this book is going.
Speaker: And Altman outside of the moment where he has to kill a guy, I
Speaker: And it's the only time Altman never raises his internal emotion above the low hum of being annoyed at being mildly inconvenienced.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It never goes beyond that.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So after that, the marker is in.
Speaker: They have they are they are pulling the the marker up in the next in the next chapter.
Speaker: It's they're they're bringing it to the surface.
Speaker: They're bringing it up to the surface.
Speaker: Markov reminds Altman like, hey, you're like, you're almost expendable because I don't need you to pilot this submarine anymore.
Speaker: Yeah, he keeps doing that.
Speaker: He loves that term.
Speaker: You're going to hear that from Markov a lot.
Speaker: You're expendable and you're expendable.
Speaker: You're expendable.
Speaker: That cat's expendable.
Speaker: That tractor's expendable.
Speaker: Expendable, expendable.
Speaker: He loves that word.
Speaker: Loves it.
Speaker: Loves it.
Speaker: can't get enough.
Speaker: He learned it like I think he learned it like a week before he took this this duty.
Speaker: Yeah, he basically has he has like a word of the day calendar.
Speaker: And right before he got hired, he started like, oh, expendable.
Speaker: OK, right.
Speaker: Yeah, I can use that in a sentence.
Speaker: Yeah, he just like that one time I was watching The Office years and years ago when it was still new.
Speaker: And there's a moment where Jim uses this phrase that I did not know.
Speaker: And he says six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Speaker: And I'd never heard that expression before.
Speaker: And my girlfriend at the time had to explain it to me.
Speaker: And I thought that and when I realized what it meant, I was so charmed by it that I used it so frequently that she nearly broke up with me.
Speaker: So, yeah, I get it.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: But I think that's the position that Markov is in right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, he's in a real six and one half dozen the other position.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Thank God you understand what I am saying right now.
Speaker: No matter what happens, it's six of one half dozen of the other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the six of one half dozen of the other podcasts.
Speaker: We will be discussing eggs.
Speaker: My name is six and one alongside half dozen of the other.
Speaker: That's going to replace our handles.
Speaker: Kevin six of one.
Speaker: Fill the half dozen of the other.
Speaker: um so um yeah basically uh uh markov just tells altman to bring the sub around back and park it like we don't need it right right and yeah they're done they're done and they bring up they bring up the uh
Speaker: the marker.
Speaker: And yeah, it's pretty clear that they're done with Altman.
Speaker: He's not invited to the party.
Speaker: He doesn't he's he's not going to get to investigate the marker.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So the next chapter is basically him trying to get in.
Speaker: He's trying to sneak.
Speaker: He's trying to be a sneaky boy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And right at the beginning of Chapter 47, what is up with this author's obsession with like cartoonish toadies?
Speaker: Like we've got Tim, Tom and Terry.
Speaker: And now we've got different guys that are like you got a couple of guards who sound like like the mob characters from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he's like he's trying to blow his way in.
Speaker: He says, I'm supposed to be in there to bring the marker up.
Speaker: Do you have a pass?
Speaker: Ask one guard.
Speaker: Nobody gets in without a pass.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Nobody, unless the boss says so.
Speaker: Nobody.
Speaker: And you find out the boss is like two and a half feet tall with a really big hat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, just, ugh.
Speaker: Yeah, the boss is like, you know, played by Peter Lorre or something like that.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Or the Bugs Bunny.
Speaker: Like, you know how they would draw Peter Lorre in those cartoons with like the...
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I was in my mid thirties before I even saw Peter Lorre and had like a reference for who he was outside of a cartoon parody.
Speaker: That was just that's how that's how ubiquitous that portrayal is with like the really heavy eyelids.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Fucking Robin Williams as the genie in Aladdin pretending to be him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's just I'd seen him.
Speaker: I'd seen it a hundred times before I'd actually seen the guy.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, my God, that's exactly it's like shit.
Speaker: It's like him.
Speaker: It is exactly the real thing.
Speaker: So he's trying to get in to get to the marker.
Speaker: He gets a little glimpse.
Speaker: He gets a little glimpse.
Speaker: He gets a glimpse, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then he realizes his only chance to get to do it is to be a prophet, I guess.
Speaker: This is like the Ferris Buellerfication of Altman.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: He's like, all right, if I'm gonna get in there and look at the marker, I'm gonna have to let these cultists see my dick, or sorry, rather, the piece of the marker that I've got.
Speaker: Which is exactly what he does.
Speaker: At this point, all my- Trying out a bunch of new impressions on this episode.
Speaker: That was a spot on, Matthew.
Speaker: That was a spot on mid 80s Matthew Broderick, I gotta tell you.
Speaker: I'm glad because I've never done that one before.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He goes back to field and he's like, hey, I got to see the marker because, you know, we all know how the markers alive and totally the Prince of Peace and King of the Jews.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So he's totally hip.
Speaker: And the marker wants something from me.
Speaker: So I got to go in there and you guys got to help me get in there.
Speaker: And basically he does, he has the piece of the marker that he stole still and he shows it to Field and Field just like,
Speaker: Basically, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Like like like the finger bone of a dead priest or something like that.
Speaker: Field has a field.
Speaker: He he he orgasms just a little bit.
Speaker: Just a little.
Speaker: Just a little.
Speaker: Can I hold it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which which out of context, you have to admit, sounds pretty bad.
Speaker: Or or not bad, you know, or not bad.
Speaker: I mean, pretty good.
Speaker: It could go.
Speaker: It could go either way, depending on if there's, you know, depending on the context.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So so they yeah, they basically strike up an arrangement.
Speaker: He's going to work with a bunch of like Harmon and these guys who they're all basically on the side of the religion.
Speaker: And and so they're going to dress him up as a guard in a uniform and going to sneak in past the guards to go see the marker.
Speaker: Snake, this is a sneaking mission.
Speaker: Right, right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: Altman has this moment, they give him a uniform, an outfit that's the same as Harmon's, and Altman stared at it.
Speaker: How's this gonna help, he asked.
Speaker: Won't they recognize me in any case?
Speaker: Maybe, said Harmon, but they won't try to stop us.
Speaker: They won't question the past as long as you have the uniform.
Speaker: If we have trouble, it'll be afterwards, which is a risk I'll have to take.
Speaker: And that might be the stupidest thing said in this book.
Speaker: Like there's like really saying like, yeah, you know, if,
Speaker: If they'll look at you and realize you are totally not who you say that you are.
Speaker: They'll know.
Speaker: If you got the past, they'll know.
Speaker: But they'll let you go.
Speaker: And we'll deal with it afterwards.
Speaker: It's like, what the fuck are you even talking about?
Speaker: You're writing the book.
Speaker: Give them something else.
Speaker: Just make it a better scene.
Speaker: Just select it and delete it and make this a better scene.
Speaker: Yes, that's all.
Speaker: Just make it better.
Speaker: And it would be one thing.
Speaker: It would be one thing.
Speaker: And it still wouldn't be great.
Speaker: But it would be one thing if this was meant to lead to some, like, scary standoff moment.
Speaker: You know, like, the codes are a little older, but it all checks out.
Speaker: You know, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Like a little bit of a standoff moment.
Speaker: Something.
Speaker: It doesn't.
Speaker: It goes exactly as planned.
Speaker: Without a single hiccup.
Speaker: Yeah, they get in there and they go and there's the marker and he takes out his cell phone and starts taking pictures.
Speaker: And Harman's like, what are you doing?
Speaker: Nobody's allowed to vid it.
Speaker: And like, why are you drawing the line here, Harman?
Speaker: Like, what the fuck?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You broke in.
Speaker: You just broke in.
Speaker: You're going to be court-martialed.
Speaker: And you're like, but don't take video of it.
Speaker: Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker: It's like, it's like we murdered that guy.
Speaker: Yeah, but don't take his wallet.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so so Altman gets all this this information.
Speaker: He starts packing.
Speaker: He gets back to his room, starts packing up, getting ready to roll.
Speaker: And clearly he is he's ready to leave.
Speaker: He's he's ready to escape.
Speaker: He's like, let's get out of here.
Speaker: Let's get out of here.
Speaker: Let's take this evidence that I've got.
Speaker: And God only knows how this is going to work out.
Speaker: Let's blow this possible stand.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So and that leads us to a rarity in this book, a chapter that is the POV, not of Altman.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Well, in the first, remember in the first part, it was like no Altman at all.
Speaker: Right, that's true.
Speaker: It was every other chapter.
Speaker: It was like Chava, Altman, Chava, Altman.
Speaker: And then like part two was no Altman.
Speaker: And then, but then part three on, it's been all Altman all the time.
Speaker: and that's true and now we get a Markov chapter and Markov chapter he's just like this chapter is basically Markov just being like fuck I don't know there's cult there's a convergence there's shit happening um I don't there's there I don't know what's going on you you fucking nailed it that's exactly what this chapter is it's just Markov going ah fuck I don't know what
Speaker: He's like, he's asking, like, Krax is like, hey, here's some shit.
Speaker: And Markov's like, well, what's your recommendation?
Speaker: And Krax is like, I don't know, these guys are crazy.
Speaker: Yeah, they're religious fanatics.
Speaker: They're finally paying attention to them.
Speaker: He's like, I don't know.
Speaker: They're nuts.
Speaker: You know, and it's like, like we should, you don't want to, and cracks is like, he's like, no, don't fucking crazy.
Speaker: Kill him.
Speaker: Take him out.
Speaker: Take him out.
Speaker: Deal with this.
Speaker: Just be an end with, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Markov's like, nah, you know, like, like it's not gonna, you know, it's, I don't know about that.
Speaker: And cracks kind of convinces me like, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna have to, this is gonna get ugly and we might as well be ready for it.
Speaker: So we, we are prepping, uh, for, uh,
Speaker: the proverbial shit to hit the proverbial air conditioning unit.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So, uh, the proverbial air conditioning unit.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, it basically, there's more like the, uh,
Speaker: Now there's a kerfuffle.
Speaker: There's a rumble going down in the marker chamber.
Speaker: And the scientists are protesting and Crax and his team are down there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Field is basically they're they're fighting over.
Speaker: They're fighting like the cult is there like trying to protect the marker, essentially.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like worried that they're going to take it away.
Speaker: There's going to be some some bad that'll happen, something that they're going to destroy the marker in one way or the other.
Speaker: And they get into.
Speaker: Yeah, they get into a big scuffle.
Speaker: And in order to make it end, cracks basically shoots the marker.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He like he shoots it a couple of times.
Speaker: Nothing happens to the marker.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: But the cult freaks out and starts going, OK, OK, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Like, well, just don't hurt anymore.
Speaker: And cracks gets like a splitting migraine in that exact moment and doesn't seem to take any notice of any significance to that.
Speaker: No, I suppose.
Speaker: No, but cracks does then take take it all to mean just more proof that religion is a dead end.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Which is the right message that you came to in the wrong way.
Speaker: And that's all right.
Speaker: Then he smiles and he says he hadn't had so much fun since the moon skirmishes.
Speaker: The moon skirmishes!
Speaker: Cracks have gone to the moon!
Speaker: It's like those old, every time they bring up like the moon wars, I think of like those old pulp cartoons and comics and stuff where it's like it was made in 1956 and they're like, the year is 2007.
Speaker: We are fighting on the moon.
Speaker: You know, it's just, oh God, okay.
Speaker: The boys are keeping high spirits on the front.
Speaker: fighting space communism.
Speaker: So, yeah, they yeah.
Speaker: So he's just he's just happy he got to shoot a guy because he did shoot field in the foot.
Speaker: He shot field in the leg.
Speaker: Yeah, he shot him on the leg.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's in a good mood.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: If you got if I got to shoot field in the leg, maybe I'd be in a pretty good mood, too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In the next chapter, we get like I was surprised that we finally got backstory on Terry, Tim and Tom.
Speaker: Oh, my God, we totally do.
Speaker: Tim and Tom are brothers and Terry is unrelated.
Speaker: He's just there for the ride.
Speaker: He's a thin guy with glasses that carries a large caliber gun.
Speaker: Tim and Tom are brothers, large men who looked enough to be to be twins.
Speaker: And well, here's the thing.
Speaker: They say that they look enough alike to be twins.
Speaker: And then not far down the way, they say that they are indeed twins.
Speaker: Basically, one of them is nine minutes older than the other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they kind of like, I don't know.
Speaker: It's like he was so caught up in writing another one of his the backstory on one of his cartoonish Toadie characters that he was like, yeah, they're twins.
Speaker: No, they're not.
Speaker: Yeah, they are.
Speaker: Like, just.
Speaker: Come on, man.
Speaker: Yeah, just pick it.
Speaker: Just pick something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, they're guarding.
Speaker: Like, what are they doing?
Speaker: What are they doing?
Speaker: I don't even know what's happening in this chapter.
Speaker: What the fuck is happening in this chapter?
Speaker: Altman is doing something, but there's... The pulse had started again, and then there's the ichthyologists who may or may not be the same ichthyologists as before...
Speaker: think it's the same one but now he's got he's got a name um a gizzes i guess a gases a gases a gases uh so so basically they're trying to like i think they're trying to they're they're guarding the way out they're guarding the way out that's the
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Omen obviously wants to get out.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: So they're trying to come up with some sort of plan for that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, they were in the land compound.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: They were back.
Speaker: They were off the I missed the part where they actually got off.
Speaker: But yeah, they were there.
Speaker: They're basically they were shipped off.
Speaker: Field is there with them.
Speaker: They're trying to now leave the the compound.
Speaker: And they're like, no.
Speaker: But Scood, the disposable, Scud, the disposable assassin, it has some research equipment and he's still still doing some some research and they keep seeing ghosts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he's not he's not going anywhere.
Speaker: So basically, they're trying to this is this is sneaking mission.
Speaker: This is and it's a sneaky mission.
Speaker: Colonel.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's he's walking down the hall.
Speaker: It's late one night.
Speaker: He's walking.
Speaker: Here it is.
Speaker: And then suddenly, late one night, walking down the hall, he realized that the guard on duty at the front door, Tim or Tom, was talking to himself.
Speaker: He watched him gesture to empty air and then hold out his rifle and let go of it.
Speaker: It clattered to the ground and he just left it there and then went rapidly down the hall, passing Altman without a second glance.
Speaker: Nobody was guarding the door.
Speaker: So Altman grabs the gun, scoops it up and just runs the fuck out, takes advantage and goes.
Speaker: Now,
Speaker: this is another moment of like just someone is bad at their job.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And therefore he takes advantage.
Speaker: And if you're wondering what the fuck happened, well, the next chapter is going to tell you.
Speaker: The next chapter tells you Tim is on duty and his dad shows up and starts talking to him.
Speaker: and says, here, basically, he gives, the dad says, hey, Tommy has stopped talking.
Speaker: And Tim's like, I'm gonna go check on him.
Speaker: And the dad's a ghost, the dad's a ghost.
Speaker: Dad's a ghost, I mean, yeah, dad's a ghost.
Speaker: And he's like, and it's so, again, the totishness, the totiness,
Speaker: of this character like that cartoonish bullshit is so over the top.
Speaker: It's it's so cartoonishly buffoonish.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: Give him the give him the rabbit, Lenny.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: So ghost dad basically tells him, you know, go check on your brother.
Speaker: He goes, he finds his brother.
Speaker: Oh, wouldn't you know it?
Speaker: Tom or Tim or whoever.
Speaker: It's Tom.
Speaker: Tom is dead.
Speaker: Tim finds him.
Speaker: Dead.
Speaker: Dead.
Speaker: And his throat's cut.
Speaker: He cut his own throat in much the same way that many of our characters have done.
Speaker: Rest in peace, Tom.
Speaker: You will barely be remembered.
Speaker: So that's a wrap on Tom.
Speaker: That's a wrap on Tom and Tim.
Speaker: I think I think both Tom and Tim.
Speaker: I don't recall if we get any more Terry either, but it doesn't matter because they really are a package deal.
Speaker: They're really a package deal because in chapter 51, suddenly Altman is having a press conference in Washington, D.C.
Speaker: with the footage of the marker.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So this is the beginning of what I call the great back and forth of Altman.
Speaker: And I don't mind.
Speaker: I'm not going to give anything away per se, but this is the beginning of several moments in the final 30% of this book where Altman disappears.
Speaker: He runs away.
Speaker: He's escaped.
Speaker: He has escaped.
Speaker: He's escaped and he is he is basically taking his video footage of the of the the marker that he took and he's showing it to everybody.
Speaker: He's getting all these press conferences done.
Speaker: He's on TV in the way that nobody ever would be.
Speaker: We know how this works, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: There are way more convincing things on the Internet.
Speaker: And The New York Times does not pay attention at all because a crack is a crank and a crackpot's a crackpot.
Speaker: And that's clearly what Altman is, even if we happen to know that he isn't.
Speaker: So anyway.
Speaker: That's what he's doing.
Speaker: The part five ends with him being some whistleblower and people like, oh, man, maybe this is proof that there is alien technology on the planet.
Speaker: Maybe this is a government conspiracy in the way that nobody except for the people who believed in Pizzagate would.
Speaker: Yeah, the ticker says the ticker below him says Michael Altman whistleblower or paranoid.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It's like, no, no, no.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: So he does this.
Speaker: I don't mind telling you guys he's going to go back and then he's going to leave again and then he's going to go back and then he's going to leave again.
Speaker: And none of it means anything.
Speaker: It means nothing.
Speaker: it means less than nothing.
Speaker: It is just so, this is the, this is the beginning of the great back and forth and we'll get into way more detail on that.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: On the next episode, we'll cover the great back and forthening of,
Speaker: of michael altman there's only two parts left in this book part six and part seven i believe right is there it's yes this is this is we are we are rounding the bend here and it's just like this book that uh where when we were dealing with a mysterious pulse
Speaker: It ended with grants and, you know, research into getting one of those.
Speaker: And then we get actual footage of an alien artifact.
Speaker: And the character's reaction is to take it to the press.
Speaker: Hold a press conference in Washington, D.C.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dead Space.
Speaker: A story of doing things by the book.
Speaker: Michael Altman goes to Congress.
Speaker: It's just, oh my God.
Speaker: He's testifying in front of Joe Manchin, who is somehow still alive.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And they've, yeah, he's still there.
Speaker: He hasn't, and no one questions it, by the way.
Speaker: No one questions it.
Speaker: It's that.
Speaker: Even the markers freaked out by that guy.
Speaker: He's got coal running in his blood.
Speaker: That's what keeps him going.
Speaker: Steampunk Senator Overlord Joe Manchin, who runs on coal.
Speaker: All hail.
Speaker: All hail his coley holiness.
Speaker: His coley holiness.
Speaker: Joe Manchin.
Speaker: Joe Manchin.
Speaker: From West Bank Guard, Virginia.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: And they've somehow resurrected Strom Thurmond in this universe as well.
Speaker: Oh, God, it is.
Speaker: Part six is hell unleashed.
Speaker: And that, I mean, really, if hell is unleashed, I imagine Strom Thurmond's going to be leading the charge.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just a head in a jar balanced carefully on a Confederate war horse.
Speaker: Like, that's just that's what we're dealing with here.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: No, it's not, because that would actually make for an interesting book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I actually want to read that.
Speaker: Strom Thurmond, by the way, lived to the ripe old age of 101, which.
Speaker: Was he that old?
Speaker: God, motherfucker, like was the he's like he was like the emperor.
Speaker: And sometimes evil is an amazing preservative.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: It really, really salts the skin and the organs.
Speaker: Just that crispy, crackly, good fried chicken skin.
Speaker: We all know Strom Thurmond had.
Speaker: He was, yeah, that was his beauty regimen was a deep fat fryer.
Speaker: In the back of ladies.
Speaker: I roll myself in flour.
Speaker: I roll myself in flour.
Speaker: And then I have my good friend Paula Deen get me into the deep fat fryer in the back of Lady and Sons.
Speaker: Buys me another 10 years.
Speaker: They use, they reuse that oil on the chicken afterwards, by the way.
Speaker: Gives the chicken its distinctive flavor.
Speaker: The flavor of evil.
Speaker: Racism and hate.
Speaker: That is a Southern Gothic novel I will absolutely write.
Speaker: The fried chicken is flavored with evil.
Speaker: With evil.
Speaker: Oh, that is, that's like if Stephen King was born in South Carolina, he would have written that already.
Speaker: Yeah, he would have written that and it's two sequels by now.
Speaker: That's basically like the it's like the the mangler, but but for a fried chicken place.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: I loved the mangler.
Speaker: It was so stupid.
Speaker: But yeah, I think I think a gothic horror novel set in a fried evil fried chicken place.
Speaker: I think it's time has come.
Speaker: It's time has come.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, that'll do it for today's episode.
Speaker: Remember to rate us five stars on Apple iTunes and Apple Podcasts and follow us on the podcast platform of your choice.
Speaker: And remember to go ahead and follow us on Twitter and share the podcast.
Speaker: Share it with your friends, share it with your family, and share it with your enemies.
Speaker: Share it with your evil southern relatives.
Speaker: Share it with your favorite evil southern senator.
Speaker: Because, hey, they deserve a good podcast too.
Speaker: And maybe it'll soften that cold dead heart of theirs.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: With that delicious crackly skin.
Speaker: With that delicious chicken fried crackly skin.
Speaker: Tastes good, y'all.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Goodbye.
