Transcript
Speaker: Hey there everybody, welcome back to Pixel Lit.
Speaker: With me as always is my good friend Phil the Conquistadorc.
Speaker: Hello everybody!
Speaker: So today we are starting a brand new book series.
Speaker: And Phil, what are we going to be talking about?
Speaker: Today, Kevin, we are going to start our way through Halo, The Fall of Reach by Eric Nyland.
Speaker: And it's the first in what appears to be a very long series of Halo novels.
Speaker: So, yeah, this is this is basically, as far as I understand it, the prequel.
Speaker: to Halo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, what's funny is we're going to go into this book and I have to make a gamer confession.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I have barely played Halo.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I played Halo.
Speaker: I only ever played the first one.
Speaker: And actually, in preparation for this one, because I remember being kind of embarrassed in our last book with Resident Evil that I had never fully played through all of the first Resident Evil.
Speaker: So I started playing Halo 1 again.
Speaker: And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that you do not need to have ever played Halo to read this book.
Speaker: Yeah, that was that was actually the vibe I was getting from the book.
Speaker: And we'll get into it, but it's first impressions.
Speaker: This is a pretty tight book so far.
Speaker: It's pretty good.
Speaker: Honestly, I think for me, I played Halo, but I never got super into the franchise like a lot of my friends did because I was already a Warhammer 40k nerd.
Speaker: Yeah, there's only so much space military stuff that one can absorb into their life.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: You know, when you give when you got it, when you got enough 40 K stuff, Halo is at best.
Speaker: It's like, OK, that's cute.
Speaker: You know, at least at least that's at least that's how it looked, you know, on the outside.
Speaker: Look again.
Speaker: But yeah, first impression so far without getting into the whole thing too much.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd say this is a this is a pretty tight book.
Speaker: It's it's it's a little more well constructed than our last book.
Speaker: Is and obviously we both we both thoroughly liked the last book for the most part with the with the odd with the odd exceptions around phrasing and.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And Chris.
Speaker: And the copters.
Speaker: And the copters.
Speaker: And the copters.
Speaker: The copters.
Speaker: There's no copters in Halo.
Speaker: No copters in Halo.
Speaker: They've moved past copter technology in Halo.
Speaker: No copters, just pelicans.
Speaker: Just pelicans.
Speaker: We can jump right into it.
Speaker: And this book starts with a prologue, and you know it's going to be good.
Speaker: When there's a prologue at the beginning, because that means that means someone cared enough to really like, you know what?
Speaker: This isn't the plot, but it's important to the plot.
Speaker: So I'm going to write extra stuff just to it's it's that context.
Speaker: And I liked it.
Speaker: It was a nice little scene.
Speaker: It's that classic meat grinder introduction where it's like, look, we're gonna have to give you some exposition here pretty heavily to begin with, so to keep your attention, why don't I throw you a big ol' war scene where we openly and freely mix Norse and Greek mythology for our names and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: I know that's gonna be exciting for you.
Speaker: We got the Spartans running around in their Mjolnir armor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I've been reading and listening to the audiobook for the most part.
Speaker: And it's made me giggle every time because the guy who read the...
Speaker: the audio book does a fantastic job.
Speaker: Unfortunately, nobody told him how to pronounce Mjolnir, which I don't know how it's pronounced in the game because I've barely played the game, but I don't think they ever bring it up.
Speaker: I'm not sure they bring it up.
Speaker: But in the book, in the book on tape version, which made me sound, that just made me sound a million years old in the audible version of the book.
Speaker: In the audiobook version that I checked out from the public library.
Speaker: I checked it out from the public library and it plays on my 8-track.
Speaker: It's wonderful.
Speaker: It's wonderful technology.
Speaker: I can cruise down the street in my horseless carriage and listen to it.
Speaker: In my Coupe de Ville.
Speaker: The beautiful mono audio technology of it all.
Speaker: In mono.
Speaker: We are so off track already.
Speaker: Already.
Speaker: This is why it took five episodes to get through a relatively light Resident Evil.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this book is at least a hundred pages longer.
Speaker: Oh gosh.
Speaker: Um, Lord have mercy on us.
Speaker: Anyway, what I was, uh, our audience on the audience.
Speaker: So yeah, so yeah, the guy wearing Mjolnir Spartans wearing Mjolnir, except the guy on the audio book says Majolnir.
Speaker: Are you kidding me?
Speaker: He says Majolnir.
Speaker: Yes, he does.
Speaker: Majolner.
Speaker: Majolner.
Speaker: In their Majolner battle armor.
Speaker: And I was like, ooh.
Speaker: Man.
Speaker: Because when did this book come out?
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: 2010.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: This came out in 2001.
Speaker: Oh, the book came out.
Speaker: Oh, the book came out in 2001.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Thor Award was written in 2010.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's what the difference is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The book came out in 2001.
Speaker: I don't even have.
Speaker: You see, I have my old beat up ass paperback copy.
Speaker: First edition.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It doesn't even have your fancy nine year ahead forward.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think I know where you're going.
Speaker: You're wondering if Thor had come out yet.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: We can talk a big game here about being able to pronounce Mjolnir, if I'm doing it right, but if I had tried to pronounce it in 2001, God only knows what I would have actually said, so I'm not going to give him too much guff over that.
Speaker: Yeah, we're all very cocky here in the year 2021 when there are three count them three Thor movies.
Speaker: You know, it's a horn of plenty that we never would have expected in 2001 ever.
Speaker: We didn't think we we didn't we didn't think we were going to get a Scarlet Witch TV show.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: We were barely we're barely going to get it.
Speaker: We were like, oh, they might make a movie on Spider-Man.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: They made an X-Men movie and it blew our brains out of our ears.
Speaker: We could not believe it.
Speaker: You couldn't believe it.
Speaker: And it was, and like looking back on it, it was like, they tried to fix the X-Men by putting them in the black leather outfits.
Speaker: They got them out of, that's a whole separate podcast.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: It's a whole other podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to have to.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Erase, erase, erase.
Speaker: This will be covered up in editing.
Speaker: No, it won't.
Speaker: I demand that you leave it in.
Speaker: Everything's going to be left in.
Speaker: Everything's left in.
Speaker: No edits, people.
Speaker: It can't be edited.
Speaker: So what happens in the prologue?
Speaker: Who do we meet?
Speaker: What are we seeing?
Speaker: What's going on in this prologue?
Speaker: Well, we got the Spartans in their Norse armor.
Speaker: They're fighting a bunch of Covenant grunts.
Speaker: The Covenant being an affiliation slash alliance of aliens that are fighting against Earth, your classic dark alien horde baddies.
Speaker: And it really is a nice glimpse into the video game, because frankly, you are going to go a long time in this book before you see anything
Speaker: that reminds you too much of Halo.
Speaker: If at that point all you've done is played the first Halo, you're not going to see a ton after this prologue that looks like the Halo game, because, you know, so they give you
Speaker: That's what this prologue's about.
Speaker: It's like, hey, just so you know, you didn't get the wrong book.
Speaker: We've got blue team versus red team coming out.
Speaker: This is Halo.
Speaker: This is Halo.
Speaker: We've got your weird little, you know, alien bots screaming, panicking, running around, and...
Speaker: a lady spartan coming out and taking out a cannon, you know, and you know, and feminism wins.
Speaker: And it's, it's, and it's, you know, and it's, it's just, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's a big action scene.
Speaker: It makes me think a lot of 40 K with fewer illusions to the Catholic church, pretty much.
Speaker: I didn't say none.
Speaker: I said fewer.
Speaker: Would you say that?
Speaker: Well, yeah, they use the word covenant, which is right.
Speaker: Super religioso.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which makes you wonder with it's the Spartans and their Norse technology fighting the covenant.
Speaker: Is this.
Speaker: Pagans fighting back against the monotheistic God against the Holy Roman Empire.
Speaker: Is this is this a whole it's is it a whole thing?
Speaker: I don't I don't know.
Speaker: Is it an allegory?
Speaker: Speaking as a man who took a single literary criticism class while getting his master's degree, I'm going to confirm.
Speaker: Yes, that's exactly what this is all about.
Speaker: Pagans versus Judeo-Christian ethics.
Speaker: That's what this is.
Speaker: That's what this is.
Speaker: We figured it out.
Speaker: The theme has been just exposed to the bone, my friend.
Speaker: Theme established.
Speaker: Theme established, yeah.
Speaker: So the Spartans are dominant.
Speaker: They just absolutely obliterate the grunts.
Speaker: There is nothing that the grunts can do to stop the Spartans from just...
Speaker: grinding them up into little grunt paste.
Speaker: You almost feel bad.
Speaker: There isn't a single.
Speaker: Oh, you do.
Speaker: Because there's not a single move they make that the Spartans don't have some plan for.
Speaker: Like, they've got it figured out, you know, and it's just you can hear the fucking Metallica playing in the background.
Speaker: Or more appropriately, honestly, if you've never played Halo, just just this is what you ought to do.
Speaker: Go find the Halo soundtrack and listen to it while you're reading the book, because honestly, that soundtrack.
Speaker: rules.
Speaker: It's I forgot.
Speaker: I forgot how good it is.
Speaker: It's this perfect combination of like early thousands metal music and symphony orchestra shit.
Speaker: It's the it's the Metallica made an album where they played with a symphony orchestra and they called it S&M Symphony and Metallica because they're very James Hetfield's very clever and very clever.
Speaker: And it's awesome.
Speaker: And that's what the soundtrack is.
Speaker: It's just a whole it's and you can just hear that playing in the background while they're doing this.
Speaker: And they've got cool, badass quotes like a ship just wasn't home.
Speaker: The battlefield was sugar.
Speaker: Like it's right there, man.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's really energized.
Speaker: Uh, but the, the prologue ends on a down note, basically, um, uh, for as good as the Spartans are on the grounds, the United Nations, uh, space, space force, um, established by Donald J. Trump in the year 2019.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: The year of our Lord.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: And his Q forces of space marines.
Speaker: The Q space marines.
Speaker: The Q marines.
Speaker: The Q marines.
Speaker: The four marines.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'll debate on editing that out, whether I really want the attention of Q-Berts onto this.
Speaker: Man, they're busy wondering why, you know, they're... Yeah, honestly, they're not going to be listening, so who cares?
Speaker: They're busy wondering a lot of things, actually.
Speaker: I don't know why...
Speaker: I'll let it ride.
Speaker: I'm going to let it ride.
Speaker: Just roll those dice, man.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I'm going to ride the lightning.
Speaker: He said in a callback.
Speaker: With a quiet shrug to himself.
Speaker: I did shrug.
Speaker: It was a real, you know, the guess I'll die meme.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It was that guy.
Speaker: I think we all saw that.
Speaker: I think we all knew that's exactly what you were doing.
Speaker: Right in the mind's eye.
Speaker: So for as good as the Spartans are, the United Nations Air, Space Navy, whatever they are, they're bad.
Speaker: They just absolutely suck at what they're doing.
Speaker: Yeah, there are no human colonies left.
Speaker: They're constantly on the run.
Speaker: They are constantly losing.
Speaker: They are just losing every chance they get.
Speaker: They're winning ground wars, but winning a ground war doesn't matter if the spaceships are getting blown out.
Speaker: of the sky right right and I would like to point out that this prologue ends with uh uh uh Big Papa Chief uh uh uh what's the fuck what's his fucking name Master Chief Master Chief Big Papa Chief Big Papa Chief can we call him Big Papa Chief instead Scott Steiner I'm reaching out to Bungie
Speaker: Bungie, can we please retroactively change his name for the last 21 years to Big Papa Chief?
Speaker: I'd really appreciate it.
Speaker: So Big Papa Chief, they finish their mission and he requests to watch as they literally obliterate the entire planet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like they just blow it to shreds and he wants to watch.
Speaker: He wants to watch the Covenant just turn all their lasers onto the surface of the planet, which he's doing well.
Speaker: Therapy is going really well.
Speaker: The therapy is going well.
Speaker: Speaking of therapy, I mean, I guess we'll get to that in like chapter two or whatever.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I'm in therapy.
Speaker: You're in therapy.
Speaker: Big Papa Chief's in therapy.
Speaker: Big Papa Chief is in therapy.
Speaker: Oh, he needs to be.
Speaker: That's one thing we find out about him in this book.
Speaker: That man needs therapy.
Speaker: That man needs therapy.
Speaker: There's been some questionable choices in raising him.
Speaker: And we'll get to that.
Speaker: Therapy and let's say maybe a hug.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll get there.
Speaker: We'll get there.
Speaker: So that's that's the end of the prologue.
Speaker: And we we skip right into chapter one where we introduce we.
Speaker: Well, first, it's weird.
Speaker: Chapter one is told from the point of view of a character who thus far into the book, we're not going to see again.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, we will never see him again.
Speaker: He is, his name is Jacob Keys.
Speaker: Hey there, it's future Kevin editing this episode.
Speaker: Boy, were we wrong.
Speaker: He totally shows up later in the book and in the Halo video games.
Speaker: We make this mistake several times in the episode, so please laugh with us and mostly at us as we continue down this journey into wrongness.
Speaker: because I want to stay on top of this and call out any Easter eggs that aren't really deeply hidden, like ticks in the skin of a newborn baby fawn.
Speaker: I've been like every time there's like a proper noun or a name or something like that, I will like check it out online on the Halo PDA or whatever it's called and look it up and and nothing, just nothing.
Speaker: This this this this man is nothing.
Speaker: This man is nothing.
Speaker: This man is nothing.
Speaker: It's just, he's nothing.
Speaker: His mother doesn't even call him on his birthday.
Speaker: Yeah, Jacob Keys.
Speaker: But I still wrote his name down because I was like, ooh, is that a person?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No, it's not.
Speaker: That happens a lot in this book, I'm going to be honest with you.
Speaker: It does happen a lot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Definitely, definitely not going to live this one down.
Speaker: So he wakes up from his cryo sleep just in enough time to awkwardly turn his male gaze onto Dr. Halsey.
Speaker: Dr. Halsey, who doesn't, I'll tell you what, who is a big old flirt.
Speaker: She knows what she's doing.
Speaker: She, yeah, I mean, she's flirting a little bit.
Speaker: But yeah, I thought it was weird.
Speaker: Like, Jacob Keys gets, like, zero...
Speaker: physical like description.
Speaker: But meanwhile, Dr. Halsey is, uh, her pale skin make, made her look like a ghost in the fog.
Speaker: Matted locks of dark hair clung to her neck.
Speaker: She didn't look much older than him.
Speaker: And she was lovely, not beautiful, but definitely a striking woman for a civilian anyway.
Speaker: And I was like, I don't know what that's that.
Speaker: That last part means.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: It does smack very hard of like, I've seen hotter.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: She's not that hot.
Speaker: I mean, don't get me wrong.
Speaker: I'd bone her.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: And then he dies.
Speaker: That's your Jacob Keys, uh, official canon Jacob Keys voice.
Speaker: I would really appreciate when a Halo movie is made if I will be properly cast as Jacob Keys because I nailed that.
Speaker: You nailed it.
Speaker: I nailed it.
Speaker: So, yeah, they have their little moments of basically it's Eric, Mr. Nyland wrote in a scene of like, you remember the J.J.
Speaker: Abrams Star Trek movie?
Speaker: Um, the first one where, uh, what's her name?
Speaker: The scientists, she basically just strips down into her bra and panties.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: She's like, she's like, Oh, whatever.
Speaker: Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: It's basically that scene.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he and it's kind of it's kind of adorable or weird or both.
Speaker: Let's say both where he's kind of finicky about whether or not it's OK for him to see her naked.
Speaker: He kind of shifts around.
Speaker: It clearly makes him a little uncomfortable, but she doesn't give a shit, which is kind of her establishing dominance because she's an alpha female.
Speaker: And it's like, what?
Speaker: These breasts?
Speaker: Yeah, I got them.
Speaker: They're spectacular, but I'm still a bad bitch, which is not.
Speaker: said out loud so much, but it's there.
Speaker: You can tell.
Speaker: It's a subtext.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I know writers use subtext.
Speaker: They're all cowards.
Speaker: They're all cowards.
Speaker: All of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she kind of like she did.
Speaker: But then like there's this funny scene after that where the computer is like she's like kind of ordering the computer around.
Speaker: Do you remember what I'm talking about?
Speaker: Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker: She she basically breaks the A.I.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: She just keeps interrupting it.
Speaker: And it's, it's the, I kept thinking of the scene from Austin Powers when they, yeah, when they unfreeze him and he's peeing and the computer's like evacuation complete.
Speaker: evacuation it was like that it's it's that's the scene that's just another another chance for her to show that she's a bad bitch and and she will not be ordered around by man or machine damn it no no she it's it it's a two-part yeah it's it's her establishing dominance in two parts once over this uh schmuck uh jacob keys um and i say schmuck in the most lovingly way possible
Speaker: Speaking as a schmuck, I can say that I took no offense.
Speaker: And then she does it to the AI, this schmuck, this AI.
Speaker: The schmucky AI.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jacob Keyes, the schmuck, and AI, the putz.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: That Yiddish journey.
Speaker: That's what that is.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: A journey down Yiddish insults.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's... And then it also kind of sneaks in some, like...
Speaker: Some lore, some world building in there where it's, ooh, these, yar, these waters be dangerous.
Speaker: That's my Jacob Keys impression.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: See, I didn't need, I don't need this competition, Kevin, because you fucking nailed that.
Speaker: That's so good.
Speaker: He's talking about how like... Damn it.
Speaker: He's talking about how the space... The sector of space they're in is actually kind of dangerous.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because it's... There's rebels out there.
Speaker: And this is kind of like the first...
Speaker: I don't like I said, I don't know a ton about Halo didn't play it, but usually rebels are not they're not normally cast in the villain.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's interesting, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this isn't the last time they do it.
Speaker: They talk a lot about rebellions and they're kind of like predicting a timetable for like we we've got a rebellion coming up like they're predicting when a rebellion or an uprising will happen.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, you're right.
Speaker: They don't.
Speaker: That's rare.
Speaker: That's rare when the rebel is like this unseen bad guy for us.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's rare that your hero is the one who says something like we need to crush this rebellion.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Not used to that.
Speaker: Uh, even though I'm an American.
Speaker: Oh, topical.
Speaker: You know it.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's what the people come here for.
Speaker: That's both topical and evergreen.
Speaker: Unfortunately, it's never, it's, it's going to work.
Speaker: It's going to work no matter, no matter when they're listening to it, our country will be involved in quashing some people's fight for freedom.
Speaker: And yeah, if it's, whether it's 2021 that you're listening or 2031, um,
Speaker: You remember the shitty thing that our country did last week?
Speaker: That's what I was referencing there.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Covered.
Speaker: Recovered.
Speaker: Recovered.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Perfect save.
Speaker: Oh God, I'm good at this.
Speaker: I am so good at this.
Speaker: So also keys is, there's a lot of backgrounds given for Jacob keys for a character that is vanished.
Speaker: It's really, and I've got actually, I've got a little excerpt here that I chose because, uh,
Speaker: She basically tells him that they are on a super secret mission and, and, and implies that they're there to observe a child, like, you know, in no uncertain terms, that's what they're there for.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: He's just kind of put off by all of this.
Speaker: If it's a super secret mission, and she basically explains to him that, you know, he says, he says, you know, I've got a, I've got a shitty record.
Speaker: She says, I chose you precisely because of your record, because of the incident in your second year at OCS, 14 ensigns killed.
Speaker: You were wounded and spent two months in rehabilitation.
Speaker: Plasma burns are particularly painful, I understand.
Speaker: He rubbed his hands together.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So he did all of this.
Speaker: Something went really wrong.
Speaker: Uh, uh, in training school there and, uh, his, and, and he refused to testify against, uh, I guess his superior officer.
Speaker: And he was, has basically been held down and kind of kept to the shittier positions ever since then.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because he had a sense of honor and duty and that kind of thing.
Speaker: And, and yeah, just like you said before, we don't really talk to this, talk about this guy much afterwards.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it seems like this could have been a mostly introspective chapter written from Dr. Halsey's point of view.
Speaker: I don't you know, obviously that's that that note comes 20 years too late.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, and it's interesting because it kind of tells you about the difference between this book and Resident Evil in the previous book that we read, The Umbrella Conspiracy, because whereas we got lots of characters that.
Speaker: died almost instantly or something like that.
Speaker: And the author would just kind of throw in this thing of like, he had a good smile.
Speaker: He had a good laugh.
Speaker: He was going to miss him.
Speaker: And that was it.
Speaker: And this character in Halo, the fall of reach, we will never see again.
Speaker: And they give him an entire backstory implying that Dr. Halsey had to
Speaker: go with somebody who would get things done no matter how dirty his hands got.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just for this little moment.
Speaker: And it kind of tells you about the breadth of a book that Eric Nyland is writing here.
Speaker: I get the, I get, I got the impression a lot of times while we were reading Risen and Evil that SD Perry was working under a lot of writerly constraints where they were like, Hey, listen, keep it to 250 pages and no longer.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah, I do not get the impression that Eric Nyland is working under similar constraints.
Speaker: Like, just build it out.
Speaker: Just keep building.
Speaker: Build those characters out.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I feel like he's really stretching his legs like this is this is the 19th page and he's here to tell you, like, you know, I'm getting comfy.
Speaker: This is what I'm doing, which is very similar to the way we treat our podcast.
Speaker: Hey, we're about 34 minutes into recording this, and we're on page 19.
Speaker: That's efficiency, baby.
Speaker: I'm proud of us.
Speaker: We're doing a great job.
Speaker: Basically, Keyes is on this team because he knows how to keep a secret.
Speaker: That's really what it comes down to.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because they got top secret shit, and that's why she needs it.
Speaker: And that's chapter one.
Speaker: Chapter two, we're on the planet now.
Speaker: And Halsey is, she finally sees the target of her research.
Speaker: And it's a little boy named John.
Speaker: Little boy.
Speaker: Little boy named John.
Speaker: He's six years old.
Speaker: He's tall for his age.
Speaker: And he is first introduced when he's first introduced.
Speaker: He is in the middle of a fight taking on three other boys in on the playground.
Speaker: Well, yeah, they're playing King of the Hill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Did you ever play King of the Hill?
Speaker: Yes, I believe I did as a kid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a pretty brutal game to watch.
Speaker: And, you know, for anyone who's listening who doesn't know what King of the Hill is, basically you get one kid stands on the top of a tall, you know, hill, theoretically, or just some other elevated position.
Speaker: And the only goal is to knock him off.
Speaker: and take over his take his space.
Speaker: It's it is just strength and endurance.
Speaker: That is all it is.
Speaker: It is one of the least creative kids games there is outside of Red Rover.
Speaker: And the end and this kid is described as being a head taller than everybody else.
Speaker: And and they're playing King of the King of the Hill.
Speaker: And I got to be honest with you, man, I was just wincing.
Speaker: I don't have kids.
Speaker: I don't have kids, but I'm 38.
Speaker: And I'm at that age where I see kids and I don't want them for myself, but I see them and there's a level of like, there's a niceness to it.
Speaker: Like, I don't mind seeing kids as much as I used to.
Speaker: They used to freak me out a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I've mellowed on that.
Speaker: And I do have a sense of...
Speaker: protecting them a little bit like you know i think that's just built into us and so i'm imagining this kid who's like a foot taller than everybody just knocking them down a hill and i'm like oh oh no no we don't play that way just destroying the other children and be like okay nice hands nice hands we're gonna keep our hands to ourselves just broken limbs just just and piggy dies and it's just it's a mess it's just a mess
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: And they refer to him as number one 17.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Number one 17 or one one seven or I don't know.
Speaker: One one seven.
Speaker: There's right.
Speaker: Is it one one seven in the, in the game?
Speaker: Is that what they,
Speaker: Well, and that's the thing.
Speaker: It doesn't, they don't bring it up at least as far as I've been in the game, but I did, I did like my proper noun search and John one one seven is indeed master.
Speaker: So got it.
Speaker: Big, big Papa chief.
Speaker: Uh, as he is known Scott Steiner genetic freak.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Make that king of the gale game.
Speaker: We, yep.
Speaker: But chapter two is a pretty brisk, pretty brief chapter.
Speaker: There's a nice little moment between John and Dr. Halsey where she flips a coin and she's curious as to whether he was able to call it based on seeing it right before it landed or whether he has some other ability, extrasensory abilities regarding this coin flip.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Or it's just a coin flip doctor and you're thinking too hard.
Speaker: Well, it didn't impress me all that much.
Speaker: They have some pretty standard, like anyone who's ever seen a movie where a kid is a genius, they always do the same thing.
Speaker: And they did it in this too, where he said something about, they said something about playing chess and he was like, oh yeah, it's boring.
Speaker: I keep winning.
Speaker: It's like, oh, you're going to chess.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: And then, yeah, and she tosses a coin and he guesses the coin side and it's like, you're right.
Speaker: You get to keep the coin.
Speaker: I'm like, that's not that big of a deal.
Speaker: He had a 50-50 shot.
Speaker: 50-50 shot of doing it.
Speaker: Come on, make me into a super soldier.
Speaker: I could guess a coin probably.
Speaker: So it's basically like a hard cut to, you know, John walks away back to the King of the Hill game in progress to murder some other children.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we get a hard cut to like a month later.
Speaker: And Halsey has now gathered all of the children.
Speaker: I believe it's like 75 children or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, it's 75 kids, yeah.
Speaker: Into a little auditorium.
Speaker: And she's decided to break the news to them that she stole all of them from their parents.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Bad news, kids.
Speaker: Like, bad news, kids.
Speaker: You're six years old, and we're going to turn you into super soldiers.
Speaker: Who can tell me what kidnapping is?
Speaker: I'm sure they compensated the parents with, like, you know, a hundred bucks or something.
Speaker: Yeah, they're like, here, here, and they're just like, look, just take him.
Speaker: He killed so many kids.
Speaker: He is that stupid King of the Hill game.
Speaker: He is constantly murdering kids during King of the Hill, so we need to get rid of this kid.
Speaker: We're afraid of him.
Speaker: We have other kids.
Speaker: We don't want this one anymore.
Speaker: Yeah, he keeps killing our children during games of tag, and we need to move on with our lives.
Speaker: So Halsey is disgusting.
Speaker: Oh, and real quick, before you go, our dear friend Keyes, with his strong backstory, they inform us that he has been reassigned because he knew too much.
Speaker: He knew too much.
Speaker: He had to go.
Speaker: He had to go.
Speaker: He had to go.
Speaker: Based on the way the rest of these couple chapters play out, I wouldn't have been surprised if reassigned was just a euphemism for killed.
Speaker: I wouldn't either.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know that where's the, where's the, uh, the fan theorist who read this and was like, all right, but if you pay attention to the way she said it this way and on page 120, they Stalin his ass.
Speaker: Like he's gone.
Speaker: He is, he is gone.
Speaker: He was, they, they put him on there cause he has a bad background cause he's expendable.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: I'm talking myself into this.
Speaker: I think that's exactly what happened now.
Speaker: He's expending.
Speaker: Is this how conspiracy theories work?
Speaker: This is how they work.
Speaker: I believe that that's what happened now.
Speaker: I will hear no other argument.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So Halsey is basically debating things with Deja, who is her personal AI or the or sorry, she's the AI assigned to reach, which is where they are now, which is where the training will will take place.
Speaker: And and.
Speaker: uh she's like are debating back and forth the ethics and whether daisius just like yeah just just lie to the kids just keep lying and if the lies don't work use amnesia on their brains targeted amnesia and yeah she literally tells them like like we could just give them a minor lobotomy and if they don't handle it well
Speaker: lobotomize these kids whatever it's fine but you know I'm an AI and I have no morals so the decision's up to you doctor
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not going to hell if this if this whole God thing turns out to be true.
Speaker: I don't exist.
Speaker: It's up to you, Halsey.
Speaker: So Halsey decides to, like, tell them the truth.
Speaker: Sort of.
Speaker: She she it's it's like the truth in the spiritual sense of you've been conscripted and you're now protectors of the world or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, she says, you're all conscripts in the Spartan program and you're not going home.
Speaker: They handled it pretty well.
Speaker: They handled it pretty well.
Speaker: Here's the thing.
Speaker: I have been around a lot of young kids.
Speaker: Uh, I, I h ave a daughter.
Speaker: Uh, she's, she's, uh, just about eight years old.
Speaker: Um, and let me tell you, you tell a groom full of 75, six year olds that they can't go home and see their parents anymore.
Speaker: It's not going to be like the, I was like, I was like, does Eric Nyland, has he been around a child?
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Was was my question, because half of those kids would have started crying right there on the spot.
Speaker: Like, this is not this is not maybe it's it's a statement of like how psychologically resolves these children are and be like, no, they're six.
Speaker: Like, that's not a thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't care how good you are at chess.
Speaker: Being, like, notions of patriotism, which is what she does, by the way.
Speaker: She's like, you know, you're going to be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies.
Speaker: And it says here, a handful of the children sat up straighter, no longer entirely frightened, but now interested.
Speaker: I don't, no, I don't care how good you are at chess.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I don't know if I buy that.
Speaker: You have Dr. Halsey who on a good day seems a little bit abrasive.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Trying to tell these children that like you're you can't go home and you're probably going to die.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But she's trying to be the good guy in her head.
Speaker: Like the fact that she's making the effort is good.
Speaker: And like she's, it's, it's a, it's a nice moment where she's like, and this is a recurring motif for Dr. Halsey where every time she's, she becomes re she's reintroduced into the story.
Speaker: She's kind of drifted further down the rabbit hole of,
Speaker: what we're doing probably isn't right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then, and then she merrily goes along with it at the same time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She goes along with it anyway, but she, yeah, she has, she, her internal inner monologue is definitely more graver and graver concerns as it goes along.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: And one of these days, one of these years that goes by, she might even say something about it, but for now she's keeping it all tucked up inside.
Speaker: She's the, she's the Dr. Cox of, of this for any of my scrubs fans.
Speaker: She's, she's, she seems hard on the outside, but on the inside, she's, she's got some love in there, but she's still not going to use it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, like there's, there's a great little paragraph here that it was so frustrating.
Speaker: It says, uh,
Speaker: She tells them that she knows they're all going to make it.
Speaker: The training will be difficult.
Speaker: There will be a great deal of hardship on the road ahead, but I know you will all make it.
Speaker: Patriotic words, but they rang hollow in her ears.
Speaker: She had wanted to tell them the truth, but how could she?
Speaker: Not all of them would make it.
Speaker: Acceptable losses, the Office of Naval Intelligence Representative had assured her.
Speaker: none of it was acceptable.
Speaker: I mean, you're letting it happen.
Speaker: You're clearly kind of just letting it happen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is the... Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 are... If I was to... I would just circle both of those chapters and I would just kind of like put...
Speaker: I don't know about this.
Speaker: I'm not so sure about your intentions here, Dr. Halsey.
Speaker: Chapter four begins part two of the book.
Speaker: The boot.
Speaker: The boot or boot or whatever.
Speaker: Chapter four, we are in, the kids are in basic training.
Speaker: The children are in basic training.
Speaker: The children.
Speaker: This is like, this is not years later.
Speaker: This is, I think, a week or two later.
Speaker: Like, this is not.
Speaker: It's not a week or two later.
Speaker: I checked.
Speaker: It's the next day.
Speaker: It's the next day.
Speaker: Of course it is.
Speaker: Of course it is.
Speaker: And, and how are they?
Speaker: And Kevin, real quick, could you remind me, how are the kids woken up from the barracks?
Speaker: They're woken up by this guy named Mendez, who's going to be their trainer.
Speaker: This part of the, this chapter is told from John's point of view.
Speaker: John doesn't want to get up.
Speaker: He's tired.
Speaker: So Mendez uses a stun baton on his chest.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: On a six-year-old child, Mendez uses a stun baton because a six-year-old child does not want to get out of bed.
Speaker: I tell you what, man.
Speaker: I tell you.
Speaker: Child labor laws have ruined this country.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is like this part of the chapter.
Speaker: I was like, no, no, no.
Speaker: This is not how any of this would actually like this is best case scenario.
Speaker: You got 75 kids like.
Speaker: What are you.
Speaker: Where did you get this concept, Eric, that this would make sense with 75 six year olds?
Speaker: I got to tell you, that's the difference.
Speaker: Like you, you're a father, you you've dealt with kids and small and large groups.
Speaker: You, you know how, how that works.
Speaker: And I'm just sitting there going, yeah, stun baton.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: You can't be, you can't, you can't mess around.
Speaker: You can't show any softness to these kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't want to.
Speaker: We need them to grow up to be proper psychopaths.
Speaker: You know, they always say, you know, spare the stun baton, spoil the child.
Speaker: And I think exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's just a whole lot of questionable child rearing in this chapter.
Speaker: And it starts with stun batons.
Speaker: It's wonderful.
Speaker: It's just so great.
Speaker: Oh my god, yeah.
Speaker: So they're in boot camp.
Speaker: And it starts the way you'd expect.
Speaker: You know, push-ups, sit-ups, the whole rigmarole, you know.
Speaker: And they just run until they're about to puke.
Speaker: And then they're told, you're going to school.
Speaker: And they're just...
Speaker: miserable.
Speaker: They're so unhappy.
Speaker: We don't want to go to school.
Speaker: And what's the name of the AI again?
Speaker: You just said it.
Speaker: Deja, as in like Deja.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And Deja, who I love because of this, they're all like, we don't want to go to school.
Speaker: And Deja says, well,
Speaker: I understand that if you don't want to go to school, you're more than welcome to go back out there with Mendez and do some more basic training.
Speaker: And they were like, oh, fuck that.
Speaker: And they all go inside and they start learning about the Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is classic.
Speaker: Classic.
Speaker: It's classic.
Speaker: You know, the 300.
Speaker: Yeah, they, they, it's, and it's, it's taught the way basically the movie, the 300 portrays it as like, yeah, there was just the 300 Spartans.
Speaker: Like, no, weren't there more than that?
Speaker: Like, no, there weren't.
Speaker: No, there weren't.
Speaker: No, I'm pretty sure when I read about it, there was like all the thousands upon thousands of other Greeks that gave them support and did, no, no, no, no
Speaker: Yeah, it's basic indoctrination.
Speaker: Like, you can tell, like, the first feelers of propaganda are working their way into these kids.
Speaker: And after the Battle of Thermopylae is done, they're finished.
Speaker: They go out, they say it's time for playground time, and
Speaker: And playground naturally turns out to be this huge obstacle course.
Speaker: But I'm just like, wow, school's fast in this place.
Speaker: I'm like, you'll learn about one battle of battle during the during the one of the Greek Persian wars.
Speaker: And then it's time to play, but not actually play.
Speaker: You're just going out for more torture.
Speaker: more torture, more obstacle course, and a valuable lesson.
Speaker: They get assigned to teams.
Speaker: John learns the value of teamwork.
Speaker: The value of teamwork.
Speaker: And, you know, John learns that the fastest way to win a war, friendship.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really the key takeaway here.
Speaker: The little More You Know logo is across the sky, projected by holograms across the sky of reach.
Speaker: And we're like, the more you know.
Speaker: And they're like, what the hell is that?
Speaker: And Mendes is like, I'm not sure.
Speaker: Mendes, yeah, he has no context for it.
Speaker: It's anti-aircraft.
Speaker: Just ignore it.
Speaker: Just ignore it.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: John learns the value of teamwork because he is he he this is where he meets his friends, Kelly and Sam and Kelly and Sam are going to be by the way, these names.
Speaker: What is with these names?
Speaker: Like they are like the most like 20th century names that they could have picked.
Speaker: And they're also incredibly milquetoast.
Speaker: They're milquetoast.
Speaker: It is 500 years into the future.
Speaker: John would at least be spelled differently.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's just give me something.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It would be some sort of Neo.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Germanic version.
Speaker: It would be it would there would be no vowels in it or something like I don't know how it's 500 years later.
Speaker: Something's different.
Speaker: You would hope.
Speaker: The way I interpreted it was, you know, like, you had Dr. Halsey, you have Mendez, you got, like, you got full names for the adults, but for these kids, it's just numbers and these really milquetoast names.
Speaker: And maybe this is me reading too much into it, but I was just like, oh, okay, they're just a first name and a number.
Speaker: They're, like, some of the most forgettable names on the planet.
Speaker: Sorry, John and Sam and Kelly.
Speaker: I know you're all listening and mad at me, but, you know, they're really...
Speaker: rudimentary names and a number and so it's like it expresses how expendable they are i don't know that's that's just where my brain like that yeah yeah something along those lines um anyway john basically he wins the obstacle course but at the expense of sam and kelly losing um and because of this his team ends up coming in last and
Speaker: And John learns from Mendez that if even if you finish first and your team, the rest of your team comes in last, you've come in last.
Speaker: And John does not get any dinner that night.
Speaker: Yes, because the people, the team that lost would go without.
Speaker: And he does a wonderful job of describing the feast that they're going to have.
Speaker: It's turkey dinner.
Speaker: Some choice.
Speaker: chocolate and just, just a wonderful feast.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, and I thought he was going to be full of shit.
Speaker: I'm going to be completely honest with you.
Speaker: I thought they was like, well,
Speaker: Yeah, but it wasn't that good.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Like John and his teammates, they lose and they watch everybody eat and it looks really, really good.
Speaker: And they're and everyone's really enjoying themselves.
Speaker: And so quietly, John is is is just he hasn't learned his lesson yet.
Speaker: He's he's just secretly swearing vengeance against his teammates while they learn about wolves.
Speaker: This is the next day and they learn about wolves and how they can take down a bigger animal by working together.
Speaker: Deja is like, she's doing everything but smacking him on the head with a yardstick going, do you get the metaphor?
Speaker: And he's just going, I'm going to beat up Kelly and Sam.
Speaker: I was just going to say, Deja is really just working on rounding these kids out into being the most insufferable people in the world.
Speaker: Oh, they're the worst.
Speaker: These kids are the, yeah.
Speaker: These kids are going to grow up to be the worst trademark.
Speaker: Oh, they're going to be terrible.
Speaker: They're going to be gamers.
Speaker: Hey, oh, Oh God, I'm too old to be making air horn sounds open my mouth.
Speaker: It's just we made a podcast about the books behind video games.
Speaker: That should tell you our age and the age of the listeners we're going for here.
Speaker: So, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, John, I'm rethinking a lot of stuff.
Speaker: John, Phil's having a look in the mirror moment over there.
Speaker: I'm just going to go sit on the toilet for a few minutes.
Speaker: You keep going.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So John basically ends up atoning for his mistakes from the previous day in the in the next run when he he kind of he kind of comes to terms with Kelly and Sam and then he actually scouts out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I think I think that was the best part.
Speaker: Like to me, that was the again.
Speaker: I don't have kids.
Speaker: It was well deserved.
Speaker: Well, that was the most realistic part for me with the kids.
Speaker: John doesn't go, hey, I've been giving it some thought and maybe we should work together.
Speaker: No, the kids go, we're going to kick your ass if you don't help us this time around.
Speaker: And he goes, all right, fine.
Speaker: And that to me, I was like, OK, yeah, that's six year olds like that.
Speaker: Six year olds.
Speaker: That's that's more along the line of six year olds.
Speaker: But that makes way more sense.
Speaker: They don't get third while they win.
Speaker: They they get third.
Speaker: But that's winning in this.
Speaker: And that's what he's not losing, which is they get to eat.
Speaker: It's being it's being fed, which also like, hey, kids don't actually function without food that well.
Speaker: So I don't think they don't.
Speaker: And meanwhile, there is fan fiction floating around about the team that lost this time because you're supposed to be really overjoyed for John and his team's like, good, you learned your lesson.
Speaker: It's like, well, there's another team that lost and didn't eat.
Speaker: There's another team that lost and didn't eat.
Speaker: But that, sure, that works.
Speaker: That works.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: But they're not our heroes, so fuck them.
Speaker: We time jump into chapter five.
Speaker: The kids are eight now.
Speaker: And Mendez is just doing another one of his bullshit competitions because, you know, honestly, fuck this guy.
Speaker: He's not great, is he?
Speaker: He's not terrific.
Speaker: He's not great.
Speaker: I don't like him.
Speaker: I should have guessed that the guy who woke up six-year-olds with a stun baton would not be my favorite.
Speaker: So he's like, we're going to drop you off in the wilderness.
Speaker: The people that get onto the ship last get left behind in the wilderness.
Speaker: Which kind of contradicts the lesson they learned in the last chapter, doesn't it?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, all right, look, teamwork and friendship.
Speaker: And now we're leaving you out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker: And the last person to get left behind gets left behind.
Speaker: It's like, whatever happened to don't leave anyone behind.
Speaker: Whatever happened, what happened?
Speaker: Don't leave anybody behind working together as a pack.
Speaker: Luckily, John has learned his lessons from chapter four and he's like, yeah, fuck that bullshit.
Speaker: Like, like as soon as Mendez, as soon as they like land, he's like, no, no, we're not doing that.
Speaker: We're, we're going to work together.
Speaker: And we're all going to get on the ship at the same time.
Speaker: You know, screw that noise, which ends up working out to their benefit, because when they find the ship, it's being guarded by some some douchebags who.
Speaker: Yeah, they're out of uniform.
Speaker: They're drinking.
Speaker: Like, it's just a bunch of it's theoretically supposed to be soldiers, but it's like they're out of uniform.
Speaker: They're drinking.
Speaker: They're like doing everything they can to make this look like a bad situation.
Speaker: So and so these these kids go full Lord of the Flies on these guys asses.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, they take them down.
Speaker: 75 children, 8-year-olds, against five grown men with stun batons.
Speaker: Wouldn't you know it, the 75 8-year-olds win.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't like those odds.
Speaker: I wouldn't be a part of that.
Speaker: Shit.
Speaker: They take them down.
Speaker: They get them on the dropship.
Speaker: And they basically take off.
Speaker: They leave the guys on the ground.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They literally she literally she John literally calls in Dave Deja like to say, can you fly us back?
Speaker: And they autopilot back to home.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then when they get back,
Speaker: Dr. Halsey and Mendez both question John and it becomes clear that those men were in fact part of the training.
Speaker: You beat the shit out of your soldiers.
Speaker: What the hell?
Speaker: What did you do to my guys?
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And he's and he points out and he goes, he says, well, they were they were out of uniform.
Speaker: They were drinking.
Speaker: We didn't know what to think.
Speaker: And Mendez just kind of goes, yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker: I never addressed that.
Speaker: It's like, what kind of shitty operation are you running here, Mendez?
Speaker: He is the worst.
Speaker: He is just the worst.
Speaker: They've got the shittiest grunts under you.
Speaker: They're not even in uniform.
Speaker: Like, what the hell?
Speaker: And they got their asses beat by a bunch of eight-year-olds.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's just like he is just he's abusive and he's also not great at his job, like logistically, like keeping things organized.
Speaker: Clearly, he is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Clearly, Dr. Halsey could have had somebody better doing this.
Speaker: She could have.
Speaker: She could have.
Speaker: But as we learned when it comes to keys, she's probably surrounding herself with people who, while they might not be the most well-trained and intelligent, they probably know exactly when to keep their mouth shut.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we might not be dealing with the cream of the crop here.
Speaker: here no she she basically yeah it honestly yeah she probably basically just hired based on a person's ability to be discreet right right she like goes to him she's like hey listen there's the plan can you uh what can i count on your discretion and he's like yeah absolutely and she's like okay great great i really appreciate it he's like yeah i'll die before i
Speaker: tell anybody.
Speaker: And she's like, oh, that's exactly what we need.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: And he's like, real quick question.
Speaker: She's like, yeah.
Speaker: And he's like, can I stun baton these kids?
Speaker: And she just kind of goes, I already told them about everything.
Speaker: So
Speaker: I've got to deal with this.
Speaker: And that's just how it all happened.
Speaker: That's how it all happened.
Speaker: That's in between the pages, in between the lines.
Speaker: Oh, Stunbaton Mendez.
Speaker: Stunbaton and Children Mendez.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Child Abuser Mendez.
Speaker: Just no good.
Speaker: So John gets promoted to squad leader.
Speaker: It gets, yeah, naturally.
Speaker: Naturally.
Speaker: After all the conflama, John has shown that he's a take charge kind of dude.
Speaker: And it's kind of like that, it's basically that line that you hear in every shitty action movie or military movie you've ever seen where they're like, that's the stupidest, you're the worst pilot I've ever seen.
Speaker: The worst pilot who's gonna lead my force.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: That's what that is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thanks, Sarge.
Speaker: It's like choosing... It's basically the choosing Maverick over Iceman approach to the military.
Speaker: When in all honesty, I doubt that Maverick would ever get anything over Iceman.
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: That is not how that works.
Speaker: No, there's no way.
Speaker: There is no way.
Speaker: So for any kids or young adults, Maverick and Iceman were characters in a movie called Top Gun.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It was a softcore male-for-male pornography film.
Speaker: It was quite enjoyed in its day.
Speaker: Chapter six now, we have another time jump.
Speaker: And the kids are like 16 now, I think.
Speaker: I think they're 14.
Speaker: It's like six years later.
Speaker: They're 14.
Speaker: Yes, they're 14.
Speaker: And they're undergoing surgery.
Speaker: Yeah, it ain't great.
Speaker: Yeah, they're in the observation deck to some sort of med bay, and people are not looking good.
Speaker: No, they're not looking good.
Speaker: These are 14-year-olds that they are operating on, and Halsey is looking over the files, and everything says, yeah, this is a very low percentage chance of working.
Speaker: And she's looking over these files, these warnings and these risks, right?
Speaker: And then she closes it and she walks down the hallway and John is already hooked up to the IV.
Speaker: It's like, you couldn't have looked over those earlier.
Speaker: They're already...
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He's already like they're the reports from like like the Navy back home or whatever.
Speaker: We're like, hey, listen, these are the main good idea.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's a it's like the chief science officer, chief admiral of science or whatever in the the Papa Navy.
Speaker: The main Navy is looking over these and he's like, yeah, this is dumb.
Speaker: Why are you doing this?
Speaker: I'm not going to not be doing this.
Speaker: Like you should not be doing this.
Speaker: And a and B, you're not you are not allowed to waste chimps on this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: They make a point.
Speaker: They're like, Hey, listen, you're not allowed to use chimps.
Speaker: That's not cool.
Speaker: Probably on that same note, shouldn't use kids, but I'm not going to check into it.
Speaker: We're just going to tell you, you shouldn't do it.
Speaker: And she just cuts to like a closet full of chimps.
Speaker: She's like, I don't know.
Speaker: So, yeah, she's just like she goes down the hallway and she talks to John and she's like he's John's like, is there anything I got to do?
Speaker: And in her best Adrian from Rocky voice, she says to him, win.
Speaker: Actually, she says survive.
Speaker: But I just imagine this whole thing played by Talia Shire or
Speaker: Oh, naturally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's, that was my first choice too.
Speaker: Actually, actually Talia Shire would have made a good Dr. Halsey.
Speaker: Now that I think about like the physical.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, but you know, surviving is an awful lot like winning when you're dealing with horrible, horrible shit happening to your genes.
Speaker: It's really, really bad.
Speaker: They're undergoing like gene therapy.
Speaker: They're undergoing Wolverine procedure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're all, they, it's basically just, it's basically just the serious part of the first Deadpool movie forever.
Speaker: Like that's what this is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just constant.
Speaker: Just a lot of things happening.
Speaker: Uh, it's a lot going on.
Speaker: And, and the next chapter brings us to a funeral.
Speaker: A bunch of kids died.
Speaker: Guess what?
Speaker: We started with 75 and now only 30 of them are left.
Speaker: That can be soldiers.
Speaker: Others are either dead or they're victims of like a horrible series of mutations that happen from all these experiments.
Speaker: There's some terrible body horror imagery.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's awful.
Speaker: It's like a bunch of his friends are in wheelchairs or they're vegetables in one shape or form or another.
Speaker: And they're just, you know, and the funniest part, well, not funny, funny, but like the cadets who
Speaker: can do something are still like super loyal, including John.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is just brainwashed as hell at this point.
Speaker: All of the, all the Sparta and Wolf lessons really, he really, he really took them to heart.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: If he lived, if he were not in a space station, if they just accidentally dropped him off in America right now, he would be building a compound out in the woods and the FBI would be tapping his phone calls.
Speaker: No question in my mind.
Speaker: No question about it.
Speaker: John, at this point, would be, he would probably be leaning into that QAnon.
Speaker: Oh, God, yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: John, in another reality, John117 has a don't tread on me flag tattooed on his back.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: No question in my mind.
Speaker: No question about it.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: And then John gets, I like to call it the talk from Mendez.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Oh, oh yeah.
Speaker: This is another important moment in just about any coming of age fightin movie or book or what have you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is important.
Speaker: It was like, he's like, not everybody's going to come home alive from these missions.
Speaker: Um, and John's like, okay.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That's I know.
Speaker: That's basically exactly what happens.
Speaker: But this is like, listen, sometimes people may be going to die.
Speaker: And John's like, cool.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Thanks for the warning.
Speaker: Could have told me that before.
Speaker: And this is this is how messed up.
Speaker: It's like going back like a chapter.
Speaker: John is is framing the surgery as a mission.
Speaker: He is framing this entire thing, whereas like they're going going in to get these surgeries, these augmentations as a mission.
Speaker: And it was like it's it's pretty revealing of the character that everything he like basically frames everything as, oh, this is this is a mission.
Speaker: This is this is like this is what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker: It's a mission because it's the only thing he knows.
Speaker: It's the only thing he knows.
Speaker: He doesn't know anything other than mission.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's actually a great point, because what happens next is we get John, he's working out.
Speaker: Yeah, he's working out.
Speaker: Yeah, and he starts to kind of notice he's getting, you know, they're on a strict workout diet and working out and diet schedule, like they're eating tons of food.
Speaker: They don't tell you exactly how many calories he's taking in, but I imagine it's like a Sunday morning breakfast for me.
Speaker: He's noticing that the weights are starting to feel kind of lighter and like the grav pull, like he feels faster and lighter in kind of a weirdly unnatural way.
Speaker: And then naturally a whole bunch of ODST soldiers show up.
Speaker: And these are the boots first in the hell guys.
Speaker: They're shock troopers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're extreme paratroopers, basically.
Speaker: They ride the fucking bullet into a planet.
Speaker: So they're basically like Navy SEALs, Marines, and Rangers all rolled into one.
Speaker: And they're not thrilled with this kid, and naturally they get into a fight.
Speaker: But John, like you said, John's hesitating.
Speaker: He's kind of thrown by all this because everything to him is a mission.
Speaker: And these guys are clearly on his side.
Speaker: They're there, you know, on the on the side of Earth.
Speaker: And they're the yeah, they're from the U.N.
Speaker: U.N.
Speaker: Navy people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But but they're fighting him, so he doesn't know heads or tails to make out of it.
Speaker: And so they get thrown into a boxing ring by one of their sergeants.
Speaker: Like the sergeant comes in, thinks it's kind of amusing.
Speaker: It says, well, go ahead and take it out in the boxing ring.
Speaker: And John straight up kills a bunch of them.
Speaker: He murders them.
Speaker: He they are they they die.
Speaker: Not in if he literally he literally and figuratively murders them, like figuratively in the in the sense that he he kicked their ass at boxing, literally in that he kicked their ass at boxing so much they died.
Speaker: And there are dead.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's just like he just kills them.
Speaker: And then Mendes shows up.
Speaker: And it's kind of hilarious because Benda's like breaks up the fight.
Speaker: But what fight is there at this point?
Speaker: It's the stop, stop.
Speaker: He's already dead.
Speaker: Gif.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he literally tells the sergeant, he's like, yeah, there's a med base coming in to take care of your guys.
Speaker: The sergeant goes, oh, shit.
Speaker: Is he one of those guys?
Speaker: Like implying that there's rumors of some secret super soldier Captain America bullshit going on.
Speaker: And, and, and, and, and Ben just basically goes, uh, yeah, you're going to get debriefed.
Speaker: Go on and go check out intelligence.
Speaker: They're going to, they're going to tell you to keep your damn mouth shut.
Speaker: If you know, it's good for you.
Speaker: He probably gets off just like frigging keys.
Speaker: I have to believe that there's like, there's a closet somewhere and like keys is like corpse is, is just sitting in there because nothing decays in space.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There are no,
Speaker: There are no maggots or blowflies or anything like that.
Speaker: So he's just sitting there.
Speaker: It's just sitting there and they throw it.
Speaker: And then like they throw, uh, they throw the sergeant's corpse in there and, uh, you know, not the first, they just, they prop a chair up against it.
Speaker: It's like, these are all the bodies of people that the, uh, that the kids have killed.
Speaker: Uh, that's one closet.
Speaker: And the other closet is the dead kids.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We got dead kids and the kids murder victims.
Speaker: The bodies are stacking up like cordwood, man.
Speaker: Like it is getting out of control.
Speaker: It is getting out of control.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And John basically says to Mendez, he's like, hey, I don't know what's going on, man.
Speaker: Like this is a weird mission.
Speaker: This is a weird mission you've put me on.
Speaker: And Mendez, instead of, he's like, I don't get this mission because they're on my side, but they attack me.
Speaker: Did I do the right thing?
Speaker: And Mendez basically goes, yeah, real hard mission.
Speaker: Listen, when they try to kill you, you get to kill them back.
Speaker: That's basically what he says.
Speaker: That's just like the basic rule of people is you're allowed to kill people who are trying to kill you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And just like at the end of that, the middle section of this chapter, he tells John that and John goes, okay.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: That's the fucking chapter.
Speaker: John learns nothing.
Speaker: He learns it's okay to kill people.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: And it's, and here's the thing.
Speaker: While I'm, I am playing Halo while I'm listening to this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I'm listening to an audio book partially.
Speaker: I'm reading it partially.
Speaker: And I, and so it's like, it's crazy because I,
Speaker: If you play Halo, Halo is, is, is a pretty, it's not, it's not ancient, but, but by today's standards, it's kind of an old fashioned shooter.
Speaker: You know, it's a much simpler kind of shooter.
Speaker: Uh, it's, it's, it's kind of refreshing in a way it's, it's, you know, get in there and shoot and there's some story and there's, uh,
Speaker: kind of a labyrinthine kind of maze aspect to certain parts of it.
Speaker: But it's very straightforward.
Speaker: And it's like, these are the bad guys.
Speaker: You're the good guy.
Speaker: Go kill them.
Speaker: And while that's happening, I'm getting like this Spec Ops the Line bullshit from the audiobook.
Speaker: Where it's like, oh no, war is hell and da-da-da-da.
Speaker: And I'm like, no, this is kind of fun actually.
Speaker: No, war.
Speaker: You're killing Marines.
Speaker: Yeah, you're getting- You're waiting for a loading screen to come up and be like, you're a murderer.
Speaker: Like, no.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: And this is why the gamers say you have to keep politics out of their games.
Speaker: You've got to.
Speaker: Kevin, it's so important.
Speaker: It's so important.
Speaker: It's literally the most important thing.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is, because if you can't just unwind at the end of the day by killing huge swaths of aliens named after the promise given by God to never murder his people again while wearing armor named after a pagan god's ritual weapon...
Speaker: If you can't look at something that straightforward and go, it's just a game, man.
Speaker: I don't know what we can do for you.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: What's, what's wrong with this country?
Speaker: For those of you who might be missing it, uh, uh, we're being very facetious.
Speaker: But also we humbly request that the gamers do not rise up.
Speaker: Please do not.
Speaker: We are already going to have that.
Speaker: We're already going to have trouble with the queues.
Speaker: It's the queues and the gamers together.
Speaker: Might be a little much.
Speaker: It's too much.
Speaker: In fact, I think we can all accept that it's too much.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: How about we all just chill out?
Speaker: Yeah, we'll chill out.
Speaker: Play the Binding of Isaac.
Speaker: We'll chill out and we'll follow our favorite Twitter account, at PixelitPod.
Speaker: You can check us out.
Speaker: At PixelitPod?
Speaker: PixelitPod.
Speaker: That is our Twitter account.
Speaker: It is live.
Speaker: You should go and check us out.
Speaker: We'll be posting polls.
Speaker: We'll be posting updates.
Speaker: We'll be posting all sorts of stuff.
Speaker: On the twitter.com, on that bird app, you should go check us out there and follow along.
Speaker: It is exciting.
Speaker: It is exciting.
Speaker: And remember, there's video versions of all these podcasts, so if you just listen to us on iTunes, you can go ahead and go over to YouTube and watch whatever I put up for the video version.
Speaker: uh, over there because why not?
Speaker: I mean, it's, it's a different platform.
Speaker: It's a different way of engaging with it.
Speaker: That's all we have for today.
Speaker: Right, Phil?
Speaker: I think that's it.
Speaker: I think, I think that's it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And if you guys have any ideas, if there is a video game novelization or,
Speaker: video game related book that you think that we need to cover, let us know.
Speaker: Because the fact of the matter is, is the more you dig, there are some obvious ones like the ones that we've started with.
Speaker: And the more you dig, there are some really weird esoteric ones too.
Speaker: Like there's a King's Quest novel that I need to find.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like there's a ton of weird stuff out there and we need your help.
Speaker: We need your help.
Speaker: Let us know.
Speaker: And we will make this happen because this podcast will never die.
Speaker: No, we will go into fan fiction if we have to.
Speaker: Yeah, unlike poor John Keyes, this podcast will never be disappeared.
Speaker: Have a good day, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: you
