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My name is Oliver Stubbs. My
whole life and identity are inextricably entwined with

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my camera, and to say that
I make a living behind the lens would

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be a monumental understatement. Ever since
I was a child, I've been fascinated

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by the power of photography, the
ability to freeze time to immortalize a moment.

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At an early age, I discovered
a knack for capturing more than just

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images, but stories, emotions,
and life itself. Though looking back,

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my pictures weren't all too impressive as
a child, but as I grew older,

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my fascination turned into a burning passion. I studied photography at the prestigious

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University of Arts in London and became
known by my peers for my evocative storytelling

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Through images. I had the unique
ability to capture the unseen, the unheard,

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the unspoken, the soul of a
scene. My distinctive style was hailed

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as revolutionary. My work spans a
range of genres, but my underwater photography

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has become particularly renowned within my small
community. The unseen world beneath the waves,

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teeming with life, captivated me,
and I devoted myself to capturing it

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in all its vibrancy and mystery.
My photos full vivid detail and the uncanny

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ability to transport viewers beneath the surface
into the heart of the underwater world.

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And at the age of thirty,
I was awaiting the dreaded burnout my friends

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had all complained about. I was
a natural choice when the renowned historical and

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marine research organization, the Sea Passed
Society, decided to take on the ambitious

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task of finding and documenting revened Sir
Rod Britain's own Atlantis. They needed someone

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who could document the submerged ruins in
a way that showcased their historical significance and

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capture the mystery of a town long
lost to the sea, a challenge that

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I knew was perfect for me.
Doctor Catherine Howard, the head of the

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Sea Past Society, was a well
respected marine historian, contacted me personally.

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She believed in my unique talent for
visual storytelling and thought I could bring the

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sunken town story to life. She
felt my photos could inspire a global audience,

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stir their imagination and allow them to
connect with the past submerged beneath the

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cold waters of the North Sea.
Naturally, I was thrilled and honored to

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be selected for such a significant project. The chance to dive into the mysterious

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depths and uncovered the secrets of a
lost town was a dream come true.

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And although I had done similar projects, something just felt different. My flat

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in London soon became a frenzy of
activity, cluttered with new high tech underwater

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cameras, powerful lights for illuminating the
dark ocean depths, an all manner of

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equipment for preserving my gear against the
corrosive effects of salt water, all funded

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by the Sea Past Society. But
amid the chaos, there was an undercurrent

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of palpable excitement. Beneath the exhilaration
was a thin layer of anxiety, like

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a dusting of frost and an otherwise
warm window pane. It lingered there,

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never once stepping into the light,
but ominously hovering in the room's dark corners.

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The task ahead was daunting. This
was not a recreation, nor dive

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into a well explored reef, but
an expedition into a town lost to the

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depths six centuries ago. Unease did
not overshadow my enthusiasm. It feeled it

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the chance to tell the story of
Reverence Rod, to breathe life into its

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submerged and silent streets was a thrill
like no other. I relished the challenge.

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Before long it was time to travel
to Yorkshire. I was introduced to

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my dive body, a man named
Callum, a burly Scotsman with a twinkle

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in his eye and a jovial demeanor. But beneath his lighthearted exterior was an

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individual of impressive expertise and meticulous attention
to detail. Doctor Howard had assembled a

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unique team of historians, marine archaeologists
and technical experts. Most of them were

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to stay above the sea and through
another camera broadcasting to the boat. Callum

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was the Sea Past Society's health and
safety coordinator. A veteran diver with an

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impeccable track record, His task was
to ensure the safety of the divers as

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they explored the undersea ruins, and
I was to be his primary responsibility.

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Callum was hired not just for his
expertise in dive safety, but also his

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ability to remain calm in a crisis. His warm personality put me at ease,

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making me feel safer about the dive. In the days leading up to

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the dive, Callum and I worked
closely together. We conducted practice dives,

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tested our equipment, and developed a
dive plan. His attention to detail,

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an uncompromising approach to safety, impressed
me. He was careful and cautious,

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but also open to the spirit of
adventure that this exploration held. The excitement

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and nerves within me swirled like a
tempest. The idea that I was soon

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to explore a piece of history untouched
for centuries, about to uncover stories that

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had been silence for the sea kept
me tossing and turning in my bed at

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night. The day finally arrived.
Our vessel was a massive, state of

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the artboat, stocked with all the
equipment necessary for the dive, including cutting

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edge so in our equipment, robotic
submersibles, and a plethora of diving gear.

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There was an undercurrent of tension in
the air, a static charge that

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prickled the skin and raised the hair
and the back of your neck. I

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noticed hushed conversations among the crew,
quick sideline glances that hinted a concern.

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Was it the enormity of the task
that caused this, or perhaps they were

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wary of a new face. I
shook it off. I had a talent

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for over thinking things, especially while
stressed, Callum meticulously checked my gear,

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ensuring every piece was functioning correctly.
His diligent inspection was comforting, a touch

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of solidarity emidicity of anticipation. We
ran through a final checklist, emergency signals,

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the navigation route, the ascent and
descent points. As we finished our

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preparations, the moment we've been waiting
for was finally upon us. With one

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last nod of reassurance from Callum,
we plunged into the icy embrace of the

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North Sea. The sudden chill was
a shock, biting through the thick near

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preen of my diving suit, but
it did nothing to dampen my spirits.

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If anything, it heightened my senses, focusing my mind and the world were

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about to enter. As we ended, the remnants of raven Serad slowly emerged

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from the gloom. The water had
eroded much for what remained for a spectral

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reminder of the bustling town it once
was. Buildings, streets, the outlines

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of what might have been a town
square, all blanketed in a shroud of

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decay and encrusted with marine life.
Intricate stonework, long worn away by the

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constant current, was now home to
vibrant corals and anemones, creating an eeriefusion

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of man made and natural beauty.
The coral had claimed these structures, using

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them as foundations for their colonies,
transforming them into organic, living artworks that

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swayed gently with the ocean's rhythm.
It was a haunting site, a tableau

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of life abruptly halted and preserved beneath
the waves. Statues stood guard over their

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underwater realm, their features softened by
sentries under the sea, the stony gaze

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meeting mine through a veil of tiny
bubbles that streams from my regulator. A

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fish started past, a flash of
iridescent color that stood out against the gray

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stone and green blue water. I
was caught between two worlds, the ancient

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human past and the teeming marine life
of the present. It was simultaneously humbling

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and thrilling, a testament in nature's
uncanny ability to reclaim and repurpose. With

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my camera had the ready, I
eagerly started documenting this hauntingly beautiful underwater world.

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Calum and I navigated through the labyrinth
of sunken streets. Each building was

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a monument to the past, offering
a unique glimpse into the lives of those

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who once called roven Sarad home.
While I concentrated on capturing the visual essence

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of these ancient structures, other team
members avoided us and engaged in their own

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tasks. Their meticulously scraped away at
the encrusted stone walls, collecting samples to

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further understand how the sea had affected
the materials over the centuries. Though this

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underwater world was extraordinary, it wasn't
entirely alien. I'd spent years exploring and

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documenting similar sites, yet each site
had its own unique character, as singular

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atmosphere that made every dive a new
adventure. My previous major project had been

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an exploration of the underwater ruins of
a Second World War shipwreck in the Mediterranean

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Sea. That was a poignant journey, a testament to a grim period of

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human history. But despite the historical
significance and the eerie beauty of the coral

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clad wreckage, the experience was different, perhaps because it lacked the element of

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human life that raven Sirard held.
Once a mighty symbol of naval power,

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the decaying whole now lay silent and
broken on the ocean floor. Raven Sirard

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was not merely a relic of an
ancient era, but a snapshot of everyday

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life, frozen in time and lost
to the ocean depths. It had once

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been filled with people, their hopes
and dreams, their daily routines. This

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tangible human element made this dive so
much more thrilling. I felt like an

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interloper peering into a time capsule of
lives lived centuries ago. I was careful

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to capture every significant structure, every
suggestive detail that hinted are the lives once

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lived here. I photographed the decay, the rich marine life, and the

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profound contrasts between human architecture and natural
adaptations. Each click of my shutter felt

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like a tribute, a way to
immortalize the town in its untold stories for

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posterity. The underwater world was a
curious way of warping one's sense of time.

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Minutes stretched into hours, and each
moment is amplified in the silent stillness

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of the ocean depths. Before I
knew it, I dive time was up,

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and the team began their gradual ascent
back to the surface. As I

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started to swim upwards, I felt
an unaccountable tug, like an unseen current,

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pulling me back towards the sunken Town. It was as if Raven Syrid

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was reluctant to let us go,
whispering silent please for us to stay and

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listen to its muted stories a while
longer, mistaking it for my thirst for

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excitement, there was a mistake.
A few days later, I found myself

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in the Sea Pass Society's dedicated photography
lab, surrounded by the familiar hum of

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high end development equipment and the sharp, confident scent of photographic chemicals. Developing

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photos was always a ritual of anticipation
and discovery. For me. The way

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an image gradually emerged in the paper
felt almost like magic, a portal opening

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up to a frozen moment in time. As the first of the underwater images

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began to materialize, I was thrilled
to see the haunting beauty of the sunken

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town coming to life once more.
But as I went through the developing photos,

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unease started to creep in. I
first noticed in one of the shots

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of the town square there was a
shadow that didn't align with the underwater light

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refraction, a blur that felt out
of place. I thought it might have

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been a technical glitch, perhaps an
equipment malfunction or an error in the development

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process. But as more photos developed, the anomalies kept appearing. Patches of

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darkness seemed to move across the sequential
shots, undefined shapes lurking in the corners

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of the frame, and art distortions
that seemed to warp the scenery. They

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were subtle and could easily be dismissed
as flaws or artifacts of the photographic process,

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but something about them made me feel
uneasy. I reviewed the images over

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and over, trying to find a
logical explanation, but the more I looked,

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the more inconsistencies gnawed at me.
It felt as though the images were

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hiding something, something that lurked just
beyond the edges of perception. It was

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as if the quiet town of Raven
Syrod had secrets. It was reluctant to

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reveal secrets that I had inadvertently brought
back with me to the surface. In

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some sort of sickening denial, I
laid out the images before me. My

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mind teetered between disbelief and fear.
Something was wrong, but I couldn't discern

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whether it was a simple mistake on
my part or something more profound. This

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was my work, and the anomalies. However, bizarre had emerged from my

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own camera. I wanted it to
be my error. It had to be

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right. Doubt seeped into my thoughts, creating a whirlpool of uncertainty. Had

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I over something in the underwater conditions? Had I mishandled the equipment? Was

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there something wrong with my camera?
I was well respected in my field and

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known for my precision and attention to
detail. A mistake like this felt uncharacteristic.

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But I couldn't ignore the possibility.
And then there was the question of

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whether to reveal these anomalies to my
superiors. I found myself wrestling with the

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implications. I was not one to
be easily intimidated, but the thought of

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jeopardizing my position unsettled me. Despite
my accomplishments, the all too familiar feeling

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of imposter syndrome setting, I found
myself questioning my abilities and whether I really

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belonged here. Despite this, deep
within me, a quiet resolve began to

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form. As much as the prospect
of uncertainty unknown to me, the idea

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of not pursuing this anomaly felt even
worse. I've always been driven by a

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hunger for truth and understanding. I
had to find out if I had messed

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up, if not, what was
causing the distortions raven Erard had presented me

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with a puzzle, and I could
not resist the pull the delve deeper.

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I approached doctor Howard with a carefully
considered proposal. I crafted an excuse,

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one that was rooted in genuine scientific
curiosity and made to cover my ass if

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it turned out to be my fault
the entire time. I suggested we needed

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a more detailed visual record of the
site. A series of panoramic images that

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could be digitally stitched together to provide
a three hundred and sixty degree view of

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the underwater town could enhance her understanding
of the spatial layer of the town.

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Doctor I argued, maintaining an air
of professional concern, Imagine being able to

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virtually navigate through the streets of raven
Sirid. It could reveal architectural patterns,

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structural relationships, aspects we may have
missed her in the first dive. I

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chose my words carefully, knowing that
the proposal would appeal to doctor Howard's keen

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interest in experimental archaeological techniques. A
prospect of contributing a unique method of documentation

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to the field was too enticing for
her to disregard. To my relief,

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she agreed, that sounds like an
excellent idea Oliver, She nodded, a

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spark of excitement in her eyes.
Prepare for another dive and make sure this

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time we document every inch of that
town. With a go ahead secured,

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a new wave of anticipation swept over
me. I was going back. I

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found myself relieved, yet something still
sat deep inside of me. In the

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days leading up to the dive,
I found myself spending more time with Callum.

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A shared passion for ocean exploration had
naturally drawn us together, but our

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contrasting personalities solidified our bond. With
his infectious enthusiasm and easygoing nature, Callum

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was the perfect counterbalance to my more
focused and often intense demeanor. Callum had

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a knack for putting people at ease. He was full of stories about his

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adventures from all around the world,
from wild encounters with marine creatures to the

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time that he got lost in a
coral made off the coast of Australia.

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His tales were always told with a
broad grin and a glint of mischief in

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his eyes, leaving anyone within earshot
in fits of laughter. One evening,

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as the sunset bathe the sea in
hues of orange and red, Callum and

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I found ourselves sitting on the company
dock, just minutes from our temporary accommodations.

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He had brought two hot Coco mugs, a comforting drink perfect for the

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cold evening. Callum turned to me
as we sipped the sweet beverage and watched

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the sun sink below the horizon.
You know, Ali, the iving isn't

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just about the adrenaline rush with a
sense of adventure, he said, his

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eyes reflecting the dying light from the
setting sun. It's about connection. It's

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about understanding our place in the grand
scheme of things and how we as humans

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interact with the world around us.
He spoke, his words, rich with

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00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:10,759
his accent. His words resonated with
me. It was comforting to know that

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00:21:10,960 --> 00:21:17,039
someone else understood and shared this sentiment. It was this shared sense of connection,

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the shared appreciation of the ocean's magnitude
and mystery, that had drawn me

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00:21:22,720 --> 00:21:27,839
to this profession in the first place. As the night deepened and the stars

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shone brightly above, I hesitated,
weighing my words carefully before speaking Callum,

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I began, my voice barely above
a whisper. There's something about the last

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dive that I haven't told anyone.
Callum turned to me, his usually cheerful

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00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:57,359
expression giving way to concern. What
is it? Oli the photographs from the

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dive, There are anomalies, I
confessed, watching his face nervously for any

215
00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:11,599
sign of ridicule or disbelief. Anomalies
he echoed, leaning back in his chair

216
00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:18,920
and crossing his arms, Yeah,
I nodded. Shadows that don't make sense,

217
00:22:18,559 --> 00:22:25,400
blurs that seemed to move. It's
as if something was there with us.

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00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:33,279
A silence stretched between us, filled
only by the distant lapping of waves

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00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:40,640
against the boat's hull. Callum's face
was thoughtful. Momentarily I feared I had

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00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:48,599
crossed the line. Finally, he
broke the silence. Ali, we were

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diving into a sunken town, a
place that held life history, probably secrets

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00:22:55,240 --> 00:23:00,519
too. He began, his tone
measured. Let's not forget it. We

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00:23:00,519 --> 00:23:06,160
were deep underwater, where life behaves
strangely, and visibility can play tricks in

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your eyes and the camera. I
nodded, knowing his rationale made sense,

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but also knowing that my concerns weren't
mere illusions. It's more than that.

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The photos they feel wrong. I
can't explain it, but it's like the

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00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:34,079
town was trying to tell us something
or warn us. Callum regarded me for

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00:23:34,119 --> 00:23:38,599
a long moment, the lines on
his face deepening as he processed what I

229
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:44,400
just shared. Then, with a
firm nod, he clapped a hand on

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my shoulder. Ally, you're one
of the best underwater photographers out there.

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If you say something was off,
then it was off. We'll keep our

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eyes open and the next dive together. His reassurance brought a wave of relief,

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00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:07,440
and I found myself smiling at his
words. His support and willingness to

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00:24:07,519 --> 00:24:15,000
believe my concerns made me feel better
about the upcoming dive. There was a

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00:24:15,079 --> 00:24:21,279
moment of silence as Callum finished speaking. Thank you, Callum, I finally

236
00:24:21,319 --> 00:24:26,119
said, my voice filled with gratitude. I know it sounds odd. I

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00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:32,559
just needed someone to know, just
in case, in case of what he

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asked, his eyes searching mine,
Frances I paused for a moment, staring

239
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:45,200
out at the endless expanse of the
sea. I'm not sure, I admitted,

240
00:24:45,039 --> 00:24:48,960
but whatever it is, I have
a feeling it's tied to raven Seer

241
00:24:49,079 --> 00:24:55,400
d This is different from my other
dives. It feels like something more than

242
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just a sunken town. Callum continued
to look at me, his eyes reflecting

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00:25:02,799 --> 00:25:07,240
concern and curiosity. It was clear
that part of him didn't believe me,

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00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:15,640
but he remained silent. Well,
he said, after a considerable pause,

245
00:25:15,559 --> 00:25:19,839
we'll face it. As he said, this is about more than just the

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00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:26,599
town. Whatever it is, I
nodded, feeling a sense of camaraderie in

247
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:32,519
his words. Yeah, I agreed, taking a deep breath as I turned

248
00:25:32,559 --> 00:25:37,759
to face the sea again. The
following morning dawned bright and clear, the

249
00:25:37,839 --> 00:25:45,039
crisp blue sky starkly contrasting the enigma
that awaited us beneath the surface. As

250
00:25:45,119 --> 00:25:49,799
we prepared for the dive, I
couldn't help but feel a mix of anticipation

251
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:56,599
and unease. There was a silent
tension in the air, like the stillness

252
00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:03,680
before a storm. Callum once again
meticulously checked over our equipment, his attention

253
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:10,440
to detail a welcome source of comfort
amidst my apprehension. Every buckle, valve

254
00:26:10,559 --> 00:26:15,720
and gage was inspected. Every aspect
of our gear was scrutinized to ensure maxim

255
00:26:15,759 --> 00:26:22,880
and safety. As we began our
descent, the familiar coolness of the water

256
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:29,079
enveloped us, and my senses heightened. This time, however, the thrill

257
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:34,400
of the dive was tinged with an
undercurrent of uncertainty. As the town of

258
00:26:34,519 --> 00:26:41,839
raven Syriard came into view and not
sensation settled over me. It was as

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00:26:41,839 --> 00:26:45,880
though the town was somehow aware of
our presence. There was a whisper at

260
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:51,119
the edge of my consciousness, a
sense of being observed from the shadows.

261
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:56,200
The closer we got, the more
palpable this feeling became. It felt like

262
00:26:56,279 --> 00:27:02,200
we were intruders in this lost town, disturbing the peace of its long forgotten

263
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:08,640
inhabitants. As we began our exploration, I continued to notice fleeting shadows at

264
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:14,319
the edge of my vision, faint
movements caught in the corners of my eyes,

265
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:19,480
seemingly disappearing as soon as I turned
to look. My heart pounded in

266
00:27:19,559 --> 00:27:25,240
my chest as a chill ran down
my spine, But I forced myself to

267
00:27:25,279 --> 00:27:30,640
stay composed and focused on the task, Determined to fulfill my promise that doctor

268
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:37,000
Howard, I set about capturing the
panoramic images of raven Syrid. I methodically

269
00:27:37,119 --> 00:27:42,720
swam from one building to the next, with Calum following close behind. I

270
00:27:42,799 --> 00:27:48,880
captured every detail of the sunken town. The remains of the harbor, the

271
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,640
ancientcy wall, and the collapsed roofs
of the houses are all immortalized in my

272
00:27:52,720 --> 00:28:00,440
camera. Yet with each shutter click, the sense of unease grew. It

273
00:28:00,559 --> 00:28:04,799
was as though the very act of
photographing the town was disrupting something, and

274
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:12,279
with each disruption, the uncanny sensation
that we were not alone intensified. It

275
00:28:12,279 --> 00:28:18,039
felt like the sea had a heart
beat, a throumbing rhythm that pulsed around

276
00:28:18,039 --> 00:28:23,640
me, seeping into my bones.
The feeling of being watched became stronger as

277
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:29,599
we swam through the main square,
where a towering statue, ravaged by time

278
00:28:29,599 --> 00:28:34,640
and water, stood as a testament
to the town's lost glory. As my

279
00:28:34,759 --> 00:28:41,000
flash illuminated the worn stone, I
could swear the statue's gaze was locked on

280
00:28:41,039 --> 00:28:47,400
to us, the cold eyes of
stone holding a cold glare. I shook

281
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:51,319
my head, trying to dismiss it
as a trick of the light, but

282
00:28:51,559 --> 00:28:56,240
Callum had noticed too. The murkiness
of the water seemed to thicken around us

283
00:28:56,519 --> 00:29:02,519
as we continued to the outskirts of
the town, the once vibrant coral that

284
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:08,440
adorned the buildings, appearing pallid and
ghostly under our torch light. Occasionally a

285
00:29:08,559 --> 00:29:15,200
fish would dart away, its silvery
scales, shimmering briefly before disappearing into the

286
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:22,319
blue abyss, leaving us in solitude. Once more. Examining the town more,

287
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:29,200
I noticed each structure held its own
tale of decay. Houses, once

288
00:29:29,279 --> 00:29:33,759
filled with a hum of life,
now stood desolate, the skeletal remains encrusted

289
00:29:33,799 --> 00:29:40,039
with marine life. The town's church, with its toppled spire, lay half

290
00:29:40,079 --> 00:29:45,000
buried under the sand. I captured
the eerie beauty of the forsaken town etched

291
00:29:45,039 --> 00:29:51,880
in each frame. As we neared
the end of our exploration, the sensation

292
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:56,119
of being watched peaked. The water
around us seemed to ripple with an unseen

293
00:29:56,200 --> 00:30:03,480
presence. Suddenly, gust of underwater
currents swept past us, an inexplicable chill

294
00:30:03,519 --> 00:30:08,680
that froze my blood. A dark
form darted in the corner of my eye,

295
00:30:10,519 --> 00:30:14,839
but when I turned, there was
nothing but the ancient ruins and the

296
00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:21,559
haunting darkness beyond. My heart pounded
in my chest as I watched Callum signal

297
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:27,720
or ascent, his eyes wide with
fear. A dark shadow darted towards him

298
00:30:27,759 --> 00:30:32,920
from the corner of my eye.
A surge of adrenaline rushed through me as

299
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:40,279
I turned to look, but it
was too late. An unseen force struck

300
00:30:40,319 --> 00:30:44,960
Callum, rushing him with a violent
current into the decrepit wall of a nearby

301
00:30:45,039 --> 00:30:49,440
building below. His regulator was knocked
free. Bubble was bursting from his mouth

302
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:55,039
in a panicked rush, yet his
training prevented him from breathing in water.

303
00:30:56,640 --> 00:31:00,359
Callum, I screamed into my regulator, my voice muffled and carried away by

304
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:06,640
the water. Frantically, I swam
towards him, my heart pounding in my

305
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:11,039
chest. His eyes were wide and
shock and his hands desperately grappled for the

306
00:31:11,079 --> 00:31:18,480
regulator as he struggled against the new
unseen current. I grabbed him, anchoring

307
00:31:18,519 --> 00:31:23,720
myself and fighting the force battering us. I swam down and holding onto Calum

308
00:31:23,799 --> 00:31:29,920
with one hand, I grabbed his
backup regulator and shoved it towards him.

309
00:31:30,039 --> 00:31:33,480
He took it, jamming it into
his mouth. He purged the water out

310
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:38,000
of the mouthpiece, and his paniced
eyes softened slightly as the life giving air

311
00:31:38,119 --> 00:31:44,880
flowed once more. I turned to
face the town, a sense of anger

312
00:31:45,079 --> 00:31:51,799
burning inside me. Whatever was lurking
in the forgotten depths of raven Serad had

313
00:31:51,799 --> 00:31:56,319
shown itself, not just as an
uncanny presence, but as a threatening force.

314
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:04,240
The water seemed to pulsate with sinister
energy, the town's ruins casting ominous

315
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:09,839
shadows in our torchlight. I could
feel it watching us, pressing against us,

316
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:16,519
making his displeasure known. I signaled
and a cent to Callum, who

317
00:32:16,559 --> 00:32:22,960
nodded, his eyes wide but resolute. He kicked upwards, each stroke taken

318
00:32:23,039 --> 00:32:29,319
us further from the menacing depths of
raven Serard. As we rose, the

319
00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:32,880
water grew lighter, the pressure eased, and the sense of dread began to

320
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:39,359
dissipate. Just as we thought we
were clear, a sudden force pulled us

321
00:32:39,359 --> 00:32:45,400
back down, even stronger than before. It was as if the entire ocean

322
00:32:45,599 --> 00:32:52,880
had become an invisible hand, dragging
us back towards the malevolent town. I

323
00:32:52,039 --> 00:32:57,039
screamed into my regulator again as I
saw him get pulled away from me,

324
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:02,720
his form disappearing into the murkinger.
Desperate, I tried to swim towards him,

325
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:08,319
but the force was too strong.
Then suddenly my grip and my camera

326
00:33:08,359 --> 00:33:14,680
slipped and it began to sink.
It's attached light flickering like a falling star

327
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:21,400
into the watery void. I watched
horror stricken as it fell into a crack

328
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:27,640
and deeper into the abyss. I
cried out, I've voice lost in the

329
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:34,279
aquatic emptiness. That camera was my
lifeline, not just for my profession,

330
00:33:35,079 --> 00:33:39,799
but now it seemed for our survival. It sank rapidly, swallowed up by

331
00:33:39,799 --> 00:33:45,960
the eternal darkness of the ocean.
Whatever was targeting us was weak, as

332
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:50,680
if it needed us to be closer
to the town to fully overpower us.

333
00:33:52,119 --> 00:33:54,759
As I was about to dive after
it, I felt a hand gripped my

334
00:33:54,880 --> 00:34:00,319
arm. I turned to see Callum, his eyes wide with fear and confusion,

335
00:34:01,119 --> 00:34:08,920
but alive. He shook his head. He was right. Going after

336
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:15,719
it spelt more danger than either of
us could imagine. We ascended again,

337
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:20,320
with nothing else to do, hoping
the loss of our evidence calmed the town.

338
00:34:21,639 --> 00:34:25,639
The effort was physically taxing, the
cold sea water churning around us as

339
00:34:25,679 --> 00:34:31,360
we battled to ascend. Each kick
and each push felt like we were fighting

340
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:37,199
against a relentless tide. My muscles
screamed in protest, but I forced myself

341
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:44,000
to keep going, pushing past the
pain and exhaustion. Callum was ahead of

342
00:34:44,039 --> 00:34:49,639
me, every sinew in his body
straining as he too fought against the pull.

343
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,039
Determination was etched on his face,
yet he kept his eye on me.

344
00:34:55,519 --> 00:35:00,920
Slowly, painstakingly, we began to
gain distance, the poll of the

345
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:07,719
town lessening. I could see the
lighter waves above us, the sun's rays

346
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:14,159
penetrating the deep blue, beckoning us
towards safety. We broke to the surface

347
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:19,119
and found ourselves clinging to the side
of the boat. Our breaths ragged and

348
00:35:19,199 --> 00:35:24,400
our bodies exhausted. Our crew helped
our heavy bodies aboard, their faces masks

349
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:30,880
of concern and confusion. We exchanged
no words. The terror of our experience

350
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:39,280
had left us momentarily speechless. As
we docked back at the mainland, doctor

351
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:45,639
Howard was there to meet us.
She looked troubled eyes scanning Callum and me,

352
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:51,239
noting our bruised and battered bodies.
We were a far cry from the

353
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:57,559
enthusiastic team that had embarked on a
journey to chronicle the sunken town. Oliver

354
00:35:58,199 --> 00:36:02,079
Callum. She began, her voice
a mixture of concern and something else,

355
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:10,239
something I couldn't quite place what happened
out there. I exchanged a glance with

356
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:16,400
Calum before turning back to her.
Taking a deep breath, I recounted the

357
00:36:16,519 --> 00:36:23,320
inexplicable experiences, the unseen force,
the threatening shadows, and the attack.

358
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:31,679
Doctor Howard listened, her face paling
as we described our encounter. As I

359
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:37,480
mentioned the loss of the camera,
I saw a flicker of disappointment across her

360
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:42,800
face, but it was quickly replaced
by a serious expression as I continued.

361
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:50,679
I know this may sound impossible,
I concluded, brace myself for a reaction,

362
00:36:51,599 --> 00:36:55,880
but something is down there, Doctor
Howard, something that doesn't want us

363
00:36:55,880 --> 00:37:04,599
there. For a moment, there
was silence. Doctor Howard seemed to be

364
00:37:04,639 --> 00:37:10,159
processing what we told her, her
gaze distant. Then, to my surprise,

365
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:19,159
she nodded, I believe you,
Oliver, she said quietly. In

366
00:37:19,199 --> 00:37:23,480
fact, I hear you both.
An apology. She took a deep breath

367
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:30,559
and then began to explain. Teams
before us had reported the same strange feelings,

368
00:37:31,119 --> 00:37:36,480
the same sense of being watched,
but it was more than that.

369
00:37:37,039 --> 00:37:44,159
After their third dive, members started
returning with inexplicable injuries. Those who were

370
00:37:44,199 --> 00:37:50,639
brave enough to attempt a fourth dive, they never returned at all. I

371
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:55,559
had hoped, foolishly, perhaps that
capturing photographic evidence would help us understand what

372
00:37:55,679 --> 00:38:02,519
was happening, doctor Howard confessed,
her voice wavering slightly. I didn't want

373
00:38:02,519 --> 00:38:09,880
to believe that the town itself could
be dangerous while we were gone. Doctor

374
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:15,679
Howard admitted that she had examined the
photos from our first dive. She also

375
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:22,199
admitted to noticing the strange phenomena.
I had ghostly figures, inexplicable shadows,

376
00:38:22,639 --> 00:38:28,719
things that didn't make sense, But
she dismissed them, attributing them to light

377
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:35,760
or damage to the camera. But
now hearing your account, I understand that

378
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:40,119
there's something more at play here,
she admitted, her eyes reflecting her deep

379
00:38:40,159 --> 00:38:45,199
remorse. I should have warned you, should have stopped the dives, but

380
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:53,480
my desire for discovery overrode my caution. Her confession left us shocked the realization

381
00:38:53,639 --> 00:38:59,360
that she had known at least partially
of the potential danger, but had not

382
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:07,480
shared it. It's stung yet looking
at her, seeing her genuine remorse,

383
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:13,760
I could only feel a deep sense
of sadness. I shook it all away.

384
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:20,079
As doctor Howard's confession hung in the
air, a deep sense of betrayal

385
00:39:20,159 --> 00:39:24,519
began to coil in the pit of
my stomach. Anger, hot and quick,

386
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:30,119
started to rise within me. Seeing
away the icy dread that had gripped

387
00:39:30,199 --> 00:39:36,079
me since the dive, I stared
at Doctor Howard, my mind a whirlwind

388
00:39:36,079 --> 00:39:40,199
of disbelief. My chest tightened,
and my heart pounded in my ears.

389
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:46,480
The woman who had entrusted us with
an assignment of a lifetime, a woman

390
00:39:46,559 --> 00:39:52,119
we respected and admired, had knowingly
led us into a trap, a trap

391
00:39:52,199 --> 00:39:58,280
that could have costed us our lives. We had trusted her, relied on

392
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:05,159
her, and she had betrayed us. The pressure built inside me, a

393
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:08,800
physical weight pressing against my chest,
the corners of my vision growing red with

394
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:15,519
rage. The sting of betrayal cut
deep. A flash of memory, the

395
00:40:15,639 --> 00:40:22,760
cold, unforgiving waters, the threatening
shadows, and the deep Callum's terrified eyes,

396
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:27,599
the invisible force that had almost claimed
us, all came crashing down,

397
00:40:28,199 --> 00:40:34,800
feeding the fire of my anger.
You knew. My voice was low and

398
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:38,400
harsh, carrying the weight of my
bruin anger. You knew, and you

399
00:40:38,519 --> 00:40:45,280
still sent us down there. Doctor
Howard tried to respond, her voice placating,

400
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:49,840
but the words were lost on me. The anger was all consuming,

401
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:54,360
now, blotting out any reason we
could have died, Howard Callum could have

402
00:40:54,400 --> 00:41:01,639
died. The words tore from my
throat, raw and furious. At that

403
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:07,360
moment, I felt a sudden urge
to leave, to put as much distance

404
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:12,239
between myself and doctor Howard as possible, to escape from the bitter taste of

405
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:20,519
betrayal. But instead I stood there, my fists clenched, my body trembling

406
00:41:20,519 --> 00:41:25,320
with unspent rage. My career,
my love for the ocean, and the

407
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:30,559
trust I had in those I worked
with all felt like they were sinking.

408
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:37,880
A shiver ran through me, a
mix of anger and something else, a

409
00:41:37,039 --> 00:41:45,639
deep, echoing sadness as profound as
the ocean itself. I walked out after

410
00:41:45,679 --> 00:41:50,679
that, in a rush of adrenaline. I packed away my belongings, leaving

411
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:55,719
behind the new equipment tainted by the
darkness of the project, and left.

412
00:41:59,679 --> 00:42:19,639
I hope whatever inhabits that town stays
there. Let's consider some hypotheticals. Let's

413
00:42:19,639 --> 00:42:23,119
say you got yourself a master's degree. Let's say you've got a job at

414
00:42:23,119 --> 00:42:28,400
a small branch of state government.
Let's say you work there for the better

415
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:34,039
part of your early adult life.
You built everything around that job, got

416
00:42:34,079 --> 00:42:37,599
an apartment, moved in with your
girlfriend, had an orange cat with seemingly

417
00:42:37,639 --> 00:42:45,880
a single brain cell. Life is
good, right Hypothetically, Then comes along

418
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:52,000
this man says he works in conjunction
with the federal government and the private sector.

419
00:42:52,119 --> 00:42:57,159
The guy reeks corporate, got a
suit with a custom cut, no

420
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:00,400
labels on his clothes, tells us
that we're going to be working closely with

421
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:06,559
a small department that has recently got
a boost. Apparently there's a need for

422
00:43:06,639 --> 00:43:12,039
expansion, and some people from my
branch will be moving on up. Let's

423
00:43:12,039 --> 00:43:17,360
say that one of those people is
me. Hypothetically, all right, I'm

424
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:22,760
going to stop with that. Sorry, it still gets to me. You

425
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:28,559
can safely presume that I've changed a
couple of details to make myself less recognizable.

426
00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:34,440
I got to get through the filters. I had moved from Milwaukee up

427
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:38,400
to Superior. Sarah and I tried
to make it work, but she couldn't

428
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:44,000
leave the city behind. He came
down to a choice between me and the

429
00:43:44,039 --> 00:43:50,239
rest of her life. It made
sense for her to stay kind of annoyed

430
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:55,079
me. She kept the cat though, that thing I loved. I started

431
00:43:55,119 --> 00:44:01,239
working at the DUC in September of
nineteen ninety eight. At first I didn't

432
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:06,800
even know what the acronym stood for. It wasn't a matter of secrecy.

433
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:10,360
But they had these stupid sayings plastered
along the walls that people followed to a

434
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:17,239
t. For example, water off
a duck's back. This was the standard

435
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:24,039
operating procedure. Don't ask too many
questions. Let your questions and worries drift

436
00:44:24,159 --> 00:44:30,679
right off like water. Offer ducks
back. They displayed this proudly in the

437
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:37,000
lunch room with a picture of a
duck peacefully sleeping by a pond. We

438
00:44:37,039 --> 00:44:44,199
worked in collaboration with other agencies in
Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota. Mostly

439
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:51,440
Minnesota. I helped them develop software
to codify reports of invasive ecological species.

440
00:44:52,599 --> 00:44:57,480
It would break down verbal reports with
the bare bones takes the speech program,

441
00:44:57,639 --> 00:45:05,039
which in turn is transcribed and separated
into categories. Categories were measured, analyzed,

442
00:45:05,199 --> 00:45:10,639
and turned into probability reports. Once
information had been categorized, the most

443
00:45:10,639 --> 00:45:16,320
prominent reports will be sent to the
department lead. Seemed simple by today's standards,

444
00:45:17,119 --> 00:45:23,280
but back then it was cutting edge
staff. It was November nineteen ninety

445
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:30,639
nine when we finalies the first version
of our system, lovingly named Daisy.

446
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:36,719
Hours before the launch party, the
department lead took me to his office,

447
00:45:37,199 --> 00:45:42,639
closed the blinds, and sat quietly
across from me for about two solid minutes.

448
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:49,960
This man, the department lead,
was Thomas Rubin, a sixty seven

449
00:45:50,079 --> 00:45:54,280
year old extra sergeant with a penchant
for the dramatic, kept his head as

450
00:45:54,320 --> 00:46:00,559
bold as his lies. Having worked
there for over a year. I thought

451
00:46:00,639 --> 00:46:05,280
I had a foot in the door
by then. Turns out I was still

452
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:14,440
on the outside until that very moment. Thomas poured me a shot mint schnaps.

453
00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:20,960
To a job well done, he
said, raising his glass. I

454
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:27,400
accepted the invitation and down the shot. What the hell right do you have

455
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:34,199
reoccurring nightmares? He asked? Seeing
something strange at night those last few hours

456
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:39,039
before the sunrise? Do the shadows
gain a peculiar tint? No, sir,

457
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:44,960
you're not a very haunted man,
are you. I'm not, sir.

458
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:52,079
I can work with that, he
bored me. Another drink. I

459
00:46:52,159 --> 00:46:55,039
can get you working on the real
deal, he said, But you're not

460
00:46:55,079 --> 00:46:59,280
going to like it. You're not
going to like it one bit. That

461
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:02,760
sounds like a party to you.
I took the glass and studied it.

462
00:47:04,599 --> 00:47:09,679
Little sugar crystals swirling around, back
lit from a lone computer screen. I

463
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:16,760
down the second shot and Thomas smiled. Imagine a lighthouse, he said,

464
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:22,679
and whenever someone thinks about the lighthouse, it lights up. You're with me

465
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:28,079
so far, yes, sir.
And this lighthouse draws in all kinds of

466
00:47:28,119 --> 00:47:34,639
things from far and wide, traders, smugglers, warships, everything. But

467
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:38,159
you don't want that. The beach
is closed and these ships are bad news.

468
00:47:39,519 --> 00:47:45,159
What do you do? We turn
off the lighthouse, sir ah,

469
00:47:45,159 --> 00:47:50,079
But it comes right back on whenever
someone thinks about it. Even when you

470
00:47:50,199 --> 00:47:57,599
do. We demolished the lighthouse,
sir, same thing pops right back once

471
00:47:57,639 --> 00:48:01,360
you think about it. Try again. We forget about it, sir.

472
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:08,599
You can't unkno something. Then you'd
have to go after the people that know

473
00:48:08,679 --> 00:48:13,519
about it, and you'd have to
be careful not to learn anything about it

474
00:48:13,559 --> 00:48:20,320
yourself. And that's what we do, said Thomas. We turn off the

475
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:27,639
lighthouses. Thomas elaborated over the course
of three more shots. What he was

476
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:34,000
describing was an invasive ecological agent,
something that literally grew from the ground.

477
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:39,199
Its very presence acts as a sort
of go ahead for other more dangerous enteredies,

478
00:48:40,199 --> 00:48:46,119
but thinking about it too much causes
it to appear, not immediately but

479
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:52,840
slowly over time. The more you
knew, and the more intimate your knowledge

480
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:58,719
about it was, the stronger the
connection would be. I was safe,

481
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:02,920
though you had to know the details
to trigger it. Thomas gave me the

482
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:07,679
example of a red lily. You
couldn't just know it was red or a

483
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:14,400
lily. You had to know both
these things to imagine it clearly. Once

484
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:17,719
you did, there's a chance it
starts appearing more and more in your everyday

485
00:49:17,760 --> 00:49:24,639
life until it takes physical form,
and by then you've opened an express highway

486
00:49:24,679 --> 00:49:32,760
to something far darker and far worse. The DUC, or the Department of

487
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:38,400
Unknown Crisis, was founded to combat
these entities in a way that doesn't endanger

488
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:46,440
the general populace. We were preventative. Mostly. The software we made scrubbed

489
00:49:46,480 --> 00:49:52,840
all details and simply stated an address, sometimes a person in the likelihood of

490
00:49:52,920 --> 00:50:00,440
their being at least one physical manifestation
of the invasive species present. As the

491
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:05,840
system was automated, there was no
way for us to know the details only

492
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:12,000
the computer knew. According to Thomas, there was a time when these things

493
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,559
had been completely eradicated, right before
the start of the Second World War.

494
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:21,639
There had been a concentrated effort to
remove them. The methods they used was

495
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:28,360
later adapted in creation of the DUC. Turns out those things can't ever be

496
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:35,800
truly removed. There was an author
who documented these ecological entities to such a

497
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:39,599
degree that it could be used as
a gateway. While he passed away in

498
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:45,559
nineteen twenty six, possibly as part
of the containment, his diaries were discovered

499
00:50:45,559 --> 00:50:52,519
in the sixties. Since then,
the invasive species had free reign with no

500
00:50:52,559 --> 00:50:57,920
one to stop them. There'd been
some loose efforts, mostly from the private

501
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:01,480
sector, but it took the creation
of the DUC to start the work on

502
00:51:01,519 --> 00:51:08,480
a larger scale, and there we
were. From that point forward, I

503
00:51:08,519 --> 00:51:14,840
started to work with more specific field
equipment. Since being able to imagine the

504
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:19,280
object is something that triggers it to
manifest, we needed a way for field

505
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:24,159
agents to physically remove them without putting
themselves in danger. We came up with

506
00:51:24,199 --> 00:51:30,519
something we called the Blurguard, a
full headset that removes all color dampened sounds

507
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:36,840
and mildly blurs your vision. Going
back to the example of a red lily,

508
00:51:37,599 --> 00:51:40,440
the blur guard turned it from a
red lily to some kind of flower

509
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:49,400
that's not enough detail to trigger a
manifestation and thus deemed safe. Since our

510
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:53,320
software knew what to look for,
we incorporated a camera and basic image recognition.

511
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:59,360
There'd be a little green light showing
up whenever what we were looking for

512
00:51:59,559 --> 00:52:04,719
was in few. From that point, our field agents could play hot or

513
00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:09,320
cold until they found what they were
supposed to remove. And when it came

514
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:15,880
to people, well, we can't
kill them or have them unlearned something,

515
00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:22,079
so instead there was a targeted effort
to hurt them into place where we knew

516
00:52:22,119 --> 00:52:28,000
this problem was prominent enough to go
unnoticed. The DUC had done it for

517
00:52:28,119 --> 00:52:35,199
decades. These were personalized, targeted
efforts, maybe sending a particularly juicy job

518
00:52:35,199 --> 00:52:40,599
offer enticing a target to move things
like that. We focused on two main

519
00:52:40,679 --> 00:52:47,320
sites, a rural town in Minnesota
and one in West Virginia. There were

520
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:52,599
talks of one up in New England, but that was a separate department.

521
00:52:53,440 --> 00:53:00,360
These places have been absolutely scrubbed to
this day. You can't even find them

522
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:05,400
on the map. Our colleagues and
the private sector brought up pretty much everything

523
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:10,480
there is to owe, giving the
DUC close to full control. It might

524
00:53:10,519 --> 00:53:15,000
seem cruel, but most of these
people had no idea they'd been manipulated.

525
00:53:16,239 --> 00:53:21,800
They lived good lives. We did
our best to turn off as many lighthouses

526
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:27,360
as we could, but in a
town like that, some were bound to

527
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:32,519
pop up eventually. Let's skip ahead
a couple of years. In the summer

528
00:53:32,639 --> 00:53:37,039
of two thousand and four, I
had been on rotation assisting the development of

529
00:53:37,079 --> 00:53:44,679
new equipment. I was also regularly
updating both Daisy and the Blurguard. We

530
00:53:44,719 --> 00:53:49,800
had implemented generalized search filters looking for
the trigger words that Daisy could use,

531
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:55,880
increasing our information input tenfold. Hell
about ninety percent of forum infrastructure could be

532
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:01,280
breached the sense of descriptions of the
invasive agents if needed. We had basic

533
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:08,199
bots prowling most major discussion forums to
contain eventual spread. One night, I'd

534
00:54:08,199 --> 00:54:13,360
taken my work home with me to
work on a camera light. Some field

535
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:17,639
agents had mentioned image recognition issues in
low light areas where the camera refused the

536
00:54:17,679 --> 00:54:22,039
work, so I figured an extra
light source would go a long way.

537
00:54:23,519 --> 00:54:28,840
I was blasting my worktime playlist on
my laptop, sipping on my second room

538
00:54:28,880 --> 00:54:32,239
and coke. If I was going
to do extra work from home, I

539
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:37,760
might as well make an event out
of it. Just short of midnight,

540
00:54:37,679 --> 00:54:42,920
it was time to try it out. I turned off the lights, put

541
00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:46,039
on the helmet, and checked to
see if the camera light auto activated as

542
00:54:46,079 --> 00:54:54,960
instructed. It did. Strange thing, though I was getting her green marker,

543
00:54:57,039 --> 00:55:02,880
the helmet was recognizing the invasive element
right in front of me. I

544
00:55:04,079 --> 00:55:07,679
know my own apartment top to bottom, so I know exactly what I was

545
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:14,239
looking at. Blurred helmet or no. I'm obviously not going to describe it

546
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:20,239
to you, but it had the
appearance of a household plant, quite large.

547
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:24,079
I had it in my window for
years. For the sake of storytelling,

548
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:31,480
let's call it a red lily,
like in Thomas's example. Suddenly it

549
00:55:31,599 --> 00:55:37,239
dawned on me. Now I knew
what the invasive agent was. I couldn't

550
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:42,840
unlearn it. From that point forward. I was going to be a threat

551
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:47,000
to the department. This was an
invitation for red lilies to pop up out

552
00:55:47,039 --> 00:55:52,800
of nowhere, possibly making everyone aware
of them. But first and foremost,

553
00:55:53,519 --> 00:56:00,199
they'd be a lighthouse for other things
to come. I pulled a lily to

554
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:04,079
the pot, roots and all,
and shoved it down the garbage disposal.

555
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:09,840
I swear that damned thing screened.
The empty pot was left on the window

556
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:17,679
sill. Moments later, my phone
rang. Turns out my blurguard was actively

557
00:56:17,679 --> 00:56:22,440
connected to the daisy system. It
probably sent out a report to the department

558
00:56:22,519 --> 00:56:28,800
lead with my neigh and address the
moments it recognized the species. I held

559
00:56:28,840 --> 00:56:32,400
my breath, trying to calm down. This was going to spark a series

560
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:37,719
of events that'd be a report,
an investigation. I'd most likely lose my

561
00:56:37,800 --> 00:56:45,480
job and be forced to relocate.
No worse, this was unprecedented. As

562
00:56:45,519 --> 00:56:52,519
expected, the call came from Thomas. What's going on, he asked,

563
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:59,239
I'm working on the internal camera light. I think there's a malfunction. We've

564
00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:02,239
got a positive match on your location. I know, I know. It's

565
00:57:02,320 --> 00:57:07,199
not a big deal. It's nothing. We're going to stick to protocol on

566
00:57:07,239 --> 00:57:12,400
this one, said Thomas. Expect
three field agents on site within fifteen minutes.

567
00:57:12,960 --> 00:57:19,360
Don't go anywhere. I pulled my
hair. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

568
00:57:20,239 --> 00:57:23,719
I usually get the shakes when i'm
losing control. I figured I better

569
00:57:23,760 --> 00:57:29,519
remove all traces of the plant,
whatever parts were stuck in the garbage disposal,

570
00:57:29,800 --> 00:57:35,079
and whatever remained in the pot.
Except when I looked back up,

571
00:57:36,159 --> 00:57:40,599
there was another red lily growing from
the pot, almost exactly the same,

572
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:49,280
like it had never left. I
can't stress this enough. You can't unlearn

573
00:57:49,400 --> 00:57:53,800
things, you can't unremember something.
I tried not to think about it,

574
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:58,840
but that just made me think of
it more. I fetched a ruby's cue

575
00:57:58,840 --> 00:58:02,559
from my desk to focus something else, but as soon as that color showed

576
00:58:02,639 --> 00:58:07,599
up, my mind sank back to
thinking of it. I got a garbage

577
00:58:07,599 --> 00:58:13,079
bag and through the whole potting along
with the rest of the garbage. There'd

578
00:58:13,079 --> 00:58:17,400
been nothing left. I went room
by room looking for anything remotely resembling it,

579
00:58:19,119 --> 00:58:22,800
but there was nothing. So I
left the apartment intent on throwing it

580
00:58:22,840 --> 00:58:30,000
all away. But see, there's
this communal garden project outside my apartment building.

581
00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:36,679
It was filled with these things.
There were dozens of red lilies.

582
00:58:37,519 --> 00:58:43,559
My mind blanked and I could feel
my pulse rising in my throat. This

583
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:50,000
entire neighborhood could be compromised, possibly
more. I couldn't, for the life

584
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:52,559
of me remember if the litters had
been there earlier that day, or if

585
00:58:52,719 --> 00:59:00,159
it was a reaction to my realization
these things were insidious. They're not only

586
00:59:00,199 --> 00:59:02,920
appeared when you think about them,
but they made a conscious effort to pop

587
00:59:04,000 --> 00:59:09,239
up when they at least expected or
wanted. I called my landlord Jerry,

588
00:59:09,519 --> 00:59:15,039
and started pulling up lilies from the
community garden with my free hand. Some

589
00:59:15,119 --> 00:59:20,480
of them screamed. It was like
a tiny whale from a baby. Some

590
00:59:20,559 --> 00:59:24,280
of the lilies clung to the dirt, digging their roots deeper. Others came

591
00:59:24,320 --> 00:59:30,519
willingly. One of them withered in
my hand, giving up completely. When

592
00:59:30,599 --> 00:59:36,280
Jerry finally picked up, I was
out of breath. I need to ask

593
00:59:36,320 --> 00:59:42,960
about the communal garden project, I
said, I work with the Department of

594
00:59:43,159 --> 00:59:46,000
Fish and Wildlife. There's a bit
of an invasive species growing here, and

595
00:59:46,079 --> 00:59:52,280
I need to establish a time frame
as to when they appeared. All right,

596
00:59:52,119 --> 00:59:58,599
the red lilies, the community garden
lilies. They're actually a dangerous and

597
00:59:58,639 --> 01:00:02,239
invasive species. Do you have any
idea how long they've been here? Red

598
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:07,239
lilies? Oh, yeah, we've
had those for a while. How long?

599
01:00:09,880 --> 01:00:14,880
There was a silence on the other
end, Maybe he was thinking about

600
01:00:14,920 --> 01:00:19,559
it. I didn't have that kind
of time. How long, Jerry,

601
01:00:20,840 --> 01:00:29,400
I look, I don't know,
eight maybe nine years. I grabbed my

602
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:34,800
hair and pulled. The pain in
my scout forced me to concentrate a handful

603
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:38,360
of hair gave way. Thanks Jerry. If you see these, throw them

604
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:44,840
away immediately. I'll do that,
and don't tell anyone. We don't want

605
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:52,880
to want to alarm people. I
hung up. I was flailing, breaking

606
01:00:52,920 --> 01:00:58,440
protocol left and right. I was
breaching, waiting to be sealed. I

607
01:00:58,559 --> 01:01:00,880
was on my knees in the dirt, pulling up red lilies by the handful.

608
01:01:01,679 --> 01:01:06,079
One of my neighbors walked past,
and I could hear a dog whining

609
01:01:06,159 --> 01:01:12,199
in the side of me, or
maybe it saw something I didn't. There

610
01:01:12,280 --> 01:01:15,880
was no telling what this could mean. Most breaches would encountered was one or

611
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:21,039
two of these things. At most
they were usually contained to the Minnesota side

612
01:01:21,039 --> 01:01:25,320
of operation. Them having skipped the
state line and latching unto me was alarming.

613
01:01:27,079 --> 01:01:31,079
This could prompt a whole new level
of response. I knew Thomas held

614
01:01:31,119 --> 01:01:36,639
a level black response, where termination
of lives would be necessary to contain the

615
01:01:36,719 --> 01:01:42,480
threat, but we'd never employed it, not yet. But looking around me

616
01:01:42,559 --> 01:01:46,480
and running the numbers. This might
be it. This could be the first

617
01:01:46,519 --> 01:01:52,480
time they'd have to kill people,
and I'd be the first in line.

618
01:01:52,639 --> 01:01:59,440
The field agents would be there at
any moment. My hands were red and

619
01:01:59,559 --> 01:02:04,880
raw and pulling up lilies and stuffing
them into the garbage bags. I was

620
01:02:04,880 --> 01:02:09,119
so frantic that I grabbed everything that
even remotely resembled them, anything red,

621
01:02:09,519 --> 01:02:15,199
anything lily shaped. I tore up
more than half the community garden in ten

622
01:02:15,239 --> 01:02:22,199
minutes flat. I could hear a
car coming, I couldn't take any chances.

623
01:02:22,199 --> 01:02:27,039
I looked over the garden again,
I couldn't see any of them,

624
01:02:27,079 --> 01:02:31,000
and sprinted to the garbage cans.
The moment i'd thrown it all away,

625
01:02:31,599 --> 01:02:37,960
I saw headlights turning the corner.
I recognized them. I brushed my hands

626
01:02:37,960 --> 01:02:43,800
off the best I could and shoved
them in my pockets. A white hatchback

627
01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:49,880
with government license plates pulled up,
and three people got out. I tried

628
01:02:49,880 --> 01:02:53,519
to stay calm, I tried not
to think about red lilies. I tried

629
01:02:53,559 --> 01:03:00,199
to smile. I could tell that
I was looking at Agent a step as

630
01:03:00,960 --> 01:03:05,920
young and Owens. I had worked
with these people plenty of times to prep

631
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:09,760
them for excursion, never to this
extent, though, and never on this

632
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:17,000
side of the States. They all
fixed and activated their Blurguard helmets. Rough

633
01:03:17,159 --> 01:03:22,320
Night asked the steps. Yeah,
yeah, I nodded, working on an

634
01:03:22,400 --> 01:03:28,960
update the helmet kind of. You
know, sure, sure, we'll just

635
01:03:29,039 --> 01:03:31,639
check out the apartment and be on
our way. You mind waiting down here?

636
01:03:32,519 --> 01:03:39,039
No, that's that's fine. They
turned on their image recog, singed

637
01:03:39,119 --> 01:03:44,599
their combs and gave me a pat
on the shoulder. We'll be an inn

638
01:03:44,639 --> 01:03:50,719
out, said Young, Sorry about
the trouble. I watched them. I

639
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:54,159
send the stairway while I stayed out
by the garden. I was going to

640
01:03:54,239 --> 01:03:59,440
make sure nothing popped up. If
the agents just up and left, I

641
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:03,960
could come with a plan, I
tell Thomas eventually, but I had to

642
01:04:03,960 --> 01:04:09,320
be clever about it. I had
to assess the damage and spread to make

643
01:04:09,360 --> 01:04:15,440
sure I could trigger a quarantine rather
than an eradication level response. Still looking

644
01:04:15,480 --> 01:04:21,159
around the apartment complex, there were
probably hundreds of people living there. These

645
01:04:21,199 --> 01:04:26,880
things could have made their way into
every single household, opening the way for

646
01:04:27,000 --> 01:04:30,119
pretty much anything, not that I
had the slightest idea of what that might

647
01:04:30,159 --> 01:04:34,840
be. I was lost in thought
for the better part of half an hour.

648
01:04:36,360 --> 01:04:41,360
What the hell was taking them so
long? Had they found one?

649
01:04:43,559 --> 01:04:47,280
I walked up the stairway and put
my hand on the apartment door. It

650
01:04:47,320 --> 01:04:54,679
was quiet. It shouldn't be quiet. I got this sinking feeling, like

651
01:04:54,760 --> 01:04:59,039
my body heat was leaking out of
my feet. My mind started to race

652
01:04:59,119 --> 01:05:03,559
with possibility. Maybe they left,
went to the wrong apartment. Maybe they're

653
01:05:03,559 --> 01:05:09,039
watching TV and my couch, having
a beer, burning a red lily in

654
01:05:09,079 --> 01:05:15,559
the bathtub. Whatever they did,
they wouldn't do it quietly, and this

655
01:05:15,519 --> 01:05:23,320
was quiet. I pushed the door
open and was met with a chemical smell,

656
01:05:24,119 --> 01:05:28,599
like a moist mix of methanol and
iron. It was strong enough to

657
01:05:28,679 --> 01:05:34,599
taste astavers. I coughed out,
are you guys in? There? No

658
01:05:34,719 --> 01:05:42,079
response. I stepped back out,
gasping for fresh air. The smell by

659
01:05:42,199 --> 01:05:45,920
my nose hairs. My eyes teared
up as I tried not to sneeze.

660
01:05:46,039 --> 01:05:49,840
I didn't want to go back in. I knew it was bad. I

661
01:05:49,840 --> 01:05:56,920
could feel it in the pit of
my stomach. Still, I didn't have

662
01:05:56,960 --> 01:06:02,480
a choice back in and shut the
door behind me. I turned on the

663
01:06:02,559 --> 01:06:13,159
lights. I turned on the lights. They'd been torn to pieces. There

664
01:06:13,239 --> 01:06:17,199
was blood dripping from the ceiling,
two severed arms on the kitchen table,

665
01:06:17,920 --> 01:06:23,960
an armless, legless torso resting on
the couch, the blood sinking into the

666
01:06:24,039 --> 01:06:29,119
cracks in the leather. The floor
was covered in gore, torn straight from

667
01:06:29,159 --> 01:06:33,039
their bodies and left in the open, muscle, sinew, vital organs,

668
01:06:33,559 --> 01:06:39,880
all splayed out on the floor and
furniture. There was a single red lily

669
01:06:40,280 --> 01:06:45,320
in a brand new pot resting on
the window sill. There was a bright

670
01:06:45,480 --> 01:06:51,639
red handprint on the bathroom door.
I gently pushed the door open, only

671
01:06:51,639 --> 01:06:58,599
to reveal the severed heads of Esteva's
younger owens, unceremosely thrown into a pile

672
01:06:58,679 --> 01:07:03,280
on the floor of my our cabinet. I don't know how long I stood

673
01:07:03,280 --> 01:07:09,880
there. My mind went completely blank. I could honestly not tell if it

674
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:14,480
was real or a nightmare. For
a moment, I was awash with this

675
01:07:14,599 --> 01:07:18,239
intense relief. It had to be
a nightmare. It didn't make sense for

676
01:07:18,280 --> 01:07:24,760
something so terrible to happen so suddenly. It took me a while to realize

677
01:07:25,239 --> 01:07:30,119
that there was something looking at me
from the bathroom mirror. I turned to

678
01:07:30,199 --> 01:07:34,039
it. My face wasn't there,
just the dark space where my face ought

679
01:07:34,119 --> 01:07:40,400
to be. It was like staring
into a hole. Vaguely shaped like a

680
01:07:40,480 --> 01:07:45,960
humanoid. It followed my movements as
I leaned my head left and right.

681
01:07:46,079 --> 01:07:51,000
We looked at one another in silence, hearing only blood dripping from the living

682
01:07:51,079 --> 01:08:02,000
room ceiling. A trembling whisper burrowed
into my spine. Hello, This was

683
01:08:02,039 --> 01:08:05,559
one of the things Tom's had warned
us about. This was one of the

684
01:08:05,599 --> 01:08:12,719
ships that came to shore following the
lighthouse, one of the countless entities invited

685
01:08:12,800 --> 01:08:18,119
into my world, drawn by this
thing, the thing that ought not to

686
01:08:18,199 --> 01:08:24,600
be. I hate calling it a
red lily. I want to scream what

687
01:08:24,720 --> 01:08:30,199
it is and have them torn apart, but I can't describe them or they'll

688
01:08:30,279 --> 01:08:34,800
spread out of control. The longer
I stared at the thing in the mirror,

689
01:08:35,000 --> 01:08:40,079
the more I understood. It was
one thing to know about the red

690
01:08:40,119 --> 01:08:45,359
lilies. It was a hundred times
more potent to know exactly how they worked.

691
01:08:45,600 --> 01:08:49,560
For an average person to know their
appearance might invite a few to pop

692
01:08:49,640 --> 01:08:55,479
up, But to know them at
the level that I did, that was

693
01:08:55,520 --> 01:09:01,119
an entirely different league to these things. I was precious cargo. I could

694
01:09:01,199 --> 01:09:06,600
light a hundred lighthouses A thousand.
They perceived A. Stev's and the other

695
01:09:06,640 --> 01:09:12,640
agents as a threat and disposed of
them immediately. I was the equivalent of

696
01:09:12,680 --> 01:09:17,920
a carrier patient zero. I was
stuck in the eye of the storm,

697
01:09:17,960 --> 01:09:26,199
and everything around me would be torn
to shreds. I ran a hundred scenarios

698
01:09:26,199 --> 01:09:30,319
in my head. Destroying myself was
the obvious choice, but that would be

699
01:09:30,359 --> 01:09:34,279
the nail in the coffin that would
force Thomas to take violent action on this

700
01:09:34,520 --> 01:09:40,520
entire apartment complex. Without context,
he wouldn't know how to contain it.

701
01:09:41,479 --> 01:09:46,039
Losing personnel was the final criteria for
a black lever response. However, if

702
01:09:46,039 --> 01:09:50,560
it was attributed to a breach of
protocol or faulty equipment, I could bring

703
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:56,880
it down to a quarantine. There
was hope, but I had to explain

704
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:02,880
it. I had to stay alive. As I pondered my options, I

705
01:10:03,000 --> 01:10:09,079
heard a running motor outside. I
stepped out of the bathroom and out into

706
01:10:09,079 --> 01:10:15,239
the walkway. Another two white Hatchbacks
had pulled up. I'd lost track of

707
01:10:15,279 --> 01:10:19,199
time. No one in the Stevis's
team had reported and all clear or anything.

708
01:10:20,239 --> 01:10:26,319
This had prompted a standard backup response. If these teams found traces of

709
01:10:26,359 --> 01:10:30,479
anything, our entire field division would
be called in. They'd probably put people

710
01:10:30,560 --> 01:10:34,239
all the way down in Des Moines
on high alerts within the next fifteen minutes

711
01:10:34,399 --> 01:10:40,239
if there was no de escalation.
There was already new red lilies growing in

712
01:10:40,279 --> 01:10:45,680
the community garden. They wouldn't let
me speak. Talking was a hazard,

713
01:10:46,039 --> 01:10:50,479
since I could verbally describe what they
were looking for. I could yell out

714
01:10:50,720 --> 01:10:56,479
they looked like red lilies, and
the entire squad would be compromised. Up

715
01:10:56,560 --> 01:11:00,880
until this point, we'd never had
to worry about that kind of wilful exposure,

716
01:11:00,680 --> 01:11:05,600
and there was no plan for it
that the UC didn't have enemies in

717
01:11:05,640 --> 01:11:11,760
the active sense. We were preventative. There was no way they'd let me

718
01:11:11,840 --> 01:11:16,680
talk or leave, not with three
human remains in my apartment. At best,

719
01:11:16,800 --> 01:11:20,600
they'd gag me and burn this place
to the ground. At worst,

720
01:11:21,000 --> 01:11:27,760
they'd shoot me and then do the
same. I scurried along the walkway,

721
01:11:28,079 --> 01:11:30,880
turning left at the far end,
I took the fire escape to the ground

722
01:11:30,920 --> 01:11:34,479
floor, hugged at the wall of
the building, and circled back to the

723
01:11:34,520 --> 01:11:40,920
parking lot. I burst into a
sprint for my sedan. Luckily, no

724
01:11:41,000 --> 01:11:46,319
one noticed at least no one that
cared. As soon as I got on

725
01:11:46,359 --> 01:11:50,479
the highway, I called Thomas.
I had trouble staying in my lane.

726
01:11:51,079 --> 01:11:57,520
My hands kept cramping up. Thomas
picked up. I could hear him opening

727
01:11:57,520 --> 01:12:00,439
a door, putting on a jacket. You've got to tell me what's going

728
01:12:00,479 --> 01:12:04,279
on, he said, where are
you? I had to go. I

729
01:12:04,319 --> 01:12:12,680
had to The place is infested,
so let's deal with it. I didn't

730
01:12:12,680 --> 01:12:16,239
know what to say. There was
no good place to start. I leaned

731
01:12:16,239 --> 01:12:20,319
back in my seat, tried to
keep the car straight and took a deep

732
01:12:20,359 --> 01:12:27,000
breath. There were flashes of read
by the roadside, could have been lilies.

733
01:12:28,039 --> 01:12:31,000
The back seat was dark, dark
enough to hide a possible shape.

734
01:12:31,640 --> 01:12:34,960
I thought I saw an outline in
the rear view mirror, but it might

735
01:12:35,000 --> 01:12:40,439
have been my mind playing tricks.
Stay where you are. I'll have someone

736
01:12:40,479 --> 01:12:44,520
pick you up, and we'll deal
with it. I can't. I said,

737
01:12:45,239 --> 01:12:48,600
it's bad, Thomas, it's real
bad. How bad are we talking?

738
01:12:49,960 --> 01:12:58,319
We're talking our quarantine breach a protocol
at least three casualties. Thomas took

739
01:12:58,319 --> 01:13:02,159
a deep breath the line for a
few seconds. I could hear him get

740
01:13:02,199 --> 01:13:11,119
into the car. You know don't
you. Yeah, that's I'm sorry.

741
01:13:12,239 --> 01:13:16,640
They're everywhere. I can't stop seeing
them. Don't tell me anything nothing.

742
01:13:17,079 --> 01:13:23,720
I shouldn't be talking to you.
He was right. Talking to someone like

743
01:13:23,840 --> 01:13:28,520
me who knew was like trying to
pit a rattlesnake. It could be over

744
01:13:28,760 --> 01:13:31,800
in a snap. We've got to
bring you in. What are you going

745
01:13:31,880 --> 01:13:38,039
to do? Did we lose people? Mists his team? I said,

746
01:13:38,640 --> 01:13:45,520
something came through. Jeez, are
you saying you're causing manifestations? I don't

747
01:13:45,560 --> 01:13:53,000
know, but you do know you
if anyone knows, so tell me.

748
01:13:56,439 --> 01:14:00,640
Looking back in the rear view mirror, I knew there was something riding along,

749
01:14:00,399 --> 01:14:04,800
something that had caught on to me, something that had stepped into our

750
01:14:04,800 --> 01:14:11,640
world following the light of the red
lilies. There was no point in denying

751
01:14:11,640 --> 01:14:15,199
it. I'll figure it out,
I said, I'll deal with it.

752
01:14:17,079 --> 01:14:21,760
Before Thomas got the chance to object, I turned off my phone and chucked

753
01:14:21,760 --> 01:14:29,319
it out of the window. I
drove for the better part of an hour

754
01:14:29,800 --> 01:14:34,800
before a familiar sound snapped me to
attention. Whatever surface level plans I'd made

755
01:14:34,800 --> 01:14:41,199
in my head dissolved completely. I
heard the sound before I saw the flashing

756
01:14:41,279 --> 01:14:47,640
lights. A siren. I was
probably swerving left and right, trying to

757
01:14:47,720 --> 01:14:53,800
keep the car straight. No wonder
I was being pulled over. This could

758
01:14:53,880 --> 01:14:58,840
get real bad, real fast.
I thought about bucking it and hoping for

759
01:14:58,880 --> 01:15:02,760
the best, but that had just
draw more attention to me. Instead,

760
01:15:03,159 --> 01:15:10,079
I found a secluded spot and pulled
over. It was only as I pulled

761
01:15:10,079 --> 01:15:15,000
the handbrake that I remembered I'd been
drinking early that night. I'd had about

762
01:15:15,039 --> 01:15:19,680
two rum and cokes. I'd completely
forgotten about it. I tried to consider

763
01:15:19,720 --> 01:15:26,239
my options, but there was no
time. I was told to turn off

764
01:15:26,239 --> 01:15:29,920
the engine, rolled down the window, and placed my hands on the dashboard.

765
01:15:30,439 --> 01:15:35,119
There were two officers, a man
and a woman. I could barely

766
01:15:35,159 --> 01:15:41,399
hear them over my pounding heart.
To them, it was a routine stop,

767
01:15:42,079 --> 01:15:45,479
but I was trying to save lives. They had no idea what kind

768
01:15:45,479 --> 01:15:49,159
of trouble there are in I tried
to wrap my head around it to come

769
01:15:49,239 --> 01:15:54,239
up with something plausible that they'd understand. I could tell them I had a

770
01:15:54,239 --> 01:16:00,760
bomb strapped to me or anything,
but there was no time. I hadn't

771
01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:04,640
even heard them asking for my license
and registration. I could feel a flashlight

772
01:16:04,760 --> 01:16:10,439
shine in my face, but I
barely registered it. They asked me three

773
01:16:10,479 --> 01:16:15,760
times. Then they changed tactics.
Sir, we needed to step out and

774
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:20,159
place your hands on the hood of
the vehicle. I fumbled my response.

775
01:16:21,000 --> 01:16:26,720
This something in the car, I
said, You've got to be careful.

776
01:16:26,800 --> 01:16:30,720
There's, sir, is there currently
a weapon on your person? Something that

777
01:16:30,840 --> 01:16:33,560
can puncture wound my partner? A
pencil, a knife, a sharp set

778
01:16:33,600 --> 01:16:36,920
of keys. No, listen,
you, you got to step back.

779
01:16:38,079 --> 01:16:43,520
There's something. My thoughts blanked.
There By the side of the road,

780
01:16:44,439 --> 01:16:47,800
I saw one, a red lily, clear as day, growing through the

781
01:16:47,880 --> 01:16:53,960
cracks in the pavement. Sir,
I needed to cooperate with me. The

782
01:16:54,039 --> 01:17:00,159
officer insisted, have you been drinking
tonight? I couldn't take my eyes off

783
01:17:00,159 --> 01:17:05,039
the red lily. It was like
a reminder that this was already over,

784
01:17:05,880 --> 01:17:12,439
that my fate and theirs was sealed. The moment we met dead men walking,

785
01:17:13,680 --> 01:17:19,680
please, I whispered, let them
go. For a second, I

786
01:17:19,800 --> 01:17:24,800
thought that it might do it.
I was willing to listen, to give

787
01:17:24,840 --> 01:17:29,319
in if that's what it took for
these people to live. The red lily

788
01:17:29,399 --> 01:17:34,399
knew. I know it knew,
But like a lighthouse, it can't help

789
01:17:34,439 --> 01:17:42,279
but to shine and bring ships to
shore. And with that a familiar tremble

790
01:17:42,600 --> 01:17:50,359
rose in my stomach. Hello.
There was a flicker as one of the

791
01:17:50,439 --> 01:17:55,800
light posts went out. I closed
my eyes, trying to keep the tears

792
01:17:55,800 --> 01:18:00,840
in. The officer to my left
started screaming. I heard a gunshot,

793
01:18:00,960 --> 01:18:05,279
but muffled, as if firing into
something at close range. I heard fabric

794
01:18:05,319 --> 01:18:11,800
being torn, then flesh, then
sinu ine arteries. No one ever told

795
01:18:11,840 --> 01:18:15,960
me it was possible to discern the
sound of marrow separating from breaking bone,

796
01:18:16,039 --> 01:18:26,800
But now I can't stop hearing it. Hello. Primal animalistic screams a program

797
01:18:26,840 --> 01:18:32,119
response in a biology to alert other
humans to stay away, to run Spotches

798
01:18:32,119 --> 01:18:36,840
of blood rained down on the concrete
and the hood of the car. I

799
01:18:36,880 --> 01:18:43,159
could feel something warm splatter across my
face and run down my cheeks. The

800
01:18:43,239 --> 01:18:47,319
screams stopped. I had sunk to
my knees. I looked like a crying

801
01:18:47,319 --> 01:18:53,560
older boy, praying for it all
to stop. When I finally forced my

802
01:18:53,600 --> 01:18:59,000
eyes open, the world was red
with blood. In the flicker of a

803
01:18:59,079 --> 01:19:03,520
dying light post, I saw something
vaguely human drop the sundered remains of a

804
01:19:03,600 --> 01:19:11,920
torso he followed my head like movements
left to right, mimicking me. I

805
01:19:11,960 --> 01:19:16,000
could tell it was proud, like
a dog bringing back a stick to its

806
01:19:16,039 --> 01:19:26,399
master. Hello. I stumbled to
my feet, leaning against the car to

807
01:19:26,479 --> 01:19:30,439
steady myself. The concrete was slippery
with blood, and I kept stepping on

808
01:19:30,560 --> 01:19:35,760
something indiscernible. I tried to look
straight ahead as to nut look at the

809
01:19:35,880 --> 01:19:42,359
entity too closely. It was just
standing there in the middle of the street,

810
01:19:42,880 --> 01:19:47,079
looking at me, waiting for me
to say or do something. I

811
01:19:47,199 --> 01:19:53,800
looked straight ahead, pretending it wasn't
even there. The car took a few

812
01:19:53,880 --> 01:19:57,840
turns of the key to start.
The steering wheel was slippery with blood,

813
01:19:58,319 --> 01:20:01,680
but I managed to steer back on
the road. The windshield wipers smeared the

814
01:20:01,680 --> 01:20:09,600
gore into a thin red veneer.
I had to go away, far away,

815
01:20:09,760 --> 01:20:15,680
and there was only one place I
could imagine. As I mentioned earlier,

816
01:20:16,039 --> 01:20:23,680
the DUC had certain contaminant areas,
previously user spaces where they simply moved

817
01:20:23,760 --> 01:20:28,840
people of interest. But with me
there, they'd have to leave it alone.

818
01:20:29,800 --> 01:20:33,039
It'd be too dangerous to interact with. They'd have to trust that I

819
01:20:33,039 --> 01:20:39,000
wouldn't interfere as long as I kept
to myself and out of the way.

820
01:20:39,640 --> 01:20:44,319
I burned my car in a field
and walked nine miles. I washed myself

821
01:20:44,359 --> 01:20:48,479
off in the river. This was
a town designed to keep people comfortable enough

822
01:20:48,760 --> 01:20:55,600
not to ask questions, so having
a stranger wandering off the streets wouldn't be

823
01:20:55,600 --> 01:21:01,680
a problem. And everywhere I looked
there were red lilies. They were in

824
01:21:01,720 --> 01:21:06,880
the windows of every house by the
roadside, in every garden. Hell they

825
01:21:06,880 --> 01:21:12,600
were even used as a logo.
I'd seen that logo a hundred times.

826
01:21:13,640 --> 01:21:18,760
Maybe they had no idea what it
meant. I've stayed in that rural minace

827
01:21:18,800 --> 01:21:24,279
of the town ever since. I've
seen more horrors than I dared to count,

828
01:21:25,119 --> 01:21:29,279
but they seem to ignore me.
They treat this place as a nesting

829
01:21:29,279 --> 01:21:33,680
ground or a staging area. Considering
how many of them there is, I'm

830
01:21:33,720 --> 01:21:40,680
astounded that anyone is still alive.
Do you see has declared this entire town

831
01:21:40,720 --> 01:21:45,520
a hazard. I've tried getting in
touch with Thomas again, but all my

832
01:21:45,520 --> 01:21:49,760
attempts at communication with the outside world
has been censored. If this, by

833
01:21:49,800 --> 01:21:54,840
some miracle, gets through the filters, I urged that do you see to

834
01:21:54,920 --> 01:21:59,359
get in contact with me. I
want to be an asset I want to

835
01:21:59,399 --> 01:22:05,479
help, and of the lighthouses.
And as for everyone else, the best

836
01:22:05,520 --> 01:22:12,640
thing you can do he stop asking
questions. Don't question the armed men with

837
01:22:12,720 --> 01:22:16,760
strange helmets, don't look too closely
at the strange plant in the community garden.

838
01:22:17,640 --> 01:22:24,239
Don't look for anything abnormal, and
if you see something, try to

839
01:22:24,319 --> 01:22:30,239
consider it might be artificial. Don't
dig too deep into this. If you're

840
01:22:30,279 --> 01:22:51,279
not involved, consider yourself lucky,
and stay out of rural Minnesota. It

841
01:22:51,359 --> 01:22:57,760
was my best friend Luke's idea to
form our own detective agency, inspired by

842
01:22:57,760 --> 01:23:01,560
the shows we loved watching together.
We lived on Brook Street in a small

843
01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:10,199
town in Oregon, so we called
ourselves the brook Street Sleuths. We advertised

844
01:23:10,199 --> 01:23:15,119
our services on the community board in
Elmer's Market, which usually cost twenty five

845
01:23:15,119 --> 01:23:19,920
cents a week, but mister Elmer
kindly allowed it for free. We worked

846
01:23:19,960 --> 01:23:24,840
on various cases in the space of
a month or so over one summer.

847
01:23:25,920 --> 01:23:31,279
Who's been taking the blackberries from Miss
Jacob's brambles solved almost everyone who passed by?

848
01:23:31,840 --> 01:23:36,359
And lots of chipmunks? What made
the small hole in Lowery's front yard

849
01:23:38,279 --> 01:23:43,960
solved a chipmunk? Yeah, we
had an abundance of chipmunks in town,

850
01:23:44,960 --> 01:23:49,520
but not all the mysteries involved the
little critters. They were clearly not mysteries

851
01:23:49,520 --> 01:23:54,479
to the adults who hired us.
But the best thing about living in that

852
01:23:54,560 --> 01:23:59,840
kind of community was the willingness of
our neighbors to contribute to our idea of

853
01:24:00,119 --> 01:24:04,439
fun. Luke and I were rewarded
with many sodas and candy bars for our

854
01:24:04,520 --> 01:24:12,640
sleuthing skills. Despite our success rate, the brook Street Sleuths was a short

855
01:24:12,640 --> 01:24:18,920
lived agency. Our last ever case
began with a very real mystery, where

856
01:24:19,399 --> 01:24:26,600
is mister Page's dog? Frank Page
was a retired widower and happened to be

857
01:24:26,680 --> 01:24:30,479
my next door neighbor. His dog, Milo, a Yorkie, was what

858
01:24:30,600 --> 01:24:36,479
Frank referred to as a pain in
the proverbial. Milo was an expert escape

859
01:24:36,600 --> 01:24:42,279
artist. He was always getting out
of the yard and causing mischief in town,

860
01:24:43,119 --> 01:24:45,920
but would usually come back home with
his tail wagging after an hour or

861
01:24:45,920 --> 01:24:51,279
two. One evening, we could
hear Frank calling for Milow from the doorstep.

862
01:24:53,279 --> 01:24:58,359
He had escaped as per but it
had been several hours Ernie still hadn't

863
01:24:58,399 --> 01:25:02,119
returned. I'd had offered to drive
around the neighborhood to look for him,

864
01:25:02,239 --> 01:25:08,880
but had no luck. The next
morning, I helped Frank make a missing

865
01:25:08,920 --> 01:25:13,600
poster. We stuck a photograph of
Marlow and a sheet of paper using a

866
01:25:13,640 --> 01:25:17,800
glue stick, and I neatly wrote
the details underneath in black marker, as

867
01:25:17,840 --> 01:25:24,640
dictated by Frank. Then we went
to Elmer's market to use the photocopier and

868
01:25:24,800 --> 01:25:29,760
made ten copies. It should have
cost us a dollar, but mister Ellmer

869
01:25:29,840 --> 01:25:33,920
said there was no charge and wished
us luck in finding him. Frank brought

870
01:25:33,960 --> 01:25:39,159
me a kola as a thank you. You're a good kid, Ricky,

871
01:25:39,760 --> 01:25:45,680
he said, patting my back.
I could hear he was upset. We'll

872
01:25:45,720 --> 01:25:48,520
find him, mister Page, I
said, the brook Street sleuths are on

873
01:25:48,640 --> 01:25:56,560
the case. He chuckled. He's
a piece of work, but I'd be

874
01:25:56,640 --> 01:26:00,079
lost without him. I'll go knock
for Luke just as soon as we've put

875
01:26:00,159 --> 01:26:05,199
up these posters. We left one
on the board in Elma's, then stood

876
01:26:05,199 --> 01:26:11,479
the remaining posters on telegraph poles earned
the two bus shelters in town. I

877
01:26:11,600 --> 01:26:15,920
asked Frank if I could keep hold
of the original photograph of Milow. That

878
01:26:15,960 --> 01:26:20,560
way I could show it to the
local residents during our investigation. Before I

879
01:26:20,640 --> 01:26:26,680
knocked for Luke, I went back
home to tell my parents. Don't wonder

880
01:26:26,720 --> 01:26:30,319
too far, Ricky said, Mom, and stay out of the woods.

881
01:26:30,560 --> 01:26:34,800
I don't like the thoughts of you
boys. And there alone. There was

882
01:26:34,800 --> 01:26:41,000
a woodland area that lined the back
of town. I absolutely planned on looking

883
01:26:41,039 --> 01:26:45,520
in there. I told my mom
I wouldn't though, of course. I

884
01:26:45,560 --> 01:26:48,039
grabbed my bike and rode to Luke's
to fill them in on the details.

885
01:26:49,079 --> 01:26:55,000
There we rode around town and knocked
on doors asking if they'd seen Milow.

886
01:26:56,319 --> 01:27:03,640
It was mostly unsuccessful, but one
lady had some potentially useful information now that

887
01:27:03,760 --> 01:27:09,239
I think about it, she said
on a doorstep, I did see a

888
01:27:09,279 --> 01:27:14,840
little dog snifficker around the brambles and
Maple Road yesterday. Thank you, ma'am,

889
01:27:15,000 --> 01:27:18,760
said Luke. We discussed it as
we retrieved our bikes from the end

890
01:27:18,800 --> 01:27:24,600
of the driveway. There are two
houses on Maple Road with brambles in the

891
01:27:24,680 --> 01:27:29,359
yard, he said, Miss Jacobs, I said, and the Deans.

892
01:27:30,119 --> 01:27:34,479
Why did it have to be the
Deans. The Dean family were not known

893
01:27:34,520 --> 01:27:41,479
for their warm community spirit, especially
the oldest son, Tommy. He was

894
01:27:41,520 --> 01:27:45,479
a senior and notorious troublemaker who had
caused Luke and I a lot of grief.

895
01:27:46,600 --> 01:27:51,239
The family also had a much bigger, meaner dog that would probably treat

896
01:27:51,279 --> 01:27:57,960
Marlowe as a snack. We'll go
to Miss Jacob's house first, said Luke.

897
01:27:58,840 --> 01:28:00,600
If we're lucky, we won't have
to go to the Deans at all.

898
01:28:02,920 --> 01:28:06,319
We left our bikes on the sidewalk
and knocked on Miss Jacob's door.

899
01:28:08,800 --> 01:28:14,880
Well, she said warmly, if
it isn't the brook Street sleuths. Hello,

900
01:28:14,960 --> 01:28:18,600
Miss Jacobs, we said in unison, what can I do for you?

901
01:28:18,680 --> 01:28:24,920
Boys? We're looking for my neighbor, mister Page's dog, I said,

902
01:28:25,319 --> 01:28:30,479
showing other photo. He went missing
yesterday afternoon. Oh no, she

903
01:28:30,600 --> 01:28:35,840
said, I'm familiar. I sometimes
see him in the yard by the brambles,

904
01:28:35,880 --> 01:28:41,279
but I haven't seen him for days. Thank you anyway, Miss Jacobs,

905
01:28:41,600 --> 01:28:45,119
said Luke. Of course, she
said, I'll keep my eye out.

906
01:28:45,880 --> 01:28:53,000
Oh and help yourselves to blackberries.
As we walked down Miss Jacob's pathway,

907
01:28:53,680 --> 01:28:58,239
we looked at each other with concern, knowing we now had to visit

908
01:28:58,279 --> 01:29:02,279
the Deans. We took the opportunity
to eat a few of the ripened berries

909
01:29:02,359 --> 01:29:09,439
before braving it then wheeling our bikes
to their house. The yard was in

910
01:29:09,560 --> 01:29:14,279
as kempt as the others in the
neighborhood. It was overgrown and there were

911
01:29:14,319 --> 01:29:19,760
scraps of metal from various vehicles dartted
around like a junkyard. We slowly walked

912
01:29:19,840 --> 01:29:25,039
up the path. As soon as
we knocked on the door, they came

913
01:29:25,159 --> 01:29:30,640
loud barking from inside that made us
jump, followed by shouting. The door

914
01:29:30,720 --> 01:29:35,199
flew open and mister Dean was standing
there, holding back their monster of a

915
01:29:35,279 --> 01:29:41,279
dog by the collar. Were just
barking at us like crazy. Shut the

916
01:29:41,319 --> 01:29:45,680
hell up, he yelled down at
it. It quiet and down, but

917
01:29:45,880 --> 01:29:50,479
growled under its breath. What do
you want, hello, sir? I

918
01:29:50,600 --> 01:29:55,880
stuttered. We were asking around to
see if anyone has seen my neighbor's dog.

919
01:29:57,119 --> 01:30:01,239
I took out the photo he went
missing it today. What makes you

920
01:30:01,279 --> 01:30:05,159
think I had anything to do with
it? He snapped. It's not like

921
01:30:05,319 --> 01:30:09,960
that, Sir, said Luke.
We're just asking if you've seen him,

922
01:30:10,159 --> 01:30:15,079
that's all. He sometimes wonders around
the neighborhood. Who do you think you

923
01:30:15,119 --> 01:30:19,439
are, he said, Colombo or
something. Luke and I turned to each

924
01:30:19,479 --> 01:30:25,079
other like it had been a bad
idea. I'm sorry to have bothered you,

925
01:30:25,159 --> 01:30:29,960
sir, I said, turning to
leave. Believe me, he said,

926
01:30:30,520 --> 01:30:32,920
if that rat had been anywhere near
here, Caine would have sorted it

927
01:30:32,960 --> 01:30:40,159
out. The dog started barking again, and we hurried back down the path.

928
01:30:41,159 --> 01:30:44,279
I don't want to see you boys
and my property again, he yelled

929
01:30:44,319 --> 01:30:48,880
after us. I won't hold him
back next time, he laughed loudly as

930
01:30:48,880 --> 01:30:55,119
we quickly rode away, my heart
beating hard. We stopped around the corner

931
01:30:55,119 --> 01:31:00,680
to catch our breath. Then we
started to laugh uncomfortably. God, I

932
01:31:00,800 --> 01:31:05,640
hate that family, said Luke.
We heard the roar of an engine,

933
01:31:05,840 --> 01:31:11,560
and a ross bucket of a car
came hurtling around the corner, its tires

934
01:31:11,560 --> 01:31:16,680
screeching on the road. It was
Tommy Dean behind the wheel. When he

935
01:31:16,800 --> 01:31:20,439
noticed Luke and I, he gave
us the finger and sped away out of

936
01:31:20,479 --> 01:31:29,920
sight. So suspicious, I said, but maybe too obvious, Luke shrugged.

937
01:31:30,720 --> 01:31:35,479
They're assholes. But I think we
need to investigate more first. When

938
01:31:35,479 --> 01:31:41,560
it felt like we'd exhausted all avenues
in town, I suggested we look in

939
01:31:41,600 --> 01:31:47,079
the woods. Luke was apprehensive,
as like me, he was forbidden from

940
01:31:47,079 --> 01:31:51,560
the woods. Without an adult,
but it seemed logical that a dog would

941
01:31:51,560 --> 01:31:58,039
be drawn to the woods, especially
with all the chipmunks the chase. If

942
01:31:58,039 --> 01:32:01,079
we do find Miller there, I
said, we'll just pretend we found him

943
01:32:01,079 --> 01:32:06,279
someplace that won't get us in trouble. We looked around for an hour or

944
01:32:06,319 --> 01:32:12,279
so, shouting Milo's name from time
to time. He got to the point

945
01:32:12,399 --> 01:32:15,359
where we figured if Milo was somewhere
he could hear us, he would have

946
01:32:15,439 --> 01:32:20,960
made himself known by now. Before
we left, we both confessed in needing

947
01:32:21,000 --> 01:32:27,279
the bathroom badly, so we went
in opposite directions to find a secluded spot

948
01:32:27,279 --> 01:32:33,880
to p Rickie. I heard Luke
scream after a few minutes. I quickly

949
01:32:33,920 --> 01:32:39,359
finished and retrieved my bike. Where
are you, I yelled, my nerves

950
01:32:39,359 --> 01:32:45,520
on edge over here? I saw
him standing in a small clearing and rushed

951
01:32:45,520 --> 01:32:49,960
over. What is it? I
asked, out of breath. He didn't

952
01:32:49,960 --> 01:32:57,880
answer. Luke had found what looked
like the sight of a sacrificial ritual.

953
01:32:59,239 --> 01:33:02,960
There were strange symbols drawn onto several
tree trunks and what appear to be blood.

954
01:33:04,039 --> 01:33:09,159
In the center was a slab of
stone with a chalk drawing of three

955
01:33:09,239 --> 01:33:15,079
triangles, all pointing the same way, but overlapping each other. In the

956
01:33:15,159 --> 01:33:20,399
center of that it was a severed
animal paw. It had the same auburn

957
01:33:20,439 --> 01:33:29,079
colored fur as Milo's. Oh my
god, I said quietly. I really

958
01:33:29,079 --> 01:33:33,039
want to leave now, said Luke
in an almous whisper. I nodded,

959
01:33:33,680 --> 01:33:40,399
yeah, come on. As I
went to pick up my bike, I

960
01:33:40,439 --> 01:33:45,880
saw a small satchel sitting by a
log I walked over to it. Luke,

961
01:33:45,000 --> 01:33:49,880
spotting it too, leave it,
ricky, He said, it's evidence.

962
01:33:50,279 --> 01:33:55,000
I said, about to pick it
up, but then I remembered not

963
01:33:55,079 --> 01:33:59,720
to contaminate it. I used the
stick to lift the flap open and peek

964
01:33:59,760 --> 01:34:04,479
in side. There was a pack
of cigarettes and some school textbooks. Senior

965
01:34:04,479 --> 01:34:12,920
biology and math student. I said. I found a large leaf and used

966
01:34:12,920 --> 01:34:17,560
it to cover my fingertips, opening
the first page of the biology book written

967
01:34:17,600 --> 01:34:25,880
in pencil in the top right corner, Tommy Dean. A shiver went through

968
01:34:25,880 --> 01:34:29,399
me. As I told Luke,
we got on our bikes and rode like

969
01:34:29,479 --> 01:34:33,560
the wind, heading straight to the
Sheriff's office. We burst in and both

970
01:34:33,640 --> 01:34:43,279
started yelling whoa fellas said Deputy Campbell
from behind his desk, garm yourselves now

971
01:34:43,640 --> 01:34:49,840
what seems to be the problem.
We explained everything. Luke and I were

972
01:34:49,960 --> 01:34:56,199
escorted back to the woods to show
the deputy what we had found. Sweet

973
01:34:56,279 --> 01:35:00,439
mother of Jesus, he said,
calling it in. It was a search

974
01:35:00,520 --> 01:35:06,159
conducted at the Dean's house. Inside
Tommy's bedroom, they not only found an

975
01:35:06,159 --> 01:35:12,439
ancient book of the occult containing the
very symbols found at the scene, but

976
01:35:12,640 --> 01:35:18,039
also Milo's collar. Apparently he protested
his innocence as they took him in for

977
01:35:18,119 --> 01:35:24,159
questioning. I heard all of this
through the walls as my parents talked about

978
01:35:24,199 --> 01:35:30,520
it that night, having been banished
to my room or Mister Page was devastated.

979
01:35:30,359 --> 01:35:35,279
The disturbing nature of it rocked our
sleepy community, but Luke and I

980
01:35:35,520 --> 01:35:42,479
were commended for our help in the
investigation. We both received honorary badges from

981
01:35:42,520 --> 01:35:48,880
the Sheriff's department, making us feel
like real investigators. After a couple of

982
01:35:49,039 --> 01:35:55,680
days, Miss Jacobs required our services
again. My mom was reluctant for me

983
01:35:55,720 --> 01:35:59,840
to carry on play detective, as
she called it, but my dad talked

984
01:36:00,119 --> 01:36:05,079
around. Luke and I went to
visit Miss Jacobs late afternoon and were greeted

985
01:36:05,079 --> 01:36:11,840
by a wonderful smell. Take a
seat, boys, she said, I

986
01:36:12,000 --> 01:36:15,279
begged you a BlackBerry pie. Co
let it. Thank you for your services

987
01:36:15,319 --> 01:36:21,680
to the community. Thanks, miss
Jacobs, we both said together, excitedly.

988
01:36:21,760 --> 01:36:27,119
Sitting in the dining table, where
a warm pie sat in the center,

989
01:36:28,560 --> 01:36:32,560
she cut two slices and played them
up, handing us one each by

990
01:36:32,560 --> 01:36:38,960
an appetite, she smiled, taking
a seat as we started talking into the

991
01:36:39,039 --> 01:36:45,079
delicious pie. Well done on your
investigation. That must have been quite a

992
01:36:45,159 --> 01:36:51,880
shock discovering such a gruesome scene.
Luke nodded. It was scary, it

993
01:36:51,960 --> 01:36:57,800
wasn't it, Ricky, Yeah,
I agreed, But we handled it like

994
01:36:57,920 --> 01:37:04,279
professionals. She chuckled. I'm sure
you did. I always knew that Tommy

995
01:37:04,319 --> 01:37:09,640
Deane was a rotten apple. I
can't help but wonder what it was all

996
01:37:09,680 --> 01:37:15,279
for, though, Why sacrifice that
little dog? We looked at each other

997
01:37:15,359 --> 01:37:19,880
and shrugged. With mouthfuls of pie. And those cymbals, what do they

998
01:37:19,960 --> 01:37:27,520
mean? My dad said it was
devil worship, said Luke. I'm sure

999
01:37:27,600 --> 01:37:31,279
he's right, she said, to
think I'd only seen that poor dog a

1000
01:37:31,319 --> 01:37:35,479
few hours before Tommy took him.
I can't help but think I could have

1001
01:37:35,600 --> 01:37:41,039
done something to help you couldn't have
known, Miss Jacobs, I said,

1002
01:37:41,479 --> 01:37:46,000
it's not your fault. She patted
my hand. Thank goodness, you hero

1003
01:37:46,159 --> 01:37:50,279
has found those school box of his
heather scene. Imagine what else he could

1004
01:37:50,279 --> 01:37:57,239
have done if it weren't for you, I tread to think. Luke and

1005
01:37:57,279 --> 01:38:01,000
I looked at each other and smiled
with pride. Excuse me a moment,

1006
01:38:01,520 --> 01:38:08,439
She said, I'll be right back. We're heroes. I chuckled when she'd

1007
01:38:08,479 --> 01:38:13,039
left the room. We found a
villain and saved the day. Luke giggled.

1008
01:38:15,119 --> 01:38:18,279
As we kept tucking in. I
couldn't help but feel like something wasn't

1009
01:38:18,359 --> 01:38:25,760
quite right. Then it hit me, Wait, didn't Miss Jacobs say she

1010
01:38:25,800 --> 01:38:30,119
hadn't seen Milo for a few days
when we were investigating. He shrugged,

1011
01:38:30,840 --> 01:38:36,279
Yeah so, but she just said
she saw him a few hours before Tommy

1012
01:38:36,359 --> 01:38:44,880
took him. His brow furrowed.
Oh yeah, she's an old lady though,

1013
01:38:44,960 --> 01:38:50,159
Ricky, my grandma is very forgetful. I contemplated it, but it

1014
01:38:50,279 --> 01:38:58,359
still didn't feel right. My eyes
widened. The Sheriff's department didn't release the

1015
01:38:58,439 --> 01:39:01,880
evidence, I said, quietly,
how does she know about the books?

1016
01:39:04,479 --> 01:39:11,279
Luke's eyes widened to match mine as
Miss Jacobs came back into the room.

1017
01:39:11,399 --> 01:39:15,680
Well you look at that, she
said, you've almost finished your pie.

1018
01:39:15,479 --> 01:39:20,359
Let me cut you another slice.
No, I said, clearing my throat.

1019
01:39:21,159 --> 01:39:27,159
It was delicious, but very filling, Very well, she smiled,

1020
01:39:27,720 --> 01:39:32,439
let me take this dish away.
Then, when she lifted the pie dish,

1021
01:39:32,640 --> 01:39:39,880
Luke and I both stared in horror. Scratched in the wooden table with

1022
01:39:40,039 --> 01:39:45,760
three triangles overlapping each other. Oh
yes, she said, there was a

1023
01:39:45,840 --> 01:39:51,239
mystery for you to solve, a
mystery ingredient. I wonder if you've got

1024
01:39:51,239 --> 01:39:57,800
the detective skills to work it out. Luke looked at me like he was

1025
01:39:57,840 --> 01:40:02,920
about to cry, and I he
felt exactly the same. He coughed a

1026
01:40:02,920 --> 01:40:09,319
little and put his fingers to his
mouth, pulling something out. What is

1027
01:40:09,359 --> 01:40:14,439
it, Luke, she said.
He covered his mouth like he was about

1028
01:40:14,479 --> 01:40:21,119
to puke. Hair clue number one, she said, and you ricky,

1029
01:40:24,159 --> 01:40:29,880
I shook my head. We'd like
to leave now, Miss Jacobs, nonsense,

1030
01:40:30,279 --> 01:40:33,359
she said. She took my plate
away and put the pie dish in

1031
01:40:33,399 --> 01:40:41,000
front of me. Go on,
have a look. I looked at Luke,

1032
01:40:41,239 --> 01:40:45,680
who was clearly terrified. My hands
were shaking as I picked up the

1033
01:40:45,680 --> 01:40:50,239
fork and pulled pieces of pastry away. As I searched the thick, dark

1034
01:40:50,359 --> 01:40:56,800
purple filling, my fork made a
clink sound. I picked it out with

1035
01:40:56,880 --> 01:41:03,000
my fingers. I could instantly feel
what it was, A long canine tooth.

1036
01:41:04,279 --> 01:41:10,119
I threw it across the table and
pushed myself back, grabbing Luke's arm

1037
01:41:10,239 --> 01:41:13,560
as we made a run for the
door. It slammed shut, and the

1038
01:41:13,680 --> 01:41:17,439
light that had been coming through the
windows dimmed. The symbol on the table

1039
01:41:17,520 --> 01:41:23,199
began to glow as if it was
drawn in embers. Luke and I had

1040
01:41:23,199 --> 01:41:27,560
her arms around each other as we
sniveled, not being able to comprehend what

1041
01:41:27,760 --> 01:41:32,920
was happening. Miss Jacob smiled from
across the room, her hair flowing as

1042
01:41:32,960 --> 01:41:40,039
if caught in a breeze. What
are your findings, she asked. The

1043
01:41:40,159 --> 01:41:45,239
brook Street sleuths must be able to
figure it out. You killed my Looe,

1044
01:41:45,800 --> 01:41:53,920
I shouted, and the thought of
it made me sick. Bravo,

1045
01:41:54,279 --> 01:42:00,600
she clapped, make the sacrifice,
feed the innocent. But why, screamed

1046
01:42:00,680 --> 01:42:06,319
Luke, I am far older than
any humans should be. She cackled,

1047
01:42:08,039 --> 01:42:13,760
that takes a bit of dark magic
to maintain. She grabbed Luke and I

1048
01:42:13,760 --> 01:42:15,840
tried to pull him away from her, but with a flick of her hand,

1049
01:42:16,079 --> 01:42:20,199
I was forced against the wall.
She threw him down onto the symbol,

1050
01:42:20,600 --> 01:42:26,960
and he screamed out as smoke began
to rise around him. It burns,

1051
01:42:27,359 --> 01:42:31,640
he screamed in pain. Leave him
alone, I cried, but she

1052
01:42:31,760 --> 01:42:38,399
turned to me. The features that
made her miss Jacobs faded, revealing something

1053
01:42:38,520 --> 01:42:45,119
ancient and decayed. Loose skin hung
from visible bones, empty sockets, whispy

1054
01:42:45,159 --> 01:42:49,880
strands of hair, teeth surrounded by
split, leathery gums. You're next,

1055
01:42:50,000 --> 01:42:57,359
Ricky, she yelled, deep in
demonic. Her mouth opened wide, and

1056
01:42:57,479 --> 01:43:01,239
she took Luke's whole head inside.
His arms and legs began to kick about

1057
01:43:01,560 --> 01:43:06,600
as I could hear muffled groans coming
from inside her. There were snapping sounds

1058
01:43:06,760 --> 01:43:13,199
as part of her dislocated like a
snake to swallow him whole. Before long,

1059
01:43:13,560 --> 01:43:17,640
his shoulders could no longer be seen. She made greedy, gatural noises

1060
01:43:17,880 --> 01:43:24,199
as she forced his body down her
throat. I was paralyzed against the wall,

1061
01:43:24,760 --> 01:43:29,720
forced to watch as my best friend
was eaten alive. I could feel

1062
01:43:29,760 --> 01:43:34,399
my mind snapping like her ancient bones. Luke's legs were still kicking as she

1063
01:43:34,520 --> 01:43:41,680
reached his knees and her long bony
fingers gripped around his ankles to push the

1064
01:43:41,800 --> 01:43:48,960
last bit of him inside. There
came a loud bang, something that startled

1065
01:43:48,960 --> 01:43:54,319
her as well as me. The
doors to the dining room flew open,

1066
01:43:54,640 --> 01:44:00,840
and three officers burst into the room, led by Deputy campbell Us. He

1067
01:44:00,960 --> 01:44:06,239
yelled, taking aim at what was
once Miss Jacobs. She wretched and Luke's

1068
01:44:06,279 --> 01:44:11,399
whole body slipped out of her,
collapsing on the table in a cocoon of

1069
01:44:11,439 --> 01:44:15,520
translucent goop. I fell from the
wall and hid the floor hard as the

1070
01:44:15,560 --> 01:44:20,399
officers opened fire on her, forcing
her back with a multi layered scream.

1071
01:44:21,640 --> 01:44:27,800
The window shattered and natural light poured
in, making her scream even louder as

1072
01:44:27,840 --> 01:44:31,319
if burned by the rays. I
ran to Luke and pulled him from the

1073
01:44:31,359 --> 01:44:38,279
table, relieved when he was still
breathing. The glowing cymbol was fading,

1074
01:44:39,039 --> 01:44:44,000
and with a final shriek, the
former Miss Jacobs became a cloud of smoke

1075
01:44:44,319 --> 01:44:50,000
that was seemingly sucked into the symbol. Then everything went deathly silent for a

1076
01:44:50,039 --> 01:44:57,439
few seconds. As it happened,
Tommy Dean had managed to convince the sheriff

1077
01:44:57,560 --> 01:45:01,760
to investigate miss Jacobs. He insisted
that he had seen her on his property

1078
01:45:02,439 --> 01:45:09,399
and that is Satchel couldn't be found
afterwards. Thank god he did, because

1079
01:45:09,479 --> 01:45:14,840
Luke and I would not be here
to day if it wasn't for him.

1080
01:45:14,880 --> 01:45:21,199
We carry the mental scars, but
we live. Suffice to say, the

1081
01:45:21,279 --> 01:45:38,600
brook Street Sleuths were no more after
that day. I've spent the better part

1082
01:45:38,640 --> 01:45:44,920
of a decade as a cybersecurity analyst
for Trident Cybersecurity or TCS for short,

1083
01:45:45,119 --> 01:45:50,680
a highly regarded private agency whose name
is whispered across government halls and boardrooms.

1084
01:45:51,920 --> 01:45:59,159
Our client list ranges from powerful conglomerates
and discreet billionaires to governmental bodies looking for

1085
01:45:59,239 --> 01:46:04,880
invisible defense lines in the current digital
healthscape. Over the years, I've worked

1086
01:46:04,920 --> 01:46:11,000
on a myriad of complex cases.
I helped take down an international ring of

1087
01:46:11,039 --> 01:46:16,399
hackers intent on disrupting the national power
grid of on Earth digital scams hidden in

1088
01:46:16,439 --> 01:46:23,479
the most intricate labyrinth of code.
My work with Trident led to the arrests

1089
01:46:23,560 --> 01:46:28,760
of some very dangerous people you will
never hear of, who have alluded international

1090
01:46:28,760 --> 01:46:35,680
authorities for years. I am naturally
introvert, referring the company of a glowing

1091
01:46:35,720 --> 01:46:42,399
screen and encrypted data to people.
My colleagues often joked that I could talk

1092
01:46:42,439 --> 01:46:47,920
to computers. If patience, diligence, and the uncanny ability to find patterns

1093
01:46:47,920 --> 01:46:55,039
in chaos are characteristics you'd attribute to
a conversation with computers, they might have

1094
01:46:55,119 --> 01:47:00,680
been right. When I was handed
the case labeled Deep Web Anomalies, I

1095
01:47:00,760 --> 01:47:08,319
rolled my eyes. I had seen
a hundred similar files. Authorities who can

1096
01:47:08,359 --> 01:47:13,760
afford our services scared of the deep
Web's reputation, thinking every glitter of system

1097
01:47:13,800 --> 01:47:17,159
hiccup was a malicious entity or person
from the darker corners of the Internet.

1098
01:47:18,520 --> 01:47:24,760
However, it's either just them unable
to explain an online behavior in getting spooked,

1099
01:47:25,359 --> 01:47:30,079
or someone hitting sights at random to
test vulnerabilities, or just cause chaos

1100
01:47:30,119 --> 01:47:34,079
for fun, just another day at
the office, I thought, ready to

1101
01:47:34,119 --> 01:47:41,479
explain why the smoke and mirrors surrounding
whatever tricks they were seeing. As I

1102
01:47:41,520 --> 01:47:45,760
began the investigation, I traced the
incidents to an obscure message board, a

1103
01:47:45,880 --> 01:47:53,960
niche digital hotspot where Internet users exchanged
experiences and data about purported paranormal events.

1104
01:47:55,279 --> 01:48:00,920
The board was a melting part of
the uncanny and unexplainable. Stories ranged from

1105
01:48:00,920 --> 01:48:08,079
inexplicable system crashes in strange apparitions on
video calls to personal accounts of spectral whispers

1106
01:48:08,119 --> 01:48:14,159
through headphones. Even some were claiming
that AI personal assistants had started speaking in

1107
01:48:14,239 --> 01:48:20,239
tongues just imagine the x Board on
steroids. This board, however, was

1108
01:48:20,319 --> 01:48:27,239
more than just the usual conspiracy theories. The sheer number of incidents, the

1109
01:48:27,399 --> 01:48:32,680
sporadic nature, the detailed accounts of
TICKSAV users failing to find an earthly explanation.

1110
01:48:34,199 --> 01:48:41,680
It made me pause, a flicker
of uneased threading through me. The

1111
01:48:41,800 --> 01:48:45,760
paranormal has always been an interesting all, be its abstract concept to me,

1112
01:48:46,840 --> 01:48:53,680
I'm not dismissive of it, but
I've always found comfort in the logical explainable

1113
01:48:55,359 --> 01:49:00,560
While sifting through the digital chaos.
A particular thread titled the Shadow Codex piqued

1114
01:49:00,600 --> 01:49:08,439
my interest, A thread teeming with
frantic narratives and vague cautionary tales, pinned

1115
01:49:08,439 --> 01:49:14,840
by a user named cortex Phantom.
Among the clutter of posts, one stood

1116
01:49:14,840 --> 01:49:24,840
out, a cryptic encrypted file ominously
titled Damon's Whisper. I've encountered countless clandestine

1117
01:49:24,880 --> 01:49:29,960
files during my tenure, each hiding
keys to the locks of my investigations.

1118
01:49:30,079 --> 01:49:35,520
The damon's whisper seemed like it could
be one such key, maybe an encoded

1119
01:49:35,560 --> 01:49:40,720
message or a hidden bread crumb to
lead me to the source of these anomalies.

1120
01:49:42,359 --> 01:49:45,840
I let out a low sigh as
I stared at the encrypted file.

1121
01:49:46,039 --> 01:49:53,079
Downloading files from unknown sources was never
without risks. It always set off a

1122
01:49:53,159 --> 01:49:57,960
quiet alarm in the back of my
mind, reminding me of the potential digital

1123
01:49:58,039 --> 01:50:02,319
landmines I could be walking into.
But as part of my job, I

1124
01:50:02,359 --> 01:50:08,760
had learned to weigh the risks against
the potential rewards. The careful dance of

1125
01:50:08,840 --> 01:50:14,520
curiosity and caution was a familiar one. I remembered a case from a few

1126
01:50:14,600 --> 01:50:18,159
years back, or a similarly obscure
file led me to a worm that had

1127
01:50:18,199 --> 01:50:25,399
been slowly eating away at a corporations
security infrastructure. Despite the inherent risks,

1128
01:50:25,920 --> 01:50:31,079
my foray into the digital unknown had
been vindicated. I decided to take the

1129
01:50:31,159 --> 01:50:38,600
plunge. Encased within my virtual machine, a fortress of firewalls and isolated sandboxes.

1130
01:50:39,920 --> 01:50:44,239
With a series of deft keystrokes,
I set all my security options to

1131
01:50:44,319 --> 01:50:49,840
the highest, prepping for potential digital
fallout. Each click closer to the download

1132
01:50:50,239 --> 01:50:58,239
felt like a step deeper into an
unexplored cave. At that moment, I

1133
01:50:58,359 --> 01:51:01,479
believed I was simply, I think, another piece of this complex puzzle.

1134
01:51:02,640 --> 01:51:10,399
I thought the Damon's Whisper would be
another mysterious yet manageable obstacle. But I

1135
01:51:10,479 --> 01:51:16,399
was wrong. As the decryption software
did its job, the file unraveled not

1136
01:51:16,680 --> 01:51:23,079
into a clue to my perpetrator,
but into a haunting phrase that would soon

1137
01:51:23,199 --> 01:51:32,640
seep into every corner of my reality, shadow dwells within. It was far

1138
01:51:32,800 --> 01:51:40,520
from the solution I had anticipated.
I devoted the next few hours to examining

1139
01:51:40,600 --> 01:51:45,239
Damon's Whisper. My screen illuminated the
room as they traced through the intricate web

1140
01:51:45,279 --> 01:51:51,319
of code, the secting each line
twice over. At the surface, it

1141
01:51:51,359 --> 01:51:58,279
was a complex, yet seemingly harmless
array of encrypted data. As I delve

1142
01:51:58,359 --> 01:52:05,760
deeper, peculiarly charities emerged, recurring
snippets of nonsensical data, obfuscated commands,

1143
01:52:05,760 --> 01:52:13,880
sequences that seemed to replicate themselves in
a bizarrely organic fashion. Despite the oddities,

1144
01:52:14,439 --> 01:52:18,920
I couldn't pinpoint any concrete threats or
leads. The file was just a

1145
01:52:19,000 --> 01:52:26,880
maze of riddles layered with digital noise. Frustrated, I concluded it was simply

1146
01:52:27,119 --> 01:52:33,680
a cleverly designed decoy to mislead curious
minds like mine. Unresolved mysteries have a

1147
01:52:33,720 --> 01:52:40,319
way of gnawing at your psyche.
As fascinating as the file was, I

1148
01:52:40,439 --> 01:52:46,159
knew keeping such an unpredictable element in
my system was unwise. As I harbored

1149
01:52:46,159 --> 01:52:51,880
the mouse over the delete button,
I was momentarily frozen by a fleeting sense

1150
01:52:51,920 --> 01:53:00,000
of disappointment. All that build up
was a dead end. With a reluctant

1151
01:53:00,159 --> 01:53:06,199
sigh, I clicked delete. A
strange sensation washed over me. As the

1152
01:53:06,239 --> 01:53:12,359
file vanished from my drive, the
room seemed colder, the hum of my

1153
01:53:12,439 --> 01:53:17,199
computer louder. I shrugged it off, attributing it to the late hour and

1154
01:53:17,359 --> 01:53:25,600
the eye strain. But then my
screen flickered, displaying what looked like snippets

1155
01:53:25,640 --> 01:53:30,920
of the same code from the deleted
file. A cold, dread prickled at

1156
01:53:30,960 --> 01:53:35,119
the back of my neck. I
frantically ran a system diagnostics check, but

1157
01:53:35,199 --> 01:53:41,199
it came back clean. The screen
returned to normal as abruptly as it had

1158
01:53:41,199 --> 01:53:47,399
glitched. Then, in the eerie
silence, my speakers crackled a life whispering

1159
01:53:47,479 --> 01:53:58,000
a distorted echo of a phrase from
the file Shadow dwells within. My heart

1160
01:53:58,039 --> 01:54:01,600
pounded as the words lingered in the
air. As soon as the serenade that

1161
01:54:01,800 --> 01:54:09,199
threatened to shatter my composed demeanor,
I swiftly muted the speakers, staring at

1162
01:54:09,239 --> 01:54:14,760
the now silent machine and disbelief.
A chill swept over me, as if

1163
01:54:14,760 --> 01:54:19,520
the room itself had taken a deep, cold breath. I sat there in

1164
01:54:19,560 --> 01:54:26,920
the computer screens, glow, fear
creeping into my veins. I could rationalize

1165
01:54:26,920 --> 01:54:33,439
the system glitches, but this it
was as if the digital entity had manifested

1166
01:54:33,439 --> 01:54:42,039
itself in my very workspace. I
simply made myself believe it was a coincidence

1167
01:54:42,319 --> 01:54:45,880
or a trick of my mind scaring
itself. I dismissed the claims of the

1168
01:54:46,000 --> 01:54:53,439
paranormally inclined users on the message board. But now I was the one sitting

1169
01:54:53,520 --> 01:54:59,880
in a dark room, feeling the
tendrils of the inexplicable encroach upon my reality.

1170
01:55:00,680 --> 01:55:04,640
I was afraid, confused, and
in deep waters that my knowledge of

1171
01:55:04,680 --> 01:55:13,520
code and cyberspace hadn't prepared me for
the sun of a new day brought no

1172
01:55:13,680 --> 01:55:20,079
respite. Strange occurrences now followed me
beyond the confines of my workspace. Digital

1173
01:55:20,119 --> 01:55:27,640
devices I owned began acting oddly.
My smartphone screen sometimes flickers, showing glimpses

1174
01:55:27,680 --> 01:55:31,720
of the same strange code I had
encountered. My smart watch would vibrate randomly,

1175
01:55:32,079 --> 01:55:38,880
displaying nonsensical strings of data instead of
time. Even my smart home system

1176
01:55:39,199 --> 01:55:44,279
seemed to be in the grip of
this digital haunting, the thermostat fluctuating wildly,

1177
01:55:44,800 --> 01:55:49,239
lights flickering on and off at their
own accord. At first, I

1178
01:55:49,359 --> 01:55:55,439
tried to rationalize it. Perhaps it
was a newly made worm or virus that

1179
01:55:55,520 --> 01:55:59,880
had made its way through my devices, new enough to bypass all my currency

1180
01:56:00,199 --> 01:56:06,039
security. But the nature of these
disturbances felt less like malicious software and more

1181
01:56:06,119 --> 01:56:12,720
like a presence. The digital world
had been my playground for years, but

1182
01:56:12,880 --> 01:56:17,479
now it felt tainted and hostile.
The familiar hum of my computer was now

1183
01:56:17,520 --> 01:56:24,439
a haunting reminder of the inexplicable.
The boundary between my professional and private life

1184
01:56:24,479 --> 01:56:30,239
began to blur, replaced with a
mounting dread that made my home feel alien

1185
01:56:30,399 --> 01:56:38,319
and unfamiliar. To my growing horror, these occurrences became more frequent, more

1186
01:56:38,359 --> 01:56:45,239
intrusive, more distorted whispers would echo
from my speakers. The chilling phrase shadow

1187
01:56:45,479 --> 01:56:51,600
dwells within, now a regular,
unwelcome intrusion. I would find my computer

1188
01:56:51,760 --> 01:56:56,920
on in the middle of the night, the screen pulsating with the eerie glow

1189
01:56:57,199 --> 01:57:03,680
of that nonsensical code. Sleep became
a luxury. Each waking moment, dominated

1190
01:57:03,960 --> 01:57:10,479
by an oppressive sense of unease,
my mind would dart to each digital display,

1191
01:57:10,960 --> 01:57:16,680
anticipating the next bizarre occurrence. Anxiety
clawed at me, replacing the analytical

1192
01:57:16,720 --> 01:57:23,239
calm of my professional persona with a
man living on the razor's edge of fear.

1193
01:57:24,640 --> 01:57:30,359
But as disturbing as the developments were, a part of me remained stubbornly

1194
01:57:30,439 --> 01:57:36,359
defiant. I refused to be intimidated
by what seemed like a digital poltergeist.

1195
01:57:38,880 --> 01:57:43,760
Driven by a fear of mix and
determination, I decided to dive back into

1196
01:57:43,800 --> 01:57:48,640
the murky depths of the Shadow Codex. The thread was still there, exactly

1197
01:57:48,640 --> 01:57:55,720
where I found it. Equipped with
a new resolve, I meticulously gathered every

1198
01:57:55,760 --> 01:58:01,439
information I had, cryptic, message
and anomaly. Each clue was a lifeline

1199
01:58:01,720 --> 01:58:06,680
back into the abyss, a breadcrumb
on the path to my unseen tormentor.

1200
01:58:10,159 --> 01:58:16,840
On the message board cortex. Phantom's
posts took a more ominous tone. Rereading

1201
01:58:16,840 --> 01:58:23,800
them fell like descending into a dark
well. The words a spiral into madness.

1202
01:58:24,920 --> 01:58:29,520
The thread was a digital relic,
a testament to the silent chaos that

1203
01:58:29,640 --> 01:58:34,880
the codex had apparently unleashed on others
before me. When I first reencountered the

1204
01:58:34,920 --> 01:58:42,840
haunting phrase, shadow dwells within my
blood ran cold, but fear was now

1205
01:58:42,880 --> 01:58:47,000
my fuel. With each repetition of
the phrase, I felt less like a

1206
01:58:47,119 --> 01:58:55,600
victim and more like a hunter closing
in on its prey. Hours turned into

1207
01:58:55,680 --> 01:59:00,159
days, each instance of the phenomenon
pushing me further down the rabbit hole.

1208
01:59:01,520 --> 01:59:06,520
It was a battle of attrition,
me against the abstract horror lurking in the

1209
01:59:06,600 --> 01:59:13,840
depths of cyberspace. The Shadow Codex
was an enigma, a digital wraith that

1210
01:59:14,000 --> 01:59:19,079
defied definition. As the lines between
my work and the creeping terror blurred,

1211
01:59:19,960 --> 01:59:27,000
so did the boundary between my mind
and the digital I started seeing the haunting

1212
01:59:27,000 --> 01:59:31,399
code in my dreams, the patterns
weaving themselves into the fabric of my nightmares.

1213
01:59:32,479 --> 01:59:39,239
Every digital flicker, distorted whisper,
and chilling message were all signposts to

1214
01:59:39,359 --> 01:59:44,359
my slowly eroding sanity. By the
end of the week, I was a

1215
01:59:44,399 --> 01:59:49,640
shadow of my former self. My
once pristine workspace was now a storm ravaged

1216
01:59:49,760 --> 01:59:56,760
landscape of discarded coffee cups and scattered
notes. My reflection in the dark screen

1217
01:59:57,199 --> 02:00:01,159
was a haggard, haunted face,
eyes wide with terror, that had become

1218
02:00:01,199 --> 02:00:08,119
my constant companion. I was adrift
in a sea of digital horror, a

1219
02:00:08,119 --> 02:00:14,600
lone sailor battling a storm that defied
understanding. The Code was no longer just

1220
02:00:14,680 --> 02:00:19,920
an anomaly in the digital realm.
It was an eldrigentity, a relentless force

1221
02:00:20,279 --> 02:00:28,479
slowly eroding my reality's edges. The
seemingly random sequences started to make a twisted

1222
02:00:28,560 --> 02:00:33,159
kind of sense in my subconscious,
forming a grotesque pattern that invaded my every

1223
02:00:33,279 --> 02:00:39,880
thought. Yet when I tried to
formulate these thoughts, they would quickly lose

1224
02:00:39,920 --> 02:00:44,600
sense. It was like knowing the
definition of a word but not being able

1225
02:00:44,640 --> 02:00:48,520
to name it. The Codex was
reaching out from the digital realm into my

1226
02:00:48,600 --> 02:00:56,880
mind, reshaping my sanity into its
own terrifying image. As the toil of

1227
02:00:56,920 --> 02:01:03,079
my descent into the Codex became increasingly
TANGI the once familiar digital landscape had transformed

1228
02:01:03,199 --> 02:01:09,960
into an abstract nightmare. The culmination
of the horror was not just the code,

1229
02:01:10,439 --> 02:01:15,640
but the creeping realization of my own
insignificance, my inability to comprehend the

1230
02:01:15,680 --> 02:01:21,239
depth of the abyss I'd stumbled into. I was losing myself, piece by

1231
02:01:21,319 --> 02:01:26,920
piece, my sanity, slowly succumbing
to the darkness of the pits I was

1232
02:01:26,960 --> 02:01:32,079
delving into. By the time I
looked away from the screen, my surroundings

1233
02:01:32,079 --> 02:01:38,479
were painted with the echo of the
horrific code. I was now a prisoner

1234
02:01:38,560 --> 02:01:44,119
in my own home, the walls
whispering, the chilling chorus shadow dwelves within.

1235
02:01:45,840 --> 02:01:50,439
As I descended into a darkness that
was both digital and psychological, one

1236
02:01:50,479 --> 02:01:59,239
thing was clear. The Shadow Codex
wasn't just dwelling within my machines. It

1237
02:01:59,279 --> 02:02:14,520
was in my mind. It had
become a part of me. Each day,

1238
02:02:14,960 --> 02:02:20,239
my reality became a hellscape of twisted
code and creeping shadows. The Codex

1239
02:02:20,319 --> 02:02:27,720
dominated every waking moment anomaly. There
was now a Leviathan consuming my life.

1240
02:02:28,720 --> 02:02:32,199
My mind felt like a battleground,
a storm tossed sea, in the grip

1241
02:02:32,399 --> 02:02:40,239
of a monstrous entity. Driven by
desperation, I threw myself into my work

1242
02:02:40,760 --> 02:02:45,319
hoping to find a solution, a
way to rid the Codex from my reality.

1243
02:02:45,760 --> 02:02:50,960
I spent countless hours poring over every
line of code, every fragment of

1244
02:02:51,000 --> 02:02:57,680
the bizarre sequences, trying to discern
some pattern, some key that could unlock

1245
02:02:57,720 --> 02:03:02,960
the nightmare I was trapped in.
But every attempt to decipher the code was

1246
02:03:03,039 --> 02:03:08,479
met with failure. It was like
trying to comprehend a language from a long

1247
02:03:08,560 --> 02:03:14,399
dead civilization, its meanings obscured by
the sands of time and the vast void

1248
02:03:14,439 --> 02:03:18,520
of cyberspace. The more I tried
to decipher it, the more my mind

1249
02:03:18,680 --> 02:03:26,760
was consumed by its eldritch patterns.
Sleep became a forgotten luxury. My meals

1250
02:03:26,760 --> 02:03:30,680
were consumed in front of my screen, my appetite overtaken by a hunger for

1251
02:03:30,760 --> 02:03:39,600
answers. Every personal boundary, every
sanity preserving routine was lost in the wake

1252
02:03:39,720 --> 02:03:45,000
of the Codex. Even the simple
act of leaving my workspace filled me with

1253
02:03:45,119 --> 02:03:50,720
dread. Every time I stepped away
from my computer, I was assaulted by

1254
02:03:50,760 --> 02:03:58,880
the echoes of the Codex. My
once safe haven was gone. Each veiled

1255
02:03:58,880 --> 02:04:03,840
attempt to rest control from the Codex
only deepened the darkness swallowing my reality.

1256
02:04:05,840 --> 02:04:13,039
Yet paradoxically, the closer I inched
towards madness, the more determined I became.

1257
02:04:14,399 --> 02:04:16,600
A part of me clung to the
belief that I could make it to

1258
02:04:16,680 --> 02:04:21,039
the other end of the tunnel,
that this was my way to fight back.

1259
02:04:23,359 --> 02:04:27,640
It was a beacon of hope in
the sea of despair, a desperate

1260
02:04:27,640 --> 02:04:33,479
lifeline in the face of ever encroaching
darkness. But with every failed attempt,

1261
02:04:34,239 --> 02:04:41,920
the Codex's grip and my reality tightened. My mind was now maelstrom of digital

1262
02:04:41,960 --> 02:04:47,119
horrors, my sanity reduced to a
fragile thread dangling over an abyss of madness.

1263
02:04:48,319 --> 02:04:54,079
I was caught in a perverse dance
with the Codex, each step dragging

1264
02:04:54,119 --> 02:05:00,000
me deeper into its shadowy realm.
The boundary between my mind and the code

1265
02:05:00,119 --> 02:05:06,479
Dex was becoming increasingly blurred, my
thoughts echoing with its haunting patterns. My

1266
02:05:06,560 --> 02:05:13,439
once rational mind was now an echo
chamber of a monstrous entity, my sanity

1267
02:05:13,640 --> 02:05:18,479
slowly being eroded by the ceaseless whisper. It was no longer just a digital

1268
02:05:18,520 --> 02:05:29,560
anomaly. It was my reality,
my nightmare, my inescapable fate. In

1269
02:05:29,600 --> 02:05:36,960
a desperate bid for sanity, I
finally decided to do the unthinkable, disconnect

1270
02:05:38,000 --> 02:05:44,039
from the digital world. I switched
off my computer, my smartphone, and

1271
02:05:44,239 --> 02:05:48,800
every device that linked me online.
The hum of the technology, once a

1272
02:05:48,920 --> 02:05:56,479
comforting presence, now sounded like the
ominous drone of some unseen beast. The

1273
02:05:56,600 --> 02:06:00,800
silence that followed felt like a gasp
of fresh air after being submerged in a

1274
02:06:00,960 --> 02:06:11,319
dark, turbulent ocean. But my
respite was short lived. Even devoid of

1275
02:06:11,319 --> 02:06:16,880
the digital manifestations, the Codex's influence
was not gone. The silence was not

1276
02:06:16,960 --> 02:06:21,840
the comforting void I had hoped for, but a stark, cold reminder of

1277
02:06:21,880 --> 02:06:28,920
my isolation. My home, once
my sanctuary, was now a prison of

1278
02:06:29,039 --> 02:06:34,039
silence and shadows. Without the hum
of the machines, every creak of the

1279
02:06:34,079 --> 02:06:42,079
house, every rustle of the wind
outside seemed amplified My mind, so used

1280
02:06:42,079 --> 02:06:46,319
that the digital chatter now started playing
tricks on me. I saw patterns in

1281
02:06:46,359 --> 02:06:51,039
the grain of the wood floor and
the plaster on the walls. The ordinary

1282
02:06:51,039 --> 02:06:58,239
and mundane were twisted into grotesque reminders
of the Codex. The physical world was

1283
02:06:58,279 --> 02:07:02,560
not a refuge. It was just
another canvas for the Codex to paint its

1284
02:07:02,600 --> 02:07:11,640
horror on shadow dwells within. The
phrase had followed me out of the digital

1285
02:07:11,680 --> 02:07:17,279
world, insinuating itself into the very
fabric of my existence. The patterns in

1286
02:07:17,319 --> 02:07:21,479
the wood, the whispers of the
wind, and the playoffs shadows in the

1287
02:07:21,520 --> 02:07:30,399
corners of my vision all echoed the
haunting mantra. As the sunset, casting

1288
02:07:30,520 --> 02:07:35,119
long, menacing shadows around the room, I missed the computer screen's eerie glow.

1289
02:07:36,680 --> 02:07:43,119
The real world was no less terrifying
than the digital Each shadow seemed to

1290
02:07:43,159 --> 02:07:46,520
pulse with a life of its own, as if the Codex had extended its

1291
02:07:46,520 --> 02:07:53,079
reach from the digital realm into the
physical. The darkness around me seemed to

1292
02:07:53,119 --> 02:07:59,560
throb with an unseen presence, the
Codex perhaps lingering at the edges of my

1293
02:08:00,000 --> 02:08:05,079
option. The creeping sense of horror
was more profound and more intimate. In

1294
02:08:05,119 --> 02:08:09,680
the real world. It was no
longer a threat lurking behind a screen,

1295
02:08:11,239 --> 02:08:16,920
but an all encompassing entity that had
split into every corner of my existence.

1296
02:08:18,359 --> 02:08:22,880
In the depth of my despair,
I reached out to the only place that

1297
02:08:22,960 --> 02:08:30,079
seemed to hold any semblance of understanding, the message board where it all began.

1298
02:08:31,079 --> 02:08:35,920
With trembling hands and a mind teetering
on the brink of insanity. I

1299
02:08:37,079 --> 02:08:41,239
reconnected to the digital world, back
to the humming chorus of machines and the

1300
02:08:41,359 --> 02:08:48,079
eerie glow of the screen. The
fear was tangible, but my desperation rushed

1301
02:08:48,159 --> 02:08:54,520
me past it. A grim sense
of nostalgia washed over me as the familiar

1302
02:08:54,520 --> 02:09:03,199
form loaded on the screen. This
was where my nightmare had started, and

1303
02:09:03,399 --> 02:09:11,000
maybe, just maybe where it could
end. I poured out my story,

1304
02:09:11,479 --> 02:09:16,800
every detail of my encounter with the
Codex, the bizarre happenings, my subsequent

1305
02:09:16,840 --> 02:09:22,359
isolation, and the profound terror that
now consumed my life. The words came

1306
02:09:22,359 --> 02:09:26,279
out in a disjointed, chaotic stream, a madman's rambling to the void.

1307
02:09:28,680 --> 02:09:33,520
I didn't sugarcoat my fear, didn't
hold back my despair. I was beyond

1308
02:09:33,600 --> 02:09:41,520
caring about sounding crazy or desperate.
If anyone could understand, maybe offer some

1309
02:09:41,720 --> 02:09:46,960
insight or help, it would be
these fellow dwellers of the digital shadows.

1310
02:09:48,920 --> 02:09:58,479
And then I waited, every passing
second, stretching into agonizing eternity. I

1311
02:09:58,640 --> 02:10:03,319
stared head of the screen, the
harsh light stinging my eyes, the silence

1312
02:10:03,319 --> 02:10:09,760
of the room amplifying the pounding of
my heart. I waited for a reply,

1313
02:10:09,680 --> 02:10:18,000
any reply a lifeline in the endless
digital see. The notification pink startled

1314
02:10:18,039 --> 02:10:24,640
me, breaking the oppressive silence.
My heart pounded in my chest. As

1315
02:10:24,680 --> 02:10:31,159
I opened the response. Two words
stared back at me, their brevity more

1316
02:10:31,279 --> 02:10:41,560
chilling than any verbose response. Two
late, a chill ran down my spine.

1317
02:10:43,319 --> 02:10:48,079
The finality of the words echoing in
my mind. It was like a

1318
02:10:48,159 --> 02:10:54,800
death sentence, the crushing weight of
my doomed fate. They held no sympathy,

1319
02:10:54,359 --> 02:11:01,439
no offer of help, just a
cold, hard acknowledgment of my plight.

1320
02:11:03,000 --> 02:11:09,880
I was truly alone, left to
face the monstrous Codex and its terrifying

1321
02:11:09,960 --> 02:11:16,439
grip and my reality. A sense
of profound dread washed over me. This

1322
02:11:16,640 --> 02:11:20,239
wasn't just a fight against the digital
anomaly anymore. This was a battle for

1323
02:11:20,359 --> 02:11:26,359
my sanity, my very existence,
against an entity that had already claimed victory.

1324
02:11:28,800 --> 02:11:33,319
The Codex wasn't just in my computer
or my home. It was in

1325
02:11:33,399 --> 02:11:37,399
me, And, according to someone
who had managed to look past my ramblings

1326
02:11:37,439 --> 02:11:45,760
as insane gibberish, it was already
too late. As the days bled into

1327
02:11:45,760 --> 02:11:50,000
each other, my life became a
relentless cycle of dread and despair. The

1328
02:11:50,079 --> 02:11:56,640
Codex's haunting echo never left me,
persisting in my every thought and sense.

1329
02:11:58,119 --> 02:12:01,960
I was trapped, lost within my
own mind, and there was no way

1330
02:12:01,960 --> 02:12:09,560
out. Each sunrise was not a
new day, but another descent into madness.

1331
02:12:11,800 --> 02:12:16,079
I stopped trying to tract time.
Days, hours, minutes, They

1332
02:12:16,159 --> 02:12:22,600
lost their meaning in the face of
the all consuming horror. Food lost this

1333
02:12:22,760 --> 02:12:28,199
taste. Sleep became a fleeting memory, and my once cherished solitude became a

1334
02:12:28,199 --> 02:12:33,840
tormenting isolation. Each day was a
test of endurance, a struggle to hold

1335
02:12:33,880 --> 02:12:39,000
onto the last vestiges of my sanity. The house seemed to take on a

1336
02:12:39,079 --> 02:12:43,199
life of its own, the walls
whispering with the echoes of the Codex.

1337
02:12:45,520 --> 02:12:48,600
It was no longer a haven,
but a haunting reminder of my entrapment.

1338
02:12:50,199 --> 02:12:56,039
I could see the Codex's patterns in
everything, the way the dust particles floated

1339
02:12:56,039 --> 02:13:01,239
in the sunbeams, the way the
shadows played on the walls. It was

1340
02:13:01,279 --> 02:13:07,399
as if the Codex had woven itself
into the very fabric of reality. I

1341
02:13:07,439 --> 02:13:13,119
was living in its shadow, my
life a twisted reflection of its nightmarish design.

1342
02:13:13,720 --> 02:13:20,520
I started to fiercely, knowing they
would only bring more terrifying visions but

1343
02:13:20,640 --> 02:13:26,720
staying awake was no better. Every
waking moment was filled with a creeping horror

1344
02:13:28,039 --> 02:13:33,920
of the Codex. The outside world
became a distant memory. I couldn't remember

1345
02:13:33,960 --> 02:13:39,560
the last time I had left the
house, seeing another human face, heard

1346
02:13:39,560 --> 02:13:46,880
a voice other than my own.
The Codex had effectively isolated me, cutting

1347
02:13:46,920 --> 02:13:50,920
me off from the world. My
life reduced to a terrifying echo of the

1348
02:13:52,039 --> 02:13:58,760
digital nightmare. My once robust spirit
was breaking, my will eroding under this

1349
02:14:00,039 --> 02:14:05,239
ceaseless onslaught of the Codex. The
shadows grew darker, the silence more oppressive,

1350
02:14:05,800 --> 02:14:13,079
and my despair deeper. I was
losing myself, my identity being swallowed

1351
02:14:13,119 --> 02:14:20,079
by the monstrous entity. I could
no longer tell where I ended, and

1352
02:14:20,199 --> 02:14:26,840
the Codex began. Its patterns had
edged themselves into my thoughts, its influence

1353
02:14:26,880 --> 02:14:31,399
seeping into every corner of my mind. I was not just a victim of

1354
02:14:31,439 --> 02:14:37,000
the Codex. I was becoming part
of it. And in the cold,

1355
02:14:37,359 --> 02:14:46,640
heartless world it had created, I
was utterly alone. And the worst part

1356
02:14:46,439 --> 02:14:52,520
the silence, the isolation, the
creeping terror. They weren't just a result

1357
02:14:52,560 --> 02:14:56,760
of some demonic entity or a malevolent
ghost. They were a product of my

1358
02:14:56,880 --> 02:15:05,439
own, making the content point of
my journey into the abyss shadow dwells within

1359
02:15:05,840 --> 02:15:11,520
the phrase had become a cruel prophecy, a chilling truth that was impossible to

1360
02:15:11,640 --> 02:15:20,760
deny. Through lucid moments of clarity, I kept digging my mind, clawing

1361
02:15:20,960 --> 02:15:26,760
from the deep depths it had sank. I am a digital splunker, lost

1362
02:15:26,000 --> 02:15:31,359
in the abysmal depths of the shadow
codex, its endless chasm, drawing me

1363
02:15:31,439 --> 02:15:39,159
in with an irresistible pull. However, the more I tried to understand it

1364
02:15:39,359 --> 02:15:45,520
and decipher its language's cryptic patterns,
the more I was consumed by it.

1365
02:15:46,199 --> 02:15:52,800
Despite this, the pulsating symbols and
my computer screen had become my obsession.

1366
02:15:54,399 --> 02:15:58,399
In a trance like state, each
moment, each hour was consumed by the

1367
02:15:58,439 --> 02:16:05,399
pursuit of comprehension, the tantalizing possibility
of a breakthrough, despite where that I'd

1368
02:16:05,520 --> 02:16:11,239
leave me in the end. It
could be salvation, or it could be

1369
02:16:11,359 --> 02:16:18,800
my demise. It'd be an end
regardless. I labored over intricate patterns woven

1370
02:16:18,880 --> 02:16:26,920
through labyrinthine forums, drew and redrew
cryptic symbols, seeking connections, finding none.

1371
02:16:28,880 --> 02:16:33,719
Yet with every pattern I unraveled,
every theory I spun, and every

1372
02:16:33,760 --> 02:16:39,719
code I broke, I found it
harder to remember who I am. Memories

1373
02:16:39,719 --> 02:16:45,840
of my life before the Codex,
before this haunting dread become as elusive as

1374
02:16:45,840 --> 02:16:52,520
the solutions I was seeking. Faces
and names blurred into obscurity, replaced by

1375
02:16:52,520 --> 02:16:58,120
the mesmerizing patterns of the Codex.
I was losing myself in this digital abyss,

1376
02:17:00,040 --> 02:17:05,520
eating the very beast I was trying
to slay. Each deciphered code leads

1377
02:17:05,559 --> 02:17:15,120
to another and never ending maze of
horror, resisting understanding, and I realized

1378
02:17:15,399 --> 02:17:22,360
the terrifying truth. My futile attempt
to conquer the Codex wasn't a path to

1379
02:17:22,399 --> 02:17:31,360
salvation. It was a death march
into oblivion. I understand the full scope

1380
02:17:31,399 --> 02:17:37,680
where the Codex is monstrous design with
chilling clarity. This isn't a war I

1381
02:17:37,719 --> 02:17:41,760
can win. With every step I
took to fight back, I was simply

1382
02:17:41,799 --> 02:17:52,719
sinking deeper into its clutches. And
thus I descend not fighting, not resisting,

1383
02:17:52,760 --> 02:18:00,000
just falling, falling into the endless, inky depths of the Shadow Codex.

1384
02:18:00,079 --> 02:18:05,319
This realm, the futility of it
all, was crushing. Finding myself

1385
02:18:05,360 --> 02:18:09,559
to be a pawn in a game
I cannot understand, let alone win,

1386
02:18:11,799 --> 02:18:20,520
And finally my mind snapped. I
fell into a rhythm, dance with insanity

1387
02:18:20,559 --> 02:18:26,639
and the unknown. The message board
becomes my canvas, my stage, my

1388
02:18:26,760 --> 02:18:33,040
confessional. I spell secrets of another
realm under the page. Ideas beyond comprehension,

1389
02:18:33,680 --> 02:18:37,440
Names that no human tongue has uttered, Descriptions of entities so foreign,

1390
02:18:37,760 --> 02:18:45,639
so other worldly, they defy reality, Alien landscapes that extend into endless twilight,

1391
02:18:46,520 --> 02:18:52,520
Creatures formed from impossibilities, names that
ring within ethereal echo. Each post

1392
02:18:52,760 --> 02:18:58,159
is a chilling sonnet to the Codex, a testament to my fall. These

1393
02:18:58,159 --> 02:19:05,200
aren't just simpol or coded messages.
They are whispers from the abyss, confessions

1394
02:19:05,239 --> 02:19:11,000
from the edge of my sanity.
Every time I hit refresh my posts,

1395
02:19:11,200 --> 02:19:18,360
my mad ramblings, they vanished,
devoured by the digital void. Each disappearance

1396
02:19:18,479 --> 02:19:24,440
echoes the fimilality of my sanity.
But it doesn't matter. I keep posting,

1397
02:19:24,920 --> 02:19:31,399
and I keep pouring the madness onto
the screen. I'm driven not by

1398
02:19:31,399 --> 02:19:35,520
the hope of salvation, but I
need to express, to expel the Codex's

1399
02:19:35,559 --> 02:19:48,239
influence, even if only momentarily.
Then finally I resurface the madness the chaotic

1400
02:19:48,280 --> 02:19:56,280
symphony of the incomprehensible thoughts recedes like
a passing storm. I find myself sitting

1401
02:19:56,399 --> 02:20:01,559
in front of the computer screen,
fingers poised over the key board. My

1402
02:20:01,639 --> 02:20:07,000
last post, an amalgamation of cryptic
symbols and alien words, displayed on the

1403
02:20:07,040 --> 02:20:13,799
screen. I hit refresh. The
post disappears, as it always does,

1404
02:20:15,319 --> 02:20:22,479
but a familiar post catches my eye
in the refreshed list of threads, the

1405
02:20:22,479 --> 02:20:28,879
original thread of the Shadow Codex,
the digital Pandora's box that began my descent

1406
02:20:28,280 --> 02:20:35,920
into this never ending nightmare. Compelled
by a sense of dread, I click

1407
02:20:35,000 --> 02:20:41,479
on it. They're highlighted in the
dim light of my room. Is a

1408
02:20:41,559 --> 02:20:48,200
new comment on the thread. It's
from the original poster, the unknown harbinger

1409
02:20:48,319 --> 02:20:56,760
of my ordeal. The message is
as simple as it is chilling. The

1410
02:20:56,879 --> 02:21:07,639
codex has been updated. Whatever I
did, it seems it's ready for the

1411
02:21:07,719 --> 02:21:26,719
next person to download and add to
the annals of their sacred texts. Fishhooks

1412
02:21:26,079 --> 02:21:31,280
a penny from nineteen seventy one,
something bent and warped, too light to

1413
02:21:31,280 --> 02:21:35,959
be valuable, A bit of old
jewelry, perhaps smashed against the rocks.

1414
02:21:37,479 --> 02:21:41,719
Why am I doing this? I
must like standing in the rain. I

1415
02:21:41,879 --> 02:21:46,479
must like the heady smell of seaweed
and salt, the crisp sound of wet

1416
02:21:46,520 --> 02:21:52,840
sand beneath my feet, the inevitable
feel of it between my toes. Despite

1417
02:21:52,879 --> 02:21:58,760
the sturdy shoes and thick wooly socks
that I wear, this beach is littered

1418
02:21:58,760 --> 02:22:05,360
with cheap tat and nothing else.
I've been coming here for years, drawn

1419
02:22:05,440 --> 02:22:09,799
by the excitement of a silver coin
found in two thousand and eight. Since

1420
02:22:09,840 --> 02:22:15,360
then I found the odd musket ball, but nothing of any real value.

1421
02:22:16,319 --> 02:22:20,159
Most of the time, when I
get down on one knee, I anticipate

1422
02:22:20,280 --> 02:22:28,399
disappointment. And yet here I am
still scanning the sand and rocks, looking

1423
02:22:28,520 --> 02:22:33,559
for another one in a million find
with my detector. But there's nothing here.

1424
02:22:35,799 --> 02:22:41,440
This place has been combed thoroughly,
not by competing hobbyists, but by

1425
02:22:41,440 --> 02:22:48,399
myself, slowly and painfully, over
a process of years. This is hardly

1426
02:22:48,440 --> 02:22:52,719
a place for sunbathers. The sloping
cliffs rise overhead as I pick my way

1427
02:22:52,760 --> 02:22:58,440
along what little sand lies between the
rocks and the ocean. Seagulls coast lazily

1428
02:22:58,479 --> 02:23:03,639
in the sky, but down here
on the ground, the wind is fierce,

1429
02:23:05,440 --> 02:23:11,040
and so is the sea. White
horses race furiously towards the land,

1430
02:23:11,600 --> 02:23:16,319
breaking not far to my right,
folding themselves to pour, lazy at all

1431
02:23:16,440 --> 02:23:22,120
clumps of rotting seaweed and stubborn rocks. I am alone, standing at the

1432
02:23:22,159 --> 02:23:28,200
feet of giants for a moment.
I take my headphones off and look around,

1433
02:23:28,959 --> 02:23:35,239
my senses battered by the wind,
I stinging. I scanned the way

1434
02:23:35,239 --> 02:23:41,719
back. When I began, there
was an old man going for a walk,

1435
02:23:41,600 --> 02:23:46,520
but he's nowhere to be seen now
not long, and the tide will

1436
02:23:46,639 --> 02:23:52,879
raise the way back. This isn't
a popular beach, not with families.

1437
02:23:54,040 --> 02:23:58,840
Nudists sometimes come here during the winter
to go racing into the waters, screeching,

1438
02:24:00,040 --> 02:24:05,399
giggling, titilated and thrilled. Those
nude retirees visit this place for much

1439
02:24:05,479 --> 02:24:11,680
the same reason I do. It's
not good for bathers, swimmers, surfers,

1440
02:24:13,520 --> 02:24:20,719
or much house The rocks are dangerous. Riptides funneled by powerful geography have

1441
02:24:20,879 --> 02:24:24,600
claimed more than a few lives.
It does well to do your research before

1442
02:24:24,639 --> 02:24:30,760
going for a dip, but if
you're prepared you can be safe, and

1443
02:24:30,840 --> 02:24:35,239
the tall cliffs make for an attractive
privacy barrier. Only those who know the

1444
02:24:35,319 --> 02:24:41,920
area can find the rocky path that
leads down to the sand. Most don't

1445
02:24:41,920 --> 02:24:48,920
even know it exists, one of
the world's forgotten little corners. I wonder

1446
02:24:50,239 --> 02:24:54,040
why I'm still here, when I've
wasted the afternoon looking for nothing, so

1447
02:24:54,120 --> 02:24:58,799
far from comfort and warmth. It
is a long way back to the car.

1448
02:25:00,719 --> 02:25:03,959
I picture the feel of a cup
of tea held in both hands,

1449
02:25:03,600 --> 02:25:09,559
the sound of wind buffeting my house
and wheels, and I'm ready to finally

1450
02:25:09,600 --> 02:25:16,319
call it a day and go home. When something catches my eye. It

1451
02:25:16,360 --> 02:25:20,360
glitters on the sand, not far
from me, and I approach it,

1452
02:25:20,559 --> 02:25:26,040
expecting a piece of litter, a
foil wrapper. Perhaps. I pick it

1453
02:25:26,120 --> 02:25:33,360
up and trace its shape with my
fingers. My mind moves at a glacial

1454
02:25:33,399 --> 02:25:41,000
pace. It it is a gold
coin. It is cold to the touch,

1455
02:25:41,760 --> 02:25:46,559
handmade pre saxon. The ancient head
stamped into its metal is strange,

1456
02:25:48,200 --> 02:25:54,680
warped with time. It resembles a
man with the mouth of an angler fish.

1457
02:25:54,760 --> 02:26:01,079
It is beautiful. It is everything
I've ever wanted, solid gold and

1458
02:26:01,239 --> 02:26:05,879
thicker than a smartphone. Six months
rent in the palm of my hand.

1459
02:26:07,879 --> 02:26:11,319
Didn't even have to use my metal
detector. It was right there on top

1460
02:26:11,360 --> 02:26:16,799
of the sand. It must have
come from the water, placed here by

1461
02:26:16,840 --> 02:26:22,319
those rapid waves. My mind conjures
the image of a sunken shipwreck a mile

1462
02:26:22,399 --> 02:26:26,159
or two off the coast, its
waterlog coffers filled with coins, just like

1463
02:26:26,200 --> 02:26:33,639
these clusters of jewels gelded with silver
and gold, an ancient treasure that has

1464
02:26:33,719 --> 02:26:41,239
finally broke loose after centuries of tidal
warfare. That might mean there's more.

1465
02:26:43,680 --> 02:26:50,000
I look around, but there's only
shale and sand hundreds of meters away,

1466
02:26:50,399 --> 02:26:54,920
where the rocks become hard to navigate. Something else shimmers in the sun,

1467
02:26:54,520 --> 02:27:00,440
but that could easily be a rock
pool catching the sun. I should go

1468
02:27:00,559 --> 02:27:03,920
back, I tell myself, as
I scan the beach once more. The

1469
02:27:05,079 --> 02:27:09,200
sea is coming behind me. The
sand is narrowed to just ten meters.

1470
02:27:11,559 --> 02:27:18,159
I know from experience it will disappear
faster than seems possible. Then there would

1471
02:27:18,200 --> 02:27:22,479
just be water and cliffs. If
I get caught. The best case scenario

1472
02:27:22,920 --> 02:27:26,639
is that I'll be able to scamper
up the safety somewhere and get rescued by

1473
02:27:26,639 --> 02:27:33,319
a helicopter. My humiliation paraded for
all to see on local papers. Happens

1474
02:27:33,399 --> 02:27:39,520
at least once a year, but
the stakes are higher than you might think.

1475
02:27:39,959 --> 02:27:46,680
Another coin would make a year's rent. Again, that image of a

1476
02:27:46,760 --> 02:27:52,000
sunken chest full of treasures flashes into
my mind. Absurd. I tell myself

1477
02:27:52,360 --> 02:27:58,600
a child's fantasy, but I'm holding
the evidence of it in my hand,

1478
02:27:58,520 --> 02:28:05,319
a goal old coin. How often
in my life has a fantasy come true?

1479
02:28:05,639 --> 02:28:09,440
I dig my fingers into the gold
as hard as I can. I

1480
02:28:09,559 --> 02:28:16,239
want to make sure it's real.
How often does a fantasy need to come

1481
02:28:16,280 --> 02:28:22,520
true? Just once? I mutter
my words? Lost to the wind,

1482
02:28:24,120 --> 02:28:30,879
it is uneasy. The rocks here
are sharp and treacherous. As a child,

1483
02:28:31,200 --> 02:28:35,879
when my mother first brought me to
this beach, I imagined myself walking

1484
02:28:35,920 --> 02:28:43,239
across a giant's fingerprint back then I
glided across stone ridges, pivoting the arches

1485
02:28:43,239 --> 02:28:48,239
of my feet like a spinning top, moving effortlessly across the strange landscape.

1486
02:28:48,319 --> 02:28:52,760
Some of the caps are three four
feet deep. Falling would have hurt,

1487
02:28:54,760 --> 02:29:01,120
but I didn't fall. I was
young, nigh invincible. It isn't like

1488
02:29:01,280 --> 02:29:03,920
that now. It might be my
knees, It might be the fear,

1489
02:29:05,319 --> 02:29:09,840
It might be the nerves. But
I wobble each time I lift my foot,

1490
02:29:09,879 --> 02:29:16,559
my body struggling to balance ridges as
thin as a pencil. I fall

1491
02:29:16,680 --> 02:29:22,639
twice, and the second time it
hurts like hell. Ripped jeans, ripped

1492
02:29:22,680 --> 02:29:28,280
skin, blood, a gash that
takes thirty seconds for the pain to reach

1493
02:29:28,360 --> 02:29:35,719
consciousness. I grip my teeth.
Determination floods me. I look back and

1494
02:29:35,879 --> 02:29:43,520
realize that the sand is no longer
there. Turning back now means wet socks

1495
02:29:43,520 --> 02:29:50,520
and shoes ankle high water. I'd
be humiliated. I looked down at the

1496
02:29:50,559 --> 02:29:54,639
cut of my leg, watching the
blood flow thinly into salt water until it

1497
02:29:54,719 --> 02:30:05,000
turns a pinkish yellow. There's another
gold coin. All thoughts of turning back

1498
02:30:05,159 --> 02:30:11,280
dissolve as I fumble for it in
my fingers. I want more. I

1499
02:30:11,399 --> 02:30:15,319
want the coffer. I want to
run my fingers through gold like it's liquid.

1500
02:30:15,760 --> 02:30:18,520
I want to submerge my arms elbow
deep into the treasure. I can't

1501
02:30:18,559 --> 02:30:24,920
stop picturing. But the tide is
coming. The tide is here, furious

1502
02:30:24,959 --> 02:30:31,040
waves falling just a few feet short
of my position. This will have to

1503
02:30:31,079 --> 02:30:37,280
do two coins, a year's worth
of friend I accept this compromise and begin

1504
02:30:37,360 --> 02:30:45,520
to turn back. A wave hits
me. It is worse than any punch.

1505
02:30:46,440 --> 02:30:50,319
No boxer has ever hit this hard. Here is a force that shapes

1506
02:30:50,360 --> 02:30:56,360
continents, and it has me firmly
in its grip. I can't tell you

1507
02:30:56,440 --> 02:31:03,959
how long this next part lasts.
There is salt, spray, foam.

1508
02:31:03,000 --> 02:31:07,040
I am tossed about in a way
that I've never been before, like a

1509
02:31:07,159 --> 02:31:13,399
roller coaster without the tracks. A
rock smashes my ribs, another, my

1510
02:31:13,440 --> 02:31:20,719
ankle. Something breaks. There is
darkness, there is light. I'm dying,

1511
02:31:20,159 --> 02:31:26,760
I'm sure of it. When I
awake, it is to the feeling

1512
02:31:26,959 --> 02:31:31,639
of my lungs fighting for air while
I lie on my back. For a

1513
02:31:31,719 --> 02:31:39,479
second, I'm just an animal and
loving it. Then the rest comes flooding

1514
02:31:39,479 --> 02:31:45,440
back, the tired, the beeches, the coins. I lurch upwards and

1515
02:31:45,600 --> 02:31:50,120
stare at my palm, clutched so
tightly I have to will the muscles to

1516
02:31:50,200 --> 02:31:56,239
open. Sure enough, the gold
coins are still there. I laugh,

1517
02:31:56,799 --> 02:32:05,000
but the movement hurts, and even
worse, it starts something. In just

1518
02:32:05,159 --> 02:32:09,799
a few short seconds, I am
forced to reckon with three terrible facts.

1519
02:32:11,360 --> 02:32:18,079
First, my ribs are broken.
Second, my ankle is broken. Third,

1520
02:32:18,319 --> 02:32:24,040
I'm going to be sick. The
salt burns, but it is nothing

1521
02:32:24,120 --> 02:32:28,920
compared to my ribs and ankle.
As I struggle to roll over, I

1522
02:32:30,000 --> 02:32:33,280
cannot help but cry as of vomit. I've never known pain like this.

1523
02:32:35,680 --> 02:32:41,319
I manage four pitiful heaves of sea
water and bile before collapsing in a breathless

1524
02:32:41,319 --> 02:32:46,920
fit. My chest feels full of
gravel. After a few long breaths,

1525
02:32:46,959 --> 02:32:52,040
I sit up, secure the coins
in a pocket with a zipper, and

1526
02:32:52,200 --> 02:32:58,840
look around. I realize how strange
the world has become. I am lying

1527
02:33:00,159 --> 02:33:03,520
on a flat rock at the mouth
of a cave. I must have been

1528
02:33:03,559 --> 02:33:09,319
deposited here like one of those coins, and I count myself lucky. I

1529
02:33:09,440 --> 02:33:13,799
want to look outside. I want
to take register of how far I am

1530
02:33:13,879 --> 02:33:20,280
along the coast and how low the
sun has fallen. But I cannot stand,

1531
02:33:20,639 --> 02:33:26,159
and movement is beyond difficult. The
best I can manage is a crawl,

1532
02:33:26,000 --> 02:33:33,440
and I soon realize I'm going to
need all my energy. A gentle

1533
02:33:33,520 --> 02:33:37,920
lapping of water reaches my feet and
soaks my legs and ass. I haven't

1534
02:33:37,920 --> 02:33:43,360
even managed to catch my breath to
contemplate the jagged ruin of my ankle,

1535
02:33:43,239 --> 02:33:48,719
and already the tide is catching up
with me. It makes sense. I

1536
02:33:48,719 --> 02:33:54,520
suppose the sea put me here,
so of course it isn't far behind.

1537
02:33:56,440 --> 02:34:01,520
Damn, I hiss out loud for
the first time since finding the coins.

1538
02:34:03,040 --> 02:34:07,760
My mind snaps back into what feels
like a normal speed. I am in

1539
02:34:07,840 --> 02:34:13,440
incredible danger, and it's still not
too late for that look to run out.

1540
02:34:13,840 --> 02:34:20,319
I pat my pockets. My phone
is broken and unresponsive. My only

1541
02:34:20,440 --> 02:34:24,680
light is a water proof torch.
I keeper my key chain, a Christmas

1542
02:34:24,680 --> 02:34:28,959
gift from my mother. She likes
that I have a hobby. She says

1543
02:34:30,000 --> 02:34:33,639
it makes it easier to shop presents
for me. I turned the torch on

1544
02:34:35,239 --> 02:34:41,440
and almost cry at the serendipity of
it all. Until now, I've never

1545
02:34:41,559 --> 02:34:46,799
used it. The cave ahead is
roughly waist height, and it goes deeper

1546
02:34:46,879 --> 02:34:52,559
than my torch can reach. The
ocean is rising behind me, furious at

1547
02:34:52,600 --> 02:34:58,000
losing its catch. Thankfully, the
cave slopes upward a few meters in,

1548
02:35:00,159 --> 02:35:05,799
so I begin to crawl, seeking
higher ground. I dragged myself off the

1549
02:35:05,840 --> 02:35:11,200
flat rock and further into the cave. I make slow progress across the collection

1550
02:35:11,360 --> 02:35:15,639
of a roaded gravel, a random
crap. The water is deposited here over

1551
02:35:15,680 --> 02:35:22,000
the years, fishing tackle old nets, driftwood, a cat's skull. I

1552
02:35:22,079 --> 02:35:26,959
cannot help but stop at the last
one. Hollow eyes glare back at me

1553
02:35:26,159 --> 02:35:31,959
like a warning. I shake the
feeling off and move onwards. I am

1554
02:35:33,040 --> 02:35:37,959
losing the chase, I realize as
the water catches up to my belly.

1555
02:35:37,639 --> 02:35:43,639
Damn it, damn it, damn
it. I dragged myself elbow over elbow,

1556
02:35:43,959 --> 02:35:48,639
like they do on those army adverts. Be the best, I think

1557
02:35:48,920 --> 02:35:54,000
over and over as my ankle catches
on the stones and my ribs grind in

1558
02:35:54,079 --> 02:36:00,239
my chest. I haven't cried like
this since I was a child, but

1559
02:36:01,239 --> 02:36:07,840
I don't stop. The water is
at my chest now. The cat's skull

1560
02:36:07,920 --> 02:36:13,000
is floating somewhere behind me, buoyed
by the rising sea, I don't want

1561
02:36:13,040 --> 02:36:18,680
to join it. At last,
I make it to where the ground begins

1562
02:36:18,680 --> 02:36:24,520
to rise. The darkness makes for
an ominous savior, but here is my

1563
02:36:24,639 --> 02:36:31,760
only chance of survival, and I
cling to it. I ignore the caveman

1564
02:36:31,840 --> 02:36:37,680
inside me. He is terrified of
this place and is banging every warning drum

1565
02:36:37,719 --> 02:36:41,479
in my mind that he can reach. But I forge my way ahead regardless

1566
02:36:43,760 --> 02:36:48,680
arm over arm My progress is slow, maybe a meter for every ten minutes,

1567
02:36:50,920 --> 02:36:56,360
I cannot say for sure. I'm
no athlete. When the rising tunnel

1568
02:36:56,399 --> 02:37:01,639
becomes too steep for my elbows that
offer much attraction, my fingers into cracks

1569
02:37:01,639 --> 02:37:07,639
in the stone and pull myself along
that way. Meanwhile, the water climbed

1570
02:37:07,680 --> 02:37:13,440
still. I feel it's icy touch, reach my collarbones and let out an

1571
02:37:13,440 --> 02:37:18,799
audible cry. I don't want to
die. It terrifies me, the thought

1572
02:37:18,879 --> 02:37:24,479
of it, the pain most of
all. How painless is drowning? I

1573
02:37:24,520 --> 02:37:31,040
wonder less painful than this. I
want to weigh up the pros and cons

1574
02:37:31,040 --> 02:37:35,959
of letting go and sliding back into
the water, but my brain won't let

1575
02:37:35,000 --> 02:37:41,639
me. It's all or nothing.
Instincts older than the continents propel me,

1576
02:37:43,440 --> 02:37:48,239
fighting to hold my chin up.
As the water reaches my bottom lip.

1577
02:37:48,760 --> 02:37:54,440
I failed to notice the ground changing
direction, a sudden downward tilt that leaves

1578
02:37:54,479 --> 02:37:58,479
my hands flailing. I want to
pause, engage the way ahead, but

1579
02:37:58,559 --> 02:38:03,399
it's are too late. I am
carried over the top by a mix of

1580
02:38:03,440 --> 02:38:13,000
gravity and the water's currents for a
moment, and then there is total darkness.

1581
02:38:15,319 --> 02:38:22,280
For the second time that day.
I pass out. When I awake,

1582
02:38:22,879 --> 02:38:26,040
I am on my stomach and in
so much pain that I am actually

1583
02:38:26,079 --> 02:38:31,440
able to register a glimmer of anger
at the world around me. This is

1584
02:38:31,479 --> 02:38:37,399
starting to feel personal, and that
spark of frustration is what gives me the

1585
02:38:37,440 --> 02:38:41,719
strength to lift my head up and
try to gauge where I am. Luckily,

1586
02:38:41,879 --> 02:38:46,600
my torch states strapped to my wrist, and I use it now to

1587
02:38:46,719 --> 02:38:52,399
see that I'm in a head hike. Cavern. Nearby is a crack in

1588
02:38:52,440 --> 02:38:58,520
the rock, and from there the
water drains. Lucky for me, or

1589
02:38:58,559 --> 02:39:03,120
else I would have surely drowned.
Behind me lies the way I came.

1590
02:39:05,840 --> 02:39:09,719
It is a nearly vertical wall of
rock, ten meters high and slick with

1591
02:39:09,760 --> 02:39:16,879
algae and eroded smooth by millennia of
waves. I have no more chance of

1592
02:39:16,920 --> 02:39:22,159
climbing it than I do the Empire
State building. I watch as another wave

1593
02:39:22,360 --> 02:39:28,319
crest the top and strikes me like
a thrown bucket. Nearby, that crack

1594
02:39:28,399 --> 02:39:35,440
has begun to fill backwash lapping eagerly
at my feet. If I stay here,

1595
02:39:37,079 --> 02:39:41,600
I will likely drown in less than
an hour. But this isn't a

1596
02:39:41,680 --> 02:39:48,719
death trap, not yet anyway.
The cave carries on another tunnel chest height

1597
02:39:50,280 --> 02:39:56,239
big enough to crawl through it.
Bends gently out of sight, and something

1598
02:39:56,360 --> 02:40:03,159
about the darkness beyond makes my stomach
curdle. For all I know, it

1599
02:40:03,280 --> 02:40:09,280
terminates after a meter, but I
have no choice except to try. I

1600
02:40:09,399 --> 02:40:16,479
possesst crawling onwards around the corner.
It seems safe at first, but then

1601
02:40:16,479 --> 02:40:20,639
the tunnel begins to narrow. I
try not to let it worry me.

1602
02:40:20,879 --> 02:40:26,799
I'm on my stomach and there is
room to spare as the ceiling gradually lowers

1603
02:40:26,799 --> 02:40:31,959
from six to five to four feet. When it starts to graze my shoulder

1604
02:40:31,959 --> 02:40:37,760
blades, I have to suppress the
need to hyperventilate. Then it's not just

1605
02:40:37,799 --> 02:40:41,799
the ceiling that's getting closer. The
walls on either side encroach my arms,

1606
02:40:41,840 --> 02:40:48,760
and the panic becomes very real.
I keep hoping they'll widen any second,

1607
02:40:50,319 --> 02:40:56,159
but they don't. They just keep
pressing closer and closer. I want to

1608
02:40:56,159 --> 02:41:01,479
turn back already I can feel water
reaching my knees. I tried to turn

1609
02:41:01,559 --> 02:41:07,280
back and find I can't. This
realization seems to drain the world of all

1610
02:41:07,360 --> 02:41:11,159
color, but I try, and
as the dwell on what it means,

1611
02:41:13,120 --> 02:41:18,520
I keep going without realizing what I'm
doing. I leave my arms out in

1612
02:41:18,559 --> 02:41:22,959
front until the walls narrow so tightly
I can no longer bend them at the

1613
02:41:24,000 --> 02:41:28,360
elbow. I'm forced to move entirely
on the motion of two wrists and one

1614
02:41:28,440 --> 02:41:35,239
functioning ankle. If I thought progress
before was slow, this was a thousand

1615
02:41:35,319 --> 02:41:43,040
times worse. Time crawls to a
halt as I struggle against my own intubment,

1616
02:41:43,879 --> 02:41:48,600
and I spend what could be ten
seconds or ten hours staring at a

1617
02:41:48,639 --> 02:41:52,719
single bit of rock, the fingers
of my right hand working furiously, or

1618
02:41:52,799 --> 02:41:58,239
my left foot tries to push me
forward. I move no more than a

1619
02:41:58,319 --> 02:42:05,879
centimeter at a time without warning.
The panic hits me like a hammer blow.

1620
02:42:07,840 --> 02:42:13,120
I can't move. I tried to
thrash an anger, but it's more

1621
02:42:13,159 --> 02:42:18,159
like a seizure. My wrists and
ankles flick a left and right, looking

1622
02:42:18,159 --> 02:42:24,639
for leverage, but there's nothing.
I should try to think clearly, but

1623
02:42:24,879 --> 02:42:30,440
most of my mental energy has to
go to fighting panic. My emotions reach

1624
02:42:30,559 --> 02:42:35,760
breaking point and I begin to sob
out loud and curse. Soon I become

1625
02:42:35,840 --> 02:42:41,840
hyper aware that I cannot breathe in
fully because the tunnel is compressing my ribs.

1626
02:42:43,000 --> 02:42:48,680
There's no budge in the stone.
It is so unyielding every breath is

1627
02:42:48,760 --> 02:42:54,079
limited, and so they start to
come faster and faster in a desperate bid

1628
02:42:54,120 --> 02:43:01,719
to chase away the overgrowing sense of
suffocation. I just want one deep breath,

1629
02:43:01,360 --> 02:43:09,280
one deep breath, but I can't. The more I struggle, the

1630
02:43:09,399 --> 02:43:13,920
more desperate the need for oxygen becomes. I'm trapped in a downward spiral that

1631
02:43:15,120 --> 02:43:20,360
feels like it is killing me.
This is the worst case scenario. I

1632
02:43:20,479 --> 02:43:26,360
realize I was better off drowning.
Nothing can possibly be worse than this.

1633
02:43:28,559 --> 02:43:33,920
I want to pass out, I
want to die. Neither happens. The

1634
02:43:33,959 --> 02:43:41,440
world goes a bit woozy. I'm
overcome briefly by dizziness, but there's no

1635
02:43:41,600 --> 02:43:48,399
changing this. Instead, I am
forced to face my fear, and while

1636
02:43:48,479 --> 02:43:52,680
I cannot beat it, I can
at least observe it. I don't really

1637
02:43:52,719 --> 02:43:58,879
have much of a choice. Neither
the cave nor I are going anywhere,

1638
02:44:00,079 --> 02:44:05,319
so I pay attention to the lightheadedness, the pain in my chest, the

1639
02:44:05,399 --> 02:44:09,799
weight of the earth above and below
me. My heart raises so quickly it

1640
02:44:09,840 --> 02:44:16,040
feels like it might just seize up
and stop. I focus on its rhythm.

1641
02:44:16,120 --> 02:44:24,079
I count each beat in the tattoo
slowly, without meaning to This heightened

1642
02:44:24,079 --> 02:44:30,239
awareness causes some of the panic to
ease up. I can describe it only

1643
02:44:30,319 --> 02:44:35,680
is a sort of out of body
experience, except I never leave my body.

1644
02:44:35,840 --> 02:44:43,280
I'm inside it, painfully, aware
of every constraint and bondage and every

1645
02:44:43,399 --> 02:44:50,600
ache and pain. At last,
I notice something new. If I breathe

1646
02:44:50,600 --> 02:44:56,760
out, the rock is no longer
squeezing me to death. If I exhale

1647
02:44:56,840 --> 02:45:01,879
and keep the air out, the
feeling of constraint becomes almost tolerable. It

1648
02:45:03,040 --> 02:45:07,639
is the only physical sensation of relief
I have felt since this began. And

1649
02:45:07,799 --> 02:45:15,399
just like that, I'm back in
the driver's seat. It is so obvious

1650
02:45:15,440 --> 02:45:20,000
in hindsight. I want to laugh. I exhale and keep the air out

1651
02:45:20,000 --> 02:45:24,479
of my lungs and wiggle my foot. My body moves. I try it

1652
02:45:24,520 --> 02:45:31,719
again, and this time I inch
forward. I do it maybe fifty a

1653
02:45:31,879 --> 02:45:35,760
hundred times. All in all,
I travel a meter, I think,

1654
02:45:37,920 --> 02:45:45,719
and then the rock gives way.
I weep plug a baby. I can

1655
02:45:45,799 --> 02:45:52,719
breathe a full breath, and the
tunnel keeps widening. Before I know it,

1656
02:45:52,040 --> 02:45:56,280
I have my arms back at my
side, and I'm using my elbows

1657
02:45:56,319 --> 02:46:01,760
to drag myself forward. Soon there
is no time scraping my shoulder blades at

1658
02:46:01,760 --> 02:46:07,440
all, no rock to bang my
head against. I emerge head first and

1659
02:46:07,600 --> 02:46:11,159
drag myself out of the tunnel and
drop a few feet onto a rocky floor

1660
02:46:11,200 --> 02:46:18,440
below. I roll onto my back
and let rip a laughter. It is

1661
02:46:18,520 --> 02:46:24,440
howling and mad and like nothing I've
known before, weeping without a joy.

1662
02:46:24,159 --> 02:46:28,200
I looked to my left and right, ready for the next step in this

1663
02:46:28,399 --> 02:46:37,760
nightmare. There is a man smiling
at me. Geez, I squeal,

1664
02:46:39,079 --> 02:46:43,719
scrambling upwards and away without meaning to. I kick him in the face,

1665
02:46:43,040 --> 02:46:48,239
and his head loves backwards like he's
trying to laugh. I see his mouth

1666
02:46:48,440 --> 02:46:54,479
in a bloody ruin. His eyes
and teeth are gone. He isn't smiling

1667
02:46:54,520 --> 02:47:01,799
at all. He's dead. Something
has torn his jaws open and removed his

1668
02:47:01,920 --> 02:47:09,079
teeth. The result merely looks like
a joker esque grin. Terrified, I

1669
02:47:09,159 --> 02:47:13,559
shuffled over and briefly flick a hand
out to touch him a quick shove to

1670
02:47:13,600 --> 02:47:20,680
the shoulder. He does not react. It takes another three or four pokes

1671
02:47:20,120 --> 02:47:28,440
before I finally convince myself is a
nert Reality asserts itself with a kind of

1672
02:47:28,639 --> 02:47:35,719
nun dread. This really is a
dead body, I tell myself. His

1673
02:47:35,879 --> 02:47:39,840
face is pale in the glare of
my torch, but a quick hand to

1674
02:47:39,920 --> 02:47:45,920
the forehead tells me he's still warm, and that windbreaker is awfully familiar.

1675
02:47:46,159 --> 02:47:52,559
I rack my mind and summon an
image of that old man on the beach.

1676
02:47:52,840 --> 02:47:58,239
He'd been wearing a jacket much like
this one. But it can't be

1677
02:47:58,360 --> 02:48:05,799
him. I decide it simply cannot
be him. This place is a nightmare,

1678
02:48:05,000 --> 02:48:11,600
I think, a real life underworld. I look around and try to

1679
02:48:11,639 --> 02:48:16,600
imagine how this body came to be
here. There are strange things bundled against

1680
02:48:16,639 --> 02:48:22,799
the far wall. I approach and
go through them, but their effect is

1681
02:48:22,879 --> 02:48:28,959
similar to the gold coin. My
thoughts become frozen and sluggish. I inventory

1682
02:48:30,040 --> 02:48:35,520
them like some idiot, unable and
unwilling to see the bigger picture. Six

1683
02:48:35,639 --> 02:48:43,159
coats, fifteen shoes, countless hats
and gloves, all of them torn or

1684
02:48:43,280 --> 02:48:50,079
ripped in some fashion. Three backpacks, exercised books from a school paper turned

1685
02:48:50,079 --> 02:48:54,840
a much long ago. A pencil
case stuffed with soft pencils and broken pens.

1686
02:48:56,120 --> 02:49:01,200
I dropped the last item to the
floor and swiven light across the room

1687
02:49:01,239 --> 02:49:09,559
behind me. I don't like this, my mind raises with possibilities. Suddenly

1688
02:49:09,879 --> 02:49:15,360
I'm scanning this small chamber like my
life depends on it, desperate to answer

1689
02:49:15,360 --> 02:49:22,399
a question that supplants all others.
Maybe I should have listened to my caveman

1690
02:49:22,520 --> 02:49:35,920
thoughts. I think I may not
be alone down here. There is writing

1691
02:49:37,079 --> 02:49:41,760
on the wall. I cannot recognize
the language, but it frightens me.

1692
02:49:43,280 --> 02:49:50,520
Paragraphs of it scrawled in neat blocks, one after the other. Occasionally it

1693
02:49:50,559 --> 02:49:56,239
is broken up with simple pictograms of
ships and spear wielding men. If it

1694
02:49:56,319 --> 02:50:01,440
tells a story, I cannot make
heads or tails of. Something about the

1695
02:50:01,479 --> 02:50:07,239
scene is getting to me. Nonetheless, the body, the pile of forgotten

1696
02:50:07,280 --> 02:50:13,440
things, an ancient language. I
stopped myself sinking into another full blown panic

1697
02:50:13,959 --> 02:50:20,479
by remembering that these are all irrelevant
details. I need to leave this place,

1698
02:50:20,799 --> 02:50:26,879
no matter what. There are several
tunnels leading out of this cavern,

1699
02:50:26,559 --> 02:50:33,399
all much larger than the last one. I pick one at random, Hopefully

1700
02:50:33,680 --> 02:50:37,520
it is more reliable than the last. I crawled through. Fighting the pain,

1701
02:50:37,920 --> 02:50:43,840
I rise onto my knees and hands. It hurts like hell, but

1702
02:50:43,959 --> 02:50:50,559
it lets me leave swiftly and quietly. I scamper along offering only one last

1703
02:50:50,760 --> 02:50:56,479
sad glimpse of the body. The
old man is looking at me. He

1704
02:50:56,639 --> 02:51:01,319
is still grinning, and I'm glad
to take the light away and put distance

1705
02:51:01,520 --> 02:51:07,600
between us. Whether or not this
path leads out, I appreciate that at

1706
02:51:07,639 --> 02:51:13,000
least stays wide open. At points
it is even large enough for two or

1707
02:51:13,040 --> 02:51:18,920
three people to walk abreast. I've
never been thankful for this kind of room.

1708
02:51:18,000 --> 02:51:22,319
Before, just the day ago,
this would have felt like a crowded

1709
02:51:22,319 --> 02:51:30,520
elevator. Now it's like an empty
stadium. And lets me stop and catch

1710
02:51:30,559 --> 02:51:35,159
my breath, lets me raise ahead
and make progress. Either can happen on

1711
02:51:35,280 --> 02:51:43,559
my terms. Minutes slide away in
the dark where time has no meaning for

1712
02:51:43,680 --> 02:51:46,639
long periods, I turn the torch
off and navigate by sound and touch,

1713
02:51:48,159 --> 02:51:52,319
relying on my echoes to tell me
when the tunnel takes a sudden change in

1714
02:51:52,399 --> 02:51:56,319
direction. This is something that if
you had asked me this morning, I

1715
02:51:56,360 --> 02:52:03,600
would have told you I could never
imagine. But it is surprisingly easy.

1716
02:52:05,000 --> 02:52:09,079
More than once I did. Take
the change in what is otherwise uniform soundscape

1717
02:52:09,079 --> 02:52:15,280
and stop lighting up my torch and
seeing a sharp bend right or left,

1718
02:52:16,680 --> 02:52:24,319
I am acquiring a competency that gives
rise to a flickering hope. This confidence

1719
02:52:24,079 --> 02:52:30,799
fades when I come to a fork
in the tunnel. For a moment,

1720
02:52:31,239 --> 02:52:39,639
I'm caught by indecision. But then
something familiar catches my eyes. There is

1721
02:52:39,680 --> 02:52:45,959
a gold coin, another pristine,
just like the one on the beach.

1722
02:52:46,440 --> 02:52:52,280
This time it does not exhilarate me. No images of sunken chests come to

1723
02:52:52,360 --> 02:52:58,719
mind, only the leering grin of
the pallid corpse I left behind, and

1724
02:52:58,840 --> 02:53:05,559
the grim words into stone. The
world is heavy, weighing down from above,

1725
02:53:05,479 --> 02:53:11,000
and I am so small and alone
down here, the darkness so complete

1726
02:53:11,239 --> 02:53:16,760
as to suffocate. I stare at
the coin and it's positioning in a tunnel

1727
02:53:18,040 --> 02:53:22,319
that takes a hard left turn out
of sight. I don't like it.

1728
02:53:24,360 --> 02:53:28,959
I don't like its placement. Taking
it would place me right at the threshold

1729
02:53:30,040 --> 02:53:35,360
of the unseen. I'm certain of
nothing in this underworld, possessing only the

1730
02:53:35,440 --> 02:53:43,159
risk averse instincts of a prey animal. But I decide that coin is a

1731
02:53:43,280 --> 02:53:50,840
trap based only on those instincts.
It is almost arrogant, unsubtle. I'm

1732
02:53:50,959 --> 02:53:56,639
wide eyed, with a smell of
blood still freshen my nose. A twitching

1733
02:53:56,680 --> 02:54:03,200
hair ears raised. I have a
feeling that whatever set that trap is near

1734
02:54:03,319 --> 02:54:09,559
enough to hear my every breath.
I am separated from death only by the

1735
02:54:09,639 --> 02:54:18,520
gossamer thin limits of my perception.
It's right there, and it expects me

1736
02:54:18,040 --> 02:54:26,040
to take the bait. I realize, with some disappointment I already have.

1737
02:54:26,600 --> 02:54:33,000
I'm two coins deep into this nightmare. This whole thing a carefully laid trap

1738
02:54:33,079 --> 02:54:39,920
from the start. My only hope
is that I'm no Highland hair. I

1739
02:54:39,959 --> 02:54:46,200
can think beyond action and reaction,
but I have to be quick. I

1740
02:54:46,319 --> 02:54:50,719
weigh up my options. If something
is there, do I really want to

1741
02:54:50,799 --> 02:54:56,959
let it know I'm aware of it. I suppose every ambush, sooner or

1742
02:54:56,040 --> 02:55:01,079
later, has to release itself.
Better to be in control, I decide

1743
02:55:03,840 --> 02:55:09,120
I find a rock. There are
plenty of them. Slowly, quietly,

1744
02:55:09,959 --> 02:55:15,120
I back away from the fork and
find a ridge in the stone walls that

1745
02:55:15,239 --> 02:55:20,559
I can hide behind. It is
small and offers little shelter, but it's

1746
02:55:20,600 --> 02:55:26,639
the best I have, and I
hope it'll work anyway. I thumb the

1747
02:55:26,680 --> 02:55:31,040
switch and my light goes out.
I throw the stone in my fist and

1748
02:55:31,280 --> 02:55:39,639
squeeze myself back into my hiding space
and hold my breath just in time.

1749
02:55:39,159 --> 02:55:45,239
The stone smashes into the wall of
the right hand tunnel. This is the

1750
02:55:45,280 --> 02:55:50,879
one without the coin. There is
silence for what might be five ten seconds,

1751
02:55:52,159 --> 02:56:00,000
and then there is only the gentlest
of sounds, the touch of something

1752
02:56:00,239 --> 02:56:05,000
soft against the stone. What a
far cry from the synthetic world of engines

1753
02:56:05,000 --> 02:56:11,600
and buzzing motors I'm used to.
I have spent my life training myself to

1754
02:56:11,719 --> 02:56:18,559
ignore those kinds of sounds, barely
perceptible scuffles, a cat's footfall, a

1755
02:56:18,680 --> 02:56:24,959
bird's wings, a scurrying rat.
But down here the sound is like thunder.

1756
02:56:26,239 --> 02:56:30,959
It makes my blood run cold,
and the hair and my scalps stand

1757
02:56:31,000 --> 02:56:37,000
on edge. A part of me
had thrown the stone, convinced I would

1758
02:56:37,000 --> 02:56:43,440
only prove myself wrong. But now
the terror is so real that I can

1759
02:56:43,479 --> 02:56:48,879
almost reach out and touch it.
It is as tangible as the wall I'm

1760
02:56:48,920 --> 02:56:54,440
trying desperately to dissolve into, as
real as my own flesh and blood.

1761
02:56:56,239 --> 02:57:05,200
I am being hunted. Whatever was
in hiding has seemingly taken the bait.

1762
02:57:07,360 --> 02:57:11,959
The sound of its movements disappears down
the right hand tunnel. Thank God for

1763
02:57:13,000 --> 02:57:20,159
that caveman, he remembers the plan. Acting on instinct and painfully aware of

1764
02:57:20,200 --> 02:57:24,520
the ticking clock, I force myself
to peek around the rocky outcrop and turn

1765
02:57:24,559 --> 02:57:31,360
on my torch. There lies the
fork again, and if I had any

1766
02:57:31,399 --> 02:57:37,159
doubt about the trap before, it
is thoroughly beaten down. When I see

1767
02:57:37,280 --> 02:57:45,360
the gold coin has disappeared, I
waste no more time and scramble on all

1768
02:57:45,440 --> 02:57:50,559
fours down that turning, pausing only
briefly to consider if my hunter has employed

1769
02:57:50,559 --> 02:57:58,520
a double bluff. Oh well,
I think it's too late. Now around

1770
02:57:58,559 --> 02:58:03,040
the corner, I go and find
nothing but darkness. I could try and

1771
02:58:03,079 --> 02:58:09,040
perform some mental gymnastics convince myself there
was never anything there in the first place.

1772
02:58:11,319 --> 02:58:15,319
But on one of the walls,
I spot a streak of something reddish

1773
02:58:15,360 --> 02:58:20,719
brown. There is just enough time
in passing to be sure that it is

1774
02:58:20,760 --> 02:58:31,719
blood, and then I'm gone,
desperately crawling further into darkness. Occasionally I

1775
02:58:31,840 --> 02:58:37,159
stop and check over my shoulder for
signs of something giving chase. If it

1776
02:58:37,239 --> 02:58:41,920
took the bait and followed the wrong
tunnel, who's to say it didn't quickly

1777
02:58:41,959 --> 02:58:48,120
realize and is now barreling down on
me. Or that the tunnels don't intersect

1778
02:58:48,239 --> 02:58:54,040
down the line. If something lives
here, it must be incredibly familiar with

1779
02:58:54,120 --> 02:58:58,760
a layout of these sprawling caverns.
I am merely a tourist in the shadows,

1780
02:59:00,360 --> 02:59:07,040
hopelessly lost and ill equipped for this
kind of survivalless nightmare. But each

1781
02:59:07,079 --> 02:59:13,520
time I look, there is only
empty space, a frighteningly sterile landscape,

1782
02:59:13,159 --> 02:59:20,639
brutal and haunting looming over me and
my hands and knees, rock walls curved

1783
02:59:20,639 --> 02:59:26,520
and jagged, ribbed and rippling,
a concrete colon where light can only reach

1784
02:59:26,600 --> 02:59:33,040
so far. Each time I look, I have to force myself to break

1785
02:59:33,079 --> 02:59:41,000
eye contact with the darkness and resume
my journey. I do this sixteen times.

1786
02:59:41,000 --> 02:59:46,600
I do not know how long elapse
is between each glance. I only

1787
02:59:46,639 --> 02:59:52,959
count the number, until at last, the everlasting tunnel takes a break and

1788
02:59:52,079 --> 03:00:00,360
I am deposited and yet another cavernous
room. This time I am almost minded

1789
03:00:00,360 --> 03:00:05,120
by the light it emanates. For
a moment, I turned my head upwards,

1790
03:00:05,440 --> 03:00:09,239
expecting to see a bulb. Instead, there is a hole in the

1791
03:00:09,319 --> 03:00:15,799
roof, and only the faintest glimmer
of sunlight makes its way down. But

1792
03:00:15,959 --> 03:00:20,760
after hours in pitch black darkness.
It felt like staring right at the sun.

1793
03:00:24,559 --> 03:00:28,079
It is too far to see the
way out, or to get any

1794
03:00:28,120 --> 03:00:33,680
real hint of the sky beyond.
I can't say if it's night or day

1795
03:00:33,719 --> 03:00:39,719
up there, but I know the
sky must be close, so close the

1796
03:00:39,799 --> 03:00:46,120
hole itself isn't far above me,
and using my light I can spot a

1797
03:00:46,239 --> 03:00:52,040
kind of ancient rusted ladder embedded in
the rock. It won't be easy climbing

1798
03:00:52,079 --> 03:00:56,840
it so injured, but given my
limited choices, I'll have to manage.

1799
03:00:58,680 --> 03:01:03,239
For the first time in hours,
I stand at my two feet. Reaching

1800
03:01:03,319 --> 03:01:09,840
upwards hurts everything from my chest to
my toes. Broken ribs grind, A

1801
03:01:09,959 --> 03:01:18,280
swollen angle pulses pain through deadened nerves
that seconds ago reported nothing but hissing static.

1802
03:01:18,760 --> 03:01:22,680
I swear it is so bad my
heart stops, or at the very

1803
03:01:22,760 --> 03:01:28,840
least, it misses a beat.
This must be the kind of stress that

1804
03:01:28,959 --> 03:01:35,200
can kill healthy men, and I'm
not even healthy. My elbow doesn't even

1805
03:01:35,200 --> 03:01:39,239
get past my shoulder. When I'm
forced to gasp for breath and the whole

1806
03:01:39,360 --> 03:01:46,719
house of cards comes tumbling down,
I fall back, and even that hurts

1807
03:01:46,760 --> 03:01:52,360
more than I can imagine. Suddenly, I find myself questioning if I really

1808
03:01:52,440 --> 03:02:05,799
haven't in me to climb that pitted, rusty ladder. Something screams, it

1809
03:02:05,879 --> 03:02:11,399
isn't far away. This room,
like the others before, has many ways

1810
03:02:11,479 --> 03:02:16,319
in and out. It is rising
on the walls too, picked the grams

1811
03:02:16,319 --> 03:02:20,280
of something strange with a head of
angler being worshiped by men the size of

1812
03:02:20,399 --> 03:02:26,120
ants. My torch flashes across the
moor and makes nightmares of the shadows,

1813
03:02:28,319 --> 03:02:33,440
but nothing yet leaps out at me. I realized, this is it the

1814
03:02:33,479 --> 03:02:39,040
only chance I'm getting. How many
chances do I need, I asked myself,

1815
03:02:41,479 --> 03:02:48,120
Only one, I mutter. I
force myself upright, and before my

1816
03:02:48,239 --> 03:02:52,680
nerves have time to register the landslide
of pain ready to collapse me, I

1817
03:02:52,799 --> 03:02:56,879
hop on one foot. It is
all I need to reach the ladder with

1818
03:02:56,000 --> 03:03:01,479
one swinging arm, then the other, so that I'm there, clinging on

1819
03:03:01,680 --> 03:03:07,920
for dear life, feet barely an
inch off the floor, with tears streaming

1820
03:03:07,959 --> 03:03:13,000
down my face. This already feels
like too much. But before I have

1821
03:03:13,120 --> 03:03:20,120
time to give up and fold into
myself, there comes another scream. This

1822
03:03:20,159 --> 03:03:24,239
one is so close I cannot help
but imagine that whatever lies in the dark

1823
03:03:24,959 --> 03:03:31,920
is excited to finally catch up with
me. That last thought tempts fate.

1824
03:03:31,120 --> 03:03:37,520
It seems still swinging eyes darting to
and fro from the several tunnel holes.

1825
03:03:39,200 --> 03:03:45,399
I catch a glimpse of something.
It is racing towards me. It is

1826
03:03:45,520 --> 03:03:50,000
human, vaguely in the way that
the monsters in our nightmares often are.

1827
03:03:52,559 --> 03:03:56,600
I let out my own scream or
something like it. It is the cartos

1828
03:03:56,639 --> 03:04:01,040
sort of yelp. Because whether I
really liz it or not, my muscles

1829
03:04:01,120 --> 03:04:07,520
have kicked into gear and I'm somehow
doing a pull up, my legs kicking

1830
03:04:07,559 --> 03:04:11,159
furiously. I drag my way up
until the first rung is at chest height

1831
03:04:11,760 --> 03:04:18,079
and I am able to grab another
overhead. The pain in my chest retreats

1832
03:04:18,079 --> 03:04:22,879
to a dull throb. I try
foolishly to use my bad ankle to climb,

1833
03:04:22,280 --> 03:04:26,479
and realize there aren't enough indorphins in
the world to let me put weight

1834
03:04:26,520 --> 03:04:33,600
on a broken bone. I let
out another cry and switched tactics. I

1835
03:04:33,680 --> 03:04:37,159
have to use my arms to lift
myself and rely on one good foot as

1836
03:04:37,159 --> 03:04:45,040
a stabilizer. This would be difficult
but manageable if I had all the time

1837
03:04:45,040 --> 03:04:48,479
in the world, But with the
memory of that thing bearing down on me.

1838
03:04:50,520 --> 03:04:56,079
It is akin to torture. I
am flooded with a sense of futility,

1839
03:04:56,879 --> 03:05:01,760
of pain and needless suffering. But
if I've learned anything in the last

1840
03:05:01,760 --> 03:05:07,920
few hours, it is that the
human body runs on its own firmware,

1841
03:05:07,799 --> 03:05:13,079
and it isn't slaved to your brain. My arms move their own accord.

1842
03:05:13,760 --> 03:05:20,959
My body rises one rung at a
time, too fast for common sense injuries,

1843
03:05:20,959 --> 03:05:24,920
a bound, grazed skin, a
bumpt head. Each step up as

1844
03:05:24,959 --> 03:05:31,360
me clumsily bashing or banging some sensitive
parts of me into the barely visible rocks.

1845
03:05:31,479 --> 03:05:35,399
Instinct may be in the driver's seat, but it's happy to leave me

1846
03:05:35,479 --> 03:05:43,719
with the consequences of its recklessness.
I feel every ache and pain, every

1847
03:05:43,760 --> 03:05:50,559
stinging wound, embedded with grit,
every ligament stretched to breaking point. Oddly,

1848
03:05:52,639 --> 03:05:56,600
I don't mind this arrangement. I
want to live. I am glad

1849
03:05:56,639 --> 03:06:01,680
there is a caveman inside me to
take air of moments like this, especially

1850
03:06:01,760 --> 03:06:07,399
when I glanced down between my legs
and see pitch black eyes glaring up at

1851
03:06:07,440 --> 03:06:15,000
me with thoughtless glee. I cannot
get over how human that faces. I

1852
03:06:15,079 --> 03:06:20,799
expected something insectile, maybe even a
rachneid. Whatever is below me, whether

1853
03:06:20,920 --> 03:06:28,040
it's some hybrid or mutant, it
is vile and fast approaching. The vibrating

1854
03:06:28,040 --> 03:06:33,639
in the ladder tells me it is
climbing too. I try to climb faster,

1855
03:06:33,239 --> 03:06:39,440
but I really am operating on all
cylinders right now. There's nothing left

1856
03:06:39,440 --> 03:06:43,360
to spare. I don't want to, but I look down again, and

1857
03:06:43,520 --> 03:06:52,079
there it is even closer. It
is smiling with a rubbing mouth full of

1858
03:06:52,120 --> 03:06:58,399
glassy teeth. I hate it.
I lash out with my bad foot without

1859
03:06:58,440 --> 03:07:03,760
meaning to, and hurt only myself. The pain is so severe I'm forced

1860
03:07:03,760 --> 03:07:09,879
to stop climbing and sob. And
it is in that moment I feel claws

1861
03:07:11,200 --> 03:07:16,959
sink into the hot, swollen flesh
of my calf. I let out a

1862
03:07:16,079 --> 03:07:22,000
hell of a noise. It empties
my lungs and burns a mark deep into

1863
03:07:22,040 --> 03:07:28,000
my being. I will remember the
way this scream feels until the day I

1864
03:07:28,079 --> 03:07:33,719
die. It is the moment in
time where I give into despair, where

1865
03:07:33,719 --> 03:07:39,479
I lose all hope as my nervous
system gives into a pain in jue seizure

1866
03:07:39,840 --> 03:07:45,479
that sees my fingers go numb and
my limbs go limp. The last thing

1867
03:07:45,479 --> 03:07:50,600
I remember as I fall is the
sight of an iron grate overhead, only

1868
03:07:50,680 --> 03:07:56,959
ten twenty meters away. A man
I think is standing there and shining a

1869
03:07:58,040 --> 03:08:03,520
torch straight down. He says something
I cannot hear. I tell myself this

1870
03:08:03,719 --> 03:08:11,559
is a hallucination, nothing more.
I enter free fall. My head hits

1871
03:08:11,559 --> 03:08:22,079
a rocky outcrop beneath me. Something
crunches darkness. I come too in a

1872
03:08:22,200 --> 03:08:26,760
hospital bed with a feeling in my
chest that makes me think of war.

1873
03:08:28,280 --> 03:08:31,399
A lash left to right. Grab
a hold of a table and jerk it

1874
03:08:31,440 --> 03:08:37,040
across the floor, ready to wield
it like a club. The nurse in

1875
03:08:37,079 --> 03:08:41,000
the corner is afraid. She doesn't
realize it. But I'm fighting for my

1876
03:08:41,079 --> 03:08:48,440
life, or at least I think
I am. Slowly, I blink the

1877
03:08:48,479 --> 03:08:54,479
Halligan glare away and take in my
surroundings. The battle ground fades. I

1878
03:08:54,639 --> 03:09:01,399
realize where I am. I try
to hold back tears. It doesn't work.

1879
03:09:01,799 --> 03:09:07,680
Within seconds, I am bawling.
Arms embrace me. I don't know

1880
03:09:07,760 --> 03:09:13,879
who they are, and I don't
care. I embrace them back. I

1881
03:09:13,040 --> 03:09:18,760
seize them and cling unto their unfamiliar
body with such severity. They mutter words

1882
03:09:18,799 --> 03:09:26,159
that someone near by along the effects
of ah Jeez is hurting me more rust

1883
03:09:26,239 --> 03:09:35,079
movement a needle. I must sleep
again. Hours, maybe days later,

1884
03:09:35,159 --> 03:09:41,959
I awakened to find my mother and
a policeman near by. This time my

1885
03:09:41,040 --> 03:09:48,639
senses return in time to stop panic. I am finally given the story of

1886
03:09:48,760 --> 03:09:56,360
my rescue. They were looking for
me the entire time, and by chance

1887
03:09:56,600 --> 03:10:01,479
they heard me near the old storm
drain. They came rattling down no more

1888
03:10:01,520 --> 03:10:05,559
than a few minutes after I hit
the ground, and found me lying there,

1889
03:10:07,120 --> 03:10:13,159
bleeding and broken. Strangely, they
say I had no real injuries from

1890
03:10:13,159 --> 03:10:16,799
the fall itself, a bumped head
and a broken wrist on the way down.

1891
03:10:18,680 --> 03:10:22,760
But from that height I should have
broken my neck. Something cush in

1892
03:10:22,840 --> 03:10:30,200
my fall, I think, and
laugh uproarously. My mother looks worried.

1893
03:10:31,120 --> 03:10:35,920
She must think of gone insane.
Who can blame her? I was down

1894
03:10:35,959 --> 03:10:41,719
there for over twenty four hours,
although it didn't seem like it to me.

1895
03:10:43,280 --> 03:10:46,159
I explained this to them, the
elasticity of time in the dark,

1896
03:10:46,879 --> 03:10:54,079
and they nod like they understand,
but of course they don't. Somehow,

1897
03:10:54,840 --> 03:11:03,479
it takes me another hour to realize
I'm missing leg. This perplexes them as

1898
03:11:03,559 --> 03:11:09,680
much as me indiscrepances in the nature
of the wound. An expert stands to

1899
03:11:09,760 --> 03:11:15,600
the side and explains as much to
me, but the words are a distant

1900
03:11:15,639 --> 03:11:20,600
drone. I'm taken aback by the
sight of the stump, all neatly bandaged.

1901
03:11:22,840 --> 03:11:28,520
Apparently it took a lot of surgery
to neat an up. Despite everything,

1902
03:11:30,360 --> 03:11:35,680
I am angry. I thought I
was dead. There should be a

1903
03:11:35,719 --> 03:11:39,760
small price to pay, and yet
the knowledge that a part of me went

1904
03:11:39,799 --> 03:11:45,440
to feeding that monster makes my stomach
churn. I want to be sick.

1905
03:11:46,360 --> 03:11:50,760
A piece of me is down there
somewhere, dissolving in stomach acid, waiting

1906
03:11:50,799 --> 03:11:56,879
to be excreted in some folated corner
of the monster's lair. When I start

1907
03:11:56,920 --> 03:12:01,879
to cry and shout in impotent age, they have to sedate me once more.

1908
03:12:03,399 --> 03:12:07,760
They assume it is simple shock.
But there is more to it than

1909
03:12:07,840 --> 03:12:13,799
that. I am consumed by a
deep hatred that is hard to explain.

1910
03:12:18,639 --> 03:12:24,200
Months later, I find myself recounting
this story to try and purge that hateful

1911
03:12:24,280 --> 03:12:31,479
feeling. All this time, I
cannot escape the sense of unfinished business.

1912
03:12:31,799 --> 03:12:37,639
Every time I mess up with my
prosthetic, slip, stumble momentarily forget it

1913
03:12:37,760 --> 03:12:45,639
is there. I feel the anger
burning inside me. Every night I spend

1914
03:12:45,719 --> 03:12:50,040
hours in agony from phantom pains,
trying to soothe a wounded brain using a

1915
03:12:50,079 --> 03:12:56,840
mirror of all things. Sometimes I
think I would have rather died if it

1916
03:12:56,879 --> 03:13:03,399
meant killing that thing all my weight. Such a steep drop, I picture

1917
03:13:03,440 --> 03:13:09,760
myself crushing it and leaving it a
gory, broken mess. I've never felt

1918
03:13:09,760 --> 03:13:20,319
this kind of enmity. Evidently I'm
not alone. One morning, a knock

1919
03:13:20,479 --> 03:13:26,799
on the caravan door. It takes
me far too long to get ready.

1920
03:13:26,200 --> 03:13:31,319
I'm not yet practiced with a limb. Putting it on, taking it off

1921
03:13:31,440 --> 03:13:37,600
takes me nearly twenty minutes to get
myself together. My mood is darkened since

1922
03:13:37,719 --> 03:13:41,959
my rescue, and I practically kick
my door open with a raw ready to

1923
03:13:43,079 --> 03:13:52,760
curse out anyone who disturbs me.
I find no one there, only silence

1924
03:13:54,280 --> 03:14:11,959
and another gold coin back. In
my final year at MSU, I was

1925
03:14:11,000 --> 03:14:18,120
invited to take part in a research
expedition to the Zionia Wetlands in northern Sweden.

1926
03:14:18,680 --> 03:14:26,000
It was part of an exchange through
the AWC Arctic Wellness Cooperative, funded

1927
03:14:26,000 --> 03:14:31,079
by members of the Arctic Council and
private actors in the area. Me and

1928
03:14:31,280 --> 03:14:37,280
Roger Roger Dawson took a flight in
early May. During the fifty five minute

1929
03:14:37,360 --> 03:14:43,399
layover at Arlander, Stockholm, we
met up with Helena and Germark from the

1930
03:14:43,479 --> 03:14:50,639
Royal Institute of Technology. When we
arrived at Umau Airport, we met up

1931
03:14:50,639 --> 03:14:56,079
with a last member of our expedition, Camilla Ostemo, from Lulaire University.

1932
03:14:58,799 --> 03:15:05,319
From there it was just a long
drive north. The Siona Wetlands are enormous.

1933
03:15:07,399 --> 03:15:13,079
We're talking about seven hundred thousand acres
of maya and wetland just above the

1934
03:15:13,159 --> 03:15:20,280
Arctic Circle. In optimal conditions and
excluding factors such as sleep, food,

1935
03:15:20,559 --> 03:15:26,639
terrain and weather, it had take
about eleven days to walk across. In

1936
03:15:26,760 --> 03:15:31,120
my head it conjured up images of
the dead Marshes from Lord of the Rings,

1937
03:15:31,079 --> 03:15:37,159
but Helena assured me it was nothing
quite as dramatic. Roger and I

1938
03:15:37,319 --> 03:15:43,159
had no idea what to expect.
We'd got our equipment prepurchased. The suites

1939
03:15:43,159 --> 03:15:50,719
were in charge of everything practical on
sight, excluding our personal equipment. We

1940
03:15:50,719 --> 03:15:56,040
were scheduled to spend four days in
the actual Maya and four more days accounted

1941
03:15:56,040 --> 03:16:01,959
for travel in Sure we had wildlife
encamp experience, but you can't prepare for

1942
03:16:03,040 --> 03:16:09,399
something like the Arctic. Myers May
is a strange time in northern Sweden.

1943
03:16:09,639 --> 03:16:16,440
While technically spring, it can still
dip into subzero temperatures. The weather can

1944
03:16:16,559 --> 03:16:22,000
range from blazing heat in the afternoon
to frost in the early morning. So

1945
03:16:22,319 --> 03:16:26,840
while we had a variety of clothes, we still had to be flexible enough

1946
03:16:26,920 --> 03:16:31,559
to change throughout the day. There's
no one thing fits all up there.

1947
03:16:35,479 --> 03:16:39,319
The further north we drove, the
more things started to look the same,

1948
03:16:39,680 --> 03:16:46,079
long stretches of road through the wilderness
that seemed to go nowhere, nothing but

1949
03:16:46,319 --> 03:16:52,719
moss, undergrowth and sprinkles of spinley
trees. I was chewing on my last

1950
03:16:52,719 --> 03:16:58,360
lim gym when Helena brought up a
laptop. So we have eight designated sites

1951
03:16:58,559 --> 03:17:03,239
where we need to do some sampling, she said. But Camilla and I

1952
03:17:03,319 --> 03:17:07,040
have been talking and we think we
ought to get at least one further in.

1953
03:17:07,920 --> 03:17:11,319
We have to go a bit off
road to get some reliable results.

1954
03:17:13,040 --> 03:17:18,360
When do you talk about this?
I asked Gott to read the group chat,

1955
03:17:18,600 --> 03:17:22,520
said Roge, I told you to
get in on that. I'm in.

1956
03:17:22,680 --> 03:17:28,440
I'm just not getting notifications, then
you're not in. I'm telling you

1957
03:17:28,559 --> 03:17:33,719
I'm in either way, said Helena. If we take a detour north after

1958
03:17:33,799 --> 03:17:37,959
sight three, we ought to get
some reliable samples before we reach four.

1959
03:17:39,879 --> 03:17:43,920
It should work with your schedule.
You're the locals. You got this,

1960
03:17:45,719 --> 03:17:50,680
said Roge. I'll either steer your
judgment. We're not locals, said Camilla.

1961
03:17:52,079 --> 03:17:56,559
I'm from Lulu. That's like a
four hour drive. Stockholm is like

1962
03:17:56,559 --> 03:18:01,000
a twelve hour drive from there,
So we're going in blind, I asked.

1963
03:18:01,639 --> 03:18:07,040
None of you have been there before. That's kind of the point to

1964
03:18:07,079 --> 03:18:11,760
get acquainted with it, said Camilla, to get something for the next group

1965
03:18:11,799 --> 03:18:16,120
to compare when they do another expedition
in five or so years. All about

1966
03:18:16,200 --> 03:18:24,079
long term cooperation, smiled Helena,
like it says on the website. Roger

1967
03:18:24,159 --> 03:18:28,719
leaned over and patted me on the
shoulder, holding up his phone. I

1968
03:18:28,879 --> 03:18:33,440
just checked, and you're not in
the group chat. We were stuck in

1969
03:18:33,479 --> 03:18:39,879
that car all day. We reviewed
our notes, plans, equipment, and

1970
03:18:39,079 --> 03:18:46,120
route. Much of what spurred the
expedition to begin with reports of wildlife changes.

1971
03:18:46,200 --> 03:18:52,399
The indigenous Sami people had moved their
reindeer herds north, claiming that their

1972
03:18:52,440 --> 03:18:56,360
animals were getting sick from the soil. They had also been reports of reduced

1973
03:18:56,399 --> 03:19:03,760
fish population and increased bird my in
the southwest. We were there to measure

1974
03:19:03,799 --> 03:19:09,239
possible toxins and so changes too,
if possible, determine a cause, but

1975
03:19:09,479 --> 03:19:18,399
first we needed samples, which was
the meat of the expedition. This started

1976
03:19:18,440 --> 03:19:24,159
to pop up little villages along the
forest road. Well, maybe not villages,

1977
03:19:24,079 --> 03:19:30,879
more like loose collections of houses within
view of one another, red houses

1978
03:19:30,920 --> 03:19:37,000
with white corners and metal roofing.
How anyone could live that isolated was beyond

1979
03:19:37,040 --> 03:19:43,920
me. Still at great phone coverage, though somehow, we passed through a

1980
03:19:43,959 --> 03:19:48,479
town with a name I won't even
begin to pronounce or spell too many vowels.

1981
03:19:50,920 --> 03:19:54,600
It was our last stop before we
got to the wetlands, so we

1982
03:19:54,639 --> 03:20:01,120
made sure to stock up. Camilla
got us some extra batteries. When we

1983
03:20:01,239 --> 03:20:07,799
finally arrived, it was dark.
We've been following a gravel road for the

1984
03:20:07,840 --> 03:20:13,319
past forty minutes. There were six
houses in a semicircle along the road,

1985
03:20:13,200 --> 03:20:20,200
one of which we'd rented for the
night. The rest were abandoned. Camilla

1986
03:20:20,319 --> 03:20:24,239
dragged us stuff in and collapsed on
the living room couch. Helena took the

1987
03:20:24,319 --> 03:20:31,159
downstairs guest room. There was a
second bedroom upstairs with three smaller beds for

1988
03:20:31,319 --> 03:20:37,479
me and Rodged to occupy. I
was asleep the moment my head hit the

1989
03:20:37,520 --> 03:20:45,399
pillow. The following early morning,
it was all hands on deck. Helena

1990
03:20:45,600 --> 03:20:52,079
was preparing sandwiches in the kitchen what
Camilla checked her equipment, all batteries charged,

1991
03:20:52,479 --> 03:20:58,639
all containers properly marked and sorted.
She was meticulous, and at five

1992
03:20:58,840 --> 03:21:05,040
thirty am we were ready to go. I took a moment to soak up

1993
03:21:05,040 --> 03:21:11,079
the atmosphere. The smells felt alien
yet familiar. The air was buzzing with

1994
03:21:11,159 --> 03:21:18,079
insects. I could hear nestling birds
in every direction. Despite the four of

1995
03:21:18,200 --> 03:21:22,079
us being the only people in the
area for miles and miles, it felt

1996
03:21:22,520 --> 03:21:28,200
very much alive. It was a
vast forest without a canopy, with the

1997
03:21:28,239 --> 03:21:35,040
waking sun gazing down on us from
an endless sky. Helena took lead,

1998
03:21:35,639 --> 03:21:43,680
with Roge following suit. Then there
was Camilla, and finally me. There

1999
03:21:43,680 --> 03:21:50,559
were paths marked with orange flags showing
us the intended way. Anyone know any

2000
03:21:50,600 --> 03:21:56,440
good songs, asked Eleanor you could
teach us some, said Roge. Probably

2001
03:21:56,479 --> 03:22:01,000
something we can pronounce. As long
as we make noise, said Camilla,

2002
03:22:01,159 --> 03:22:07,399
it keeps the bears away. We
began our rendition of smear Grodner as we

2003
03:22:07,479 --> 03:22:15,200
trotted along the path, going deeper
into the wetlands. Minutes later, it

2004
03:22:15,280 --> 03:22:18,760
was clear to me there'd been no
way to navigate the Maya without those little

2005
03:22:18,799 --> 03:22:26,399
flags. Everything looked the same,
the same trees, the same bushes,

2006
03:22:26,719 --> 03:22:33,440
the same moss, and no clear
paths to follow. We weaved and bobbed

2007
03:22:33,440 --> 03:22:37,559
through the miya. We all wore
those tall rubber boots and pants, along

2008
03:22:37,559 --> 03:22:43,280
with backpacks that only reached halfway across
our backs. There'd be spots where we'd

2009
03:22:43,280 --> 03:22:48,959
have to wade through water that could
reach over our knees, so we had

2010
03:22:48,959 --> 03:22:52,360
to keep as dry as possible.
It was a pain to walk through,

2011
03:22:52,920 --> 03:22:58,159
and I could feel a rash growing
in my thighs within the first fifteen minutes

2012
03:22:58,159 --> 03:23:05,680
of walking. We reached our first
site at seven am. Camilla brought out

2013
03:23:05,680 --> 03:23:11,479
the testing equipment. She and Rodge
took turns calling out what kinds of samples

2014
03:23:11,520 --> 03:23:16,440
they were getting, while Helena recorded
it all on a laptop. I catalogged

2015
03:23:16,440 --> 03:23:24,239
and stored everything. Took us about
thirty minutes all in all. As we

2016
03:23:24,319 --> 03:23:28,600
packed up and moved to the second
site, Camilla pointed out something in the

2017
03:23:28,680 --> 03:23:37,360
undergrowth. Lots of animals here,
she said. Look, she pointed at

2018
03:23:37,399 --> 03:23:45,000
the ground, but I saw nothing. I shrugged. How do you say

2019
03:23:45,040 --> 03:23:50,159
it? Short? Run, Helena? What's that in cloudberry? Right?

2020
03:23:50,719 --> 03:23:56,159
There should be cloudberries here? See
the petals. What the hell is a

2021
03:23:56,200 --> 03:24:01,399
cloudberry? Chuckled Rodge Never heard of
it makes a great jam, added Eleanor

2022
03:24:03,559 --> 03:24:07,120
maybe we'll see some further along,
said Camilla, where there's less animals.

2023
03:24:09,559 --> 03:24:13,120
It took us another four hours to
get to the second site. We spun

2024
03:24:13,159 --> 03:24:16,879
around in circles for a while and
had to get the satnav to find our

2025
03:24:16,920 --> 03:24:22,959
way back. Standing out there with
water up to my knees looking for those

2026
03:24:22,959 --> 03:24:31,319
orange flags, it was scary.
Camilla seemed confident though. At worst,

2027
03:24:31,760 --> 03:24:35,799
we will just go straight southwest,
she said, as long as we can

2028
03:24:35,840 --> 03:24:41,680
see the sun, we can navigate. True enough. When we got to

2029
03:24:41,760 --> 03:24:46,840
the second site, there was a
stretch of dry ground where we could rest.

2030
03:24:48,079 --> 03:24:52,719
We stopped for lunch. Helena set
up a portable stove to make us

2031
03:24:52,719 --> 03:24:58,760
some coffee. More Camilla and Rog
got the samples soil, water, vegetation

2032
03:24:58,399 --> 03:25:05,879
more kind. Still nothing, said
Camilla, poking around the moss of their

2033
03:25:05,879 --> 03:25:13,719
feet. No short run. Cloudberries, Roger added, right, cloudberries all

2034
03:25:13,840 --> 03:25:20,319
gone? Is that strange, I
asked, sort of reindeer, Usually don't

2035
03:25:20,319 --> 03:25:26,559
go this far out. We finished
up and moved to side three. We

2036
03:25:26,559 --> 03:25:31,840
were finished just after dinner time.
We had a few more hours until sunset,

2037
03:25:33,680 --> 03:25:39,040
so we decided to move north.
Camilla and Helena had mapped out of

2038
03:25:39,079 --> 03:25:43,559
place where we could get more reliable
samples, and it'd just be a few

2039
03:25:43,600 --> 03:25:48,000
hours off the trail. There'd be
plenty of dry land to set up camp

2040
03:25:48,000 --> 03:25:54,079
as well, so it didn't mess
with our schedule too much. When we

2041
03:25:54,120 --> 03:25:58,319
stepped off the trail and left the
orange flags behind, I got this itch

2042
03:25:58,399 --> 03:26:03,440
along my spine, like I was
stepping into something out of my control.

2043
03:26:05,000 --> 03:26:13,040
Those little flags were the only trace
of civilization left. Without them, we

2044
03:26:13,040 --> 03:26:22,680
were in the deep wilds and still
no cloudberries. We set up camp around

2045
03:26:22,719 --> 03:26:28,959
eight pm. The sun was getting
low, but we had plenty of flashlights

2046
03:26:28,000 --> 03:26:33,600
with us. We changed our clothes, set up our tents, and crawled

2047
03:26:33,639 --> 03:26:39,719
into our sleeping bags. Camello read
an article on erosion, and Helena uploaded

2048
03:26:39,719 --> 03:26:45,479
the best images to Instagram. Even
now, we still had great coverage.

2049
03:26:46,879 --> 03:26:52,079
Roger has taken notes and double check
in our batteries. I twisted and turned

2050
03:26:52,200 --> 03:26:56,959
back and forth for hours, but
I just couldn't get any shut eye.

2051
03:26:58,440 --> 03:27:03,559
My eyes kept popping back up.
Long after the others were asleep, I

2052
03:27:03,719 --> 03:27:11,520
was still It was useless to keep
trying, so I decided to walk it

2053
03:27:11,600 --> 03:27:16,319
off. I stepped out of the
tent and wandered around for a while.

2054
03:27:16,479 --> 03:27:22,479
The horizon was blood red, and
the sparse trees cast long, gangled shadows

2055
03:27:22,520 --> 03:27:28,840
across the camp. The thought hit
me we'd forgotten to set up the mosquito

2056
03:27:28,959 --> 03:27:35,360
lights this place, or to be
flooded with mosquitoes. But there was nothing.

2057
03:27:37,319 --> 03:27:43,440
It was all quiet. Not a
bird, not an insect, nothing,

2058
03:27:43,719 --> 03:27:50,040
just creaking branches carefully swaying in the
wind. Compared to what we'd felt

2059
03:27:50,120 --> 03:27:58,959
when we first stepped into the mire, this was dead. It was almost

2060
03:28:00,159 --> 03:28:07,360
midnight when I saw something in the
distance. There was this long stretch of

2061
03:28:07,520 --> 03:28:11,959
ankle deep moss water next to our
campsite. I'd looked out across it for

2062
03:28:13,000 --> 03:28:18,360
at least ten minutes before I realized
that one of the trees wasn't a tree.

2063
03:28:20,200 --> 03:28:26,479
It was a reindeer. The thing
had been standing perfectly still, not

2064
03:28:26,600 --> 03:28:33,559
even moving its head, and mistaken
its auntless for branches. I sat there

2065
03:28:33,879 --> 03:28:37,760
looking at it for at least half
an hour, and in all that time

2066
03:28:39,600 --> 03:28:43,600
it didn't move a muscle, not
a twitch of the neck, nothing,

2067
03:28:46,399 --> 03:28:52,680
never seeing anything like it. Eventually
I got back in my tent. I

2068
03:28:52,799 --> 03:29:01,399
barely got any sleep. The reindeer
was gone by morning. I told Chamella

2069
03:29:01,479 --> 03:29:07,040
about it, and she insisted that
they were skittish creatures, they'd stay away

2070
03:29:07,079 --> 03:29:13,959
from us. Maybe it was just
curious. We got the extra samples early

2071
03:29:13,000 --> 03:29:18,600
in the morning and started to move
east towards our main route. By then

2072
03:29:20,120 --> 03:29:24,559
we all had soggy feet in a
sour mood. Chamella and Roch had a

2073
03:29:24,600 --> 03:29:31,719
long and intense discussion about the persevation
efforts and eregulations, while Helena kept stopping

2074
03:29:31,719 --> 03:29:39,760
to take pictures. Around nine am, we all heard something in the distance.

2075
03:29:41,239 --> 03:29:46,639
The discussion died down as we all
tilted our heads and listened. At

2076
03:29:46,639 --> 03:29:52,760
first I thought it was a wounded
animal. There was this rising and falling

2077
03:29:52,840 --> 03:29:58,559
squeak, like a big bird call. It took us a few seconds to

2078
03:29:58,639 --> 03:30:07,120
REALI eyes that it was a person, a monotone scream, over and over,

2079
03:30:07,200 --> 03:30:15,440
the exact same pitch and tone,
This desperate, heartwrenching death scream.

2080
03:30:16,040 --> 03:30:22,200
Help, said Helena. Someone's calling
for help. We so goed back and

2081
03:30:22,280 --> 03:30:26,840
tried to locate the sound, but
it just seemed to get fainter and fainter,

2082
03:30:28,799 --> 03:30:33,159
as if whoever called for us moved
further away. We tried yelling back,

2083
03:30:33,680 --> 03:30:39,000
but they didn't seem to get any
closer. After about half an hour,

2084
03:30:39,680 --> 03:30:46,040
we couldn't hear them anymore. Roger
was visibly shaken, his cheeks flushed

2085
03:30:46,079 --> 03:30:52,399
a nice watery We were all a
bit uneasy about it. Camilla tried to

2086
03:30:52,399 --> 03:30:56,680
make sense of it, saying it
might have been an animal, but we

2087
03:30:56,719 --> 03:31:03,440
couldn't figure out which one. Still, it had to be an animal,

2088
03:31:03,319 --> 03:31:09,040
had to be. As we made
our way to sight four, we shared

2089
03:31:09,040 --> 03:31:13,639
our thoughts. There were a lot
of things out there that didn't add up.

2090
03:31:15,840 --> 03:31:20,680
No birds, no insects, no
animal droppings or markings. It fell

2091
03:31:20,719 --> 03:31:26,559
off. We found our way back
to the main route with the orange flags

2092
03:31:28,760 --> 03:31:35,799
following them. We spotted something that
would come to haunt us forever. On

2093
03:31:35,959 --> 03:31:43,120
the path ahead was this large,
overarching tree, much larger than others in

2094
03:31:43,159 --> 03:31:50,399
the area, and from the tree
hung no less than four reindeer carcasses.

2095
03:31:52,719 --> 03:31:58,719
They were seemingly placed there. The
antlers tangled into the branches, dry and

2096
03:32:00,000 --> 03:32:05,159
added flesh, dangled like sick fruit. Who's gently tapping against one another in

2097
03:32:05,200 --> 03:32:11,680
the mild breeze like a nightmare wind
chime. Helena put away a phone and

2098
03:32:11,799 --> 03:32:18,479
Camilla stared slight jorde. Rog looked
at me for reassurance, but I had

2099
03:32:18,559 --> 03:32:24,600
none to give. Camilla tried to
say something, but lost the words along

2100
03:32:24,639 --> 03:32:33,920
the way. Composing herself, she
gave it another try. Sometimes the bears

2101
03:32:33,799 --> 03:32:41,319
they hide their prey. This isn't
hiding, said Rog, this is full

2102
03:32:41,399 --> 03:32:50,600
display. I don't know what to
tell you. We looked around, spotting

2103
03:32:50,680 --> 03:32:58,799
strange markings in the bark, mostly
hoof marks, but also something else.

2104
03:33:01,360 --> 03:33:05,639
We were all shaken after seeing it. It haunted me. I could almost

2105
03:33:05,639 --> 03:33:11,799
imagine hearing the dead hoofs if I
stopped to listen. Helena had gotten a

2106
03:33:11,879 --> 03:33:16,760
phone back out and didn't look up
from it. We got the sight four

2107
03:33:16,879 --> 03:33:22,639
at one pm, saying procedure as
always, Camilla and Rug got the samples.

2108
03:33:24,159 --> 03:33:28,479
Helena took notes, I catalog and
stored it. We had a late

2109
03:33:28,600 --> 03:33:35,520
lunch but couldn't find anywhere to set
up the kitchen to make coffee. We

2110
03:33:35,520 --> 03:33:39,920
were going deeper. We were going
into the deeper Miya, and dry land

2111
03:33:41,040 --> 03:33:46,200
was getting sparse. Following the orange
flags, we had to stop several times

2112
03:33:46,239 --> 03:33:52,000
to navigate. We were coming up
and what should be a large lake,

2113
03:33:52,079 --> 03:33:58,319
but there was nothing there, a
slope into more moss with no trees,

2114
03:33:58,520 --> 03:34:05,120
if any thing. It looked like
the water had been drained. Helena took

2115
03:34:05,159 --> 03:34:09,680
some pictures, but Camilla was convinced
we were off track. There was no

2116
03:34:09,719 --> 03:34:13,959
way a lake would disappear on its
own. We had to be going the

2117
03:34:15,000 --> 03:34:20,120
wrong way, no matter what the
sat nav was telling us. Still,

2118
03:34:20,360 --> 03:34:26,680
we followed the flags and just past
two pm we got to this enormous open

2119
03:34:26,760 --> 03:34:33,000
space with a tree spread out.
We could see for miles ahead, and

2120
03:34:33,200 --> 03:34:43,239
somewhere out there we heard it again, someone calling for help, the same

2121
03:34:43,399 --> 03:34:48,920
monotone scream, the same pitch.
This time, we didn't call back.

2122
03:34:50,360 --> 03:34:58,079
Instead, we just stood there listening. We identified at least two sources,

2123
03:34:58,120 --> 03:35:03,079
one to the north east and one
to our west. The screams were coming

2124
03:35:03,120 --> 03:35:09,360
from two different directions. It has
to be a bird, said Camilla,

2125
03:35:09,680 --> 03:35:15,200
A mating Callaura. That's not a
damn bird, whispered Helena. That's a

2126
03:35:15,280 --> 03:35:20,959
person. What's more likely, Helena
asked Camilla, a pair of identical twins

2127
03:35:20,000 --> 03:35:24,600
are following us and calling out to
us, or that we're hearing the echoes

2128
03:35:24,600 --> 03:35:28,879
of a nesting bird. I don't
think anyone here is an ornithologist, said

2129
03:35:30,000 --> 03:35:33,559
Roger. So we can't tell for
sure, but yeah, I don't think

2130
03:35:33,600 --> 03:35:39,959
that's a person. It's saying help. Birds can't pronounce L or P,

2131
03:35:41,120 --> 03:35:46,360
say what you want, but that's
something else. We went through site five

2132
03:35:46,760 --> 03:35:52,879
and stopped for the night. Halfway
to Site six, I was getting nervous.

2133
03:35:52,920 --> 03:35:58,079
I kept imagining that repeated call for
help out in the maya. I

2134
03:35:58,159 --> 03:36:03,479
thought I saw her as among the
dead trees A few times. I was

2135
03:36:03,520 --> 03:36:09,879
getting paranoid. Side six was our
furthest point before we started to circle back.

2136
03:36:11,879 --> 03:36:18,520
But this was dangerous territory. One
sprained ankle could mean aboating this whole

2137
03:36:18,600 --> 03:36:24,079
expedition. The orange flags had stopped
some time ago. They didn't reach across

2138
03:36:24,120 --> 03:36:31,520
our whole route. We were on
our own from this point forward. Camilla

2139
03:36:31,719 --> 03:36:35,200
was confident, though, and with
only three more sites, to go.

2140
03:36:35,920 --> 03:36:41,360
We were ahead of schedule. There
was barely enough dry land for us to

2141
03:36:41,440 --> 03:36:46,479
set up our tents, but we
made it work. The ground was moist

2142
03:36:46,520 --> 03:36:50,840
and I had a puddle of something
cold next to my feet. It was

2143
03:36:50,920 --> 03:36:56,840
uncomfortable, to say the least.
I collapsed into an uneasy but welcome sleep.

2144
03:37:05,920 --> 03:37:09,799
Rog gently shook me awake sometime in
the middle of the night. He

2145
03:37:09,879 --> 03:37:13,920
held a finger to his lips and
motioned his hand to his ear, as

2146
03:37:13,920 --> 03:37:22,040
if telling me to listen. There
was that scream again, and it was

2147
03:37:22,159 --> 03:37:28,760
much closer. I dressed myself and
got out of the tent. Camilla and

2148
03:37:28,840 --> 03:37:35,079
Helena were already up. We all
huddled together at the edge of our camp,

2149
03:37:35,600 --> 03:37:39,719
looking out across the Miya. It
was too dark to see, but

2150
03:37:39,840 --> 03:37:46,559
the screamer couldn't be far off.
Camilla held up a flashlight and gave us

2151
03:37:46,559 --> 03:37:52,200
a nod. We nodded back.
We had to see what this thing was.

2152
03:37:54,000 --> 03:38:01,040
She turned on the flashlight. There
are a dozen reindeer about sixty feet

2153
03:38:01,040 --> 03:38:07,719
ahead of us, all standing at
the exact same angle, looking directly at

2154
03:38:07,799 --> 03:38:16,040
us, no one blinking, moving
or recoiling from the light. We all

2155
03:38:16,120 --> 03:38:22,280
froze, not wanting to make any
sudden movement. These was supposed to be

2156
03:38:22,360 --> 03:38:28,959
timid woodland creatures, but something was
off. One of them slightly opened his

2157
03:38:30,159 --> 03:38:41,239
mouth, stared at us, and
called out a perfectly human help. Helena

2158
03:38:41,399 --> 03:38:46,520
covered a mouth, holding back a
scream. The reindeer one by one called

2159
03:38:46,559 --> 03:38:52,719
out to us, all with the
same mechanical movements, an identical voice.

2160
03:38:54,399 --> 03:39:03,840
Help. It was eerie. Roge
decided enough was enough and got up.

2161
03:39:03,719 --> 03:39:07,840
He tried to make himself big,
stretching out his arms and waving them up

2162
03:39:07,840 --> 03:39:13,239
and down. He huffed and yelled, trying to scare them off. They

2163
03:39:13,239 --> 03:39:18,479
didn't react in the slightest, that
is, until the reindeer at the very

2164
03:39:18,559 --> 03:39:24,959
front turned its head to look directly
at him. It slowly raised his front

2165
03:39:26,040 --> 03:39:33,600
legs and leaned back. In a
matter of seconds, it was standing upright

2166
03:39:33,360 --> 03:39:39,280
like a human. The others coalesced
around it, circling like a school of

2167
03:39:39,360 --> 03:39:48,360
shark. All was screaming out over
and over calling for help. Don't provoke

2168
03:39:48,440 --> 03:39:54,120
it, whispered Camilla. They're sick, they look sick. We should go,

2169
03:39:54,719 --> 03:40:03,840
said Helena right now. No one
argued Camilla stood guard well. The

2170
03:40:03,920 --> 03:40:07,280
rest of us packed up as quickly
as possible, all to the sound of

2171
03:40:07,440 --> 03:40:13,399
constant screams for help. We were
sloppy, but considering the panic I had

2172
03:40:13,440 --> 03:40:18,399
building in my chest, it was
a miracle we got anything at all.

2173
03:40:20,040 --> 03:40:24,200
Roger and I were halfway through stuffing
the tent into its bag when we heard

2174
03:40:24,239 --> 03:40:31,559
something movement in the woods. Another
scream for help, this time from the

2175
03:40:31,600 --> 03:40:39,000
west. Roge got another flashlight and
checked it out. As he turned it

2176
03:40:39,040 --> 03:40:45,239
on, I could see a dozen
more eyes looking back at us. They

2177
03:40:45,280 --> 03:40:54,680
were much much closer. They were
everywhere, gasped Roge. It's a herd,

2178
03:40:54,280 --> 03:41:00,760
said Helena. They Sammy, They
used to move herds through. She

2179
03:41:00,920 --> 03:41:05,159
was interrupted by another scream, this
one by a reindeer right next to us,

2180
03:41:05,600 --> 03:41:11,000
within arm's reach of Camilla, but
the scream was lower, drawn out

2181
03:41:11,639 --> 03:41:18,760
and much clearer. The upright deer
in the middle of the mire was still

2182
03:41:18,840 --> 03:41:24,920
standing there, staring at us.
As the scream died down, we all

2183
03:41:24,959 --> 03:41:30,319
held our breaths. No one wanted
to move, no one wanted to act.

2184
03:41:31,319 --> 03:41:35,399
It all hung on a threadbare balance, and anything could tip The scales.

2185
03:41:37,079 --> 03:41:43,840
Hoofs came trembling through camp, these
massive three hundred pound creatures, running

2186
03:41:43,879 --> 03:41:50,000
completely wild, knocking into one another, crashing through bushes, running head first

2187
03:41:50,079 --> 03:41:56,040
into trees, stumbling over rocks and
roots. They were like frenzied sharks,

2188
03:41:56,239 --> 03:42:01,959
smelling blood in the air. One
of the reindeer reared up and bore down

2189
03:42:01,000 --> 03:42:07,840
and cambilla over and over again.
I could hear a chest snap as all

2190
03:42:07,959 --> 03:42:13,639
air was pressed from her lungs.
A flashlight tumbled out of her hands,

2191
03:42:13,200 --> 03:42:20,399
rolled into the mossy water, and
was swallowed by the dark. Raj took

2192
03:42:20,399 --> 03:42:24,319
off running but didn't get far.
One of them bit into his arm as

2193
03:42:24,319 --> 03:42:30,440
he tried to get past, sending
him reeling onto the ground. From there

2194
03:42:30,719 --> 03:42:35,719
they had no trouble, pounding him
into a pulb heavy hoofs, breaking bones

2195
03:42:35,040 --> 03:42:43,159
like they would dry past her.
It was absolutely, dreadfully morbid. I

2196
03:42:43,280 --> 03:42:48,879
crawled on all fours, trying to
keep out of sight. There were so

2197
03:42:48,959 --> 03:42:52,360
many of them, but they only
seemed to attack what was directly ahead of

2198
03:42:52,399 --> 03:42:58,479
them. Still, one might stumble
over me and decide to kill me,

2199
03:42:58,600 --> 03:43:03,719
but I was running out of options. I kept to the ground and moved

2200
03:43:03,799 --> 03:43:09,600
slowly, my hands sinking into the
inch deep moss, the ice cold water

2201
03:43:09,799 --> 03:43:16,840
floating to the surface. My veins
ached there was screaming all around me,

2202
03:43:16,520 --> 03:43:24,040
and somewhere in the torrent of whales, both Rog and Camilla had gone silent.

2203
03:43:24,719 --> 03:43:30,159
One of them almost tripped over me, given me a mild kick to

2204
03:43:30,239 --> 03:43:35,639
the chest. I say mild only
because it didn't kill me, but I'm

2205
03:43:35,639 --> 03:43:41,760
pretty sure it bruised a couple of
ribs. Another stepped to my thigh,

2206
03:43:41,920 --> 03:43:48,079
ripping open a two inch long cut
along the side. Still, little by

2207
03:43:48,159 --> 03:43:56,360
little, I made it out.
I kept going forward, no matter the

2208
03:43:56,440 --> 03:44:03,600
sound, no matter the pain,
I kept going. As the sun rose,

2209
03:44:03,239 --> 03:44:07,959
I couldn't hear them anymore. I'd
collapsed in the moss, panting.

2210
03:44:09,120 --> 03:44:13,200
I could just run a marathon.
There were no songbirds, no insects,

2211
03:44:13,639 --> 03:44:22,280
nothing, just me, the sun
and the Miya. I used the elastic

2212
03:44:22,319 --> 03:44:26,879
band from my underwear to make a
mateshift bandage, using dry moss from a

2213
03:44:26,879 --> 03:44:31,959
tree to soak up the blood.
It wasn't a deep cut, but it

2214
03:44:31,040 --> 03:44:37,639
could easily get infected. I could
still stand, but I felt this sting

2215
03:44:37,680 --> 03:44:41,360
of pain in my chest. With
every breath I took, I could see

2216
03:44:41,399 --> 03:44:48,120
a deep bruise forming, going straight
from blue to a reddish purple. I

2217
03:44:48,159 --> 03:44:52,399
was lost. I was in the
middle of nowhere with little to no equipment.

2218
03:44:54,680 --> 03:45:01,399
I've never been so freaked out in
my entire life. I screamed and

2219
03:45:01,440 --> 03:45:05,799
cried. I don't know for how
long. One moment I wanted to lie

2220
03:45:05,840 --> 03:45:11,360
down and just wait for someone to
find me. The next I wanted to

2221
03:45:11,440 --> 03:45:20,200
run blindly straight ahead. After a
while, I composed myself. I thought

2222
03:45:20,280 --> 03:45:24,319
about what I'd learned about the area
and what I'd seen. I knew there

2223
03:45:24,360 --> 03:45:28,440
were flags put up along safe roots. I could also use the sun to

2224
03:45:28,559 --> 03:45:35,799
navigate. If I went straight southwest, I should stumble upon flags again.

2225
03:45:37,040 --> 03:45:41,239
From there, I'd just had to
follow them. I'd either pop back out

2226
03:45:41,239 --> 03:45:46,399
where we started or on the other
side of the wet lands. Still,

2227
03:45:46,920 --> 03:45:50,799
neither way would be a long walk, and there were no guarantees that I'd

2228
03:45:50,799 --> 03:45:58,200
make it, but I had to
try. I tried not to think,

2229
03:45:58,639 --> 03:46:03,920
not to reflect. I focused on
the road ahead and the position of the

2230
03:46:03,959 --> 03:46:11,280
sun. Everything else was secondary.
But every flash of what happened that night

2231
03:46:11,639 --> 03:46:18,760
felt like a cut in my stomach, the way Camilla's flashlight disappeared, Roger's

2232
03:46:18,799 --> 03:46:26,000
screamed with our first bite. The
only one I couldn't account for was Helena.

2233
03:46:26,159 --> 03:46:30,920
I hoped against hope that she got
out, that she had the same

2234
03:46:30,959 --> 03:46:35,280
idea as me. Maybe I'd meet
her down the line. If not,

2235
03:46:35,760 --> 03:46:41,639
I could tell the police there was
at least one person unaccounted for. They'd

2236
03:46:41,639 --> 03:46:46,479
have to send a rescue party.
I must have walked for hours. It

2237
03:46:46,639 --> 03:46:52,159
is surreal to walk in a space
where all you hear is yourself. There's

2238
03:46:52,239 --> 03:46:58,360
usually some sort of external sound,
a cart passing by, a squawking bird,

2239
03:46:58,559 --> 03:47:05,159
a humming motor, something somewhere off
in the distance. Out there,

2240
03:47:07,239 --> 03:47:13,920
there was nothing, just the ever
present crackling sound of dry branches snapping under

2241
03:47:13,959 --> 03:47:20,280
my heels. As I limped forward, step by step, I lost all

2242
03:47:20,479 --> 03:47:26,639
concept of time and swayed back and
forth between single minded purpose and scatter brain

2243
03:47:26,719 --> 03:47:37,399
despair. But in a moment of
clarity, I stopped to listen the screams

2244
03:47:37,440 --> 03:47:43,840
again. They were ahead of me, so they weren't following me. They

2245
03:47:43,840 --> 03:47:48,200
were merely in the area. I
flinched as I saw branches moving the wind.

2246
03:47:50,159 --> 03:47:54,600
I rept our brain thought they were
antlers. I hunker down and listened,

2247
03:47:58,159 --> 03:48:03,639
Helena. This scream wasn't like the
others. It wasn't the same sound

2248
03:48:03,799 --> 03:48:11,440
over and over. They were different
and irregular. She wasn't screaming for help,

2249
03:48:11,479 --> 03:48:18,719
but in pain. She was alive. Now I had two choices.

2250
03:48:20,879 --> 03:48:24,920
I could try and keep moving until
I found the flags and just hope to

2251
03:48:24,920 --> 03:48:28,879
get out somehow. Or I could
try to find Helena and her things.

2252
03:48:30,840 --> 03:48:35,719
She had the sat nerve last time
I checked. It was a battle between

2253
03:48:35,719 --> 03:48:41,360
my instinct and my reasoning. I'd
be putting myself in danger either way.

2254
03:48:41,399 --> 03:48:48,280
But if I could help her,
I had to try. At the very

2255
03:48:48,360 --> 03:48:54,559
least, I could try fetch some
supplies. I followed Helena's screaming. She

2256
03:48:54,719 --> 03:49:01,040
was heading straight north, deeper into
the Maya. She was on the move,

2257
03:49:01,600 --> 03:49:07,879
slowly but surely. I measured the
distance. After a while, she

2258
03:49:07,920 --> 03:49:15,319
stopped screaming. I figured she passed
out. It took me about an hour

2259
03:49:15,399 --> 03:49:20,920
of searching before I found something.
There was a young tree that had been

2260
03:49:20,959 --> 03:49:24,479
stripped of leaves and covered in blood, like someone had grabbed the bottom of

2261
03:49:24,520 --> 03:49:31,159
it and dragged the hand along it. There were clear red stains across the

2262
03:49:31,239 --> 03:49:37,719
leaves. There was no trail to
follow, but I could hear something moving

2263
03:49:37,760 --> 03:49:46,879
to the north, maybe more reindeer, maybe Helena. The ground started to

2264
03:49:46,879 --> 03:49:52,399
get muddy. They were algae and
reeds drying in the sun. I could

2265
03:49:52,399 --> 03:49:58,079
hear screaming in the distance, not
like Helena, not like a person,

2266
03:49:58,239 --> 03:50:03,799
just those each us, pretending to
be people. But there were more of

2267
03:50:03,840 --> 03:50:11,000
them now, so many more.
I could hear dozens of them screaming back

2268
03:50:11,000 --> 03:50:18,079
and forth, screaming for help.
I pushed on. I had to see

2269
03:50:18,360 --> 03:50:24,959
to know there was something up ahead, and I needed answers. There was

2270
03:50:26,000 --> 03:50:31,120
a small hill, and after that
a sudden drop. I crouched at the

2271
03:50:31,239 --> 03:50:39,879
edge, looking down. There was
this dried out lake with a deep crack

2272
03:50:39,879 --> 03:50:45,159
in the ground going down the middle, revealing parts of a dark underground cave

2273
03:50:45,520 --> 03:50:50,520
through the mud and debris. I
could smell the moss drying in the sun.

2274
03:50:50,719 --> 03:50:54,399
It must have been midday by then, and the sun was casting harsh

2275
03:50:54,440 --> 03:51:03,280
shadows across the miya. There were
one hundreds of reindeer, hundreds, some

2276
03:51:03,479 --> 03:51:09,120
standing up, others shuffling along on
all fours, all moving in a circle

2277
03:51:09,239 --> 03:51:16,040
around the crack in the ground where
something massive moved. Some of the reindeer

2278
03:51:16,079 --> 03:51:20,319
were dragging things along, pieces of
flesh, dead birds, and fish.

2279
03:51:20,479 --> 03:51:24,920
I could have sworn one of them
was dragging parts of Camilla's tent. They

2280
03:51:24,920 --> 03:51:30,680
were neatly lined up and took turns, dumping whatever price they had into the

2281
03:51:30,760 --> 03:51:35,440
crevice. Those who had nothing to
contribute stayed on the sidelines, eating.

2282
03:51:37,600 --> 03:51:43,680
Everything looked so different in this light. I could have sworn most of the

2283
03:51:43,799 --> 03:51:50,719
moss and flowers they ate looked strangely
blue. And there among the debris was

2284
03:51:50,799 --> 03:51:58,520
Helena. Her unconscious body was being
unceremoniously dragged to the mud and dumped in

2285
03:51:58,559 --> 03:52:03,079
front of the crevice. I could
see her head moving, struggling to regain

2286
03:52:03,120 --> 03:52:09,360
consciousness. I could hear a mouth
moving, but there was no way to

2287
03:52:09,399 --> 03:52:15,879
hear her over the wailing screams of
the creatures. But for a short moment,

2288
03:52:16,239 --> 03:52:22,200
I could have sworn she saw me, just a moment of recognition.

2289
03:52:24,040 --> 03:52:30,440
Then, without a sound, something
emerged from the crevice, A long,

2290
03:52:31,000 --> 03:52:35,600
bone, white hand, large enough
to wrap its fingers across a chest,

2291
03:52:35,559 --> 03:52:43,920
carefully dragging her into the dark.
For a moment, the reindeer got quiet.

2292
03:52:46,120 --> 03:52:52,239
An awful crunch echoed through the makeshift
clearing, and seconds later the reindeer

2293
03:52:52,600 --> 03:53:01,920
made a new sound, this time
in Helena's voice, tired, barely conscious

2294
03:53:01,000 --> 03:53:11,120
voice. Calm down, it said, help me. These four words were

2295
03:53:11,159 --> 03:53:18,559
repeated over and over by all of
them in her voice, in all constellations

2296
03:53:18,559 --> 03:53:26,559
and combinations. Come help, help, come down, help help down.

2297
03:53:28,840 --> 03:53:35,719
The horrid screams replaced by a dying
whisper, a whisper intended for me.

2298
03:53:39,639 --> 03:53:45,239
I was too afraid to move.
I stayed there, looking down. Every

2299
03:53:45,239 --> 03:53:50,520
now and then, that large bone
white arm would emerge, sometimes to put

2300
03:53:50,559 --> 03:53:54,040
away something inedible, sometimes the grab
hole of a reindeer, to drag it

2301
03:53:54,120 --> 03:53:58,760
into the deep. At one point, a white finger touched the forehead of

2302
03:53:58,799 --> 03:54:03,879
a reindeer, making it stand up
on its hind legs like a humanoid.

2303
03:54:05,000 --> 03:54:09,000
Those who stood up seemed to be
of great importance, and the others circled

2304
03:54:09,040 --> 03:54:15,559
them. But there was no one
to save, and there was nothing left

2305
03:54:15,639 --> 03:54:20,639
for me to gather. Or that
was left was for me to leave and

2306
03:54:20,840 --> 03:54:28,520
never look back. I kept going
south. Every now and then i'd hear

2307
03:54:28,559 --> 03:54:35,799
them, a whisper of come help
me, making its way through the sparse

2308
03:54:35,920 --> 03:54:43,840
vegetation. Come help me. These
things were everywhere, and they were looking

2309
03:54:43,879 --> 03:54:50,719
for me. Reindeer have a great
sense of smell, so I took a

2310
03:54:50,760 --> 03:54:56,079
short dip in stale lake water to
hide my smell. My leg would definitely

2311
03:54:56,079 --> 03:55:03,479
get infected. A to my way
through the undergrowth, stopping only to listen

2312
03:55:03,520 --> 03:55:09,399
for clues and what paths to avoid. By nightfall, I still hadn't found

2313
03:55:09,440 --> 03:55:15,680
any flags. My leg was in
such a burning pain that I couldn't lean

2314
03:55:15,719 --> 03:55:20,040
on it anymore, and my muscles
ached. I was constantly out of breath,

2315
03:55:20,639 --> 03:55:26,639
not wanting to draw too much air
into my lungs, but I had

2316
03:55:26,680 --> 03:55:30,920
to keep going. There was a
good chance that I'd die out there if

2317
03:55:30,920 --> 03:55:35,959
I had to spend the night in
the open, temperatures could easily dip into

2318
03:55:35,040 --> 03:55:43,120
freezing. Once the blood red sunset
started to gleam in the distance, I

2319
03:55:43,239 --> 03:55:48,719
knew I was short on time.
My hands were shaking and I could barely

2320
03:55:48,799 --> 03:55:54,159
stand. I could barely move Everything
in me wanted to just sit down and

2321
03:55:54,280 --> 03:56:00,040
hope for everything to be okay in
the morning. It was so easy to

2322
03:56:00,360 --> 03:56:09,920
trick myself into doing so, but
I just kept going. I stopped there

2323
03:56:09,000 --> 03:56:15,440
was something up ahead. I caught
a glimpse of eyes reflecting the setting sun.

2324
03:56:16,879 --> 03:56:22,159
For a moment they locked onto me, and a second later it burst

2325
03:56:22,479 --> 03:56:30,479
into a sprint. I thought I
was done for I had no fight left

2326
03:56:30,479 --> 03:56:33,280
in me. I turned to run, but I only made it a few

2327
03:56:33,319 --> 03:56:41,719
steps before I tripped. Then a
gunshot. The reindeer collapsed next to me,

2328
03:56:43,559 --> 03:56:50,520
whose big black eyes meeting mine.
It struggled to breathe help me,

2329
03:56:50,600 --> 03:57:00,879
and whispered in Helena's voice, come
down, come help me. Didn't understand

2330
03:57:00,920 --> 03:57:07,559
what it was saying. It was
just noise. But there was something there,

2331
03:57:07,760 --> 03:57:13,840
And as that reindeer opened its mouth
to speak again, I caught a

2332
03:57:13,879 --> 03:57:20,239
glimpse of it, something thin and
bone white, lingering far down its throat,

2333
03:57:20,399 --> 03:57:28,680
something vaguely humanoid. A second pair
of eyes looking up, Then another

2334
03:57:28,719 --> 03:57:35,719
gunshot. I was blinded by a
flashlight. There were three men, all

2335
03:57:35,840 --> 03:57:41,319
speaking Swedish, all dressed in some
kind of logging company jackets with trucker caps.

2336
03:57:43,440 --> 03:57:48,200
They all had these yellow reflective vests
on them. I told them I

2337
03:57:48,239 --> 03:57:54,920
didn't understand, and they changed the
heavily accented English, British, American.

2338
03:57:54,440 --> 03:58:01,680
One of them masked American. I
said, we there was I attack.

2339
03:58:03,120 --> 03:58:07,120
Yes, they attack, He nodded, we know, we know. Come.

2340
03:58:11,120 --> 03:58:15,399
The three men dragged the reindeer away, tied a rope around his antlers,

2341
03:58:16,040 --> 03:58:20,680
and made a great effort to hoist
it up and nearby tree, just

2342
03:58:20,840 --> 03:58:26,600
like the tree I'd seen with the
others just days prior. Keeps them here,

2343
03:58:26,319 --> 03:58:33,680
said the man who helped me.
Makes a good uns border. Like

2344
03:58:33,799 --> 03:58:37,200
a warning. I added, yes, like a warning. He nodded.

2345
03:58:37,600 --> 03:58:43,520
They understand. We looked up at
the dead body hanging from the tree.

2346
03:58:45,799 --> 03:58:52,040
They smarter here no more. I
was taken back to the base camp,

2347
03:58:54,319 --> 03:59:00,600
about eight people living in caravans.
They gave me fresh clothes, hot dogs,

2348
03:59:00,719 --> 03:59:05,600
beer, and warned me up by
the fire. They disinfected my thigh

2349
03:59:05,639 --> 03:59:09,959
and stitched me up while I tried
to sleep off my upcoming fever. They

2350
03:59:11,000 --> 03:59:16,319
called the police and the embassy in
Stockholm, and the next day I was

2351
03:59:16,360 --> 03:59:24,520
on a plane back to the States
like nothing ever happened. The aftermath that

2352
03:59:24,600 --> 03:59:33,040
has been pretty much nothing. It
was classified as an animal attack and dismissed.

2353
03:59:33,239 --> 03:59:37,879
I talked to a few people from
the AWC about it, and they

2354
03:59:37,920 --> 03:59:45,840
called it a sincerely regretful incident and
asked me to remain discreet as to not

2355
03:59:45,959 --> 03:59:52,440
discourage future climate change studies. The
AWC still operate in the area. By

2356
03:59:52,440 --> 03:59:56,959
the way, I've gotten no answers
as to what they've done with the soil

2357
03:59:56,000 --> 04:00:01,280
samples, or if they ever looked
into what I saw in the Maya.

2358
04:00:03,360 --> 04:00:09,879
All I know is that no one
wants me to talk about it. The

2359
04:00:09,959 --> 04:00:15,360
only people have gotten answers from with
the hunters. They were eager to share

2360
04:00:15,399 --> 04:00:22,159
their stories, claiming that the government
refuses to listen. I'm still in email

2361
04:00:22,200 --> 04:00:28,959
contact with some of them, and
there's a lot to unpack. But in

2362
04:00:30,040 --> 04:00:35,959
short, there was a quake in
the Maya. Something came out of the

2363
04:00:35,040 --> 04:00:41,680
lake. It did something to the
wildlife in the area. It stole hundreds

2364
04:00:41,680 --> 04:00:46,239
of reindeer from local Sammi herds.
It seems to be expanding, stopped only

2365
04:00:46,319 --> 04:00:58,239
where it finds immediate and violent resistance, and over time it seems to learn