Following a production by r point of this episode contains depictions of drug use a second oil. Someone told me once that history is a spiral, a vortex, the shell of a vaulted nautilus. It has a beginning, it has an end, it has a shape. There's an impression of narrowing. I'll tell you what happened. This is where I entered the spiral. Gladious class sub automated. The Udex Oil Company uses them to relay cargo between the surface and their deep grid stations on the ocean floor. Sometimes they haul garbage, a maintenance team or in this case me. My name is sinove Pan. They sent me down to Atlas Station to find a missing person. I found something else. In the subs cramped modular cabin. I bowed my head in the sink and let the tap batter my skull as hot and violent as the sub's plumbing allowed. It numbed my mind. It held me over till the treatment kicked in and found its groove in the bloodstream. It began to settle my nerves. The fear melted back into something more manageable. They called it the basilisk. The black drug, an anti psychedelic of the highest order. I'd packed four applicators plus two subdermal doses that could be deployed at will, enough for a five day trip six if I rationed it out. The water dripped from my chin. A few streams ran down my neck and darkened the corners of my shirt. I turned my head and let the water hit the tattoo on my forehead, one of twelve identical symbols on my body. You dex covers everybody in my line of work with markings like this. For my protection, they said, elder signs something like a star exploding into a labyrinth. Command insisted they did the job. That's why I had them on my crown, brow, throat, chest, and on and on. Every little advantage counts. I cut the water and rubbed one of the cabin's yellowed towels over my scalp. I stepped away from the sink, suddenly lightheaded. Part of it was the heat, and part of it was the basilisk sinking its claws into my amygdala, a familiar swoon before the tightness took hold. I braced one hand against the hull and felt the rumble and groan of the sub's carapase adjusting to external pressure. It was still descending, still sinking along its terrible trajectory toward Atlas, a place that shouldn't be. My vision blurred for a moment, I could sense the enormity of the ocean, the teeming, scuttling expanses, the crushing debt. It's the distant dirge of the world's last whales, singing the song of their extinction. It was probably a hallucination. Sometimes they leak in at the peaks and pits of the black drug's influence, sounds, voices, lights. I peeled my hand away from the hall and stepped back towards the cabin's lone cot. My equipment still laid out like surgeons tools, the applicators for umbra, black throwing knives, my scrubbed communit. Suddenly I saw something movement in the steam covered sink mirror. For a second, I thought it was just a trick of the light, some flickering of the drug through my visual cortex. But there was no mistaking the intruder. Eight hours into the journey, leagues upon leagues, into the alien depths. Somehow she'd hidden on a vessel no larger than a surface tug. I moved in a heartbeat. I'd slipped two of the knives up from the cot. My fingerprints on the handles tightened the nanoparticles at the edge of the blades to sublime sharpness. I flicked my wrist and let one fly intentionally wide. It quivered in the bulkhead behind the intruder. Then I was on her. I slammed her against the bulkhead, forearm against the flesh of her throat, blade tensed to slice. I looked into her fearful eyes, and I hesitated independence, ambition, in infinite potential. The modern world offers possibilities that previous generations would only imagine. And you DEX Petroleum is proud to provide the energy for your ascension. Through the use of the deep grid system and patented Proteus well and subsea template technology, we're able to safely harvest the Earth's deepest petroleum riches without endangering ocean or inland environments. Thanks you, DEX, Thanks you X, Thank you X. You're the flame. We provide the fuel. You Dex Petroleum, Welcome to the second oil Age. If your skin is blank, are you even really fair? Where's your ink? Where's it? Don't worry about your job. Don't worry about forever. You don't have to. With graphic tattoo tech, you change your ink as often as you like, manipulating the pigment particles under your skin, and do exactly who you want to be. Tribe up with your crew, dragon sleeves for the weekend, black bars on the job. Let the crowd know if you're looking for love, looking for trouble, looking to be left alone. Your flesh is a canvas. Graphic applicators are compatible with all com unit models and graphics software. Just press all into the skin and watch it change. Master your flesh, make it graphic recreation. Graphicking technology is not compatible with graphic kings. Pro Removal of our citing tattoos is a violation of federal and international law. Yeah, it would have been easy. A stiff head butt to the bridge of our nose, disorient her just enough to drag her back into the gladious cargo bay and restrain her. Or I could have simply opened up one of her carotid arteries where we stood. The basilisks would have made it too easy. But I hesitated. Maybe it was the fear in the blonde woman's eyes. The quivering weakness in her body, and of course I needed to know. I unpinned her from the wall, pointed to the cot with the black tip of my knife. Sit, Sit, Who are you? I'm press a journalist. Your name Tabitha Veil. I write for the New Humanist, the New York doesn't matter. How do you get aboard? I stowed away in a shipment of farm tab mules. It's a big crate. We followed out of space beneath the top layer of packages. Who's we members of the Mariner's Guild. They liked my story pitch and you stumbled out? Just now? What bathroom brake? Neighborly visit? They told me the cabin was empty, there was no passenger manifest This much was true. I didn't think I'd have to get out of the crate, but my leg cramped, and well, let's have it. I have what your pitch, the one the mariners liked the whole time. The tip of my knife never wavered. I drilled into her with my eyes tight, with the drug pupils gleaming beneath the sigel on my forehead. She also had a clear view of the mark on my throat and half of the one on my sternum. They make quite a statement. The various symbols on my arms just added a little extra flare. Old fashioned ink, a dagger, a skull, a fractured world tree. I had em all from the old days before my current line of work. Veil mostly studied the floor, cast a nervous glance or two at the other knives laid out beside her on the cot, But when I asked about her work, she finally looked me in the eye. I want to bring back a first hand account of Alasta San Why. It's the biggest underwater habitat ever constructed, and nobody knows anything about it all. We've got our some schematics and a few photos of unassembled modules. Hundreds of people live and work there. It's a central hub for deep work, and we know next to nothing about the place outside what they feed us and press releases. Some call that corporate espionage. Do you I thought I was asking the questions land spoken recombined, working side by side, even representatives of the deep Myriads and the Tritons themselves. You've never been there either, have you my first visit? I smiled? This one was sharp, bolder, than I judged at first. I flipped the knife around in my palm and laid it beside the sink, then grabbed a pair of disposable plastic cups from the medicine cabinet. I want to reveal the conditions there. We all know what it's like on the surface. But if the rumors are true, Atlas is one of the few places where recombined workers have equal footing with landsfolk, shared culture, even And what can we learn from a place where a recombined person is more in tune with their environment. It won't play well with the heartland because they're so out of tune with theirs. They need it more than anyone. You've seen the conditions they enable. She was right, of course. I had seen the recombined populations of the surface, the endless sprawl of the coastal communities where the rising tide washed, the ruins of metropolis, where a swelling population teemed beneath the walls of inland governments amid those ruins, the New California Coast, the Florida Stump, Atlanta, Mumbai, guang Zoe, Gothenburg. Those were just the ones I'd seen with my own eyes. But it was the same all over a new people live at the edges of the old, a product of the bargain you dex made to save the world. It was the price of the second oil age. I walked over to my bag and pulled out a half empty bottle of whiskey. I splashed a little into each cup and held one out to her. You'll get caught, you know that. Maybe When she reached out to accept the drink, I grabbed her forearm and twisted it just enough to make out the black tattoo on the inside of her wrist, a ten character serial number starting with the letters r CEO. You're recombined. Yeah, we both took a sip of our lukewarm liquor, and you can look at these marks without flinching. If she were pure blood Triton, she'd be in convulsions. Even some recombined individuals can experience a mild episode at the sight of an elder sign. They call it the Watts effect, the tendency for certain combinations of lines and angles to induce seizures in the triton brain. Scientists claim it's some kind of photosensitive epilepsy. The legacy of a species long adapted to an undersea world in its own mysterious architecture. But then again, I've heard supernatural explanations as well. Pick your poison. I guess yeah, we're all different, you know. Part of the human condition birth is obscure, and men are like rivers whose origins are often unknown. What's that from the Mahaparata? What happens now? I'm just a passenger. They're not paying me to deal with stowaways. As long as you don't get in my way, you're not my problem. I downed the rest of my whiskey and tossed the cup in the sink. I considered dragging her into the cargo hold anyway, it would have simplified things, but we were still eighteen hours from our destination. Maybe I wanted the company, the sound of some one else's voice. I figured i'd probably hand her over once we arrived. But for now, what's your business on Atlas Station? A missing person's case? Who goes missing on the bottom of the sea, some one who should have known better. For now, she was another way to distract myself from the weight of my destination. Atlas Station, threshold of the Triton Kingdom, the bottom of the World, m M m m H. The second oil Age was produced by Robert Lamb, Alex wood S, Lauren Vogelbaum, and Josh Stank. This episode featured en Jo Masters as Sinov Pond and Lauren Vogelbaum as Tabitha Veil. Supporting voice work by Annie Reese, Matt Frederick, Ben Bolan, Alexander Williams, Alison louder Milk, and Sebastian Lamb intro outro, and supporting music created by the Weirding Module. Learn more at Modules dot band camp dot com. Music for the graphing Media segment Fourth Way by a Lith provided by King de Luxe Records. Learn more at King de Luxe dot c A form more podcasts from iart Radio, visit the irt radio app, Apple Podcasts or winning listener to your favorite shows

Following a production by r point of this episode contains depictions of drug use a second oil. Someone told me once that history is a spiral, a vortex, the shell of a vaulted nautilus. It has a beginning, it has an end, it has a shape. There's an impression of narrowing. I'll tell you what happened. This is where I entered the spiral. Gladious class sub automated. The Udex Oil Company uses them to relay cargo between the surface and their deep grid stations on the ocean floor. Sometimes they haul garbage, a maintenance team or in this case me. My name is sinove Pan. They sent me down to Atlas Station to find a missing person. I found something else. In the subs cramped modular cabin. I bowed my head in the sink and let the tap batter my skull as hot and violent as the sub's plumbing allowed. It numbed my mind. It held me over till the treatment kicked in and found its groove in the bloodstream. It began to settle my nerves. The fear melted back into something more manageable. They called it the basilisk. The black drug, an anti psychedelic of the highest order. I'd packed four applicators plus two subdermal doses that could be deployed at will, enough for a five day trip six if I rationed it out. The water dripped from my chin. A few streams ran down my neck and darkened the corners of my shirt. I turned my head and let the water hit the tattoo on my forehead, one of twelve identical symbols on my body. You dex covers everybody in my line of work with markings like this. For my protection, they said, elder signs something like a star exploding into a labyrinth. Command insisted they did the job. That's why I had them on my crown, brow, throat, chest, and on and on. Every little advantage counts. I cut the water and rubbed one of the cabin's yellowed towels over my scalp. I stepped away from the sink, suddenly lightheaded. Part of it was the heat, and part of it was the basilisk sinking its claws into my amygdala, a familiar swoon before the tightness took hold. I braced one hand against the hull and felt the rumble and groan of the sub's carapase adjusting to external pressure. It was still descending, still sinking along its terrible trajectory toward Atlas, a place that shouldn't be. My vision blurred for a moment, I could sense the enormity of the ocean, the teeming, scuttling expanses, the crushing debt. It's the distant dirge of the world's last whales, singing the song of their extinction. It was probably a hallucination. Sometimes they leak in at the peaks and pits of the black drug's influence, sounds, voices, lights. I peeled my hand away from the hall and stepped back towards the cabin's lone cot. My equipment still laid out like surgeons tools, the applicators for umbra, black throwing knives, my scrubbed communit. Suddenly I saw something movement in the steam covered sink mirror. For a second, I thought it was just a trick of the light, some flickering of the drug through my visual cortex. But there was no mistaking the intruder. Eight hours into the journey, leagues upon leagues, into the alien depths. Somehow she'd hidden on a vessel no larger than a surface tug. I moved in a heartbeat. I'd slipped two of the knives up from the cot. My fingerprints on the handles tightened the nanoparticles at the edge of the blades to sublime sharpness. I flicked my wrist and let one fly intentionally wide. It quivered in the bulkhead behind the intruder. Then I was on her. I slammed her against the bulkhead, forearm against the flesh of her throat, blade tensed to slice. I looked into her fearful eyes, and I hesitated independence, ambition, in infinite potential. The modern world offers possibilities that previous generations would only imagine. And you DEX Petroleum is proud to provide the energy for your ascension. Through the use of the deep grid system and patented Proteus well and subsea template technology, we're able to safely harvest the Earth's deepest petroleum riches without endangering ocean or inland environments. Thanks you, DEX, Thanks you X, Thank you X. You're the flame. We provide the fuel. You Dex Petroleum, Welcome to the second oil Age. If your skin is blank, are you even really fair? Where's your ink? Where's it? Don't worry about your job. Don't worry about forever. You don't have to. With graphic tattoo tech, you change your ink as often as you like, manipulating the pigment particles under your skin, and do exactly who you want to be. Tribe up with your crew, dragon sleeves for the weekend, black bars on the job. Let the crowd know if you're looking for love, looking for trouble, looking to be left alone. Your flesh is a canvas. Graphic applicators are compatible with all com unit models and graphics software. Just press all into the skin and watch it change. Master your flesh, make it graphic recreation. Graphicking technology is not compatible with graphic kings. Pro Removal of our citing tattoos is a violation of federal and international law. Yeah, it would have been easy. A stiff head butt to the bridge of our nose, disorient her just enough to drag her back into the gladious cargo bay and restrain her. Or I could have simply opened up one of her carotid arteries where we stood. The basilisks would have made it too easy. But I hesitated. Maybe it was the fear in the blonde woman's eyes. The quivering weakness in her body, and of course I needed to know. I unpinned her from the wall, pointed to the cot with the black tip of my knife. Sit, Sit, Who are you? I'm press a journalist. Your name Tabitha Veil. I write for the New Humanist, the New York doesn't matter. How do you get aboard? I stowed away in a shipment of farm tab mules. It's a big crate. We followed out of space beneath the top layer of packages. Who's we members of the Mariner's Guild. They liked my story pitch and you stumbled out? Just now? What bathroom brake? Neighborly visit? They told me the cabin was empty, there was no passenger manifest This much was true. I didn't think I'd have to get out of the crate, but my leg cramped, and well, let's have it. I have what your pitch, the one the mariners liked the whole time. The tip of my knife never wavered. I drilled into her with my eyes tight, with the drug pupils gleaming beneath the sigel on my forehead. She also had a clear view of the mark on my throat and half of the one on my sternum. They make quite a statement. The various symbols on my arms just added a little extra flare. Old fashioned ink, a dagger, a skull, a fractured world tree. I had em all from the old days before my current line of work. Veil mostly studied the floor, cast a nervous glance or two at the other knives laid out beside her on the cot, But when I asked about her work, she finally looked me in the eye. I want to bring back a first hand account of Alasta San Why. It's the biggest underwater habitat ever constructed, and nobody knows anything about it all. We've got our some schematics and a few photos of unassembled modules. Hundreds of people live and work there. It's a central hub for deep work, and we know next to nothing about the place outside what they feed us and press releases. Some call that corporate espionage. Do you I thought I was asking the questions land spoken recombined, working side by side, even representatives of the deep Myriads and the Tritons themselves. You've never been there either, have you my first visit? I smiled? This one was sharp, bolder, than I judged at first. I flipped the knife around in my palm and laid it beside the sink, then grabbed a pair of disposable plastic cups from the medicine cabinet. I want to reveal the conditions there. We all know what it's like on the surface. But if the rumors are true, Atlas is one of the few places where recombined workers have equal footing with landsfolk, shared culture, even And what can we learn from a place where a recombined person is more in tune with their environment. It won't play well with the heartland because they're so out of tune with theirs. They need it more than anyone. You've seen the conditions they enable. She was right, of course. I had seen the recombined populations of the surface, the endless sprawl of the coastal communities where the rising tide washed, the ruins of metropolis, where a swelling population teemed beneath the walls of inland governments amid those ruins, the New California Coast, the Florida Stump, Atlanta, Mumbai, guang Zoe, Gothenburg. Those were just the ones I'd seen with my own eyes. But it was the same all over a new people live at the edges of the old, a product of the bargain you dex made to save the world. It was the price of the second oil age. I walked over to my bag and pulled out a half empty bottle of whiskey. I splashed a little into each cup and held one out to her. You'll get caught, you know that. Maybe When she reached out to accept the drink, I grabbed her forearm and twisted it just enough to make out the black tattoo on the inside of her wrist, a ten character serial number starting with the letters r CEO. You're recombined. Yeah, we both took a sip of our lukewarm liquor, and you can look at these marks without flinching. If she were pure blood Triton, she'd be in convulsions. Even some recombined individuals can experience a mild episode at the sight of an elder sign. They call it the Watts effect, the tendency for certain combinations of lines and angles to induce seizures in the triton brain. Scientists claim it's some kind of photosensitive epilepsy. The legacy of a species long adapted to an undersea world in its own mysterious architecture. But then again, I've heard supernatural explanations as well. Pick your poison. I guess yeah, we're all different, you know. Part of the human condition birth is obscure, and men are like rivers whose origins are often unknown. What's that from the Mahaparata? What happens now? I'm just a passenger. They're not paying me to deal with stowaways. As long as you don't get in my way, you're not my problem. I downed the rest of my whiskey and tossed the cup in the sink. I considered dragging her into the cargo hold anyway, it would have simplified things, but we were still eighteen hours from our destination. Maybe I wanted the company, the sound of some one else's voice. I figured i'd probably hand her over once we arrived. But for now, what's your business on Atlas Station? A missing person's case? Who goes missing on the bottom of the sea, some one who should have known better. For now, she was another way to distract myself from the weight of my destination. Atlas Station, threshold of the Triton Kingdom, the bottom of the World, m M m m H. The second oil Age was produced by Robert Lamb, Alex wood S, Lauren Vogelbaum, and Josh Stank. This episode featured en Jo Masters as Sinov Pond and Lauren Vogelbaum as Tabitha Veil. Supporting voice work by Annie Reese, Matt Frederick, Ben Bolan, Alexander Williams, Alison louder Milk, and Sebastian Lamb intro outro, and supporting music created by the Weirding Module. Learn more at Modules dot band camp dot com. Music for the graphing Media segment Fourth Way by a Lith provided by King de Luxe Records. Learn more at King de Luxe dot c A form more podcasts from iart Radio, visit the irt radio app, Apple Podcasts or winning listener to your favorite shows