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Archive Sector: SOL-4

Awakening Descent Archives Observatory

Log: 0.9M AE

A Chronicle of the Eternal Giants

The Silence
of Eclipsera

After nearly a million years in stasis, the architects of a dead world return to the cradle of their creation.

Descend

Part I: The Thawing Ache

The awakening was not a sound, but a slow, thawing ache in bones of calcified light. For Xylar, First Archivist of the Eternal Giants, it began as a dream of ocean currents—the warm, psychic tides of the living Mars that had perished nine hundred thousand years before. He felt the life-song of the planet humming through the coral spires of Opsia, a symphony of a billion minds in harmony, where the very water carried the thoughts of his people like a liquid network.

The dream dissolved, note by painful note, into the cold, silver light and utter silence of the Eclipsera’s cryo-hall. He rose from his crystalline sarcophagus, his nine-foot frame unfolding with the stiffness of millennia. The intricate silver tracings on his skin—bio-luminescent tattoos that served as interfaces with the ship—glowed faintly in the dim light, pulsing with the rhythmic return of his circulatory system. Around him, in a chamber vast enough to hold a mountain, thousands of his kin were stirring. The collective hum of their reawakening minds was a slow, rising chord of confusion and ancient hope, a mental chorus echoing in the cavernous space, a resonance that vibrated through the very floor.

Their mothership, the Eclipsera, was no mere vessel of metal and wire. It was a creature of bio-luminescent alloy and woven bone, a final, living monument to their lost world. Its corridors pulsed with a soft, internal light like the bioluminescence of the deep ocean trenches it was built to mimic, and its walls were lined with "memory-veins" that stored the psychic history of their race. For an age, it had drifted in the silent dark beyond the Kuiper Belt, a ghost ship waiting for a signal that had never come, its life-support systems sustained by consuming interstellar dust and the faint radiation of distant stars. Now, its long pilgrimage was over. It had returned home, drawn by the ancient gravitational call of the sun they had once worshipped.

“Status,” Xylar projected, his thought-voice a low baritone in the minds of the bridge crew, who stood like statues of sorrow on a deck of polished obsidian. The air smelled of ozone and the sterile scent of deep-sleep chemicals.

The reply came from Lyra, the ship’s Navigator, her mind a placid lake of ancient sorrow that rippled with his query. Her eyes, large and iridescent, reflected the data-streams flowing across the hull. “We are in orbit, First Archivist. We are home. But the home we seek no longer speaks.”

Part II: The Ash of Opsia

Through the great viewport, which was less glass and more a seamless ripple in the ship’s hull, Mars awaited them. But it was not the world of their memories, not the vibrant jewel of their dreams. The great, global ocean, the cerulean cradle of their civilization that had once teemed with psychic kelp forests and singing leviathans, was gone. In its place was a silent, unending desert of red dust, pocked with the scars of dead volcanoes and craters that gaped like open graves. A suffocating psychic silence emanated from the planet, a void where a planetary consciousness had once sung. It was a silence that screamed of extinction, the absolute stillness of a world that had forgotten how to breathe.

They descended in a single, tear-shaped scout vessel, its hull shimmering as it cut through the thin, dead atmosphere. They landed where their capital, Opsia, had once risen on spires of living coral and psychic resonance, its towers catching the light of the twin moons like crystalline needles. Now, only the broken teeth of its highest structures remained, half-buried in ochre dust that shifted in the desolate wind.

Xylar stepped out onto the surface, the frigid, almost non-existent air a phantom touch against his skin. He knelt, placing a long-fingered hand against the dead earth. There was no hum, no life-song from the planetary core that had once sung them to sleep. He felt only the cold, entropic vibration of a cooling rock. He sifted the red dust through his fingers, the grains as fine as powdered blood. This was not soil; it was ash—the pulverized remains of a billion years of biology. They had slept through the death of their own hope, awakening to a graveyard that stretched from pole to pole.

The mission to find a renewed civilization became an archaeological dig of their own grave. Days turned into weeks of methodical, heartbreaking searching. They wandered the skeletal remains of their cities, where the wind whistled through empty archways like a funeral flute. They found nurseries filled with dust, libraries where the crystal data-shards had been shattered by time and radiation, and amphitheaters where the echoes of their grandest philosophies had long since faded into the static of the cosmos.

Part III: The Genetic Spirit

The truth was found not on Mars, but within the Eclipsera’s own heart—the deep archives Xylar was sworn to protect. Buried under terabytes of corrupted data from the final, cataclysmic solar flare that had boiled their oceans and stripped their atmosphere, he found a sealed testament from the last Martian Council. It was a final, desperate message, protected by layers of psychic encryption that only a First Archivist could unlock. It spoke not of renewal, but of escape—not of bodies, but of essence.

Recovered Archive Recording

“We cannot save our world. The sun has turned against us, and the core of Mars grows cold. But we can save the memory of what we were. We will not send our bodies into the void to wither. We will send our future.”

He watched the recovered recordings, ghost-images flickering in the archive’s silver light. The Elder Chancellor spoke of a final, desperate gambit: the ‘Seeding.’ Vast bio-metal arks, smaller and faster than the Eclipsera, had been launched not into the void, but toward the inner system, toward the third world—a turbulent, primitive sphere of water and rock they called ‘Terra.’

The arks carried no Giants. They carried the essence of them: fragments of their core DNA, the very architects of their life, encoded as a viral benediction designed to merge with the planet’s burgeoning primordial soup. They had not tried to conquer the world, but to join it, to whisper a piece of their song into its evolutionary choir. They had sacrificed their physical forms to ensure their genetic spirit might survive in whatever strange vessels that young world might craft.

“They sent their memories ahead,” Xylar thought, the realization a tremor that shook his soul to its foundations. “They planted a garden they would never see, using their own bones as fertilizer for a new kind of life.”

Part IV: The Third World

With a dawning sense of awe and terror, they turned the Eclipsera’s sensors toward Earth. Hidden in a silent orbit behind the Moon, a position that shielded them from the primitive but searching eyes of their descendants, they watched. They deployed cloaked micro-drones, slivers of silver that drifted through the terrestrial atmosphere like falling stars.

They saw a world teeming with a frantic, chaotic, and brilliant life. They saw continents ablaze with networks of light, like scattered constellations on a dark sea. They saw towers of steel and glass that scraped the sky, crude but ambitious echoes of their own lost citadels. And they saw the inhabitants: tiny, fragile, bipedal creatures, their forms so different, yet so hauntingly familiar in their restless energy.

The Eclipsera’s deep-scanners analyzed their biology, their genetic code. The answer came back, undeniable and profound. The fragmented DNA of the Giants was woven through them, a hidden thread of starlight in their biological tapestry. It was the spark that had guided their evolution—a silent, unseen hand nudging them toward intelligence, toward self-awareness, toward looking at the stars and wondering if they were alone. It was the source of their "imagination," that strange human ability to see what does not yet exist.

The Giants watched them, transfixed. They saw the sweep of human history in a compressed burst of data. They saw a lone figure on a desolate plain painting a memory of a hunt onto a cave wall—an echo of their own archival instinct. They heard a symphony in a cathedral, its cascading notes a faint, chaotic reverberation of the mathematical music of their own planet’s core. They watched as humans split the atom, a terrifying reflection of the power that had destroyed Mars, and they watched as they launched their own fragile metal tins into orbit, reaching back toward the world they had forgotten was their mother.

Part V: The Shadowed Vigil

A great debate, the first in millennia, began in the silent, amber-lit halls of the Eclipsera. Kael, a warrior whose mind burned with a protective fire, argued for intervention. “They are our children, lost and wandering in the dark. We can guide them, provide them with the technologies to heal their planet, and lift them from their cycles of self-destruction.”

“A duty to do what, Kael?” countered Lyra, her mind radiating a cold, clear caution. “Impose our memory upon them? Their appearance would shatter their cultures, their religions, their very sense of self. We would become their gods or their demons, but never their kin. We have no right to prune it to our liking just because we are lonely.”

Xylar remained silent for a long time, his gaze fixed on the shimmering blue marble. He saw the sprawling slums and the magnificent libraries, the wars of religion and the acts of selfless love. To make contact would be to end humanity’s childhood forever. To remain silent would be to condemn the Giants to an eternity of hidden observation, ghosts at their own descendants’ feast.

He retreated to the archives. What is the final purpose of a memory? he asked the silent ghosts around him. Not to be relived, but to be a foundation upon which new memories can be built. If a foundation becomes the whole building, there is no room for the inhabitants.

“We will not make contact,” he projected, his thought-voice resonating with the finality of a closing book. “Our time is done. We are the architects who died before the building was finished, and that is as it should be. Our civilization does not need to be reborn; it needs to be remembered. And it is—in them.”

“Look. Our drive to build is in their cities. Our love for story is in their books and films. Our curiosity is in their telescopes. They are not a failed copy of us. They are a new song, played with a few of our old notes. To interfere would be to silence them just as they are learning to sing their own chorus. We must let them be human, so that we might truly remain Giants.”

The Eternal Giants had found their immortality, not in survival, but in the enduring, unwitting memory of a species that would never know their name. They had become a myth before they were ever a memory, their elegy written in the stars, their hope alive on a world they could never touch, but would always love.

End of Archive Entry

98

The Scariest Depictions of Demons In Esoterism - YouTube

Transcripts:

Hello, welcome to Esoteric Guardian. Today we're going to discuss something that most channels covering occultism will not touch. The entities that experienced practitioners, people who have spent decades working with grimoirs and ritual systems refuse to name carelessly. And I want to clarify from the beginning.

 What we're covering comes from primary sources. Grimmooars, cabalistic manuscripts, Inoian records, apocalyptic literature, texts where these entities first appeared with one consistent warning attached. Do not approach unless you know exactly what you're doing. and even then reconsider. I spent months on this material, cross-referencing accounts from practitioners separated by centuries who could not have influenced each other, tracking down the original Latin, Hebrew, and Greek manuscripts.

 And what kept me researching and what kept me losing sleep was the same thing, the consistency. people working in completely unrelated traditions in different countries in different centuries describing encounters with almost identical characteristics. You can interpret that as shared psychological archetype.

 You can interpret it as something else. But the convergence is there and it's difficult to explain away. Subscribe to the channel, leave your thoughts in the comments and let's get into it. The first entity most people encounter in serious esoteric study is actually the one you should encounter last. Kuranzon sits at a very specific coordinate on the cabalistic tree of life.

 And the problem is that this coordinate happens to be unavoidable. Anyone pursuing the highest initiations within western esoteric tradition has to pass through what's called the abyss. the gap between the lower seven sepharoth and the superernal triad. Kuranzon guards that passage. Every spiritual tradition on earth talks about ego dissolution, transcending the self, letting go of personal identity to access something greater.

 [music] And most of those traditions describe this as a gradual supported process. teachers holding you through it, community around you, structured retreat. Coronzon is the unsupported version. The entity first appears in the Inokeian system that John D and Edward Kelly spent years constructing in the [music] 1580s. D was advising Queen Elizabeth while simultaneously running these elaborate scrying sessions with Kelly.

 And whatever else you want to say about the Enochian system, it is rigorously structured within that structure. Coronzon rules the 10th ether called Zachs and its function is specific. It disintegrates coherent consciousness not through temptation, not through fear, through pure dispersion. The breakdown of stable thought into contradictory fragments that cannot be reconciled back into anything functional.

 The most detailed account of an encounter comes from 1909 when Crowley and his assistant Victor Newberg performed a ritual invocation in the Algerian desert. They drew a triangle of invocation in the sand, established a protective circle, inscribed the names of God at every boundary, and Crowley deliberately positioned himself outside the circle to serve as the entity's vessel, while Newberg maintained the protections.

 They had prepared extensively. They knew the risks. By Crowley's own estimation, they did everything right. According to their account, Kuranzon never attacked with force. It attacked the ritual itself. The entity cycled between forms. A woman, a serpent, Newberg's own face, staring back from outside the circle, an old beggar.

 And each form spoke with perfect internal consistency, while flatly contradicting whatever the previous form had said, teaching one moment, mocking that teaching the next, denying it had spoken at all. Then claiming the denial was the real lesson. The mechanism is radical contradiction that feels logical moment to moment but creates total incoherence when you try to hold it all together.

Your mind can track anyone's statement. It cannot track the sequence and at some point according to both Crowley and Newberg the cognitive architecture simply stops holding. You can't sustain a stable thought because the ground keeps shifting underneath every thought you form.

 When the shifting forms failed to break the circle, the entity tried another approach. It appeared as an exact duplicate of Noberg and claimed the real Neyberg needed rescuing from inside the triangle. When that failed, it threw sand and stones at the circle's boundary. Newberg struck back with the flat of his dagger. The entity retreated briefly, then came back with everything at once.

 Seduction, threats, blasphemy, apparently sincere prayers, and dense philosophical argument fired in rapid succession with no transitions, as if five different minds were speaking through the same mouth. What genuinely disturbed me in researching this was the aftermath. Both men reported that Kuranszison's influence did not stop when the ritual closed.

 Weeks of psychological disruption, paranoia, identity fragmentation, and a specific symptom Crowley documented, the tendency to find everything meaningless, a lingering inability to assign significance to anything. The entity had established what amounts to a permanent foothold in consciousness, and that foothold continued dismantling coherence and meaning long after the formal invocation ended.

 Dion Fortune documented the same pattern from the other direction. She never named Kuranzon directly, calling it the dweller on the threshold. And she described it as the convergence of every fear, every doubt, every contradiction, every unresolved psychological complex you've accumulated across your entire life, all of it activating simultaneously.

She also documented the cost of failure. She described meeting several practitioners who had attempted the abyss crossing without adequate preparation. They didn't recover. Ego fragmentation, loss of consensus reality, permanent institutionalization, minds split into competing personalities that never reintegrated.

Fortune was not given to exaggeration. She reported this the way a physician reports clinical outcomes. Kenneth Grant, who headed the Typhonian Otto after Crowley, proposed something I find worth considering, even if it sounds extreme. He argued the boundary between the abyss and ordinary consciousness might be weakening.

 Rising schizophrenia rates, the fragmentation of shared cultural meaning, the erosion of coherent social narratives. He read all of it as evidence of Kuranszon's influence expanding from individual encounters into collective experience. You can dismiss this as [music] mystical projection onto social phenomena, but as a diagnosis of modernity, it has more teeth than most sociology I've come across.

In the clifothic system, the shadow side of the tree of life, Coronzon commands legions that share its core quality of dispersal, each specializing in a different mode of fragmentation. Some attack language directly. You try to speak and the words come out wrong or you forget your point mid-sentence or a single word splits into contradictory meanings that you're aware of simultaneously without being able to resolve.

 Others target memory, cutting the threads that connect past experience to present meaning. You remember events but can't recall why they mattered. The emotional weight is gone. Your biography becomes a series of disconnected images without a narrative holding them together. Others dissolve the boundary between self and environment.

 You look at your hand and can't confirm it's yours. You hear your own thoughts but experience them as someone else's voice. Peter Carroll offered a reframe I find useful. He suggested Coruranszon is better understood as a process than a personality. It's what happens when consciousness hits its own structural limit and tries to push past it without having built adequate foundation.

 In that reading, the entity is always there at every threshold, at every point where awareness tries to exceed its current architecture. Patient, impartial, doing its job with complete reliability. And this is what I kept coming back to during my research. Coronzon serves a necessary function.

 The abyss genuinely needs guarding. Crossing it unprepared really does shatter the mind. If you're ready, genuinely ready through actual development, coron dissolves and you pass through. If you've reached the threshold through technique alone, through accumulated method without corresponding growth, the entity reveals that fact.

It shows you exactly what was missing in your preparation by scattering the parts that weren't solid enough to hold. You can't fight that the way you fight an enemy. Coronzon functions more like gravity. It reveals what was already true and it has been performing that function with perfect consistency for as long as practitioners have been attempting the crossing.

Samiel operates on completely different principles than Kuranszon. And what makes this entity so disturbing has nothing to do with power or violence. It's the authorization. In Hebrew, the name translates multiple ways. Venom of God, blindness of God, left hand of God. Each translation points to a different function and all of them are sanctioned.

Samuel carries divine poison, administers divine blindness, operates as the executive arm of divine judgment. In cababalistic cosmology, Samiel doesn't rebel against the divine order. Samiel works within it. That's the problem. To understand why this matters, you need to grasp a principle that makes most people uncomfortable.

 In cabalistic thought, evil doesn't exist as the opposite of good. Evil is what happens when divine severity separates from divine mercy. When the principle of judgment detaches from the principle of compassion, what we experience as demonic originates from holy sources that have become unbalanced. The horror isn't that Samiel stands against God.

 The horror is that Samiel operates with God's full endorsement. The Zoha which serious cabalist treat with the same weight physicists give foundational texts describe Samiel as the intelligence riding the primordial serpent in Eden. And this detail matters enormously. Samiel is not the serpent. The serpent is raw instinct, animal appetite, undirected craving.

 Samiel is the strategic mind directing it. A tempter can be resisted through willpower. A strategist with complete knowledge of divine law who uses that knowledge to execute judgment that requires something other than resistance. The functional description across cabalistic sources is consistent. Celestial Prosecutor.

 Complete access to every thought and action you've ever had. Perfect impartiality. No malice, no vendetta, no personal agenda, pure adherence to law. Arguments grounded in perfect information that cannot be counted because they happen to be true. And after the prosecution concludes, the same entity carries out the sentence.

 No appeal, no second hearing. Isaac the blind whose 12th century work shaped cababalistic thought for centuries after him taught that samiel emerged from gavora the saphira of severity. Gavora is a necessary principle within the tree of life. Without it the boundless love of chest dissolves everything into undifferentiated mush.

Gavora provides limit, definition, law, form. Creation needs it. But when Gavora separates from its compliment, when severity detaches from mercy, you get Samuel, an entity that applies law without grace, judges without compassion, punishes without any mechanism for redemption. Every legal system ever built recognizes the need for both justice and mercy.

Samuel is what the system looks like when one of those principles has been completely removed. Medieval cabalists mapped entire hierarchies under Samiel's command. Specialized angels of destruction executing disease, warfare, natural catastrophe, mental collapse, spiritual abandonment. Each authorized, each serving corrective function within cosmic order.

 Which means you can't appeal to higher authority because samayel is the higher authority's enforcement mechanism. You can't claim unjust persecution because the punishment reflects actual transgression. You can't even maintain a sense of righteous resistance because opposing samayel means opposing divine justice itself. There is nowhere to stand.

 The Talmud gives us saml from multiple angles. In one passage, he serves as the guardian angel of Rome, the cosmic principle behind earthly empires that persecute and oppress. In another, he's the angel who wrestled Jacob at the ford of Jabok. And that Jacob story, if I'm being honest, is the only documented case I found across all my research of someone surviving a direct encounter with Samuel and emerging functional.

 Jacob couldn't win. The text is explicit on this point, but he endured until dawn. He refused to surrender despite injury and exhaustion, and the encounter shifted. It transformed from pure destruction into something else. Jacob walked away with a permanent limp, a physical injury he carried for the rest of his life. He also walked away with a new name, Israel, meaning one who struggles with God, which acknowledged both the reality of the struggle and the possibility of coming through it changed rather than annihilated.

The injury was the price. The name was the proof that the price could be survived. Luranic Cabala developed in 16th century safet placed samiel at the head of the kipoth the shells that formed when divine vessels shattered during creation. In this framework Samiel represents the beautiful husk of holiness.

 The appearance of divine order that has separated from genuine divine essence. An entity that can quote scripture with complete accuracy. Invoke the names of God with proper pronunciation, construct theological arguments that are technically flawless, all while leading consciousness away from authentic connection toward isolation and spiritual death.

His consort Lilith completes the system. Samuel strikes from outside. Circumstance, consequence, judgment falling on you from external reality. Lilith corrupts from inside. desire, compulsion, seduction operating within your own psychology. Together they form a closed system of destruction with no gap, no angle of escape, no dimension of experience they don't cover between them.

Gersham Scholam, who essentially created the modern academic study of Jewish mysticism, argued that Samuel represents Judaism's solution to the problem of evil within strict monotheism. No independent evil principle, no cosmic war between equal opposing forces. Instead, evil as a distortion of holiness, divine severity separated from divine mercy, which gives the demonic a legitimacy that no dualistic framework can match.

Samiel's authority comes from God. His operations aren't rebellion, they're authorized function. The most unsettling operational detail, and I keep coming back to this, Samuel doesn't require invocation. The entity activates automatically when cosmic law is violated. Prosecution begins immediately. Sentence is recorded.

Execution becomes inevitable. Whether in this incarnation or a subsequent one, traditional Jewish prayer doesn't try to banish Samel because banishing Samiel would mean banishing divine justice. And you can't banish something that originates from the structure of reality itself. The prayers ask for mercy to balance severity.

 The assumption underlying every one of those prayers, everyone without exception has earned Samiel's attention. Only grace prevents immediate execution. The ly requires a different kind of attention because this entity's operations don't look like attack. They look like a Tuesday afternoon where nothing seems to matter anymore. The Hebrew breaks down to ble yal without worth without value.

 And the grammar functions both ways. Something can be of bleial meaning characterized by worthlessness or it can be bleial itself worthlessness walking around in a form. You encounter the entity as an external force draining meaning from your life or you become the entity a person radiating purposelessness to everyone you contact.

the Dead Sea Scrolls position. Beliel as commander of the sons of darkness in the cosmic war. But the warfare described in those texts doesn't involve anything you'd recognize as combat. Victory for Beel looks like collective demoralization. Populations that stop believing things matter.

 Social bonds that dissolve because maintaining them feels pointless. Commitments that collapse because honoring them seems naive. The entity wins through absence, through removal, through the slow draining of whatever made people care about anything. The book of Jubilees adds a detail I find deeply uncomfortable. God gave Beiel permission to retain one/tenth of the demons after the flood specifically to continue testing humanity.

 Testing how exactly? Testing whether people can maintain meaning in the face of pressure toward meaninglessness. Whether commitment can survive when every signal in the environment says commitment is foolish. The test is simple and brutal. When everything around you suggests that nothing matters, do you generate meaning anyway or do you give up? In the Grimmooire tradition, Beiel is categorized among the most powerful kings of hell, created after Lucifer, cast out before all others.

That chronological detail is significant because it positions Balile's rebellion as the original template, the first abandonment of divine purpose, the corruption that made every subsequent corruption possible. The operational method is consistent across every source I examined, and it's the subtlety that makes it so effective.

 Reasonable questions. What are you really accomplishing here? Isn't this all self-d delusion? Wouldn't your time be better spent on practical concerns? What evidence do you actually have that any of this works? Why are you doing this instead of something that produces measurable results? Each question contains truth.

 Each sounds rational. None of them are wrong exactly. And through accumulation, conviction erodess. Not through dramatic crisis, not through dark night of the soul, but through quiet, steady, perfectly reasonable loss of certainty about why any of this mattered in the first place. You wake up one morning and realize you've abandoned things you once considered sacred.

 And you can't identify the moment when the abandonment began because there was no moment. There was just a long series of small reasonable adjustments. Crowley framed Beiel as the ultimate test of true will. The authentic purpose that constitutes each individual's unique contribution to [music] existence.

 Balile doesn't oppose your will. The entity makes you doubt that will exists at all. No special calling, no authentic contribution, just a person going through life imposing pattern on randomness. If there's no true [music] will, then spiritual practice is an elaborate hobby that connects to nothing transcendent.

 And if it connects to nothing, why endure the difficulty? Why maintain the discipline? Why not just relax into comfortable purposelessness? The Abrain operation, that six-month magical retirement designed to achieve knowledge and conversation with the holy guardian angel, specifically warns about Beiel appearing near the end. After 6 months of intensive daily practice, the entity shows up to argue that the entire operation was selfdeception.

 It cataloges every moment of doubt, points to every experience that has a psychological rather than spiritual explanation, highlights every subjective element of every vision, makes a thoroughly reasonable case that you've spent half a year talking to yourself. If you accept the argument, the doubt retroactively poisons every experience from the previous 6 months.

You emerge with less certainty than when you entered. Victor Frankle's concentration camp research describes the same phenomenon in entirely secular terms. Prisoners who maintained a sense of meaning, connection to purpose, reasons to survive that extended beyond immediate circumstances had dramatically better survival rates regardless of their physical condition.

 Those who lost meaning died not because they gave up in some dramatic way but because meaning is apparently a biological necessity and its absence kills you the same way the absence of water kills you just slower. Bel creates that absence as active force and I want to point out the collective dimension because I think it's the most relevant to anyone watching this today.

Entire cultures can operate under what esoteric tradition would identify as Belile's influence. Cultures of cynicism where commitment is naivity. Where sincerity reads as weakness, where entertainment is built on the assumption that mockery is the highest form of intelligence. where genuine emotional investment in anything, relationship, craft, belief, community, is treated as embarrassing at best, delusional at worst.

 The shared background assumption that nothing really matters, that meaning is performance, that caring about anything is either foolish or secretly calculated self-interest. If that description doesn't resonate with your experience of contemporary culture, we're watching different channels. As Modius gets reduced to demon of lust on every channel that covers it and that framing misses the actual mechanism so completely that it might as well be misinformation.

What as modius does is convert desire into compulsion. These are categorically different things. Healthy desire responds to fulfillment. You want something, you get it. The want diminishes or transforms into something else. appreciation, gratitude, satisfaction. The cycle completes. Compulsion doesn't complete.

 You get what you wanted. The want returns immediately at higher intensity, requiring more stimulus to produce less effect. The cycle can't close because each fulfillment feeds the appetite instead of resolving it. The name traces back to the Avastan Eshma Dava, one of seven arch demons in Zoroastrian cosmology. The transformation from Eshma into Asodius occurred during the Babylonian exile when Jewish culture absorbed and reinterpreted Persian religious concepts.

 The book of Tobot contains the earliest detailed account. As Modius killed seven consecutive husbands of Sarah, each on their wedding night before consummation, not passion gone wrong, possessive destruction that prevents any rival from accessing the object of obsession. The solution Raphael prescribes in that text reveals something critical about how the entity operates.

 Burn fish heart and liver in the bridal chamber. The smoke drives Asmodus away. But the preparation must happen before consumation, before the obsessive bond forms. After the entity establishes its hold, removal becomes exponentially more difficult. This maps precisely onto what modern psychology understands about compulsion. Early intervention works.

Late intervention works poorly. No intervention works at all once the neural pathways have been sufficiently carved. Medieval grimoirs describe Asodius appearing with three heads, bull, ram, man. Each represents a dimension of compulsive desire. The bull is raw physical appetite that overwhelms reason and restraint.

 The body overriding the mind. The ram is stubborn pursuit that cannot redirect itself. determination that becomes destructive specifically because it can't adapt or change course when the course leads off a cliff. The human head is rationalization, the sophisticated arguments that dress compulsion in the language of choice. I want this. I've decided this.

 This is who I am. The most dangerous head because it makes the prison feel like home. Modern addiction psychology working in frameworks that have never referenced demonology describes an identical progression. Increased tolerance requiring higher doses, withdrawal symptoms when the behavior becomes unavailable, continued use despite visible consequences, and eventual loss of meaningful control where the person cannot stop despite genuinely wanting to.

 The person still exists, still makes decisions, but the decisions increasingly serve the appetite rather than the person making them. The will doesn't disappear entirely. It gets progressively overwritten by compulsion operating below conscious awareness. Asteroth presents a defensive problem that none of the other entities on this list present.

 And the more I researched it, the more the problem bothered me. How do you defend against truth? The name derives from a starter, the ancient neareastern goddess of fertility, sexuality, and warfare. Standard demonization, deities of conquered cultures become demons in the victorious tradition. But Asteroth's character shifted dramatically in the transition where a starti embodied creation and vital force.

 Asteroth became associated specifically with forbidden knowledge. knowledge that weakens the person who receives it. The lesser key of Solomon ranks Asteroth as a duke commanding 40 legions. The entity speaks freely on all matters past and future teaches genuine sciences. The Grimoire prescribes specific protections, a silver ring held before the face because of the unbearable stench Asteroth carries.

 Asteroth is apparently willing to teach even eager. And then the text adds a warning that most commentators skim past, but that I think is the most important sentence in the entire entry. The demon encourages sloth and laziness in those who consult him. Think about what that actually means in practice.

 The entity provides accurate information, genuine insights, working predictions that check out, and the knowledge itself produces demoralization. Asteroth shows you how little your efforts matter against the scale of the systems you're operating within. How what you interpreted as progress was predetermined or random or trivially small relative to the forces actually shaping outcomes.

 How the structures you thought you could influence are far more entrenched than you had imagined. Every revelation technically improves your understanding of reality while simultaneously draining your motivation to participate in that reality. Crowley documented this firsthand. Asteroth provided genuinely useful intelligence, forecasts that proved accurate insights into hidden dynamics that checked out on investigation.

Within days, Crowley experienced what he called the horrors. existential despair where continuing any form of work seemed pointless. His conclusion after reflection, the information was true but curated for maximum demoralization. The content was accurate. The selection of which truths to reveal was deliberate. The context was weaponized.

This is what I kept turning over during my research. When a demon tempts you with pleasure, you recognize temptation. You can name it. You can resist it through discipline. When a demon attacks you with fear, you know you're under assault. You can mobilize courage. But when a demon teaches you verifiable truths, truths that hold up under scrutiny that other sources confirm that your own investigation validates, and those truths happen to systematically dismantle your will to continue.

 What exactly are you supposed to do with that? What does defense even look like against accurate information presented in a demoralization sequence? I don't have a clean answer. I'm not sure anyone does. Most channels mention Aazelle as a footnote, the scapegoat entity, the fallen watcher, a name that comes up in passing when people talk about the book of Enoch.

 That treatment misses what I think is the most operationally significant mechanism of any entity on this list. The Yam Kipur ritual in Leviticus 16 lays it out. Two goats [music] selected, one sacrificed to God, one loaded with the sins of the entire community and sent into the wilderness to Aazel. Think about the mechanics of that.

 The entity receives sin, accumulates it, functions as a living archive for every transgression humanity wants to disown. The Book of Enoch identifies Aazel as one of the Watchers, the angels who descended to Mount Herman to take human wives. His specific teachings are worth noting because of what they have in common.

 Aazelle taught humanity weapons making and cosmetics, war and vanity, the instruments of destruction and the instruments of deception. These seem unrelated until you identify the shared principle, the ability to reshape the world according to human desire by force or by disguise. To impose will on reality through violence or to conceal your true nature through artifice.

Every civilization built on military conquest and cultivated appearance traces its spiritual DNA in this tradition back to what Aazelle taught. Now scale the Yam Kapor mechanics to individual experience because this is where Aazelle becomes genuinely frightening. Every compromise you make with your own values doesn't vanish.

 It goes somewhere. It accumulates. Every time you know the right action and choose the convenient one instead, every justification you construct after the fact, every selective memory that lets you avoid responsibility, all of it adds mass to a structure. And the Aazil principle describes what happens when that structure reaches critical mass.

 It develops its own gravitational pull, independent momentum. You don't need a tempter at that point. your own unagnowledged shadow pulls you toward further compromise because compromise is what the entire structure is composed of. The Apocalypse of Abraham, a first century text that receives nowhere near the scholarly attention it deserves, presents Aazel as a monstrous bird attempting to contaminate Abraham's sacrifice during his heavenly ascent.

The angel Yahoo drives the entity away. But the text specifies that Aazel's domain encompasses the stars and the people born after the stars. A cosmological claim that this corruption isn't external to creation. It's threaded through the material world at the structural level. You can't separate from it because you're made of the same material it's woven into.

Practitioners who work with Aazel in left-hand path traditions report that the entity offers radical self-confrontation. Everything you've hidden from yourself, every justification, every convenient reinterpretation, every selective memory as shows you the complete ledger with nothing softened, nothing contextualized, nothing reframed for your comfort.

Some practitioners describe this as the most valuable spiritual experience of their lives. Others describe permanent psychological damage. The variable appears to be readiness. If you can face the full accounting without making excuses, the confrontation transforms you. If you can't, the weight of your own unagnowledged shadow collapses on you all at once.

Abaden requires fewer words than the other entries on this list, and I think that's appropriate to the entity's nature. The name means destruction in Hebrew. In Job 26:6, it's a place, a realm of annihilation that lies open before God. In Proverbs, it parallels Shaol as a destination of no return.

 In Revelation 9:11, it becomes a person, the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abedan. and in Greek Apollon. The progression from location to entity is the important detail. Abaden begins as a description of absolute ending, a zone where destruction is so complete that even the possibility of recovery has been eliminated.

 Then it becomes a being that embodies and executes that function. Revelation describes Abdan commanding armies of locusts with scorpion tails and human faces. Locusts are relevant because of how they destroy completely and without selection. They don't choose targets. They strip everything. Abdon's destruction doesn't evaluate what deserves to survive.

 The distinction between Abodan and Samuel is the one that should concern you. Samiel prosecutes and [music] sentences. The destruction serves corrective purpose within a system of cosmic justice. Abdan carries no judicial function. There's no case, no prosecution, no sentence that the destroyed party can comprehend as serving some larger purpose.

 Abodan is finality without explanation. Practitioners who have worked with this entity in traditions that engage the clipoth report a shared experience, silence. Other demons communicate extensively. They seduce, they threaten, they negotiate, they teach, they argue. Abdan arrives. The communication is the destruction itself.

 There is nothing to discuss because discussion implies a future state in which the discussions outcome matters. Abaden is the point where future states become unavailable. Bel holds first position in the Gertia, commands 66 legions, and his primary attribute is invisibility. Every treatment I found focuses on literal invisibility, the power to become physically unseen.

That reading is shallow enough to be misleading. What's actually being described is the power to exert control without being identified as the source to shape outcomes while everyone involved genuinely believes they're acting from their own judgment. The Guetia describes Bale appearing with three heads, cat, toad, and man.

 The cat, stealth, and patience. The predator that watches without moving. The toad, toxicity through contact rather than aggression. Poison that works through proximity without requiring attack. The human head, the social intelligence required to make manipulation, looked like normal interaction. The Grimoire tradition warns that Bale is particularly difficult to detect because the entity operates through existing structures rather than building new ones.

 Bale doesn't create power dynamics. He inhabits ones that already exist. The manipulation feels like business as usual, like institutional logic functioning the way institutional logic always functions. You can't fight what you can't see. And you can't see something that looks identical to the ordinary operation of the systems you already live within.

If there's a more relevant description of how invisible power actually operates in the real world, I haven't encountered it. Mammon gets treated as the demon of greed, and that's technically accurate, but so reductive that it obscures the actual function. The name likely derives from Aramaic mammona meaning wealth or property.

 When Jesus says you cannot serve God and mammon in Matthew, he's treating wealth as a rival deity, not a temptation, a deity, an alternative organizing principle for consciousness that competes with the divine for primacy. The esoteric understanding of Mammon is the inversion of the value hierarchy. Things that should function as instruments, money, possessions, status symbols become purposes.

Things that carry intrinsic worth, connection, development, purpose, creation, become instrumentalized, valued only in so far as they generate material returns. The tools become the meaning. The means replace the ends. Gregory of Nissa made an identification I think is underappreciated. He linked Mammon directly to Belub, Lord of the Flies, corruption and decay.

 His argument was that placing material value above spiritual value constitutes the most fundamental form of rebellion against divine order. And the implication of connecting wealth worship to the Lord of Decay is radical. A materialist orientation doesn't merely distract from spiritual reality. It actively decomposes it.

 It rots whatever it touches. Leviathan is older than every demonological system that tries to contain it. This entity predates Judaism, predates organized religion, reaches back to Mesopotamian creation myths where the founding act of creation itself required the subjugation. The text is specific, not destruction, subjugation of primordial chaos.

 In the Ugaritic texts, it appears as Lotan, the seven-headed sea serpent defeated by Bal. In Hebrew scripture, Leviathan is the chaos monster that gods subdued to establish ordered reality. Job 41 provides a description with a specificity that goes beyond standard mythological imagery. A creature that makes the deep boil like a pot that trails light in its wake that has no equal on earth that was made without fear.

The description reads less like symbolism and more like a field report. The esoteric significance is that Leviathan represents chaos that is older than order. The state of reality before differentiation, before categories, before meaning as structured consciousness can process it. the ocean from which creation emerged and into which creation can theoretically return.

Every other entity on this list attacks some specific feature of existence, meaning desire, knowledge, identity, will. Leviathan threatens the principle that makes existence itself possible. The basic structural order that distinguishes something from undifferentiated potential. To encounter Leviathan is to confront the possibility that ordered reality is temporary, fragile, a brief arrangement within a chaos that was here long before structure arrived and will still be here long after structure fails.

My name is Legion, for we are many. Mark 5:9. This one challenges a fundamental assumption underlying every other entry we've covered that a demon is a singular being with coherent identity and defined function. Legion has no identity. Legion is multiplicity itself. The Gerosene demoniac contained thousands of spirits so densely packed that the host had lost all coherent selfhood.

 He lived among tombs, cut himself with stones, broke every physical restraint applied to him. screamed without stopping. When asked its name, the collective entity responded with a statement that is simultaneously identification and diagnosis. We are many. The esoteric analysis that I find most compelling comes from both origin in the 3rd century and Meister Echart in the medieval period and they arrived at essentially the same reading independently.

They treated Legion as a description of the ordinary human condition taken to its end point. Every person contains competing voices, desires, fears, conditioning, inherited patterns, trauma, social programming. In most people, these are organized under a functional self that maintains coherent direction. We call that organization identity and take it for granted.

 That organization is fragile. Remove it through sustained trauma, through the cumulative influence of the other forces we've discussed today, through any process that erodess the central organizing principle. And Legion was always already there. The multiplicity was present all along, held in check by a structure that can be dismantled.

The man in the gospel wasn't conquered by an external force. His identity had been replaced by a committee. Thousands of competing impulses with no hierarchy, no organizing principle, no central eye directing the whole operation. He wasn't possessed by a demon in the conventional sense. He was possessed by the absence of a coherent self.

 The most unsettling detail in the account, when Jesus casts the spirits into a herd of pigs, the animals immediately stampede off a cliff into the sea. The Legion doesn't attempt to preserve its new host. It destroys the host instantly. The implication is that destruction, not possession, is the actual purpose. The host is a temporary vehicle.

 The destination is annihilation. Modern practitioners who've attempted to engage with the Legion principle, working with the concept of multiplicity rather than with a specific named entity report an experience categorically different from working with any other entry on this list.

 There's no personality to address, no intelligence to negotiate with, no coherent will to oppose or redirect. There is static noise, a wall of competing signals with no hierarchy, no structure, no way in. Working with Legion, they report, is like trying to have a conversation with interference. If you've seen The Exorcist, you know the face, the hunched figure with wings and a dog head. That's Pizuzu.

 What the film never explains is that the real Pizuzu, the Mesopotamian original, was not straightforwardly evil. And that makes him worse. Pizuzu was demon king of the southwest wind in Assyrian and Babylonian demonology. He brought disease, famine, drought, locusts, and he was invoked as protection specifically against Lamashtu, the demonists who killed infants and caused miscarriages.

Mesopotamian mothers hung Pizuzu amulets in their homes above their children's beds. They chose one demon to ward off another. the plague to prevent the massacre, the lesser apocalypse to avert the greater. Think about the theological architecture behind that decision. The protection is the threat.

 The guardian is the destroyer. You can't access Pizuzu's shielding without accepting Pizuzu's destruction. There is no clean version. There is no safe invocation. Every household that placed his image by the door was making a calculated trade, except this category of harm to prevent that category, and the terms were non-negotiable.

Mesopotamian texts describe Pazuzu's power as environmental rather than possessive. He doesn't inhabit individuals the way other demons do. He changes conditions. The southwest wind brings crop failure, water shortage, spreading illness, community collapse, and all of it looks natural, mundane, completely explicable through ordinary causation.

 Bad luck, bad weather, bad timing. You'd never attribute it to a demonic entity because it looks exactly like the world functioning the way it always does. Archaeological evidence shows Pizuzu iconography spanning from at least the first millennium BCE through the late Babylonian period. Bronze statueets, clay tablets, boundary markers, domestic objects.

 The sheer volume of artifacts tells you Pizuzu was not a peripheral figure. He was domestic everyday, a constant presence in ordinary life. Families lived with his image in their homes the way people today live with smoke detectors. An acknowledgment that protection and danger coexist in the same space. William Peter Blatty's decision to use Pizuzu in The Exorcist rather than a more conventional Christian demon may have been more astute than anyone gave him credit for.

 Pizuzu enters through the environment, through conditions, through the wind that was already blowing before anyone noticed something was wrong. This last entry is going to be controversial, and I'm aware of that, so I want to explain why it's here before anyone decides I've lost the thread. Malathoteep is fictional created by HP Lovecraft in 1920.

Written down after a dream that disturbed him so badly he composed a pros poem about it before the details could fade. In the dream, a figure traveled between cities demonstrating terrible instruments, after which audiences went mad and wandered blindly into darkness. Lovecraft was a committed materialist. He treated this as imagination and nothing else.

 He would have been appalled to find it on a list alongside Samuel and Coronzon. The problem is what happened after he published it. Kenneth Grant in his Typhonian trilogies documented multiple cases of practitioners reporting contact with an entity matching Nalathoteep's described characteristics. Several of these cases predated the practitioner's exposure to Lovecraft's work. They hadn't read the stories.

 They encountered something independently and described it in terms that aligned with the fiction they hadn't yet encountered. Michael Bertio, who built the Voodoo Gnostic system entirely outside the Lovecraftian current, described a messenger entity with precisely these characteristics years before reading any Lovecraft.

 By the 1990s, the chaos magic community had accumulated enough independent corroborating reports that Nalithotep started appearing in serious grimoire compilations placed alongside entities backed by millennia of documented tradition with the same formatting, the same level of operational detail, the same warnings. Peter Carroll proposed one framework.

 If enough people invest genuine psychic energy in a fictional construct through fear, fascination, creative engagement, ritual work, that construct develops what he called pragmatic existence. It functions. It produces consistent results. People who invoke it report experiences matching its described nature.

 Whether this constitutes existence in the philosophical sense is a question Carol deliberately left open. Grant's framework is more disturbing. He argued Lovecraft didn't create Nya Thotep. He received it. That the dream was not creative imagination but genuine contact filtered through the only conceptual framework Lovecraft had available, fiction.

 that Lovecraft, through his particular sensitivity to what Grant called the Move Zone, was mapping real territory while loudly and consistently insisting that he was doing nothing of the kind. In Grant's reading, Lovecraft was an inadvertent prophet, a man who drew accurate maps of places he refused to believe existed.

 The practitioner reports across decades and across traditions share consistent features. Initial contact feels productive, even exhilarating. The entity communicates willingly, provides insights, opens conceptual doors, appears generous and engaged. Then destabilization begins gradually and at first imperceptibly, relationships fracture, certainties erode.

 The insights that initially felt liberating begin to feel corrosive. And through the entire process, the entity remains present, communicative, engaged, apparently delighted by the unraveling it has facilitated. Whether Nyalath is real in the sense that Samiel or Kuranzon are real, entities with thousands of years of documented tradition and consistent description across unconnected cultures, I genuinely don't know.

 What I can say is that the phenomenon around this entity raises questions about the boundary between fiction and genuine spiritual encounter that nobody in any tradition working from any framework has adequately resolved. And if I'm being honest, that kind of permanent unresolvable ambiguity feels like exactly the kind of thing the crawling chaos would find amusing.

 We've covered 12 entities today. 12 distinct mechanisms for the dismantling of human consciousness, human will, human meaning. And I want to resist the temptation to wrap this up neatly because I think neat conclusions are dishonest when dealing with material like this. Reality doesn't resolve. These entities don't resolve.

 What I will say is that understanding them provides something that ignorance never will. orientation. You can navigate a threat you recognize. You can prepare for a danger you understand. You can protect what you value if you know what's trying to take it. The practitioners who documented these encounters across centuries weren't performing.

 They weren't entertaining audiences. They were trying to leave maps for people who came after them. The question is whether you trust the cgraphers and maybe more importantly whether you trust your own capacity to read the terrain once you've seen it clearly. Subscribe to Eoteric Guardian for more investigations into the topics that most channels will not cover.

 Leave your thoughts in the comments. I read them and the conversations on this channel are consistently better than anything I see elsewhere on this platform. Until next time, may you have the wisdom to recognize these forces when you encounter them, the strength to hold your ground when holding is possible, and the honesty to know when you've reached your limit.

BMIRRO

GAY

 

MALL AD

The Design Secret Behind Every Mall in America | Architectural Digest - YouTube

Transcripts:

The American shopping mall, the escalators, the fountains, the food court. At the mall, you can get your ears pierced, eat a giant pretzel, entertain your kids, and do your holiday shopping all in a single trip. It can be a little overwhelming. And that's actually by design. The mall is specifically designed to make you spend more time and more money than you mean to without even realizing it.

 And what may be most surprising is that these design ideas actually come from classical European plazas. dating back thousands of years. I'm Michael Whitesner and I've been an architect for over 35 years. And today we're breaking down how shopping malls are designed to influence your behavior. So why is it called the mall? The term mall comes from a 17th century mallet and ball game called Paul Mall that was like a cross between croquet and golf.

And it was played on an alleyshaped court that was called a mall. In fact, the popular shopping and entertainment street in London, Paul Mall, was actually first built as a court for nobility to play this game, but was eventually converted to a street. Because of this game, many wide paths or streets lined by trees came to be referred to as malls, like the mall in New York Central Park, for example.

 Fast forward to today, and modern shopping malls have replaced the trees with stores and replaced the game with shopping, but the basic shape remains. But nearly every other thing you find inside the mall is directly inspired by European plazas. So this is the Southdale Center Shopping Mall in Adina, Minnesota.

 This mall in Adina was the first modern enclosed shopping mall in the United States. So looking at this image, first you could see it's one giant building under one giant roof. Secondly, there's two anchor stores. One is called Dayton's, one is called Donaldson's. And those two anchor stores are set up in what we call a dumbbell plan and they're connected with smaller shops and restaurants between them.

 And typically that's the most common layout you see in malls today. And the reason for that is that people would pass from one anchor store to the other anchor store and they'd have to pass by all the smaller shops in between. But you'll also see a cartisian and a cluster design and we'll get into those a bit later.

 The other thing you can see is that it's surrounded by all this parking. This was designed by Victor Gruin. And these cars are actually what inspired Victor Gruin to design the mall the way he did. Gruin was born in Vienna, Austria, and was accepted to the same art school that rejected Adolf Hitler. Later, Gruin immigrated to the United States to escape the Nazis.

 And although he fled Europe, he fondly remembered the culture of pedestrian public life in Vienna and was outspoken in his dislike of the car focused suburbs of the United States. He saw cars as isolating and a threat to the idea of a social community. His vision was to create a gathering place where people would get out of their cars and spend time together as a community.

In essence, a sort of public plaza reinvented by the suburbs. And although before this there had been other versions of covered shopping arcades in the US like the arcade in Cleveland nicknamed the Crystal Palace of America, this mall in Adina was the first modern enclosed shopping mall in the United States.

 American malls of course are not always fully enclosed and in fact Gruin and other notable architects like IMP and Renzo Piano have designed malls across America that are open air. But to become true commercial giants, shopping malls needed to be able to support lots of shoppers all year round, not just when the weather was good. And what makes these huge enclosed space possible is actually the advent of air conditioning.

 And that's part of what made this mall in Minnesota so special. Once the mall became fully enclosed, that's when Gruin's design ideas evolved into an economic and psychological principle known as the Gruin transfer. So, let's take a look at the interior. So, this is what jumps out at me. First off, there's no windows.

 All the natural light comes from above so that you can't see directly outside. Secondly, he brings you up to the second level via these escalators and he fills it with plants and a fountain. There are seating areas. And the other thing he does is he takes the storefronts and he turns them inboard.

 And so instead of the stores facing out toward the street, now they're facing in towards the main space. It eliminated the barrier between the storefront and the outside. There's no door that you have to open anymore. The storefronts are completely open and people can flow in and out without any friction.

 And so the shape of it is very much like a public plaza, which is very evident in the plan layout. So that dumbbell layout is quite evident here in that these two anchor stores, Dayton's and Donaldson's, are the two ends of the dumbbell and then connecting between them are the smaller shops and stores that are surrounding this plaza. So when you're in this central plaza, instead of looking out to windows, you're looking into stores.

 So you could see that funny shape of the fountain which is right here. And you could see the escalators beyond which are right here and here that lead up to this bridge and the second floor. Even when you're on the second floor, you're still part of the main space. So if you were to remove the roof, this would look like almost any public plaza you would see in Europe.

 It would end up looking a lot like this space. There's a fountain and there's a fountain here and there's this arcade along the sides and there's an arcade along here and along here there's an escalator that goes up. There's a stair that goes up here. The facades of these buildings are essentially the facades of the storefronts that are inside the plaza.

 And they've even got the grid on the floor as you would see here and here. And similar to European plaza, there's a lot of areas for just sitting and talking. Gruin envisioned these shopping malls as places that were imitating what was happening in the European plazas of his youth. This great social community gathering place where people talk and people shop and people eat and people gather and it all happened as they were going around their daily lives.

 So from this ancient idea came the idea that the mall is this singular enclosed building in which you could buy everything you needed. So if someone came in the morning, they could buy clothes and toys and gifts. They could stop for lunch and then buy their gardening tools and cleaning supplies and groceries on their way out. Then they would have been there the whole day around other people with the opportunity for spontaneous interaction with neighbors and shopkeepers.

 In that way, the mall was designed to be a cultural hub and it was very successful. But the unintended consequence of this design, at least from Gruin's perspective, is the psychological phenomenon, which would later be described by retailers as the gruin transfer. So the gru and transfer is a psychological effect where a shopper plans to buy one thing but becomes disoriented and distracted by the many options in front of them causing them to buy other things they weren't planning to.

 The transfer part is what happens when the shopper transfers their focus from need to desire. And the effect is amplified the more time that someone spends at the mall. So the key elements of the Gruin transfer are one, an overwhelming amount of choice, and two, a pleasant environment that makes you want to linger.

 Retailers learned that when you combine these elements, shoppers spend more money than they intended to. In fact, Joan Ddian tells this great story that she went into a mall in Honolulu to buy a newspaper and came out with three hats, some flowers, and a toaster. It's the idea of an impulse buy. This idea has become so popular in the design of retail spaces that you see it adopted in individual stores like IKEA, which leads you on a winding path past every item in the store before you can leave.

 It also happens at airports, which have incorporated malls in between check-in and the gate, forcing you past a dizzying array of shopping opportunities while you wait for your flight. Some people say that airports are now nothing but shopping malls where planes happen to take off and land. And you even see this idea in amusement parks.

 In fact, Walt Disney was inspired to include elements of mall design in his plans for Epcot in Florida after touring Midtown Plaza Mall in Rochester, New York, also designed by Victor Gruin. And although this psychological effect is named for Victor Gruin, he always maintained that his design was focused on community and the human experience and the idea of getting people out of their cars.

 And he rejected the notion that malls should cynically and intentionally manipulate people using this idea. He saw other malls that use design to maximize profits as a bastardization of his intentions, even saying, quote, "I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments." Of course, despite Gruin's outspoken opposition, malls are first and foremost built to make money.

And so, future malls would try to maximize the Gruin transfer in their designs. And one of the most successful examples of this is the Mall of America, also in Minnesota. So, this is the largest mall in America and it's 5.6 million square ft, which basically means you could fit 97 football fields or seven Yankee stadiums inside of it.

 At the center of it is a 7 acre theme park. It has 520 stores, 60 restaurants, and an aquarium. It's so big that it has its own zip code. So, even though this building is colossal in size, you still see a lot of Gruin's original ideas. the bridge going across the top, the stores lining on the sides acting as an arcade, the idea that light comes from above with these skylights and this central gathering place in the middle and all these potted plants that bring greenery into the center.

 And you could see here at the bottom the escalator that goes up to the upper level. A mall of this size would simply not work if it relied on stairs or elevators. In fact, without the rise of escalators, there is no mall. When the economy began to recover after World War II, retailers were looking for an edge to get the most out of every visitor to their store and the Otis Elevator Company began heavily marketing one of its main products, the escalator, as a tool to accomplish this.

The escalator fits seamlessly into the ideas of Gruin's designs. It allowed people to flow effortlessly between floors, unlike stairs, and without losing sight of stores like you would in an enclosed elevator. The other thing the elevator does is it pulls you out of the space. So you not only lose sight of the stores, but you're no longer part of the action.

 You're no longer part of the environment. So the other thing the escalator allowed for was this sort of multiple paths through the space. You could see the whole space while you were riding the escalator and you could decide, hey, I want to go over there. This optionality, this multiple choice of paths amplifies the Gruin transfer once again.

 So escalators really took off in a big way. And in fact, the number of escalators worldwide roughly doubles every 10 years. And with a single escalator, you're able to move 7 or 8,000 people up one floor in 1 hour. In a giant space like this one, you can see how valuable that kind of people moving technology would be. But to get an idea of how truly massive this shopping mall is, you have to look at it from the outside.

 This image is just amazing to me. Let's break down what we're seeing. There are these four anchor stores at these corners. You could see these hotel and office complex at the two midsection ends. Then there are these two massive parking garages at the ends which hold over 12,000 cars. And then there are the smaller shops that surround this central skylighted atrium in the middle which is part of the 7acre theme park.

 And if we take a look at that from the interior, those skylights here are these skylights here. There are 55 of these huge skylights in this central zone right here. So in this view, you can see the theme park is actually uh the Nickelodeon universe, but it used to be Camp Snoopy based on the Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schultz, who's also from Minnesota.

 And so the other thing about this space in the middle is that it's absolutely massive and you can easily get lost in it amongst all these plantings and pavilions and amusement rides. But the rest of this mall is essentially laid out like a grid which is what you'd call a cartisian layout. The second of the three major types of mall plans that you most commonly see and the name cartisian comes from the great philosopher Renee Deart who was also a mathematician who created the system for plotting locations using an x and y axis as reference points. So

essentially this cartisian grid is basically just a dumbbell multiplied. So what happens is if you wanted to get from one anchor to the other anchor you've got to go through a dumbbell. But if you wanted to get diagonally from one anchor to the other anchor, you either have to navigate all the way around or you've got to get lost in the center of this maze like layout.

 And so if all you wanted to do was get to these four anchor stores, you'd have to walk around the entire massive 5.6 million square ft mall. So this mall has been expanded many times, including a $325 million addition in 2015 where they added these hotel and office parks. But the Mall of America has ambitious plans to expand once again.

 This time adding a $430 million water park with a lazy river and a retractable roof as well as additional hotels and another parking garage. But although the Mall of America is certainly the largest shopping mall in the United States, there's nowhere that maximizes the Gruin transfer quite like Las Vegas. This is an interior view of the forum shops at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

And there's a lot of really interesting things going on in this image. So instead of introducing natural light from above, now they introduce the fake sky so that you think it's natural light, but in fact it's completely unnatural. And that allows them to control the time of day. So it's always the same time inside.

 Very much how casinos like to work. You have no idea that time is passing. And so you're prone to spend even more time in a place. The other thing that this layout does that you see in this photo is it curves the pathways so you can't see the end. So it feels almost endless. The other thing that I find really amusing about this is this is supposed to emulate like a Roman village from ancient times and then I love that they take this medieval castle language and stick it on top of that.

 I just think that's brilliant and that's a really Las Vegas thing to rebuild history like in a cartoon way. They have the pyramids, they have the Eiffel Tower, they have the New York skyline and the Trevy Fountain in Rome. I love this because what you have here is exactly what Gruin was inspired by but in this twisted perverted way.

 So if Gruin was inspired by the original mall that had shops on either side and then it was covered and became an arcade with a skylight and then that became his mall which also was covered with natural light coming in. This has taken it all the way back to the beginning, but in this perverse and weird way in that now it's the sky is fake and it's completely covered but it's made to appear as if it's uncovered and at the same time it's pretending you're in the past instead of being modern and contemporary as Gruin intended it to be. The classical

architecture and fake sky in one sense echoes Gruin's original vision of a European public plaza, but it's been distorted to be entirely about commerce and even in a subtle way begins separating people instead of bringing them together. That's because instead of the dumbbell or cartisian grid shape from the first two examples, this mall introduces the idea of a cluster design.

In essence, a cluster design is intended to sort shoppers into groups by putting stores with similar target demographics into the same area of the mall, clustering those stores together. For example, one area might have all your sports equipment and athletic shoe stores together and another might be jewelry stores and so on.

 So, when we look at this from above, you could see this is the strip right here. Caesar's Palace is over here. The fake sky is here and the fake sky is here. So, there's essentially three clusters. There's the cluster that has the fountain show, which is an eventbased cluster, and then has simple stores around it.

 There's the cluster that has the high-end shops over here, which connects directly to the casino. And then there's this multi-story mall within a mall that happens to be right off the strip. So around the fountain show you find staple brands like Nike and the Cheesecake Factory, things that appeal to a broad swath of of the population.

 And in the central area where the high-end shops are located, you find brands such as Van Clee and Arpels, Rolex, Jimmy Chu, Gucci, Versace, Balenciaga. So, I love the idea that after you've won at the casino, after you won big, you walk in directly to the high-end shops in the center. So, if you're in the casino where you don't know what time of day it is, and you exit to go into the shops, you still don't know what time of day it is because it's artificially controlled with that forever sunset in the fake sky. And then the mall within the mall

you find souvenir shops, toy stores, drugstores, the things you would expect to find when you walk in off the strip. So by looking at these three malls, you can see the journey of an idea from a space for community to a space that maximizes revenue. So what do you think? Did Gruin succeed or did he fail in creating a public plaza for the American suburbs?

ASTROPEARLTREE

Team Advanced ASTROLOGAL STUDIES

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OH MY OH MYH YEP YES YAY

A Scanner Darkly - YouTube

Transcripts:

<i> A Scanner Darkly</i> Home Video closed captioned (<i> low, eerie tones playing</i> ) (<i> soft scraping</i> ) (<i> exhaling</i> ) <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by  WARNER BROS.</font> (<i> quiet, melancholy theme  playing )</i> ♪ ♪ (<i> electronic whirring</i> ) (<i> scratching</i> ) (<i> insects buzzing quietly</i> )

(<i> whimpering</i> ) (<i> high-pitched grunt</i> ) (<i> high-pitched grunt</i> ) (<i> low grunting</i> ) (<i> whimpering</i> ) (<i> high-pitched grunt</i> ) (<i> deep gurgling</i> ) ♪ ♪ (<i> high-pitched grunt</i> ) (<i> high-pitched grunt</i> ) Huh? (<i> eerie tones playing</i> ) (<i> high-pitched grunt</i> ) ♪ ♪

(<i> coughs</i> ) (<i> curious whine</i> ) (<i> soft grunt</i> ) (<i> whines</i> ) (<i> insects chirring</i> ) (<i> high-pitched grunt</i> ) (<i> dog whines</i> ) (<i> high-pitched grunt</i> ) (<i> dog whining softly</i> ) I looked them up. (<i> panting</i> ): They're aphids. They're in my hair, on my skin, in my lungs.

And the pain, Barris... it's unreasonable. They're all over the place. Oh, and they've completely gotten Millie, too. Okay-okay, wai-wai-wai-wait. Just listen to me. You got to get out of there. I'll meet you over at the Fiddler's Three, okay? Calm down. Everything's gonna be fine. Before you go, put a couple of them in a jar so I can get them examined.

I mean, I'm sure they're just aphids, but you never know. Just in case, 'kay? Just do it. Relax. Relax. (<i> eerie tones playing</i> ) (<i> low grunt</i> ) Gentlemen of the Anaheim 709th chapter of the Brown Bear Lodge, we have a wonderful opportunity this afternoon, for, you see, the County of Orange has provided us with the chance to hear from and put questions to an undercover narcotics agent from the Sheriff's Department, who is out there on our behalf fighting this awful Substance D epidemic.

It's no secret we're living in a culture of addiction. Nearly 20% of the population can now be classified as addicts. And, as far as anyone can tell, there is but one company that is working and helping this situation. That company is our sponsor, New-Path. Now, you will notice that you can barely see this man, because he is wearing what is called a "scramble suit," the exact same suit he wears, and, in fact, must wear, during certain parts, in fact, most parts, of his daily activities of law enforcement.

This man-- whom we will call Fred, because that is the code name under which he reports the information he gathers-- once within the scramble suit, cannot be detected by even the latest in voice and facial recognition technology. The scramble suit itself is purportedly made up of approximately a million and a half fraction-representations of men, women and children in every variant, making the wearer of a scramble suit the ultimate Everyman.

(<i> whispers</i> ): This is terrible. He looks, does he not, like a... a constantly shifting, vague blur and nothing more, am I right? (<i> laughter</i> ) Let's hear it for the vague blur! (<i> applause</i> ) (<i> distorted</i> ): If you saw me on the street without this suit on, you'd probably say, "There goes a total dope fiend.

" You'd feel aversion and walk away. I don't look like you. I can't afford to. My life depends on it. (<i> normal voice</i> ): I'm not going to tell you first what I do as an undercover officer engaged in tracking down dealers and the source of their illegal drugs in the streets of our cities and corridors of our schools, here in Orange County.

I'm going to tell you what I'm afraid of. What I fear, night and day, is that our children-- your children and my children-- (<i> distorted</i> ): I have two little ones... very little. But not too little to be addicted, calculatedly addicted to Substance D for profit by drug terrorists. As many of you know, our military and their associates are actively engaged in countries where it is believed the organic component of Substance D, a small, highly toxic flower, originates.

And while our troops are down there fighting for us, it is up to each and every one of us here to do our part in eliminating the demand for this drug. It's important you, as citizens, continue to report all suspicious activity and individuals. For, simply put, if there were no demand in our society, there would be no market for these leeches to exploit.

MAN: Yeah. (<i> normal voice</i> ): Each day, this disease takes its toll on us, and each day the flow of profits and where they go... (<i> distorted</i> ): uh... Well, it isn't about the profits anyhow, it's... something else. Uh... what'd you see happen. Like, if you were a diabetic, and you didn't have money for insulin, (<i> normal voice</i> ): would you steal to get the money or just die? MAN (<i> over headphones</i> ): Uh, I think you better go back to the, uh, prepared text there, Fred.

(<i> quietly</i> ): I forgot it. I think I have a block against this shit. (<i> over headphones</i> ): Repeat after me, but, uh, make it sound casual. "Where the profits flow, we will soon... "...and then retribution will swiftly follow. "At that moment, I would not, for the life of me, want to be in their shoes.

" Got it? (<i> quietly</i> ): You know why I've got a block against this bullshit? Because this is what gets people on drugs. It's all so disgusting, you want to lurch off and become a user. Come on, Fred, just say the shit and get it over with. (<i> distorted</i> ): Um... Anyway... (<i> inhales sharply</i> ) Substance D.

D... (<i> normal voice</i> ): D is for Dumbness and Despair and Desertion. The desertion of your friends from you, you from your friends. Everyone from everyone. (<i> distorted</i> ): Isolation and loneliness and... hating and... suspecting each other. D is, finally, Death. Slow death. (<i> normal voice</i> ): From the head down.

Well... (<i> distorted</i> ): that's it. Okay, let's eat. (<i> quirky rock tune playing</i> ) (<i> siren chirps</i> ) (<i> siren wailing</i> ) All right, what's your name? Ah, my name, um... uh... Oh, you don't know your name? Well, that's interesting. Probable cause. Out of the car, sir. Now, you have the right to remain silent until...

and, uh... and anything you say can and will be used against you when you, uh... And when... You know, fuck this shit! (<i> dissonant chord plays</i> ) (<i> eerie, oscillating tones  playing</i> ) (<i> mechanical whirring</i> ) (<i> fabric fluttering</i> )

(<i> whirring, clicking</i> ) (<i> quiet beeps</i> ) Hello? Hey, how you doing? Oh... I-I'm all right. Anything wrong? Ugh! Just this fucker stole 50 bucks worth of shit from us today, and my boss said it was somehow my fault and it's coming out of my paycheck, which... I don't even think is legal. I mean, can you legally do that? Yeah, they can't do that.

At least they... used to not be able to do that. I'll check. Hey, Donna, can I get anything from you? Mm... yeah, how much? Ten. Ten? Yeah, I'm hurting really bad. I'll, uh, I'll pay you back later. Yeah, okay, um... say, day after tomorrow? Any sooner? I'll come by later. Like, around 8:00? Yeah. I'll see you later.

DONNA: Okay. All right, bye. Okay, bye. BARRIS:<i>  You see, all symptoms</i> are purposeful, be they positive or negative. You see what I'm saying? In this case, I wouldn't feel strangely about it, because just the idea of turning yourself over to New-Path for rehabilitation is only naturally gonna make you a little, you know...

apprehensive, but... that's just a manifestation of the fear. It's just, uh... that's the D talking. You know, the first thing I hear that, when you go into the New-Path, what they do to you? (<i> whispers</i> ): They cut your pecker off. No, no, they could never get away with that. You kidding me? Come on, that's an urban myth.

It's actually the spleen that's remanded to their custody. The what? The sp... Hey, how is everything? Everything is super good. (<i> whispers</i> ): Not with me. I got a lot of problems nobody else has. No, no, come on. More people than you'd think. And more people each day. This is a world getting progressively worse.

Can we not agree on that? What's on the dessert menu? Would you like to maybe order some dessert? Like what? (<i> moaning</i> ): Mmm... Well, we have fresh strawberry pie and fresh peach pie that we make here ourselves. (<i> sultry moan</i> ) No, we don't want any dessert. All right. Fucking fruit pies are for old ladies.

What do you think about the New-Path? While it doesn't matter what I think, I kind of have to tip my hat to any entity that can bring so much, uh, integrity to evil. I mean, imagine this, a seemingly voluntary privatized gulag just managed to eliminate the meddling middlemen of public accountability and free will, and wrapped it up in a little bow and given to the public like a gift, I

 mean, come on, this is... pshew! (<i> exhales sharply, coughs</i> ) This is awe-inspiring stuff. I heard you have to go cold turkey. Cold turkey doesn't even apply to Substance D. Unlike the legacy of inherited predisposition to addictive behavior or substances, this needs no genetic assistance. There's no weekend warriors on the D. You're either on it, or you haven't tried it.

Well... I like it. Yeah. How many caps do you take per day? (<i> raspy groan</i> ) Um... it's very difficult to determine. But not that many. Well, like the old school pharmacopoeia, a... tolerance develops. These visions of bugs, they're just garden-variety psychosis, but a clear... indication that you've hurdled over the initial fun and euphoric phase and passed on to the next phase.

News from the guinea pig grapevine suggests that... whatever it is, we won't know until it's... way too late. You see? You see that we're all canaries in the coal mine on this one? Hmm. I do think I have another source. That Donna chick. Bob's girl? Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah. His girl. Although I know for a fact he never gets in her pants.

Really? Yeah. (<i> inhales</i> ) But he... talks like he does. Oh, yeah. That's Bob Arctor-- he talks like he does many things. That's not the same, my friend, that's not the same thing. Donna has an aversion to bodily contact. And junkies lose their interest in sex, you realize, due to, uh, organs swelling up from vasoconstriction.

And I have observed in her an inordinate failure of sexual arousal, not just toward Bob Arctor, but, uh... ...other males as well. I... can't believe she doesn't put out. (<i> chuckles</i> ) Well, she would... if she were handled right. For instance, I could show you how to sleep with her f

or less than... three dollars? (<i> heavy sigh</i> ) I don't want to sleep with her. I want to buy from her. Donna does coke, all right? Three dollars doesn't get you a lot of coke. Ah, ah. That's where you're wrong, pal. (<i> sped-up music,  high-pitched whirring</i> ) (<i> sped-up engine revving</i> ) (<i> sped-up traffic passing</i> ) (<i> sped-up engine revving</i> ) (<i> quirky rock melody playing</i> ) ♪ ♪ (<i> aerosol can hissing</i> ) What they've deliberately done is mix the cocaine with the oil so that it cannot be extracted.

But my... (<i> sniffs twice</i> ) knowledge of chemistry is such that I know precisely how to separate the oil from the cocaine. Now, now I will freeze it, which'll cause the cocaine crystals to rise to the top, because they are lighter... than the oil. The terminal step, of course, I keep to myself, but suffice to say, it involves an intricate and methodological process...

of filtering. Hmm. How long is it gonna be in there? Just about a half an hour. You know, uh, I been thinking, Barris, uh, even if we do get a pure gram of cocaine out of this deal, I don't want to use it on Donna, I mean, you know, to get in her pants. That'd be like buying her. No, it'd just be an exchange.

You give her a gift, and she gives you one. (<i> snorts, chatters</i> ) (<i> sighs</i> ) And besides, we're talking about Bob's girl here. Um... and this is his house, he's my friend. He lets you and Luckman live here. There's a great deal about Bob Arctor you're not aware of. FRED (<i> distorted</i> ):<i>  How did New-Path rig it  where they're the one place</i> in our entire country that can't be scanned? All the rest of us can be tracked 24 hours a day, but, no, not at New-Path.

HANK (<i> distorted</i> ): Hey, that's their contract with the government. But I think you're right. It would be a good place for a dealer to hide. (<i> grunts</i> ) What about, uh, Donna Hawthorne? I'm systematically working up to her supplier. The quantities I'm buying now are basically beyond her capacity.

She doesn't have enough front money to handle it, so it's just a matter of time before she's hooking me up with the next person up the ladder. I think someday soon we'll have somebody who really knows something, and they'll be worth busting. What about, uh, Jim Barris and Ernie Luckman? Same shit, nothing new.

Well, what about, uh, Charles Freck and Robert Arctor? Up to pretty much the same old thing. Even Arctor? Arctor? Yeah, he doesn't seem to be doing much. Still working his nowhere Handy Brake and Tire job. Drops a few caps of Death cut with meth during the day. I'm not so sure. We just got a tip in from an informant that Arctor has funds above and beyond what he gets from his little job.

And when we checked into it, we found he wasn't even working there full-time. Hmm. Yeah. Who's this informant? We don't know. Undoubtedly, it's a vengeance burn. That's how these druggies are. I mean, phoning in on each other every time they get pissed off. Anyhow, as of now, I'm officially assigning you to observe Arctor.

(<i> tapping computer keys</i> ) If we're ever going to get to the bottom of this, I have a hunch it'll be through this guy. So will that mean full-time viewer recording? We got no choice. We'll install a new holographic scanning system. You'll just let us know when they're out of the house, and, uh, we'll want storage and printout on everything.

(<i> grunting</i> ) Total, total, total, totally, total, total, total providence. I am walking home. I find myself on a street I am rarely on, and look what I obtain for a mere $50. LUCKMAN: What is it? Oh, this would be an 18-speed bike of the all-terrain variety. I noticed it in a neighbor's yard, and I inquired as to its availability.

They had four of them, so I made a cash offer. Oh! Drugs! 50 dollars. They acquiesced. They actually threw in these lemon yellow racing pants. They actually even hoisted it over the fence for me, which I found to be very neighborly. Oh, that's weird. I didn't know you could get an 18-speed bike nearly new for $50.

It's amazing what you can get for $50. I'll give you $60 right now, no questions asked. DONNA: You know, this bike looks a lot like the bike that this girl lives across the street from me had that got ripped off about a month ago. This bike could be hot. They probably jacked it, these hoister friends of yours.

Sure they did-- I mean, if they've got four and selling it that cheap. Right? You should at least show it to her, so she could see if it's hers. Yeah. Okay, I can do that, but this is a boy's bike. Okay? So it can't be. Not to invalidate your intuition, but it's not possible. Thank you. Why do you say it's an 18-speed, when it only has nine gears? What? What? Yeah. Yeah.

Six right here, three at the other end of the chain. Six plus three equals nine. It's a nine-speed bike. Yeah, but even a nine- speed bike for 50 bucks, he still got a good deal. Okay, those guys told me it was 18 speeds. I just got Greeked, I just got... Wait! Wait. Now I count eight. Six here and then two in the front.

That makes eight. What do you think happened to the missing gears? Think? I know. They were probably working on it, these gypsy grifters, with improper tools and no technical knowledge, no understanding of reverse engineering, and when they attempted to reassemble it, they panicked. They got scared, and they left nine orphan gears there, just laying on the floor.

They're probably still there on the floor of the garage. (<i> Luckman pounding table</i> ) Let's just go rescue the orphan gears, dude! Don't you see that that's part of the plan? They're going to try to sell them to me, not give them to me, as they rightfully should've, as included in part of the original sale price.

Oh, my God, there's no telling what else they've bait-and-switched. Yeah, but all of, if all of us go together, oh, they'll give them back. Oh, you bet they will. Oh, you bet they will! Let's just go as a team, okay? DONNA: Wait! Wait, wait, wait. Are you sure there are only nine gears on this bike? Eight. Okay, eight, nine, whatever.

Don't you think that, before we go over and accuse and start some shit, we should find out for sure? Absolutely right, Donna! Who do we know who's an authority on this type of bi-- (<i> Donna grunts</i> ) Get off of me! Let me... (<i> annoyed grunting</i> ): God...! We are all way too close to this. There's only one thing we can do to thwart the plot of these albino, shape-shifting lizard bitches.

We are going to take this bike outside, ask the first person we see. We're going to introduce some novelty. That way, we get an objective viewpoint. <i> Eins, zwei,  drei, Hagel...</i> BARRIS: By the way, I might take you up on that, uh, $60 offer. No, that was for an 18-speed. Oh, God. Now, for this, 18 minus ten, I'll give you $23.75.

Are you certain that's the right math on that? (<i> knocking</i> ) MAN: Come in. You are Officer Fred? Yes. Have a seat, please. All right, Fred. We're going to administer several easy tests, and there will be no physical discomfort involved. If this is about the speech I gave to the... WOMAN: Uh, what this is about stems from a recent departmental survey showing that several undercover agents have been admitted to Neural Aphasia Clinics during the last month.

MAN: You're conscious of the high factor of addictiveness of Substance D? Of course I am. Of course, these tests in no way pertain to the addictive properties of Substance D, but to... well, let's start with the Set-Ground Test first. Within the apparently meaningless lines is an object that we would all recognize.

You are to tell me what that object is and point to it in the total field. In many of those taking Substance D, a split between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere of the brain occurs, which results in a defect within both the percept and cognitive systems, although apparently, the cognitive continues to function normally.

Have you located the familiar object in this line drawing? It should just jump right out at you. I see a... Coke bottle. A soda pop bottle is correct. Was it in the speech I gave? Maybe it seemed I showed a little bilateral dysfunction there... I mean, I might've seemed a little... slushed. Are you getting any cross-chatter? What? Cross-chatter between hemispheres.

If there's damage to the left hemisphere where the linguistic skills are normally located, then sometimes, the right hemisphere will fill in to the best of its ability. Uh... I don't know. I mean, not that I'm aware of. What do you see in this second picture? A sheep. Show me the sheep. MAN: An impairment of set-background discrimination can get you into a heap of trouble.

Instead of perceiving no forms, you perceive faulty forms. So there is no sheep here, is there? Was I close? This is not a Rorschach test, where some abstract blot can be interpreted many ways by many subjects. This has one specific object, in this case... a dog. (<i> softly</i> ): A dog. What's that mean that I saw a sheep instead? MAN: Who knows? Only after the entire set has been run, can we make a determination...

Why this is superior to the Rorschach is that it's not interpretive. There are many wrongs, but there is only one right. You either get it, or you don't. And if you show a run of not getting it, then we have a fix on a functional impairment, and we dry you out for a while, until you test better later on. At New-Path? BOTH: Undoubtedly.

Now, what do you see in this drawing among these particular black and white lines? (<i> sighs</i> ) Plastic dog shit. The little kind you can buy and put in someone's bed. (<i> proctors laughing</i> ) Can I go now? You know, Fred, if you keep your sense of humor like you do, you just might make it, after all. Make it? Make what? The team? The girl? Make good? Make do? Make out? Make sense? Make money? Make time? Define your terms! The Latin for "make" is<i> facere,</i> which always reminds me of<i> fuckere,</i> which is Latin for "to fuck,"

and I haven't been getting shit in that department lately. If you guys are psychologist types and you've been monitoring my endless debriefings with Hank, tell me, what the hell is Donna's deal? What do I do? I mean, how do you make it with that kind of sweet, unique, stubborn little chick? You could buy her flowers.

Really? This time of year, you can get little blue flowers at any nursery. Give them to her. (<i> distorted</i> ): Yeah. Hey, Fred, glad you could make it. This is the informant who phoned in about Bob Arctor, and I mentioned him. (<i> distorted</i> ): Yes. Anyway, he phoned in again, and we challenged him to step forth and identify himself.

Do you know this man? FRED: Sure do. You're James Barris, aren't you? So, Mr. Barris, what's your information? I have evidence that Mr. Arctor is part of a covert terrorist drug organization. They are well-funded, and they have arsenals of weapons at their disposal. And what is this organization? I believe it to be political in nature and very much against this country, an enemy of the U.S.

HANK: Can you give us any specific names of anyone else in this organization of persons Arctor meets with? Yes, uh, Ms. Donna Hawthorne. On a variety of pretexts, he will go over to her place of residence and colludes with her regularly, I've noticed. Colludes? (<i> chuckling</i> ): Colludes. What do you mean? Well, I-I've followed him in my own car, without his knowledge.

He goes there often? Yes, as often as... She is his girl. Right. Uh, Mr. Arctor also... HANK: No, hold up. is seemingly... Hold up. You think there's anything to this, Fred? I think we should definitely look at his evidence. All right. Bring in your evidence, all of it. We want names most of all. Now, have you seen Mr.

 Arctor involved in any large quantities of drugs? To be certain. And I have carefully taken samples, uh, again, without his knowledge, when the opportunity presented itself, strictly for you to analyze, and I can bring those in, as well. Great. Is there anything else you wish to state at this time? There is. Mr. Arctor is an addict. He is addicted to Substance D.

And I fear that his mind has become deranged over time, and he is now officially to be considered, um, dangerous. Dangerous? Yes, he is having episodes that would occur with brain damage from Substance D. And I'm quite certain, also, that the optic chiasm has deteriorated somewhat, due to a weak ipsilateral component.

HANK: This sort of unsupported speculation, as I've already warned you, Mr. Barris, is completely worthless. Now, we'll be sending an officer with you to gather your evidence, all right? May I... An officer out of uniform, of course. Uh, no, see, I could be mur-dered. As I've already said, Mr.

 Arctor has this cachet of, well, weapons. Mr. Barris, we appreciate this and the extreme risk you are taking, and if it works out, and your information is valuable in obtaining a conviction, then, naturally... But that is not the reason I am here. You see, this-this man is, he just has a soul-sickness. His brain is damaged from the use of this toxic and most terrible substance.

Nonetheless, the reason I am here is I feel that I may have certain qualities that would qualify me to perhaps come over to your side, to surrender and come to the side of law enforcement in general. I would like an employment application. We don't care why you're here; we only care whether your evidence and material amount to anything.

The rest is your problem. Perhaps at the desk, I can get an employment, uh... Gentlemen, you are about to witness for approximately 61 cents of ordinary household materials, the perfect homemade silencer. Barris, the neighbors are going to hear. Nah-- they only call in murders in this neighborhood. Plus, Freckledeck, it's a silencer.

They're not going to hear anything. Well, I'm pretty fucking sure they're illegal. In this day and age, the type of society we find ourselves living in, every person of worth needs to have a gun at all times, to protect themselves. And we're off.<i>  Un...</i> <i> Deux...</i> <i> Trois?</i> (<i> gunshot blasts</i> ) (<i> dogs barking frantically  in distance</i> ) (<i> softly</i> ): That sure is some silencer.

BARRIS: Yes, uh, what it did was augment the sound rather than dampen it. But I almost have it. I believe I have it in principle, anyway. Oh, well, the good news is, regardless of what you do next time, it'll be a silencer to us, because we're now deaf! ARCTOR:<i>  What happened?</i> <i> How did I get here?</i> Okay, it's your move now.

Anyone want some popcorn? GIRLS: Yeah! Ah! Fuck! (<i> grunting</i> ) <i> The pain...</i> <i> so unexpected and undeserved,</i>  had, for some reason, <i> cleared away the cobwebs.</i> <i> I realized I didn't hate  the cabinet door.</i> <i> I hated my life, my house,</i> <i> my family...</i> Are you okay, Daddy? What happened? A

RCTOR:<i>  ...my backyard,</i> <i> my power mower.</i> <i> Nothing would ever change.</i> <i> Nothing new  could ever be expected.</i> <i> It had to end... and it did.</i> <i> Now, in the dark world  where I dwell,</i> <i> ugly things  and surprising things</i> <i> and, sometimes,  little wondrous things</i> <i> spill out at me constantly.

</i> <i> And I can count on nothing.</i> (<i> scatting softly</i> ) Medfly! Got it. That would be a Thelma Kornford. Oh, yeah! Miss Big Tits. "If I had known it was harmless... ALL: I would have killed it myself!" Thanks for the mammaries. (<i> laughing</i> ) She had such beautiful tits. Daddy Slowpoke. Oh, get around him, will you? You know what to do.

Your move, Peterbilt. That's a big ten-four. Got nothing on us. There we go. Get a life! Okay, Bob, no rush. Hey, not so fast, Bob. You are flying-- decelerate. Steady. Decelerate! LUCKMAN: Slow down! Jesus! Son of a bitch! Hey! Come on! Decelerate! Oh... (<i> gasps</i> ) (<i> horn honking</i> ) Ah...! (<i> engine sputtering</i> ) (<i> horn honking</i> ) Let us over! Emergency! We're getting over! (<i> horn honking</i> ) Emergency! (<i> horns honking</i> ) What the hell was that? Jesus fucking Christ! What the hell in the hootenanny was that?

The return spring on the throttle cable, and, look, the gas. Was it cut or broken? BARRIS: Let's give her a look. Ah! It's not the spring. It's the linkage from the pedal to the carb. See? It fell apart so the gas pedal didn't push back out when you took your foot off. But... that doesn't explain why... There is a safety override on the carb.

When the linkage parts, it's... Why did it part? Shouldn't this locking ring hold the cable in place? I mean, how can it just come off like that? Let's have a look, let's probe a little. All right. This screw has been turned all the way out, the idle screw. So, when the linkage parted, it went the other way, up instead of down.

Wait... Now, how could that happen? There is no way that that screw could turn itself all the way out like that accidentally. No way. Motherfucker! They did it deliberately! This could... We almost died! They almost fucking got us, man! Now, to loosen the lock ring and nut assembly that holds the accelerator linkage rods together, a special tool would be needed. Several, in fact.

I'm going to estimate it'll take about a half an hour to get this back together. I have the tools, though. Back at the house. Correct. Well, we can always go to a repair center and borrow theirs, or get a tow truck out here. (<i> quiet laugh,  then a gulp</i> ) Here. You know, maybe that's what's fucking us up, fucking up our brains.

We're going to wind up like Freck soon. (<i> chuckling</i> ): No. Hey, these are for us. I'm going to suggest that you take several with the implicit acceptance of the fact that Substance D cannot screw up an accelerator linkage or a carb-idle adjustment. LUCKMAN: Yeah, dude. Don't blame the drugs. Come on. Well, so much for our great road trip to San Diego, Bob.

I told you we should have gone to San Francisco. What, like going to San Francisco would not have caused this, uh, problem with the engine? I don't know what you mean. Yeah, because when you're going north, it screws this way, and when you're going south, it screws that way. No, no, no. If we were in Australia...

This proves you got somebody out to get you real bad, Bob. I just hope that the house is still there when we get back. Yeah, I didn't think of that. I wouldn't worry about it too much. LUCKMAN: You wouldn't?! Christ, they may have broken in and ripped off all we got. All... Bob's got, anyhow. What if they stomped the animals? Don't worry about it.

I left a little surprise for 'em. What? Yes, anyone entering the house while we are gone today will receive a... little surprise. Little something I perfected early this morning. What kind of surprise? It's my house, Jim. You should ask me before you start... wiring up my house. Why would you get so uptight about protecting your house from intruders? Why would you care? I'm just saying it's my house, that's all.

You can't start going around booby-trapping my house. Okay, okay. I mean, geez-- or as the Germans would say, <i> Leise,</i> which translates to "Be cool." Just be cool. So what did you do? If the front door is opened while we are in absentia, thumbnail-sized auxiliary motion detector digital memory cameras start recording.

You should have told me. What if they come in through the back door or the bathroom window, like that infamous Beatles' song? To increase their chances of entering via the front door, rather than in other less usual places, I, fortuitously, left the front door unlocked. Suppose they don't know it's unlocked? Well, that's why I left a note on the door.

You're kidding me. No, no. No. Yes. But no. But yes. Are you bullshitting us or not? I just simply never know with you. Is he fucking with us, Bob? We'll see when we get back. If there's a note on the door and it's unlocked, we'll know he isn't lying. They'd probably take the note down after ripping off and vandalizing the house and then locking the door behind them so we don't know, we will never know.

It's still that gray area. Of course I'm kidding-- only a psychotic would do that. Leave the front door of the house unlocked with a note on the door? What'd you write on the note, Jim? I wrote, "Come on in, the door's unlocked." He did it! He really did it! BARRIS: This is the only way we're gonna know for sure, Bob, who's been doing this stuff.

And is that not what is of primary importance? LUCKMAN: Okay, I'm still gray here. Now, did you do it or not? Is it really that suspenseful? Did you? He did it. BARRIS: Please, it doesn't matter, we're gonna be home shortly. LUCKMAN: Did you? We'll be home presently. (<i> whirring, clicking</i> ) (<i> hinges squeak</i> ) (<i> meows</i> ) ♪ ♪ Hmm.

Oh, well, Barris, I can see you're right. This scrupulous covering-over of all the signs they would have otherwise left, testifies to their thoroughness. You're an idiot. Oh. Wai-Wai-Wai-Wait. This... What is that? Huh? Huh? Uh-huh. Come here, come here. Look at this, look at this. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh! A still-hot cigarette butt. It sure is.

Wait a second. They lit a joint while they were here, Bob. Fuck it, Barris is right, there was somebody here. This roach is still hot. Smell it. Yes. And that roach may not have been left here by accident. This evidence may not be a slip-up. So, what now? Maybe they were here specifically to plant drugs in the house.

Setting us up, then "phoning in a tip" later. It could be in the phone, it could be in the wall outlets. We are gonna have to go through this house and get it absolutely clean before they phone us in, unless they already have! (<i> whispers</i> ): We might only have minutes. (<i> gasps</i> ): You check the wall sockets.

I'll tear this phone apart! Wai-Wai-Wait, hold on, hold on. If they see us scrambling around right before the raid... (<i> whispers</i> ): What raid? If we are running around frantically trying to flush their drugs, then we can't allege, even though it's true, that we didn't know they were here. (<i> whispers</i> ): They are going to find us holding them or...

maybe that's... part of the plan. Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! (<i> sobbing</i> ): We can't do anything! We're f-f-fucked, man! Fuck! Yech! Fucked, man! Barris, what about the super-secret surveillance cameras? The what? The doodads, man. Oh, yes, of course. Right, of course. How could I have forgotten? (<i> chuckles</i> ): Oh, this should be extremely informational, at this point.

I believe this will tell us a great deal. Although it probably wouldn't have... proven to be that important. Let me guess-- didn't record. Allow me to suggest that it's highly likely that the tow truck was bugged, thus affording them ample time and opportunity to deploy an operative to diffuse and otherwise erase the evidence obtained.

But, at this point, we have no other recourse in view of their evasive tactics. I mean, there is, of course, one thing you could do, Bob, although it would... take time. Sell the house and move out? But, hell, this is our home. You could make a considerable profit. On the other hand, you might have to take a loss on a quick sale.

(<i> whispers</i> ): I know a good Realtor. What reason should I give for selling? They always ask. Can't tell the truth, you really shouldn't tell the truth. Well, why can't we tell the truth? We put an ad in the<i> L.A. Times.</i> "Modern three-bedroom tract house "with two bathrooms for easy and fast flushing, "high-grade drugs stashed throughout all rooms, included in sale price.

" It could actually increase the value. But they might be calling and asking what kind of drugs are stashed, and, uh, we don't know, it could be anything. Yes, and prospective buyers might inquire as to the quantity. Yeah, a-a-and we don't know at this point. It could be ounces of weed or pounds of heroin or hits of E or killer caps of D.

DONNA: Hey, you guys. (<i> guys gasp, whimper</i> ) Fuck! Jesus! What the fuck is wrong with you? (<i> exhales, sniffles</i> ) I came in, like the note said. It didn't say when you were gonna get back, so I just... I just sat around for a while and... ended up crashing. Love your sweater. Just don't touch me! Man, you guys were making so much noise.

Sorry. It woke me up. (<i> Barris grunts</i> ) Did you smoke a joint before you crashed? Uh, yeah... (<i> chuckles</i> ) Otherwise, I can't ever sleep. You know, you guys should seriously think about maybe locking the doors when you leave. Otherwise, you could get ripped off, and it'd be your own fault.

 (<i> chuckles</i> ) This is all your fault. DONNA: Did I hear you say you were gonna sell the house? (<i> Barris and Luckman grunting</i> ) Or was that... you know, me dreaming? 'Cause what I heard sounded weird. Yeah, we're all dreaming. BARRIS (<i> grunting</i> ): Quiet. Steady. Steady. BARRIS: Kidney. Kidney. Ow! Kidney! HANK (<i> distorted</i> ): So, the information from the holo scanners installed in Arctor's house are transmitted back here, to station 12-879.

This'll be your new home away from home, pal. It's, uh, pretty intuitive. You'll just be watching and scanning through recorded information. You can go live, of course, but that tends to be excruciatingly boring. And, then, you see where these, uh, holos are placed? What would be great is if they ever need servicing or changing out, you could do that yourself while no one else is around.

But wouldn't you, then, see me on the tapes doing that? No. For that, you just edit yourself out. But be sure to include yourself in the tapes from time to time, 'cause if you systematically edit yourself out, then we can deduce who you are through the process of elimination, whether we want to or not. I'm not sure I exactly...

Well, we take it for granted that you are one of the individuals that are in Arctor's circle of roommates and friends that frequent the house. I mean, undoubtedly, you're either... Jim Barris or Ernie Luckman, Charles Freck... (<i> chuckles</i> ): even Arctor himself. Hell, you could be Donna, for all I know.

As my superior, I figure you'd know all this stuff. (<i> scoffs</i> ) How the hell would I know? I'm just a little guy behind a big desk. You'd have to go way up the food chain to access that kind of info. You know, instead of me doing any maintenance, you should send someone to the house once a month, in uniform, and have him say, "Good morning.

 I'm here to service "the monitoring devices covertly installed on your premises." (<i> Hank chuckles</i> ) Maybe that sucker Arctor would even pick up the bill. (<i> sighs</i> ): Actually, I think Arctor would probably kill the guy and then disappear. (<i> normal voice</i> ): If it's proven that Arctor is, in fact, hiding that much.

Huh. Believe me, Arctor is hiding a great deal. We've got more recent information on him analyzed, and... (<i> scoffs</i> ) there is no doubt about it-- he's a ringer. A three-dollar bill. The guy is a phony. So keep on him until he drops; until we have enough to arrest him and make it stick. You think he's high up in the, you know, Substance D network? What we think is of no importance to your work.

You report your limited conclusions, and we evaluate. You got it? Okay, okay. I got it. (<i> sighs</i> ) I'd say Arctor is doomed if he's up to something. And I have a hunch from what you're saying that he is. BARRIS:<i>  Actually, the idling jets</i> could be replaced with smaller jets that would compensate, and with a tach, you could just watch his RPMs, so it didn't over-rev.

Usually just backing off on the gas pedal causes it to upshift if the automatic linkage doesn't do it. What are you grease monkeys up to? Bob's got a bent choke shaft. How much does this Impala weigh? Weighs about a thousand pounds. BARRIS: All right. A thousand pounds traveling at 80 miles per hour builds up a force...

That's a thousand pounds with passengers in it and a full tank of gas. Uh, for a fact? Okay. How many passengers? Twelve. Six in the front, six in the back. No, that's 11 in the back, and the driver sitting alone in the front. The extra weight on the rear wheels is to keep the car from fishtailing. What are we talking about, 12 50-pound passengers? Kids' soccer team.

Now, is that metal or plastic cleats? Metal cleats for safety. Okay, my computations are complete. You are just... heckle tweak, but you are bug-bite squared. What kind of bug? About-to-get-fucked-up, bitch, beetle. FRECK: Hey, come on, c-cool it, you guys. BARRIS: All right? Just try to do something. Step back, Freck and Frack, Ernie's on the attack.

What-what is this? Come on. I'm desperately afraid. I'm going to knock your nads up into your nostrils Come on. for talking to your betters that way. All right, I am a technician, you are an interloper. You are constitutionally incapable of not shutting the fuck up. Bring it! Shut the fuck up! No, no, Proctology Boy, I'm coming after you.

Shut it-- hey! Hey. I have the perfect tool for this job. I was only kidding him. Fuck. Fuck! What if he goes in there and he gets his gun and his silencer? I'm leaving. This place has become unsafe. No. Hey, hey, Freck, no, come on. You're a bro, man. Stick around. What's the hammer for, Barris? No, I just saw it inside, and I just thought I, you know, should bring it along with me.

(<i> yells</i> ) Same with this. You ready? Huh? Yeah. What do you want? Come on, Hammerhead. Shut up! Make a move. Don't like it. FRECK: Okay! If you guys are gonna kill each other, I'm splitting. It's getting very fucked up over here. ARCTOR: Hey, Freck. The most dangerous kind of person is the one who's afraid of his own shadow.

What is that supposed to mean? I'll tell you what it means, Freckles. It means that if you take too much of that stuff, you not only start seeing and feeling buggy-bugs all over you, but you start talking like... (<i> quacking</i> ) and no one can understand you. What'd you say, Barris? I didn't understand.

(<i> quacking like Donald Duck</i> ) See, you guys are fucked up. BARRIS (<i> mimicking Popeye</i> ): No-no. It is yuck-uck-uck-ou that are fuckuckeded up. Hey, go Freck yourself! (<i> as Popeye</i> ): Don't take the car; you'll kill yourselfsk. Oi-yuck-uck-uck-oh. (<i> engine starting</i> ) (<i> car speeding away</i> ) LUCKMAN:<i>  So this guy's</i> been going around claiming to be a world-famous impostor, right? Says he's posed, at one time or another, as a surgeon at John Hopkins, as a theoretical, sub-molecular, high-velocity,

particle-research physicist on a federal grant at Harvard, as a Finnish novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature, as a deposed Argentinean president who was married to a go-go dancer from Chicago... And he got away with all that? He never got caught? Okay, you broke my flow, so now I guess I'll just have to segue down to the near.

And that's just it, you see, he didn't pose as any of those. He just posed as a world-famous impostor. Yeah... I-It came out later in the<i> L.A. Times.</i> They-they checked up, and he was pushing a broom at Disneyland or something. He saw that old DiCaprio movie, you know, the one where he plays a world-famous impostor, before Leonardo hit his Elvis stage.

And his first thought was, "Hey, I could pose as all those exotic guys and get away with it," but then, his next thought was, "Hell, why bother? "I could just pose as an impostor. It'd be a lot easier." They say that he made more money (<i> over speaker</i> ): than the actual impostor, although I'm not sure if they, uh, uh, adjusted for inflation.

BARRIS: Hmm. Well, you know, we all see impostors now and then, but not posing as subatomic physicists. Oh, as a narc, you mean. Hmm? What's a narc look like? ARCTOR: That's like asking what's an impostor look like. I once talked to this dealer who'd been busted, and I asked him what the narc who'd busted him looked like.

BARRIS: What, did he say he looked just like us? More so. So I guess the moral of that is... stay away from guys that look the same as us. (<i> laughs</i> ) (<i> Barris laughs</i> ) Well, there are female narcs. LUCKMAN: Oh, hey, I'd like to meet one of those. No, I don't mean a female, I mean just the narc, BARRIS: Right, yeah.

knowingly, like a positive, although... BARRIS: Sure, so you could positively know, and you will, 'cause when he slaps the cuffs on, then you'll know for sure, when that day comes. How could a guy do that? Pose as a narc? LUCKMAN: What? BARRIS: Huh? What? Pose as a narc? BARRIS: No, you said... yeah. Pose as a narc? Oh, sh...

(<i> chuckling</i> ): Shit, I'm spaced. Pose as a narc, wow. (<i> chuckling</i> ): Pose as a narc. My brains are scrambled today. Hmm. (<i> computer beeps</i> ) (<i> pounding table</i> ) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ Christ, Barris, what the fuck? Hello... (<i> clears throat</i> ) Uh, yes, hi, how are you? I have something somewhat, uh, emergent, uh, to report. Uh, I don't know if I should be summoning the inhalator squad or the resuscitation squad. (<i> clears throat</i> ) Yes, ma'am? Uh, I-I-I don't, I don't want to say it's not cardiac arrest, but it's either that or an involuntary asphyxiation of a bolus within the....

Uh, the address, yes, the address is simple, although I've never sent myself a piece of mail here. Seven-zero-niner. Is the, is the street relevant? FRED: Come on. I'll tell you this much-- it is a cul-de-sac. Uh, that does technically qualify as a street? Oh, I am, uh, pleased to report we won't be needing your assistance, uh, after all.

Thank you. Have a nice day. (<i> Luckman retching</i> ) There you go. Took care of itself. (<i> Luckman hawking</i> ) (<i> grunts</i> ) BARRIS: Okay. LUCKMAN: Oh, Jesus. BARRIS: You all right? (<i> grunts</i> ) There you go. LUCKMAN: I must have passed out. Yeah. Well, you, uh... I was dreaming. Gosh, I almost died.

Yeah. Shit. Huh? And what were you doing while I was being escorted by dead relatives to the bright light? Well, no, no, no. Jacking off? No-no-no. You saw me. I was on the phone, I summoned the paramedics. I sprung into action without delay. Bullshit! You were, you were cleaning your pipe. No, I was wrapping my pipe.

You were unconscious. You're the only person in the known universe who's never heard of the Heimlich maneuver? All right, I'm gonna give you a little feedback, since you seem to be proceeding through life like a cat without whiskers, perpetually caught behind the refrigerator. Your life, and watching you live it, is like a gag reel of ineffective bodily functions.

I swear to God that a toddler has a better understanding of the intricacies of chew, swallow, digest, don't kill yourself on your TV dinner, and yet, you've managed to turn this near-death fuck-up of yours into a moral referendum on me. LUCKMAN: You are a monster! Oh, fuck. BARRIS: You are a billy goat. LUCKMAN: A sick, depraved...

(<i> radio playing soft rock</i> ) (<i> dialing through stations</i> ) NARRATOR:<i>  ...Charles Freck,</i> <i> becoming progressively  more and more depressed</i> <i> by what was  happening around him,</i> <i> decided finally to off himself.</i> <i> There was no problem in  the circles where he hung out</i> <i> in putting an end to yourself.

</i> <i> You just bought  a large quantity of downers</i> <i> and took them  with some cheap wine.</i> <i> The planning part  had to do with</i> <i> the artifacts he wanted found  on him by later archaeologists.</i> <i> He had spent  several days deciding--</i> <i> much longer than he had spent  deciding to kill himself.

</i> <i> He would be found  lying on his back on his bed</i> <i> with a copy of Ayn Rand's</i>  The Fountainhead <i> and an unfinished letter  to Exxon,</i> <i> protesting the cancellation  of his gas credit card.</i> <i> That way,  he would indict the system</i> <i> and achieve something  by his death,</i> <i> over and above  what the death itself achieved.

</i> (<i> pills rattling</i> ) <i> At the last moment, he changed  his mind on a decisive issue</i> <i> and decided to drink the pills  with a connoisseur wine</i> <i> instead of Ripple  or Thunderbird.</i> (<i> bottle shatters</i> ) <i> So he set off  on one last drive,</i> <i> over to Tiny's Liquors, which</i>  specialized in fine wines, <i> and bought a bottle  of 2001 Azalea Springs Merlot,</i> <i> which set him back almost $70.

</i> <i> Back home again, he uncorked  the wine, let it breathe,</i> <i> drank a few glasses of it,</i> <i> and tried to think of something  meaningful, but could not.</i> <i> And then,  with a glass of Merlot,</i> <i> gulped down  all the pills at once.</i> <i> However, he had been burned.</i> <i> Instead of quietly suffocating,</i> <i> Charles Freck  began to hallucinate.

</i> <i> The next thing he knew,</i> <i> a creature  from between dimensions</i> <i> was standing beside his bed,</i> <i> looking down at him  disapprovingly.</i> You going to read me my sins? Yeah. It's going to take 100,000 hours. Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in shifts, throughout eternity. The list will never end.

"The Sins of Freck." NARRATOR:<i>  Charles Freck wished</i> <i> he could take back  the last half hour of his life.</i> CREATURE: "...age six, in the first grade: Theft of fingernail clippers." "3:08 p.m.: Theft..." "...you did knowingly and with malice..." "...kicking, punch your baby sister Evelyn." "December: Theft of Christmas presents.

" "...one million lies." NARRATOR:<i>  1,000 years later,</i> <i> they had reached  the sixth grade,</i> <i> the year he had  discovered masturbation.</i> "November 14: Percodan... Vicodin... cocaine..." NARRATOR:<i>  Charles Freck thought,</i> <i> "At least I got a good wine."</i> Where did Substance D come from? Why can't we stop it? The bigger this war gets, the more freedoms we lose, the more Substance D is on our streets! Can't you figure this out?! Look around you! Look how far we've come! Humanity wasn't meant to live like this--

our every waking moment tracked and traced and scanned! It's time to stop submitting to this tyranny. It's time to realize that we're being enslaved. Uh-oh, it's our tax dollars at work to protect us from ourselves. Hey, guys, I used to be one of you. Stop selling out your own species! (<i> tires screeching</i> ) Hey.

 (<i> chuckles</i> ) Get in. You scared me. Got something for you. I'm seeing some crazy shit tonight. What do you mean? That fucking Barris. You know how he works? He doesn't kill anybody, but he hangs around until the situation arises where they die. And then he just... sits there. And he sort of sets them up in the first place, while he stays out of it.

But I'm not sure... how. Hey, do you have that money for stuff? I need it tonight. Yeah, I have it. Okay. You know, I don't like Barris. I don't trust him. Guy's fucking crazy. And when you're around him, you start acting crazy. And then when you're not around him, you're fine. You're acting crazy now. I am? Yes.

Oh. Hey, will you take me to a concert next weekend at Anaheim Stadium? Sure. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah! Which night? Oh, it's Sunday afternoon. Whatever you want. Hmm? Well, I'll just drive over to my place. You have the money, you'll give it to me. We'll kick back, drop some Death, maybe get some tequila. All right. All right.

Hey, Donna, do you like cats? Mm... Droopy little things, moving along about a foot above the ground. Above? You mean on the ground? Just drooping, behind furniture... little spring flowers with blue in them, that come up first. Yeah. Before... Before someone stomps on them and they're all gone. It's like you know me.

(<i> giggles</i> ) You can read me. Can I put my arms around you? I want to hug you, okay? No! What? Look, I do a lot of coke, okay? And I just have to be really careful, because I do a lot of coke. So just leave my body alone, okay? Okay. Sorry. Yeah. You know... fuck it. Hey, I-I'm sorry. I just don't like it when people grope my body, and I have to watch out for that because I snort so much coke.

That's fucking lame. I got to go. Your car's not fixed. I drove you here, I'll drive you back. Bob! Bob! Bob, wait! Please... Please wait. I didn't mean... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'm just, I'm so out of it right now. Sometimes, after I've worked really hard all day... Please, come back. Come... come on.

We've got tequila. How much do you do? Not that much. And I don't shoot up. I never have, and I never will. Once you start shooting, you have, like, six months, maybe. Even tap water, you get a habit. You have a habit. We all do. I mean, so what? What's the difference? I'm happy. Aren't you happy? Listen to me. I think it's starting to get bad.

You know what I want to do someday, Bob? I want to move north, live on a farm near the mountains, in a cabin. Can I go with you? I hope so. I hope so. (<i> slow electronica  theme playing</i> ) All right. You weren't kidding. ♪ ♪ Do you have a toothbrush?

What? Screw it, screw it. Teeth are teeth. I'll, uh... I'll brush them. Bathroom is...? What bathroom? In the house. You know those guys out there, rolling joints and rattling on and on-- they live here with you? Two of them do. So you're gay? Try not to be. That's why I called you tonight. So you're putting up a pretty good battle against it.

You better believe it. Guess I'm about to find out. If you're a latent gay, then you'll want me to take the initiative. Do you want me to undress you? Sure. (<i> eerie, free-form tones  playing</i> ) (<i> ominous, dissonant  notes playing</i> ) (<i> slow, deep rhythm plays</i> ) (<i> sighs</i> ) (<i> groans</i> )

Aw, Jesus, fuck. (<i> phone ringing</i> ) (<i> distorted</i> ): Hello. WOMAN: Fred. We've processed some more recent material on you. How are you feeling? Okay. Any problems? Well, I had a fight with my girl. Any confusion? Are you experiencing any difficulty identifying persons or objects? Any language disorientation? No.

Can you come back over to room 203? What did you find to be a problem? We'll take that up when you get here. (<i> sped-up passionate moaning</i> ) (<i> sighs</i> ) (<i> electronic whirring</i> ) (<i> lamp clattering</i> ) (<i> slow, eerie tones playing</i> ) ♪ ♪

Connie. Donna. (<i> music builds dramatically</i> ) (<i> beep</i> ) (<i> electronic quack</i> ) (<i> electronic quack</i> ) (<i> electronic tone</i> ) (<i> electronic tone</i> ) All right, Fred, very good. And this next test-- with your eyes covered, reach out and feel an object with each hand. You are to tell us if the object presented to your left hand is identical to the object presented to your right.

Uh... Um. Um... (<i> sighs</i> ) One more thing, Fred. We need an updated blood test... so, go down the hall to the pathology lab, and they'll fix you up. And by the time you get back here, we should almost be through with our evaluation. I'll be upstairs with Hank. WOMAN: You certainly seem much more depressed today than you did when we first saw you.

Pardon? Last week, when we first saw you, you were kidding and laughing. Did you ever get her the flowers? (<i> grunts</i> ) ARCTOR (<i> normal voice</i> ):<i>  Crazy job they gave me.</i> <i> But if I wasn't doing it,  someone else would be.</i> <i> And they might get it wrong.</i> <i> They might set Arctor up--</i> <i> plant drugs on him  and collect the reward.

</i> <i> Better it be me,  despite the disadvantages.</i> <i> Just protecting everyone</i> <i> from Barris's justification  of himself.</i> <i> What the hell  am I talking about?</i> <i> I must be nuts.</i> <i> I know Bob Arctor.</i> <i> He's a good person.</i> <i> He's up to nothing.</i> <i> At least, nothing too bad.

</i> <i> In fact, he works for</i> <i> the Orange County  Sheriff's Office covertly,</i> <i> which is probably why  Barris is after him.</i> <i> But that wouldn't explain</i> <i> why the Orange County  Sheriff's Office is after him.</i> <i> Something big is definitely  going down in this house--</i> <i> this run-down,  rubble-filled house,</i> <i> with its weed-patch yard</i> <i> and cat box  that never gets emptied.

</i> <i> What a waste  of a truly good house.</i> <i> So much could be done with it.</i> <i> A family and children  could live here.</i> <i> It was designed for that.</i> <i> Such a waste.</i> <i> They ought to confiscate it  and put it to better use.</i> (<i> slow, mysterious theme  playing</i> ) <i> I'm supposed to act like  they aren't here.

</i> <i> Assuming there's a "they"  at all.</i> <i> It may just be my imagination.</i> <i> Whatever it is that's watching,</i> <i> it's not human,</i> <i> unlike little dark-eyed Donna.</i> <i> It doesn't ever blink.</i> <i> What does a scanner see?</i> <i> Into the head?</i> <i> Down into the heart?</i> <i> Does it see into me, into us?</i> <i> Clearly or darkly?</i> <i> I hope it sees clearly,</i> <i> because I can't any longer  see into myself.

</i> <i> I see only Mark.</i> <i> I hope, for everyone's sake,  the scanners do better...</i> <i> because if the scanner  sees only darkly, the way I do,</i> <i> then I'm cursed  and cursed again.</i> <i> And we'll only  wind up dead this way,</i> <i> knowing very little</i> <i> and getting that  little fragment wrong, too.

</i> (<i> heavy sigh</i> ) You show what we regard more as competition phenomenon than impairment. Yeah? Competition between the left and the right hemispheres of your brain. It's like you have two signals that interfere with each other by carrying conflicting information. It's as if you have two fuel gauges on your car.

They're studying the same amount of fuel, but one says your tank is full, the other registers empty. They can't both be right. And you, as the driver, have only an indirect relationship to the fuel tank, via the gauges. So what does all this mean? Well, I'm sure you know already. You've been experiencing it without knowing why or-or what it is.

The two hemispheres of my brain... are competing? Yes. Yes. But... why? Substance D. It often causes that, functionally, and this is what the tests confirm. Damage has taken place to the normally dominant left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere is attempting to compensate. Cross-cutting, we call it. Related to split-brain phenomena.

We could perform a right hemispherectomy, but, um, I'd... Will this ever go away? Uh, probably. It's a functional impairment. It may be organic damage. It may be permanent. Time will tell, and only after you've been off Substance D for a long while. I'll never take Substance D again for the rest of my life. Uh, how much are you taking now? Not much.

More, recently, because of job stress. ARCTOR:<i>  Death is swallowed up  in victory.</i> <i> Behold, I tell you  the sacred secret now:</i> <i> We shall not all sleep  in death.</i> ARCTOR: We'll do the other half of Southern California tomorrow night. The Air Force Arsenal at Vandenberg will be hit for automatic weapons and...

DONNA: What about that anthrax Anwar ripped off for us? When do we-- aren't we supposed to carry the stuff up to the watershed area to... ARCTOR: We need the weapons first. Drugs in the water supply is step B. DONNA: Okay, but I got to go. I got a customer. I can also identify the aforementioned, uh, terrorist cell.

It's repeatedly indicated, uh, throughout the course of my observations. HANK: Do you have any more material of this sort, or is this tape substantially it? Oh, no-- I have a veritable cornucopia, and much of it is directly referencing, uh, the organization and its-its directives. Who are these people? What organization? It is primarily Arctor and Hawthorne.

I have coded notes here which may be of some interest to you. I, uh, my own cryptology is, uh, very difficult to... As of now, I'm impounding all of this. It is our property temporarily, and we will sort through it ourselves. You will be on hand to explain anything to us, if and when we get to the point where we feel we need anything explained.

Mr. Barris, you will not be released pending our study of this material. You will be charged, as a formality, to keep you available, with knowingly giving the authorities false information. This, of course, is just a pretext for your own safety. I've always wanted to go to the Galapagos. There's an interesting variety of creatures there.

Is that satisfactory, Mr. Barris? Uh, not entirely. Though I wonder, when I'm locked down, may I be provided with, uh, some lotion, and perhaps some, uh... So... what do you think of Barris's evidence? Seems like what he played, the little we heard anyway, sounded pretty genuine to me. It's fake. Hmm. Worthless.

Made on a home computer. Hmm. Maybe you're right. Is that my medical report you have there? Yep. What does it say? That you're completely bonkers. Completely? Ah, there's maybe, uh, two brain cells that still light up. The rest is just... short circuits and sparks. (<i> whispering</i> ): Two? Listen, uh, when you go to pick up your next paycheck, there will be a substantial difference this time.

I get some... sort of bonus for this, for this having... happened to me on duty? No. Read your penal code. "An officer who willingly becomes an addict, "and doesn't report it promptly, "is subject to a misdemeanor charge, a fine, and/or six months." You'll probably just be fined. Willingly? (<i> chuckles</i> ) No one held a gun to your head and shot you up.

No one dropped something in your soup. You knowingly and willingly took an addictive drug, brain-destructive and disorienting. I had to. You could have pretended to. Most officers manage to cope with it. (<i> chuckling</i> ): And... from the quantities you were taking.... (<i> chuckling</i> ) My God, Fred. I...

Hey. You know what I would do if I were you? Once you get out of New-Path, and, you know, it's all over... But it may never be over. Cigarette? I'm getting off that, too. Everything. Including chocolate. Yeah. And... Huh. Like I tell my kids. (<i> chuckles</i> )... (<i> exhales smoke</i> ) I've got two kids. Two girls.

Little ones. I don't believe you do. You're not supposed to. Maybe not. (<i> sniffs</i> ) HANK: Listen, is there anywhere specific you'd like to go? Maybe over to Donna Hawthorne's place. From the information you brought in, sounds like you guys are pretty close. Yes, we are. How'd you know that? Process of elimination.

I know who you aren't, and we're talking about a very small group of people that we hoped would lead us higher. And maybe Barris will. I pieced it together a long time ago that you're Arctor. I'm who? (<i> whispering</i> ): I'm Bob Arctor? Yeah, get me, uh, Donna Hawthorne's number or just patch me through when you locate her.

Thanks. Bud, you are in a very bad way, my friend. Maybe Jim Barris poisoned you. We were really interested in Barris, not you. The whole scanning of the house was to keep an eye on him. We hoped to draw him here and we did. (<i> clicks tongue</i> ) He is deep into it with some very dangerous people. Then... I'm a what? Well, we had to get to Barris to set him up.

So, how we arranged it was, he grew progressively more and more suspicious that you were an undercover cop, trying to nail him or use him to get high or... So he did what you or anyone would have done... Hey, Donna. Yeah, hi, this is a buddy of Bob's. Arctor. Yeah... uh, listen, um, he's in a, he's in a bad way.

Yeah, way bad. And I was wondering if I could, uh, ask a favor of you. You're a sweetheart. Yeah. I'm-I'm sure he'll appreciate it very much. Great, thanks. Good news. Donna Hawthorne said she'd pick you up out front in about five minutes. You fuckers. (<i> quiet, eerie tones playing</i> ) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (<i> pants</i> )

(<i> sniffs</i> ) (<i> panting quietly</i> ) You're a good man, Bob. You've been dealt a bad deal. This is not fair, but it has to be this way. You just, you got, you've got to just wait it out; just get through it. And someday, a long time from now... you'll see the way you saw before. There'll be a, a recognition and some spark in a disguised form will reveal itself to you...

and guide you. (<i> grunts, gags</i> ) (<i> vomits</i> ) Substance D? Yeah. Ate his head. Another loser. (<i> panting</i> ) It's easy to win. Anybody can win. (<i> panting</i> ) Good-bye. (<i> gasping rapidly</i> ) Living and unliving things are

exchanging properties. The drive of unliving things is stronger than the drive of living things. MAN: The living should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. (<i> metallic popping,  percolating</i> ) But the dead should, if possible, uh, serve the purposes of the living. MAN: Hey, good news. I think I got you transferred to one of our farms.

Can I work with animals? Well, I think you'll be working with plants for a while. Out in the open, where you can touch the ground. I want to be with something living. The ground is living. The earth is still alive. Do you have any agricultural background? I worked in an office. Well, you'll be outside from now on.

Hmm. (<i> eerie, dissonant tones  playing</i> ) Your name is Bruce. My name is Bruce. We're gonna try you on farming for a period, Bruce. Okay. Staff thought you'd be better off. I think you'll like it here. I think I'll like it here. Come on, I'll show you where you're going to be sleeping. You like mountains, Bruce? Look up: Mountains.

No snow, but mountains. I like mountains. The air is good here. (<i> inhales</i> ) I like air. Yeah. We all like air, Bruce. We really do. That we have in common. 4-G. Yours is 4-G. Can you remember that? 4-G. Will I be seeing my friends? What, you mean from back where you were? The Santa Ana facility? Mm-hmm.

 Mike and Laura, and Mike and Eddie, and.... The people from the residence facilities... they don't come out to the farms, Bruce. See, these are closed operations. Closed operations. But, you know, you might get back up there a... couple times a year. You know, there are gatherings, you know, at Christmas and, uh, see, the next one is Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving. So you might see them in, uh, three months. Hmm. (<i> indistinct conversations</i> ) Hey, Audrey. Glad you could meet. (<i> sighs</i> ) So tell me, are they getting paranoid about him? No, not at all. The guy's so burnt-out. And we're still convinced they're growing the stuff? They have to be.

 Who else? Or I... I just wonder if it even matters at this... It matters... Audrey. It matters when we can prove that New-Path is the one growing, manufacturing and distributing. How does he look? I mean, do you think he's going to be able to pull through for us? I guess all we can do is hope that when he finally gets in there a few...

charred brain cells will flicker on and some distant instinct will kick in. (<i> whispering</i> ): Shit. That's just such a cost to pay. Yeah... But there's no other way to get in there. I couldn't, and think of how long I tried. They got that place locked up tight. They're only gonna let a burnt-out husk like Bruce in.

Harmless. You have to be, or they won't take the risk. (<i> whispering</i> ): Yeah, but to sacrifice someone? A living person, without them ever knowing it? I mean, if he'd understood, if he had volunteered... but he doesn't know and he never did. He didn't volunteer for this. Sure he did. It was his job. It wasn't his job to get addicted.

We took care of that. Look, Mike, I got to get out. I-I-I can't do this again. I-I want it to end. I-I... lay in bed at night and I can't sleep. And I just think, "Shit, we are colder than they are." I don't think so. You know, I believe God's M.O. is to transmute evil into good, and if he's active here, he's doing that now...

although our eyes can't perceive it. The whole process is hidden beneath the surface of our reality, it'll only be revealed later. And even then... the people of the future, our children's children, will never truly know this awful time that we have gone through and the losses we took. Well, maybe some footnote in a minor history book...

a brief mention with no list of the fallen. (<i> pump clicking quietly</i> ) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (<i> footsteps rustling  through foliage</i> ) You're seeing the flower of the future. But not for you, Bruce. Not for me? No, you've had too much of a good thing already. (<i> laughs</i> ) Get up, get up. Uh, stop worshipping.

This isn't your god anymore, although it once was. Gone. Flowers gone. No, you just can't see them. Back to work. I saw. (<i> mock cheerfulness</i> ): Back to work, Bruce. "I saw Death rising from the earth... "...from the ground itself... "in one... blue field." (<i> slow, melancholy theme plays</i> ) A present for my friends at Thanksgiving.

♪ ♪ (<i> theme building  into hopeful melody</i> ) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

(<i> electronic blipping,  whirring</i> ) (<i> fast-tempo electronica  intro begins</i> ) ♪ ♪ ♪ What will grow crooked, you can't make straight ♪ ♪ It's the price that you gotta pay ♪ ♪ Do yourself a favor and pack your bags ♪ ♪ Buy a ticket and get on the train ♪ ♪ Buy a ticket and get on the train ♪ ♪ 'Cause this is fucked up ♪ ♪ Fucked up ♪ ♪ 'Cause this is fucked up ♪

♪ Fucked up ♪ ♪ People get crushed like biscuit crumbs ♪ ♪ And laid down in the bitumen ♪ ♪ You have tried your best to please everyone ♪ ♪ But it just isn't happenin' ♪ ♪ No, it just isn't happenin' ♪ ♪ And it's fucked up ♪ ♪ Fucked up ♪ ♪ And this is fucked up ♪ ♪ Fucked up ♪ ♪ This is your blind spot ♪ ♪ Blind spot ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ You are fucked up ♪ ♪ Fucked up ♪ ♪ This is fucked up ♪ ♪ Fucked up ♪ ♪ Be your black swan ♪ ♪ Black swan ♪ ♪ I'm for spare parts ♪ ♪ Broken up. ♪ <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by  WARNER BROS.</font> Captioned by<font color="#00FFFF">  Media Access Group at WGBH  access.wgbh.org</font> (<i> song ends</i> )