Bedtime stories to help grown ups fall asleep in the deep, dark night.

Episode 1042 – President Smith vs Grand Iller | Spice Friends Ep1

 

[START OF RECORDING]

 

SCOOTER:    Friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and my patron peeps, if you want somebody to lull you, somebody who really lulls you, ‘cause you don’t feel right when it’s late at night and it’s just you and your dreams, that’s what Scoots is here for.  You just want someone to lull; if that’s what you want, I’m here to…and you make it possible, patrons.  What do you say we get on with the show?

 

INTRO:    [INTRO MUSIC] Hey, are you up all night tossing, turning, mind racing?  Trouble getting to sleep?  Trouble staying asleep?  Well, welcome.  This is Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you or sends you to sleep.  We do it with a bedtime story.  Alls you need to do is get in bed, turn out the lights, and press play.  I’m gonna do the rest.  What I’m going to attempt to do is create a safe place where you could set aside whatever’s keeping you awake, whether that’s thoughts that you’re thinking about, things on your mind, feelings, anything emotionally you’re feeling, physical sensations, changes in time or temperature or routine, you got something going on and then you got the…then the…life stuff, life happens.

 

As so many t-shirts once said, life spelled in a different way…a different way of spelling life with four letters happens.  Sometimes it feels like a…anyway, enough…whatever is going on.  It could just be baffling.  Say, what in the heck?  Happened to me two nights ago.  I mean, I definitely had things on my mind, and that got me…so I guess I do know.  I said well, I was thinking about that, then…but whatever it is that’s keeping you awake, I’d like to take your mind off of it and keep you company while you fall asleep.  The way I do it is I send my voice across the deep, dark night.  I’m gonna use lulling, soothing…eventually soothing.  If there was…if you could do a parentheses while you’re speaking, which I think I may have mastered the art of; parentheses and…maybe not italices.  Hitting Enter too early.

 

They say, Scoots hits Enter too early then Delete by accident while he’s talking…parentheses; eye roll, wink, giggle, emoji that hasn’t been invented yet all in one…eyes laughing and shrugging all in one emoji, which would be confusing, but if you spelled it out, that would be too…or emoji’d it out.  Do you emoji it out?  I’d like to emoji…you do the emoji, emoji, you turn yourself around.  That’s what emojis are all about.  Emoji.  Is there an international corporation that’s bought that already, emojis?  ‘Cause you could call me.  I mean, I don’t know; is emoji a trademarked word?  Who owns it?  That’s probably some secret consortium.  Yeah, it’s Emoji Enterprises, Inc.  Also Quantum Dynamics and Systems…part…it’s part of the great machine.  Emojis…the first part, but not the second part of what Scoots said.

 

That’s what we’re all about.  Not the second part.  Don’t worry about Quantum Dynamics Incorporated.  It’s just a secret…it’s just a…anyway, what am I talking about?  Oof, I’m here to keep you company…oh, my voice.  That’s what I was doing a parenthesis about.  Creaky, dulcet tones, not soothing, creaky, dulcet tones.  Eventually they’re what the parentheses were for, was that eventually they’ll be…if they grow on you; not actually.  Creaky, dulcet tones; at first you don’t find them soothing, but they’re so different.  You say, I expect a soothing voice to be actually soothing.  I’d say, really?  ‘Cause those ones, no offense to soothing voices…I don’t know if…I can’t always…I can’t…if something’s supposed to be soothing, it just doesn’t soothe me.  I’ll be honest with you.

 

So, that’s why…well, the creaky, dulcet tones are just what I got.  Pointless meanders, I got even more of those.  Superfluous tangents, I mean, you’ve seen them.  They’re spilling out of me.  Some people have rhymes spilling out of them; I have pointless meanders and superfluous tangents.  I don’t just drop them.  Intentionally, they spill…you say Scoots, does your cup overfloweth?  I say yeah, with pointless meanders and superfluous tangents, half-words.  It’s overflowing.  That’s why I made a podcast, to keep it…to put a good use to it.  Okay, but if you’re new, you’re probably very mixed up and you might be ambivalent, you might be having strong feelings.  Totally understandable.  You might be skeptical or doubtful or frustrated.  That’s how most people arrive at this show.  Why wouldn’t you be?

 

Because you probably dealt with a lot of different stuff to try to help you fall asleep.  You’re probably already frustrated if you’re here.  I’m here to help, but I’m gonna give you a bunch of information now to try to not put your skepticism or doubt at ease, but to say well, let’s just…can I see how it goes?  That’s the first thing, is hundreds of thousands of people have messaged me over the…whatever, eight years I’ve been making the show.  Hey, it took two or three tries for me to get used to the podcast.  First I didn’t like it or I was trying to make sense of it.  So, if you can, give it a few tries and see how it goes.  If you can get in that mindset right now, just go with…it’s not like going with the flow.  It’s kinda watching the flow passively.  Just barely listen.

 

This isn’t so much a podcast where the bedtime story starts and I start to wind you down.  It’s more like a friend talking in the deep, dark night that you don’t have to listen to, or background noise that you could listen to.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  You have a friend; you call them when you want, you call them when you need, but they…you don’t have to listen to them.  They just talk, and they don’t…they’re like yeah, no, that’s what I’m here for.  I’m here for you to not…you could listen to me, but you don’t need to.  So, that’s one thing that’s also hard if you’re new.  Other thing is this is a podcast…really doesn’t put you to sleep.  I’m here to keep you company whether you’re awake or asleep, so that’s why the shows are over an hour.

 

I’m here to the very end, so if you can’t sleep, I’m here to keep you company, and if you’re not listening, I’m here to keep you company.  If you’re asleep, I’m here to keep you company.  I’m here to be your bore-friend, your bore-bae, your bore-sib, your bore-cuz, your bore-bestie, bore-bruh, your bore-bor or your neigh-bore as a lot of people on Twitter say.  But yeah, I’m here to keep you company so you can drift off or so that you feel less alone in the deep, dark night.  Why do I do that?  Because you’re important and I think…I don’t think I can say that enough times; you’re important and your sleep is important.  If you get the sleep you need, your life is gonna be better.  If you don’t have to dread going to bed, your life’s gonna be better, and that is important to me.

 

One, because I’ve been there and I know how it feels, but two, because you deserve it and I know your world will be a little bit more manageable and improve with some rest, with a bedtime routine.  That means our whole world is a better place to live in.  I know parts of me even say nah, but I…it’s true.  It really is true.  You’re important and you deserve a place to rest.  You deserve a bedtime you at least feel neutral about.  If that’s all I can provide, I’ve accomplished every…I mean, I’m more…lived an imperfect life, but this is like okay, well, that’s not bad to accomplish, making someone dread bedtime a little bit less.  That’s my calling, because it’s important and because we’ve all been there, everybody that’s listening now, in the deep, dark night, whether it’s the daytime or the nighttime.  So, that’s why I make the show.

 

I just said that strangely; make the show.  That’s why I make the podcast.  I don’t know why…that was like a half-baby voice because I guess I was feeling very soft, so, I don’t know if that’s why I switched into that baby voice.  I’m not trying to baby you; it’s just the truth.  Oh, and if you don’t like the show, you already know.  You say, you know what?  You’re not my style.  Totally cool, too.  Sleepwithmepodcast.com/nothankyou has other sleep podcasts and sleepy audio on there that…maybe you can find something else that helps you fall asleep.  So, those are some things.  The other things that throw new people off is the structure of the show.  The structure of the show serves a very specific purpose, but as you become a regular listener, you could readjust how you listen to the show.

 

But there’s only one way to send a podcast out, so…so, the structure of the show; the show starts off with a greeting.  Friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, then I say something silly or I try to reference something witty and then I get mixed up, so you feel seen, you feel welcome, and you say oh, the tone of the podcast is a little bit lighthearted even though sleep’s a serious thing.  Then there’s support.  There’s listener support and there’s support for the show, so…because the goal of the podcast is to be a free podcast on any podcast app and come out twice a week.

 

The sponsors and the patrons are what enable us to do that, or the people that support the sponsors and our patrons, so that’s what comes next, is sponsors, Patreon, and then listener resources and support, and community resources and support, because all those things are important and they’re all interconnected.  Then there’s a intro, and sometimes when people are frustrated, they get the support and sponsor stuff mixed in with the intro, but they’re two separate things.  They serve two separate purposes.  So, the intro is kind of a show within a show.  It’s twelve to twenty minutes long which we’re doing now, where I try to explain what the podcast is, I get mixed up, it takes me ten to twenty minutes long.

 

But it’s where I can introduce the new person to the podcast, but also it’s something familiar for the regular listener, but it’s different every time.  I think that helps us with our…whatever, overthinking or the parts of us that say oh, this is the…if the intro was the same every time, I don’t think this podcast would work for the most…most of the people it works for, because it…I don’t know.  I think we just…for me at least, I need something different every time, otherwise my brain says oh, here we go again with that bird tweeting.  Then the frog will start a minute forty…forty-five seconds in.  So, that’s part of what the intro is.

 

The other thing the intro serves or why it’s ten to twenty minutes long, it naturally evolved because what I found is that oh, wait a second, people…while there is a percentage of listeners that fall asleep right away and there is a small percentage of listeners that skip the intro and there is a few thousand people that support the show on Patreon that listen to story-only episodes, for most people what I discovered over the years of making the show is the beginning of the podcast is part of the wind-down, in which…fits in with all positive, empowering sleep advice.  Have a wind-down routine.  So, the intro kinda serves as a part of that.  It’s a landing strip or a buffer zone between your waking time and your sleep time.

 

So, you could listen while you’re getting ready for bed or while you’re doing some sort of other unwinding passive or mellow activity, or while you’re in bed getting comfortable.  But the intro, while it could put you to sleep…it puts people to sleep and that’s totally great, it can also serve as your time to get comfortable, to get cozy, and to kinda go through that twilight period.  So, yeah, just see how it goes.  That’s the intro.  Then there’s more support for the show, again, so it can be free and come out twice a week on every podcast app, which is what my goal is, my current goal.  So, that’s what the sponsor support enables.  Then there will be our story.  Tonight it’ll be…I think it’ll be…’cause of the topic of this intro, it’ll be the first episode of our new series which doesn’t even have a title yet.

 

So, that’s cool.  It’ll be…it’s gonna be good.  It’s gonna be our ongoing episodically modular new series.  So, there’s that, and then there will be thank-yous at the end.  So, that’s the structure of the show, that’s why I make the show.  I’m really, really glad you’re here.  Just see how it goes.  That’s all I can ask.  I work really hard, I yearn and I strive, and I really hope I can help you fall asleep.  Thank you again for coming by, and here’s a couple ways I’m able to do this for you for free twice a week.

 

Alright everybody, it’s Scoots here.  It’s time for our episodically modular series.  It’s a new one, so that’s very exciting.  It’s one we’ve never done before because it’s a new series.  I kind of have a working title that I talked about in the second intro, ‘cause I recorded the first two intros already…just how the workflow around the show works.  Also buying time, ‘cause I can’t remember what the working title I came up with was.  I mean, you could call it the Big Ones or the Big Emojis or Big Emojis…are some of the titles that may be featured…the series.  But it’s gonna be a tale, episodically modular, so you could list…if this is your first episode, you’re in for a treat, because if you listen to the other ones and now you’re listening to Episode 1, don’t worry; this is gonna be like one of those prequels.

 

This is really…I’m really excited about this series.  It’s got exposition, it’s got speeches, it has tangents, it has explanations, it has characters waiting for one another, it has solutions to worldwide events that involve dance steps and watching TV and eating cereal.  So, if you never thought you could save the word…world…or a word by watching a cartoon, turns out in this world, maybe there will be a tangent explaining how the backstory of that fact comes to be a part of the story, which may be a part of the solution we eventually get to.  But it’s kinda stuff you could sleep through or you could lie in bed listening to it gently.  Or if you need a break during the day, you could listen to it.  That kinda stuff.  You say Scoots, will you be talking and telling and not showing?

 

I said, I’ll be showing you through the art of talk and tell and speak.  Speeches will come in…well, I don’t know.  Technically…monologues…oh boy, I’m piling on the monologues here.  It’s the season to…I got a pile of monologues ready to go.  I also have a Hollywood announcer here ready to announce our new series which is gonna be interesting since he was listening, trying to be quiet, but his…somehow, even in…cloaked in velvet, his smile still makes a noise that sound like an angel’s wings tinkling.  I say, I don’t…am I hearing that in my head or did the mic pick up that sound?  They say every time a angel…every time a angel feels…every time Antonio Banderas smiles, an angel feels joy.  I don’t know if you’ve heard that phrase before.

 

Then their wings tinkle to get…their…they get…here’s the thing; when an angel hears him smile…turns out, humans, we can hear other people smile, especially me.  I can hear Antonio smiling among other things.  But you know, that’s one of the things; they say oh boy, how’d you end up…what’s the best part of be…about it…being an angel?  Well, there’s a lot of hard parts, but when humans smile, we feel it, particularly Antonio Banderas.  We feel it so much, we have an involuntary body response of toe-curling joy, where our wings…because they are…contract and the two tips touch each other, which makes that famous tinkling sound you may have heard during different transcendent experiences or in the movies.

 

So, without further ado, the man who probably puts a little dew on the backs of angels, even, because I would think that would come with that experience, is Mr. Antonio Banderas.  Thank you, Scooter.  Friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time for a new tale, a tale of giants walking the earth, giant Big Ones, Big Emojis.  Yeah.  Thanks, that was great, Antonio.  Really well done on making that work.  This is…that was Mr. Antonio Banderas and this is Big Emojis.

 

It’s been so long since I’ve done one of these; not even sure if I’m supposed to put a date in here.  A lot of times when I’ve done diaries in the past, it’s been for…is this for me or for you, I guess is my question?  But we’re here, we’re waiting for…I’m waiting for you.  The world’s been waiting for you.  I guess we were…the world…everyone was waiting for your arrival, but I’m waiting for your actual arrival…post-arrival arrival.  First, I guess it…I don’t know if it’s irony, but there was a lot of discussion.  Once we knew the exact time you would return, whether to share that with the world or not…but then people could see it in the sky just like a comet, which…I don’t know.  There’s so many layers to this.  But people saw you in the sky and the world started to celebrate your return.  I’m here waiting.

 

You’ve already landed and you’ve been escorted to our secret location here, and that was the instructions you sent ahead and we debated about.  This whole facility is…can still…confusing to me as I wait here, but…and I said there’s a lot of discussion, not just my discussion.  Who’s insistence was this, yours or Planet Zipper’s instructions?  But the clock is ticking.  The clock’s ticking for me because I have a lot to do and I’m waiting here to meet with you so that we can move forward.  I have to fill everyone in on everything, but the bigger clock is ticking too, for the Big Ones.  But I guess I’m writing this to you because I hope you’re reading this in the future and you’re looking at it with some sort of smile, that you’ve returned here to Earth with some secret knowledge or some secret thing.  You changed the world.

 

You kinda saved the world.  So, you’re looking at this and you’re reading this with that knowledge that you did that, you had volunteered so long ago.  Now you’ve come back, and I have to hope that as I’m writing this.  It’s helping me and maybe it’s helping you later, because I want that.  I feel other feelings too; I feel like we’re waiting for them to wake up.  The world is on edge.  We’re all a little bit on edge waiting for the Big Ones to wake up.  There’s doubt; why did we lose contact with Planet Zipper after you departed?  Do you have anything?  Would you…there was all…but we know you’re back.  I know you’re resting, getting washed up, and coming to meet me any minute.  So, I guess this is helping me.  The plan is for you to come here to fill me in.

 

I mean, I don’t even…I guess…how long have you been asleep for on this journey?  That’s one thing that was confusing to us, is that Planet Zipper has all this extra technology.  They’re a more advanced civilization, but they sent you back in the same ship you came in that takes so much time to cross space, and that you had to rest.  Why did things have to be cut so close?  Couldn’t they have sent you on…don’t they have a ship they could have sent you on?  They said they didn’t.  Or a way to get you across space faster.  But that’s healthy doubt, you know?  We do need healthy doubt, but I also need healthy hope.  So hopefully you’re smiling as you read this.

 

That gives me some confidence that you’re reading this in the future and you’re smiling, looking at me writing it now, picturing me with this mix of feelings, strong feelings, wanting everything to work out not just for myself but for everyone, everyone in my orbit that I care about and everyone…everyone everywhere.  So, the plan is you’re gonna brief me and then I’ll…you probably don’t even know that now we have the CN; it’s not the UN anymore.  Cooperative Nations.  It’s a bit of a…you know that my unofficial title is President of the World, which people thought…felt like was a joke, but it’s also not a joke, but it is a joke.  Technically, I’m the lead counsellor of the Cooperative Nations, but they say oh, that’s President of the World.

 

But everybody’s gonna be waiting here, not just the CN, but all the indies, all of the groups including all those with the Big Ones, the people who strongly believe in them.  We don’t have much time, but I hope you have something that we can all…I know that’s not realistic; that most of us can get behind, and that the world…not just the Cooperative Nations, but the indies and some of those…I know we can’t get everyone behind and working together, but we’ve had…we need a common cause, but a common cause that actually works, but that doesn’t cost us so much like the past ones have.  But I don’t know.  I’m also thinking about the clock, because the awakening is coming and it just happens to be a spring awakening.

 

I don’t know if that’s…does Planet Zipper have their own sense of history that the awakening is going to come in the spring?  But yeah, best case scenario for me that’s realistic is we learn what the plan is.  You have a plan, of course, or some sort of material or device or some secret knowledge.  We implement that plan, we stop the Big Ones or whatever it is, put them back to hibernation, send them somewhere else, like some had thought.  Maybe Planet Zipper had a off-world solution.  That’s it.  Then we save…the world’s saved from the Big Ones, at least.  Then we get back…I guess to the…more hard work.  I want to say the hard work, but this is hard work enough.  But yeah, we start to stabilize things without that looming presence of the Big Ones.

 

So, I’m looking at my clock and I’m looking at the messages coming in, so that clock you’re approaching here and the other clock is ticking.  So, I’m looking forward to meeting you, but I’m also looking forward to you looking back at this with confidence and calmness and amusement, because things played out so well.  Alright, well, first impressions.  This is my second entry.  I guess thinking about that you’re going to be reading this or listening to it, that kinda clouds over what I was…say, but I’m not known for…well, what are my first impressions?  Where should I even start?  So, I should start with my first impressions of you.  You looked tired, obviously, but happy.  Could also tell you were a bit starstruck, but also starstruck in a way…I don’t know.  You said you were really happy to see me.

 

I know that’s not projecting because you said…she seemed like such a fan.  But it seemed to be that you could just say that, that you had some sort of happy confidence.  That put me at ease.  Normally it would put me on guard, but I said wow, maybe it aligned with what I wrote earlier.  Maybe this is my imagination, or was, that you were gonna make everything okay.  So, I guess I felt good at the time.  My first impression…or my second within seconds impression was good, and then I felt good, briefly, until you kinda started talking and you told us the plan.  But that’s getting ahead of myself, because first you probably want me to walk through what you asked.  You said, hi.  We had our greeting.  We sat down.

 

You were assured that we had our privacy and we walked through some of the protocols and some of the basics of what to expect next.  But you already knew that ‘cause we had briefed you once you came into…anyway.  You asked me to run through the whole history as briefly as I could, from even before you left, which I guess was understandable.  I didn’t know if you were serious or if it was just for a conversation or to put me in a certain place, but you also had sent that in advance.  You said, you want to go over the whole history point by point, the whole history of the B ones or the Big Ones.  I think you said whatever they used to say, ELI5 or whatever.  Explain it to me like I’m five.

 

Then you said, like I’ve come from another planet and I’ve been asleep for a long time, but I have a basic understanding of human dynamics.  That caught my attention, ‘cause I said, is that a joke that fell flat or something else?  You said okay, tell me just the important parts.  So, I said okay, well, my team went through this, so we had fission technology, right?  That fission technology brought conflict because it was used in offensive ways or pre-offensive ways to express dominance.  That’s what caused the first contact.  Then there was fusion and Ivy Mike, and that brought more.  At first it wasn’t…those two things weren’t clear, but clearly those two events and other events like it, we now see are causal or very related, because after some of the accords we made and looking at it…we, I say; this was before I was even a twinkle…might even have been before even my father was alive.

 

But that was where they created the B1 Atoll and they created Ivy Mike with that…their own sense of irony, and they buried it there.  That Atoll B1 was so far away, but they all went there, all of them that were walking the earth and swimming through the earth and flying above the earth, stepping on cities and causing chaos.  They all went there to B1 Island.  They had buried my Ivy Mike in a machine that kept it running deep, deep, deep in the earth.  That stopped them for a time, along with the accords, to say hey, let’s not do this.  They stayed on the island and we tried, or history tried, to…I don’t know.  How do you stop…what is it in a human being that leads us to these choices sometimes?  The quest for innovations?

 

Some’s quest for dominance, some driven by being afraid, too, and things started happening…secret things started to happen in the US, where I was from…was a particularly…is to blame.  Deep and secret even from my father, people that would have been…I don’t know if you can stop these things.  These choices, we do have to deal with them.  As I said, one of those secrets was hidden deep in a Nevada mountain, covered up by waste which they weren’t interested in.  It was supposed to be a place to store waste.  They said oh, well, the nuclear waste on top doesn’t seem to attract the B1s.  So, they hid that facility deep below that mountain where this spent material was supposed to be resting.

 

They worked there for some time before it caught the attention…before we tried to keep renewing things and keep the B1s on B1 Island.  Then it happened; my father and I were elected to office, the first father-daughter…it doesn’t really matter, but that was just the timing.  It’s hard for me to separate that time and the timing and my relationship with my father.  But he did not know about any of that until…well, until one of the Big Ones came and approached and everyone was trying to figure out what to do.  What was the cause of it?  A lot of the world instantly jumped to the correct conclusion that something was happening that was attracting the…one of the B1s.

 

You know, our whole family was in California and lived there, and quickly as my father found out the depth of what was happening in those labs, what was being worked on, that there was some sort of fail safe.  Though my father was not behind this research or the planning, he was the one tasked with making the call and what we thought was a call…an expensive call to what would result in Nevada and California going away.  It had to be an instant choice.  My father knew that my mother and my other siblings were there in California, but that if…that that action had to be taken.  No one was happy about it.  No one in the world was happy with the US because of the choices that had been made.  People in the US…we thought that it had solved things and that the B1 and B1s was gone, but it wasn’t the case.

 

But then we got…not that long after that, a message from Planet Zipper and a shipment from Planet Zipper.  A craft landed, an automated craft.  This is where I’m really struggling ‘cause this doesn’t add up for me.  So, with what you’ve just told me, so, none of this adds up.  So, I’m really having trouble accepting and moving towards hope and moving towards action because of this.  So, we got something from Planet Zipper, a message; the Big Ones are going to return.  It’s only a matter of time.  It kind of explains some things about their physiology and that Planet Zipper had tried the same thing, similar to Big One’s Island and using a device to keep them attracted there, and maybe even that would eventually run out.  But it also offered a short-term solution and a plan.

 

So, the…while my father’s plan kind of worked, it didn’t work for long.  We thought the B1 and B1s was gone, but it wasn’t long after that that they all started to depart B1 Island, Big One’s Island, and head off to the world.  That’s when this message and this item arrived from Planet Zipper and landed on the earth, along with a warning; hey, we’re sending something.  I mean, I’m simplifying things, I guess, as you told me.  Then we opened it and we looked at it and it had fallen on US soil, so we felt like we had the rights to it.  But my father…well, I guess I have to take a little moment here to think about things and how I can write more about this when I do have such a personal stake in it.  So, I’m gonna take a minute to breathe here, to think about my father who is a hero, who was a hero before this.

 

Well, who was a part of my life and someone I really loved and cared about, too.  Okay, it’s…I needed to take a break, there.  I guess this is a recording, so you’re listening to my audio diary just moments later, and it’s not really that long after.  I’m not sure where I left off.  I think I was talking about my father and Planet Zipper and the Big Ones.  Well, I know I was talking about those things, and the technology from Planet Zipper and my father’s heroism.  First, my father had to make the hard choices.  We thought we dealt with the Grandiller, and when my…when California and Nevada went into the sea.  But that wasn’t the case.  Worldwide, the other Big Ones started to move on other secret locations, but also it seemed it was no long fusion or fission that were attracting them, but other activities that could be classified as non-threatening, non-offensive power sources.

 

So, it was not a good situation.  My father used what was…what they were working on, a secret facility of ours, with what I’m thinking…and now I just don’t know anymore.  I was under the impression that all of this was from Planet Zipper and that this serum technology that my father used was from Planet Zipper.  He insisted on being the one to do it.  My father’s a very capable person and he felt responsibility.  He also…we had private conversations that I’m not willing to share with you, but we talked about this and he said he was ready for me to lead and he wouldn’t be able to fulfil his duties as president, and not only did he need to do this and not only did he want to do it, but he thought only he could, that he had clarity of mission.

 

Now, he also told me that while…where the technology and what my father used was not clear to me…it’s still not totally clear to me and I don’t know how deep I can keep looking, but it did…this was when we knew that you…Planet Zipper had reached out to us and made this offer.  I guess I’m…my timelines are not clear, but you told me to give you this as clearly and as quickly as you could, or I could.  I guess I’m getting sidetracked.  Yeah, I’m sidetracked.  What can I say?  But so, I’m having trouble separating everything, and I guess you would say that’s understandable.  You probably look at me with a knowing smile and nod, and use it to make the same points you were making about the actual solutions, which I still am not sure I can grasp or understand.

 

But sticking with the historical points as I can recall them right now, and maybe history’s proving me wrong, but again, I hope you’re listening to this in a way that says well, all was well, just like the famous…one of my favorite movies about…Otter Things.  Emma used to say all will be well.  So, okay, so, there’s a few different things; father stepped down as president.  At the time it was in secret because people did not need to know what he was doing.  Father underwent a change and became a Big One, and that is one piece of history that’s myth now, President Will Smith versus Grandiller.  But it really didn’t happen that way.  I may have already talked about this to you.  I may not be remembering things clearly.  But so, father, seemingly in the myth of the story, went to do one-on-one with the Grandiller, the B1 of B1s.

 

But it was really just a show.  It was really just to get Grandiller’s attention and to really get on Grandiller’s radar, or whatever, internal radar, internal…but also to get the other Big Ones aware, to see if father could get them all back to the atoll, the Big One’s Atoll, or Big One’s Island.  It’s an atoll though, but it’s really just a circular island is all an atoll is.  Or isn’t a atoll just something pointing up from the bottom of the sea?  I don’t know.  Not important right now, clearly.  I can be so…I can laugh at myself.  But father stepped into myth and to heroism by getting them all back on the atoll, and outnumbered…but it was all part of Planet Zipper’s plan.  Some of this father filled me in on before he turned things over to me, and some of it was…I was told after, because I think he would have want…wouldn’t…I don’t think he would have…I don’t think I would have been…become president if I knew all this.

 

But you and the rest of the team was sent to Planet Zipper for a long-term solution, but Planet Zipper had reached out.  Anyway, I guess the timeline isn’t super important.  They reached out.  The first time they reached…again, there’s a lot of complications, especially here in the US, with trust and agendas.  But when father found out about it, he said okay, well, this looks like a solution.  I believe we can trust Planet Zipper.  We’ll send the astronauts there and we’ll implement this plan.  We’ll be ready to implement it.  It wasn’t like this just happened.  You were all already on your way to Planet Zipper.  Planet Zipper had already said if the Big Ones…they warned us; they said the Big Ones will return, especially if you’re dabbling about.

 

I think father found that confusing until…so, they had a solution, which was the whole-Earth hibernation, some sort of beam or…I don’t know.  They said we wouldn’t understand the technology and not to worry about it, but they had something that would put the whole Earth under hibernation, and the hibernation clock would start.  There was a agreed-upon time, and I was only told this during the countdown, and past zero hour, which father had already implemented.  Even if I wanted to turn back or change my mind, it wouldn’t have made sense at all because…it just wouldn’t have made sense.  It wouldn’t have worked.  This plan seemed sound.  Father had got all the Big Ones back on Big Ones Island.

 

According to what Planet Zipper had told father, this whole-Earth hibernation would affect all beings by size, meaning we have some problems with some smaller beings now and their population growth, but that human beings, most mammals, we came out of hibernation at a much more rapid pace than the Big Ones who are still hibernating.  But as I said, the hibernation clock is ticking down and it won’t be long until they’re estimated to begin awakening.  Earth scientists have kind of proven that the clock is close; the timeline you gave us is close, observing it on larger mammals.  So, obviously the whole planet has been concerned about this and it’s caused a lot of upheaval, waiting for the Big Ones to reawaken.  What are we going to do?

 

It meant changes in governance, changes in belief systems, changes in how we treat each other.  But for the majority of the people of Earth, it did mean some sort of unity and bond.  It did give us a common goal and even though with the dissolution of most of the existing countries before, there is…much like the UN…the Cooperative Nations, or Cooperative Nation, I guess, if you’re using old language and the old way of looking at things.  But now that it’s gotten closer and we don’t have a clear solution…we’ve been awaiting your return and everything we’ve theorized and everything we’ve worked on has been mostly well, what can we do to mitigate?  What can we do to defend ourselves?  Where could we hide?  Is there any way to work together with the Big Ones?

 

Again, with the Ivy Mike idea of bearing that below and doing that and hoping that would work again.  But knowing what we knew from the last time is that we needed some sort of long-term solution, because it doesn’t seem like coexistence with the Big Ones has ever been an option.  So, that’s where we were, I guess; waiting the return…it was a long time ago you left Planet Zipper.  Again, like I said, I can’t believe that for a planet so advanced, they’d send you back in the same ship at the same rate where you were sleeping and we were waiting.  But I guess it fit with the timeline of the hibernation anyway.  Again, we still don’t know about…much about Planet Zipper, and we lost contact with them.  They said that you’re the only one returning.

 

You said you haven’t seen the other members of your team in a long, long time, that you each went to a different station on Planet Zipper.  So, there was a lot of questions, but there was a lot of hope, too, hope of someone flying in from another planet and saving the world, like I said.  Maybe you would do the same thing you…my father did, but in an offensive way and not as a distraction.  Again…or maybe we could have equal numbers instead of just my father facing the Big Ones alone, and…or turning the Big Ones…some of the other myths; oh, well, we could…like some of those movies.  Oh, this one’s…loves humans, or these two are arch enemies.  They do some disagreements on…they did have a lot of those on Big Ones Atoll.  But in the end, we’ve been waiting for you, and you came back.

 

I don’t know.  We thought that everything would be solved, and I guess a little too hopefully, we tried to temper our expectations that it might not be a complete solution, or there might be some sort of sacrifice.  But what you’ve told me today, even though we’ve been implementing it in secret, I thought it was something…the instructions from Planet Zipper, I…we followed them.  But again, we…there was other plans working, not just this one, from Planet Zipper.  We thought it was more…I didn’t…it didn’t make a lot of sense.  We thought it was a distraction maybe to get us working.  But you had us in secret set up an entertainment company with cartoons and cereal and toys and podcasts and music, all about the Big Emojis, all about songs and feelings and dance.  It’s very popular with children of the world.

 

It’s translated and broadcast and produced in many, many different places locally.  The funding was there.  I guess people would have been surprised that it was funded by the former United States and some other assets we’ve been able to acquire, and that you pointed out to us that we could find.  But I guess we always thought of it as a distraction, something to give us…to keep our children busy, right?  To keep our children balanced.  Again, these things are about positive emotions and feelings and expressing yourself through dance and song.  Traditionally very popular topics anyway, and what you had offered with these emojis, it wasn’t really that different.  So, when I sat down with you, and after we went through this and there was some time, and…you smiled, you sipped at your tea, and you laughed.

 

I said okay, well, listen; can you give me back…what’s the plan?  Then you wanted to talk about how I was feeling, and how I was feeling about talking about my father and talking about hope and what’s next, and I didn’t really want to talk about those things, mostly because I had other clocks that were ticking, other responsibilities and other people to report…the whole world was waiting.  That’s mostly why I didn’t want to talk about how I was feeling, but you wanted to talk about how I was feeling to point me in a certain direction.  Then you said back up, and let’s talk about fission and fusion.  What do I feel about that, or what do I think the world felt about that?  What temperature…?  I said, I don’t know; cool, hot?  What do I feel in my body?  I feel queasy.  I feel trembling.

 

Well, what would you call those feelings related to fission or fusion?  Fear, tension, something much stronger than that.  You said, would you say they were scary?  I say yes, yes, on some level, they are scary.  You said well, even though you haven’t been around in the time of fission or fusion, off…used offensively, except people trying to figure it out.  I say yeah, of course; it’s a normal human feeling, right?  We talked about that and you said yes, this is a normal, healthy reaction.  But I couldn’t understand your point.  I said to you, I don’t…not sure I understand what kind of point you’re making.  What are you…where are you going with this?  You said to me, the how does not matter.  Can you feel those feelings and say the how does not matter, if how you’re feeling is the why?

 

I really was having trouble with other feelings ‘cause I was feeling frustrated, because I wasn’t sure if you were not good at communicating, you were being oblique on purpose, or I was in a place where I just wasn’t hearing and understanding what you were saying.  I mean now, even a few minutes removed, I think I understood clearly what you were saying.  Maybe I just didn’t want to believe it, so I couldn’t…maybe I…I guess because I can’t understand it.  But luckily I said, could you say it to me in a different way?  You said, okay.  How we’re feeling about things, how we’re feeling or how we’ve felt as a planet dealing with fission and fusion and the knowledge or the consequences of those things.

 

Maybe even deep down during the Cold War, during the WWs or the…you said…you know what I mean; afterwards, after the Cold War.  Those are strong feelings, right?  You said it, you said it to me, and you said that’s the why.  I just want you to think about…that’s why.  I said, that’s why what?  I said, you’ll see.  You said that to me; you’ll see, but you have to set aside the how for now.  But you under…you might not understand why the why, but you understand what I’m saying.  If that’s the why and you could set aside the how for now…and again, we kept going back and forth.  How did…what?  How does this…what does this have to do with anything?  Then it hit me and I went silent in our conversation.  I said wait a second, is your point here that our feelings are attracting the Big Ones?

 

It’s not the fission or the fusion that are attracting…that are attracting the Big Ones; it’s our feelings about the fission or the fusion that are attracting the Big Ones?  You didn’t say anything but you didn’t indicate that it was affirmative or negative.  Then I said, so you’re saying if we could not be afraid, if we could not be scared, if we could not be in a resentful disbelief that people still go forward looking to use these offensively, that the cost and the costs even before the Big Ones, but now with the Big Ones involved, you’re asking me not to feel those things?  Are you telling me that if we don’t feel those things, the Big Ones won’t come?  You said no, no, no.  You’re close, though.  You’re very close.  He said, that’s the why.  You have to set aside the how.

 

I said, the why is because we feel strongly about these things.  So, you’re not saying it’s an attraction; you’re saying it’s a manifestation.  That’s not…again, I guess the how is not possible, then.  I mean, the appearance of every Big One lines up with those changes in technology or each stage of development, another Big One.  But you’re saying they’re not attracted to the fission or the fusion, the radiation.  They’re attracted to the radiation of our feelings.  But then you’re saying no, it’s not the radiation of our feelings that’s attracting them.  It’s the radiation of our feelings that’s creating them?  That they’re a manifestation?  A true, concrete manifestation of our feelings?  But there’s no way that’s possible is what I said to you.  You said again, just for the time being, set aside the how.

 

I said, I can’t set aside the how and then conclude that it’s true, because it’s impossible.  I said, that…you’re asking me to set aside the how to believe that the Big Ones are a manifestation of our very real and understandable feelings.  Yeah, I don’t know how to make any sense of that.  Then I said…and you said okay, here’s another thing; I want you to close your eyes and breathe for a second, and just pause.  When you think about the Grandiller or you think about the Big Ones, the sounds they make, the way they move through space…I mean, I don’t mean outer space.  I mean as they go through a city, or the first time you saw the Grandiller in person.  What other feelings other than the ones that are aligned with what we’re talking about did you feel?  I said unreality, awe, wonder, surprise, shock.  You said, right.

 

Like, it’s…was a surreal experience, but…a experience of awe and wonder but also surreality because of all your time on Earth and all of your understanding of human history, history of the planet Earth, all species, you don’t have a frame of reference, so it seemed impossible to you even though you were witnessing it in the moment and even though you know the history inside and out.  You have a personal connection to it.  Even seeing it and being there, it seemed impossible.  Like, how could this be?  I said yeah, this is so…you’re telling me that our feelings are causing the Big Ones, creating the Big Ones, even though we haven’t had a new Big One in maybe twenty-two…I’d have to check the facts.  So, what’s our plan, to just unmanifest our feelings?  If what you’re saying is true, what would we even do?

 

What is the plan?  If our feelings are magnets and creators, I…and you said well, you can’t not feel, right?  When you don’t feel, you feel it even stronger.  Then we got into a…again, you took me down another rabbit hole of like oh, wait a second, is…those repressions when we were oppressing those feelings?  Was that what was manifesting the Big Ones?  I almost bought into it for a time, and then I realized I had to present this…we had no plan.  You said don’t worry, we have a plan.  I said so, what you’re saying is that these Big Ones in some sense, if we put aside the how and the why, they just appear out of nowhere because of our feelings.  You said no, no, no, you’re getting caught up in the how.  Maybe you should focus on the what, what we should do.  That’s what I’m trying to get you focused on.

 

I said, what do you mean?  You said well, okay, so if the Big Ones are manifesting from our feelings, then we should what?  I said, stop our feelings, hide our feelings, change our feelings, lessen our feelings, block our feelings.  I went on and on and on and I got more and more frustrated.  You said yeah, you’re having some strong feelings about this.  I said yeah, this metaphor is not doing it for me.  You said okay, what if there’s two things that are true here, even…with no matter what we’re saying?  But our feelings are manifesting the Big Ones, and having feelings is normal, it’s healthy, it’s rational, it’s an essential part of being human, and being human on the same planet as the Big Ones is gonna have even more feelings.  The feelings are important.  I said, okay.  You said, but those aren’t the only things we feel.

 

Those feelings about the Big Ones or about fission or fusion, those aren’t our only feelings.  Again, if we set aside the…why haven’t our other feelings manifested something, or can our other feelings manifest someone?  What if I knew that they could?  Then the time was up; we were interrupted and I had to buy us some time so we could sit down, and I know we’re gonna talk again soon.  But for now, I have to lie down.  You said well, I guess it’s time for both of us to get some rest.  I just have to lie down and clear my mind for a little while before I make this presentation.  I guess I’ll say that you’re still recovering from your travel across space, but that you do have a plan.  I don’t know what I’ll say, but I do need to rest for the time being.  Then again, I know I have to…why’d I say I know?  I know you’re listening to this and I know you might have strong feelings too now, but I hope those feelings are generous ones and you’re smiling.  Maybe you looked up a image of the smiling Emma otter saying all will be well, ‘cause that makes me feel good right now.

 

[END OF RECORDING]

(www.leahtranscribes.com)

Notable Language:

• Quantum Dynamics Incorporated
• ELI5 (Explain it to me like I’m 5)
• Planet Zipper

Notable Culture:

• Emojis
• Antonio Banderas
• Will and Willow Smith

Notable Talking Points:

• Emoji It Out
• It’s an atoll, but really it’s an island
• Focus on the What