Cameron: Welcome to another episode of the Devil's Rest Book Club where we dive into the details of Christopher Rocchio's Sun Eater Universe. I am your lowly second in command lieutenant that gets unnamed host Cameron. and with me today as always is the night tribune of our podcast, Drew. Drew, how are you doing this week?
Drew: I am doing wonderful this week and we're gonna be covering chapters sixty-seven through sixty-nine in the first book of the series Empire of Silence this week. I'm very excited. We're getting to some really, really, really good stuff. Some of my favorite moments from the entire night.
Cameron: Absolutely. And it's a lot of action packed stuff going on in this one, which is awesome. We love we love some action sequences. But remind us of what we discussed last time to frame this conversation.
Drew: Yeah, so last time we get some more exploration of Kalagah, and it gets much bigger. We had some really epic moments where we got to see this wild vision of something that feels something like a prophecy. Hadrian tries to share it with Volka explaining it, and they have a sort of parting of ways. They have a conflict over her accusing Hadrian of lying about this fact. And then we have, you know, Jadians showing up. Being introduced to Kalaga and Anais is with them. And we also have this moment at the end of the chapter or end of the last section of the story where Anais is sort of being kind of pushy with Hadrian and kisses Hadrian right as Volka walks in and sort of leaves us on this note of like not knowing how they're going to resolve the relational stuff. So we've got big stuff happening, and we've also got small small scale stuff between Hadrian and Volka going.
Cameron: And that's where we begin chapter sixty-seven, lost time. as Hadrian, the narrator is wont to do, he always begins introspective sections talking about some really weighty and heady subject. And in this case, he's reflecting on the Palatine relationship with time. he mentions that he could have spent multiple lifetimes basically as a plebeian on the streets of Borisiva with Cap. Wi without a care, like not thinking about the end of his life or whatever. I love this quote. The man that who hopes for the future delays its arrival and the man who dreads it summons it to his door. Not only is that ominous, but it's also very real. Like how many
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: tim the Sunday scaries are real, like, you know, y your your vacations are never too long, it's always too short. Yeah that's just a weird experience that we as humans have with time, which I think is fascinating.
Drew: It it's this yeah, it's this per s this perception based thing that we have. You know, we tend to think of time in this very objective sense in this day and age. You know, we have all the the clocks everywhere and like atomic time keeping act but but in truth we experience time kind of differently than this and this describes it perfectly that you know time can sometimes feel feel like it slows down, feels like it speeds up. feels like we'll never reach the future or that the pu the future is screaming towards us like a some horror monster, right? so it
Cameron: S.
Drew: it's it's interesting that depending on our perspective, it can really change our experience. there's more commentary on time coming up, but so that we'll we'll visit about it more, but it's it's a interesting way to start this chapter feels like foreshadowing to me as well. this something It's negative about anticipating in the future.
Cameron: Yeah. He goes on this diatribe beginning with a quote from Augustine, who says that if there are such things as the past and the future, they do not exist as such, but are only the present in their own time. The past, he says, exists only in memory and the future only in expectation. Neither is real. The past and the future are lives and our dream and dreams are stories. We are our all stories in the end, only stories. And it is the nature of stories that times present and past are present in time future and the future present in the past. Thus all time is always present in the mind and in the story of the mind, and perhaps in those forces that shape the mind. The poet wrote that all time is unredeemable. That might have been is only an abstraction, words in quantum space unrealized, which in turn define events by their exclusion from events. What if what might have been? What must be? I saw my self in the dusty halls of the Athena on Tucros, in the vaulted chambers of the seminary on Vesperad. Other Hadrians tramped the dust of other worlds, unmade, unrealized. Footfalls echoed in memory down passages I did not take towards doors I did not open. Whoa.
Drew: Yeah, yeah. There's there's so much going on in this passage. It the th the things that float around my head as we explore this is there's you know, this You know, i in a sense, the future and the past are sort of these abstract concepts and like all the only thing that we really have is our experience with the present moment. And our our experience of the past in the future is really just sort of like our mind trying to create some narrative about what has happened to us, what we've done, or also what may be approaching. And the only real synthesis of these things is just the nexus of the moment, right? Of what's what's happening
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: to us. I find it so interesting that we're reading about this in a story. because, you know, the the way that we relate to each of these things is kind of through the story we tell ourselves about them. it's really displayed very well in this opening passage we just discussed, but the way we view the future, the way we view the past really impacts how it affects us now. Interestingly enough, we can leap our awareness into the future and catastrophize, think about all the things that could go wrong and now rather than reacting to the problems we are currently exposed to or reacting to ten possible negative outcomes in the moment as if they're happening because we're leaping our awareness into the future. very unfair to ourselves. And similarly, if we leap into the past and we tell ourselves a particular story about things that we've done, we can hurt ourselves in the present telling us a story about moments that ne don't even really exist anymore. It's like, just so much going on here that is just deeply fascinating. This is one of the more thought-provoking sections of the whole book, actually, I think. It just
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: speaks to something really important about what it is to be a a person and to have this level of a view of the structure of reality.
Cameron: I wonder if the story section is like a a call back to Lord of the Rings. I mean, I think in general others had come up with the idea of like the fact that narrative drives so much of who
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: we are as humans. like I mean, you do this for a living, right? You're reframing people's past so that they can their expectations
Drew: Yes.
Cameron: of the future e and their experience in the present is is you know, helped in that set in
Drew: Yeah. Well I mean it
Cameron: front.
Drew: well, th that's important to that our our view of the future and of the past is is subjective. It's it's n it's genuinely not objective. And oftentimes with further introspection, just putting it down on paper or something like that and just thinking about it a little bit more, we can get much closer to an objective version of what happened. But w our sort of baseline is telling ourself a sort of feeling motivated version of what happened to ourselves in the past, or the things we Yes.
Cameron: And a lot of that's negatively coded most often.
Drew: Yeah, we have a negative attention bias, and if we have a a negative core belief about ourself. If I think I'm a bad person, I read that feeling emanating throughout my entire past, even if I'm being really unfair to myself, and we read that as objective when it's really the story we're telling ourself. there's entire models built around this related to narrative therapy, for example, where we sort of adjust and write out story like write out the life as a story is like what mistakes are we making in this narrative? Like and then it, you know, leaps off the page here, leaps off pages of the Lord of the Rings Similarly as well. that you know, we are in s some sense a story. j wonderful, just wonderful section of the story. So good.
Cameron: I've been I've been thinking because I'm going through Fellowship of the Ring, I've been thinking about this concept literally a lot. And so this coming
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: up at the same time that this comes up in I think it comes up in the Council of Elrond or something around around there, like before they go on and take the Ring South, Tolkien mentions this concept a lot. so it's very serendipitous that this is also
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: coming up here. not to mention the fact that Rocchio has mentioned his two biggest influences are, you know, Tolkien and Gene Wolfe. So I'll leave that where it is. Another big influence that we plan on talking about with Christopher Rocchio when we interview him is T.S. Elliott, apparently. So th th there's Direct quotes that Hadrian is calling out here when he says, like the poet said all time is unredeemable. He's directly quoting T. S. Eliot's first of his four quartets, called Burnt Norton, which is this weird diatribe around the same kind of thing that Augustine is talking about with like time and all this different stuff. The the four
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: quartets are sort of seen as T T. S. Eliot's foray or Showing of his interest in in religious philosophy, that being in his mind a blend of mostly Western with some Eastern influence as well, which some people criticize him for. I I read Burt Norton and I thought it was very good. I didn't understand it, I'm sure,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: but it's this is the second time T. S. Eliot has come up, and I'll remind our listeners that T. S. Eliot came up at Kat's death, a quote from the poem The Wasteland, in reference to the hyacinths that are on. the sheet that she is wearing, which is like a curtain actually or something like that. so clearly T. S. Elliott has had some influence on here too. And there's weird, like, I don't know. The it it's strange to be bringing this up in the midst of such a action packed sequence, but the narrator sort of pulls us that pulls back, shows us restraint and gives us this philosophical idea to chew on. he also sort of presents the the idea of the many worlds theory, right? He says he's he I and doesn't say that he sees vision. I saw myself. That could not be a literal vision as much as like thinking about the possibility of where I could have ended up, which I'm sure all of us do, of him on Tucros Vesperad, potentials, probabilities. Like he brings up these things that are, you know, very closely linked to the the many worlds or many universes interpretation. But then he brings us back with this quote, and he said, The present time at the end of this sort of chapter break, mentioning that the present time is not when we are, but what we do. It's again a a callback to the old crow ideology of like
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: where you're going and who you are is in is more in the present. I guess the old crow is kind of a little bit more future focused, but what we do now is is who we really are in the moment. We are not. made up by who we were in the past or who we expect
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: to be in the future.
Drew: Old Crow sort of pulls us out of the past, right? And makes us look forward and in in a sense, forward is the present moment, right? You know, he's pulling us out of our head to be guilty and just sort of wallowing in mis past mistakes and it's like it's what you do and what what you do is sort of what the moment is. You know, we sort of existing is sort of like an act of of thing and I also like that you know the there's this idea of like, you know I it's swimming around my head too is like this idea of like counterfactuals existing of like possi inf infinite possibilities sort of being strained down through the single moment and that just becomes what is. You know, there's all these different things we can do, all these possibilities in front of us, and then it sort of just comes down to this tiny funnel, which is the moment, and that just it it just streams in. There's no counterfactual left. There's just only what has happened. just super interesting. It'll be interesting to see how like this carries forward in the narrative. And like why why is Hadrian starting chapter 67 giving us a a lecture on the the the view about the past and the future and the the meaning of the present moment. It's like it's a very heavy way to start this section of the story. Alm almost suggests that like something
Cameron: Jarring for sure.
Drew: about the moment is important or something like that, going into the next section of the story.
Cameron: And then he immediately just moves on to this conversation that he's having drunkenly trying to resolve this situation with Falca. he's, you know, out as he is wont to do when he is being emotional or melodramatic, he has his pencil and his scalpel and his journal, and he's sitting on the beach and he is just, you know, trying to draw off something. And he ponders the fact that like he's sort of created this melodrama around himself. so in in Ha tying back to what we were discussing earlier about narrative and story, Hadrian Hadrian's narrative about himself is melodramatic.
Drew: Yeah. It's it the
Cameron: And in s doing so that also brings melodrama around him and thus everybody else is saying, Ugh, why are you so melodramatic?
Drew: But yeah, i it's it's a strange, you know, like almost like self fulfilling kind of thing, right? 'Cause if if
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: you know, Hadrian is melodramatic and therefore has these large moments which cause more sort of conflict and He's he's like this force that sort of generates all this stuff, but it's it's whipping up all this story stuff. You know, it it's you know, if he was just passive, you know, it's possible that the you know, the sort of preconceived narrative of the universe that he lives in is sort of he gets lost in the ocean of that. But because he's this, you know, figure that is just like running headfirst into everything, now he's on this planet having killed Gilliam Voss and in Collika. Like none of this was written in the cards for him. He's like this just running totally against the current here. but he has also this just you know, if we start to take stock of, you know, the current events of this situation as Hadrian does and what's what's occurred, you know, it kind of does feel like a story. He feels like he's in the middle of something important in some sense, which is kind of What he wanted in the first place. As rough as it's been, it's been a story. It's been melodramatic,
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: yeah.
Cameron: We'll see his thoughts about how the universe should be ordered and and that being related to narrative at the end of the section. But entering into this narrative, Volka startles Hadrian and asks him, like, What's he doing? How's he doing or whatever? And of course he, you know, freaks out and
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: whatever, and he's like, You shouldn't sing up on people She's like, Bro,
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: okay, all right. This is the first time that they've sort of had a one-on-one conversation, just the two of them, since she saw him and an ice kissing in the tunnels, without his consent. And it sounds like there's been maybe a week that has passed since or some indeterminate period of time, maybe in the newer version. but he asks, like, how did you know I was here? And she's like On average you're out bas basically she's like, On average you're out here every other night, mostly. It's just again pointing to this idea of like this memory she's got this identic memory that is it is not natural or normal. And she's like, Yeah, you're out here every other night and we've spoken out here several times And he's like, yeah, I guess we do come out here with Il Ilomas and Ada and Karthik pretty often.
Drew: He he th he thinks he's in some like black obelisk tower, like drawing
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: alone in this melancholy and everyone's like, Bro, we can see you from camp on the ledge here. It's just y Yeah, y yeah.
Cameron: That is the vi it's very much the vibe of the melancholic, right? It it he is so melancholic. And it's partially I realize this reading through it. the the melodrama and the melancholy, like he's very prone to that in general, as we're finding
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: out, especially as he's young, right? and he is not very emotionally mature. And so he's like, he doesn't in in him his heart of hearts, he knows that the only thing that's gonna solve or like ha have him move on to resolution is going to be to talk about it. with Volka and he just hasn't like broached the subject about it yes. And she's actually extending the conversational olive branch to him here. And he's like, I just want to be alone. You know, like being very childlike and very emotionally immature.
Drew: Avoidant.
Cameron: yes, avoidant for sure in terms of attachment style. But like Th his dysregulation and avoidance is because of the fact that this is an unresolved thing with the woman he cares about most on this planet, right? And he doesn't have the wherewithal in the moment to be like, okay. Well, I mean, eventually they begin talking about it because she's there and she's not leaving. She's been around the block longer than him, and it's probably a little bit more emotionally mature. But I just found that he was like. I I I was sort of hit the cringe of like you think about yourself in the past too. I've definitely been this sort
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: of guy for sure whi in relationships with people.
Drew: In it in the moment it feels right, but like looking on it in hindsight just feels so like Childish is probably the wrong word. It just feels like such a mistake after he's like, it's like, bro,
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: just like let go and just turn towards instead of turning away, you know. it's just a mistake. It's a big
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: mistake. Dude, like you're already past this, don't 'cause the the problem with it is that it just it just risks further relational division. You know, if if Volka is less mature here and he says go away, Then she just leaves and hey, guess what? Now you never resolve with this person. you you're depending on the other person continuing to be charitable and continuing to try to make effort to resolve the relationship. And in truth, we should just, you know, set our feelings aside a little bit and turn toward and have the conversation rather than
Cameron: And I bet from Volka's per Volka is doing that. She's being very charitable because like otherwise why would you be here in this situation? Like she doesn't have to put herself here, but she's choosing
Drew: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Mm hmm. Agreed.
Cameron: to do so. at the same time too. It probably has an impact like maybe she's also looking at it from this perspective of like, This is impacting my work. Like this guy's sulking around me all the time. Like I like there's not that very many people here. I do actually want his opinion on this stuff and he's just been a mopi sod for like the, you know. Better part of a week or whatever. Like, let's just get this over with. And regardless of of her motivations, she is being that charitable force here. And she is trying to focus on the now and the future and the present. And he is all in the past. Like,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: he's like You know, about the what I saw in the cave. Like he's apologizing for the vision that he explained to her that he believes is true, right?
Drew: Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron: and she just kind of shuts it down and says, you know, like we don't have to talk about it, actually. Like we can move on. We
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: both said awful things, we can just forgive each other and move on. And then Hadrian in his like black and white mi morality world is like, I didn't lie to you in this situation at all. Like I told you exactly what I saw. But then he remembers and thinks about Gilliam. He it literally says on the page, like Gilliam's blue eye was like above her shoulder, like looking over onto me as I said this. And so he didn't bring it up because like, you know, he
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: still has the specter of Gilliam overshadowing everything.
Drew: That's a really interesting thing. Cause you know, the the part of our capacity to recover from conflict and relationships is the degree to which we're willing to set aside our anger momentarily, even when we think there's something to resolve, right? So he would object. He's like, We didn't both say awful things. I said a true thing, and then you accused me of lying, and now we're in this situation. So it there's a urge to jump in and say that. But it's almost as if like, you know He sees her and he also sees the outcome of his previous rage and decides to not do it and to not do the like imp impulsive thing because it's her it had such dire consequences before.
Cameron: That's really interesting. I I thought about it from a different perspective. It's kind of h hinting at the same thing of like he's picking his battle, right? Because
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: he is on such thin ice with or he b he believes the narrative he's telling himself is that he's on thin ice with Volca because of what happened with Gilliam, and that may or may not be true, but yeah, both can be true.
Drew: It it it's also defin it's probably yeah, it's probably both at the same time too, right? Because i it's also the thing you're saying because i the consequence here if he's impulsive is the the breaking of his relationship with Volca, right? Which is the consequence of him being unwilling to set his anger aside for a moment and to not do the impulsive
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: thing. It's it's all kind of wrapped up into this it's a great image.
Cameron: continuing on, like now that there he's actually talking and has begun the conversation, he's gonna try and resolve every issue that he has. And in his mind, he wants to make it very, very clear that he is not interested in Anais, the way that Balka
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: may have interpreted that based on the fact that they were kissing And he's like, about that. And she's like, dude, I don't care. And if we think about her ethic, right? She was the one who was shooing the sex slave out of her room that one time where she forgot Hadrian was going to show up. and when she says that she doesn't care, in her mind she's saying, Look, it's not as big of a deal as you're making this. Which hurts Hadrian because in his mind he wants this monogamous relationship where he's a viable partner. sexually and otherwise romantically to her and she just doesn't clearly does not see him that way. And but in her mind she's like, you know, this is good. Like she's being realistic and saying, you know, better than most Palatine creatures can hope for, to which Hadrian Bristles and, you know, she's like, Th you shouldn't have any she she's a very anti-shame person, we're finding out in general. She doesn't live with very much shame at all. very liberated kind of person. and or it the shame that she does live with is very How would you say? The shame that she chooses to have is very traumatic or shameful. Like she she she's done a good job of like letting go of a lot of different things. Part of that is the society that she grew up in. Part of it is her as a person. she's like, there's nothing to be ashamed of, dude. You kissed a girl, I saw you, it's no big deal. And not only that, like you're engaged to be married to this woman, and they're gonna make you like the head of this planet. Right? Like,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: like this is weird for you not to like this. And the fact like, hey, we had a conversation about your parents not too long ago and how cold that is. This is a way better situation than that, right? At least you know the girl. She's cute, gorgeous, as she says. and like, you know, it's she's trying to cheer him up about the situation and sort of relieve some of the tension in the conversation or the feelings that Hadrian may have about this. And and may mainly she just wants to like clear the air. And Hadrian's immediately like, I the last thing I wanna do is marry her.
Drew: She's sort of looking past like what it would feel like to be actually in this situation and just looking at like the privilege associated with the situation, right? So like she's thinking more like what he stands to gain and not like the freedom he's losing by it. Or like the fact that he's being forced into it, which is obviously what Hadrian is very upset about. And
Cameron: Well, societally, she doesn't understand this concept of what this means, right? Like
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: she's never going to be approached or or in a situation as this sort of like weird diplomatic courtier thing. Like she's never gonna be in this situation where she's being married to somebody and being forced to be in a a relationship with them. Right.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: you know, he is like r at this point he's word vomiting and and saying like, you know, you're the only reason, you know, it's like and then he just like cuts himself off. better that he stop continuing to put his foot in his mouth.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: and he looks out at the sea and he's like struck by the beauty there, which gives him a moment of pause, which actually is a very good thing when you're in a conversation like this and maybe you're not it's not going the way that you want. he's taking a pause and then he refocuses himself and then utters to us that he wasn't supposed to be here. Like like again, going back to that previous conversation we've had about the the other Hadrians that he saw on Tucross or on whatever, it's like like this is the last place in the universe Hadrian Marlowe should be is on this beach a betrothed to a woman he does not love. and destined to be a a stud to give grandchildren to House
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Mataro.
Drew: Grieving over the past is is something we can do, it's relatively normal, but getting fixated on it stuck is sort of like a losing game, so to speak. You know, the
Cameron: Yeah. It's very easy to get stuck.
Drew: Yeah. If we if we don't accept what is, then we can't move on and act in the present. And he's sort of he's sort of caught on once again grieving the life that he could have had. He's he's sort of forgotten all the
Cameron: Thought he should have had.
Drew: Right. Right, which isn't up to us in some sense.
Cameron: Right.
Drew: but yeah, but nonetheless we do this to ourselves all the time. forgetting old Crows of advice a little bit here in some sense.
Cameron: Yeah, a hundred percent. Volka in this moment to like divert this conversation is like, Hey, look, man, I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to, you know, have my own ship and maybe take some crew around and do all this different stuff. And Hadrian's like, Why weren't you a pilot? And she said, My father died. And so this is the first time Volka is being like emotionally vulnerable
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: or available with Hadrian full stop. Everything else before that is about her work or like you know, the current situation. She's she's given no indication about her family at all. And her life before she was a zoologist. And she mentions that her father was killed doing what she does. We later come to find out that it was the Inquisition on Ozzimandius.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: that had him captured and killed for work that he was doing. Presumably around we know that there is Ozzy Mandius has, you know, quiet ruins. And so presumably she's carrying on this legacy from her father. We don't know if she came up with the hypothesis or him or whatever, but he was at a di he was a xenologist, he was at a dig on Ozzie Mandius and was taken away by the Inquisition and presumably never seen again or something like that. And then like immediately asks him a question before she gives him more details in the situation. She's like, Why do you sharpen your pencils with a knife? Which is a funny, like, little diatribe they go on. But it it it does bring up an interesting philosophical or
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: practice where Hadrian says, you know, I he understands that pencil sharpeners exist and maybe they do put a finer point on it or whatever. But the narrative he tells himself is that like, no, this scalpel puts a finer point on it. But in reality, it's a meditative thing that he sort of does to get into the mood or break up the monotony of you know, drawing block in inspiration block or whatever, like a lack of creativity. And he mentions that the tools we use help adjust our thinking. which is very true when you really think about it. I mean,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: mental like math is become a different thing compared to our parents' generation because we had T I eighty five calculators in school, right? Or, you
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: know I I'm sure AI will have this impact on future generations of how they interact with this technology, and the tools that they use can impact the way that we think about how we th go about thinking about things.
Drew: I I think this is especially poignant when we're talking about the difference between interfacing with technology versus doing something more ph physical and analog. You know, it you know, it comes to mind like almost if someone said, you know, you're journaling right now, why are you writing in a journal? You know, we have keyboards and computers now, or we have your phone with a notepad and and you're
Cameron: Yeah, compared to typing on your phone. Yeah.
Drew: and you know, there's in some sense there's a logic to that, but there's a There's something lost with the digital interaction, the putting your pencil into a pencil sharpener instead of feeling the sensation of what it's like to be in the moment cutting the charcoal, be in the moment, feeling the stroke of the pen across the page. There's something that is very I think human about the analog experience that can sort of become almost meditative and ritualistic. And especially when it comes to art or expression in the way that he's doing now, I you know it it it there's something a little bit mystical about it in some sense, but it also seems real. there's something grounding about it, being in the present moment, doing something with your hands. something about, I don't know, like pouring tea into a cup instead of cracking a can of tea open or something. There's something about it. I don't know exactly what it is, but it feels like the practice of it matters somehow. Yeah.
Cameron: Ritual, yeah, it's a ritual thing.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Or like observance of a particular form.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: the tactile experience being tied to the analog frame of mind. I mean, I I think it's already been shown too, right? L writing something from a recall perspective, writing something down is more effective at getting it stuck in a person's brain than typing it out.
Drew: I agree. I I also think there's there's a sense in which like doing things the analog way there's something that's slightly more human about it. You know, I was
Cameron: Very much more human, not even slightly.
Drew: I was I was reading a a book called The Anxious Generation by a social psycholog yeah,
Cameron: Jonathan Hype, yeah.
Drew: Jonathan Hype is a social psychologist And one of the things that I didn't fully appreciate before reading that book is how much it this it sounds silly, but how much of our human experience is embodied in how much digitizing experience strips us of our natural state of being. it's it's d definitely different. Writing on a page, feeling the physical experience of being grounded in the moment. So it it's it's sort of reconnected back to this present moment speech. I think at the start of this passage, you know, a lot of mindfulness-based practice is about observing physical sensation in the moment to be present in the now rather than being in the past or the future with our mind. So really interconnected chapter in this way.
Cameron: Which is really well done because if you just look at the conversation and you strip out the philosophical conversation at the top of it or in the middle of it, yeah, there's if you look at all the pieces together, it looks like it doesn't make sense, but it is woven together very, very well.
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: Adrian then it's like Do you hate me, Volka? And I'm j like like he's so much. He's
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: so much and I think I cringe and I whinge about it because I can I have been and can be that melodramatic or melancholic or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
Drew: Yeah d d we we cringe because this is us. This is us. Right? It this is so much of of this is us.
Cameron: young man's experience in in a relationship, yeah. And
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: she has the best response ever. And she's like, I think you'd do enough of that yourself, dude. you don't you don't need my help in aiding yourself. And he's
Drew: Yeah. Th d this this passage really definitely I think emphasizes the difference in their maturity and their age, you know, 'cause
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: Volka gives me the impression that she's a bit avoidant as well. She just is like more grown. You know, like she you know, this you could take some of her language about not caring about stuff is true, but it also could be a own kind of personal avoidance, you know, if she has feelings for Hadrian and she doesn't want to express those, she could Yeah, it doesn't matter, or it's not a big deal, we don't have to talk about this. That's a little avoided as well.
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: but she's also the one approaching and at the same time here she's she's kind of seeing the game that's going on internally with Hadrian and kind of just staying above the whole thing, which is kind of a sign of emotional maturity in some sense.
Cameron: And and she is trying to lighten the situation clearly and Hadrian's trying to be, you know, melodramatic. Yeah, wallowing. And she's
Drew: Yes. He's just in it. He's just wallowing. Wallowing in it. Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron: trying to lift him out of there. And she gives him a compliment and she says, You know, you're not who I thought you were. And Hadrian's like, Well who did you think I was? And she said, You can probably guess. And Hadrian immediately thinks in his mind, like, yeah, she probably thought I was Crispin, right? Like that kind of person. But again, like he calls
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: like Crispin this butcher. And if we remember and think back, like Hadrian's perception of Crispin is not the real Crispin, right? He's not
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: the same thing. He is not Crispin is not Alistair. Crispin
Drew: No,
Cameron: is not Alistair at all. And Hadrian sort of lumps him in with Alistair. Even here. It's been 35 years, however many years that Hadrian's had, and he just like cannot see outside of his perception of who Crispin is. But broad strokes, it's more that sh Valka is saying to Hadrian that. okay. He is not a garden variety palatine that just lords his lordship over everyone and takes advantage of his privilege at every opportunity. And then she's like, you know, you're so much not that like you wear like your privilege on you as if it is chafing you, right? Like as if it's like giving you a r rash when you wear
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: it. And he's like, It does. In fact, it does. My imperial mantle does chafe me.
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: and then that's when she like we I hinted at it earlier in the conversation, but and that's she's like, dude, like You don't understand that they're trying to give you everything. Like they're giving you the basically the rule of a planet. Like Anais Mataro is gonna rule this planet. Like how stupid crazy is that? Like a person ruling a planet. And so we get some like world building there to understand, like, sounds like more than one person rule a planet in in Taveros. Which we've kind of understood up to this point already. But specifically I think it's also a dig at Naya's Mataro saying like this girl's gonna rule the planet. Like, are you kidding me? And also at the same time, he's she's like that's you too though, right? Like you could really rule the power here, and like most men, most people in this situation that you are in would love to be in this. Like, what's wrong with what you're going through? Would you rather be on the streets and a peasant? He's like, I was on the street for years. And then he goes through and explains his time on the street, like what he's gained, what he's lost. Like, I lost my friend the gray rot, for goodness sake. Like and
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: then he apologizes again for Gilliam. You know what? I I will say this always, like Gilliam is my fault. I'm sorry. And I d wish I didn't do it. But if you think that me marrying a nice is not a prison, then you don't know what prison is.
Drew: It it's interesting too, you know, she's trying to cheer him up. she doesn't like the values of his empire, but she's sort of, you know, saying like, it's okay, like you get to be at the top of the hierarchy. but he's almost like taking the Volka stance that it's like bad, like it's not it's not what I want, it's not a good thing, like it it's not desirable.
Cameron: I see it more from the perspective of like he she he's a test subject and she's like trying or like a like a psychology patient and she's trying to understand from a xenologist or zoologist perspective of like why would this creature in this situation behave this way?
Drew: I I think she's just trying to cheer him up. I don't
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: think she actually thinks it's a good thing. She's just like, come on, bud.
Cameron: Yeah, yeah.
Drew: You're yeah, that yeah, I agree. It's just interesting to me. Yeah, she's she's gorgeous and and
Cameron: And she's gorgeous. She's gorgeous. Punches him in the arm.
Drew: and he's like, come on like totally not the type of person he would even want to be with in the first place.
Cameron: Yeah. Of course not. And he's made that up on another page.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Hadrian then is like, I wanted to be a pilot too, and then goes down the rabbit hole of like well the plan was that him and all of his Myrmidon buddies were gonna buy a ship and then you they were gonna go sail off and the sunset like Simi and the Red Travel Star. Meet Xenos, rescue rescue princesses, like this kind of thing. And she's
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: like, You have a very romantic view of the universe. And I love this line from Adrian actually. He says, I would like to. I'm just sorry the universe doesn't share that aspiration. It's
Drew: I love it. I love it.
Cameron: that's what it we it's strangely optimistic for
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: how melancholic he has been the entire chapter.
Drew: Yeah, i it's once again we're getting this, you know, emphasis on story. You know, he he we know this about Hadrian from the start, about his his love for Simeon. And we're getting that again here, and he's grappling with the fact that he is wanting to be in a story in a universe that isn't kind of the the s type of story that he wants to be in, in some sense. And Just the the difference between his vision of the world and the way the world actually is just kind of keeps making him run into this brick wall over and over again. but even despite that, there's s some kind of like hopeful, youthful defiance here that's really kind of inspiring. I like it actually. Yeah.
Cameron: Me too. And she's like, dude, are you all you always this dramatic? She's like, ask and literally anybody
Drew: Anyone
Cameron: that knows me, l ask them. And then
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: she sort of ends this chapter break period saying, you know, for what it's worth, I'm sorry too. And it's a great way to just close out that conversation with them having re-established rapport and been able to to move it sounds like they have now moved on to some extent from the issues that they were facing before. So I'm sure Hadrian will feel better about that. Immediately we have a chapter break and then a like the this section in the original text is significantly changed and reduced in the old test
Drew: Interesting.
Cameron: old text. I'll read what what's in the second edition. Memory is not
Drew: The the new edition is the new edition is shorter. Is that what you're saying? Okay, interesting.
Cameron: Way shorter. Way shorter.
Drew: Okay. We'll go with yours. Okay.
Cameron: Memory is not history, nor are our stories the past. We remember not what was but what mattered, what was important to us. Events which in truth were separated by days or months, or even months tend in recollection to occur one after the next. The truth the truth is I cannot say with confidence that we shared that bottle on our last night at Calaga, or if it was some other conversation with which preceded that what was to come. I think there's a way longer period. in the original version before the the truth the truth is line that he says there. It's just like one short little paragraph he sort of cut down
Drew: Okay, I'm gonna read that section because I I actually quite liked it.
Cameron: Sure.
Drew: Another problem with August is Augustine's common sense vision of time. It assumes a sort of ca causal relationship between the past and present, between present and future. True, perhaps, in the physical sense, but in the narrative, no. Stories are not subject to time, ever fleeting. They transcend time. They are eternal. In classical English, the word present means both now and gift. How the ancient s ancient survived such confusion, I will never know, but there is beauty in such vagaries. Each moment as it passes is precious and so separate from the moments that follow and precede it. it's interesting that this was cut, because this sort of
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: plays with the pr the previous section and something. sense about you know more themes about the present. I this I don't know why I've never heard this. Th this is such an interesting line of the pr present in in classical easy meaning gift and now. It's such a cool line, actually. I've I've never thought that but that it is true that it actually means both things. I it's possible he cut it 'cause he thought it was like it's like, okay, I'm talking about the present a lot. But
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: but it sort of just drives the the the point home again. Interesting that he you know, usually when he goes through sections like this, he changes the sort of prose structure, adds in a couple extra things. He doesn't fully cut paragraphs typically, so it's quite
Cameron: Mm-hmm.
Drew: quite different in the new version.
Cameron: But regardless, we should make note of Hadrian's memory and our on our chalkboard of unreliable narrator and actually kind of being honest about his unreliability, he's mentioning the truth is that I cannot with confidence say that we shared the bottle in our last night at Kalaga. So this conversation with with Volka. may or may not have happened the same night that the events that we're about to experience happened. He does not know, but it's the next bullet point in his narrative internally in his head. And he's sort of justifying that here. Like it's not a strict timeline as he's going through the story and that's the way he's sort of justifying it and explained it. Saying it doesn't matter.
Drew: Mm-hmm. It is the construction it is the construction of the story of his version of the past, right?
Cameron: Right.
Drew: Yeah. The which is you know, begs the question with all the previous commentary about what what does that mean in terms of the veracity of this report, but that is what we're reading.
Cameron: But what we can a assume is that a as he is walking back on some night with Volka to the camp, whether it was this night or another, that a great flash fills the heavens and a ship is falling out of the sky. he sees flashes of blue light. He describes it as lightning, as plasma, and then very soon after it, a a wave of sound overtakes him and makes him fall to the ground and stuns him as this shockwave has just knocked him over. Falka is screaming to him to get up. and now where distant thunder at the beginning of the book was far and far away at Kai Shen. the Thunder is now on his doorstep and at his feet as the Cielsen have begun at attacking or like have made their way to
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Kalagah there's a callback that we wanted to make specifically to when he mentions Many have written about the like my first meeting with the CLC and saying it was at Kalaga.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: and he said that's not true. It was in the cells at you know in the vomitorium or whatever. they're talking about this moment here. So this moment it will be mythologized in the future from what we understand it, or the Empire will have a particular line of it,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: essentially. So let's keep an eye on that as we move forward in this section.
Drew: you know, as this moment occurs through my second read through, it really struck home to me that really the narrative thus far of Empire of Silence has been distant thunder of the war of the Cielsen. You know, we're we're asked sort of a couple of questions at the start of the book. And number one is like, What happens with the the war with the Cielsen? And the other question that we ask is who is Hadrian Marlowe and how does he become The person that he is. The story starts with distant thunder. So we have one sort of track above us that's sort of slowly dripping down, giving us a little information throughout the story, while we follow the other track, which is the deconstruction and reconstruction of Hadrian's identity and who is he is as a person. And at this point in the story, they're sort of crashing and colliding finally. And that's gonna sort of propel us through the rest of our narrative here. And so it'll be interesting. to see how those things are sort of tied up here in this last arc of our story.
Cameron: Hadrian's the first one to realize that it's the Cielsen in this moment as people are yelling and like techs are coming out of their houses and stuff like that. And Hadrian is pretty collected and is giving orders and telling everybody like telling people, go let Elamass know he needs to like contact Spring Deep immediately. Like we need we need people here. You know, he's trying to coordinate efforts on. What needs to happen next instead of just, you know, either withering or going crazy or whatever, right? He's doing what would be expected of him, or I guess what we would come to expect of him in this situation, which is cool. he also mentions that like we need to let them know because like the camp is visible for miles around. Like they're gonna be able to see this if they're coming from the sky. It's the only settlement that's near the ruins. And clearly they're coming near the ruins for some reason. and if we think about it too, the reason that this like ship crashed in this area is that this is the only continent on Imesh, right? Bor Sivo on the other side of the planet is like built on top of coral and terraformed, but the only true like land continent that exists on this planet after its initial terraforming or whatever is. Where Kalaga is. Now it may be remote, but like we're on the same landmass, right? and clearly they're coming this direction for some reason. And that's where V Volka basically ends the chapter saying, like, we gotta get everybody out of here. And that's where we end chapter sixty seven and move on to chapter sixty eight. Help. Love this
Drew: I
Cameron: short chapter.
Drew: I was just gonna say one of the most memorable moments of this book to me, the first time I read it, was when the C Elsen stuff is raining down from the sky. Like that moment sold me like fully on Rockyo's prose and imagery. Like that mov that that moment sort of played like literally like a movie in my brain when I first read it. It was just like such striking imagery of things cra just Wonderful. Just so get Yeah, yeah, yes. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Mm hmm
Cameron: it's about to more too. I mean, when we get to our last chapter of the day, especially like I I see it in my brain very clearly. these are these are scenes that have to be in whatever media that comes visual media that comes out, a hundred percent.
Drew: a hundred percent.
Cameron: So Because clearly they have actually made those calls out to the Archon to get reinforcements and to the rest of the planet because shuttles have arrived near Kalagah, that have a bunch of soldiers in them, and they are there to extract people from this area because the CL Center nearby and take them to safety. the centurion that's taken charge is known to Elomas and Dekarthic. and Elomass is talking to her and trying to get some information out of her, and she says she is not at liberty to share. and accidentally lets slip that it's at on the knight tribune's orders. So what we find out is Rain Smythe, who's the knight tribune of the fourth century legion. So one of the four that reports up to like The whole head of the this part of the army has taken control of the planet temporarily and is running the show. you don't want a power struggle in a crisis moment like this. You want somebody to be able to take charge of all the military action, period, full stop. And that is Rain Smythe in this situation. and it she is coordinating those efforts. and and we've seen her before. We saw her at the Ephibia. We have seen her at the other end of the table when Hadrian was had his moment with Light Jass. so now she has sort of taken over military control of the planet while C Elsen are in the system. and in s in doing so, the fact that she d has done this is an indication to Hadrian and a confirmation that it really is the it has to be the Cielsen, otherwise why would she do this? He mentions that like d space battles above and like how they how poets talk about space, how everybody romanti romanticizes space combat. I made a note of like Star Wars does this very poorly, for instance, and I
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: love Star Wars. It's like it's sound and light and you know, all this different you know, explosions and all this different stuff. I mean like in and Hadrian's like in reality space combat is just light and silence. Like it's it. All you see is light and there's no sound and it's weird. Hadrian then asks the Centurion how far the Cielsen are away, and the Centurion immediately recognizes Hadrian clocking him as you know the Count's stud to be, essentially. what's happening above is that the Jadean ships that are also in system are also intercepting what's going on here. and Hadrian, of course, the moment any Celson comes into play immediately is like I'm like the expert on CLS and guys, you have to take me with you. You have to take me with you. I can
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: help. I promise thinking that he's gonna be able to negotiate with them, because he sees them as like in his mind at this moment, diplomacy is a way that he can impact the war in a positive direction.
Drew: Yeah. It's it's worth recalling, you know, it's been a while since we've interacted with the Cielsen and we've interacted with his thoughts about the Cielsen, you know, it previously we he's established that, you know, we have to talk to them at some point, right? Like he he believes that, you know, like even if even if there's war going on, you eventually have to negotiate to sort of secure some sort of peace arrangement or something like that. and that just fighting senselessly is isn't isn't going to work. So like he he's we're gonna have to see like how this plays out, right? now that we don't just have a C L sin in a cage, the situation is much more active supposedly. We're just gonna to see where it goes. This is a completely different situation. in in some sense, this may this might be why the maybe the legends focus on Kalaga, because this is a much more like big, high-scale moment than just just the
Cameron: Dynamic, yeah.
Drew: just in the in the prison. so we'll have to see why the legends talk about this moment.
Cameron: when he asks to go with them saying he can help, Satrina's like, absolutely not. Like the
Drew: Yeah, there's no way, right? Yeah.
Cameron: Count and the Archon would kill me, like absolutely not, not happening. And she like has people touch like grab him or whatever, and he is like, get your hands off me. And reminder when Hadrian wants to insert his authority or get anything done the way that he wants to be done, he puts on his Alistair mask and then immediately starts acting like his dad. And so he does that and basically doesn't give her an option. he says, Great, like doesn't matter what you do, I'm coming to back you up. claiming that he can get the Clison to surrender if any of them survived. Narrator Hadrian looks back and and mentions, I don't know why I said that. Like I don't know what made me say that. I don't know if it was curiosity. I don't know if it was pride. But whatever happened, like whatever like it was, ultimately you could hang this moment to be the moment in my life that was the turning point for me, where I became Hadrian Marlowe, whose purpose was to end the war, right? and we get this image as he's sort of conceptualizing this in this moment. Like I finally it's his moment to to be the Selson talking guy. he still has a burn scar on his finger, but he's got no ring. So he's lost the identity of the Marlowe family. Now he is becoming Hadrian Marlowe. this is the first step towards becoming A sun eater, Hadrian Marlowe, is what he is saying.
Drew: Yeah, it th I I love this moment because this is b like like we were just mentioning at the end of the previous chapter, this is the the culmination, so the the Cielsen touchdown and this is him telling us the reader that he is he is back, he is now himself, he has been through the fire, he's done the deconstructing and reconstructing, and this is now the Hadrian that's gonna truly start the story, right? You know, we've we've got you know portions of himself getting torn apart. We have this un this sort of naivete torn apart. You still have pieces of that inside of him. But we now have him stripped of house identity, portions of his dad pulled inside him for the cruelty, for use of his position where needed, but still with the passion for this particular thing that he had at the start of the story, now inserted into a moment where he can actually act. And he says, not just that he's Hadrian Marlowe, but that he would he's he's Hadrian Marlowe again. Like he's been broken apart and the pieces have been put back together finally. And so we get to see our our character, he's the he now. Now come of age, so to speak, coming of age sark, so exciting, huge moment.
Cameron: And it is a big, big moment for him. And he's like, Well, if you're not gonna let me go, you'll have to stun me. And then I explain to my fiance, so I guess I'm going. and he's like, you know, we have not had a single C Elson surrender to us or surrender period full stop in a three hundred years this war is going on. I wanna change that. And so something in his voice, his way of authority, or maybe just the idea it's like, I really can't stun this guy either. she decides to let him go and and
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: stay with the si stay with the the group.
Drew: I think it's really important that this goal is restated after the culmination of his identity formation here, because it tells us that he's now like a full fledged character. You know, we're not probably we're gonna be there's still s growth and room for the future of the story, but we now know that as he's put back together, this is now his his central goal. Gonna like moving forward, right? This is yeah,
Cameron: Yeah. Diplomacy.
Drew: correct. Yeah. Maybe I can change this is the first goal that's set out. This is as on the page it says this is his purpose now. And so we will have to see how that purpose plays out and we'll see that immediately as we go
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: into our our next chapter, chapter 69 of monsters.
Cameron: now that he has convinced the centurion to let him stay, he is going with this group of soldiers to where the Cielsen ship had fallen while wearing a shield belt. Most of his like party at Kalagah have retreated back to Spring Deep with on the shuttles, Volka included. So he's the only one of the original people that's left here. and he is left with the Optio, which is a junior officer in the Roman legions. But so like that that centurion left her second in command in charge of Hadrian, presumably. they it takes them about an hour, but they end up where the crashed salesman ship is, and he remarks about like unbroken, this thing was huge, was huge. And he mentions in the new version that it would have been like a quarter mile unbroken. and and is like this is like scarab beetle shaped, like it's or not the it's got a different shape. This isn't like a this is a true ship. It's not like the castles of ice that he saw in his visions on Delos of the Seal World ships showing up there when they hadn't. He's like kind of shocked at this. At the way the ship is designed. Not only are legionaires at this site, but Jadians are as well, including Sir Aloran, who is leading the Jadians here. And of course Hadrian's like, hey, what's up, dude? I know you. And Aloran's like, hey, I know you too. and much to Hadrian's surprise, Bassander Lynn, Lieutenant Bersander Bassander Lynn is ruling the empire side of things here or running running the show here from the imperial perspective.
Drew: Something that I thought was worth mentioning here is it just it's I think it's worth appreciating that a lot of this book has been setting up this world, describing the various factions at play, developing Hadrian, all this stuff. It feels like we are like fully all of a sudden in the sandbox in this chapter where we have like literally like every faction mention like i w we don't have like you know, maybe some like guild folks or something like there's no like e economy folks here but we've got the Jadians. You know, we've got Bassander Lynn who we have this supposed relationship that happens in the future where there's some friendship slash betrayal. We we don't know what goes on there. We've got, you know, the legionnaires here. we've got the Cielsen in play. Like everything is all of a sudden happening very, very quickly.
Cameron: Bissander, as like running the show, the operation on the imperial side, it's like think probably thinking to himself, what the heck is a Palatine doing here, like right now?
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Like what is he doing here? He should not be here. He's like, What are you w asks him that basically? And Hadrian's like, I I can help negotiate. Like I speak their language. And he's like, negotiate? Like, what do you what are you talking about? And Bissander is coming from the perspective of having been on the front lines and fought C L some before. And Hadrian has not experienced Sealson at all, other
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: than Makisom in the in the vomitorium of the Colosso. he like it says, like, are you are you crazy? Like, are you really crazy? Like that this what what are you talking about? Like negotiation.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: Aloran is not even like looking at the wreckage of the vessel, like they try to find out if there's anybody. He Aloran isn't sure that there are any survivors among the pale. Hadrian in the meanwhile is like, Well, if we can try to avoid bloodshed on both sides, I morally essentially is what he's saying, we have an obligation to try and do so. And Loren even starts to like perk up at this and says like you you think you actually can reason with with them And Hadrian's like, I really don't know unless I get the opportunity to try and I know the words that I could use to to do so.
Drew: It it it at this point in the story, you know, especially on your first read, where are you sitting in terms of how reasonable you think Hadrian's goal is? Like so like he's he's sitting here, you know, advocating for communicating with them while we have a couple of other folks sort of in opposite a lot of like really the whole narrative has been people in opposition from him. Where are you sitting at this point in the story?
Cameron: I actually on first read and I still kind of feel this way a little bit of like if this war's gone for three hundred years and they've tried to and they've done the same thing over and over and over again, might maybe try something different.
Drew: That's exactly where I was sitting. especially on my f my first read. it seems reasonable on the page, to me.
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: It at least you know, like if if there's truly never been a an attempt at this and there's never been someone who's been willing to even try, how can you know what you don't know? And so it it seems reasonable, especially when there's like a sort of orthodoxy or dogma in play, then like maybe this is like just an untapped area for getting past senseless violence or something like that. So I thought it was worth staking out, you know, s people seem the characters seem to think it's ridiculous, but us as the reader may not think it's ridiculous. I s I certainly did not
Cameron: Yeah, and I mean on the page it it seems reasonable for sure, right?
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: in hindsight we know how the story ends, right? If you really think about it, we we know Yeah, there's a dissonance there.
Drew: Right. That's can so that's it's confusing, right? Like we so we know we know that the war doesn't end with words, or that's what
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: the history tells us or something like that. So like what is going on here? It's it's it's a weird contradiction in terms, but that doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with it yet.
Cameron: I did want to take a a moment to talk about the Mamluks because like I had forgotten about this portion of the books. These
Drew: T totally.
Cameron: Mamluks are we get a description of them for the first time. They are androgens, meaning that they, you know, are sexless or like un like not they're intersex or whatever they're they're created to be sexless or genderless. like the man books are holding him down hatering down in this moment and he's get your hands off me. And he actually elbows one up in the face and it falls back and is almost parallel to the ground and then just rises back straight up. Have after being hit by this, and they like the description that he has of this thing is like so we we've seen homunculi, and they seem more human, maybe with some eccentricities like blue skin or whatever, this is the unsettlingly not human. and it's I wanted to point that out of like, okay, this is kind of an outcome of the Jadion eugenics policies here They've created something That may have human DNA but is not does not behave like a human you would expect. Yeah.
Drew: Very dissimilar. Yeah.
Cameron: Take take face dancers from Dune and the unsullied from
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: the Game of Thrones universe and put them together and you get them the Jaddy and Mamlooks. really, really weird. Very creepy.
Drew: Creepy. It creepy. Like it yeah, yeah.
Cameron: Bassander is actively trying to get Hadrian out of here. Like, I don't care what you do, put him on a shuttle and send him home. We don't have enough resources to take care of this guy. we need to we need to get him out of here. And then Hadrian makes a comment that he will rue in the future. And I want to read this section because it's awesome. He says that I straightened, attempted to muster what dignity I could. We can do better. I kept my eyes on the hoodless Mamluk, ready for it to try something. Wars aren't one with soldiers, sir, not unless you're willing to kill every single enemy in the galaxy. Wars are fought with soldiers, but they're one with words. I would rue that pronouncement, the naivete of it, and as I write here my heart blackens with the irony and the bitter knowledge that I was wrong. We have to start talking to them someday. To which Lorian and Bassander are like shocked at the fact that he has said this statement. But that's narrator Hadrian telling us in this section
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: I believed this to be the path forward. I was wrong. Like my heart blackens with the irony and the bitter knowledge that I was wrong as he writes it. That how naive it was. Totally missed that on my first read.
Drew: Yeah, i i it's totally missed totally missed it as well. And you know it it sort of begs the question is like w what the what the heck happens? Like w what what
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: how do we g get from Hadrian in the future calling Hadrian now naive? so we should keep this in mind moving forward that i it's either that you know, Hadrian in the future has turned into some kind of horrible villain or something, he's lost his values, or there was a genuine reason for this lot like we don't know what's g occurred in the story. has he become cynical and doesn't believe in the hopeful thing or is it just not possible? so we'll have to continue
Cameron: Ma
Drew: re
Cameron: maybe. I think it kinda reads off of the page like Like yeah, that he was truly naive. I don't know. Like he could there could be some cynicism to it. We we really don't know. But
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: also what we do know from this is like It was his intention to go this direction and his intention was incorrect. That's what we can know for sure. that at least the narrator now believes wholeheartedly that he was wrong to try and take this tact in this moment. in hindsight, right? Now he doesn't mention that, but like he's looking back on it, he he feels shame. thinking about the fact that like right because
Drew: It hurt it hurt it hurts to write, right? Yeah.
Cameron: he was wrong he he was wrong to try and do this. So I it we really it'll be interesting to find out why that is wrong. Because ev like you we've mentioned before, seems reasonable to try something different in the last three hundred years. How how does this you know what how does the dynamic change? Upon hearing this, Bassander's like, that's really, really close to heresy. And Adrian's like, it actually is heresy. are you gonna report me to the chantry? Dude, this guy,
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: I mean, I guess at this point, if you have just killed the chant second in command on a planet or whatever, I you know, in for a penny, in for a pound. It's like, yeah,
Drew: Yeah. I love it.
Cameron: okay. that's not what they have me for. They got me for murder, but like, you know, like might as well throw some heresy on top of it. You know, I do believe that. and Hadrian tells Aloren to make the Mamluk let him go and he says a word to it and it like stiffens up. We get another creepy moment of Mamluks just like behaving the moment Aloran says a word. But we get introduced to another character. There's another officer who enters the scene here, a Jadian officer, who is the second in command to Aloren in this situation. we find out. Is named Jinan Azar. And I wanted to read this section because like she comes up and he she like begins talking to Aloran and he tells her like take off your helmet and then they start talking in Jaddy and or whatever. But on page 491, he mentions her name was Jinan Azhar. Though I would not learn it for some time, though I would not learn it for some time. She was Aloran's second in command, a cunning warrior from a good family. My captain How strange it is to think back on those dear to us, to recall that they were once strangers, strangers still to reflect upon the way that those who were once so dear to us sometimes become strangers again. I watched her as she spoke standing beside Bassander, admiring the tallness of her, her oval face and crown of dusky hair. Jinan was a stranger to me then, is a stranger to me now if she yet lives. But there was a time and she was not, and that time was yet to come. So we get sort of a mini introduction to this character here, similar to like what we have with Passanderland, but not as long. He calls her my captain.
Drew: Yeah, what is that about?
Cameron: What's that mean? He also intimates very clearly, like I knew her way more than I knew her in this moment, but I don't know her now. She's a stranger to me again, if she's still alive. I don't know.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: so d clearly there's some dynamic or relationship here, clearly one where he is subordinate to her in some respects, as she is his captain. But In this situation what we hear she's like a second in command and we don't know her I don't think it hit says her rank quite yet. I think maybe maybe it later intimates that she's a lieutenant yet. Is it a rank? I don't know.
Drew: Is captain a rank? Is Captain a r ye I don't I I don't d yeah. Very weird. Like more
Cameron: So w again, beep bee boop beep beep boop boo boo put a pin in it, like
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Hadrian's hinting at at a future with this person in s at a future relationship with this person in some form or fashion. as this dynamic is happening and actually Lauren says on the next page that like she's a lieutenant. So what does this mean? Right? Like at this moment, at this time, she's a lieutenant. Maybe she gets promoted to captain. We don't know. cause she's giving a report to Aloran because the we find out lore building wise that Mamluks do not speak to the Ali or two people in charge or whatever, right? He calls them Hakif or vile in in Jadean, which indicates that they are seen as subhuman, similar to I guess the way Hadrian views homunculi, but dial it up even more because these things really are really creepy and are not very human.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: they're sort of seen as below all of all of Jadion society. And granted Lauren is near the top but Interesting world building around the Mamluks. he he mentions that like his report from his subordinates it are that no live CLSN were on board of the ship. So only dead Sea Elson are on board. Any sort of and this is a huge ship, right? Like this is a
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: quarter mile long ship. Hundreds of CLson could have been in this thing. and there are not hundreds of bodies on the ship. At this moment, Hadrian mentions that he saw these blue flashes as the ship was crashing, saying that they could be escape pods. And Bassander's like, they don't have escape pods. What are you talking about? It's like, okay,
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: shuttles then, whatever. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, I saw blue flashes, I'm telling you the truth. And he's like, I can I think I know where they would be. And you know, Aloren's like, maybe. And then Bissander is like c I just this picture I see very clearly of like and I want this to be in the show as well of like Hadrian trying to insert himself in the situation but Cinderella just being
Drew: Yeah, just just just furious.
Cameron: Just like walking away and just fuck fuck fuck any fuck judge and
Drew: Ha ha
Cameron: then coming back and saying like where would they go?
Drew: W it's it's interesting seeing him and Bissander interact more here because like
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: we got this picture of them like being at odds with each other but also friends or something like that. It but they seem so like so dif so
Cameron: Antagonistic right now.
Drew: antagonistic out the gate, so it's hard to imagine like how do they I don't know. It's it's it's not
Cameron: One is a Palatine noble, the other is a soldier, one is a patrician, the other's a Palatine. Like like one is disciplined, the other is or I don't know, like like calm, cool, collected, the other is like melodramatic and super emotional. And like th they could not be more polar opposites in many ways, from a from a vibe standpoint, I guess.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: but regardless He gives in and asks Hadrian where they would go. And of course, he's like, okay, well, it's the ruins, of course. and so they go to the shuttle, they make their way there in about an hour. and he mentions this shuttle is scarab-like almost, and it's the size of a bus. So we're dealing with like a shuttle that's coming out of a ship that's a quarter mile long, and the shuttle is about the size of a city bus. and apparently The Sealsen have some sort sort of technology to be able to disguise their signature or cloak them from censors that the Empire has, which we don't get too much of an explanation on because Hadrian's not a very technical person. You see, he basically says, Yeah, but Sanders' explanation flew over my head or whatever, but it's fine.
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: but they have gotten out of this shuttle and have clearly gone down into a tunnel that leads into the ruins of Kalagah. Hadrian is only what has no weapon, is only wearing a shield belt, has no like physical armor, just the shield belt for projectiles, is surrounded by centurions, and you know, basically gets he is and a bunch of other Jadeans and Imperial people and a few Matar people end up going down in the belaying down into the tunnels, into these black dark tunnels at night. And begin trying to navigate them. And Hadrian's the one guiding them in this situation. And they come to a fork in the tunnel and basically he's asked which way do we go on this? Of course, he knows the most about these tunnels. Granted, he doesn't know all of them perfectly, right? He's been lost here.
Drew: How could he? yeah.
Cameron: It's also super dark. He's never been down the shaft before. But he kind of has this picture of the place in his mind as he's moving through it. Maybe something happens, I don't know. he's like, well, we know that there couldn't have been like more than like 12 Cielsen on that shuttle, right? Like they size-wise, they like it's about a dozen, right? We can assume. so and we have enough men. Let's go both ways. So the Jadians create one group and the Empire takes one group, and Bassander immediately is like, All right, Marlowe's coming with me. Like, I gotta make sure. Like, and Aloren's like, No, no, no, he's fine. I'll I'll take care of him. Don't worry. as they're going down this tunnel with him and Aloran's group, and the group is smaller, he starts to feel the fact that he's not he doesn't have a weapon or any armor or anything like that. He's like, I don't know, I don't feel good about this. But they're good.
Drew: It it starts it starts to like I think it it to me it's so funny because you know thus far he's like guys we we gotta we gotta talk to him and stuff like that and then like he's the second he gets into situations like shit like I need like a a weapon like immediately the yeah yeah
Cameron: I wish I had a sword, yeah.
Drew: which It's just immediately like recognizing kind of in a similar way to you know like If you never test your ethic, then you don't get to know what your ethic is that we got earlier in the story, it's now put in actual danger, you realize maybe like the stakes are a little bit different because the there's actually something on the line. It's not just this hypothetical thing that you can preach at people.
Cameron: They stop in this chamber and try and get their bearings. And they he he basically hatred's like, we need light, like we need light right now. and presumably Jinan is like, we can see better than like we can see, we're okay. And he's like, they can see much better. And so we come to find out here in this section that. a reminder of something that has been told us to us before is Clint have evolved underground and can see in dark places naturally, where humans cannot, because that's the way that
Drew: Yeah in i
Cameron: they had evolved.
Drew: and in the last chapter when they were talking about like the ruins of Kalaga being like similar to the Sjelsin world ship stuff, it was
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: kind of given to us that like their ships are almost like caveish kind of things. They're
Cameron: Yes.
Drew: super comfortable here. You're out of you're s it's like going to the bottom of the ocean and you're with all the stuff that sees in the dark. Yeah, it's it's
Cameron: Fish. Yeah.
Drew: not good.
Cameron: And as as such, the CLC ambush the lone people in the dark. and I wanted to read this section on page 494.
Drew: Yes.
Cameron: the way the battle actually starts is Hadrian hears just this slam into the stone and the Mamluk next to him has like crunched and fallen down, and he hears the snap of the Mamluk's neck, and then like it's like, shit, like it and everything
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: pops off. The shouts of Stunnerfire illuminated the beast like lightning. Its armor repelled the stunner blasts effortlessly, and it whirled nine feet of pale muscle enfanged polycarbon, face like the white skull of death, eyes like rotted sockets, teeth like a bank of glass knives. Was that blood on its mouth? I stumbled back, and Lieutenant Azhar threw herself between me and the creature. Flashes came from my right. Turning I saw two more CLsons sprinting through the darkness, growing closer with each flash. I needed a blade, a gun, anything. My kingdom for a horse. I thought. My addled brain cackled with the absurdity. Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together. I scrambled back, heard Aloran cry out in Jadeon, Stun them, stun them. So things get really hectic really quickly and again, so vivid and definitely
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: is gonna be in the visual media of like the gun flashing fire illuminating the Cielsen as it's like ripping dudes apart. Like it's awesome.
Drew: Nine feet tall? Are you kidding me? Like it it it it's worth worth a remind like I appreciate that we saw the first CL C in a cage, but like seeing them for real for real is it's it's like you're in a horror movie. I mean it it's just terrible. They're terrifying. So it it he's so good with imagery. this is why I actually think horror fans will probably actually like like sci-fi horror fans specifically will like this series because the the seals in are so scary. They're so they're they're horror monsters for sure.
Cameron: This is very much aliens, James Cameron aliens vibes at the beginning of the film, right? Like very much so.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Cameron: but they have the numbers in this case. and I I just want to reiterate that that description of them again. These things we saw Maki Sum like cowering in a corner and like defeated, basically, right, from the very beginning. This thing, these things are nine feet tall, like you mentioned. They have glass knife teeth. They are like rail thin, their hands have too many fingers, they have a white braid coming out of the crown of their heads, which is surrounded by horns. and eyes that are like black as pitch. and so you could like this these are like take a pale gray and make it a a pale demon and you've made a like the Cielsen and it's super, super creepy. People are dying all around him. but finally they get to like the idea of like using light as a weapon in this situation. They flash a big flashlight at at them and they all hiss and like cower back because they're blinded. It's like almost a flash blormal like flashlight to them is like a flashbang in their face. and it pushes them back. Meanwhile, one of the lieutenants is on the ground screaming and or is is screaming
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: and we see this angry little white snake with a drill bit for a mouth burrow out of the neck of this soldier. which I'll say the name of it. It doesn't say on the page, but I'm gonna say it. This is the first Nahute that we meet in in the story. They are creepy as fuck. No. No.
Drew: Did you remember this at all that this is here? I did not remember this at all. It's terrifying. It's so
Cameron: Yes.
Drew: it's so viscerally like I don't know how I miss so much of this this book. But it's it's like this mechanical drill thing that like worms its way out of this dude. He's like screaming, you don't really know what's happening, and just like come yeah, it
Cameron: Out of his neck, like jugular.
Drew: yeah, it's
Cameron: And immediately like goes and tries to find the next person to do the same thing to, right? Like
Drew: Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron: and Aloran being the badass swordmaster he is, the moment it it like flies up, just cuts it literally in half. and then like turns his high matter sword off for a second. he does mention two things that I wanted to like highlight. his high matter sword is blue as Cherenkov radiation. I have no idea what Chirinkoff radiation is, but I looked it up and everybody should look it up because it's really blue and really cool.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: yeah, so go go go look it up for a more
Drew: Tyrannic.
Cameron: physical, like a true physics description of of how Chirinkoff radiation works, but it's really, really blue. and like it on the page Rocky Oak call says Holorin, Aloran cuts it cleanly in half. flowing like water, which is, you know, martial arts, Bruce Lee. This guy is the swordmaster of swordmasters type, right? Like there was no it was never a threat to him. Not only that, he like cuts a Clinton diagonally in half and it's like but it's samurai samurai style. Its body just like slides off of its thing and like falls to the ground. And then Adrian's like, wait, wait, don't don't kill all of them. Please like like I need to talk to at least one of them. Come on. and they're trying to stun the Cielsen and Aloran's not just cutting him down anymore. I imagine he could, based on what we're seeing here. But Hadrian knows the one thing that'll get the Cielsen's attention. He yells in their language the word stop. And they're just like, What? And so the Cielson like cocks its head in this strangely like human gesture to him, the fact that he's able to say a word that it recognizes. And then he begins conversing with it. He says, Like, Where are the others? Like how many of there are you? Like why why are you here? Like general questions. and the Tielsen doesn't answer. Hadrian's like, My friends wouldn't torture and kill you. Answer my questions and you'll be treated fairly. To which the Cielsen like is like fairly, fairly, and is like clear clearly put off by this word. not believe it's clearly not believing that that will be the case at all. But Hadrian continues to ask questions and says, like, why did you come to this place? And the CLS and finally gives some information away and he says, like, it is not for you. Like, this place is a holy place. And Hadrian's trying to pull this information about potentially the quiet out. And he says, You worship the people who built this. And the CLS is like, It is not for you. Meanwhile, Ginan and Aloren are asking, like, what are they saying? And Hadrian's kind of blowing them off. Like, he's too focused on the conversation. Like, semi translating for them, but not really. Like he wants to continue to get information and maybe sanitize it a bit before he lets anybody else
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: he. Adrian says they want to hurt you. Like and at this moment We see the motivation change a bit of like he just need he wants to find out this information and the tactics that he's taking of talking are not working. And so what does Hadrian do? He turns to violence. And he takes a stunner and has a vision of all of the violent acts in his life rushing back, hit hitting Chrisman with the book, his time in Colosso. Like questions whether or not he's gonna be able to sh to shoot this Celson. in with with with this gun. Now we know Hadrian. Hadrian. he also like stabbing the shopkeeper, whatever, right? We know Hadrian is pretty good at violence. And
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: is at in the right mindset and mind frame will do the violent thing. The most violent thing. If it means like the angry Hadrian goes berserk, right? Like. So He gives us that idea this idea of like, it's so beneath me and so below me or whatever. But all we've seen on the page is a string of violent acts that this narrator has done and
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: drip fed little more details about them, making them worse. and in doing so, like they pulled the salesman's helmet off, and as Hadrian's looking at this, he remarks that their technology, like the changes kinda right, like Their tech kind of sucks. Like we are better than them, more advanced than them. But he notices that this CLS has no hair and its horns are rounded nubs, which is something presumably hasn't seen before. So wielding this gun in the CLSN's face, Hadrian is like trying to threaten and get information. And the Son says, I don't fear you. Hadrian continues to ask, Where are the others? Cielsen says, there are no others. And Hadrian shoots him. He says, how many? He's stunning it, right? This is a stun, but it's still violence and it still hurts. He mentions like on the lower end it'll make unconsciousness. At the higher end, it'll burn your nervous system in half. Like like it's not
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: it's not painless at all. And these are Cielsen, so they're at a higher level than what we would expect, you know, to do humanely to a human. And so he shoots it again. He said, How many? He shoots it again. And finally the CLS's like, there are eleven. Adrian asks where he shoots the CLC in the face when it doesn't give him the answer that he wants. And I wanted to read this last piece on 498. I'd heard stories about people dying during interrogation, about soldiers botching the job, so unskilled were they compared to the Cathars. I had always thought that those stories incredible, and yet there I was. I was glad Volka could not see me, though I felt sh the shame in her eyes, prayed that she never learned of that moment. I felt her contempt for violence for me, and lowered the gun. I tried to tell myself that I was doing w what I was doing was not really torture. The Zenobite would recover, would not be like the cripples who lined the vomitory of the Colosso begging bowls in hand. It was a lie, I told myself. A lie to save my st soul. I lowered the weapon and asked again, Where are they? Whoa.
Drew: Yeah. It's it's you know, we're we're sort of slowly seeing like how you know this person could become the Sun Eater or whatever that is, like just a little bit at a time. and like it's it's really interesting how quickly this went from talking to this. Like, very quickly.
Cameron: Yeah, right.
Drew: you know, he's still he's still talking in truth, but it's like he's It's not just talking at all. Like it's it's mixed with violence. And and interestingly enough, you know, at the start of the story, he's so contemptuous of this idea about being a torturer for the chantry and like here he is, like torturing this thing for information.
Cameron: Yeah yeah yeah.
Drew: It's like immediately like a like he's doing the thing that he was concerned about doing.
Cameron: And disgusted with with Makisome too, right? Like disgusted with the Cathars and how they did business with Makisam.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah. And here he is. Th th this is a p in in some sense you could like this is like he he's not executing this but he's torturing it. Like that's
Cameron: A hundred percent.
Drew: yeah, it's it's really not good.
Cameron: It doesn't fit with the ethical framework we understand of Hadrian up to this point either.
Drew: No. No, not at all. And you know, we have interesting things happening with the Cielsen about like the the holies like this is a holy place. What does that mean? Qu
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: question marks. I
Cameron: Why does this C Elsen have no hair and rounded nubs of horns? Like, what what does any of this mean on top of the fact that like we see C Elsen we see the monsters that they are? Like we this is the first time like we saw a a a neutered Maki Some essentially, and we'd heard stories about them eating people or whatever. We see like A few CLC, like three or four C L Cin, basically take out half of this group, with nobody's bit like in no time flat and like do some truly horrific stuff, right?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: You had mentioned that you were bought in before. After reading this first read through and upon reread, how did you feel?
Drew: it's hyped. You know, the the I love horror fiction because I I think it it includes you know, I I like genuine fiction in some sense. Like I don't like when things are sugarcoated and I appreciate when there's real like terror and evil in a story. And the C L C immediately like were exactly the kind of thing that this story I felt needed for them to be. You know, if you end up with like a a different alien race in this story, it changes the tone of the series very much. And so seeing them on the page this way, I was just like, all right, yeah, like listen man, give me the war. I wanna see it right now. I gotta I gotta
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: see, I gotta see more of these things. but it's also intriguing 'cause you just want to know more. I every time I see this Yeltsin on the page, especially in Empire's Science, I just I just like it just makes me hungrier for more information. You we get a little bit of information at a time. Now we know that there's like a holy site thing. It's like, are these things like is there like a religious thing going on? But like that's super interesting. I hadn't considered that. They're not just like you know, space cannibals or something. They're there's something else going on here. So there's like another like what is what does that part of their culture mean? what ev what about this place makes it holy? What are they worshiping? it does their war have some interaction with their beliefs. It's it it generates way more questions than it answers, which is sort of the beauty of the series in some sense is is the tendency for it to do that. So once again the the reveals just bring more momentum to the story and this is no exception.
Cameron: And now we are full steam ahead toward the end. we
Drew: Yes.
Cameron: are meeting the moment that Hadrian mentions with the CL SNET Calagah. And we will continue in our next episode, always forward.
Drew: And always down.
Cameron: We'll see you next time.
Drew: D Fox.
Cameron: Devil's Rest Book Club is Cameron Elston and Drew Welty. Today's episode discussed chapters 67, 68, and 69 of Empire of Silence by Christopher Rocchio, Copyright 2018. Empire of Silence was originally published by Daw Books on July 3rd, 2018. Quality editing and original music by Cameron Elston. Find us on YouTube. Contact us at Devil's Restbook Club at gmail.com. Devil's Rest Book Club is a production of Disquiet Pods. This episode, Copyright 2026, Cameron Elston and Drew Welty. Thanks for joining us and remember, rage is blindness.
Drew: I am doing wonderful this week and we're gonna be covering chapters sixty-seven through sixty-nine in the first book of the series Empire of Silence this week. I'm very excited. We're getting to some really, really, really good stuff. Some of my favorite moments from the entire night.
Cameron: Absolutely. And it's a lot of action packed stuff going on in this one, which is awesome. We love we love some action sequences. But remind us of what we discussed last time to frame this conversation.
Drew: Yeah, so last time we get some more exploration of Kalagah, and it gets much bigger. We had some really epic moments where we got to see this wild vision of something that feels something like a prophecy. Hadrian tries to share it with Volka explaining it, and they have a sort of parting of ways. They have a conflict over her accusing Hadrian of lying about this fact. And then we have, you know, Jadians showing up. Being introduced to Kalaga and Anais is with them. And we also have this moment at the end of the chapter or end of the last section of the story where Anais is sort of being kind of pushy with Hadrian and kisses Hadrian right as Volka walks in and sort of leaves us on this note of like not knowing how they're going to resolve the relational stuff. So we've got big stuff happening, and we've also got small small scale stuff between Hadrian and Volka going.
Cameron: And that's where we begin chapter sixty-seven, lost time. as Hadrian, the narrator is wont to do, he always begins introspective sections talking about some really weighty and heady subject. And in this case, he's reflecting on the Palatine relationship with time. he mentions that he could have spent multiple lifetimes basically as a plebeian on the streets of Borisiva with Cap. Wi without a care, like not thinking about the end of his life or whatever. I love this quote. The man that who hopes for the future delays its arrival and the man who dreads it summons it to his door. Not only is that ominous, but it's also very real. Like how many
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: tim the Sunday scaries are real, like, you know, y your your vacations are never too long, it's always too short. Yeah that's just a weird experience that we as humans have with time, which I think is fascinating.
Drew: It it's this yeah, it's this per s this perception based thing that we have. You know, we tend to think of time in this very objective sense in this day and age. You know, we have all the the clocks everywhere and like atomic time keeping act but but in truth we experience time kind of differently than this and this describes it perfectly that you know time can sometimes feel feel like it slows down, feels like it speeds up. feels like we'll never reach the future or that the pu the future is screaming towards us like a some horror monster, right? so it
Cameron: S.
Drew: it's it's interesting that depending on our perspective, it can really change our experience. there's more commentary on time coming up, but so that we'll we'll visit about it more, but it's it's a interesting way to start this chapter feels like foreshadowing to me as well. this something It's negative about anticipating in the future.
Cameron: Yeah. He goes on this diatribe beginning with a quote from Augustine, who says that if there are such things as the past and the future, they do not exist as such, but are only the present in their own time. The past, he says, exists only in memory and the future only in expectation. Neither is real. The past and the future are lives and our dream and dreams are stories. We are our all stories in the end, only stories. And it is the nature of stories that times present and past are present in time future and the future present in the past. Thus all time is always present in the mind and in the story of the mind, and perhaps in those forces that shape the mind. The poet wrote that all time is unredeemable. That might have been is only an abstraction, words in quantum space unrealized, which in turn define events by their exclusion from events. What if what might have been? What must be? I saw my self in the dusty halls of the Athena on Tucros, in the vaulted chambers of the seminary on Vesperad. Other Hadrians tramped the dust of other worlds, unmade, unrealized. Footfalls echoed in memory down passages I did not take towards doors I did not open. Whoa.
Drew: Yeah, yeah. There's there's so much going on in this passage. It the th the things that float around my head as we explore this is there's you know, this You know, i in a sense, the future and the past are sort of these abstract concepts and like all the only thing that we really have is our experience with the present moment. And our our experience of the past in the future is really just sort of like our mind trying to create some narrative about what has happened to us, what we've done, or also what may be approaching. And the only real synthesis of these things is just the nexus of the moment, right? Of what's what's happening
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: to us. I find it so interesting that we're reading about this in a story. because, you know, the the way that we relate to each of these things is kind of through the story we tell ourselves about them. it's really displayed very well in this opening passage we just discussed, but the way we view the future, the way we view the past really impacts how it affects us now. Interestingly enough, we can leap our awareness into the future and catastrophize, think about all the things that could go wrong and now rather than reacting to the problems we are currently exposed to or reacting to ten possible negative outcomes in the moment as if they're happening because we're leaping our awareness into the future. very unfair to ourselves. And similarly, if we leap into the past and we tell ourselves a particular story about things that we've done, we can hurt ourselves in the present telling us a story about moments that ne don't even really exist anymore. It's like, just so much going on here that is just deeply fascinating. This is one of the more thought-provoking sections of the whole book, actually, I think. It just
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: speaks to something really important about what it is to be a a person and to have this level of a view of the structure of reality.
Cameron: I wonder if the story section is like a a call back to Lord of the Rings. I mean, I think in general others had come up with the idea of like the fact that narrative drives so much of who
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: we are as humans. like I mean, you do this for a living, right? You're reframing people's past so that they can their expectations
Drew: Yes.
Cameron: of the future e and their experience in the present is is you know, helped in that set in
Drew: Yeah. Well I mean it
Cameron: front.
Drew: well, th that's important to that our our view of the future and of the past is is subjective. It's it's n it's genuinely not objective. And oftentimes with further introspection, just putting it down on paper or something like that and just thinking about it a little bit more, we can get much closer to an objective version of what happened. But w our sort of baseline is telling ourself a sort of feeling motivated version of what happened to ourselves in the past, or the things we Yes.
Cameron: And a lot of that's negatively coded most often.
Drew: Yeah, we have a negative attention bias, and if we have a a negative core belief about ourself. If I think I'm a bad person, I read that feeling emanating throughout my entire past, even if I'm being really unfair to myself, and we read that as objective when it's really the story we're telling ourself. there's entire models built around this related to narrative therapy, for example, where we sort of adjust and write out story like write out the life as a story is like what mistakes are we making in this narrative? Like and then it, you know, leaps off the page here, leaps off pages of the Lord of the Rings Similarly as well. that you know, we are in s some sense a story. j wonderful, just wonderful section of the story. So good.
Cameron: I've been I've been thinking because I'm going through Fellowship of the Ring, I've been thinking about this concept literally a lot. And so this coming
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: up at the same time that this comes up in I think it comes up in the Council of Elrond or something around around there, like before they go on and take the Ring South, Tolkien mentions this concept a lot. so it's very serendipitous that this is also
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: coming up here. not to mention the fact that Rocchio has mentioned his two biggest influences are, you know, Tolkien and Gene Wolfe. So I'll leave that where it is. Another big influence that we plan on talking about with Christopher Rocchio when we interview him is T.S. Elliott, apparently. So th th there's Direct quotes that Hadrian is calling out here when he says, like the poet said all time is unredeemable. He's directly quoting T. S. Eliot's first of his four quartets, called Burnt Norton, which is this weird diatribe around the same kind of thing that Augustine is talking about with like time and all this different stuff. The the four
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: quartets are sort of seen as T T. S. Eliot's foray or Showing of his interest in in religious philosophy, that being in his mind a blend of mostly Western with some Eastern influence as well, which some people criticize him for. I I read Burt Norton and I thought it was very good. I didn't understand it, I'm sure,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: but it's this is the second time T. S. Eliot has come up, and I'll remind our listeners that T. S. Eliot came up at Kat's death, a quote from the poem The Wasteland, in reference to the hyacinths that are on. the sheet that she is wearing, which is like a curtain actually or something like that. so clearly T. S. Elliott has had some influence on here too. And there's weird, like, I don't know. The it it's strange to be bringing this up in the midst of such a action packed sequence, but the narrator sort of pulls us that pulls back, shows us restraint and gives us this philosophical idea to chew on. he also sort of presents the the idea of the many worlds theory, right? He says he's he I and doesn't say that he sees vision. I saw myself. That could not be a literal vision as much as like thinking about the possibility of where I could have ended up, which I'm sure all of us do, of him on Tucros Vesperad, potentials, probabilities. Like he brings up these things that are, you know, very closely linked to the the many worlds or many universes interpretation. But then he brings us back with this quote, and he said, The present time at the end of this sort of chapter break, mentioning that the present time is not when we are, but what we do. It's again a a callback to the old crow ideology of like
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: where you're going and who you are is in is more in the present. I guess the old crow is kind of a little bit more future focused, but what we do now is is who we really are in the moment. We are not. made up by who we were in the past or who we expect
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: to be in the future.
Drew: Old Crow sort of pulls us out of the past, right? And makes us look forward and in in a sense, forward is the present moment, right? You know, he's pulling us out of our head to be guilty and just sort of wallowing in mis past mistakes and it's like it's what you do and what what you do is sort of what the moment is. You know, we sort of existing is sort of like an act of of thing and I also like that you know the there's this idea of like, you know I it's swimming around my head too is like this idea of like counterfactuals existing of like possi inf infinite possibilities sort of being strained down through the single moment and that just becomes what is. You know, there's all these different things we can do, all these possibilities in front of us, and then it sort of just comes down to this tiny funnel, which is the moment, and that just it it just streams in. There's no counterfactual left. There's just only what has happened. just super interesting. It'll be interesting to see how like this carries forward in the narrative. And like why why is Hadrian starting chapter 67 giving us a a lecture on the the the view about the past and the future and the the meaning of the present moment. It's like it's a very heavy way to start this section of the story. Alm almost suggests that like something
Cameron: Jarring for sure.
Drew: about the moment is important or something like that, going into the next section of the story.
Cameron: And then he immediately just moves on to this conversation that he's having drunkenly trying to resolve this situation with Falca. he's, you know, out as he is wont to do when he is being emotional or melodramatic, he has his pencil and his scalpel and his journal, and he's sitting on the beach and he is just, you know, trying to draw off something. And he ponders the fact that like he's sort of created this melodrama around himself. so in in Ha tying back to what we were discussing earlier about narrative and story, Hadrian Hadrian's narrative about himself is melodramatic.
Drew: Yeah. It's it the
Cameron: And in s doing so that also brings melodrama around him and thus everybody else is saying, Ugh, why are you so melodramatic?
Drew: But yeah, i it's it's a strange, you know, like almost like self fulfilling kind of thing, right? 'Cause if if
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: you know, Hadrian is melodramatic and therefore has these large moments which cause more sort of conflict and He's he's like this force that sort of generates all this stuff, but it's it's whipping up all this story stuff. You know, it it's you know, if he was just passive, you know, it's possible that the you know, the sort of preconceived narrative of the universe that he lives in is sort of he gets lost in the ocean of that. But because he's this, you know, figure that is just like running headfirst into everything, now he's on this planet having killed Gilliam Voss and in Collika. Like none of this was written in the cards for him. He's like this just running totally against the current here. but he has also this just you know, if we start to take stock of, you know, the current events of this situation as Hadrian does and what's what's occurred, you know, it kind of does feel like a story. He feels like he's in the middle of something important in some sense, which is kind of What he wanted in the first place. As rough as it's been, it's been a story. It's been melodramatic,
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: yeah.
Cameron: We'll see his thoughts about how the universe should be ordered and and that being related to narrative at the end of the section. But entering into this narrative, Volka startles Hadrian and asks him, like, What's he doing? How's he doing or whatever? And of course he, you know, freaks out and
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: whatever, and he's like, You shouldn't sing up on people She's like, Bro,
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: okay, all right. This is the first time that they've sort of had a one-on-one conversation, just the two of them, since she saw him and an ice kissing in the tunnels, without his consent. And it sounds like there's been maybe a week that has passed since or some indeterminate period of time, maybe in the newer version. but he asks, like, how did you know I was here? And she's like On average you're out bas basically she's like, On average you're out here every other night, mostly. It's just again pointing to this idea of like this memory she's got this identic memory that is it is not natural or normal. And she's like, Yeah, you're out here every other night and we've spoken out here several times And he's like, yeah, I guess we do come out here with Il Ilomas and Ada and Karthik pretty often.
Drew: He he th he thinks he's in some like black obelisk tower, like drawing
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: alone in this melancholy and everyone's like, Bro, we can see you from camp on the ledge here. It's just y Yeah, y yeah.
Cameron: That is the vi it's very much the vibe of the melancholic, right? It it he is so melancholic. And it's partially I realize this reading through it. the the melodrama and the melancholy, like he's very prone to that in general, as we're finding
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: out, especially as he's young, right? and he is not very emotionally mature. And so he's like, he doesn't in in him his heart of hearts, he knows that the only thing that's gonna solve or like ha have him move on to resolution is going to be to talk about it. with Volka and he just hasn't like broached the subject about it yes. And she's actually extending the conversational olive branch to him here. And he's like, I just want to be alone. You know, like being very childlike and very emotionally immature.
Drew: Avoidant.
Cameron: yes, avoidant for sure in terms of attachment style. But like Th his dysregulation and avoidance is because of the fact that this is an unresolved thing with the woman he cares about most on this planet, right? And he doesn't have the wherewithal in the moment to be like, okay. Well, I mean, eventually they begin talking about it because she's there and she's not leaving. She's been around the block longer than him, and it's probably a little bit more emotionally mature. But I just found that he was like. I I I was sort of hit the cringe of like you think about yourself in the past too. I've definitely been this sort
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: of guy for sure whi in relationships with people.
Drew: In it in the moment it feels right, but like looking on it in hindsight just feels so like Childish is probably the wrong word. It just feels like such a mistake after he's like, it's like, bro,
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: just like let go and just turn towards instead of turning away, you know. it's just a mistake. It's a big
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: mistake. Dude, like you're already past this, don't 'cause the the problem with it is that it just it just risks further relational division. You know, if if Volka is less mature here and he says go away, Then she just leaves and hey, guess what? Now you never resolve with this person. you you're depending on the other person continuing to be charitable and continuing to try to make effort to resolve the relationship. And in truth, we should just, you know, set our feelings aside a little bit and turn toward and have the conversation rather than
Cameron: And I bet from Volka's per Volka is doing that. She's being very charitable because like otherwise why would you be here in this situation? Like she doesn't have to put herself here, but she's choosing
Drew: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Mm hmm. Agreed.
Cameron: to do so. at the same time too. It probably has an impact like maybe she's also looking at it from this perspective of like, This is impacting my work. Like this guy's sulking around me all the time. Like I like there's not that very many people here. I do actually want his opinion on this stuff and he's just been a mopi sod for like the, you know. Better part of a week or whatever. Like, let's just get this over with. And regardless of of her motivations, she is being that charitable force here. And she is trying to focus on the now and the future and the present. And he is all in the past. Like,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: he's like You know, about the what I saw in the cave. Like he's apologizing for the vision that he explained to her that he believes is true, right?
Drew: Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron: and she just kind of shuts it down and says, you know, like we don't have to talk about it, actually. Like we can move on. We
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: both said awful things, we can just forgive each other and move on. And then Hadrian in his like black and white mi morality world is like, I didn't lie to you in this situation at all. Like I told you exactly what I saw. But then he remembers and thinks about Gilliam. He it literally says on the page, like Gilliam's blue eye was like above her shoulder, like looking over onto me as I said this. And so he didn't bring it up because like, you know, he
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: still has the specter of Gilliam overshadowing everything.
Drew: That's a really interesting thing. Cause you know, the the part of our capacity to recover from conflict and relationships is the degree to which we're willing to set aside our anger momentarily, even when we think there's something to resolve, right? So he would object. He's like, We didn't both say awful things. I said a true thing, and then you accused me of lying, and now we're in this situation. So it there's a urge to jump in and say that. But it's almost as if like, you know He sees her and he also sees the outcome of his previous rage and decides to not do it and to not do the like imp impulsive thing because it's her it had such dire consequences before.
Cameron: That's really interesting. I I thought about it from a different perspective. It's kind of h hinting at the same thing of like he's picking his battle, right? Because
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: he is on such thin ice with or he b he believes the narrative he's telling himself is that he's on thin ice with Volca because of what happened with Gilliam, and that may or may not be true, but yeah, both can be true.
Drew: It it it's also defin it's probably yeah, it's probably both at the same time too, right? Because i it's also the thing you're saying because i the consequence here if he's impulsive is the the breaking of his relationship with Volca, right? Which is the consequence of him being unwilling to set his anger aside for a moment and to not do the impulsive
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: thing. It's it's all kind of wrapped up into this it's a great image.
Cameron: continuing on, like now that there he's actually talking and has begun the conversation, he's gonna try and resolve every issue that he has. And in his mind, he wants to make it very, very clear that he is not interested in Anais, the way that Balka
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: may have interpreted that based on the fact that they were kissing And he's like, about that. And she's like, dude, I don't care. And if we think about her ethic, right? She was the one who was shooing the sex slave out of her room that one time where she forgot Hadrian was going to show up. and when she says that she doesn't care, in her mind she's saying, Look, it's not as big of a deal as you're making this. Which hurts Hadrian because in his mind he wants this monogamous relationship where he's a viable partner. sexually and otherwise romantically to her and she just doesn't clearly does not see him that way. And but in her mind she's like, you know, this is good. Like she's being realistic and saying, you know, better than most Palatine creatures can hope for, to which Hadrian Bristles and, you know, she's like, Th you shouldn't have any she she's a very anti-shame person, we're finding out in general. She doesn't live with very much shame at all. very liberated kind of person. and or it the shame that she does live with is very How would you say? The shame that she chooses to have is very traumatic or shameful. Like she she she's done a good job of like letting go of a lot of different things. Part of that is the society that she grew up in. Part of it is her as a person. she's like, there's nothing to be ashamed of, dude. You kissed a girl, I saw you, it's no big deal. And not only that, like you're engaged to be married to this woman, and they're gonna make you like the head of this planet. Right? Like,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: like this is weird for you not to like this. And the fact like, hey, we had a conversation about your parents not too long ago and how cold that is. This is a way better situation than that, right? At least you know the girl. She's cute, gorgeous, as she says. and like, you know, it's she's trying to cheer him up about the situation and sort of relieve some of the tension in the conversation or the feelings that Hadrian may have about this. And and may mainly she just wants to like clear the air. And Hadrian's immediately like, I the last thing I wanna do is marry her.
Drew: She's sort of looking past like what it would feel like to be actually in this situation and just looking at like the privilege associated with the situation, right? So like she's thinking more like what he stands to gain and not like the freedom he's losing by it. Or like the fact that he's being forced into it, which is obviously what Hadrian is very upset about. And
Cameron: Well, societally, she doesn't understand this concept of what this means, right? Like
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: she's never going to be approached or or in a situation as this sort of like weird diplomatic courtier thing. Like she's never gonna be in this situation where she's being married to somebody and being forced to be in a a relationship with them. Right.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: you know, he is like r at this point he's word vomiting and and saying like, you know, you're the only reason, you know, it's like and then he just like cuts himself off. better that he stop continuing to put his foot in his mouth.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: and he looks out at the sea and he's like struck by the beauty there, which gives him a moment of pause, which actually is a very good thing when you're in a conversation like this and maybe you're not it's not going the way that you want. he's taking a pause and then he refocuses himself and then utters to us that he wasn't supposed to be here. Like like again, going back to that previous conversation we've had about the the other Hadrians that he saw on Tucross or on whatever, it's like like this is the last place in the universe Hadrian Marlowe should be is on this beach a betrothed to a woman he does not love. and destined to be a a stud to give grandchildren to House
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Mataro.
Drew: Grieving over the past is is something we can do, it's relatively normal, but getting fixated on it stuck is sort of like a losing game, so to speak. You know, the
Cameron: Yeah. It's very easy to get stuck.
Drew: Yeah. If we if we don't accept what is, then we can't move on and act in the present. And he's sort of he's sort of caught on once again grieving the life that he could have had. He's he's sort of forgotten all the
Cameron: Thought he should have had.
Drew: Right. Right, which isn't up to us in some sense.
Cameron: Right.
Drew: but yeah, but nonetheless we do this to ourselves all the time. forgetting old Crows of advice a little bit here in some sense.
Cameron: Yeah, a hundred percent. Volka in this moment to like divert this conversation is like, Hey, look, man, I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to, you know, have my own ship and maybe take some crew around and do all this different stuff. And Hadrian's like, Why weren't you a pilot? And she said, My father died. And so this is the first time Volka is being like emotionally vulnerable
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: or available with Hadrian full stop. Everything else before that is about her work or like you know, the current situation. She's she's given no indication about her family at all. And her life before she was a zoologist. And she mentions that her father was killed doing what she does. We later come to find out that it was the Inquisition on Ozzimandius.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: that had him captured and killed for work that he was doing. Presumably around we know that there is Ozzy Mandius has, you know, quiet ruins. And so presumably she's carrying on this legacy from her father. We don't know if she came up with the hypothesis or him or whatever, but he was at a di he was a xenologist, he was at a dig on Ozzie Mandius and was taken away by the Inquisition and presumably never seen again or something like that. And then like immediately asks him a question before she gives him more details in the situation. She's like, Why do you sharpen your pencils with a knife? Which is a funny, like, little diatribe they go on. But it it it does bring up an interesting philosophical or
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: practice where Hadrian says, you know, I he understands that pencil sharpeners exist and maybe they do put a finer point on it or whatever. But the narrative he tells himself is that like, no, this scalpel puts a finer point on it. But in reality, it's a meditative thing that he sort of does to get into the mood or break up the monotony of you know, drawing block in inspiration block or whatever, like a lack of creativity. And he mentions that the tools we use help adjust our thinking. which is very true when you really think about it. I mean,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: mental like math is become a different thing compared to our parents' generation because we had T I eighty five calculators in school, right? Or, you
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: know I I'm sure AI will have this impact on future generations of how they interact with this technology, and the tools that they use can impact the way that we think about how we th go about thinking about things.
Drew: I I think this is especially poignant when we're talking about the difference between interfacing with technology versus doing something more ph physical and analog. You know, it you know, it comes to mind like almost if someone said, you know, you're journaling right now, why are you writing in a journal? You know, we have keyboards and computers now, or we have your phone with a notepad and and you're
Cameron: Yeah, compared to typing on your phone. Yeah.
Drew: and you know, there's in some sense there's a logic to that, but there's a There's something lost with the digital interaction, the putting your pencil into a pencil sharpener instead of feeling the sensation of what it's like to be in the moment cutting the charcoal, be in the moment, feeling the stroke of the pen across the page. There's something that is very I think human about the analog experience that can sort of become almost meditative and ritualistic. And especially when it comes to art or expression in the way that he's doing now, I you know it it it there's something a little bit mystical about it in some sense, but it also seems real. there's something grounding about it, being in the present moment, doing something with your hands. something about, I don't know, like pouring tea into a cup instead of cracking a can of tea open or something. There's something about it. I don't know exactly what it is, but it feels like the practice of it matters somehow. Yeah.
Cameron: Ritual, yeah, it's a ritual thing.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Or like observance of a particular form.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: the tactile experience being tied to the analog frame of mind. I mean, I I think it's already been shown too, right? L writing something from a recall perspective, writing something down is more effective at getting it stuck in a person's brain than typing it out.
Drew: I agree. I I also think there's there's a sense in which like doing things the analog way there's something that's slightly more human about it. You know, I was
Cameron: Very much more human, not even slightly.
Drew: I was I was reading a a book called The Anxious Generation by a social psycholog yeah,
Cameron: Jonathan Hype, yeah.
Drew: Jonathan Hype is a social psychologist And one of the things that I didn't fully appreciate before reading that book is how much it this it sounds silly, but how much of our human experience is embodied in how much digitizing experience strips us of our natural state of being. it's it's d definitely different. Writing on a page, feeling the physical experience of being grounded in the moment. So it it's it's sort of reconnected back to this present moment speech. I think at the start of this passage, you know, a lot of mindfulness-based practice is about observing physical sensation in the moment to be present in the now rather than being in the past or the future with our mind. So really interconnected chapter in this way.
Cameron: Which is really well done because if you just look at the conversation and you strip out the philosophical conversation at the top of it or in the middle of it, yeah, there's if you look at all the pieces together, it looks like it doesn't make sense, but it is woven together very, very well.
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: Adrian then it's like Do you hate me, Volka? And I'm j like like he's so much. He's
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: so much and I think I cringe and I whinge about it because I can I have been and can be that melodramatic or melancholic or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
Drew: Yeah d d we we cringe because this is us. This is us. Right? It this is so much of of this is us.
Cameron: young man's experience in in a relationship, yeah. And
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: she has the best response ever. And she's like, I think you'd do enough of that yourself, dude. you don't you don't need my help in aiding yourself. And he's
Drew: Yeah. Th d this this passage really definitely I think emphasizes the difference in their maturity and their age, you know, 'cause
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: Volka gives me the impression that she's a bit avoidant as well. She just is like more grown. You know, like she you know, this you could take some of her language about not caring about stuff is true, but it also could be a own kind of personal avoidance, you know, if she has feelings for Hadrian and she doesn't want to express those, she could Yeah, it doesn't matter, or it's not a big deal, we don't have to talk about this. That's a little avoided as well.
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: but she's also the one approaching and at the same time here she's she's kind of seeing the game that's going on internally with Hadrian and kind of just staying above the whole thing, which is kind of a sign of emotional maturity in some sense.
Cameron: And and she is trying to lighten the situation clearly and Hadrian's trying to be, you know, melodramatic. Yeah, wallowing. And she's
Drew: Yes. He's just in it. He's just wallowing. Wallowing in it. Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron: trying to lift him out of there. And she gives him a compliment and she says, You know, you're not who I thought you were. And Hadrian's like, Well who did you think I was? And she said, You can probably guess. And Hadrian immediately thinks in his mind, like, yeah, she probably thought I was Crispin, right? Like that kind of person. But again, like he calls
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: like Crispin this butcher. And if we remember and think back, like Hadrian's perception of Crispin is not the real Crispin, right? He's not
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: the same thing. He is not Crispin is not Alistair. Crispin
Drew: No,
Cameron: is not Alistair at all. And Hadrian sort of lumps him in with Alistair. Even here. It's been 35 years, however many years that Hadrian's had, and he just like cannot see outside of his perception of who Crispin is. But broad strokes, it's more that sh Valka is saying to Hadrian that. okay. He is not a garden variety palatine that just lords his lordship over everyone and takes advantage of his privilege at every opportunity. And then she's like, you know, you're so much not that like you wear like your privilege on you as if it is chafing you, right? Like as if it's like giving you a r rash when you wear
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: it. And he's like, It does. In fact, it does. My imperial mantle does chafe me.
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: and then that's when she like we I hinted at it earlier in the conversation, but and that's she's like, dude, like You don't understand that they're trying to give you everything. Like they're giving you the basically the rule of a planet. Like Anais Mataro is gonna rule this planet. Like how stupid crazy is that? Like a person ruling a planet. And so we get some like world building there to understand, like, sounds like more than one person rule a planet in in Taveros. Which we've kind of understood up to this point already. But specifically I think it's also a dig at Naya's Mataro saying like this girl's gonna rule the planet. Like, are you kidding me? And also at the same time, he's she's like that's you too though, right? Like you could really rule the power here, and like most men, most people in this situation that you are in would love to be in this. Like, what's wrong with what you're going through? Would you rather be on the streets and a peasant? He's like, I was on the street for years. And then he goes through and explains his time on the street, like what he's gained, what he's lost. Like, I lost my friend the gray rot, for goodness sake. Like and
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: then he apologizes again for Gilliam. You know what? I I will say this always, like Gilliam is my fault. I'm sorry. And I d wish I didn't do it. But if you think that me marrying a nice is not a prison, then you don't know what prison is.
Drew: It it's interesting too, you know, she's trying to cheer him up. she doesn't like the values of his empire, but she's sort of, you know, saying like, it's okay, like you get to be at the top of the hierarchy. but he's almost like taking the Volka stance that it's like bad, like it's not it's not what I want, it's not a good thing, like it it's not desirable.
Cameron: I see it more from the perspective of like he she he's a test subject and she's like trying or like a like a psychology patient and she's trying to understand from a xenologist or zoologist perspective of like why would this creature in this situation behave this way?
Drew: I I think she's just trying to cheer him up. I don't
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: think she actually thinks it's a good thing. She's just like, come on, bud.
Cameron: Yeah, yeah.
Drew: You're yeah, that yeah, I agree. It's just interesting to me. Yeah, she's she's gorgeous and and
Cameron: And she's gorgeous. She's gorgeous. Punches him in the arm.
Drew: and he's like, come on like totally not the type of person he would even want to be with in the first place.
Cameron: Yeah. Of course not. And he's made that up on another page.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Hadrian then is like, I wanted to be a pilot too, and then goes down the rabbit hole of like well the plan was that him and all of his Myrmidon buddies were gonna buy a ship and then you they were gonna go sail off and the sunset like Simi and the Red Travel Star. Meet Xenos, rescue rescue princesses, like this kind of thing. And she's
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: like, You have a very romantic view of the universe. And I love this line from Adrian actually. He says, I would like to. I'm just sorry the universe doesn't share that aspiration. It's
Drew: I love it. I love it.
Cameron: that's what it we it's strangely optimistic for
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: how melancholic he has been the entire chapter.
Drew: Yeah, i it's once again we're getting this, you know, emphasis on story. You know, he he we know this about Hadrian from the start, about his his love for Simeon. And we're getting that again here, and he's grappling with the fact that he is wanting to be in a story in a universe that isn't kind of the the s type of story that he wants to be in, in some sense. And Just the the difference between his vision of the world and the way the world actually is just kind of keeps making him run into this brick wall over and over again. but even despite that, there's s some kind of like hopeful, youthful defiance here that's really kind of inspiring. I like it actually. Yeah.
Cameron: Me too. And she's like, dude, are you all you always this dramatic? She's like, ask and literally anybody
Drew: Anyone
Cameron: that knows me, l ask them. And then
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: she sort of ends this chapter break period saying, you know, for what it's worth, I'm sorry too. And it's a great way to just close out that conversation with them having re-established rapport and been able to to move it sounds like they have now moved on to some extent from the issues that they were facing before. So I'm sure Hadrian will feel better about that. Immediately we have a chapter break and then a like the this section in the original text is significantly changed and reduced in the old test
Drew: Interesting.
Cameron: old text. I'll read what what's in the second edition. Memory is not
Drew: The the new edition is the new edition is shorter. Is that what you're saying? Okay, interesting.
Cameron: Way shorter. Way shorter.
Drew: Okay. We'll go with yours. Okay.
Cameron: Memory is not history, nor are our stories the past. We remember not what was but what mattered, what was important to us. Events which in truth were separated by days or months, or even months tend in recollection to occur one after the next. The truth the truth is I cannot say with confidence that we shared that bottle on our last night at Calaga, or if it was some other conversation with which preceded that what was to come. I think there's a way longer period. in the original version before the the truth the truth is line that he says there. It's just like one short little paragraph he sort of cut down
Drew: Okay, I'm gonna read that section because I I actually quite liked it.
Cameron: Sure.
Drew: Another problem with August is Augustine's common sense vision of time. It assumes a sort of ca causal relationship between the past and present, between present and future. True, perhaps, in the physical sense, but in the narrative, no. Stories are not subject to time, ever fleeting. They transcend time. They are eternal. In classical English, the word present means both now and gift. How the ancient s ancient survived such confusion, I will never know, but there is beauty in such vagaries. Each moment as it passes is precious and so separate from the moments that follow and precede it. it's interesting that this was cut, because this sort of
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: plays with the pr the previous section and something. sense about you know more themes about the present. I this I don't know why I've never heard this. Th this is such an interesting line of the pr present in in classical easy meaning gift and now. It's such a cool line, actually. I've I've never thought that but that it is true that it actually means both things. I it's possible he cut it 'cause he thought it was like it's like, okay, I'm talking about the present a lot. But
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: but it sort of just drives the the the point home again. Interesting that he you know, usually when he goes through sections like this, he changes the sort of prose structure, adds in a couple extra things. He doesn't fully cut paragraphs typically, so it's quite
Cameron: Mm-hmm.
Drew: quite different in the new version.
Cameron: But regardless, we should make note of Hadrian's memory and our on our chalkboard of unreliable narrator and actually kind of being honest about his unreliability, he's mentioning the truth is that I cannot with confidence say that we shared the bottle in our last night at Kalaga. So this conversation with with Volka. may or may not have happened the same night that the events that we're about to experience happened. He does not know, but it's the next bullet point in his narrative internally in his head. And he's sort of justifying that here. Like it's not a strict timeline as he's going through the story and that's the way he's sort of justifying it and explained it. Saying it doesn't matter.
Drew: Mm-hmm. It is the construction it is the construction of the story of his version of the past, right?
Cameron: Right.
Drew: Yeah. The which is you know, begs the question with all the previous commentary about what what does that mean in terms of the veracity of this report, but that is what we're reading.
Cameron: But what we can a assume is that a as he is walking back on some night with Volka to the camp, whether it was this night or another, that a great flash fills the heavens and a ship is falling out of the sky. he sees flashes of blue light. He describes it as lightning, as plasma, and then very soon after it, a a wave of sound overtakes him and makes him fall to the ground and stuns him as this shockwave has just knocked him over. Falka is screaming to him to get up. and now where distant thunder at the beginning of the book was far and far away at Kai Shen. the Thunder is now on his doorstep and at his feet as the Cielsen have begun at attacking or like have made their way to
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Kalagah there's a callback that we wanted to make specifically to when he mentions Many have written about the like my first meeting with the CLC and saying it was at Kalaga.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: and he said that's not true. It was in the cells at you know in the vomitorium or whatever. they're talking about this moment here. So this moment it will be mythologized in the future from what we understand it, or the Empire will have a particular line of it,
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: essentially. So let's keep an eye on that as we move forward in this section.
Drew: you know, as this moment occurs through my second read through, it really struck home to me that really the narrative thus far of Empire of Silence has been distant thunder of the war of the Cielsen. You know, we're we're asked sort of a couple of questions at the start of the book. And number one is like, What happens with the the war with the Cielsen? And the other question that we ask is who is Hadrian Marlowe and how does he become The person that he is. The story starts with distant thunder. So we have one sort of track above us that's sort of slowly dripping down, giving us a little information throughout the story, while we follow the other track, which is the deconstruction and reconstruction of Hadrian's identity and who is he is as a person. And at this point in the story, they're sort of crashing and colliding finally. And that's gonna sort of propel us through the rest of our narrative here. And so it'll be interesting. to see how those things are sort of tied up here in this last arc of our story.
Cameron: Hadrian's the first one to realize that it's the Cielsen in this moment as people are yelling and like techs are coming out of their houses and stuff like that. And Hadrian is pretty collected and is giving orders and telling everybody like telling people, go let Elamass know he needs to like contact Spring Deep immediately. Like we need we need people here. You know, he's trying to coordinate efforts on. What needs to happen next instead of just, you know, either withering or going crazy or whatever, right? He's doing what would be expected of him, or I guess what we would come to expect of him in this situation, which is cool. he also mentions that like we need to let them know because like the camp is visible for miles around. Like they're gonna be able to see this if they're coming from the sky. It's the only settlement that's near the ruins. And clearly they're coming near the ruins for some reason. and if we think about it too, the reason that this like ship crashed in this area is that this is the only continent on Imesh, right? Bor Sivo on the other side of the planet is like built on top of coral and terraformed, but the only true like land continent that exists on this planet after its initial terraforming or whatever is. Where Kalaga is. Now it may be remote, but like we're on the same landmass, right? and clearly they're coming this direction for some reason. And that's where V Volka basically ends the chapter saying, like, we gotta get everybody out of here. And that's where we end chapter sixty seven and move on to chapter sixty eight. Help. Love this
Drew: I
Cameron: short chapter.
Drew: I was just gonna say one of the most memorable moments of this book to me, the first time I read it, was when the C Elsen stuff is raining down from the sky. Like that moment sold me like fully on Rockyo's prose and imagery. Like that mov that that moment sort of played like literally like a movie in my brain when I first read it. It was just like such striking imagery of things cra just Wonderful. Just so get Yeah, yeah, yes. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Mm hmm
Cameron: it's about to more too. I mean, when we get to our last chapter of the day, especially like I I see it in my brain very clearly. these are these are scenes that have to be in whatever media that comes visual media that comes out, a hundred percent.
Drew: a hundred percent.
Cameron: So Because clearly they have actually made those calls out to the Archon to get reinforcements and to the rest of the planet because shuttles have arrived near Kalagah, that have a bunch of soldiers in them, and they are there to extract people from this area because the CL Center nearby and take them to safety. the centurion that's taken charge is known to Elomas and Dekarthic. and Elomass is talking to her and trying to get some information out of her, and she says she is not at liberty to share. and accidentally lets slip that it's at on the knight tribune's orders. So what we find out is Rain Smythe, who's the knight tribune of the fourth century legion. So one of the four that reports up to like The whole head of the this part of the army has taken control of the planet temporarily and is running the show. you don't want a power struggle in a crisis moment like this. You want somebody to be able to take charge of all the military action, period, full stop. And that is Rain Smythe in this situation. and it she is coordinating those efforts. and and we've seen her before. We saw her at the Ephibia. We have seen her at the other end of the table when Hadrian was had his moment with Light Jass. so now she has sort of taken over military control of the planet while C Elsen are in the system. and in s in doing so, the fact that she d has done this is an indication to Hadrian and a confirmation that it really is the it has to be the Cielsen, otherwise why would she do this? He mentions that like d space battles above and like how they how poets talk about space, how everybody romanti romanticizes space combat. I made a note of like Star Wars does this very poorly, for instance, and I
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: love Star Wars. It's like it's sound and light and you know, all this different you know, explosions and all this different stuff. I mean like in and Hadrian's like in reality space combat is just light and silence. Like it's it. All you see is light and there's no sound and it's weird. Hadrian then asks the Centurion how far the Cielsen are away, and the Centurion immediately recognizes Hadrian clocking him as you know the Count's stud to be, essentially. what's happening above is that the Jadean ships that are also in system are also intercepting what's going on here. and Hadrian, of course, the moment any Celson comes into play immediately is like I'm like the expert on CLS and guys, you have to take me with you. You have to take me with you. I can
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: help. I promise thinking that he's gonna be able to negotiate with them, because he sees them as like in his mind at this moment, diplomacy is a way that he can impact the war in a positive direction.
Drew: Yeah. It's it's worth recalling, you know, it's been a while since we've interacted with the Cielsen and we've interacted with his thoughts about the Cielsen, you know, it previously we he's established that, you know, we have to talk to them at some point, right? Like he he believes that, you know, like even if even if there's war going on, you eventually have to negotiate to sort of secure some sort of peace arrangement or something like that. and that just fighting senselessly is isn't isn't going to work. So like he he's we're gonna have to see like how this plays out, right? now that we don't just have a C L sin in a cage, the situation is much more active supposedly. We're just gonna to see where it goes. This is a completely different situation. in in some sense, this may this might be why the maybe the legends focus on Kalaga, because this is a much more like big, high-scale moment than just just the
Cameron: Dynamic, yeah.
Drew: just in the in the prison. so we'll have to see why the legends talk about this moment.
Cameron: when he asks to go with them saying he can help, Satrina's like, absolutely not. Like the
Drew: Yeah, there's no way, right? Yeah.
Cameron: Count and the Archon would kill me, like absolutely not, not happening. And she like has people touch like grab him or whatever, and he is like, get your hands off me. And reminder when Hadrian wants to insert his authority or get anything done the way that he wants to be done, he puts on his Alistair mask and then immediately starts acting like his dad. And so he does that and basically doesn't give her an option. he says, Great, like doesn't matter what you do, I'm coming to back you up. claiming that he can get the Clison to surrender if any of them survived. Narrator Hadrian looks back and and mentions, I don't know why I said that. Like I don't know what made me say that. I don't know if it was curiosity. I don't know if it was pride. But whatever happened, like whatever like it was, ultimately you could hang this moment to be the moment in my life that was the turning point for me, where I became Hadrian Marlowe, whose purpose was to end the war, right? and we get this image as he's sort of conceptualizing this in this moment. Like I finally it's his moment to to be the Selson talking guy. he still has a burn scar on his finger, but he's got no ring. So he's lost the identity of the Marlowe family. Now he is becoming Hadrian Marlowe. this is the first step towards becoming A sun eater, Hadrian Marlowe, is what he is saying.
Drew: Yeah, it th I I love this moment because this is b like like we were just mentioning at the end of the previous chapter, this is the the culmination, so the the Cielsen touchdown and this is him telling us the reader that he is he is back, he is now himself, he has been through the fire, he's done the deconstructing and reconstructing, and this is now the Hadrian that's gonna truly start the story, right? You know, we've we've got you know portions of himself getting torn apart. We have this un this sort of naivete torn apart. You still have pieces of that inside of him. But we now have him stripped of house identity, portions of his dad pulled inside him for the cruelty, for use of his position where needed, but still with the passion for this particular thing that he had at the start of the story, now inserted into a moment where he can actually act. And he says, not just that he's Hadrian Marlowe, but that he would he's he's Hadrian Marlowe again. Like he's been broken apart and the pieces have been put back together finally. And so we get to see our our character, he's the he now. Now come of age, so to speak, coming of age sark, so exciting, huge moment.
Cameron: And it is a big, big moment for him. And he's like, Well, if you're not gonna let me go, you'll have to stun me. And then I explain to my fiance, so I guess I'm going. and he's like, you know, we have not had a single C Elson surrender to us or surrender period full stop in a three hundred years this war is going on. I wanna change that. And so something in his voice, his way of authority, or maybe just the idea it's like, I really can't stun this guy either. she decides to let him go and and
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: stay with the si stay with the the group.
Drew: I think it's really important that this goal is restated after the culmination of his identity formation here, because it tells us that he's now like a full fledged character. You know, we're not probably we're gonna be there's still s growth and room for the future of the story, but we now know that as he's put back together, this is now his his central goal. Gonna like moving forward, right? This is yeah,
Cameron: Yeah. Diplomacy.
Drew: correct. Yeah. Maybe I can change this is the first goal that's set out. This is as on the page it says this is his purpose now. And so we will have to see how that purpose plays out and we'll see that immediately as we go
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: into our our next chapter, chapter 69 of monsters.
Cameron: now that he has convinced the centurion to let him stay, he is going with this group of soldiers to where the Cielsen ship had fallen while wearing a shield belt. Most of his like party at Kalagah have retreated back to Spring Deep with on the shuttles, Volka included. So he's the only one of the original people that's left here. and he is left with the Optio, which is a junior officer in the Roman legions. But so like that that centurion left her second in command in charge of Hadrian, presumably. they it takes them about an hour, but they end up where the crashed salesman ship is, and he remarks about like unbroken, this thing was huge, was huge. And he mentions in the new version that it would have been like a quarter mile unbroken. and and is like this is like scarab beetle shaped, like it's or not the it's got a different shape. This isn't like a this is a true ship. It's not like the castles of ice that he saw in his visions on Delos of the Seal World ships showing up there when they hadn't. He's like kind of shocked at this. At the way the ship is designed. Not only are legionaires at this site, but Jadians are as well, including Sir Aloran, who is leading the Jadians here. And of course Hadrian's like, hey, what's up, dude? I know you. And Aloran's like, hey, I know you too. and much to Hadrian's surprise, Bassander Lynn, Lieutenant Bersander Bassander Lynn is ruling the empire side of things here or running running the show here from the imperial perspective.
Drew: Something that I thought was worth mentioning here is it just it's I think it's worth appreciating that a lot of this book has been setting up this world, describing the various factions at play, developing Hadrian, all this stuff. It feels like we are like fully all of a sudden in the sandbox in this chapter where we have like literally like every faction mention like i w we don't have like you know, maybe some like guild folks or something like there's no like e economy folks here but we've got the Jadians. You know, we've got Bassander Lynn who we have this supposed relationship that happens in the future where there's some friendship slash betrayal. We we don't know what goes on there. We've got, you know, the legionnaires here. we've got the Cielsen in play. Like everything is all of a sudden happening very, very quickly.
Cameron: Bissander, as like running the show, the operation on the imperial side, it's like think probably thinking to himself, what the heck is a Palatine doing here, like right now?
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Like what is he doing here? He should not be here. He's like, What are you w asks him that basically? And Hadrian's like, I I can help negotiate. Like I speak their language. And he's like, negotiate? Like, what do you what are you talking about? And Bissander is coming from the perspective of having been on the front lines and fought C L some before. And Hadrian has not experienced Sealson at all, other
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: than Makisom in the in the vomitorium of the Colosso. he like it says, like, are you are you crazy? Like, are you really crazy? Like that this what what are you talking about? Like negotiation.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: Aloran is not even like looking at the wreckage of the vessel, like they try to find out if there's anybody. He Aloran isn't sure that there are any survivors among the pale. Hadrian in the meanwhile is like, Well, if we can try to avoid bloodshed on both sides, I morally essentially is what he's saying, we have an obligation to try and do so. And Loren even starts to like perk up at this and says like you you think you actually can reason with with them And Hadrian's like, I really don't know unless I get the opportunity to try and I know the words that I could use to to do so.
Drew: It it it at this point in the story, you know, especially on your first read, where are you sitting in terms of how reasonable you think Hadrian's goal is? Like so like he's he's sitting here, you know, advocating for communicating with them while we have a couple of other folks sort of in opposite a lot of like really the whole narrative has been people in opposition from him. Where are you sitting at this point in the story?
Cameron: I actually on first read and I still kind of feel this way a little bit of like if this war's gone for three hundred years and they've tried to and they've done the same thing over and over and over again, might maybe try something different.
Drew: That's exactly where I was sitting. especially on my f my first read. it seems reasonable on the page, to me.
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: It at least you know, like if if there's truly never been a an attempt at this and there's never been someone who's been willing to even try, how can you know what you don't know? And so it it seems reasonable, especially when there's like a sort of orthodoxy or dogma in play, then like maybe this is like just an untapped area for getting past senseless violence or something like that. So I thought it was worth staking out, you know, s people seem the characters seem to think it's ridiculous, but us as the reader may not think it's ridiculous. I s I certainly did not
Cameron: Yeah, and I mean on the page it it seems reasonable for sure, right?
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: in hindsight we know how the story ends, right? If you really think about it, we we know Yeah, there's a dissonance there.
Drew: Right. That's can so that's it's confusing, right? Like we so we know we know that the war doesn't end with words, or that's what
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: the history tells us or something like that. So like what is going on here? It's it's it's a weird contradiction in terms, but that doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with it yet.
Cameron: I did want to take a a moment to talk about the Mamluks because like I had forgotten about this portion of the books. These
Drew: T totally.
Cameron: Mamluks are we get a description of them for the first time. They are androgens, meaning that they, you know, are sexless or like un like not they're intersex or whatever they're they're created to be sexless or genderless. like the man books are holding him down hatering down in this moment and he's get your hands off me. And he actually elbows one up in the face and it falls back and is almost parallel to the ground and then just rises back straight up. Have after being hit by this, and they like the description that he has of this thing is like so we we've seen homunculi, and they seem more human, maybe with some eccentricities like blue skin or whatever, this is the unsettlingly not human. and it's I wanted to point that out of like, okay, this is kind of an outcome of the Jadion eugenics policies here They've created something That may have human DNA but is not does not behave like a human you would expect. Yeah.
Drew: Very dissimilar. Yeah.
Cameron: Take take face dancers from Dune and the unsullied from
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: the Game of Thrones universe and put them together and you get them the Jaddy and Mamlooks. really, really weird. Very creepy.
Drew: Creepy. It creepy. Like it yeah, yeah.
Cameron: Bassander is actively trying to get Hadrian out of here. Like, I don't care what you do, put him on a shuttle and send him home. We don't have enough resources to take care of this guy. we need to we need to get him out of here. And then Hadrian makes a comment that he will rue in the future. And I want to read this section because it's awesome. He says that I straightened, attempted to muster what dignity I could. We can do better. I kept my eyes on the hoodless Mamluk, ready for it to try something. Wars aren't one with soldiers, sir, not unless you're willing to kill every single enemy in the galaxy. Wars are fought with soldiers, but they're one with words. I would rue that pronouncement, the naivete of it, and as I write here my heart blackens with the irony and the bitter knowledge that I was wrong. We have to start talking to them someday. To which Lorian and Bassander are like shocked at the fact that he has said this statement. But that's narrator Hadrian telling us in this section
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: I believed this to be the path forward. I was wrong. Like my heart blackens with the irony and the bitter knowledge that I was wrong as he writes it. That how naive it was. Totally missed that on my first read.
Drew: Yeah, i i it's totally missed totally missed it as well. And you know it it sort of begs the question is like w what the what the heck happens? Like w what what
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: how do we g get from Hadrian in the future calling Hadrian now naive? so we should keep this in mind moving forward that i it's either that you know, Hadrian in the future has turned into some kind of horrible villain or something, he's lost his values, or there was a genuine reason for this lot like we don't know what's g occurred in the story. has he become cynical and doesn't believe in the hopeful thing or is it just not possible? so we'll have to continue
Cameron: Ma
Drew: re
Cameron: maybe. I think it kinda reads off of the page like Like yeah, that he was truly naive. I don't know. Like he could there could be some cynicism to it. We we really don't know. But
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: also what we do know from this is like It was his intention to go this direction and his intention was incorrect. That's what we can know for sure. that at least the narrator now believes wholeheartedly that he was wrong to try and take this tact in this moment. in hindsight, right? Now he doesn't mention that, but like he's looking back on it, he he feels shame. thinking about the fact that like right because
Drew: It hurt it hurt it hurts to write, right? Yeah.
Cameron: he was wrong he he was wrong to try and do this. So I it we really it'll be interesting to find out why that is wrong. Because ev like you we've mentioned before, seems reasonable to try something different in the last three hundred years. How how does this you know what how does the dynamic change? Upon hearing this, Bassander's like, that's really, really close to heresy. And Adrian's like, it actually is heresy. are you gonna report me to the chantry? Dude, this guy,
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: I mean, I guess at this point, if you have just killed the chant second in command on a planet or whatever, I you know, in for a penny, in for a pound. It's like, yeah,
Drew: Yeah. I love it.
Cameron: okay. that's not what they have me for. They got me for murder, but like, you know, like might as well throw some heresy on top of it. You know, I do believe that. and Hadrian tells Aloren to make the Mamluk let him go and he says a word to it and it like stiffens up. We get another creepy moment of Mamluks just like behaving the moment Aloran says a word. But we get introduced to another character. There's another officer who enters the scene here, a Jadian officer, who is the second in command to Aloren in this situation. we find out. Is named Jinan Azar. And I wanted to read this section because like she comes up and he she like begins talking to Aloran and he tells her like take off your helmet and then they start talking in Jaddy and or whatever. But on page 491, he mentions her name was Jinan Azhar. Though I would not learn it for some time, though I would not learn it for some time. She was Aloran's second in command, a cunning warrior from a good family. My captain How strange it is to think back on those dear to us, to recall that they were once strangers, strangers still to reflect upon the way that those who were once so dear to us sometimes become strangers again. I watched her as she spoke standing beside Bassander, admiring the tallness of her, her oval face and crown of dusky hair. Jinan was a stranger to me then, is a stranger to me now if she yet lives. But there was a time and she was not, and that time was yet to come. So we get sort of a mini introduction to this character here, similar to like what we have with Passanderland, but not as long. He calls her my captain.
Drew: Yeah, what is that about?
Cameron: What's that mean? He also intimates very clearly, like I knew her way more than I knew her in this moment, but I don't know her now. She's a stranger to me again, if she's still alive. I don't know.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: so d clearly there's some dynamic or relationship here, clearly one where he is subordinate to her in some respects, as she is his captain. But In this situation what we hear she's like a second in command and we don't know her I don't think it hit says her rank quite yet. I think maybe maybe it later intimates that she's a lieutenant yet. Is it a rank? I don't know.
Drew: Is captain a rank? Is Captain a r ye I don't I I don't d yeah. Very weird. Like more
Cameron: So w again, beep bee boop beep beep boop boo boo put a pin in it, like
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: Hadrian's hinting at at a future with this person in s at a future relationship with this person in some form or fashion. as this dynamic is happening and actually Lauren says on the next page that like she's a lieutenant. So what does this mean? Right? Like at this moment, at this time, she's a lieutenant. Maybe she gets promoted to captain. We don't know. cause she's giving a report to Aloran because the we find out lore building wise that Mamluks do not speak to the Ali or two people in charge or whatever, right? He calls them Hakif or vile in in Jadean, which indicates that they are seen as subhuman, similar to I guess the way Hadrian views homunculi, but dial it up even more because these things really are really creepy and are not very human.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: they're sort of seen as below all of all of Jadion society. And granted Lauren is near the top but Interesting world building around the Mamluks. he he mentions that like his report from his subordinates it are that no live CLSN were on board of the ship. So only dead Sea Elson are on board. Any sort of and this is a huge ship, right? Like this is a
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: quarter mile long ship. Hundreds of CLson could have been in this thing. and there are not hundreds of bodies on the ship. At this moment, Hadrian mentions that he saw these blue flashes as the ship was crashing, saying that they could be escape pods. And Bassander's like, they don't have escape pods. What are you talking about? It's like, okay,
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: shuttles then, whatever. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, I saw blue flashes, I'm telling you the truth. And he's like, I can I think I know where they would be. And you know, Aloren's like, maybe. And then Bissander is like c I just this picture I see very clearly of like and I want this to be in the show as well of like Hadrian trying to insert himself in the situation but Cinderella just being
Drew: Yeah, just just just furious.
Cameron: Just like walking away and just fuck fuck fuck any fuck judge and
Drew: Ha ha
Cameron: then coming back and saying like where would they go?
Drew: W it's it's interesting seeing him and Bissander interact more here because like
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: we got this picture of them like being at odds with each other but also friends or something like that. It but they seem so like so dif so
Cameron: Antagonistic right now.
Drew: antagonistic out the gate, so it's hard to imagine like how do they I don't know. It's it's it's not
Cameron: One is a Palatine noble, the other is a soldier, one is a patrician, the other's a Palatine. Like like one is disciplined, the other is or I don't know, like like calm, cool, collected, the other is like melodramatic and super emotional. And like th they could not be more polar opposites in many ways, from a from a vibe standpoint, I guess.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: but regardless He gives in and asks Hadrian where they would go. And of course, he's like, okay, well, it's the ruins, of course. and so they go to the shuttle, they make their way there in about an hour. and he mentions this shuttle is scarab-like almost, and it's the size of a bus. So we're dealing with like a shuttle that's coming out of a ship that's a quarter mile long, and the shuttle is about the size of a city bus. and apparently The Sealsen have some sort sort of technology to be able to disguise their signature or cloak them from censors that the Empire has, which we don't get too much of an explanation on because Hadrian's not a very technical person. You see, he basically says, Yeah, but Sanders' explanation flew over my head or whatever, but it's fine.
Drew: Ha ha ha.
Cameron: but they have gotten out of this shuttle and have clearly gone down into a tunnel that leads into the ruins of Kalagah. Hadrian is only what has no weapon, is only wearing a shield belt, has no like physical armor, just the shield belt for projectiles, is surrounded by centurions, and you know, basically gets he is and a bunch of other Jadeans and Imperial people and a few Matar people end up going down in the belaying down into the tunnels, into these black dark tunnels at night. And begin trying to navigate them. And Hadrian's the one guiding them in this situation. And they come to a fork in the tunnel and basically he's asked which way do we go on this? Of course, he knows the most about these tunnels. Granted, he doesn't know all of them perfectly, right? He's been lost here.
Drew: How could he? yeah.
Cameron: It's also super dark. He's never been down the shaft before. But he kind of has this picture of the place in his mind as he's moving through it. Maybe something happens, I don't know. he's like, well, we know that there couldn't have been like more than like 12 Cielsen on that shuttle, right? Like they size-wise, they like it's about a dozen, right? We can assume. so and we have enough men. Let's go both ways. So the Jadians create one group and the Empire takes one group, and Bassander immediately is like, All right, Marlowe's coming with me. Like, I gotta make sure. Like, and Aloren's like, No, no, no, he's fine. I'll I'll take care of him. Don't worry. as they're going down this tunnel with him and Aloran's group, and the group is smaller, he starts to feel the fact that he's not he doesn't have a weapon or any armor or anything like that. He's like, I don't know, I don't feel good about this. But they're good.
Drew: It it starts it starts to like I think it it to me it's so funny because you know thus far he's like guys we we gotta we gotta talk to him and stuff like that and then like he's the second he gets into situations like shit like I need like a a weapon like immediately the yeah yeah
Cameron: I wish I had a sword, yeah.
Drew: which It's just immediately like recognizing kind of in a similar way to you know like If you never test your ethic, then you don't get to know what your ethic is that we got earlier in the story, it's now put in actual danger, you realize maybe like the stakes are a little bit different because the there's actually something on the line. It's not just this hypothetical thing that you can preach at people.
Cameron: They stop in this chamber and try and get their bearings. And they he he basically hatred's like, we need light, like we need light right now. and presumably Jinan is like, we can see better than like we can see, we're okay. And he's like, they can see much better. And so we come to find out here in this section that. a reminder of something that has been told us to us before is Clint have evolved underground and can see in dark places naturally, where humans cannot, because that's the way that
Drew: Yeah in i
Cameron: they had evolved.
Drew: and in the last chapter when they were talking about like the ruins of Kalaga being like similar to the Sjelsin world ship stuff, it was
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: kind of given to us that like their ships are almost like caveish kind of things. They're
Cameron: Yes.
Drew: super comfortable here. You're out of you're s it's like going to the bottom of the ocean and you're with all the stuff that sees in the dark. Yeah, it's it's
Cameron: Fish. Yeah.
Drew: not good.
Cameron: And as as such, the CLC ambush the lone people in the dark. and I wanted to read this section on page 494.
Drew: Yes.
Cameron: the way the battle actually starts is Hadrian hears just this slam into the stone and the Mamluk next to him has like crunched and fallen down, and he hears the snap of the Mamluk's neck, and then like it's like, shit, like it and everything
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: pops off. The shouts of Stunnerfire illuminated the beast like lightning. Its armor repelled the stunner blasts effortlessly, and it whirled nine feet of pale muscle enfanged polycarbon, face like the white skull of death, eyes like rotted sockets, teeth like a bank of glass knives. Was that blood on its mouth? I stumbled back, and Lieutenant Azhar threw herself between me and the creature. Flashes came from my right. Turning I saw two more CLsons sprinting through the darkness, growing closer with each flash. I needed a blade, a gun, anything. My kingdom for a horse. I thought. My addled brain cackled with the absurdity. Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together. I scrambled back, heard Aloran cry out in Jadeon, Stun them, stun them. So things get really hectic really quickly and again, so vivid and definitely
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: is gonna be in the visual media of like the gun flashing fire illuminating the Cielsen as it's like ripping dudes apart. Like it's awesome.
Drew: Nine feet tall? Are you kidding me? Like it it it it's worth worth a remind like I appreciate that we saw the first CL C in a cage, but like seeing them for real for real is it's it's like you're in a horror movie. I mean it it's just terrible. They're terrifying. So it it he's so good with imagery. this is why I actually think horror fans will probably actually like like sci-fi horror fans specifically will like this series because the the seals in are so scary. They're so they're they're horror monsters for sure.
Cameron: This is very much aliens, James Cameron aliens vibes at the beginning of the film, right? Like very much so.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Cameron: but they have the numbers in this case. and I I just want to reiterate that that description of them again. These things we saw Maki Sum like cowering in a corner and like defeated, basically, right, from the very beginning. This thing, these things are nine feet tall, like you mentioned. They have glass knife teeth. They are like rail thin, their hands have too many fingers, they have a white braid coming out of the crown of their heads, which is surrounded by horns. and eyes that are like black as pitch. and so you could like this these are like take a pale gray and make it a a pale demon and you've made a like the Cielsen and it's super, super creepy. People are dying all around him. but finally they get to like the idea of like using light as a weapon in this situation. They flash a big flashlight at at them and they all hiss and like cower back because they're blinded. It's like almost a flash blormal like flashlight to them is like a flashbang in their face. and it pushes them back. Meanwhile, one of the lieutenants is on the ground screaming and or is is screaming
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: and we see this angry little white snake with a drill bit for a mouth burrow out of the neck of this soldier. which I'll say the name of it. It doesn't say on the page, but I'm gonna say it. This is the first Nahute that we meet in in the story. They are creepy as fuck. No. No.
Drew: Did you remember this at all that this is here? I did not remember this at all. It's terrifying. It's so
Cameron: Yes.
Drew: it's so viscerally like I don't know how I miss so much of this this book. But it's it's like this mechanical drill thing that like worms its way out of this dude. He's like screaming, you don't really know what's happening, and just like come yeah, it
Cameron: Out of his neck, like jugular.
Drew: yeah, it's
Cameron: And immediately like goes and tries to find the next person to do the same thing to, right? Like
Drew: Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron: and Aloran being the badass swordmaster he is, the moment it it like flies up, just cuts it literally in half. and then like turns his high matter sword off for a second. he does mention two things that I wanted to like highlight. his high matter sword is blue as Cherenkov radiation. I have no idea what Chirinkoff radiation is, but I looked it up and everybody should look it up because it's really blue and really cool.
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: yeah, so go go go look it up for a more
Drew: Tyrannic.
Cameron: physical, like a true physics description of of how Chirinkoff radiation works, but it's really, really blue. and like it on the page Rocky Oak call says Holorin, Aloran cuts it cleanly in half. flowing like water, which is, you know, martial arts, Bruce Lee. This guy is the swordmaster of swordmasters type, right? Like there was no it was never a threat to him. Not only that, he like cuts a Clinton diagonally in half and it's like but it's samurai samurai style. Its body just like slides off of its thing and like falls to the ground. And then Adrian's like, wait, wait, don't don't kill all of them. Please like like I need to talk to at least one of them. Come on. and they're trying to stun the Cielsen and Aloran's not just cutting him down anymore. I imagine he could, based on what we're seeing here. But Hadrian knows the one thing that'll get the Cielsen's attention. He yells in their language the word stop. And they're just like, What? And so the Cielson like cocks its head in this strangely like human gesture to him, the fact that he's able to say a word that it recognizes. And then he begins conversing with it. He says, Like, Where are the others? Like how many of there are you? Like why why are you here? Like general questions. and the Tielsen doesn't answer. Hadrian's like, My friends wouldn't torture and kill you. Answer my questions and you'll be treated fairly. To which the Cielsen like is like fairly, fairly, and is like clear clearly put off by this word. not believe it's clearly not believing that that will be the case at all. But Hadrian continues to ask questions and says, like, why did you come to this place? And the CLS and finally gives some information away and he says, like, it is not for you. Like, this place is a holy place. And Hadrian's trying to pull this information about potentially the quiet out. And he says, You worship the people who built this. And the CLS is like, It is not for you. Meanwhile, Ginan and Aloren are asking, like, what are they saying? And Hadrian's kind of blowing them off. Like, he's too focused on the conversation. Like, semi translating for them, but not really. Like he wants to continue to get information and maybe sanitize it a bit before he lets anybody else
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: he. Adrian says they want to hurt you. Like and at this moment We see the motivation change a bit of like he just need he wants to find out this information and the tactics that he's taking of talking are not working. And so what does Hadrian do? He turns to violence. And he takes a stunner and has a vision of all of the violent acts in his life rushing back, hit hitting Chrisman with the book, his time in Colosso. Like questions whether or not he's gonna be able to sh to shoot this Celson. in with with with this gun. Now we know Hadrian. Hadrian. he also like stabbing the shopkeeper, whatever, right? We know Hadrian is pretty good at violence. And
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: is at in the right mindset and mind frame will do the violent thing. The most violent thing. If it means like the angry Hadrian goes berserk, right? Like. So He gives us that idea this idea of like, it's so beneath me and so below me or whatever. But all we've seen on the page is a string of violent acts that this narrator has done and
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: drip fed little more details about them, making them worse. and in doing so, like they pulled the salesman's helmet off, and as Hadrian's looking at this, he remarks that their technology, like the changes kinda right, like Their tech kind of sucks. Like we are better than them, more advanced than them. But he notices that this CLS has no hair and its horns are rounded nubs, which is something presumably hasn't seen before. So wielding this gun in the CLSN's face, Hadrian is like trying to threaten and get information. And the Son says, I don't fear you. Hadrian continues to ask, Where are the others? Cielsen says, there are no others. And Hadrian shoots him. He says, how many? He's stunning it, right? This is a stun, but it's still violence and it still hurts. He mentions like on the lower end it'll make unconsciousness. At the higher end, it'll burn your nervous system in half. Like like it's not
Drew: Yeah.
Cameron: it's not painless at all. And these are Cielsen, so they're at a higher level than what we would expect, you know, to do humanely to a human. And so he shoots it again. He said, How many? He shoots it again. And finally the CLS's like, there are eleven. Adrian asks where he shoots the CLC in the face when it doesn't give him the answer that he wants. And I wanted to read this last piece on 498. I'd heard stories about people dying during interrogation, about soldiers botching the job, so unskilled were they compared to the Cathars. I had always thought that those stories incredible, and yet there I was. I was glad Volka could not see me, though I felt sh the shame in her eyes, prayed that she never learned of that moment. I felt her contempt for violence for me, and lowered the gun. I tried to tell myself that I was doing w what I was doing was not really torture. The Zenobite would recover, would not be like the cripples who lined the vomitory of the Colosso begging bowls in hand. It was a lie, I told myself. A lie to save my st soul. I lowered the weapon and asked again, Where are they? Whoa.
Drew: Yeah. It's it's you know, we're we're sort of slowly seeing like how you know this person could become the Sun Eater or whatever that is, like just a little bit at a time. and like it's it's really interesting how quickly this went from talking to this. Like, very quickly.
Cameron: Yeah, right.
Drew: you know, he's still he's still talking in truth, but it's like he's It's not just talking at all. Like it's it's mixed with violence. And and interestingly enough, you know, at the start of the story, he's so contemptuous of this idea about being a torturer for the chantry and like here he is, like torturing this thing for information.
Cameron: Yeah yeah yeah.
Drew: It's like immediately like a like he's doing the thing that he was concerned about doing.
Cameron: And disgusted with with Makisome too, right? Like disgusted with the Cathars and how they did business with Makisam.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah. And here he is. Th th this is a p in in some sense you could like this is like he he's not executing this but he's torturing it. Like that's
Cameron: A hundred percent.
Drew: yeah, it's it's really not good.
Cameron: It doesn't fit with the ethical framework we understand of Hadrian up to this point either.
Drew: No. No, not at all. And you know, we have interesting things happening with the Cielsen about like the the holies like this is a holy place. What does that mean? Qu
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: question marks. I
Cameron: Why does this C Elsen have no hair and rounded nubs of horns? Like, what what does any of this mean on top of the fact that like we see C Elsen we see the monsters that they are? Like we this is the first time like we saw a a a neutered Maki Some essentially, and we'd heard stories about them eating people or whatever. We see like A few CLC, like three or four C L Cin, basically take out half of this group, with nobody's bit like in no time flat and like do some truly horrific stuff, right?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Cameron: You had mentioned that you were bought in before. After reading this first read through and upon reread, how did you feel?
Drew: it's hyped. You know, the the I love horror fiction because I I think it it includes you know, I I like genuine fiction in some sense. Like I don't like when things are sugarcoated and I appreciate when there's real like terror and evil in a story. And the C L C immediately like were exactly the kind of thing that this story I felt needed for them to be. You know, if you end up with like a a different alien race in this story, it changes the tone of the series very much. And so seeing them on the page this way, I was just like, all right, yeah, like listen man, give me the war. I wanna see it right now. I gotta I gotta
Cameron: Yeah.
Drew: see, I gotta see more of these things. but it's also intriguing 'cause you just want to know more. I every time I see this Yeltsin on the page, especially in Empire's Science, I just I just like it just makes me hungrier for more information. You we get a little bit of information at a time. Now we know that there's like a holy site thing. It's like, are these things like is there like a religious thing going on? But like that's super interesting. I hadn't considered that. They're not just like you know, space cannibals or something. They're there's something else going on here. So there's like another like what is what does that part of their culture mean? what ev what about this place makes it holy? What are they worshiping? it does their war have some interaction with their beliefs. It's it it generates way more questions than it answers, which is sort of the beauty of the series in some sense is is the tendency for it to do that. So once again the the reveals just bring more momentum to the story and this is no exception.
Cameron: And now we are full steam ahead toward the end. we
Drew: Yes.
Cameron: are meeting the moment that Hadrian mentions with the CL SNET Calagah. And we will continue in our next episode, always forward.
Drew: And always down.
Cameron: We'll see you next time.
Drew: D Fox.
Cameron: Devil's Rest Book Club is Cameron Elston and Drew Welty. Today's episode discussed chapters 67, 68, and 69 of Empire of Silence by Christopher Rocchio, Copyright 2018. Empire of Silence was originally published by Daw Books on July 3rd, 2018. Quality editing and original music by Cameron Elston. Find us on YouTube. Contact us at Devil's Restbook Club at gmail.com. Devil's Rest Book Club is a production of Disquiet Pods. This episode, Copyright 2026, Cameron Elston and Drew Welty. Thanks for joining us and remember, rage is blindness.
