Gorillas: When Clean Tech Hides Dirty Secrets

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Hello and welcome back to Laugh While You Scream once again.
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I'm your host, Robin Babiocco, and thank you so much for joining us for another
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day of trying to find the humor while I have no partner,
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no co-host, no guests, okay?
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I'm working on it though, you guys. Believe me, I will have one one day.
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Keep listening. One of these days, somebody's got to be here.
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Like, I have potential people that want to be guests and be co-hosts and stuff
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like that. But the issue is,
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them either coming here or me trying to do a remote recording with them, okay?
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Because I said I'll try to do some with my sister.
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I have friends that want to do it, but I just have to figure it out,
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and I haven't figured it out, okay?
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So until they can make it here or until I can figure it out,
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it's just me, myself, and I. Me, myself, and I.
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And we're still reading short, scary stories from Reddit, and I'm still here, okay?
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Today's OP, though, is Norman Crane. We've had stories from Norman Crane before.
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Yeah, so we've had stories from Norman Crane before, and today's story is called Gorillas, okay?
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Gorillas. Don't know what it's about.
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Don't know what it's about. All right, so let us begin.
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The poor lived in high-rise cages. They were let out to work.
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They returned dutifully before curfew.
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They received food rations, limited personal use electricity,
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and free unlimited access to government, subsidized entertainment.
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They were mostly dirty, tired, and sick, and they were therefore aesthetically.
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Most displeasing. Or at least that's what Edgar Bowers thought,
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standing on his penthouse balcony and looking out over the city,
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including at the new high-rise cage that had become a total eyesore on his view. He wasn't naive.
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He understood the purpose of the poor, but seeing them? Come take a look at
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this, he called to his wife.
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She was tending to the second male offspring.
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They were growing in their state-of-the-art external uterus.
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The N-Turon 7010 with built-in gene editing capabilities. What is it?
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They're fornicating again, he said. She stepped onto of the balcony with a pair of binoculars.
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Disgusting, like apes, but without the dignity of being incapable of better.
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She watched for a while before letting her gaze drop to a cage unit below,
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where a man and woman were crying over an infant's corpse and fighting to keep
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others from taking and eating it, and below that where a government infection,
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disinfection crew, was spraying a group of naked poor with chemical cleaner and fungicide.
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Edgar first heard from KIBU, heard about KIBU, a reality filtering sensory enhancement
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implant from a work colleague.
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Yes, said the colleague, it makes life so much more pleasant.
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Before KIBU, I didn't like going downtown anymore.
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I mean, the police do a good job of clearing away unwanted elements, but some always evade.
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And I don't want my wife seeing vagrants, addicts, or low earners when we're
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going out for a night at the ballet. And.
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How do you pronounce it? Ballet?
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With K-I-B-U, they don't have to.
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I select what I don't want to see and snap, just like that, erase from view.
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Garbage, people, whatever.
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And nobody can get this? Edgar asks, completely white-zoned.
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They follow all anti-descrim laws.
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It costs one million? For now, the price will increase once it catches on,
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and Ed, believe me, it will.
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This is the next best thing to physical elimination.
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Like their slogan says, welcome to a new and better reality.
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The procedure was performed at KIBU's private health facility.
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Afterwards, Edgar and his wife were warmly greeted by KIBU's owner.
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Simone Gao, who demonstrated how the tech worked.
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He turned on a screen, which was showing a news story about some kind of low-owner
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revolutionary who was such a coward he always wore a gorilla mask.
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So unseemly primitive, Edgar's wife commented,
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then powered up the KIBU, and wow,
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uttered Edgar, the gorilla max brute as
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if by magic disappeared and the sound of broadcast was so peacefully pleasingly
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altered that it was impossible to tell if the new story was even about the revolutionary
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it was as if he'd vanished from existence.
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Life became beautiful then. Edgar was driven along pristine streets to the office
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building in which he worked,
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in front of which no one ever begged,
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and walked from the car to the building's entrance, hearing only the nice and
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idle chit-chat of his class peers
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rather than the incessant grouching and groveling of the poor, or worse,
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the political and other chants of would-be protesters before the police came
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to beat and drag them away.
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Those would always be such a downer. The sidewalks were often smeared with blood
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for weeks, but not anymore.
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No beggars, no poor, no protesters, no lingering masks of violence,
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and of course, no more high-rise cages,
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which meant that the view from Edgar's balcony was no longer imposed upon by depressive sites.
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And if he and his wife ever did want to sneak a peek at how the lower class
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was living, they could change KIBU setting,
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get out their binoculars, and have a perfectly temporarily controlled viewing.
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It therefore came as no surprise when time proved Edgar's friend right,
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and soon everyone Edgar knew had a KIB, his colleagues, friends, family.
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People exchanged settings, proudly showed off attack, and coexisted in the vibe
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of just how much more charming and delightful life was now.
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Edgar, his wife, and their two children were seated at the dinner table,
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eating when the doorbell ran.
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Odd, said Edgar. Are you expecting anyone, honey?
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The only person I'm expecting is right here, she answered, smiling and caressing
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her full pregnant belly.
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The Inuteron 7010 hummed. Edgar opened the door, but no one was there. Strange.
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He sat back down. They ate. Then the Enneuteron 7010 began suddenly to beep.
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Beep, beep, beep. Edgar ran to it. It looks to be unplugged. How?
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Anyway, plug it back in quick, said his wife, but he couldn't.
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The machine's cable was missing the end plug. The door opened.
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A window broke, followed by another, followed by the hissing whoosh of warm,
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unhaired-conditioned air.
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Which caused the curtains to billow like ghosts. A door slammed shut,
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but nobody walked in the open front door.
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Dad, said Edgar's older child.
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The in-Turon 7010's beep suddenly became a wailing alarm.
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Plug it in, Edgar's wife was repeating.
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Ed, or we lose the baby. Come on, don't let... She was levitating.
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Feet a foot off the floorboards. Choking.
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Out, not words exactly.
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She couldn't close her mouth. No, they were just sounds.
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Bass, guttural animal sounds of terror.
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Edgar felt a sudden intense pain in his back, near his spine. He stiffened.
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Shook. The pain proceeded through his torso.
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His wife's feet hung lower to the ground as her neck opened like a sock puppet's mouth,
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blood pouring down her chest, and Edgar felt there was a tunnel in him,
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a passage-radiating pain that his brain could not even process.
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His wife's headless body collapsed to the floor. Edgar dropped to his knees, bleeding.
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A figure in a gorilla mask materialized before him.
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It pulled the mask off, revealing Simon Gowd.
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He was holding a massive drill, audibly drip-drip-dripping human flesh.
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Welcome to a new and better reality, he said. The end.
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So keely dokely, I'm very confused.
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So is this something that he's showing that, you know what, let me not try to
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dissect, let me not try to figure it out, because the only person who really
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understands what this is all about is Norman Crane, okay?
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So this was a good story. I'm gonna be honest, this was a good story.
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This was well written, Very good. But the end has me a bit confused.
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I'm just a little bit confused. Just a little bit.
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Just a little bit. Please help me out because I'm just a little bit confused.
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But either way, the question would be, right, if you were of the upper elite
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in this society of this story,
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would you be so stuck up and horrible like these people?
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Yes or no? Because you see, they didn't care for the poor. They treated them
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like shit. They wanted them out of their face.
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You know what I'm saying? It's like, I don't want to see poor things.
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I don't want to see anything that's below me.
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You know and that's just horrible I mean there's
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people out there that's like that you know I'm saying they live in their pristine
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neighborhoods and they don't want nobody coming through with no raggedy cars
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they don't want to see nobody looking poor they don't want to see nobody looking
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raggedy they want everybody to keep up with with what they expect you know I'm
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saying they're pristine and they want everybody to be pristine there are people
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out there like that So either way,
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thank you guys so much for joining me once again.
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Don't forget to subscribe while you're here, rate five stars,
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Once again, thanks for stopping by.
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And if you are a lover of true crime, don't forget to check out In Time Crime,
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which is linked in the description for this
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audio as well okay new episodes uploaded
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every sunday first episode of
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check it out thank you so much for stopping by once again and we hope you guys
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continue to have a beautiful and blessed day i really enjoy your company really
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enjoy seeing you guys you know showing me your support.
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And I appreciate you with all my heart and soul. You guys have a wonderful day
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and I'll see you next time.
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Hopefully it's tomorrow. I don't know. Life is crazy. I've been trying my best,
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but I'll see you next time. Okay. Bye-bye.