Counting down to the beginning of the season - I'm going to attempt to do one player for reach of the last 99. The players will be random. Use this thread to celebrate and Talk About Some Guys^TM
An elite athlete out of Santa Monica, CA Jerry Robinson came to UCLA in the fall of 1975 to play for Dick Vermeil as a TE. He played sparingly as a WR his freshman year but was moved to inside linebacker during Rose Bowl practices.
This ended up being quite the career move. Robinson was a consensus All-American in 1976 and Unanimous in '77 and '78. He was the first Pac-10 player to be named All-American three times. He set the school record for tackles in a single game against Air Force in 1976 with 28. He had four other games in his career where he exceeded 20 tackles. He finished with 468 - a UCLA record.
When he finished his his career hi season tackle totals were First, Second and Third in school history. He was Linebacker of the year in '77 and '78. He won the Pop Warner award as best West Coast player in 1978. He was a first round draft choice in the NFL and played for 12 years. He was inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 1991 and National Football Foundation Hall of Fame in 1996.
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Jerry Robinson

⟨⟨ Chapter 001 ⟩⟩ Don't thank the «GODS»
Without warning; the direction left became urgently Tuesday. Up became a distant relative. Backwards became fictitious. And the popcorn I’d been eating became a puddle of vomit at my feet. — That last one being what I would consider “normal” allowed me to realise that whatever had happened had now stopped happening.
I stumble around in the darkness for a few seconds before a light shines up ahead. Someone else had gotten to the exit before me, opening the door allowing light in. Some part of me is trying to remember a common saying that warns against going towards the light. But right now, disorientated and in the dark, it feels instinctual.
I left the cinema room and made it out to the lobby. I bumped into someone, but just as I utter a reflexive “sorry”, someone else bumps into me. More and more people keep entering the lobby. Be it as a response to the general panic, a desire to escape the growing crowd, or something deeper; everyone seem to gravitate towards the buildings exit. Out onto the street and in the parking lot.
One leg after another, I walk without giving much thought to what's going on around me. Or to what happened back in the cinema. Going forward in a daze, carried along by the crowd.
After the exit acts as a bottleneck, The crowd is able to spread out after getting outside. I find myself leaving between the people ahead of me, pushing towards the front of the crowd.
As I’m too busy watching my footing to give the slowing crowd or my surroundings much thought. It wasn’t until I reached the outer edge of the crowd proper that I was able to take in my surroundings more fully. And it was like I woken up. The daze I was in had me on autopilot until this moment when I set eyes upon the world around me.
Where should have been a car park in the outer suburbs, instead I find myself looking up at thick vegetation. Thick distinctly alien vegetation.
“Ah crap, we got isekaied.” someone to my right said. I was internally glad someone else came to that conclusion. It would have been kind of embarrassed if I was the only one.
Around me a few more dazed people pushed forward to the edge of the crowd before seeming to wake up. A quick glance over my shoulder suggested that they were quite a few more people to come out. So I decided to walk over to the side out of everyone's way.
I started talking to myself, thinking out loud. “alright, alright, if we've been isekaied.... Hmmmm.... Is it sci-fi or magic?”
I looked over at the forest again. Tall thin trunks, or two to three trunks per tree. Then with a few large leaves hanging down. Everything is coloured a cross between olive green and chalky white.
“It looks like it fits the magic variety better. Then again, it's not like I have firsthand experience with this. And any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic anyway.”
“Yo, what’s up?” A guy comes up. He gives me a casual head nod greeting. As if what was going on was just any other normal day. “names Steve.”
“Mac. I was just trying to figure out what's going on”
“Well you are already doing better than that lot. Half of them are in denial, and the other half are in a panic.” Steve gives a friendly smile, suggesting the comment was at least partly in jest.
“Are You familiar with isekai stories? Where the characters get transport it to a planet full of magic and monsters.” I asked him.
“Like the wizard of Oz?”
“no...” I paused, thinking about it “well, yeah. Sort of.”
“But less singing, right?” he smiled “nah, sorry. I’m more of a fan of Doki Doki Sims.”
“Anyway....” I said “There's usually magic involved. If we can open up the magical interface, then we can start using magic. In some stories it is voice activated. We just need to know the right words to say.”
“Hocus pocus! Alakazam!!” Steve said enthusiastically. There was an awkward pause for a second before Steve continued “welp, I'm out of ideas. Let me know if you managed to figure magic out.” And with that he was off just as quickly as he came.
I felt a little lost for words about the whole conversation. And needed to take a moment to gather my thoughts again before continuing.
“menu? Open menu? Stat window?” I started listing off all of the variations I could remember from different books that I've read. “Help desk? Open log? Open system? Initiate system?”
I looked over towards the crowd. It was quite sizable, definitely over a thousand people. I'll thinking about Steve I suddenly hung my head and a mix of shame and defeat.
Taking a deep breath I said “Hippity Hoppity, show me my magic properties.” Time seem to slow down as I focused on the world around me. Watching as.... nothing happened. I let out a sigh. “thank «GOD» it wasn’t that one.” But this time something did happen. A cold shiver ran out my spine, and I was gripped with a deep sense of fear.
I could tell, with every fibre of my being, that I had gotten the attention of something powerful beyond measure. Like if I was an ant, and I just gone be attention of a farmer who held a shovel in one hand and a 20L Jerry of pesticide in the other.
My life flash before my eyes. And then, a moment later, the feeling of soul crushing dread and helplessness had passed. In its wake was left the more mundane type of trauma associated with near death experiences, and a message etched into his mind.
“You are not worthy to seek audience with the pantheon of «GODS». Not yet.”
I sat there in stunned silence for what felt like hours, it was probably less than 5 minutes. I didn't know what to think, I didn't know what to think about. Getting isekaied onto an alien world was surprisingly easy to come to terms with. Finding out that «GODS» exist, and then having one such «GOD» directly speak to you... That is a lot to take in.
My turmoil of inner thoughts was snapped back into focus when someone came over to talk to me. A middle-aged woman, probably late 30s. I looked up at her and saw that she had a very worried look on their face.
“Was that you? Did you... draw their attention?” She asked.
I opened my mouth to respond, but at the same time I glanced over her shoulder at the rest of the crowd. EVERYONE was looking at me. There was no movement in the crowd, no sound of talking. Everyone had stopped what they were doing to look at me, personally.
It was unsettling.
Everyone must have noticed when the «GODS» spoke to me. Or perhaps the «GODS» contacted everyone at once. Which probably was the case. It just seems more efficient than to contact each person on a case-by-case basis. Not that supremely powerful being must be concerned with efficiency.
After realising I hadn't answered the woman. I looked back at her, but still couldn't find the words to say.
“Please don’t do it again.” She said. And all I could do was manage a weak nod in response.
When the woman turned to leave, I followed behind her. As I entered into the crowd, people started talking again. At first in hushed whispers as I passed. Then as the general volume got louder, normal conversation seemed to resume.
I looked around and realised I didn't have anywhere specific I was trying to go. Nobody else came up to start a conversation. And I felt too a self-conscious at the moment to join in with random group.
So with nothing better to do, I went back into the cinema to claim an isolated corner as my own. It was my hope that some of my more immediate problems would be solved after a few hours sleep.
. ⟨⟨ Chapter 002 ⟩⟩ Food, shelter, and an obsession with magic.
It has been 3 days since we've arrived here. For me, these last three days have been... troublesome.
TITLE ⟩ Attention of the «GODS»
You have gained the attention of the God's once, and thus are more likely to do so again.
+⟩ You have a weak aura of ‹Divine touched›
+⟩ All humans have a partial geas. It now takes significant effort for humans to utter the name of any «GOD».
My unfortunate choice of words on the day we arrived resulted in me getting a title. And the rest of humanity getting a slightly different title.
For all other humans, as well as for myself, we are unable to speak the name of any «GOD» unless we really, really mean it. Which is honestly probably for the best. Humanity is probably lucky I got the «GOD’S» attention by thanking them instead of by using some creative cuss words.
The part of my title that has been given me problems has been the weak aura of ‹Divine touched›. About 1/3 about the humans have become actively hostile with me. While the other 2/3s have remained politely neutral, although slightly distant. With a very small number, let's call it a rounding error, have become creepily friendly toward. Not in a way that suggests any sort of mind control, just a cultish fascination.
As for everyone else; humanity seems to have adapted surprisingly well to our new reality. All of our first world problems have taken a back seat in the face of more immediate issues.
Food.
Shelter.
Our obsession with magic.
It was on the first day, after I had already retreated inside, someone else had unlocked the secrets of magic. There's no key phrase that needed to be spoken. All that is required is for a person to enter a deep meditative state. From there it is rather intuitive.
Spells, classes, titles, bloodline traits...
All the things I had expected to find, in quantities far exceeding my imagination. At some time in the near future I need to sit down and dedicate an hour of three going over the system. But not right now.
The other two priorities that have kept us all busy — food and shelter — have been partially solved thanks to magic.
Our primary shelter, what I had originally thought to have been a cinema complex, turned out to be an amalgamation of at least a dozen different earth buildings. Including a cinema, an office building, an apartment building, a subway station, a mattress retailer, a Chinese restaurant, The Fiction section of a library, a classroom that used to teach forklift certificates..... And other random things.
It was either a failed attempt at selecting a variety of buildings that we might need in this new world, or it was a highly successful attempt at taking the most obscure choices for the greatest variety.
I have already seen at least a dozen people using magic to help reshape the central building. Internal plumbing and rearranging the hallways where the top two priorities. An internal electrical grid is apparently the current attempt at improving our home building. But apparently electricity, and physics in general, aren't working the way we expect them to. I guess that's the price to pay for having cool magic.
For reconstructing the building, the most common magics in use have been: Geomancy, Wood Magic, Metal Smithing, Drawing Runes, and various other types of magic that don’t fit a common naming convention. Maybe all magic should just have -mancy attached to the end of the word. It works for hydromancy, pyromancy, geomancy, etc. Although adding the -smith suffix works for a lot of magics as well: Metal Smith, Wood Smith, Rune Smith.
I can deep dive the linguistics of magic another day. Last but not least – Food.
The limited supply of earth food that got teleported in with us quickly became a rare delicacy that is making a select few people rich on the black market. Is that for the majority of us, We have become hunters and gatherers once more. With the aid of magic to Find, identify, kill, purifier, butcher, and cook.
An attempt at agriculture is being made. But it has not yet borne fruit; Both literally and figuratively.
After all that rambling on about world building and exposition and stuff, we come back to the most important part of any action adventure story....
Action and adventure (duh)

After conversing briefly with the director and Dr. McGregor, Anina walked to the engineering room and sat behind the screen. It was time to search for information about planet Zeroria. She’d been here for years and had never heard about it. She started typing on the touchscreen keyboard.
The door of the other room opened, and Jerry came in. He had stains on his suit again.
“Hey,” he called.
“Yeah,” Anina answered.
“Why did he ask you to wait?”
Anina smiled. “He wants to know why I want to be part of the mission. You know.”
“And?”
“The director is worried about putting women on such a mission.”
“Excuse me?” Jerry raised his brows.
“Well, I told him not to worry about it.”
“Why did he ask you that in the first place?”
“Some bullshits about, ‘as a woman, you are more important on this ship to this planet than being out there.’”
“What nonsense?”
“You know I have a womb, and they will prefer to use it for good rather than waste it out there.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I would be fine.”
“That’s a shitty thing to say to you.”
“Yeah, I know. I told him I would go. Now he has been given an assignment. To convince more people to join us. He thinks I can do it….”
Jerry shook his head. “This mission doesn’t look important to him.”
“It does to me.”
“Why?”
“It’s a new planet. What will happen if we find natural resources and rocks that could be used for anything else? Things we can use to build homes. What if we find out how to survive there? The sun has been the major source of energy for a long time, but what if we can find other things that are extremely cheaper and more useful too? Does it fascinate you that we can have the chance to see new things?”
“I am not. I can see all I want to see from here. These computers have everything we would ever need, all the data or the information ever known to man.”
“How come you didn’t know about Zeroria.”
He shrugged and nodded.
Anina laughed. “There is a lot out there that we don’t know about.”
“So, what is the next move now? How will you convince people? How many people will you convince?”
“I’m going to convince the doctors and engineers to join us. Parker and the director are working on how to convince the soldiers.”
Jerry nodded and returned to the other corner to continue working on the truck.
Anina turned back to the screen and tried to find information about Zeroria. Each time she searched for information, it only showed a picture of a giant rock and a summary:
The Zeroria was discovered by a group of astronauts a hundred years ago (October 2018) as part of an effort to find alternative planets that could sustain humanity. Unfortunately, the mission to see if it is survivable has been canceled.
She cleared her throat and typed something different.
“Why was the mission to Zeroria canceled?” She pressed enter, and the page showed two lines.
The reason for canceling the mission to Zeroria was the risk involved. Experts think the danger is too severe.
Anina frowned and typed again. “Has there been any human contact with Zeroria?”
There is little documentation about human contact with planet Zeroria. Although there have been drone tours of the planet, nothing has been recorded of human activity. A group of scientists visited in October 2018 but have not returned.
Anina spent the rest of the day reading about survival outside the planets, especially about Zeroria. Why was there little news about this planet? Maybe the only reason it had yet to be adequately documented was that the mission was unsuccessful. The government and International space mission didn’t want people to take such risks. She continued to read the details of the Reformers' procedures to survive outside the planets. She used videos, books, and AI-generated responses to learn all the information she could find.
In the evening, after dinner, Anina went to talk to a couple of people. Her sister, Candace, had been training under a professional doctor, and although she wasn’t a professional yet, she could be helpful on the mission.
She was sitting inside her laboratory. On this ship, there were only a few places to visit. So Anina wasn’t expecting Candace to be anywhere except the bedroom, library, or laboratory.
Anina knocked on the door and looked into the room through the glass part of the door.
Candace stopped what she was doing and looked up. Then, she waved, stood up, and came to open the door.
Anina stepped inside. “Am I allowed to walk around here without a coat?” she asked.
“Shhh,” Candace said, pointing to another corner of the room.
Anina stared at where she pointed. A group of men and women were working on something. They were all staying quietly and watching a glass on a flame from a bunsen burner.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
Anina followed Candace to the seat. On the table, a ray of light formed the image of an animal organ in front of her. It was generated from the lights from a flat bulb. She was reading a book on her iPad, too.
“I came here to tell you about an adventure,” Anina said.
“Planet Zeroria?” she asked.
“How did you hear about that?”
She glanced at Anina with a smile on her face. “You think you’re the only one with the latest news.”
“I’m just curious. You were not invited to the discussion today. Were you?”
“No, Dr. Muhammed was invited, though.”
“So, have you thought about it?”
She shook her head, adjusting the image on her iPad. The image of the intestine became twice the initial size.
“I’m not…. My superior doesn’t want to go. He said the mission was meaningless. So I am not going either.”
“I won’t force you, but this is a lifetime thing. Think about everything you could experience if you go on this journey.”
“You are talking about it like it’s some vacation. It’s another planet. That is probably toxic and can kill you if anything goes wrong.”
I rubbed my hair backward. “I’m not saying it is safe. I’m saying you could contribute to something bigger. Look at you. There is nothing here. You’re stuck in a laboratory, learning, and learning. How do you plan to use your skills and gain some experience? We have another two years before we will get to Ionigius. Have you thought about how long that would be?”
Candace was looking at Anina's face, and Anina could see in Candace’s eyes that she wanted to say yes.
“Just tell me you will join us, and I will be happy.”
“What about your dad and Rachel?”
“They are old for this kind of mission,” Anina said. Her father was neither an engineer nor a doctor. Rachel, her father's new woman, would turn fifty-five in the coming month, and Anina’s father had turned sixty-five the month before. Their years of being athletic and energetic were a bit behind. The survival details were not communicated yet, but they were not the best choice.
“Seriously, I wish I could come with you,” Candace said. “I will have to talk to my boss and see what she says.”
“This is a lifetime thing. Do you have to seek his permission?”
“Please, stop, Anina. I’m not going to do that. To just walk away without asking him.”
“Okay.”
So, Anina nodded and left the laboratory. The plan was to meet some engineers and explain why they should value such an experience to Zeroria. But on her way to the engineering department, she heard the fire alarm. The alarm started with a blast. The light in the ship blinked twice, and then the red light that always stayed quiet started blinking in a circular motion, and the alarm began.
She stopped walking.
She was standing in the lobby that led to the second engineering department. She withdrew her hands from the pocket of her pants and shirt. During the day, she would have had her engineering suit on, and it would have been a lot tougher to run in it. But this was free. She looked around and started running towards her father's room, not in the direction of the engineering.
In the past couple of years, he had dedicated himself to helping with the food department. Here, most of the food items were raised using enhanced scientific methods.
She sprinted as fast as she could. The automatic sprinkler system started a few seconds later, and Anina had to stop running. She exhaled and looked at the floor as the water covered the whole place. Then, she began to stroll back to the bedroom area where she would find her father.
The sprinkler didn't launch outside the block of the engineering department, so the area was dry, which only meant one thing, the fire didn’t happen in the bedroom unit.
Anina walked to her father's room, but he wasn’t there. So she headed out again towards the food department. Before panicking, she saw her father walking back into the room.
“Hi, honey,” her father called and hugged her.
“There was fire, and I rushed down here….”
“Yeah, I am glad you are okay. I’m okay.”
“Do you know where the fire happened?” Anina asked.
“It’s the food store,” her father said. “A part of the food store is gone now. It went up in smoke. What we have left are crumbles from that unit.”
“But the fire has stopped now?” Anina asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “There is a bigger problem, though. Some of our food is gone. I think the farm is damaged too. We have to start all over.”
Anina shook her head. She had been to the farm once and saw the technology that kept the crops growing — the stores, the processed algae, and how the plants were raised vertically.
“So, the farm is gone,” I asked.
“Not everything. We are only down a little. But,” her father said, we will need a little more resources to get it up again,” her father said.
“Resources like what?” Anina asked.
“I guessed the engineers would figure that out.”
Later in the evening, Anina was in her bedroom with Jerry when they discussed what had happened. He was sitting on the floor beside her, and they both were looking out of the glass window. It was a computerized window made of glass. You could turn it off, and it would become blank, blocking the view and light from outside.
Anina stared out at the space, which was just like the name sounded, a dark, endless expanse with sources of lights that were sometimes as wild as the size of a book or huge, like a giant balloon or a rugby ball. They had been on this ship for some time, and this was the first time a fire had started and destroyed something huge. Most times, when a little fire accident happened, people stopped it from jumping from burning cigarettes to a whole desk. Corners of the ships had extinguishers too, so it was easy to prevent such hazards.
“My dad said the food store is badly damaged.”
“It destroyed the supply of oxygen, too,” Jerry said. He had his palm on his chin. “We won’t be able to produce oxygen, except on a smaller scale.”
“Damn,” Anina said. “So, what is the solution?”
"Zeroria,” he said. We are going to Zeroria.”
Anina put her hands on her knees and stared at the glass window. She had one question on her mind. “I think the fire wasn't an accident,” she said.
Jerry murmured, hymn, and then sighed. “I think it's orchestrated….”
​
****
Part three
Part one here.
If you like Mafia romance, check out Saved on Amazon Kindle.

In that case we would be back to the old days of listening to downloaded shows again. Just so I can look through my library to make sure, what are your favorites? I already have many of the obvious ones like Cornell 77.
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Also, what would you folks consider quintessential Phi and Friends? How about the other post-Jerry shows?
I assume there is probably a list out there of every show ranked, but I am curious to see what folks here have to say.

Part 32 on HFY
"I think I found it," I said, knowing that Inanna and Sarisa could hear me. A second later, Sarisa popped into existence next to me. "Huh," she said.
The map she'd shared with the rest of us showed a single row of houses fronting the natural area, but I could clearly see the roof of a building, set far back from the homes amid the trees. A wide driveway with the single white line they used here to differentiate traffic lanes emerged from between two properties with a gate closed over it.
A sign hung from the gate, unreadable with all the bullet holes in it, but the operating hours at the bottom were unmistakable. This wasn't another home, but some sort of public-fronting establishment. "I definitely have no knowledge of this building. I think you've got it."
"Will you get the others?" I asked. Sarisa smiled and vanished again. A few minutes later, Gary and Kathy emerged from around a corner with Sarisa.
"Where's Ana?" Gary asked as they approached.
"She peed herself," I said.
"What?" Gary face scrunched up and I laughed. "You heard me."
"Well, how the hell did that happen?"
I shrugged. "The usual way, I guess. She's been telling me about getting tired and feeling confused on a repeating schedule and having to make an effort to return to her usual health. I suggested she try staying hydrated, because it sounded like dehydration that she was describing. So she started hydrating and..."
"And she forgot to go tinkle," Gary grinned. I winked at him, and then noticed Sarisa giving me a look. I responded with a "what do you expect?" gesture, and she sighed and shook her head. Sarisa never liked it when I told little white lies, even though it turns out she's told a few, herself.
Inanna emerged from the closest home, then. She was still in the same khakis and unbuttoned-most-of-the-way outfit she'd worn in, but she was dry now. "It wasn't pee," she announced.
Gary looked back and forth between us, eyebrows raised. "Okay...."
Kathy suddenly smirked and turned away. Well, damn, that was quick. I had to remember not to underestimate her.
"It doesn't matter," I said, "Look." I pointed to the gate. "That has to be the museum."
"Well, whatta we waitin fer?" Gary asked and walked over to check the padlock on the gate. He gave it a quick look, then took off his pack and dug around for a second, producing a pair of smallish bolt-cutters. He lined them up on the lock's hook and, with a quick jerk, brought the jaws down on it. The padlock fell to the ground with a clatter and Gary opened the gate wide enough to walk in.
We all followed him in through the gate and he pulled it shut and used a rock to wedge it in place. Up the long drive, we found a small parking lot and another shot-up sign. But this one had the words "museum" and "north" still readable in Armenian printed on it, so if we'd had any doubts during the walk up, they were gone.
Inanna simply magicked open the locked front door and we walked in. We split up, wandering the halls and searching the various rooms an exhibits. I moved down a hall with prints of medieval paintings of vikings and little placards describing the circumstances of the original painting as well as the events portrayed. The first three doors I found were bathrooms and a closet. The last entrance had no door in the frame, and it led to a room full of weapons.
A few actual viking-age and earlier weapons sat in glass cases in the middle, with reproductions bolted to the walls. Apparently, the museum was family-friendly, because foam versions of the weapons were stacked in an umbrella stand in one corner.
As I was returning to check another hall, I heard Kathy's voice "I think I got it!"
I followed the sound through a few rooms and found her and the others gathered around a small glass display case on a pedestal in the middle of a room whose walls were bedecked with paintings, both ancient and modern, of Norse Pagan religious subjects. Squeezing between Inanna and Gary, I saw it.
It was just like the last one, except the teeth were arranged slightly differently.
"So can we just, like, take it?" Kathy asked Sarisa. Sarisa shook her head, "Not without interfering with the magic. We have to share secrets again."
We all looked around at each other. This was actually getting more difficult, as we were a pretty tight group. We simply didn't have a lot of secrets. I broke the ice.
"When I was in my junior year, I stole three books from the college library, because they wouldn't let me check them out."
Kathy snickered. "I bet that's the worst thing you've ever done, too."
I turned towards her. "They were three volumes of a history of video games. The nineteen eighties through the two-thousands. I still have them in my closet." Kathy laughed and held out a hand for a fist bump. I gave it to her, unsure of why that would be fist-bump-worthy until she said "I figured they'd be dense academic works on some obscure aspect of history. Or maybe porn."
"The second volume covered erotic games," I admitted, "but there weren't a lot of titillating images, unless a screenshot from Custer's Last Stand is the sort of thing you find sexy."
I felt an easing in the tension of the room which I hadn't recognized until that moment. It had worked. Inanna spoke up next. "I'm keeping the baby," she said.
Everyone looked at her. Sarisa spoke first, "Sister, that is possibly the least-secret secret I've ever heard of. I don't think any of have had any doubt that you would keep the child you made with the man you love."
Inanna turned to me, "Did you know?" I shrugged. "I never really considered that you'd end the pregnancy. It would be very out of character for you."
"And you're okay with that?" she asked me? "Of course," I replied immediately. "Why wouldn't I be?"
She wrapped her arms around me and leaned her head against my chest. I smiled. This was nice, Inanna showing affection without being all grabby.
"I'm going to have to think about it for a minute, then."
Gary took a deep breath. His face clouded for a moment, and then he cleared his throat.
"I killed two civilian boys in Rukha, in Afghanistan back in 2001 to stop them from alerting Taliban in the region. We were moving through some fields, coming down into the valley from the north. We needed to get to a high point that sort of split the valley, to call in some JDAMs on a couple Taliban positions down in the valley. We didn't see the boys at first, they were hiding in some bushes or something. But as we got close, they broke cover and ran. I didn't even hesitate. I knew if they made it into town or to someone with a phone, the locals would fill the streets to gawk and the Taliban would abandon their positions.
"I saw them running, had just enough time to recognize the threat, and then I shot them both in the back. Neither one was armed. Neither one was older than about twelve." His voice was rough and raw. It was obvious he was digging deep for this.
"I still sometimes have nightmares about it," he added, and then he closed his mouth and stared at the ground. I felt the tension ease a bit more.
Kathy put her hand on his shoulder and he reached up to pat it. "I abandoned my best friend throughout middle school, Maryann, because she wasn't popular enough to suit me when we got to high school," she said.
"When we started as freshmen, we both made a bunch of new friends. She had a harder time of it, just because she wasn't as sociable as I was, but she was my friend, so she kinda tagged along as we became the 'in-group'. But some of the other girls didn't like her. Maryann listened to different music than most of us, and liked different actors and dressed different. It was super petty, I know, but at the time, those things seemed important." She laughed ruefully, "Like listening to Shinedown somehow made her a bad person. Anyways, it got worse over our freshman year. When we started sophomore year, I decided to cut her loose. So I told my mom a boy was harassing me, and she changed my number. A couple of the other girls did the same. We gave each other our new numbers, but not Maryann."
Kathy sniffed and I could see moisture in her eyes.
"She just seemed so confused at first. None of us were willing to just tell her that we didn't want to be friends, so we made excuses. I told her my phone was turned off, and said that I had plans every time she wanted to hang out. When she finally figured it out, she didn't even get angry. She just, like, vanished. She stopped coming to school, and stopped eating at the diner where we always used to get burgers after school.
"After a couple of months, I started to get worried about her. So I went to her house and knocked on the door. Her mom answered and told me that Maryann didn't want to talk to me and that I should go. And that was the last I ever heard from her."
Sarisa put her arm around Kathy's shoulder and squeezed her. "It's not too late," she said, then Kathy turned into the hug and they embraced. I heard Kathy take a few shuddering breaths, and then she pulled back. "I know. And I plan to go to her, as soon as this is done. I won't take no for an answer, this time."
The tension eased further. Only the goddesses remained. Inanna had, predictably enough, managed to sneak a hand down my pants while Gary was talking, but her fondling was subdued, more of an idle fidgeting than her usual concerted attempts to arouse me. The thrill of being touched by a goddess remained, however, which is why I was keeping my mouth shut.
Sarisa broke the silence. "I slept with Astoram, once."
"What?" I choked out in unison with Inanna. Inanna jerked her hand free and spun to face Sarisa.
"I thought you said that night with Jerry was your first time."
"It was... Listen, it wasn't actually me who slept with him, but an avatar of mine who lived in my temple in Mohenjo-daro. I was experiencing everything she did, but I wasn't in control of her actions. The truth is, I wasn't even paying her much attention, and she had long since grown into her own being, making choices that sometimes surprised me. Astoram came to her in a manifestation. He pretended to be distraught after Loki had foiled one of his schemes, and he seemed to think the avatar was me in a manifestation. He played at humility, confessed that he was always jealous of how smart I am and just generally seemed remorseful, and possibly not such a bad god, once you got past his public facade.
"The avatar had been quite lonely, and had grown quite human, having lived among them for so long. So she was moved by his words and..."
"And threw him a pity fuck," Inanna said.
Sarissa nodded, "And she threw him a pity fuck, yes. Of course, that was his plan, all along. He impregnated her. He was so livid when he found out she wasn't me that I had to have Krast pin him down until he swore not to hurt the avatar. Even then, I was still so concerned for her safety that I sent her to Scandinavia to bear her son in peace."
"The avatar, that was Aelfrida?" Inanna asked. Sarisa nodded, and Inanna turned to me. "Jerry, now you three are the only people alive who knows the name of Grendel's mother."
"The baby was Grendel?" I asked, surprised. Sarisa nodded again. "Yes, and he was a lovely creature for a very long time, until that drunkard, Hrothgar built his little party shack and drove the poor thing insane with all the noise." She shook her head sadly.
The tension eased more. It was barely there. All eyes were on Inanna now. She gave us all an askance look, as if she didn't like being the center of attention.
Yeah, right.
After a moment's silence, she turned back to me and wrapped her arms around my waist. She leaned her head against my chest again and spoke, not looking at anyone.
"I've thought a lot about what we're doing and what it might entail, from a practical perspective. I've communed with Ixy on it, as well, as he's the oldest of all of us. As best I can guess, the actual method which we're trying to learn is not to kill Astoram, or even to put him back to sleep. It's to cut off his manifestation from his divinity. It would open his domain for grabs by the rest of us. I'm sure Ixy plans to seize as much of it as he can, the moment we succeed.
"I can't think of any other method of defeating him that's even remotely possible. Sarisa, you know we've discussed this." Sarisa nodded. I knew, too. I'd heard them talking about it a few times, and had a general idea of their logic. It was complex and sometimes irrational, but if you squinted just right, it sort of made sense.
The gods' divinity wasn't who they were, but a natural product of living beings interacting with the universe and each other, that occasionally grew into something so coherent and powerful that it took on a life of its own. As best I understood, Ixy was the first god. He came into being when human ancestors began really differentiating themselves from the other animals with their cleverness, a sort of reflexive kickback against said cleverness. Every time an animal did anything, a trickle of energy was added to Ixy's domain, but every time an especially smart animal followed its instincts, he got a huge jolt of power.
Eventually, all that energy coalesced into the nightmarish entity that Ixy can be if you don't know him. Because those ancestors were smart and they contributed so much, Ixy developed a literal mind of his own. A simple mind, about as intelligent as your typical chimpanzee, but with the social bonds of a dog.
As time passed and humanity evolved into its modern state, that growing intelligence that it brought flowed towards Ixy. But Ixy didn't want it. Ixy liked being Ixy. So he sequestered these little disembodied minds off from the rest of himself. And things continued like that for a very long time.
But humanity was only just beginning to get clever. As tribes and clans took hold, complex social behaviors developed, and those behaviors differentiated themselves from the primal energy that defined Ixy. One by one, these energies, these divinities, grew dense enough to power a god on their own. The minds that Ixy had sequestered were not comatose or unaware, and they saw this happening. Eventually, one of them escaped and tied itself to a divinity. They became the first generation of the gods. Hunting, bloodlust, simple lust, hunger, loneliness. Base concepts that all of humanity knew.
This first generation eventually experienced the same fate as Ixy, only without the entirety of the animal kingdom feeding them a steady drip of power, they grew weak as the energies split apart. To offset this, they emanated; breaking off parts of their own minds to take command over the diverging and clumping divinities that had once been entirely theirs. As these emanations seized their own divinities, they became the second generation of gods. Sarisa and Inanna were both second generation gods. The second generation was supposed to serve the first, but after some time, they rebelled.
The first generation was gone; slain somehow in a great war that had been wiped from the minds of all survivors, even the gods themselves. Only Astoram remained of their number. Sarisa and Inanna had discussed how that might have happened, even before Astoram's awakening, and the consensus they had established was that one or more of their 'sibling' gods had learned how to separate a god from their divinity.
Once that was done, then there would be little left but the mind, unless said god had been manifesting. In that case, they would survive not as a disembodied mind, but in whatever form they had taken. And that was what we planned to do to Astoram. What it wasn't, however, was a secret. I looked down at Inanna, who glanced up and caught my eye. When she spoke, I knew she was speaking to me.
"If we succeed. If we find a way to strip Astoram from his divinity, then after we've defeated him, I want to be stripped from my own. I want to live whatever remaining life I have in this body with you, Jerry."
Holy fucking shit.
Part 34 on HFY
----
As a reminder, this whole story is available at JerryandtheGoddesses.

0:20: Joe describes a serial killer in Ohio, a postal employee, who killed 43. (I can't identify this person. It sounds like John Wayne Gacy, but his details were different.)
1:20: Peruvian conjoined twins separated in Washington, DC. (I can't find this story. In recent accounts Peruvian physicians separate their conjoined twins.)
2:00: Joe tells of the woman who killed her 2 boys to have a relationship with a man. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Smith)
2:30: Joe tells of Roman Catholic priests who have molested children protected by the church. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_priests%27_sex_abuse_scandal)
3:20: Joe tells of the 'DC Sniper' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Boyd_Malvo).
3:50: Joe tells of the California congressman who had an affair with an intern; she was discovered murdered; he was suspected. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Levy) (but wasn't guilty.)
4:20: Joe tells of 23 illegal immigrants, bound to work in a Houston factory, are found dead of heat stroke in a cargo container. (I can't find this story; I know of Chinese immigrants in a container in NY harbor who suffocated and immigrants in box cars in Texas who cooked to death.)
4:40: Young Russian women lured to the US with promises of good jobs are forced into prostitution.
5:00: Larry and Joe talk about their favorite lines from Frost poems.
8:50: Joe tells of the nightclub fire that killed 100. (The Station night club fire, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire) says that there were others' in Japan and Argentina and elsewhere around the world'. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nightclub_fires) He talks about the callousness of the reporters who cover the stories.
10:10: Joe tells of the toddler entered in beauty contests, her murder. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JonBenet_Ramsey)
10:40: Joe tells of the young woman kidnapped by a cult leader. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Smart)
11:00: Joe tells of the murder of a pregnant woman by her husband. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laci_Peterson)
12:10: Joe tells of the woman in a coma, fought over by her husband and parents. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo)
12:50: Larry tells the story of his daughter accompanying her friend, whose mother in Chicago just had a massive stroke, to visit the mother. Larry and Joe compare their ills.
14:30: Joe says his mother told him, when he was being treated for bladder cancer in 1991, that it's worse for her than him.
14:50: Joe tells of the teacher who had an affair with a 12-year-old student (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debra_Lafave) wishes he had had an older lover when he was a boy.
16:00: Joe tells of the fellow who parked his car on the train tracks to impress a lover who jilted him. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Manuel_Alvarez)
16:40: Joe tells of the trial of a pop star tried for child molesting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson:_2005_trial)
18:20: Joe tells of the earthquake in 2004 that caused a tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake)
18:50: Joe tells of dealing with the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda_genocide)
19:10: Joe tells of the Darfur conflict. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict)
19:40: Joe tells of the westerner beheaded by Arab insurgents. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl)
20:00: Joe tells of suicide bombers in mosques.
20:10: Joe tells of injured veterans at Walter Reed.
20:40: Joe contrasts the $15K bonuses offered for enlistment to the luxury of the wealthy.
22:40: Joe mentions the dangers of avian flu, holes in the ozone layer, global warming, destruction of the Brazilian rainforest, nuclear waste, al Qaeda terrorists.
25:00: Lester Nafzger tells Joe about a game he played in school, 'Smear the queer' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smear_the_queer) . Lester says he's against self-deprecating jokes.
26:30: Joe tells Lester about his 'date' with Ariana Huffington. They go walking. Joe took 2 valium, couldn't keep up. She never called him again.
34:40: 'Each one of us in his or her life has taken small imperceptible steps that added together in the aggregate have changed us profoundly - millions of steps...' Joe talks about the steps we take in life, their significance.
38:30: 'The first chief rabbi of Palestine in the 1920s, before the Holocaust, said that in the face of the suffering in this world, to not contemplate atheism is itself almost sinful.' Joe says we want the transcendent, tells of a rabbi who spoke of 'theological pointillism', that one has to look at the larger picture, not details.
39:40: 'I've had a few experiences which I would consider genuinely religious where I felt the presence of something beyond myself...' Joe talks about why he doesn't participate in organized religion, questions practices of Evangelic Christianity and Islam.
41:40: Joe suggests that if Jerry Falwell had been raised in Qum, Iran, instead, he would have been as passionately Muslim; that Khomeini, raised in an Evangelic Christian family, would have been as passionately Christian.
47:30: Joe tells of having Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs for the first time since he was 16. An old friend from high school calls him, mocks him for his age, says he's probably eating Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs.
50:20: Joe tells of seeing the store 'Tuesday Morning' while driving on Santa Monica Boulevard (901) to St John's hospital (2121 Santa Monica Boulevard) (so Joe's going away from the ocean) to visit his mother just as the DJ on KCRW announces that it's Tuesday morning. He finds the coincidence significant. He stops in on his way back from the hospital, finds it full of kitschy junk.
52:30: Joe wonders if the 2 coincidences are significant, that something is going on, imagines it's his late father, asks Lester what he thinks.
54:00: Lester says he thinks it's because Joe is concerned about death, that, if he looked carefully at other events in his life, he'd find similar coincidences, worries that saying so may harm the comfort Joe gets from feeling that someone is looking after him.
http://jfwiki.org/index.php?title=Bad_Faith

Because someone asked me about a comment I made on another post, here's an edited version of a writeup I did back in 2011 of the 8 page outline from Heinlein's papers that became Spider Robinson's Variable Star.
When I first Read Variable Star a few years after it came out, I thought it was OK but disappointing. It's a Spider Robinson novel, and while I enjoyed the first few books of his I read, he has a limited range and by the time I read this one I had gotten bored with him.
But, a huge deal was made in the afterword and the cover blurbs about the source of the novel being a book outline by Heinlein that he had never expanded to a full novel - an 8 page outline that tragically had lost its last page by the time Robinson got hold of it. (I don't know how much of the story of the missing page is marketing BS, but there's no reason Robinson would have been unable to get a copy of the last page if he really wanted to see it) .
Anyway, I got curious and went looking for the outline. Like every other scrap of paper from his writing career that Heinlein didn't destroy, it's in the UC Santa Cruz library, and scans of everything in the Heinlein collection are available for sale online at the Heinlein Archive website. The 8 page outline (which is complete, no missing last page) is part of the "Story ideas, part 1" PDF, catalog number WRTG201a-01.
(ETA: the back end of the Heinlein Archives website has not been updated for a very long time and it's impossible to buy the PDF from them at this point. I am both surprised and amused that a libertarian organization would be incompetent at taking my money. )
I paid $2 and got a 150 page PDF, including the 8 page outline and a bunch of other quite interesting material - very much worth the pittance.
TLDR: The outline is clearly for a Heinlein juvenile. While Heinlein never turned the outline into a novel himself, he did did not abandon it as the marketing for Variable Star would imply. Rather, he took one core idea (near-light speed travel as a form of time travel into the future) and used it as the basis for Time For the Stars. Then he took the other core idea (poor boy suddenly finds himself dealing with a family more wealthy and powerful than most governments) and incorporated it into Citizen of the Galaxy. Finally he took the last idea from the outline (boy and girl seemingly separated by one-way time travel into the future discover that their ages are not incompatible after all because they've both travelled forward), and used it in The Door Into Summer.
In 2011 when I wrote this up, I could not find anyone talking about the outline, so I wrote a detailed summary on my blog. Here's that summary:
The outline is eight single space typewritten pages, plus 12 handwritten notecards. The notecards are pages 115-128 and the typed outline pages 129-136 of the PDF. I'll be focusing on the typescript, which I can read without straining my eyes. The notecards are very brief, so we're not missing much this way.
The MS begins "Notes for a novel - 5 Nov 1955," which places it (going by publication dates) after Tunnel in the Sky and before Double Star or Time for the Stars. The second line gives a working title "The Stars are a Clock," and then there are several other titles handwritten at the top of the page:
Dr. Einstein's Clock, The Starship Nautilus, The Starship Naughty Girl, The Star Clock, The Einstein Clock
It's not clear whether the two "The Starship X" ones are meant to be subtitles for "Dr Einstein's Clock" or standalone titles in themselves. Page 2 is headed "Star Clock (The Star Clock, maybe)" and the rest of the outline has "The Star Clock-[page number]" as a running head.
The only named characters are Joel Johnston, age 18, the protagonist; Jinny Jones/aka Jennifer Conrad (Joel's steady high school girlfriend, age 17); and "Mr. Conrad," Jinny's grandfather and head of the Conrad financial empire. A few other characters are described in terms of the real-world people the character should be modelled after (in speaking of the starship, he says "I think maybe Ron Hubbard is her skipper").
This was clearly intended as a juvenile novel - Joel is 18, and when saying he "should have more girl trouble aboard ship," Heinlein adds "(keep it clean, of course!)" One reason Heinlein set the outline aside and started over may be that he decided he couldn't get a book whose plot was centred on a romance accepted for the (at the time) sexless juvenile market.
Joel and Jinny are in love, but Joel is an orphan with no money and he thinks he needs to get through college and start a career before he can get married. If Joel can't get the scholarship he's applied for, then it's going to take even longer, since he'll have to work his way though school.
Having gotten Joel to admit that he would like to marry Jinny if only there was a way, Jinny lets him know that her surname is not Jones but Conrad, and that she is not just a Conrad, but the "'crown princess' of the Conrad industrial empire... which is larger than the Hanseatic League, Rothschild family, and General Motors combined and just smaller than space itself."
Two paragraphs in a row start with a variation of Joel "finally gets it through his head" that Jinny is wealthy enough to pay his way though school, so Joel is yet another variation on the "smart but slow witted youth" that Heinlein used as protagonist again and again.
There's a couple of paragraphs mentioning the marriage and courtship customs of the time, which again probably would not have been acceptable in a novel for the juvenile market: "some discussion of 'student contract,' the trial marriage used" by most college students who wish to get married before they graduate, rejected by Jinny, ("marriage isn't a ticket to an amusement park") who wants an old fashioned life long marriage.
Jinny doesn't "park, diddle, go on no-chaperone weekends... she is old-fashioned and chinchy" because she has been taught since age three that she has a responsibility to the Conrad family to produce an heir with an acceptable father - and she has decided that Joel is that man.
Joel "finally gathers" that he has been tapped not just to marry into the Conrad family but to produce its heirs, and is dubious about being a kept man/prince consort. Jinny says "it isn't like that at all!" and makes him promise to go talk to her grandfather about it.
All this takes just over a page of the outline.
The next morning, Joel is summoned to an audience with Mr. Conrad. There is only one "Mr. Conrad" at any one time, all the other male Conrads go by "Mr. Joseph, Mr. Robert" and so on. Conrad takes Joel's consent for granted and proceeds to tell him how he will live his life from then on -- he will be educated, trained, and groomed to take a top executive position. Joel was thoroughly investigated before Jinny was given permission to propose to him. Mr. Conrad knows all about him - including confidential medical/psychological records.
Joel objects, respectfully, saying that having his life planned out for him like this is not his cup of tea. Conrad brushes his objections aside and leaves, failing to realize that he's just been turned down.
Joel is unable to contact Jinny after this ("she has been gently kidnapped, of course - family stuff"), and once he fails to respond to further messages from Conrad, the screws start to turn: his scholarship (controlled by the Conrad foundation) is turned down.
Unable to continue school, sore at Jinny for not contacting him, and at his wits end, "he sees the ad for 'gentlemen adventurers'" applies, is accepted, and is shortly on his way to Beta Aurigae.
All this takes a page and a half of outline, most of it devoted to a detailed summary of Mr. Conrad's interview with Joel.
Now there's just under two pages of background material, detailing several things:
First, the economics of space travel in this future society - relativistic starships that go out on voyages of exploration often fail to come back, but those that do return invariably show an immense profit, more than enough to pay for the lost ships. Starship exploration is one area where the Conrad empire has competitors, and the ad Joel sees is not affiliated with the Conrad conglomerate.
Second, the nature of Joel's poverty - he has an "orphan's allowance" which ran out on his 18th birthday. Joel's father bought some stock for him but the market shifted and Joel had to sell it low to pay for his last (post 18th birthday) semester at prep school. Without the scholarship, Joel has no money at all. He could do many things at this point, from indentured service to a stint in the military, but he's so discombobulated by the whole Jinny/Conrad business that he is in a "what the hell frame of mind" and signs up for this star voyage.
Third, the starship in question is "a pile of junk," old and poorly equipped, carrying low value cargo (emigrants), with low likelihood of returning, but Joel doesn't know that. "She will be a quaint mixture of madhouse and hellship." Subjectively, the trip out and back (to a star 10 light years away) will take a year, but 40 years will pass on Earth.
Fourth, there's a half page of brainstorming, with Heinlein throwing out multiple ideas as to what may happen (is the skipper incompetent, or is he in on a stock market manipulation scheme to delay the ship's return? Perhaps Joel still has some stock his father bought in an old starship that is long overdue, which he instructs his solicitor to invest in Joel's starship if it ever pays off? Perhaps they pay off, but his solicitor put them in a "safe" investment instead, and Joel is penniless - again! - at the end of his trip?)
Joel applies to go on the starship, along with a large crowd of "down-at heels rabble" and he is among the few provisionally accepted. They'd like him to marry one of the single women who have also been provisionally accepted, but he'll have none of that. "He is accepted anyhow and we rush him aboard."
And then there's a bit more than a page of further brainstorming about what happens aboard ship - with an note that "we've got plenty to happen when he gets back; what we need now is adventure and humour" - and ideas for plot twists on the ship and on the alien planet.
Heinlein makes several mid-course changes in the story: the back-at-home duration of the voyage gets increased to 60 years, with Joel ageing just three years; the ship goes through two names (Nautilus and Naughty Girl) and goes from making an out-and-back voyage to making a 4 or 5 leg journey. He tosses out the idea that an emigrant on the original trip out from Earth (then a 5 year old girl) grows up to be someone he might want to marry on his return to that colony world, and the idea that another girl from his high school is on the crew of the ship, and he falls for her, but she marries one of the officers instead.
One thing he is certain of is that while Joel's ship is still travelling, FTL ships are perfected and the relativistic starships become obsolete. He also mentions that Joel will find a "space bat" as a "cute and cuddlesome and smart e.-t." pet.
Eventually Joel has to go back to Earth (whether his stocks end up making him well-heeled or broke Heinlein waffles on), still single. A page is devoted to discussing the "Out-of-Phase Club, Anachron Lounge, etc" and Joel's meeting with the secretary of the club, who explains to him the club's purpose of helping relativistic starship crew by acting as trainers/translators and as a place where they can meet people from their own time period, since they are almost always going to find Earth's society, language, and customs to be bafflingly different from when they left.
Finally, the last page and a half of the outline is devoted to Joel's arranging to meet Jinny (who he imagines is now almost 80), the girl he ran away from and who has continued to haunt him, keeping him from marrying any of the "half a dozen other nice girls" he met on his travels. After getting to the Conrad house, he first sees Jinny's granddaughter and great-granddaughter, and (once again) is slow on the uptake when Jinny (still young) finally walks into the room.
Because, of course, she took a starship out too, after marrying, giving birth to the requisite heir, and then finding herself both widowed and orphaned in quick succession. So, sixty Earth years later, they are now the same age.
They fight, they make up, they "clinch." They decide, since they are both now anachronisms from the past, to buy their own starship (Joel's old ship) and travel around relativistically, coming back to earth every century or so to "see what's new."
(ETA: As you can see, this is basically a very preliminary version of "Time for the stars." I think the main reason the outline got shoved in a drawer and TftS became a very different book is probably because Heinlein realized he was not going to be allowed to have his juvenile protagonists be interested in marriage. But he also kept the outline in his story ideas file, and clearly he went back to it at least twice. The Conrad family seems to be a precursor to the Rudbecks in Citizen of the Galaxy, and the "oh, the girl I like must have grown old and aged while I time travelled into the future... oh wait, she is still young because she also travelled to the future separately from me, now we can get married, yay" plot device reappears in The Door Into Summer.)
Now a bit about Robinson's novel: it is extremely faithful to the first five pages of the outline (up to the point where Joel leaves on the starship). Robinson used just a few of the brainstorming ideas Heinlein put in page 6 (the trip), and ignored page 7 (Joel's return to Earth) completely (and it is claimed that he didn't have page 8, which is the reunion of Joel and Jinny). Robinson also borrowed some material from Time For the Stars, the Heinlein juvenile which did get written on the theme of relativistic star travel - there's mention of telepaths keeping the starship in touch with Earth, for instance.
Then (avoiding spoilers here) the ending of Variable Star utterly abandons the outline (well before the alleged missing page 8) and strikes off in an entirely new direction. By staying so faithful to the initial outline, then diverging so widely from it, Robinson ended up with a book that egregiously violates the Chekov's Gun rule - the ending of Variable Star comes from nowhere, with very little buildup or foreshadowing, while the beginning of the book puts a good many plot threads in motion that are discarded abruptly without resolution to make way for the shock ending.
Finally, a bit about the other material to be found in the "Story Ideas part 1" PDF: There are numerous newspaper and magazine clippings that Heinlein evidently found evocative; two articles by Jerry Pournelle (one typescript, one journal reprint); some handwritten pages that I did not try to decipher; 19 pages of worldbuilding notes for "A Martian named Smith" aka Stranger in a Strange Land, dated 1949; and finally two typed letters, one to "Sarge" (dec 1963), and one (missing the first page, probably from the same time period) to "Buz," both talking about race relations. Buz is probably F.M. Busby.

No one is always a liar and no one is always corrupt. Everything is a situation.
Sgt. Jerry Martens, NYPD Blue S3 E8.
I don’t know what it is about NYPD Blue, but recalling some key quotes has the effect of clearing mental logjams in my head. People and issues are complex. Treating them as binary will make it impossible to truly understand what happened. Yep, these are the new and hopefully improved versions on the quartet of posts titled "Pathetic" that I took down a couple of weeks ago. I wrote them and posted without giving too much thought to flow, organization and potential impact. They were too long and complex for most to digest. So what do I do? I make the post even longer by expanding it into a six-parter, but hopefully with better context to give the narrative a stronger logical foundation. I also needed to take a beat and balance the importance of the information against the effect it could have on real people--particularly Hae Min Lee's family.
For those who lack patience and curiosity, this post can be distilled down to: Adnan participated in the murder of Hae Min Lee. The police and prosecutors illegally fabricated evidence to secure a conviction of first degree murder. Jay Wilds is owed the world’s biggest apology. What follows demonstrates the absurdity of identifying as a "guilter" or an "innocenter."
If you want to understand the who, what, where, when, why and how, along with the supporting evidence, you have to read the rest. If you choose to stop here, that is entirely understandable. This post is definitely not for everyone. It requires tapping into your intellect more than your emotions. TLDR works for certain things like the weather or the outcome of an NBA game. If you are reading this post, I assume that you spent at least 8.5 hours listening to the Serial podcast. Leaving aside the amount of misinformation packed into that program, what else did you consume? Rabia Chaurdry’s book? The several hours of her own podcast on this case? Her blog? Her tweets? The 4 hour HBO documentary? If you spent dozens of hours being lied to and expect a three sentence explanation, you are asking to be lied to some more. This is not me providing a caveat for this post as much as lamenting how the TLDR mentality and expectation resulted in our being increasingly uninformed.
The MPIA page cites are truncated so if the page number is MPIA 15 459 231-263, the shortened version reads as MPIA 231-263. The trial transcript cites are in a format where 8:12-16 means page 8, lines 12-16. I think that I indicate each time I include mock transcript exchanges, but to avoid any doubt, if I do not provide a specific transcript cite, I am taking creative license with a mock discussion. If I missed linking any MPIA cites please use the page number provided and look them up yourself.

One in Six Billion

Let’s begin with something about which we can all agree. In the 24 years since Hae Min Lee was murdered, there has only been one single witness who has come forward claiming to have personal knowledge about Adnan Syed’s role in the crime. It is important for us to ponder this fact for a moment. It has not simply been 24 years. A little over eight years ago this case became a global phenomenon. Millions of people became fascinated through the storytelling of Sarah Koenig. It made celebrities out of Adnan and Rabia Chaudry, his most outspoken advocate and sister of his best friend, Saad. It propelled Asia McClain from anonymity to a household name with a book deal. It destroyed what was left of the reputation of the late Cristina Gutierrez, the attorney who represented Adnan during his trial. It dragged individuals like Jay Wilds and Don Clinedinst into the spotlight despite their efforts to avoid it and move on with their lives. It reopened the wounds of Hae’s family and forced them into an inescapable and permanent nightmare. This time, however, it was worse because the man convicted of murdering Hae was celebrated by millions as a victim of injustice.
The most remarkable thing that occurred in the wake of the Serial Podcast was not its wild popularity. It was not the fact that it was discussed by almost anyone with an internet connection. It was not the broadcast media awards that its creators collected. It was not the millions paid by the New York Times to acquire the program. Even after the case invaded the consciousness of millions of people, one thing did not change. The only witness claiming to have personal knowledge of Adnan Syed being involved in the murder of Hae Min Lee is still Jay Wilds. No one who upon listening to the podcast recalled having seen something suspicious going on at the Best Buy on January 13, 1999. No one among Adnan’s classmates or friends from his mosque to whom he let it slip that he was responsible for Hae’s murder. None of the inmates with whom Adnan was imprisoned said a word reflecting Adnan mentioning what he allegedly did. For those who are certain of Adnan’s guilt and believe that he acted alone, this should be acknowledged as a remarkable level of discipline demonstrated by a 17-year-old. They talk of this being a garden variety crime and Adnan being a typical stupid teenager who screwed up. If that were the case, a lot more people would have come forward--especially in the last eight years.
The tipster who called on February 12, 1999 did not claim to have any specific knowledge, only suspicions. Jay’s friend, Ernest, told their neighbor Laura that he saw Hae’s body in the trunk of a car. Laura told her father who subsequently reported it to the police. When the cops questioned Ernest, he denied any such knowledge. For those who forgot what it’s like to be a teenager, that was Ernest trying to impress Laura with something that Jay told him. It sounded better for Ernest to tell Laura that he saw this interesting thing first-hand instead of telling her that he heard it from Jay. Jennifer Pusateri never claimed to have any first-hand knowledge and acknowledges that everything she knew was from Jay. Others in Jay and Jen’s circle learned of what Adnan had done to Hae, but the source always traced back to a single person: Jay.
Teenagers are not typically capable of that degree of discipline because they simply cannot be expected to keep that type of secret. Seriously though…of the roughly 6 billion people who were on our planet in 1999, only one fucking person had knowledge of the crime committed by this 17-year-old? Obviously, I'm making a heavy-handed point. No sherpa assisting with carrying an amateur climber's gear is gonna say that he could see Adnan murdering Hae from the summit of Everest. It's just that if Adnan was as careless as the state's case suggests, witnesses would've come out of the woodwork after the podcast dropped. Thus, it is tempting to assume that Jay’s story is bullshit. I can understand these arguments and seeing Adnan as an extremely unlucky victim of countless shitty circumstances.
It is not my place to sit in judgment over Adnan. That has already happened when the jury rendered a verdict, notwithstanding the politically motivated clusterfuck that was the motion to vacate. People keep bandying about the term, "reasonable doubt." That term is reserved for a jury verdict that is based on evidence that was presented at trial. The Asia letters were never produced as evidence by either side during Adnan’s trial in early 2000. The letters were never challenged for authenticity. Asia never took the stand in 2000. Team Adnan has dedicated itself to polluting the legal landscape with all sorts of unchallenged “evidence” that was never presented to the jury during the trial. Team Adnan has been bombarding us with ex parte arguments with their podcasts, documentaries, books, etc. to successfully trick us into thinking of their bullshit as “evidence” causing us to engage in these inane debates about whether the prosecution proved Adnan’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
My certainty of Adnan's involvement in the crime is independent of the state's case. I previously assumed that the correct verdict was reached because the state made a good faith effort to prove Adnan's involvement in Hae's murder. While I am still certain that Adnan is responsible for Hae's death, I no longer believe in the legitimacy of key evidence that was presented to the jury. My certainty of the role that Adnan played in Hae’s murder does not make him guilty. Fuck any small-minded person who feels compelled to slap me with the reductive and idiotic label of “guilter.” I, like most people with eyes and a brain, am also certain that OJ Simpson was responsible for murdering his ex and her lover. But I am also certain that the jury got the verdict right when they acquitted him. Regardless of how they rationalize it, the cops and prosecutors are not allowed to frame someone they have prejudged as guilty. In OJ’s case, the evidence against him was challenged in real time by his “Dream Team.” In Adnan’s case, despite having 24 years, his “Latrine Team” is blind to how the evidence against him was fabricated. Instead, they make up fantasies that are untethered from anything resembling the truth or common sense.
This will be long because I do not simply want to tell you shit that I expect you to believe. I want to give you the courtesy of understanding what happened and why. Please note that none of the parts of this post are standalone. They are interconnected. As tempting as it may be to comment before reaching the end of this ridiculously long post, I ask that you hold off until you have reviewed the entirety of the narrative and evidence. Unpacking more than two decades of lies told by all sides is not something that can be summarized in a tweet. Rabia Chaudry’s book on this case that is packed with false and misleading information is 416 pages long. Add to that the original 12-part podcast largely consisting of Sarah Koenig getting conned by team Adnan. Let's not forget the 4-part HBO documentary grounded in false and misleading information. Then, of course, there is the actual evidence in the form of the 2000+ page police file, the parts of the defense file that team Adnan didn’t shred and thousands of pages of briefs, trial and hearing transcripts. It is not reasonable to expect someone to distill that down to a few sentences. It was hard enough to get my head around the mind-bending reality of what actually happened in this case. Explaining it without sounding nuts is not easy. If you have issues with my writing style there is not much I can do about that. This is dark stuff and I do not want you or me to get pulled down into the darkness. Please do not mistake my style for not taking the subject seriously. If you keep an open mind and take the time to absorb this post, you will be surprised--regardless of your position.

Prisms

There are multiple prisms through which this case can be viewed. A true understanding of what really happened will never be achieved by relying on a one-sided perspective gained by viewing the case through a single prism. Doing so will always result in your seeing a kaleidoscope of possibilities with several loose ends for which there is no accounting. This leads to endless speculation and creation of random narratives to make a few pieces fit. These speculative narratives always fall apart under a modicum of scrutiny. If, however, you take the multiple prisms and combine them, the noise falls away and you are left with a single, clear image: The police and prosecutors successfully framed one of the criminals who participated in the murder of Hae Min Lee.
Of the many prisms through which this case can be viewed, we will focus on the four big ones: Of course, there is the prism of the evidence that was actually presented at trial through which Adnan was found guilty. Conversely, there is the prism that kicked off the Serial podcast wherein Adnan ostensibly had a rock-solid alibi that his supposedly bumbling attorney failed to use. Then there is the prism wherein Adnan was framed by the police who used Jay Wilds as their patsy. Finally, there is the prism of Hae’s murder being the plot masterminded by Adnan’s mentor, Bilal Ahmed. Distinguishing the lies from the truth is possible if you allow yourself to see the case simultaneously through multiple prisms. Clinging to a single prism will result in a skewed perspective whether you think Adnan is a murderer or not.
We have a natural tendency to gravitate toward one perspective or another. Whether we embrace a polarizing world view or not, that is how information is presented to us these days. Like we are children who are incapable of thinking for ourselves. We are encouraged to draw lines. We are to either believe that Adnan is a murderer or he was framed and unjustly imprisoned. Everything is black or white. We are either liberal or conservative. Add to that the nature of social media that thrives on vilifying those who hold an opposing point of view. Because outrage and conflict generate more clicks, which is the currency that drives our discourse. It drives us to attack one another with insults. Embracing such meaningless labels is an insult to our intelligence. Our need to make complex issues binary and align with one side or the other blinds us to obvious truths that could help us find common ground. We must remove these obstacles to escape the ideological entrenchment that prevents us from achieving a meaningful understanding of the issues.
It probably sounds like I'm saying that I'm above all that shit, but I'm not. Once I became aware of the lies coming from Team Adnan, I only saw their lies. The inconsistencies in Jay's story and the police investigation did not bother me. I saw evidence that unequivocally proved to me that I had been duped by a bunch of con artists. The Asia alibi that had us all worked up and outraged after the first episode of Serial dropped turned out to be a fraud. But the fraudulent alibi had nothing to do with lies that originated with Jay or the police. The Asia alibi came from Adnan. "Fuck him," I thought. He's not my client. He was a kid with whom I identified and wanted to help.
But then while piecing together how the crime likely went down, other lies started presenting themselves. Lies told by the police and prosecutors in building their case against Adnan. These are different than the lies that form the basis of alleged misconduct that is argued by Team Adnan. They align with the facile narrative that Adnan was a stupid kid who acted alone. The involvement of the police and prosecutors in fabricating the narrative is not obvious, but it's there if you look at the paper trial they left. It can be proven with more substantive evidence that audible taps during Jay's recorded statements. But make no mistake: Jay is not the villain here. Making Jay the villain is easy. Understanding that he is the biggest victim in this case after Hae Min Lee is more complicated, but that is what will be explained in these posts.
It would be so much easier to explain all this if the lies told by Team Adnan and the lies told by the police and prosecutors were independent of one another. I would love to say that if I saw the police/prosecutor lies first, I would have been entrenched in the belief that Adnan did not commit the crime. I wish that I could extend that olive branch to those who identify as "innocenters." Unfortunately, the lies depend on one another wherein you can only understand the frame up if you are able to accept the truth that Adnan was involved in Hae's murder. That is particularly frustrating to me because distilling the truth from the mass tangle of lies in each prism is already a bitch. Accepting that Adnan was framed for a crime that he actually committed is easier for those who already see him as a murderer. It is a particularly heavy lift for those who identify as “innocenters.” It requires being open to and accepting some uncomfortable truths. Regardless of how I may have come across in my previous posts, I do not look down on those who identify as partisans who believe in Adnan’s innocence. I respect your optimism and desire to support the unjustly imprisoned. Your well-intentioned support for the innocent was preyed upon by Team Adnan. The anger in my writing comes from having been duped myself by these charlatans. There is no shame in advocating for an individual whom you sincerely believe was unjustly imprisoned. The only ones who should be ashamed are those who seek to take advantage of our better angels for their cynical purposes. That said, we should address the difficult truth that Adnan was, in fact, involved in the murder of Hae Min Lee.
​

The Uncomfortable Truth

My previous posts HERE and HERE discuss how the Asia letters were fabricated and why. I did not emphasize enough that the letters were also an admission of Adnan’s participation in Hae’s murder. At the time of my earliest post, I incorrectly assumed that he and his inner circle subverted the grand jury proceedings exclusively to improperly extract information about the state's theory of Hae's time of death. Although that may be part of what was going on, it was mostly Bilal Ahmed attempting to stage manage the proceedings because, as you will see in the next section, that is who he is.
Remember that the police had already given up to Adnan the identity of who ratted him out. It was the "black guy who puts pins through his mouth." App-071. That meant that Adnan had to cover his time before he saw Jay after school on January 13, 1999. Information from the grand jury may have served to confirm that the window of time for when the murder occurred according to the state was consistent with what Bilal and Adnan knew happened.
Most people who know some of the details surrounding the letters know that they were fabricated. If you do not, I suggest reviewing the posts linked at the beginning of this section. But fabricating an alibi is something that can be explained away as the act of someone desperately trying to prove their innocence. Making up an alibi doesn’t necessarily prove that Adnan was involved in the murder. It was the timing that is underscored in each letter that serves as the admission of Adnan’s involvement.
Asia claims in her letters that she saw Adnan immediately after school. She specifically provided the time of 2:15 PM. Four years ago, I took a lot of shit for suggesting that the timing of Hae’s murder could not have been known by an innocent person on March 1, 1999. Especially when her body was not found until a month after she was last seen alive. So many hindsight spewing people with their heads appropriately up their ass declared with unearned certainty that everyone knew that Hae was murdered right after school. We know that is factually incorrect because Adnan’s own lawyers did not know the state’s theory of when Hae was murdered. They had to petition the court to compel the prosecution to provide that information. While demanding this information, Cristina Gutierrez’s letter dated July 7, 1999 specifically states:
“Defendant can’t possibly mount a defense or determine if an alibi disclosure is needed without being on notice of the alleged time of death.” (emphasis added).
Yes. Assuming that Adnan was innocent, no one could be working on an alibi until they knew Hae’s time of death. If that was not enough, we now have prosecutor Kevin Urick’s notes that were recently disclosed with information that he received from Bilal Ahmed’s ex-wife. In the wake of the news of Hae’s body being found, Bilal’s ex said that Bilal and Adnan talked about the police’s ability to determine the time of death. They also asked Bilal’s ex, who is a physician, about her experience in determining the time of death. That was on February 11, 1999–one month after Hae was last seen alive. Seventeen days before Adnan was arrested. We know it was February 11th because Hae’s body was found on February 9, she was identified on February 10th and the first news reports to the public of her body being found were on the 11th. The Baltimore Sun, February 12, 1999, pg. 8C. We also have Adnan’s cell record wherein his phone was pinging the tower near Bilal’s house located at 2915 Chestnut Hill Drive during the evening of the 11th. This address info is publicly available in Bilal’s 1999 divorce proceedings.
Then magically, there are two letters from Asia that provide Adnan with an alibi that are purportedly dated four months before an innocent Adnan would know the timing for when he needed one. While the actual dates that the fabricated letters were written is unclear, they predated the state’s July 8, 1999 disclosure of its theory for when Hae was murdered. We know that Gutierrez visited Adnan in prison two days later on July 10, 1999 to discuss potential alibis following the state’s disclosure. That is the date of Gutierrez’s suspiciously undated handwritten notes referring to Asia that were found in the defense file. Team Adnan had a penchant for selectively disclosing info from the defense file that was helpful and almost certainly shredded anything in the file that hurt Adnan’s case.
Remember. This was not a case where Hae left school and a shot rang out on January 13, 1999 at 2:20 PM and her dead body was found at 2:21 PM. She was last seen alive at 2:15 PM and her body was not found until four weeks later. The window for when she was murdered was wide open. The way alibis work in cases like this is as follows. The suspect waits for the police investigation to determine the time of the murder. The suspect is then presented with the relevant time frame. The suspect then considers whether he has anyone who can vouch for his time. In this case, Adnan had the alibi all lined up before conclusions were made regarding Hae's time of death. He then sat there drumming his fingers waiting to be confronted with the time that the state believed Hae was murdered. Upon finally being asked to account for himself, he had his prefabricated alibi. Prefabricated alibis are admissions.
There is also the police interview of Adnan’s friend, Ja’uan Gordon, who told the police about Asia’s letters in April of 1999. MPIA 912. Specifically, Ja’uan indicated that Adnan sent Asia a letter that she was supposed to transcribe and send back as her own. Team Adnan tried to “fix” Ja’uan’s statement by having him revise history 17 years later through an affidavit. It claims that the letter solicited from Asia was for letters of support attesting to his character in advance of Adnan’s bail hearing. Thus, even though there already instruction sheets for writing such letters circulating at Woodlawn High where Asia was a student wherein several students were tasked with collecting the letters (MPIA 1178), we are expected to believe that Adnan sent a special letter to Asia personally asking for her support. Did Asia ever even write Adnan a letter of support for his bail hearing? According to Asia, no. Asia admitted on the record in 2016--around the same time as Ja'uan's delayed affidavit--that the only letters she wrote were the two alibi letters. PCR Transcript, 2/4/2016 at 43:18-20.
We have not even discussed how Adnan and his family went out of their way to prove on the record that Asia’s alleged visit to the family home on March 1, 1999 never happened. You can read about that in more detail HERE where they also prove that their allegation that the information from Asia’s letters was immediately shared with Cristina Gutierrez was a demonstrable lie. If you have evidence at your disposal that proves that anything in the preceding paragraphs is factually incorrect, please share. Otherwise, it’s ok to finally acknowledge that Team Adnan has lied to you. Your support and attention should be directed to those who deserve it.
While you come to grips with the unpleasant truth, rest assured that your belief that Adnan was framed is grounded in facts. Note, however, that it is not based on the bullshit that Team Adnan has been trying to sell. Nor does it resemble the silly arguments found in the motion to vacate when the Baltimore prosecutor's office was run by Marilyn Mosby who was desperately trying to distract attention from her federal indictment. The police/prosectuor conspiracy is not as broad and comprehensive as many believe, but it is more insidious and depraved that you can imagine. The police investigation was not completely an exercise in bad faith. They resorted to fabricating evidence when they realized that they had nowhere to go. To understand the predicament in which the police found themselves, you need to understand how Bilal Ahmed operates. A foundation in understanding Bilal’s twisted mind and his relationship with Adnan sheds light on how the plot to murder Hae was supposed to go down, how it did go down and, most importantly, how Jay Wilds was wantonly and recklessly used by almost everyone involved in this case.
​

Entering the Mind of a Monster

This discipline and secrecy that resulted in Jay being the only witness claiming to have personal knowledge of the crimes committed by Adnan is beyond the capability of even the most devious 17-year-old. It came from Bilal Ahmed. The ridiculous discipline that was required to minimize the number of witnesses is a testament to Bilal’s meticulous nature. The only reason that the prosecution even had Jay was because Adnan deviated from Bilal’s plot. Had Adnan stuck to Bilal’s plan, there would not have been any material witnesses testifying against Adnan.
Thanks to Urick’s recently leaked notes, many of you have caught up to the idea that Bilal Ahmed played a role in the murder of Hae Min Lee. But then I see all the ridiculous theories that Bilal acted alone. Or that Bilal worked with Jay. Or that Bilal used one of those space lasers that exist only in the thing between Marjorie Taylor Green’s ears that neurologists mistake for a brain to blast Hae to death. Slow down. There is no need to treat this like toddler soccer where everyone, including the goalies, chase the ball around the field. We must disabuse ourselves of these false assumptions. Bilal did not work with Jay, communicate with Jay or have any direct connection with Jay. That demonstrates a degree of carelessness that is absent in Bilal’s DNA. Nor did Bilal carefully have Hae murdered without Adnan’s participation or knowledge. Anyone who thinks otherwise does not understand Bilal and the facts of this case.
It is important to pause here and note the ridiculously close relationship between Bilal and Adnan for those who are not familiar. Bilal has known Adnan since the latter was 11 years old. After Adnan was arrested, he told the detectives that he wanted to speak with Bilal. Bilal was Adnan’s first call from jail. Bilal hired the lawyers who were calling the police department within an hour of Adnan’s arrest. Bilal organized the local Islamic community’s fundraising efforts to cover the cost of Adnan’s defense. Bilal hired Cristina Gutierrez to represent himself when he testified before the grand jury and subsequently had Gutierrez take over Adnan’s defense. From his arrest through early October 1999, Bilal visited Adnan in prison more than any person who was not a member of Adnan’s family or legal team. When Bilal himself was arrested in mid October 1999 for criminal sexual conduct with a minor, he had a photo of Adnan in his wallet. That’s all I can remember off the top of my head. That’s the guy you heard almost nothing about in the original podcast.
I’m not saying this to gloat, but when I concluded a few years ago that Bilal was the mastermind behind the plot to murder Hae Min Lee, I was not just throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks. I was not making a wild guess and got lucky like I filled out a fluke NCAA bracket. I wasted a shitload of time analyzing the evidence and studying how Bilal operated. He is an extremely careful criminal. That explains how he was able to evade capture for nearly two decades despite his preying on children, his dental patients, US taxpayers (bilking Medicaid), etc. He does an excellent job covering his tracks. His problem was his tendency to go way over the top while doing so. This manifests through his concocting overly complicated plots and, in the case of Hae’s murder, going to extreme lengths to give himself plausible deniability by not getting his hands dirty. Thus, even if the cops suspect him, as they did in this case, they do not have enough evidence to charge him. Recall that Bilal’s cell records were subpoenaed around the time Adnan was formally indicted on April 13, 1999. On the surface, Bilal’s cell records did not give the cops enough to make him a suspect in the conspiracy to murder Hae. You have to go a few levels deeper to understand the game Bilal was playing.
It’s helpful to examine some of examples of Bilal’s extreme risk aversion and theatrics to understand why he would never have Jay knowingly participate in the plot to murder Hae. Let’s begin by reviewing the steps Bilal took regarding the phone that he purchased for Adnan.

• Bilal was letting Adnan use one of his (at least) three cell phones before Hae’s murder. We know this because of Adnan’s friend, Peter Billingsly’s, police interview. Peter said that Adnan was using a Sprint phone before he got the AT&T phone. God bless Peter for specifying the carrier name because Bilal’s three lines are on Sprint. Checking Bilal’s records shows that there was a call placed to Peter around the time Adnan picked up the new phone that Bilal purchased for him. Thus, it is established that Adnan was using one of Bilal’s phones immediately before Hae was last seen alive.
• I stated in previous posts that Bilal did not want to risk using one of his phones in the plot in case things went south. It’s bad enough that Bilal purchased a new phone for Adnan immediately before Hae’s murder. It looks even more suspicious that Bilal was allowing Adnan to use one of his Sprint phones and suddenly decided that Adnan should have one of his own. That’s pretty huge and something that neither Adnan nor his surrogates ever addressed.
• We know that Adnan’s AT&T phone was purchased on January 11, 1999 by Bilal and that Adnan went with Peter the next day to pick it up. Because Bilal needs everything to be a ridiculously complicated cloak and dagger production, he went to the AT&T store separate from Adnan to create distance from himself (Bilal) and the purchase of the AT&T phone. Because Bilal is not always as smart as he thinks he is, he didn’t realize that purchasing the phone for Adnan would require the account to be under Bilal’s own name, which is splashed across the top (second page of PDF) of Adnan’s cell phone bill. Thus, all that secret agent bullshit was for naught.
• After Adnan’s arrest, Bilal knew it looked very bad that he purchased the AT&T phone for Adnan immediately before Hae was last seen alive. Thus, Bilal used Yasar Ali (I’m not re-writing that shit) whom he called before Yaser’s police interview and likely told him to tell the cops that Bilal and Adnan had been shopping for a phone for months–which Yasar did (MPIA 965). This was to make the phone purchase look more coincidental than like a suspicious act.
• Bilal also knew that it looked bad that he went to the AT&T store separately–like he was trying to keep distance between himself and Adnan’s phone. So, during the grand jury proceedings, Bilal perjured himself and testified that he accompanied Adnan to the AT&T store to get the phone (bottom of pg. 9). We know that isn’t true based on Peter B’s statement to the cops.
• As to all the crap about Adnan’s parents knowing about the phone and Adnan being proud of being able to pay for a phone by himself, that’s all bullshit too. During the grand jury proceedings, Bilal testified that the bills for Adnan’s phone went to Bilal’s home address, not Adnan’s (see pg. 15). It was obviously in Bilal's interest to lie about that but he could not because the records indicated that the bills went to Bilal. Adnan did not spend one penny of his own money on that phone.
• Finally, there is the record of calls between Bilal and Adnan’s new phone–notably, the lack thereof. Bilal was careful to not have any calls between himself and Adnan on the AT&T phone on the days surrounding Hae’s murder. That was enough to throw the cops–who had subpoenaed Bilal’s phone records–off his scent. At first glance, the cops saw no calls between Adnan and Bilal between Jan 12 and Jan 14, 1999. No calls tying Bilal to Adnan on the day Hae was last seen alive. It worked. But Bilal being Bilal, he went way too far and hardly ever called Adnan’s cell at any point for the next five weeks. That was too fucking deliberate. Too careful. Not even a "Hey! How's that new phone I got you working out?" Or "Thanks for for the new phone, Bilal!" Nothing.
• In sum, Bilal decided that the safest course for himself was to NOT let Adnan use one of his Sprint phones and got him a new AT&T phone from which he did his damndest to distance himself. By trying too hard, Bilal revealed his scheme for self-preservation in view of the crime.

Is it becoming clear why there are so few witnesses against Adnan who actually saw or heard anything? No? Ok, let’s revisit how Bilal and Adnan concocted such an elaborate alibi that it ended up becoming an admission.

• Alonzo Sellers stumbled across Hae’s body on February 9, her body was identified on February 10 and it was reported to the public on February 11.
• As described earlier, we know based on Urick’s notes that Bilal and Adnan were stressing out on February 11, 1999 as the discovery of Hae’s body was being reported. We know that they were asking Bilal’s physician wife if the cops would be able to determine Hae’s time of death. Bilal and Adnan knew right then on February 11, 1999 that they needed to cover Adnan for the window during which he had no alibi.
• Jay was supposed to serve as the first and most important alibi to cover Adnan from the time that Jay picked Adnan up after school from the Best Buy lot. We will address this in excruciating detail later. But when Jay became a witness for the prosecution, Adnan needed someone to lie about seeing him an hour or so before that. Thus, the Asia alibi.
• But these shit-heads were not patient enough to wait until the state actually provided its theory on July 8, 1999 of when Hae was murdered that Gutierrez demanded the previous day specifically for alibi purposes. Nor were they capable of taking the less complicated route of having Asia come forward and simply declare that she saw Adnan at the library during the relevant time. That’s way too straightforward. Bilal is all about putting on a garish production. Thus, they have Asia write multiple letters with tons of unnecessary information indicating foreknowledge of what the state’s theory was going to be. A theory that the state did not disclose to the defense until more than four fucking months passed after the dates on Asia’s letters. Letters that talk about Adnan’s “unwitnessed, unaccountable time.” Letters that ended up being incriminating instead of exculpatory. All because Bilal cannot stop himself from trying too fucking hard. Because Bilal is preoccupied with carefully making every detail perfect. This habit of revealing criminal behavior by trying too hard is not limited to Bilal. It is a recurring theme that is essential to understanding this case.

Given that backdrop, it is absurd to believe that Bilal would say, “Hey Adnan! Tell that acquaintance of yours who is outside of our circle of trust about our plot to murder Hae and his role in it! Imagine the fun we'll have sweating buckets wondering when he will tell his friends and the stories we will have to make up to stay ahead of the police and prosecutors!” Bilal’s failures as a criminal mastermind include cramming way too much detail and having too many moving parts–demonstrating too much care. Injecting a witness like Jay into the plot that can later sell you out is beyond careless. Bilal had other plans for Jay. Without knowing it, Jay was supposed to help Adnan get away with the murder. It is a bitter irony for Adnan that Jay ended up doing the exact opposite.
On to Part 2

** Fri 5/26 *\*
Fri 10:30 - 11:30 AM Mindful Movement - Yoga in the Park North Domingo Baca Park, 7521 Carmel Ave NE Come break a sweat, get a deep stretch in, and then grab lunch at one of the food trucks afterwards! Meet us on the small grassy area just west of the dog park. Bring your own mat and water! See you there!
Fri 12 PM Pistachio Cream Ale Release Tractor Brewing Company, 118 Tulane Dr. NE We’ve been holding off releasing this one of a kind brew specifically for ABQ Beer Week! Inspired by pistachios produced right here in New Mexico this brew is as smooth as silk and as tasty and a fresh roasted pistachio. This is a very limited one off for us, so come and get you a pint or growler while supplies last
Fri 1- 6 PM Tap Takeover Tap N Taco, 1120 State Hwy 528 NE, Rio Rancho Stop by during ABQ Beer Week from 1-6 p.m. for some of the best tacos in town and a pint of Steel Bender beer...we're taking over their taps! COMPA Blue Corn Lager, Raspberry DYNAMITE, Mañana Hazy IPA, and Hefe Lifting will be available
Fri 5 - 10 PM Friday Night Fever Vol. 1 Expo NM Home of the NM State Fair, 300 San Pedro Dr. NE Local favorites edition! Come enjoy some of the cities favorite artists in a variety of genres, dance, shop and have fun •Modified Car Show! *please respect the spot, no burnouts, revving, etc.* FREE ADMISSION INTO EVENT. $7 parking charge. Event is hosted exclusively by Desert Sun Event Productions DBA Delectable baking Co in partnership with EXPO NM
Fri 6 - 9 PM Variety Dance CSP Dance Studios, 1624 Eubank Blvd. NE Welcome to the city's biggest variety dance! We'll be playing all kinds of music: ballroom, latin, country, swing, you name it! $10 cash/check at the door (sorry, no card or Venmo, CashApp, etc.) Welcome lesson from 6:00-6:30pm
Fri 6 - 10 PM Luau Disco Night Tractor Brewing Company - Westside, 5720 McMahon Blvd., Bldg 5, Ste A We're celebrating the start of summer on our patio with DJ Fishbowl for Luau Disco Night! Come dig in on some tiki drink specials, old and new age disco tunes, eats from RioTacos and if you wear your best Hawaiian shirt enjoy dollar off drinks!
Fri 7 - 11:30 PM Steely Dead a Sonic Fusion of Steely Dan & The Grateful Dead Lobo Theater, 3013 Central Ave NE Steely Dead: A National Touring Band with a Unique Fusion of Grateful Dead and Steely Dan. Hailing from the vibrant music scene of Denver, Colorado, Steely Dead is a national touring band that has captured the hearts of music lovers with their unique blend of Grateful Dead jams and Steely Dan grooves. Comprised of four exceptionally talented musicians - Dave Abear on guitar, Matt Abear on bass, Chris Sheldon on drums, and Dylan Teifer on keys - Steely Dead has gained a dedicated following with their electrifying performances and soulful interpretations of classic tunes. Get ready for a night of musical magic as the Lonn Calanca Band takes the stage to deliver their impeccable interpretations of classic Jerry Garcia Band jams in support of Steeley Dead! With the incredible talents of Kelly Wilson, Josh English, Tony Orant, and Rachel Ross, this show promises to be a delectable feast for the senses. So whether you're a devoted dead head or a lover of all types of music, prepare yourself for a savory and thoroughly satisfying night that's guaranteed to fill you with good vibes and good times (tickets)
Fri 8 - 9 PM Club Fuego Cake Nightclub, 515 Central Ave NW Introducing the new club Fuego every Friday night live. Every Friday night we will be spinning the top latin hits from DJ Julio and other top DJs. To kick it off, we are having no cover charge and drink specials all night long. Join us for $4 Dos Equis, $ Lone River Ranch Ritas, and $5 shots of Patron.Checkout our second floor with local DJ's playing top 40 and hip hop hits
Fri 8 - 10 PM Magic & Comedy Night Beer Week Edition Tractor Brewing - Wells Park, 1800 4th St. NW Dave Grimm is New Mexico's favorite bearded, balded, fake shaman-man! The night will feature his interactive close-up bar magic, yes with our beer in his tricks, and a stage show where he will make you think he can read your mind (can he?). Joining Dave will be two of Albuquerque's top comedians: Caleb Mulkey and Bryan Andrew Lambe! For this special edition we’ll be doing some sweet Tractor giveaways as well!
Fri 8 PM - 1 AM Disko Rumba Sister, 407 Central Ave NW Cumbia, Retro Reggaeton, Merengue, Dembow, Y Mas! Puro Pinche Pari! Sounds by Priejo! (tickets)
Fri 9 PM - 2 AM Synergy Effex, 420 Central Ave *All 3 levels of Effex Nightclub* UKO Records & Pirate Radio have curated this beautifully unique combination of artists to synergistically envelope you into a brand new soundscape. Activate your senses in a personal one on one session with Satya’s Meditative Light Therapy for a cosmic experience. Shop local designer Disco Liquid Studio. QuannumThrow will take you on a visual journey to enhance the synergistic soundscape (click link for full schedule and lineup)
Fri 10:30 PM The Third Saturday in October - throwback tribute to 80s slasher flicks with deranged love & humor! The Guild Cinema, 3405 Central Ave NE BONUS! PRODUCER FRANK CRAFTS AND THE ART DIRECTOR ELLAR COLTRANE (OF BOYHOOD FAME!) WILL BE IN PERSON FOR TALK/Q&A! Friday 10:30pm ONLY! Check out the trailer. Jay Burleson - 2023 - 99m - ALL SEATS $8. October 1979. Ricky Dean is a man on a mission. Years ago, he lost a child at the hands of a psychopathic killer named Jakkariah Harding. When Harding escapes Death Row, Ricky Dean throws himself into the line of fire to stop him from killing again as Harding preys upon a group of friends gathered to watch a college football game. An authentic throwback to the golden age of the slasher genre, THE THIRD SATURDAY IN OCTOBER is both a loving tribute to the films that created the horror franchises we know and love as well as an effectively creepy chiller for the modern age
** BOTH SAT 5/27 AND SUN 5/28 *\*
Sabaku Con 2023 Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North, 5151 San Francisco Rd. NE Don't miss Albuquerque's largest and longest running Anime and Gaming convention. Held at the Marriott Pyramid Albuquerque over Memorial Day weekend (more info and tickets)
** SAT 5/27 - MON 5/29 *\*
New Mexico Wine Fest Balloon Fiesta Park, 5500 Balloon Fiesta Pkwy An annual Memorial Day weekend tradition, with over 20 wineries, great food and live local music, what's not to love. This is our second year featuring our garden theme, and we welcome you to wander in the wine garden with us and enjoy the beautiful New Mexico sunshine (more info and tickets)
** Sat 5/27 *\*
Sat 9 - 10 AM U.S.S. Bullhead Memorial Clean Up! 1606 San Pedro Dr. SE Albuquerque is worth the work to keep beautiful! Please join me fellow Burqueños at the U.S.S. Bullhead Memorial park litter clean up! Trash bags and gloves will be provided to you at the 9AM check-in; please meet in the parking lot. There are also 4 extra litter pick up sticks to loan for the hour so be there early to grab yours! Please remind your family and friends not to litter!
Sat 9 AM - 4 PM Refuge Scavenger Hunt Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, 7851 2nd St. SW Stop by the refuge's visitor center any time between 9AM and 4PM to take a scavenger hunt walk and receive a prize upon completion. Fun for all ages and FREE! (Prizes will be given out while supplies last)
Sat 9 AM - 6 PM Customer Appreciation Day! Osuna Nursery, 501 Osuna Rd. NE We love our customers! Join us for our annual Customer Appreciation Day at Osuna Nursery!
Sat 10 AM - 3 PM Car Wash + Dine to Donate Gecko's Bar And Tapas Too, 5801 Academy Rd. NE Help the Atomic Sisters Rugby Team get to the National Championship! We travel to St. Louis, MO June 2nd-5th for the Final Four and a shot at the title. Join us for a car wash PLUS a dine-to-donate fundraiser (25% of all food sales go to the Sisters)! Car wash will run 10am-3pm and dine-to-donate will run all day! Thank you for your support!
Sat 10:30 - 11:30 AM Mindful Movement - Yoga in the Park North Domingo Baca Park, 7521 Carmel Ave NE Break a sweat, get a deep stretch in and grab lunch at a food truck afterwards! Meet us on the grassy area just west of the dog park. Bring your own yoga mat
Sat 10:30 AM - 12 PM Wellness Schedule Casa Rondeña Winery, 733 Chavez Rd. NW, Los Ranchos Open to people of all skill levels, Wellness + Wine is a one-hour, outdoor practice, followed by a glass of wine or Sangria, and an invitation to stay and relax on the grounds of the beautiful Casa Rondeña Winery. This experience is $25, and includes glass of wine. Discounts apply for winery members. Reservations are required to participate
Sat 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM New Mexico Entertainment's Morning Toons The Guild Cinema, 3405 Central Ave NE Grab your pajamas and your blanket, and take part in this Saturday morning event with your family and friends. New Mexico Entertainment Magazine brings you cartoons from your childhood on the big screen at The Guild Cinema. Kick back, have some breakfast, and enjoy the toons! The ticket includes admission and breakfast. Morning Toons is a LIMITED seat event
Sat 12 - 11 PM Ciderday Night Fever Space Disco Tractor Brewing Company, 118 Tulane Dr. SE We're featuring some of our amazing delicious ciders in flights and of course in goblets for you goblins. This year we’ll be featuring four limited one off ciders made by us, then at 8pm DJ Ren will be laying down some psychedelic disco on the ones and twos to get your apple tree shaking!
Sat 12 - 6 PM Bear Fest 2023 Boxing Bear Brewing Co., 8420 Firestone Ln. NE Music, Samples & Pints, Craft Vendors and Food Trucks. This is a 21+ event. Please leave your kids at home. Parents with kids under 21 will not be allowed entry to the festival. Get a babysitter and enjoy yourself! Tickets are available exclusively on Eventbrite. Purchase online before coming to the gate. GENERAL ADMISSION $25.00 - Available two weeks before the festival and at the gate - Includes entry to the festival , Commemorative BEAR FEST pint glass, four 4oz sample tickets and one full pint of your choice. DESIGNATED DRIVER $10.00 - Entry to the festival only, Designated driver wrist band, must still be 21+ to enter (click event link for list of participating breweries, vendors, and music lineup)
Sat 1 - 9 PM Party in the Park - Focus Edition Roosevelt Park, 500 Spruce St. SE Now that the weather has gotten better, it's time that the Focus fam gets back together for another Party in the Park. We've missed getting friends and family together and coming together for the love of the music and our DJs. This is a family-friendly event and open to all of our friends and relations (click link for full lineup)
Sat 1 PM Family Art Workshop Albuquerque Museum, 2000 Mountain Rd. NW Inspired by Ronald Rael's installation Glass Scaffold in the atrium courtyard we will make our own geometric sculptures. Use toothpicks, colored popsicle sticks, and glue to create a mini-masterpiece
Sat 2 - 5 PM Rebel Paws Rescue is hosting a FUNDRAISER Lizard Tail Brewing Industrial, 3351 Columbia Dr. NE Come out and help homeless dogs with your donation of a water bowl and help raise money for your own health with Evolution Strength and Conditioning Gym, Albuquerque’s premier LBGTAI+ gym!
Sat 2 - 6 PM Flying Legends Cutter Aviation, 2502 Clark Carr Loop SE The Flying Legends event will be held at Cutter Aviation at the Albuquerque International Sunport, and will feature the B-25 Mitchell "Maid in the Shade". Enjoy networking with Women in Aviation, Land of Enchantment chapter members and spread the word about our chapter at our booth! We would like to have volunteers at our booth in two shifts, from 2pm-4pm and from 4pm-6pm (more info)
Sat 2:30 - 4:30 PM Argentine Tango Practica Albuquerque Square Dance Club, 4915 Hawkins St. NE Presented by the Tango Club of ABQ (TCA), a nonprofit dance club. Tango practica is great for practicing Argentine tango, vals, and milonga, meeting other tango dancers, having fun, and being part of the tango dancing community. No partner necessary. Open to everyone, all skill levels. 2nd and 4th Sundays from May to Oct: Milonga at the Old Town Gazebo, Romero St. NW and San Felipe St. NW
Sat 4 - 5 PM East Coast Swing Group Class Enchantment Dancing, 337 San Pedro Dr. NE Welcome to our Bronze American East Coast Swing Class! Whether you are a newbie stepping on to the dance floor for the first time or a seasoned professional wanting to brush up on basics, as well as anyone in-between, this class is for you! East Coast Swing is an exciting, up-beat dance that is endlessly versatile! No partner necessary, and dropping in is fine! Class cost is only $10, and a punch card for 6 classes is $50
Sat 4 - 8 PM Pop Up Market Vegan Village, 1321 Eubank Blvd. NE Join us for another evening of fun, live music, DJ, drinks, great eats and sweets! We will also have a great variety of vendors for everyone to visit throughout the evening. Family friendly and companion animal friendly as well! Don't miss out on the most unique eats in town! Everyone is welcome! Make sure to RSVP on our eventbrite page to be entered for any giveaways and to let us know you are coming! Live music by the band Baracutanga! Special guest DJ Nalgona Superstar!
Sat 7 - 10 PM Night In The Sound Garden Drag Show Revel, 4720 Alexander Blvd. NE Drag Brunch Wasn't Enough? The Haus Of Attack Has Your Back! Join Us For An Evening Of Memories, Fun, And DRAG! Your Favorite HOA Is Back In The Sound Garden! Bringing You A Fierce Cast, Jessica K. Daniels, Trey C. Michaels, Divyne Intervention, and Busy B! Hosted By Your Favorite Duo, Assma Attack and ViLette Stratton. Seating For This Event Will Be Open Seating Unless Reserved VIP Lounge Seating Is Purchased
Sat 7:30 PM Road Warrior Comedy Show Dry Heat Comedy Club, 521 Central Ave NW, Ste G Chuck Parker Comedy and Crosslines Media present another edition of the Road Warrior Comedy Show! May’s show is sponsored by Red Door Brewing Company (downtown)! Featuring hardened standup veterans from all over the country! This month's headliner: Zach Abeyta was voted Albuquerque The Magazine’s ‘Best in the City’ in the category of comedian! This show WILL sell out, so get your tickets now! Featuring Benny Martinez & Kate Anella With your host Chuck Parker
Sat 9:30 PM - 1 AM Sabor Latin Nights Damacio's Bar & Tapas, 722 Central Ave SW Join us for Albuquerque's hottest Saturday Salsa / Latin Dancing night! Music by DJ GABRIEL GOZA. Free Salsa/Bachata lesson @ 9:30pm. Mixing up los sabores de Salsa, Bachata, Timba, Reggaeton, Mambo y mas! Full Bar / 21 & Over / $10 cover / Kitchen open until 9:30
Sat 10:30 PM Rosemary's Baby Guild Cinema, 3405 Central Ave NE God is dead. Satan lives. Advance tickets automatically entered for giveaways from Spectral Youth and Dark Room Horror
** Sun 5/28 *\*
Sun 10 AM - 2 PM Block Party 2469 Corrales Rd., Corrales *Open to the community!* We are proud to host a community block party in celebration of our practice's one year anniversary! *Food truck (The Munchie Truck) *Drinks *Yard games *Bounce House *Silent Auction benefiting local student scholarship funds *Community and networking. Hosted by Enchantment Upper Cervical Chiropractic
Sun 10 AM - 2 PM Star Wars Historic Lobo Theater, 3013 Central Ave NE THE HISTORIC LOBO THEATER along with Albuquerque Film & Music Experience is excited to bring Star Wars back to the big screen! Showing Starts at11:30AM Tickets are ONLY $10 for General Admission Brunch and a ticket is ONLY $21. Exclusive brunch menu: made-to-order pancakes, mimosas, and more! 10% off if you come in your pajamas!
Sun 12 - 2 PM Family Paint Party Urban 360 Pizza Grill and Tap House, 2119 Menaul Blvd. NE Join Hannah and in just about two hours, while you’re sipping on a glass of wine, beer, or drink of your choice*, our performing artist will guide you through a painting step-by-step. At the end of the night, take home your own unique masterpiece - you will be amazed by what you can do! We provide everything you will need for use at the event: canvas, paints, brushes and even a smock. You just bring your fun-loving friends and have a few drinks! Please arrive 15-30 minutes prior to start time, especially if you have a large group. This will secure seating with your friends and allow you to order your drink before the event begins. **Event is for 16 and over. Must be 21+ purchase alcohol. No children allowed
Sun 12 - 5 PM The GameTime Trade Show Hinkle Fun Center, 12931 Indian School Rd. NE Attention, Sports and Pokémon Collectors – The Countdown is On! The 28th of May is about to become your favorite day of the year! The GameTime Trade Show is landing at Hinkle Family Fun Center! We're going full throttle with epic card trades, camaraderie with fellow collectors, and treasure hunting for your next favorite addition! Ready to cash in on your card stash? Get your spot in line by dialing GameTime at (505) 294-3087. Join the excitement, amplify your collection, and mingle with the best in the business!
Sun 12:30 - 10 PM Memorial Day Sunday - Veterans Play for Free Empire Board Game Library, 3503 Central Ave NE Military members current and former come in and play for free on the Sunday preceding Memorial Day
Sun 3:15 - 6:15 PM Tablao Flamenco Albuquerque Matinee Show Hotel Albuquerque at Old Town, 800 Rio Grande Blvd. NW Tickets. Doors open at 3:15 pm. Performance begins at 4:00 pm. Albuquerque, NM, is the Flamenco Capitol of the United States. Immerse yourself in this deep, culturally significant art form every Friday & Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon at Hotel Albuquerque. Through a unique partnership based on cultural preservation, Heritage Hotels and Resorts and the nonprofit National Institute of Flamenco have joined efforts to create Tablao Flamenco Albuquerque. At Tablao Flamenco, the passion and energy of flamenco come alive as you experience flamenco in its most intimate, powerful setting in the heart of historic Old Town. Featuring a world-class line-up of artists, the Tablao Flamenco presents a dynamic schedule of performances, featuring premier artists from Spain and the United States
Sun 4 PM Bad Bunny Day Party Effex Rooftop, 420 Central Ave Back again with a Bad Bunny DAY PARTY! Bad Bunny themed drinks by Beto The Bartender & Bad Bunny Music ALL DAY LONG! DJ Spunjy in the mix!
Sun 7 PM DYSTOPIA Industrial Dance Party JUNO, 1501 1st St. NW Monthly industrial dance party returns! Dj $uspence and red-209 bring the latest and greatest in industrial dance! It's a DYSTOPIA, dress and dance accordingly!
** Mon 5/29 *\*
Mon 5 - 9 PM Adult Coloring Night Tractor Brewing Company - Westside, 5720 McMahon Blvd., Bldg 5, Ste A Come color with us! We got the sheets, markers, pencils, and crayons! ALL FREE! Every Monday
Mon 6 - 7:30 PM Cuban Salsa National Hispanic Cultural Center (upstairs), 1701 4th St. SW This is a weekly Casino (Cuban) Salsa course focusing on techniques, figures, rhythms, music and body movements of Cuban Salsa. Basic Pasos 6PM - 6:30PM. Figures/Combinations 6:30PM-7:30PM. Cost: $60 /Month paid up front or $20 drop in rate per class. No Partner or previous experience necessary, just desire to learn, have fun, and dance with amazing people interested in dancing Casino Salsa! WE WILL: * Learn important fundamental elements (patterns, steps, and musicality) for a solid foundation in Casino. Salsa * familiarize ourselves with music and rhythms (clave) * start with basics Casino steps and incorporate new basic elements each week * learn the roles and responsibilities for Lead / Follow so each person understands the importance of their part * incorporate dancing separate from your partner (Salsa suelta aka shines) * Further in our progress we will incorporate Cuban Rumba and Afro-Cuban dances influenced by folkloric traditions in Cuba * learn figuras (combinations) that are usually identified by colorful Spanish words that characterize or describe the movement, for example: the call “Sombrero” refers to the HAT figure * dancing "a tiempo" or "contra tiempo" (with time or against time) or dancing with "the melody" or with "the clave". Faster Timba music is usually danced "a tiempo". Slower music like Son is danced "contra tiempo" Salsa is unique to each person.. so bring your sabor and vamoooos a bailar!

You know after 10 years of this IP existing I thought it was time to actually play this game.
I was one of those people (peasants) who watched playthroughs of Undertale when it first came out. Because, like those people I had no money. Also like those people I played Deltarune chapters 1&2 because it was free (sorry Toby).
Yesterday I played through the ruins, I have been through this place a lot during the demo. However, one thing that really surprised me is after beating Toriel she didn't heal me. For the longest time I thought she healed Frisk after the battle. I wonder what other stuff I misremembered.
Also, meeting Papyrus after not even a name drop in Deltarune was magical. He just barges in, rants about everything and runs off . (I really hope he becomes a companion in later chapters).
Anyway, I will be updating this post until I finish the true pacifist run. Even if nobody reads this, its nice to have a record of somebody's first playthrough of this curious little game. :D
P.S. This might take a while, months even. Long periods between updates!
​
UPDATE 1 Snowdin forest
Talk about a jolly stroll, this whole forest area is quite calming, never felt I was in any danger despite the increasingly deadly guard dogs.
Speaking of which another one of my misconceptions got corrected. I thought Dogsong played for all dog encounters, nope just Greater Dog.
Toby is great at making characters endearing really quickly, from Sans and Papyrus to even Jerry! He came a long way since the Halloween Hack in terms of character writing. Funnily enough it's obvious that Toby was course correcting hard with the dialogue in comparison with the Hack.
Also the mystery dooroom gives me strong Oneshot vibes, especially the music.
​
UPDATE 2 Snowdin
My Fun event was the "wrong number song" so the average experience. I really like the idea of randomized Fun events. Its the closest to the "every copy of X game is personalized" concept in an actual game.
sans theme playing in Grilbys, even when he is not there. Guess sans was destined to inherit that property. R.I.P Grilbys.
The Papyrus date was jarring, in a good way. Its like an old anime with the animation being choppy and static most of the time, and suddenly it becomes really smooth and flashy.
One nitpick I have is that the world doesn't feel that dynamic, almost everyone stands in place, not even an idle animation. I understand that Toby focuses more on dialogue to get across the effect of a lively world. But personally, being in a room (such as the Library) where multiple characters that are completely still, is kinda off-putting.
Speaking of dialogue, I know for a fact that Papyrus has unique dialogue for every room in Undertale. [THIS IS GOING TO TAKE A LONG TIME...]
Might rename this post to Hard Mode, because this will certainly be finished in 20XX AD.

I ran LunekJones' synopsis through ChatGPT — it's known to "hallucinate" and get things not-quite-right, but I find the errors interesting. Somehow it interpreted certain negative comments as positive, then spun them differently in the edit. Maybe because my prompts were about "improving" the text. This is NOT intended as a "fan creation," merely as an aid to the original post. Anyway. Enjoy.
​
INDIANA JONES and the DIAL of DESTINY
Leaked Plot Synopsis
Improved Readability Edit, 5/23/23
by LunekJones and ChatGPT
Original Post
​
PROLOGUE
Lucasfilm. Paramount. Disney — and the castle cross-dissolves into a baleful BAVARIAN SCHLOSS, dark and crenelated, spires piercing a glowering dusk.
We’re in GERMANY, at a particularly rotten moment: 1944 A.D.
Lightning strobes and darkness overtakes us. We endure a tense, silent pause before — KA-BASH!, a door smashes open, center frame, and we careen through the opening into an adjoining cavernous chamber. When our whiplash subsides it dawns on us that we’re now somewhere inside the gothic edifice.
Our POV is certain, deliberate, purposeful — a confident stride toward a most peculiar tableau vivant at the opposite end of this medieval banquet hall. Quick intercuts give half-second glimpses of our patented jackboots, the hilt of our gleaming Luger, our embroidered insignia and shimmering medals — our whole panoply of fear and death. We are brutality incarnate, a grim SS Oberführer — the film’s antagonist? — racing to intercept a cordon of gruff underlings presently barely restraining a quarrelsome Young Nazi.
Off their superior’s subtle look, the lead stalhhelm rips a burlap shroud from the bucking bronco’s face, revealing:
INDIANA JONES,
looking exactly as he should, undoubtedly the final result of the most ambitious de-aging ever dared. It’s even better than Dark Fate’s young Sarah Connor — better than Mando’s Season 3 Luke. It’s like footage from an Indy movie shot in 1995 except you know it can’t be that because IMDb insists no such film exists.
All this while the castle is under heavy fire, a churn of chaos, bellweather of impending Axis defeat.
FAR OUTSIDE, in a fog-wreathed pine forest, BASIL SHAW catches glimpses of the towering fortress through tangles of moss and branch. His beady eyes dart everywhere — he is anxiety made flesh.
INSIDE, the Nazi officer, examining Indy's notes, questions why he was interested in stealing the Lance of Longinus, a prized artifact coveted by Hitler himself, as it was believed to be the lance used in the crucifixion of Christ. At some point, physicist JÜRGEN VOLLER appears, and briefly glances at the Lance before it is taken away, suggesting he notices something significant. The exchange concludes with the officer ordering Indy's removal, triumphantly stating, “To the victor go the spoils.”
Sadly, Basil — a studious Oxonian unsuited for close-quarters combat — is captured by Nazis (and their inevitable hunting dogs) and taken aboard a train leaving the castle, which is now on the brink of total destruction.
Indy finds himself about to be lynched by the bad guys. Fortunately for him, a gravity bomb drops into the room, slowly descending multiple floors before exploding, killing his would-be executioners — but leaving Indy high and dry, hanging by the rope around his neck. Miraculously, he manages to escape. It's an incredibly tense sequence.
On the train, Voller’s words carry no weight. He tries and fails to relate his revelations to the Oberführer. Soon, Basil Shaw finds himself under interrogation by the very same man. Somewhere not far away, Indiana — of course — takes the long road, delivering truly imaginative feats of derring-do along the way, squeezing every drop of value from his tattered Nazi disguise. It’s one thrilling action sequence after another, culminating with one of the sidecars (there are so many sidecars) getting sheared in half. Indy successfully boards the train (I believe this is the first time we catch a stab of the Raiders motif) and starches numberless brownshirts along the way, each felled by the satisfying pulp soundboard Ben Burtt so lovingly gifted us 42 years ago. As he progresses through the interior of the train, enfilade style, car to car, he recovers the Lance of Longinus . . . only to discover it's a replica. He also comes across a multitude of “precious valuables, your highness” and antiquities “recovered” by the AHNENERBE, the same division responsible for questing after the Ark and the Grail, which makes me wonder if the train is this movie’s nod to old rumored “lost Nazi treasure-caches” transported on their much-vaunted railways — like the Amber Room or any number of illusory “gold trains.”
Voller loses his patience and informs the Nazi officer that the Lance is a fake, much to Hitler's forthcoming disappointment. Voller begins discussing the Dial of Destiny and reveals a fragment of it, suggesting it would be of greater interest to Hitler. While his cohorts’ expressions are leaden and unreadable, an obvious glow of interest begins to radiate from Basil Shaw. Right about then Indy manages to locate the train car where Basil is being held captive. Indy routs his captors as Basil drops some very kinetic exposition to Indy about the Dial, and together, they escape to the train's roof. Indy incapacitates Voller with a surprise punch and steals the Dial. On the roof, they witness Allied dive bombers attacking the train, liquefying many aspiring fascists in the process. Just when it seems they are about to escape, the Nazi officer confronts them in a bluish haze. Indy fights him, trying to keep his head attached as the train plows through a chain of hazardous tunnels.
Indy skillfully whips his enemy’s pistol free and tosses it to Basil, signaling him to shoot. In the heat of the moment, Basil accidentally fires at Indy instead. Indy retaliates by throwing the Nazi officer off the roof, brandishing the Dial in the air and reclaiming the rancid officer’s one-liner, “To the victor go the spoils.” Finally, Indy and Basil can take a breath, out of immediate danger . . .
. . . until Voller reappears, armed with a gun, and demands that Indy hand over the Dial. Indy hurls him the bag containing the Dial, giving the impression that Voller is about to escape. But just as Voller seems on the verge of getting away, he is struck by a roadside structure near the tracks—an accidental echo of the tactic young Indy used to evade Fedora in LAST CRUSADE. Indy narrowly avoids the same fate by maneuvering the train through the turns.
While Indy and Basil desperately attempt to signal the Allied planes for rescue, the planes “rapidly disassemble” the bridge ahead by fire and fury, forcing the pair to jump. After they — naturally — emerge scathless, Basil expresses regret that Indy had to surrender the Dial to Voller, but Indy reveals that he only threw him the bag, having never relinquished the genuine article.
The scene concludes with a poignant shot of Indy resting his arm on Basil's shoulder under the bridge as they gaze upon the smoldering trainwreck, the war nearly done, young Tommies raising a victory flag over the spoils.
MANHATTAN, 1969 A.D.
The story swiftly transitions from the 1944 flashback to 1969. The camera roves across what must be Indiana Jones’ dingy New York City apartment, and we catch glimpses of other rooms — all loaded with intriguing easter eggs and art department shenanegans — hi, Sean — before settling on the man himself, out like a light. Notably, there is a black and white photo of Marion on Indy's (lead lined?) fridge from their RAIDERS days . . . not far from their finalized divorce papers.
Indy abruptly wakes up when he hears MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR blasting loudly from a downstairs neighbor’s pad. He shouts at him through the window, but his complaints go unheard as the neighbor is preoccupied with friends, starting up a hippie happening. After a brief shot of Indy shirtless, he puts on an old tee, grabs a bat, heads downstairs with malice aforethought. The beatnik sees Indy as none more significant than his crochety upstairs neighbor and continues party prep, unfazed. Indy expresses his frustration, pointing out that it's early and he has to work. The neighbor is indignant and mocks him, seemingly skeptical that Indy still has a job. He dismissively tells Indy to “f—k off” because it's “space day,” referring to the ticker tape parade for the returning Apollo astronauts.
The scene cuts to Indy preparing coffee in his apartment, “accidentally” spilling something slightly more adult into it. He shields himself from Marion’s judgment, stifling her picture with a fridge magnet. Determined, Indy leaves his place (the Irish street shot from the trailer) and takes the subway alongside a child dressed as a cosmonaut. He arrives at Hunter College — you read that right — where he opens a class on Archimedes. There's a humorous moment when a student expresses interest by exclaiming, "Syracuse?!" — and Indy clarifies he's referring to Syracuse in Sicily, not the local variant. The rest of the students are bored or hungover or both, and nobody participates when Indy tries to engage them — nobody except HELENA SHAW, who brims with Archimedean erudition and general archaeological affinity.
Indy enthusiastically discusses the clever weapons devised by Archimedes during the great siege of Syracuse, which ultimately led to the Greek victory over the Romans. However, the class is interrupted when other students come into the class rolling a TV set to watch the parade. Indy’s heart leaves the room and he follows it. Afterward, Helena discreetly stalks Indy to the professors' corner of the university, where his is assaulted by a surprise “tenth anniversary” party and rewarded for his service with a cheap anniversary clock.
Indy is bemused by the gift, remarking something along the lines of "thanks for burdening me with all these years” (forgive my English, it was some sort of time-related pun, apropos of the plot). As he walks out onto the street, fringed in destitution and “the unhoused,” he unceremoniously offloads the clock to the first beggar he sees.
Seeking solace, Indy enters a bar — we can’t see the full marquee but we absolutely spot the letters “OB” and “AN” — and starts knocking them back. Helena follows his trail, while MASON is secretly following Helena.
In another scene, KLABER (played by Boyd Holbrook) is shown in a New York City hotel room, attempting to learn German from a book. A waiter enters the room looking for Professor Schimdt, mistaking Klaber for him. Klaber points to Voller, who is observing the parade preparations from the window, and sarcastically tells the waiter that the Americans went to the moon thanks to Voller. We also catch a glimpse of the giant man who works for Voller. There is a tense and revealing exchange between Voller and the waiter, as Voller asks about the waiter's origin in a racist manner (due to the waiter being black), and the waiter responds that he is from the Bronx. When Voller inquires if he fought for his country, the waiter reveals that he served in WWII, handling cannons for the Allies. At this point, Voller may express the belief that the Allies didn't win the war, but rather, Hitler lost it. Regardless, it becomes evident that Voller never gave up his Third Reich ideology.
Back in the bar, Helena and Indy engage in a discussion about the Archimedes Dial and Basil Shaw's obsession with it. Helena reveals that she has recently become an archaeologist herself and appears to possess extensive knowledge about the Dial. She confesses that she is searching for it and knows that her father and Indy lost it in a river in the French Alps. Indy, skeptical, repeatedly asks her if she remembers their last encounter when she was a child, but she evades giving a direct answer. He also questions her motive for pursuing the Dial that drove her father to madness, but she tries to persuade him by emphasizing the allure of a great adventure. Indy is cold to her pitch. He also appears shocked to learn of Basil's death, although it remains unclear whether Basil has been deceased for a significant period or not.
Nonetheless Indy reluctantly becomes drawn into their discussion about Archimedes, particularly when the Dial is mentioned again. They decide to return to the university and head to the locked room of antiquities. Inside, Indy opens a drawer and reveals the part of the Dial that was seen in the 1944 flashback. They reiterate that there is a missing piece that is needed to complete the Dial, and Indy mentions that Basil believed the Dial possessed time-related powers. He also discovers old letters from Basil, realizing that his friend had written numerous times about the Dial, although Indy confesses he hadn't read all of them.
It is revealed that Klaber is working with Mason, but their methods seem to diverge. Klaber and his associates break into Indy's personal office, where one of Indy's colleagues, the lady with glasses from the earlier surprise party, questions their actions and grows suspicious. In response, they ruthlessly shoot her on the spot. Another colleague enters the room and meets the same fate, both falling victim to the brutal and menacing nature of the intruders. This egregious act establishes Klaber and his associates as dangerous and threatening villains, though some early-GoT cojones might have been preferable, rather than merely validating our suspicions about which characters are protected by plot armor (more on that later).
Finally, Klaber sneaks into the room where Indy and Helena are still discussing the Dial. Helena realizes the danger and escapes via the roof, while Klaber confronts Indy at gunpoint. As Helena makes her escape, Indy manages to tip over the shelves, trapping the intruders just as Mason discovers the dead professors. Indy stumbles upon his deceased colleague and is visibly shaken, attempting to call the police but getting caught by the villains. The scene ends with a shot of the phone made red by Indy’s bloodied hands.
Helena successfully escapes on the roof while Indy is hustled into a van by Klaber and his fellow CIA operatives. Indy quickly realizes their affiliation. However, as they drive, the driver nearly crashes into a barrier blocking the parade and is forced to turn back. In doing so, they collide with a taxi, causing a commotion. They are then forced to continue on foot. They find themselves amidst a peace protest, and Indy seizes the opportunity to blend in with the crowd. He shouts a peace slogan, snatches a placard, and strikes his kidnappers with it. In response, Klaber fires his gun into the air, scattering the frightened crowd.
Indy spots a police officer nearby, close to his horse, and urgently asks for help. Thinking quickly — shades of Arnie in TRUE LIES — Indy steals the police officer's horse and initiates a chase through the parade. The scene is brief but exhilarating, with CGI head-replacement barely perceptible — a marked improvement over the trailer. The chase transitions into the subway, where Indy narrowly escapes one train and manages to evade another on the opposite track. He arrives at the next station and passes his horse's reins to a woman, drily instructing her to take care of it. Indy casually composes himself and boards the train just as Mason arrives on the scene. To an astonished fellow passenger, Indy remarks, “The subway’s faster.” Native New Yorkers everywhere roll their eyes.
Later, at night, Indy watches a news report in front of a TV store, discovering that he is being framed for the murders of his colleagues. Sallah joins the story here — my memory of exactly how is murky. The scene transitions to Sallah's apartment, where Indy meets Sallah's grandchildren and surprisingly unforced, uncontrived exposition informs us that Indy assisted their family in emigrating to the US during the war. Sallah expresses eternal gratitude for Indy's help.
Sallah then drives Indy to the airport, where Indy plans to travel to Tangiers. He suspects Helena will attempt to sell the Dial at an antiquities auction organized by local mobsters there. Voller knows this too and, in classic fashion, getting there will be a race between good and evil.
At the airport, Sallah regales us with his deep-timbered voice, expressing his wistful longing for the sea, the desert, and adventure, but Indy dismisses those days as long gone. He insists that his current situation is not an adventure and, agonizingly, declines Sallah's offer to help. Here comes the “Give them hell” piece, and an inauspicious beat as Indy is nearly paved by a car. He and Sallah exchange concerned glances.
During the plane ride, Indy takes a moment to enjoy an “adult beverage” and contemplates his reflection in the window. This triggers a flashback to his last encounter with Basil Shaw and Helena as a child. In the flashback, Indy appears younger, unimprovably de-aged to his fifties. He has a tense exchange with Basil in his office, where Basil attempts to destroy a part of the Dial, underscoring how unthinkably dangerous it is. Indy intervenes and saves the piece from destruction. Basil asks Indy to promise to destroy it, and Helena overhears their conversation, revealing that she knew from the beginning that Indy possessed the Dial and had broken his promise to Basil.
As Indy leaves in his car, Helena rushes after him to return his hat. Indy assures her that her father will be okay, despite a burgeoning mental instability neither of them can truly predict. He promises to keep her informed but seemingly fails to fulfill that promise at the cost of Basil’s sanity, leading to Helena's anger and resentment. The flashback ends with Helena gazing at her own reflection as a child during her flight to Morocco.
The scene transitions to the traditional Indiana Jones
MAP SEQUENCE
slightly modernized, delineating Indy's trek to Tangiers. The stage is set for his quest to recover the missing piece of the Dial and confront the consequences of his broken promise to Basil Shaw.
Onboard Voller's plane, Mason informs him that the CIA can no longer allow him to pursue his quest for the Dial. The recent killings of professors at Hunter College by Klaber's men and Voller's abandonment of a meeting with the US president in Los Angeles have prompted this decision. As some CIA members are about to redirect the plane back to the US, Klaber and his men deploy tear gas, overpowering them. Someone, possibly Voller, shoots Mason, resulting in her death. It is a surprising turn of events, as Mason's role appeared to have more significance. Maybe this has cojones after all.
In Tangiers, Indy disguises himself and enters the bar where Helena intends to sell the Dial in the backroom auction. Not long enough later, Voller enters the bar. Indy, Helena, and Voller engage in the trailer’s conversation about capitalism, with Voller seemingly unaware of Indy's identity despite having consulted his CIA file in New York. Intriguing sidebar: Anthony Ingruber is prominently featured as one of the bidders — but, despite cineastic expectations, this particular setup for a surefire Chekov’s gun . . . never delivers, and he is never seen again.
The scene quickly escalates into action as Indy showcases his (100% practical) whip skills and gunshots ring out, as seen in the trailer. The chase for the Dial commences, featuring several twists and a fast-paced sequence. Eventually, Voller obtains the Dial, and Indy and Helena pursue his car. However, they are confronted by Helena's former fiancé, a local mobster who intends to kill her. I want to note that, far from the hyper-progressive martinet anticipated by far-right Twitter, Helena is portrayed as an avaricious gloryhound, a loudly and proudly capitalistic character openly driven by money, having stolen the Dial to resell it to the highest bidder. TEDDY — a pilot in training — comes to their rescue using a tuk-tuk (autorickshaw), sparking off a thrilling chase. Indy, Helena, and Teddy each take turns driving it. Eventually, Voller and his gang reach a helicopter, while Indy's tuk-tuk succumbs to the damage it sustained during the pursuit.
Indy and Helena engage in a spirited debate about their respective roles and usefulness in their quest for the Dial. They mention the need to find an artifact (the name of which escapes me) that holds clues to the location where Archimedes may have hidden the other part of the Dial. Deciphering this artifact requires a Greek code, and interestingly, there are two codes — one that Indy can translate and another that Helena can decipher. They believe the artifact is somewhere in the Aegean Sea, and Indy gains an advantage by revealing that he knows someone with a boat and diving skills. They then meet Antonio Banderas' character, RENALDO, and together they embark on a search for the artifact aboard his boat.
During a poignant nighttime scene on the boat, Helena poses a thought-provoking question to Indy: If the Dial possessed the power of time travel, which historical event would he choose to witness? Indy candidly confesses that he would prevent his son's tragic death in Nam (“he enlisted just to piss me off”) — which ultimately caused immense pain and led to the collapse of his marriage. Helena is deeply moved by his response and finds herself at a loss for words. We are, too.
At some point, possibly during this scene, Indy, while re-reading Basil's letter on the plane, makes a realization. Among Basil's notes, he discovers two dates of significance: 08/20/39, which marked the onset of World War II, and another date, 08/20/39, which is just a few days away. It becomes clear that Basil believed Archimedes, through mathematical calculations, had uncovered the Dial's ability to predict temporal anomalies in the sky. Once deciphered, the Dial could potentially facilitate time travel, allowing individuals to reach specific points in time and jump to different temporal periods.
The next morning, Indy, Renaldo, and Helena prepare for their underwater exploration, aware of the time limit of three minutes below the surface. Tension fills the air as they venture into the depths, searching for the artifact. The scene intensifies when eels emerge from the artifact, causing a momentary fright for Indy, who earlier expressed his unease with snakes to Teddy.
Meanwhile, Voller and his crew arrive in another boat and seize the artifact just as Indy, Helena, and Renaldo emerge from the water. Voller demands that Indy translate the Greek code on the artifact, but Indy refuses. In a chilling display, Voller coldly executes Renaldo in front of Indy as a means of coercion. In response, Helena strikes a deal with Voller, offering to translate the code in exchange for a monetary agreement once they locate the missing part of the Dial.
Indy is disheartened by Helena's actions but soon realizes that she has concealed dynamite, previously obtained from Renaldo’s boat, in her capacious back pocket. As Helena engages Voller in conversation, she cleverly passes Indy a cigarette, enabling him to discreetly light the fuse on the dynamite. While Helena deciphers the riddle and explains its connection to Archimedes' history, stating that the missing part of the Dial is located in the Alexandria Library in Greece, she hurls the dynamite down into the galley, causing a powerful explosion.
Indy, Teddy, and Helena make their escape on Voller’s yacht, but Helena is jubilant about her daring move. More somber than he used to be, Indy solemnly reminds her that they have just lost a friend. As they reflect on their next move, they realize that the artifact was not fully explored. By burning it, they uncover its true form and an encoded message that only Indy can decipher. They decipher the message and discover that their next destination is Sicily, specifically Archimedes' tomb.
Unbeknownst to them, Voller, observing their westward trajectory instead of heading east as planned, deduces their true destination and decides to follow them, determined to retrieve the dial's missing part. He sets his boat in pursuit, unwilling to let them slip away.
The stage is set for a thrilling race against time as Indy, Helena, and Teddy head to Sicily while being relentlessly pursued by Voller and his crew. The stakes are high as they navigate treacherous waters and strive to unlock the mysteries of Archimedes' tomb before their adversaries catch up.
SICILY, 1969 A.D.
Indy takes some necessary supplies for their exploration of the Cave of Dionysos, where they believe the Dial is hidden. In the meantime, Teddy remarks to Helena that she is now under Indiana's command. Helena denies this, asserting her autonomy and intention to sell any valuable artifacts they find during their quest, as Indy had mentioned that the artifact should ultimately be in a museum (very much the character dynamics of Atlantis: The Lost Empire). Teddy, distracted, decides to pilfer money from a teenager to buy gelato but never gets the chance — Voller and his men abduct him.
Indy realizes Teddy's predicament and devises a plan with Helena to use Teddy's knowledge of the artifact to gain access to the Dial, thereby ensuring his safety. They steal a wedding car and rush to the cave, which happens to be a tourist attraction open to the public. Arriving ahead of their pursuers, they decipher the riddle and determine that the Dial is concealed in the part of the cave with the most pronounced echo. Spotting a crescent moon-shaped opening near the cave's ceiling, they begin their ascent. Along the way, Helena taunts Indy about his struggles in climbing, prompting his retort about Kali and being shot nine times. It is revealed that Indy has some visible signs of aging in his knees or legs. When Helena questions his pause, Indy sharply replies, “I’m thinking!”
Alternating shots showcase Indy and Helena navigating through the cave, encountering challenges such as a corridor teeming with insects reminiscent of their previous adventures, including tarantulas. Even Indy displays a degree of trepidation, acknowledging the creepiness of the situation. Meanwhile, Voller and his gang track their footsteps, reminiscent of the Last Crusade's final enigma sequence.
At one point, Teddy, who is handcuffed to a hulking man due to his failed escape attempt, falls into the water when a fragile rope bridge collapses. In a stroke of luck, Teddy manages to steal the key from his captor and escape the water, while the giant meets a tragic end by drowning. This turn of events eliminates the need for Indy to confront the giant, considering his age and physical limitations.
After successfully navigating a wild hydrological booby trap, Indy and Helena enter the chamber where Archimedes' tomb is believed to be concealed. They are taken aback by a mural depicting a futuristic-looking raven with metal claws (Helena: “Pigeon of Archytas?” Indy: “Not very pigeon-like if it is,”), as well as what appears to be early versions of timekeeping devices resembling ancestors of watches. Indy remarks that watches would not be invented for another thousand years after Archimedes' time, highlighting the intriguing nature of the discovery.
They locate the missing part of the Dial within the tomb, but Voller & Co. arrive just as they do. Voller demands that Indy hand over the Dial, and although Indy appears hesitant, Voller threatens to kill Helena, revealing that she is the only family he has left. Reluctantly, Indy surrenders the Dial, and Voller proceeds to assemble it. However, Teddy, who had stealthily made his way into the room, ambushes Klaber. This leads to a scene that permanently puts to rest the question, “Will Disney allow Indy a gun?” — as Indy proves he still knows his way around a pistol. Despite his proficiency, he sustains a gunshot wound in the shoulder (the first hints of reshoot continutiy goofs here, as the on-screen shot very much appears to strike his heart). It is evident that Indy is in excruciating pain, but Helena is determined to save him. Teddy advises her to let Voller take Indy, promising that they will rescue him once they escape.
Voller and his crew transport Indy in a van, intending to reach the airport where Voller plans to fly using a Nazi plane to reach the time fault. Helena and Teddy discreetly pursue them on a stolen bike. As Indy is boarded onto the Nazi plane, Helena instructs Teddy to attempt flying a plane, despite his lack of experience. Meanwhile, she continues her pursuit of the Nazi plane after a thrilling bike chase. Onboard the plane, Indy and Voller engage in a tense exchange ("You should have stayed in NY" - "You should have stayed out of Poland"). Indy questions Voller about his target for assassination, speculating whether it would be Churchill or Roosevelt to alter history and secure Germany's victory. In response, Voller reveals his intention to kill Hitler to prevent Germany from invading Poland and making a significant mistake, arguing that history is a series of wars and that one must be on the side of the victors.
As Indy calculates the coordinates on the Dial for the time fault, they approach dangerously close to the destination with only a few seconds remaining. Indy realizes that Archimedes was unaware of the shifting continents, meaning they cannot be heading to 08/20/1939. In a fit of almost hysterical laughter, Indy casts doubt on Voller's decision. Voller attempts to abort the plan at the last minute, but it is too late, and they are all drawn into the time fault, including Teddy in his plane.
Voller exults in triumph, believing they have arrived in Sicily in 1939, only to discover that they have actually been transported back to
SICILY, 212 B.C.
the Roman siege of Syracuse. The sight of numerous boats, arrows, and catapults astonishes them. In the midst of the chaos, Archimedes, working on completing the Dial, is informed by his assistant that "dragons" have arrived, referring to the two planes. They gaze in astonishment from outside the city walls while the siege is underway.
Klaber fervently sprays all guns at the ships and soldiers; he’s totally snapped, raving about “savages” as he strafes living history into strawberry jam.
On the plane, Helena activates a switch that opens the bomber bay, causing several Nazis to plummet out of the airplane. Despite being attacked by Roman and Greek lances, Indy manages to free himself from his ropes using an arrow seized from the air and encounters Helena. He gives her a parachute while Voller tries to rip it from them but is disarmed. Helena and Indy jump from the plane with the parachute, while Voller and Klaber crash with the aircraft.
Upon landing on the ground, Indy is captivated by the awe-inspiring sight before him, feeling like a little boy witnessing his dream come true. He tells Helena to leave him there and return to Teddy's plane, which landed safely nearby. Just as Helena is about to comply, Archimedes, who has discovered Voller's charred corpse and his intact watch, approaches Indy and Helena. Indy converses with Archimedes in Greek. Archimedes "rigged" the dial to only send them back to Syracuse on the day of the siege, ensuring their ability to save him. It becomes clear that thanks to this temporal jump, Archimedes acquired knowledge about watches and how to complete the dial. The “dragons” make sense of later stories and legends of Archimedes’ impossible “war machines.” It’s a closed, Cameronian (“All my work was based on it”), 12 Monkeys, Arrival-style timeloop.
Helena desperately pleads with Indy to return with her to the present, underlining the dangers of further messing up the timeline. He’s obstinate. “There’s nothing for me there.”
And, so.
What follows will go down as the single most controversial sequence in Indiana Jones franchise history, more divisive even than Nuke the Fridge, as —
In her frustration, Helena simply wills all of her energy into a haymaker punch, which knocks Henry Jones, Jr. unconscious, and the screen fades to black.
In the final scene of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the last ten minutes of Harrison Ford’s 42-year-long Indiana Jones quintet, Indy awakens in his bed in New York City, mummified by bandages and enshrined by pill bottles. As he rises from bed, he finds Helena and reproaches her for bringing him back to the present when there is nothing for him there. She disagrees, and at that moment, an aged Marion enters the apartment with a bag of groceries, complaining about the empty fridge. Indy is shocked to see Marion and asks why she's back. Marion explains that she was informed he had returned and says, "Well, if INDY has returned.” We hope he has.
Teddy and Sallah arrive, and Teddy goes on again about ice cream. Helena plays the wingman and convinces them to get some outside — to grant Marion and Indy some privacy. As they go, we hear Sallah humming — the song he sang after Marion kissed him in Raiders of the Lost Ark — Gilbert & Sullivan — “I am the Monarch of the Sea, the ruler of the Queen’s Nay-vee . . .”
Indy and Marion talk about pain. He asks her where she hurts — “Everywhere,” she says. And they reenact the boat scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark in reverse. The camera then pans to the apartment balcony, finding Indy's hat drying on a clothesline. The screen irises down into a Tom & Jerry circle on the hat — as if the story ends there. A millisecond before it does, Indy’s hand grabs the lid one last time.
FINITO!

I came across this today. I was watching John Shelby Spong speak on Judas Iscarit and how he was a late addition to the scriptures. That he never existed. That video led to the next talking about the fourth gospel and biblical literalism - that the stories of the bible are huge exaggerations which tell us they are fictions. At one point in the presentations during the Q+A he mentioned he will no longer discuss lgbt issues and referenced his manifesto. Well it is one hellava read. Bishop Spong has always been high in my book. Once again my favorite person.
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Here is the link
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Here is the text:

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!
I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.
I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.
In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.
I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.
I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.
I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.
The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.
I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.
Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.
This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.
– John Shelby Spong

I would like to write a series of essays about important figures in the history of the pro-life movement. Does anyone here have suggestions? Here are some names I came up with: Horatio Storer, James T. McHugh, John & Barbara Willke, Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell. Any suggestions would be a great help.

Hello everyone! I had a ,,pleasure" to watch indiana jones and the dial of destiny at Cannes festival. I would say that the movie is pretty bad. 100% the worst indiana jones movie. Helena is a terrible character (very annoying and she is so disrespectful and toxic to Indy), CGI is pretty bad especially de-aged Ford. Overall just a mess. But whatever... Here is the synopsis. If you have any questions - ask them below.
ENGLISH ISNT MY FIRST LANGUAGE, KEEP THAT IN MIND. THE POST WAS EDITED TO INCLUDE MISSING PARTS A LOT OF YOU WANTED TO READ. ALSO - THE DIALOGUE WITH HELENA TALKING ABOUT INDY STEALING FROM INDIGENOUS PEOPLE ISNT IN THE MOVIE.
PROLOGUE (1944)
After the logos introduction (Disney, Paramount - no dissolve on a shot -, Lucasfilm), we are thrown right into the action in 1944. I think the first shot of the movie is a door opening (but not 100% sure) leading up to seeing Indy, in a Nazi uniform and a bag on his head, taken to a nazi officer by nazis who claim they caught this American spy. All of this happening while the castle is under fire and there is a lot of agitation in the background. Meanwhile, Basil Shaw is hiding in a forest nearby, looking anxiously for Indy. Cue to the scene of the trailer where Indy's face appears after the bag is taken away. The nazi officer asks him, looking at Indy's notes, why he was looking to steal the Lance of Longinus, which was used to crucify the Christ. It's a conveted prize for Hitler who really wants it. Voller appears at some point and looks briefly to the Lance in its box before it's taken away and you can see he notices something. The exchange concludes by the officer ordering to take Indy away and telling him in a triumphant way : "To the victor belong the spoils". While Basil Shaw, an Oxford scholar clearly not made for auction, is caught by nazis looking for him with dogs and taken aboard their train leaving the castle (on the verge of being destroyed by the Allies bombings), Indy is about to get hung on a rope by several nazis but fortunately for him a rocket drops slowly in the room and descends several floors before exploding, which kills the nazis and makes him hung around the void thanks to the rope around his neck - but he manages to escape alive. Great tense sequence. Aboard the train, Voller is trying to reach the nazi officer to tell him something important but you can tell the nazis don't really take him seriously. Meanwhile, Basil Shaw is interrogated by the nazi officer. After knocking a nazi in his car, Indy takes his place at the wheel but he as to let other nazis aboard and he drives along a road with them and nazis in sidecars until he decides to go off script to follow the nearby train. Good action sequence there, the sidecar ends up cut in half at some point and Indy gets on the train (first time we hear the Raiders theme very briefly if I remember correctly as well as the Wilhem scream when Indy knocks a nazi out of the train). Great succession of scenes where Indy progresses through the train while stumbling into a lot of nazis, trying, not often successfully, to blend in with them. As he progresses through the train he manages to get back the Lance of Longinus and realizes it's a copy. He also stumbles upon a lot of antiquities stolen by the nazis (which made me wonder if the train is kind of the Indy interpretation of the long-rumored nazi train full of gold). Meanwhile, Voller loses patience and informs the nazi officer that the Lance is a fake and that Hitler will be disappointed to hear about it. He starts talking about the dial of Destiny and shows it to the officer - or rather the only part of the Dial he has in his hands - and says it would be of greater interest to Hitler. It certainly is of interest to Basil Shaw. Indy manages to get to the train car where Basil is kept captive while the nazi officers have went the other way without noticing him in the restaurant train where he was hidden at a table when they passed by him. Basil tells him about the Dial. They manage to escape on the roof - where Indy kind of motivates Basil to follow him since he is afraid and says "I can't do this!" - after Indy has sucked punched Voller and stolen the dial. On the roof, they are witnessing the Allies planes firing at the train, shooting a lot of nazis. Nice aerial view of this scene. They seem on the verge of getting out when the officer appears in front of them (the foggy scene of the trailer). Indy fights him while trying to stay alive when the train enters multiple tunnels, he manages to disarm the nazi with his whip and throw his gun to Basil to tell him to shoot, hence the moment where he shoots at Indy accidentally. Indy throws the nazi out of the roof and steals his line : "to the victor belongs the spoils". While Indy and Basil finally look safe, Voller comes along with a gun and orders Indy to give him the dial. Indy sends him the bag containing the dial and Voller seems on the verge of escaping when he is hit by a sideroad perch near the tracks (the same kind that young Indy uses in LC to escape Fedora) that Indy barely avoids in turns. As Indy and Basil are trying to make signs to the Allies planes that they are to be saved, the planes destroy the bridge ahead of the train so they have to jump in the river. They get out of it alive ; Basil regrets that Indy had to give the dial to Voller but Indy shows him he threw only the bag (or another object) and he still has the dial. Cue the parting shot where Indy puts his arm on Basil under the bridge while we see a British flag raised on the remains of the train.
1969 - NYC
Right after the end of the 1944 flashback, the story jumps to 1969. We discover Indy in his NYC apartment and a traveling shot shows us another room of his place before showing him sleeping on a sofa. I glimpsed a picture of his dad on a shelf, there may have been other elements like that but not sure. We can see a black & white picture of Marion on Indy's fridge (from Raiders) and more importantly their finalized divorce papers on it. Indy wakes up suddendly when he hears very loud music (not the Rolling Stones song from the trailer). It's coming from his neighbour downstairs. He yells at him through the window but he can't hear him as he is busy with many friends, visibly starting a party. After a brief shot of Indy shirtless, he puts on an old tee-shirt (might be a baseball team t-shirt but not sure), grabs a baseball bat and goes down to knock on his neighbour door. Someone opens the door and the neighbor says "oh it's my old neighbour upstairs" like he is used to Indy complaining. Indy indeed complains that it's 8:00 am and he has to work and the man mocks him like he doesn't believe he is still working. He also basically tells him to f** off since it's "space day!", i.e the Apollo parade. Cue to a scene of Indy preparing coffee and spilling a bit of alcohol in it before hiding Marion's picture on the fridge with a magnet in a very intent way. He then leaves his place (the street shot from the trailer), takes the subway along a kid in a cosmonaut uniform, and gets to Hunter College where he starts delivering his class about Archimedes. There is a funny quirk from Indy when a student repeats "Syracuse?!" with interest and he says "Syracuse in Sicily, not in the state of New York". All the students look either bored or on a hangover and no one replies when he tries to get them to participate, except Helena, who visibly knows a lot about Archimedes looking by her answers - but Indy doesn't recognize her. Indy also sounds very excited when talking about the clever Archimedes-conceived weapons used by the Greeks against the Romans during great siege of Syracuse during which he died. Indy's class is interrupted when students come in the room with a TV set to show the parade, and the atmosphere becomes excited while Indy shuts down his own projection on Archimedes with a dispirited look. Helena then follows discreetly Indy to the professors' corner of the university where they thank him for his 10 years of service at Hunter College by offering him a big clock. He is kind of speechless as you can tell he really dislikes this gift and says something like "thanks for putting on me with all these years". Then as he walks into the street he gives the clock to a homeless man and walks into a bar where he starts drinking. Helena follows his trail as Mason is herself following Helena. As Helena comes to Indy to the bar and introduces herself, another scene shows Klaber (Boyd Holbrook) in a NYC hotel, trying to learn German with a book. A waiter comes into the room looking for professor Schimdt and mistakenly thinks it's him before Klaber points to Voller, looking at the parade preparation by the window, and tells him (or maybe a little bit later but whatever) that the Americans went to the moon thanks to Voller. We also see the giant man working for Voller. Cue a great tone-setting/character-setting exchange between Voller and the waiter, as Voller asks him where he is originally from in a racist way (because the waiter is black) and the man says "the Bronx". Voller also asks hims if he fought for his country and the man says he did set cannons for the Allies in WWII. I think it's at this point Voller says that the Allies didn't win the war but rather that Hitler lost it but I'm not sure. Anyway you get the feeling that Voller is going full nazi/racist, even so many years after the war. In the bar, Helena and Indy start discussing the dial created by Archimedes and Basil Shaw's obsession with it. Helena gloats that she just became an archeologist herself seems to know a lot about the dial and says that she is looking for it, and knows that her dad and Indy lost it in a river in the French Alps. You can tell Indiana is supiscious since he repeatedly asks her if she remembers their last encounter, when she was a kid, and she stays evasive. He also asks her why she would want to go after the dial that drove her father crazy and she tries to sell him the idea of a great adventure but you can tell he is not responding to it. He also seems shocked to learn that Basil is dead but that might just be my interpretation - it's not clear if he's been dead for a long time or not. Indy does get caught up in their discussion around Archimedes - I think it's here that they mention and the dial though and they head back to the university. In the university's locked room of antiquities, he opens a drawer and shows her the part of the dial we saw in the 1944 flashback. They mention again that there is a missing part of the dial to make it complete, and he talks about the fact that Basil was convinced the dial had time-related powers. He also finds old letters of Basil and says he wrote so many times to him about the dial that he didn't read all of them. Meanwhile, we have learned that Klaber is working with Mason but that their methods seem to diverge. Klaber and his accomplices are breaking into Indy's personal office and when her colleague (the lady with glasses from the "surprise!" party) asks them what they're doing and is growing suspiscous, they shoots her on the spot. Another colleague comes in and gets shot as well. Both in a very brutal way, which immediately establishes them as dangerous and threatening bad guys. Klaber finally arrives sneakily in the room where Indy and Helena are still talking about the dial, where Indy just told Helena that she lied to him by saying Basil and him lost the dial in the French Alps and that Basil would never have lied. So why would she lie, he asks her ? Then Klaber arrives and threatens them at gunpoint, Helena runs away by the roof, Indy drops the shelves on the bad guys just after Mason was shocked to find that Klaber killed two professors from the university. Indy finds his dead colleague and is in real shock, he tries to call the police but gets arrested by the bad guys - there is a shot of the retro phone covered with the blood on Indy's hands, taken from the corpse of his dead colleague. Helena manages to run away on the roof. Indy is then taken into a van by Klaber and the others, and he quickly understands that they are CIA. After the driver nearly drives through a barrier blocking the parade, he tries to drive back but then crashes into a taxy that screams at him so they have to continue by foot. Then they arrive into a peace protest, where Indy starts screaming a peace slogan to get into the crowd, before stealing a pancart and hitting of his kidnappers with it. Klaber starts shooting in the air, which frightens the crowd. Indy then runs to a police officer nearby, near the police officer's horse, and tell him to stop him but Klaber doesn't seem to be bothered so Indy steals his horse. Ensues the parade chase scene, very short but fun - the CGIS of Indy on the horse are way better than in the trailer but they still look like CGI. Then there is the chasedown in the subway, where Indy barely escapes one train before escaping another on the other track. He then arrives at the next station and gives his horse's reins to a lady ("get my horse") and casually jumps into the train just before Mason arrives. Indy says to his bemused train neighbour "the subway goes faster" (than the horse). Later on, at night, we see Indy looking at a news report in front of a TV store, where we learn he is accused of the murders of his colleagues. The news report also mentions that it is believed Indy has lost his son in the war and that he is divorced. As he tries to convince a man watching the news with him and telling him "it's you!" that is not him, the guy gets knocked off screen... and here appears Sallah ! Who had a rendezvous with Indy. We then discover Sallah's apartment and grandkids and learn that Indy helped his family emigrate to the US during the war and that he is forever grateful for it. Sallah then drives him to the airport, where Indy plans to go to Morocco as he suspects Helena will try to sell the dial at an antiquities auction organized by local mobsters - that Voller knows about as he is heading to Morocco as well. Sallah mentions he misses the sea, the desert and the adventure, but Indy tells him these days are long gone and that this is not an adventure as the police is looking for him for murders. He also refuses Sallah's proposition to travel with him to help him. He finally says "give them hell Indiana Jones!" just before Indy is nearly hit by a car while crossing the street - which has Sallah looking uneasy and once again Indy looking like he is definitely not ready or eager for an adventure. As Indy drinks some alcohol in the plane, he sees his reflection in the window and remembers his last encounter with Basil Shaw (and Helena as a kid). It's a flashback scene where Indy looks younger, de-aged again, but more like in his fifties or something. He has a tense exchange with Basil in his office and saves this part of the dial from being destroyed by Basil, who says it has to be destroyed because it's very dangerous. He offers him to take it with him and Basil makes him promise that he will destroy it. Helena overheards the conversation so we understand she knew from the get go that Indy had the dial and that he betrayed his promise to Basil. As he leaves in his car, Helena runs to him to give him his hat, and he promises her that her father will be better (as he seems to be getting nuts with his obsession for the dial), and that he will give her news. It seems he never did, hence some anger from Helena. The flashback ends with Helena looking at her own (child) reflection in her own flight to Morocco. Cue the traditional Indy traveling map, slightly modernized!
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1969 - Morocco
I'm not sure about the order of this scene but it makes more sense that it happened there : aboard the Voller plane to Morocco, Mason tells him that the CIA can no longer let him follow his quest for the dial (which they only allowed him to in order to be nice for his service to the Apollo mission) now that his men have killed professors at Hunter College and that Voller himself has ditched a meeting with the US president in Los Angeles. As some CIA members are about to divert the plane back to the US, Klaber and his men teargas them and someone (I think Voller) shoots Mason, who dies. (I honestly thought she would play a bigger role)
In Morocco, Indy, in costume, walks into the bar where Helena is planning to sell the dial in the auction backroom. Teddy, who is learning some piloting craft from a pilot drinking nearby, tries to prevent him from accessing the room but he can't - and he also lets Voller walk in shortly after. Cue the exchange about capitalism between Indy/Helena/Voller (who genuinely doesn't seem to recognize Indy although he did consult his CIA file in NYC). We see Anthony Ingruber quite a lot as one of the bidders. After the Indy whip scene and the gunfires from the trailer, the chase for the dial begins. There are several twists in a fast-paced action scene here but Voller ends up with it and Indy and Helena go after his car but they are stopped by Helena's former fiancé, a local mobster, who wants to kill her. By the way, Helena is clearly depicted as a capitalistic, after the money woman who only stole the dial to resell it to the highest bidder. Teddy comes to the rescue in a TukTuk, hence the chase. Great action sequence there, where Indy, Helena and Teddy each drive the TukTuk (or the next one). Voller and his gang finally get to their helicopter as Indy's TukTuk can't run anymore due to the multiple shocks it took.
As Indy and Helena banter about the situation and go into a war of who is more useful than the other in the quest for the dial, they mention that they have to found an artifact (forgot its name, sorry) that indicates the place where Archimedes might have stolen the other part of the dial. It should be deciphered with a greek code, but there are two of them (one which Indy can translate, the other that Helena can). They think it's in the Egean sea and Indy gets the upped hand by saying he knows a guy with a boat and diving skills. They then meet Antonio Banderas' character and go looking for the artifact on his boat.
There is a night scene on the boat, very emotional, where Helena asks Indy what historical event he would attend if the dial indeed had time-travel powers. He answers that he would prevent his son from dying into the war (which he did to "**** him off", he says) and collapsing her mother into despair thus leading to the end of their union. Helena is moved by this and doesn't quite know what to answer.
I don't remember at which point it was, maybe here, but Indy, after rereading the Basil letter in the plane, realizes that there are two dates of interest in his notes : 08/20/39 (days leading to the start of WWI) and 08/20/39 which is a few days away. I think at this point we also know that Basil's guess was that Archimedes, through mathematics, realized that the Dial could predict time faults in the sky, which would allow, once you can read it, to get there in time and jump to another time.
In the morning, the team of Indy, Antonio and Helena prepare for the underwater exploration with a 3 minute limit there. Great scene full of tension when they find the artifact and eels come out of it (after Indy was scared on the boat when Teddy said they were like snakes and he says "no they don't!!"). Meanwhile Voller and his crew arrive in another boat and get the artifact just as Indy, Helena and Antonio's character get out of the water.
Voller orders Indy to translate the greek code on the artifact but he refuses ; he threatens to kill Antonio's character and then does in cold blood in front of Indy so Helena starts translating the code after negotiating a money deal with Voller once they find the missing part of the dial. Indy is disappointed by Helena's behavior but realizes, as she makes some explanation about the riddle just translated and Archimedes history, that he she has hidden some dynamite (previously taken on Antonio's boat) in her backpocket. At some point she asks Voller to give him his cigarette and she manages to discreetly give it to Indy so he can light the fuse. After having affirmed that the riddle means the missing part of the dial is in Alexandria's Library (in Greece), she throws the dynamite which explodes downstairs. Indy, Teddy and Helena escape on the other boat and she celebrates her move but Indy calms her down by saying he just lost a friend. Then they realize the artifact was not entirely explored as, by burning it, they find its true form and its true legend - in the code only Indy can decipher. Thus they realize that they must head to Sicily, to Archimedes tomb, while Voller goes on a false trail - but he sees them heading west instead of east so he follows them as his boat can still run.
1969 - Sicily
As Indy buys some stuff in order to explore the Cave of Dionysos where the Dial is supposedly hidden, Teddy tells Helena she is now being bossed by Indiana, which she refutes and says she's still in control and will still be able to sell the goods they find during their quest - as Indy told them on the boat the artifact should be in a museum.As Teddy drifts off and steal some money from a teenager to buy some ice cream, he encounters Voller and his men who kidnap him. Indy realizes it and tells Helena they will use Teddy's knowledge of the artifact to get to the dial so that he is basically safe and won't be killed. Indy and Helena steal the wedding car and head first to the cave - which is a touristic place open to the public. They indeed arrive there first and realize that, according to the riddle, the dial is hidden in the part of the cave with the most echo. They find a crescent moon opening near the top of the cave and start climbing towards it. Helena mocks Indy for having some trouble climbing, hence his lines about Kali and being shot 9 times, and we learn that he has some vis and plaques in the knees or legs. And when she says "so why are you stopping?" he snaps back "I'm thinking!"Alternative shots of Indy and Helena progressing through the cave - and stumbling into a corridor full of insects like the ones in ToD + tarantulas, even Indy sounds kind of scared about it - while Voller and his gang follow their tracks (much like the LC final enigmas sequence). At some point, Teddy, who is being handcuffed to the giant man since he tried to escape, falls into the water with him after a frail rope bridge collapsed ; he manages to steal him the key and escape the water while the giant dies drowned - so no Indy fight for him, which makes sense as there would be no plausible way for Indy to kill him at his age.After solving a booby trap by using water pressure, Indy and Helena access the room where Archimedes tomb is hidden. They are taken aback by the fact that one of the mural drawings show a raven with metal claws, i.e with a futuristic look, and that are what appear to be ancestors of watches in the room although, as Indy mentions it, watches wouldn't be invented for 1000 years after Archimedes.They find the missing part of the dial in the tomb but Voller arrives at that point. He orders Indy to give him the dial, he seems reluctant to but Voller threatens him to kill Helena and mentions that she is the only family member he has left. Indy gives him the dial and he assembles it but Teddy, who had been sneaking into the room, then jumps on Klaber. First 1969 gunshot scene where Indy uses a gun ! And he seems still good at it but he gets shot in the shoulder (to me it seem just above the heart but it's mentioned later on that it's a shoulder injury). He is clearly hurt and Helena wants to save him but Teddy says "let them take him, we'll save him once we're out of there".Voller and his crew take Indy into a van, heading to the airport where Voller wants to fly, with a nazi plane, to the time fault where, while Helena and Teddy chase them (discreetly) on a stolen bike.As Indy is taken aboard the nazi plane, Helena instructs Teddy to try to flight a plane although he never did before. She then goes on to catch the nazi plane after a bike chase. Onboard, Indy and Voller have a great exchange ("You should have stayed in NY", "You should have stayed out of Poland"), and Indy asks him who he wants to assassinate to change history and make Germany victorious : Churchill ? Roosevelt? Then Voller tells him he wants to kill Hitler to prevent Germany for invading Poland and committing this big mistake, saying that history is a succession of wars and that you have to be on the victors' side.As he calculates the coordinates from the dial into the time fault, and that they come dangerously close and there a few seconds left, Indy tells him that Archimedes didn't know about the continents' moving and thus that they can't be heading to 08/20/1939. Indy starts laughing almost hysterically, which makes Voller doubt his decision and he tries to stop it at the last minute but they're drawn into the time fault - along with Teddy's plane behind.Voller erupts in triumph as he thinks they just arrived in Sicily in 1939... before realizing that they are in Sicily but 2.000 years before, precisely during the Roman siege of Syracuse. With a lot of boats, arrows, catapults and stuff !In Sicily, we see Archimedes trying to complete the dial when his assistant tells him that "dragons" have arrived (the two planes). They heat outside in amazement while the city is under siege.Klaber shoots frantically with his gun and then his machine gun at the ships and other soldiers, calling them "savages".On the plane, Helena drops several nazis out of the airplane by activating a switch that opens up the ground. As the plane is getting hit by lances from the Romans (or Greeks? or both?), Indy manages to untie his ropes with a lance nearby and get free. He then stumbles upon Helena and gives her a parachute but Voller tries to get it from them until he is disarmed. Helena and Indy jump with the parachute while Voller and Klaber crash with the plane.On the ground, Indy is in awe of what he is witnessing, like a little boy seeing his dream come true. As he tells Helena to leave him there and get back to the plane of Teddy (who landed safe nearby), Archimedes, who just saw the corpse of Voller (horribly burned, his face can't be recognized), and his watch, and took the complete dial from him, come to meet Indy and Helena. Indy talks to him in greek. As Helena tells him that Archimedes has "rigged" the dial, in making sure it only sends back to Syracuse on the day of the siege so that they could save him, we understand it's thanks to this jump in time that he found his knowledge about watches and on how to complete the dial.Helena desperately tries to convince Indy to get back to the present with him, and tells him he would change the course of history by saying, but he refuses to listen to her and says there is nothing for him in 1969. She then punches him and the screen fades to black.
Ending
Indy wakes up back in his bed in NYC, with a lot of bandages on him and several pills around the room. As he gets out of bed, he finds Helena and reproaches her of having brought him back to the present although there is nothing for him there. She says there is though and at this point we see Marion (clearly aged) entering the apartment with a bag of groceries and saying that there was no food at all in the fridge. Indy is shocked to see her here and asks her why she's back, she says she has been told he has returned and then asks him "if Indy has returned" - which means he was also not the same after Mutt's death, i.e the drinking problems maybe ? -. Teddy and Sallah arrive and Teddy asks for ice cream but Helena tells him they can go get it outside - he says Marion brought ice cream and Helena claims the ones outside are better, clearly looking to let Marion and Indy some intimacy. As they head out we hear Sallah sing the song he sang after being kissed by Marion in Raiders.Then Marion asks Indy is his shoulder hurt and he asks her back where it hurts, she says "everywhere" (meaning emotional pain I guess), except on her elbow, and they re-enact the boat scene from Raiders in reverse before Indy kisses her. Then the camera moves to the balcony of the apartment where we see Indy's hat drying on a drying line on an airer. The screen reduces into a small circle like in the Tom & Jerry cartoons, circling the hat and appearing to end there... just before we see Indy's hand (can't be sure 100% sure it was his now that I think back about it but it makes sense that it was) getting the hat back inside. The end !!
This plot point remain unclear to me, don't know if I missed it in the movie or it's not explained in the plot :
- why Indy keeps calling Helena "Wambot" or something like that throughout the movie

That smug lil potato could catch these inflated, vinyl hands...