I think we're all aware by now of the conspiracy that's building in the background of 2077. Most of us know about the mysterious Blue Eyes who appears in The Sun ending to the game. He operates as The Stinger of sorts for (that) ending of the game; He and V discuss a job vaguely alluded to through out the ending sequence and then the ending cuts to V in space charging off towards The Crystal Palace. Cue DLC Hook and credits.
But, let's go back here. This is only the tail end of the conspiracy and where it actually intersects with V's story. Blue Eyes (and some connections to him) crop up multiple times through out the game and, when pieced together, start building a larger picture that runs deeper into Night City than the pockets of most corporats.
I've finished my second playthrough of the game and I've been drafting this post as I play and find more clues. I doubt I'll find everything or might completely dismiss some, but I want to be on the front lines of uncovering this mystery, especially if this will be our Gaunter O'Dim for Cyberpunk 2077. I apologize for the length of this post ahead of time, but I need to summarize a bunch of lore and at least 4 major side-quests; "I Fought The Law", "Dream On", "Full Disclosure", and "The Prophet's Song".
Here's a long essay incoming, but I hope you chooms enjoy and I hope you read through to the end because, oh boy, I uncovered some cool shit!
So, who is Blue Eyes? Who are his contacts? What is his role in the ecosystem of this city?
"I FOUGHT THE LAW"
Let's start with where he most appears in the game; Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez, political family in the running for Night City's first family. Which I kinda have to summarize their questlines, including the first one which Blue Eyes never appears in. But I'd prefer to go in chronological order and not jump around, so stick with me.
Elizabeth first contacts you for the job "I Fought The Law". It's fairly basic, but the quest tells us she convinced her husband to hire V to look into the recent death of Mayor Rhyne. We get a BD of a cyberpsycho attack by Peter Horvath on Mayor Rhyne. Weldon Holt leaves the room before the attack and then the security gate crashes right before Peter walks in with billions of eddies worth of chrome. The attack is unsuccessful and stopped by Detective River Ward, who was only there because Peter went missing internally at the NCPD and he knew where Peter would go.
When investigating Peter Horvath, his previous boss describes him as paranoid that "probably thought Mayor Rhyne talked to him through the TV" and that the world was out to fuck him. She then mentions that someone "finally saw what he was worth" which cues into how Peter was thrown into this attack in the first place; he had a patron who funded his chrome and the attempt on Rhyne's life. Tellingly, River than goes into a little talk about how clues rarely make sense until put into the larger context, much like we're doing right now.
V goes to the club Rhyne died in; The Red Queen's Race. V sneaks through, takes out some Animals, and can investigate what actually happened to Rhyne. If we read the emails on the office terminal, we know that Weldon Holt arranged for Rhyne to be there. He initially mentioned this to Rhyne during the first BD; Rhyne asked Holt directly to arrange his usual room at the club. So, this doesn't inherently look too suspicious on it's own, but Holt knew where Rhyne would be. We also find out via the Animals Boss there that Weldon Holt is the one who hired them to smash up the club and they're currently waiting around for payment. Further, you can go to the room Rhyne died in, find the BD headset, and put it on... which INSTANTLY knocks V out and they need to be rescued by River (who, btw, takes out any Animals on the property you didn't get to! Ty bro!). They surmise that Rhyne was killed by a virus in the headset. Lastly, we find footage of Detective Han (River's partner) covering up the death of Rhyne. They confront Han, V goes off to the Peralezs, and quest ends.
Of note, finding the BD set is a hidden dialogue option with the Peralezes suggesting, yes, that's the correct deduction to make. You don't get that option otherwise. And V never actually comes to any real conclusion to what happened to Rhyne.
So, let's summarize what we know about the death of our Mayor. Peter Horvath was hired by an unknown Patron who spent a ton of money to turn him into a suicide bomb against Rhyne. They have connections internally to the corrupt NCPD which allowed Horvath to get access to Rhyne, both from escaping NCPD custody and for the security to give him access to Rhyne's conference room. That fails so our mastermind instead assassinates Rhyne at his usual sex club, one that we know for sure Holt knew about. Rhyne is assassinated via malware in a BD porno headset, NCPD comes in an Detective Han cleans it up. Later, Holt hires the Animals to take claim to the club and fuck it up.
Holt is looking suspicious AF rn, but we also don't have any direct evidence and V says as much if you accuse him. Personally, I think it's a little too clumsy if it's him. Holt leaves the room just as an assassination attempt goes down, sets up a sex club appointment for the Mayor where he's successfully assassinated, NCPD covers it up... and then he hires a gang to cover it up more? Something doesn't fit here.
My theory is Holt is innocent. He's a scum bag, but not the culprit here. Why would you EVER give your identity to the Animals you hired to cover up an assassination? The big dumb brutes of the underworld? A name they give up with almost no fight? No, I think someone hired them under Holt's name. And I think they hired them because they KNEW the BD Headset was left behind; Han dismissed it entirely as Rhyne dying of a heart attack brought on during sex. They needed that destroyed to cover the final footprints. It's the only piece of evidence that doesn't have Holt or NCPD's name on it and doesn't fit the narrative that both are pushing. If they're covering NCPD or Holt's tracks, why not delete the emails or footage of Han? And if Holt or Han were trying to push this false narrative, why leave the headset right there the first time?
And, while I have no evidence of this assertion, the Animals are only still there because they're waiting for payment to come in... I think our employer never intended to pay them and left them in the path of V, who is likely to shoot them and tie up the loose end for our mysterious entity. Animals destroy the BD set, V shoots the animals, no trace. And, even if he doesn't, Animals will point V to the wrong person.
No, we've got a third party here. But let's continue so we can finally let our lead actor take center stage.
"DREAM ON"
"Dream On" starts when Jefferson calls V and asks them to help in another case. Long and Short; Jefferson woke up in the night and found a man in a mask (or an implant) standing over him. Jefferson shot the man, only for his head to fry and knock him out. Coming to, he's back in bed with no evidence it ever happened. SSI, their private security, insists that there was nothing on the cameras, no evidence, and nothing happened. Elizabeth claims she slept through the whole thing event.
V investigates the apartment, with Elizabeth giving the tour, and finds a lot of evidence. Elizabeth is kinda dismissive at first thinking V won't find much. First small stuff leading into larger reveals. Let's start small and work our way up.
First room Liz takes us to is the campaign room. She talks about running the campaign entirely out of pocket and having to keep most of their supplies at the Penthouse; "It's cheaper that way". You find a picture of their daughter on the wall and Liz explains that she's off at university in Europe while Jefferson is running for office; "It's easier that way" she says. That phrasing again.
EDIT: A redditor in the comments pointed out that the Peralez are being controlled via drugs in their food as part of the tech. They mention they've been eating fast food lately, explaining why Jefferson was lucid enough to catch the agent and shoot him.
V can look at Jefferson's emails (which Liz slightly discourages them, saying there's nothing there) which reveals a bit more about their campaign. There's a video of the iconic commercial and poster of Jefferson pulling out a gun and shooting a bunch of paperwork. In the email, Jefferson HATES this commercial, but his assistant, Lea Patel, insists on it as it will air in television time slots with action-drama series and catch the attention of voters. Further emails have Eric Boucher, Jefferson's Campaign Partner (Manager?), saying Jefferson has been acting unpredictably lately; presumably referencing one of the next emails. Boucher is confused because they fired Lea Patel together, only for her to continue working and sent him a new ad for approval. When emailed, Jefferson is confused about Lea being fired at all and doesn't remember the event ever happening, even telling Boucher to be honest if he has some issue with her. A final email is from SSI Chief of Security, Wallace, discussing Jefferson's intent to hire a merc to look into Rhyne's death ("Dream On") and they suggest Jefferson drop it or have NCPD or themselves look into it. Private Security just... offering to investigate the former mayor's death? Huh... sounds more like they want to squash the issue to me.
We should now talk about the Peralez's campaign. As you explore the apartment, Liz explains that they're running on a corp free campaign; they want to get Night City out of the control of the corps and do so without ever owing any favors to them. She specifically cites "Night Corp, Militech, and Petrochem" as ones they've denied. Militech and Petrochem come up a few times in other quests but Night Corp is relatively obscure. And they choose that corp to be the first one she mentions? Stands out to me. It also isn't lost on me that we're talking about running a campaign out of pocket and refusing corp assistance... while walking on the fancy ass balcony of a penthouse in Charter Hill- North Oak.
Next room, we find Jefferson's office. Elizabeth and Jefferson both graduated with law degrees from Asukaga University in Berkley. V points out it would be extremely expensive for them both, but Elizabeth says that both got full ride scholarships from the Richard Night Foundation, run by Night Corp. To further fucking cement this moment, there's a Richard Night biography shard on the desk. But we'll drop this for now because I want to get to Night Corp a bit later.
The computer on the office desk has some emails on it sent by Elizabeth. One is between her and Judy where she's asking Judy for help on the original "I Fought The Law" quest and Judy is the one who gave her your contact in the first place. Another is from their daughter kinda asserting the same thing earlier; safer for her in Europe so she's not a target on the campaign trail. And here's the interesting one; Boucher emailed Elizabeth asking why Jefferson changed his mind on Lea Patel. Elizabth says Jefferson explained it to her that it "slipped his mind" and "circumstances changed in Lea's favor" and she asks him to drop the whole thing. She's dismissive and gives extremely vague details.
Next room, Bedroom. Elziabeth's gun is on the table. It's the one Jefferson claimed he fired and scanning it tells us that it has been fired recently. We also find the wedding photo of Jefferson and Elizabeth where she fondly talks about having blue roses because she loves them so much... except the photo's roses are red and V says as much. Elizabeth quietly corrects herself that they only had red roses instead and moves on.
In the hall, we find the blood trail and gun shots in the wall; both covered up hastily. Following the trail, we enter a tv room. The Smart Glass isn't working and Elizabeth says it stopped working recently; not like they use it much anyway. Passing a Tech Check lets us try and fix it... only to be quickly blacked out by it so hard Johnny felt it too. V asks Elizabeth about it but she doesn't know what V is talking about despite having been standing right there. We also find a hidden door in the wall. Unlike earlier, Liz is actually confused by the door but demands V try and open it.
Downstairs we have the security room. Liz says that it used to be her place but "Security had to set up somewhere" and that she had to make sacrifices for this campaign; "it wasn't the first nor will it be the last". One computer has a Welcome email from SSI to new recruits. It details that they have access to all areas except Section Zero, which is reserved for Blue or Black agents and that, should the encounter a Blue or Black Agent (SPECIFICALLY "in the night"), do not interact or acknowledge them. The next email from Wallace mentions an accident where there was a "behavioral anomaly" and "ALPHA" injured a Blue Agent (BLUE-66M) who is in critical and the SSI head is requesting access to Sector Zero to give medical aid. SSI gives Wallace the code to Sector Zero and sends a team to aid. SSI knew about the accident and lied. You go to the second computer, unlock it, and can unlock the upstairs door. On that terminal is a bunch of deleted files (presumably the security footage from that night) and emails discussing "normal maintenance procedure" and further informing security that ALPHA (Jefferson) hired a merc (V) and, should security encounter them, do not interact with them.
Small thing I found interesting, a shard called "You Are What You Slot" is found down here too. It details a fictional assassin who kills and then steals the identity of her victims. Small and doesn't mean much on it's own, but the shards are hinting at the story here; one of false identities and manipulation.
Now, let's get to the main event; the secret room. Inside is a control center. Elizabeth is horrified and feels violated. She shouts that she's not letting SSI anywhere near them, only for her head to start hurting and she tells V to do what he needs to do. She leaves him. Inside the control room is a box of bloody medical supplies. The computer discusses "behavioral norms" for ALPHA (Jefferson) and suggests amplifying "neural dampening". It discusses things similar to Wallace's terminal, but from the other side; ALPHA is displaying odd behavior by hiring a merc, the SSI teams avoided meeting the merc, and then the actual accident that occurred injuring BLUE-66M during regular 'maintenance'. The other side of the room also has another data shard, "Rewriting Synaptic Pathways", basically talking about using tech to rewire the brain a bit.
Following some wires from the control room to the roof, we find a signal dish. Johnny (replacing Elizabeth for conversation now that she's gone), joins in that the tech looks prehistoric but functional and that Militech used it in the war; it requires line of sight to transmit data but otherwise can't be intercepted. We can see the tower and go to investigate. V tells Liz the whole deal; V can suggest that the Van near the tower could be SSIs or that it might not be due to unconventional tech. Liz then itterates twice that it's a stressful campaign time for Jefferson and V should talk to her, NOT him. "Sure, whatever" V and the player dismiss.
(I SWEAR WE'RE ALMOST DONE WITH THE SUMMARIZING FOR DREAM ON, I'M SO SORRY.)
We drive after the van, Johnny is suddenly excited for smashing a corpo conspiracy and iterates that citizens do not choose their representatives, instead they're chosen by "key players" who watch the Peralezes for weaknesses or blackmail material. We arrive at the facility patrolled by Maelstrom and the occupants of our van park, get out, and climb ladders to the roof where they get into an AV that is cloaked to be near invisible (as shown in a couple of vids on YouTube and this subreddit).
At the place, Maelstom is explained; "UNKNOWN USER" contacted them while driving the van for protection to take care of V and then destroy the van. Van's data makes it pretty clear; the Peralezs' minds are being manipulated, new neural pathways are being created, and their memories are being created, changed, or erased. There are also a couple of other names of other test subjects. The data is then erased. We do see an almost flower like symbol before the data is destroyed.
The agents on the cloaked AV CAN be killed and do drop a shard, thought it doesn’t have many more details, merely that they’re contacting HQ to arrange extraction and that the Van’s data should be destroyed and echoing the arrangement with Maelstrom mentioned earlier in their shards.
V calls Liz, Liz wants to meet in person instead of over holo and send him to a Japantown Raman shop (same one that used to be Rainbow Cadenza, coincidentally). Odd choice for an upstanding congresswoman. She says her nerves are shot, the ramen shop is a quieter place to meet than the apartment, and she needs a moment to gather herself since she last saw V, with V even asking if something has happened since they last saw each other. Of note, Liz is stress smoking the entire scene, something she hasn't done until now. She then explains, no, it's been over a longer period of time. She's been watching her husband change and act differently for awhile; he stopped reading, his taste changed, and he even insisted he was an only child and never had a bother when Liz asks about visiting the grave. Of note, yes, Antonio Peralez has a Columbarium Vault, which proves Liz is correct on this. She confesses that she herself has been told by others she's been acting strangely. V says she knew what V would find and she asserts that she doesn't know the who, how, or why, but "they're changing us". Jefferson apparently went on in great detail about a trip she swears they never went on, but she doesn't know if the vacation is a fake memory or if she's the one that doesn't remember.
She saw a stranger in their apartment tinkering with a monitor, only for him to be missing when it was reported to SSI and they looked at the feeds. The next day, she got a phone call from a stranger (whom she refers to by "he") saying that she's walking on thin ice and Jefferson could have an accident. They later erased all data that the phone call had happened. Elizabeth claims she's terrified for herself and her husband's safety and doesn't want V to reveal the truth. V points out "they" could be telling her to say that but it doesn't really change how she feels since she just wants Jefferson to be safe. She tells V to tell Jefferson it was SSI spying for Holt. She asserts she wants SSI out of her roof if they're spying on their sleep. She will take responsibility for firing SSI, but wants Jefferson to be safe and out of that fight. She adds a meeting with Jefferson to his calendar at Reconciliation Park. But, ultimately it's V's choice (especially since she has no idea if she'll remember the conversation) and leaves. Johnny jumps and and talks and mentions that there were talks like this back in his day and worrying about the damage a puppet mayor could do.
V heads to Reconciliation Park to meet with Jefferson. Entering, V is called by an Unknown Number which blacks out V's optics. They claim to know who V is, *what* V is, and what V wants. It doesn't matter what V tells Jefferson, but "don't dare cross that line" and "you're playing with fire". Its a garbled male robo voice, so safe to say it's irrelevant to the owner.
Enter Stage Right, our missing lead; Mr. Blue Eyes. He is standing on a balcony watching the place where we meet Jefferson. In the Scanner, he is labeled "Mr. Blue Eyes", has no known affiliation, is wanted for "SC 370", and is wanted for "Classified". His eyes are electronically glowing blue you can even see from several yards away. You cannot injure him as grenades do nothing and you can't aim at him. Of small note, and I don't know if this ACTUALLY means anything, but his hair style asset is referred to as Morgan Blackhand in the files, but could mean nothing if this hair is actually used by other NPCs. MOST LIKELY THIS IS NOTHING UNLESS SOMEONE HAS FURTHER INFO.
(Plot twist: It meant something. But we'll get there.)
V sits with Jefferson and can reveal the truth; "SSI is on the take from an unknown group to control your lives". V can even point out the absurdity of Peralez being as successful of a politician as he is without any corp sponsors. "They want you to be *their* mayor. Molding you like clay". You can tell Jefferson how to proceed and additional details, but it doesn't matter. Later, Jefferson will send a text and delete your number and so will Elizabeth, who will call you out for telling Jeff. In the end credits voicemails, Jefferson has decended into paranoia about some vitamins Liz gave him which he didn't trust so he sent them to the lab, only to then not trust the lab results saying they're fine. Jefferson Peralez is confirmed the new mayor during Late Act 2 and the major difference is his state of mind at the end game; either hiring V to be on his security staff or descending into absolute paranoia over everything in his life.
Lastly, Johnny appears and cryptically talks about back in his day when they'd talk about rogue AIs. Personally... I kinda completely dismiss this? It comes out of nowhere, Johnny cites NOTHING for why he'd bring this up in relation to the case, and I can't fathom a motive. I’d also point out that this isn’t the only time Johnny is outright wrong. In fact, he’s wrong A LOT in the game. For example, he criticizes V for listening to the Netwatch Agent and that he’s bullshitting you. Except, the agent is 100% correct that VDB did spike V as a suicide virus and Johnny is actually wrong. He also claims he doesn’t know what happened with Thompson after Never Fade Away, but this is a lie because Thompson is flying the AV Johnny takes to Arasaka in 2023. The only connection I can find is "Who is controlling Blue-Eyes" which might make Johnny correct, if just not in the way 'Rogue AIs' initially implies.
So, what actually has happened?
The Peralez family has been molded for a very long time into being the perfect political couple. They got scholarships from the Night Foundation for two fancy law degrees, have successful political careers, and Jefferson is running for Mayor on an anti-corp platform, an insanity for Night City. And he's actually successful at it. During a maintenance service at night on the Peralez's apartment, Jefferson woke up and shot an SSI/Unknown agent making repairs. The Control Booth knocked Jefferson out and they pulled the agent out of the apartment into the secret room. SSI put the Peralezes back into bed and hastily cleaned up everything, but the damage was done and Peralez hired V who uncovered mostly everything.
Elizabeth seems to be initially very upset by the discovery, but wants V off the trail when we meet her next. However, she's not in on it as she's equally a victim to the brainwashing/gaslighting and that's for certain. I think she's a pawn who is either too scared or too programmed to break the rules of movement on this chessboard. It's worth noting that, while the unknown entity threatens Jefferson's life and V's well being, they do not make due on either of these threats. I call their bluff. They have put too much work into Jefferson to abandon or kill him.
But, where else have we heard of this gaslighting brainwash process before?
"FULL DISCLOSURE"
Ok, we're on the shorter end so I don't have to actually explain this quest in full. Sandra Dorsett is a netrunner and a very skilled on at that, actually collecting data from Night Corp. She was kidnapped by the savs we rescued her from at the beginning of the game shortly AFTER she stole this data, suggesting Night Corp was behind it. This data is on the shard she asks you to collect during the aforementioned quest. V has full ability to NOT read it, but let's look at it; "Operation Carpe Noctem" ("Seize The Night" in Latin)
Described in it is an experiment on Night Corp's own employees where they are quietly brainwashing them and getting them to do whatever they want. They specifically cite an empathetic and calm employee who they got to fight a co-worker and then jump from a 16th floor window. The shard ends on mentioning that they're ready to install CN-07 on "our actual target".
I think multiple quests discussing brainwashing and gaslighting is too coincidental to be utterly unrelated to each other. I think Night Corp's actual target mentioned here is Peralez.
So, what is Night Corp?
Night Corp is the most mysterious of the corps in Night City. It currently operates to better Night City via philanthropic ventures, fundraising, community support, and city infrastructure. Basically, while Militech and Arasaka and the others operate in the city, Night Corp basically RUNS the actual city. They're also noteworthy for the level of security they have that even the best netrunners can't get much from them and, since they keep to themselves and seemingly just do city infrastructure stuff, no one really super bothers them. It has been run by Miriam Night, wife of late-Richard Night, until recently and we currently don’t actually know who runs NightCorp.
Originally, they were the Night Foundation, but that requires explaining Richard Night... oh boy, Lore Drop. I'll make it quick as possible.
Richard Night is the founder of Night City. He started as a partner of a firm, but his ambitions grew beyond that to founding "Night International" to build his dream; a city that would be so grand it would make all other cities pale by comparison, Coronado City. A capitalist mecha of opportunity, Night City would be run by corporations and have next to no anti-business policies on the books. Arasaka, EMB, and Petrochem were his first backers and he came into claim of land on the central-California coast; Del Coronado Bay and Morro Bay would be the location of his dream city.
(BTW, irl, Morro Bay, California is a real place. Been there, have family there, go there regularly, kinda cool!).
Despite being a capitalist mecca city and run by corps, Richard Night also dreamed it to be "A sprawling metropolis, free of crime, of poverty, of debt. A place where people could live safely, peacefully, without having to worry about the dire situations that were growing around the world at the time".
However, due to the design plans, Night didn't employ local contractors and instead got expensive architects and builders from all over the world. Local builders didn't like that, they had mob connections, bloodshed started. And soon Richard Night was murdered by an unknown assassin, presumably a mob hitman. The city was renamed Night City in his honor and his dream utopia became to embody everything that was destroying the world. Mob took control and corps didn't give a fuck since it didn't hurt them any until they eventually had to take out the mob gangs, but not in any favor to Night’s dream either.
Miriam Night, Richard's Widow, founded the Night Foundation (later Night Corp) to stick to Richard's Ideal dreams of what he wanted the city to be. They invest heavily in ecological research, alt power sources, civic infrastructure, public works, and charities and scholarships for Night City youth. "They've even managed to stay out of the normal corporate power struggles which tend to plague every other corporation, both inside the city and out. Even the shadowy corporate rumors about them, like having underwater bases in the bay or access to orbital satellites, remain unsubstantiated despite extensive investigation."
So, where does this put us now? We have ONE last quest...
"THE PROPHET'S SONG"
Garry The Prophet is our local crazy man. He spouts off insanities to anyone who will listen near Misty's Esoterica in Kabuki. However, some of his ideas aren't quite as much off the mark as one might think. There ain't no technonecromancers from Alpha Centuri (or Spanish Inquisition) nor is Saburo Arasaka an immortal vampire, but he was correct that Saburo wasn't dead and in fact immortal; via Mikoshi and The Relic.
He send you on a quest to investigate a meeting; he says that his ripper mistuned some cyberware in his head and he can hear their communications. You show up to a meeting between corps and Maelstrom. They say some nonsense phrases and transfer a data shard. Reading it ("Destroy After Reading") it seems like nonsense. But does include the line "The cages of men melt as night descends". You can decode it via a Null Cipher; first letter of every line: “Project Oracle Command Execute Plans”.
We don’t know what Project Oracle is. In real life, secret project or operation names actually tend to be chosen at random and are unrelated to the actual project (you can google funny stories about names that ended up awkward to the actual project), so this could mean nothing. But, narratives tend to give meaning to everything. Oracles are mythical in references and could predict the future or see the unseen. Perhaps perfect prediction via behind the scenes manipulations? Not sure we’ll get answers on this one for now.
Going back to Garry, he's been kidnapped. His protoge is screaming he's been kidnapped "Black suits came by - blue eyes and all". Blue Eyes huh? Further, she claims that they threw him into an invisible AV... Huh, like the one we saw back during "Dream On"? "Night's comin... The eternal night"
So, it’s time to jump us to the final step in our Fool’s Journey: The Sun.
“THE SUN”
The Sun ending has V wake up in their new penthouse apartment (with their love interest if they have one). Checking the computer, we see emails from our dear Mr. Blue Eyes. He wants an answer from V as to the job to the Crystal Palace he has planned and that they’re on a tight schedule for “obvious reasons”. We meet with him at the Afterlife and he talks about the job; Casino security is going into maintenance and V mentions giving him the casino client list. V also asks him to “hold up your end of the bargain”. They never discuss eddies or payment. It’s all in such vague terms. “Your end” or “Obvious reasons”. Smaller point but an email from Vik on the space shuttle also tells us that he’s asked around about Blue Eyes and has nothing; either he works with people WAY above Vik’s paygrade or he’s shady as hell… or both.
I think Blue Eyes knows V is dying (the obvious reasons) and I think the unspecified payment is V’s survival. V always says that they want to come back to their love interest so it’s not a mindless suicide run and I don’t think V would risk it all for nothing but eddies; especially not after Reaper (both versions) paint suicide runs as a horrible terrible thing. To then glorify it in another ending… no, the game is smarter than that.
Your love interest doesn’t seem to be too upset about the situation either. Panam and Judy leave V in The Sun due to their lives taking different directions, but it seems mostly amicable and understanding. They even express desire to see V again because they know V needs to do this job. Kerry, who stays with V in The Sun and expresses worry and also a desire to settle down with V, also seems mostly understanding that V needs to go on this quest. I don’t think they’d be so calm and loving and understanding if this were a suicide run. They know more than the player does.
Further, I think Blue Eyes isn’t after the casino aspect of the Crystal Palace at all. While that’s the major commercial aspect of the station as marketed to the citizen world, the station also has embassies from every nation on earth, facilities from all the major corporations, and is pretty much THE place where all the dark corporate espionage goes down. There’s so much more to this location than ‘casino resort’. *EVERY* corp has space stations and hideaways in space because the Crystal Palace offers it’s own legalities and opportunities that are not allowed within Earth’s terms and conditions. If they want to do some research that would be frowned upon elsewhere and get up to some Top Secret shit, it’ll be in outer space. Night City is controlled by corps and has lax laws, but outer space’s are even more so.
I think the cure V wants is not only on the station, I think it’s what Blue Eyes himself is after, but I’ll get there when it’s time to theory craft about the future.
I think it’s worth noting; Blue Eyes IS IN THE TRAILER FOR THE GAME. Yeah, anyone remember that shot on a shuttle with a guy being burned out from the inside? Yeah, he’s there. In the foreground. *Smirking*. The shuttle also seems like they’re in space.
These events leading to the Crystal Palace and the conspiracy with Blue Eyes are blatant DLC Hooks for the future and suggest a post-game DLC. This isn’t the first CDPR has done so either; Blood and Wine takes place after the story of Witcher 3 and is explicitly incompatible with the worst endings of that game. I think, conceivably, other endings where V is still alive could be roped into this adventure; Blue Eyes merely needs to hire them with the same offer of survival. While The Star takes V to Arizona and away from Night City, I think that choice of location is appropriate as, to even get to space for The Crystal Palace, citizens go from LAX to Arizona for a space port to launch them off Earth’s surface. They could have chosen anywhere else to send Panam and V, but they choose Arizona, huh. I do think Reaper, Temperance, and Devil will be locked out of this future, however, as all make any point of Blue Eyes hiring V irrelevant; there’s no V left to hire/save. MAYBE a rejected Devil ending, but I wouldn’t blame them for not continuing that conclusion either as Devil is one of the bad endings.
So, it’s finally time to really compile a lot of this information into where I think this is going in the next comment below

So I am extremely intrigued by the Mitrice Richardson case, as I feel like there is just something "off" about it. I've been thinking about posting about it for a while. I did just see a new post this morning with a theory, and figured I'd run through the entire case again to hear what people have to think. I'm not used to this so please be gentle! This is also going to be a long one, so strap in!
I am struggling to get the formatting to work correctly so I apologize.
Mitrice Lavon Richardson was born in 1985 to Latice Sutton and Michael Richardson, though she was raised by Latice and Mitrice's stepfather, Larry. From a younger age, she was extremely drawn to psychology and the way the human brain worked. Mitrice grew up in West Covina, CA and later attended Cal State - Fullerton to pursue her BA in psychology. She was the first person in her family to attend college.
As she approached the end of her undergraduate career, Mitrice decided that she might want to pursue graduate school. During this time, she was dating her girlfriend, Tessa, and also go-go dancing at a lesbian bar.
Leading up to her disappearance, there are conflicting reports on whether or not Mitrice had been acting unusual. According to Crime Junkie, Tessa adamantly opposes the idea that Mitrice was in any way mentally ill or erratic. However, both Crime Junkie and Trace Evidence acknowledge that Mitrice had been sending strange text messages and posting weird posts on social media at all times of the night.
At some point in the investigation, officers also found erratic journal entries where the writing switched from clean and neat, to staggered and illegible, within the same pages, sometimes the same sentences.
Whether or not she had bipolar disorder is also a point of contention. NBC Los Angeles states that she was diagnosed. I have seen some articles state that she was diagnosed, and that her mother admitted this. But other articles, like this one from Fox LA state that family members state that she had no mental health problems.
However, regardless of whether or not she had bipolar disordea diagnosis, I do believe that she was struggling with mental illness in some way. But did this have to do with her death?
On September 16, 2009, Mitrice was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway when she decided to stop at Geoffrey's in Malibu. She got out of her car to wait for the valet - in his car, mumbling about avenging Michael Jackson's death. When she went inside, the valet informed the host that she was acting strangely.
Mitrice sat alone, drinking a cocktail and eating a steak. But then she randomly joined another table of 7 people. She talked quickly about astrology, even mentioning that she was from Mars. At the end of the meal, the other people left. When Mitrice tried to leave, she was stopped and told to pay the $89 bill. Despite the fact that money was later found in her purse, Mitrice told the restaurant that she had no money and thought the table would pay for her.
The manager called Mitrice's great-grandmother Mildred, who agreed to pay the bill. However, the manager refused to take her credit card number over the phone. Eventually, one of the employees called the police. On the phone call, the woman stated, "We have a guest here who is refusing to pay her bill. She sounds really crazy. She may be on drugs."
At approximately 9pm, officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff's Station showed up at Geoffrey's to arrest Mitrice. Officers searched her car and found a small amount of marijuana. LA Mag, who has one of the most comprehensive write-ups of this case I've seen, also notes that the police found partially drunken bottles of alcohol in her car, but I have not seen that anywhere else.
Because employees at Geoffrey's didn't think Mitrice was okay enough to drive, and because of the marijuana, officers performed a field sobriety test. Mitrice passed. Officers do not report finding a wallet, money, or even cell phone in the car. Although the employees at Geoffrey's considered paying Mitrice's bill for her, to avoid her being taken into police custody, they were worried about her mental health and her ability to drive. So they let her be taken away by the police, as the manager chose to press charges.
As this was going on, Mildred called Latice. Immediately, Latice was concerned about how strange her daughter was acting. She called the Lost Hills station and was assured that Mitrice was being carefully watched by the officers. It was late at night by this time and Latice wasn't sure if she should pick her daughter up; the officer assured her that Mitrice would be in custody until morning, so Latice could pick her up then.
According to LA Mag, Latice told the officer, "I think the only way I will come and get her tonight is if you guys are going to release her tonight. She's not from that area and I would hate to wake up to a morning report, 'girl lost somewhere with her head chopped off.'"
Here's what we know.
Mitrice's car was impounded. Mitrice was taken to Lost Hills station, about 25 miles away from Geoffrey's. Law enforcement could have held her under the belief that she might hurt herself or others.
Despite conflicting reports, law enforcement officers state Mitrice was fine. Mitrice was released from custody between 12:15am and 1:25am on September 17. When released, she had no wallet or cell phone.
She used a phone at the station to try and call Mildred. LE states she called 4 times and they heard a conversation. Mildred says she never received a phone call. All phone calls (if any) were made from a non-recorded line.
Mitrice was charged with marijuana possession and defrauding an officer. Because she had no prior record, she was let go with a fine and court date. Officers refused to drive her back to her car (8-13 miles away). Officers told her she could sleep in the lobby until morning. One jailer claims Mitrice said she was meeting friends.
In an article for CBS News, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore stated, "She exhibited no signs of mental illness or intoxication. She was fine. She's an adult."
Mitrice walked into the night, in an unfamiliar area, with no car, wallet, or phone. When Latice called the station the next morning around 5:30am, she was told that her daughter was gone. She asked about filing a missing persons report, but was told it was too soon. Latice told the deputy she was worried about her daughter's mental state, that she might be depressed.
Somewhere between 5:30am and 6:30am, Bill Smith called the Lost Hills station to report a young black women "prowling" around his home in Monte Nido (about 6 miles away from the station). Bill reports that when he asked the woman how she was doing, she replied that she was OK, just resting. Then she disappeared into the night.
Now here's where the Lost Hills station begins to look more and more fishy.
It took 2 days before Lost Hills officers started searching for Mitrice...at Bill Smith's house. Officers declined to use scent tracking dogs that would tell them how Mitrice got from Lost Hills station to Monte Nido.
Officers found shoe prints. It looked like Mitrice was walking, then had suddenly started running towards Dark Creek and Dark Canyon. Officers did not search Dark Creek or Dark Canyon at the time.
Mitrice's case was reassigned twice: first to the LAPD's Missing Persons Unit, then to LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Unit. LAPD officers determined that Mitrice had a manic episode caused by bipolar disorder. When LAPD officers searched her car, they found her wallet, cell phone, ATM card, and enough money to cover her meal - despite the fact that the LASD stated they found nothing.
3 days after her disappearance, the Lost Hills Lieutenant sent out an email about Mitrice, which LA Mag got a hold of. In the email, Lieutenant Scott Chew addresses Captain Thomas Martin, noting that Mitrice was brought in because "[Loureiro] felt she was acting unusual and was uneasy about letting her go. In the end, [Loureiro] brought her because of his instincts. The fact that she disappeared validated his instinct.”
Since then, Chew stated that he did not remember writing the email, or maybe didn't write it at all. Loureiro stated that he never actually had that conversation or asked for a sobriety test for Mitrice. For the next month or so, the LASD frequently spoke to the media to reaffirm that Mitrice had been fine.
Latice then asked for the footage of Mitrice at the station, hoping to get insight into her daughter's condition. She was told that no footage existed. 4 months later, she was told that there was actually a video...but due to "technical difficulties," it took ANOTHER 3 months for the family to receive it.
In the video (which was edited), Mitrice seems agitated, pulling on her hair and on the bars. When she is finally released, the video shows Mitrice walking out the door...with a deputy following quickly after. The police department refused to name the officer or state if he had any contact with Mitrice outside of the station.
In January, there were immense searches of Malibu Canyon; no body was found, and Lost Hills officers refuse to say whether or not they checked Dark Canyon. As time went on, there were some supposed sightings of Mitrice in Las Vegas, in a casino or working as a prostitute. But Latice says she knew her daughter was still somewhere where she went missing. Unfortunately, she was right.
11 months after her disappearance, Mitrice's mummified remains were found in Dark Canyon by rangers, only 8 miles from the Lost Hills station and 2 miles from where she was last seen. You can see the map to get a better idea.
Again, here's where it gets weird.
Mitrice was found naked. Some of her clothes were recovered a few hundred feet away in positions that did not suggest animal involvement. Her bra was unclasped. Her belt was unclasped and removed. Her jeans were unzipped.
An earring that she had not been wearing at the time of her disappearance was stuck in her hair.
Her right leg, with the femur removed, was located 6 feet upslope from her body. Her body, clothes, and leg showed no signs of animal involvement, biting, trauma, etc. Five neck bones were never found.
Mitrice's left arm was tightly flexed over her chest, indicating that she mummified in that unnatural position.
Rangers called in the dead body. Around 1.5 hours later, a Lost Hills deputy (unidentified) arrived on scene. Policy and state codes say that the coroner must be contacted immediately upon finding remains. It took 1.5 additional hours, after the deputy arrived, to call the coroner.
The coroner and his team were told that a LASD helicopter would pick them up and bring them to the body. 2-3 hours later, they were told that the LASD would remove the body instead. Against the wishes of the coroner, the LASD collected the remains and took them back to the Lost Hills station, breaking policy.
Sheriffs took no photographs of the scene, failed to collect soil samples, and did not document the process of recovering Mitrice's remains. When asked, sheriffs stated they pulled on the skull and the entire skeleton appeared. This is untrue, as her skull was detached from her neck.
The LASD stated that they believed no crime had been committed. Rather, they posited that Mitrice had been bitten by a rattlesnake or possibly had a fatal allergic reaction to poison oak. They stated that Mitrice must have been naked because animals ripped her clothes off, but this directly contrasts how neatly the clothes were removed, the fact that the clothes and body show no tooth marks, and that her clothes were scattered around the canyon.
Additionally:
If animals had torn off her clothing, where were her shoes and socks, shirts, and underwear?
Why were her clothes so clean, with no evidence of animal bites or even dirt from nature? One forensic anthropologist believes the clothes might have been removed from the scene and cleaned.
Why was Mitrice mummified and not totally decomposed if she had been exposed to the elements for 11 months?
What caused her left arm to be flexed? Could she have been tied up while mummification occurred?
When the animal theory didn't pan out, the LASD changed their statement, saying that her clothes were removed by running water. But for this to be possible, the creek would have needed to rise by 60 feet, and her body would have needed to float against the current.
Next came a series of infuriating mistakes from the coroner's office:
The coroner did not test hair found on the ground and compare it to Mitrice's hair to see if someone else was present. The earring was never tested. Bug casings on Mitrice's body were never tested. Dirt and leaves from the scene were never tested.
No craniotomy was performed to identify potential blunt force trauma. It took weeks to find Mitrice's clothes at the coroner's office; they were shoved into the bottom of a bag. Mitrice's pubic hair and clothes were not tested for semen, fibers, or hair.
Altogether, the LASD only searched the scene twice: once when Mitrice's body was found, and again 6 months later. Some of her remains are still missing. Her teeth were slightly pink, indicating strangulation, but no determination can be made without the missing hyoid bone from her neck.
So what happened to Mitrice?
(1) She was experiencing some sort of psychosis or manic episode, whether from bipolar, schizophrenia, or another mental illness. Because of this, she was able to get to the specific area of the canyon, remove her clothing, and succumbed to the elements. The LASD, though sketchy, did not play a role in her death. They just didn't care that much about a black woman in a predominantly white area.
(2) Mitrice was going through some sort of mental health crisis. Officers of the LASD believed that they could take advantage of her in some way, probably sexually. After she was released, the LASD contributed to her getting to Monte Nido and then to her death. They cleaned up and either hid the body, or dumped it but led others away from the area, then continually prevented the investigation from proceeding.
(3) Some third party (another person, a group of people) contributed to Mitrice's death. Because of LE's clear negligence, and Mitrice's mental illness, no third party was ever searched for.
I personally believe that the LASD did have a hand in Mitrice's death. I believe that one, or multiple, officers offered her a ride. I believe that she was sexually assaulted. But I'm unclear if, after this, LE killed her or she wandered off on her own, where she died. What are your thoughts? Curious to see what everyone else thinks.
Additional Articles: LA Mag & Wikipedia

Kennedy and Heidi: Vicarious Patricide as Tony’s Decompensation

At the risk of needless redundancy, I think it’s helpful to summarize Tony’s state of mind going into the episode Kennedy and Heidi. His consciousness is teeming with ancient but recently-agitated memories showcasing his father’s violence and toxic influence, like Johnny shooting a hole through Livia’s hairdo and baptizing him in the act of murder. He’s unable to shake stories of parental neglect leading to tragic outcomes for children. He’s painfully aware of Christopher’s hatred of him and desire for murderous revenge, feelings ultimately rooted in the fact that Tony guided him into the same corrupt existence into which he himself had been led by Johnny, Junior, and company, suggesting a reciprocal, if unconscious, rage by Tony towards those men. His subconscious mind is under constant assault from hats and movie posters and coffee mugs bearing the image of a bloody meat cleaver, an emblem of his own lost childhood innocence and inculcation by his father into his brutal, ugly vocation. He is racked with acute but intense guilt over the role he thinks his life’s example has played in shaping his son’s values and poor sense of self-worth. And he is still repressing a mountain of hurt over the fact that his uncle and second father tried not once but twice to kill him, a repression Melfi warned would someday result in a total collapse of his defense mechanisms, that is, a collapse of his paternal hero-worship and related quest for the macho validation that has prevented him from critically examining his father, uncle, and the men upon whom he modeled his life.
Now consider the circumstances immediately before the crash. Tony and Chris are on a routine drive back from business in Christopher’s new black Cadillac SUV (the first Cadillac Chris has ever owned, incidentally.) The conversation turns to life priorities. Chris, conspicuously clad in a Cleaver hat, specifically mentions how Kaitlyn has changed his priorities, and Tony mentions the “shit with Junior”. So the context is immediately pregnant with the fact that Junior shot and nearly killed Tony within the past year and with the fact that Chris is in a new place of responsibility, a position where he is, for the first time, truly the custodian and trustee for another life.
In a perfectly-timed illustration of just how ill-equipped Chris is to live up to those responsibilities, he nervously and repeatedly fiddles with the car stereo, fidgets, and widens his eyes, telegraphing to Tony that he is high as a kite on drugs. “Comfortably Numb” swells on the sound system as Tony stares at him, the lyrics underscoring that, in that moment, he does not see Chris as a youngster, as the “adorable kid” he once road around in the basket of his bicycle, but as a grown man:
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye I turned to look but it was gone I cannot put my finger on it now The child is grown, the dream is gone
Chris swerves, and the crash happens seconds later.

Tony as the Child in the Carseat

It’s critical to note that Tony initially manifests every intention of helping Chris, even as he’s fighting his own injuries. “I’m comin’,” he says as Chris asks for help. His expression and demeanor only change when he realizes what Chris means by “help”. “I’ll never pass a drug test,” Chris moans. “What?” Tony asks incredulously as Chris is inhaling his own blood. Almost simultaneously, Tony turns towards the back and sees that a tree limb has penetrated the passenger compartment, lodging in Kaitlyn’s car seat like a spear. While Tony would somewhat exaggerate the size of the branch in later narrations of the event, there’s no question that it was large enough to have impaled or seriously injured an infant.
Even after this warning shot over the bow, Tony apparently intends to help Chris, coming over to the driver’s side and breaking the window when he couldn’t get the door open. He draws his cell phone to call for help but stops when Chris again mentions being doped up, which suggests that Chris is more concerned about the legal consequences of his intoxication than about the fact that he is drowning in his own blood, completely belying his claim to a life newly ordered around the lofty priority of fatherhood.
That’s the moment when Tony forms a genuine murderous intent, an intent that has little to do with Christopher’s animosity towards him or the danger that he might flip. Those are conscious, background motives that help Tony rationalize and make sense of his actions later. But the factor impelling him to end Christopher’s life is his own, fundamental identification with the child who might just as easily have been killed or seriously harmed in that carseat.
To objectify this point, there is a slow pan of the limb sticking through the seat as Tony performs the suffocation, clearly not a shot representing Tony’s vision or gaze at that moment but objectively corroborating the earlier angle when Tony glances back and we see the seat from his point of view. The juxtaposition of these shots – subjective and objective – tells me the carseat is not just a convenient excuse for Tony. This is what he’s really feeling. In this moment, he is the phantom child in that carseat, a child whose safety and well-being come second to his father’s corrupt values and reckless self-indulgence, a child whose soul and humanity are metaphorically impaled by riding in and being taught to drive his father’s black Cadillac.
The exclamation point on the symbolism is provided by Christopher’s hat. Incredibly, it remains on his head throughout the crash and suffocation, its bloody cleaver logo pointing towards Tony when the car comes to rest. As Tony acts consciously on behalf of an innocent child, the symbol of his own lost childhood innocence is directly before him. And, for good measure, the cap and logo stare back at him in the hospital from the gurney laden with Christopher’s bloody clothing and the black bag containing his dead body. (The logo antagonizes Tony a final time from his coffee mug the next morning before he angrily tosses the mug into his backyard woods.)
Several points about the suffocation itself are remarkable. First was the look of absolute depravity on Tony’s face as he watched Christopher struggle to breathe. This look was unlike any ever seen on Tony’s face at any other moment in the series. Even when committing other personal and deadly acts of violence, his face and demeanor had always betrayed a commensurate level of animus, an active, passionate intent. In contrast, he reached through the window and pinched Christopher’s nose – and maintained that hold – with remarkable calm. His face and eyes throughout the suffocation were paradoxically both incredibly intense and completely devoid of human emotion, a look far more disturbing than any look of mere rage he’d ever worn before.
Second, although this act was, in my judgment, clearly about the release of Tony’s pent up rage towards his father figures, the method of killing evokes Livia. Besides her conspiracy with Junior to kill Tony (which she rationalized was for his own good) and general obsession with stories of child deaths, she had once threatened to “smother [her children] with a pillow” to save them from a fate she deemed even worse. Tony grabbed a pillow intending to smother her in the season one finale before nursing home personnel intervened. In Members Only, Tony spoke of being smothered with a pillow as a suitable form of euthanasia. Its functional equivalent at the scene of the crash had a definite vibe of putting Chris out of his own – and everyone’s – misery. So, in killing his “father”, Tony was also paradoxically suffocating his “son”, thereby channeling Livia’s filicidal urges and concept of mercy killing.
The most spine-tingling resonance with the scene comes from two season four episodes where Tony’s deep identification with “innocents” – be they children or animals – once again comes to the fore, as does his appreciation for the consequences of Chris continuing to use drugs. In Whoever Did This, Tony warns Christopher that he “can’t be high on heroine and raise kids.” And in The Strong, Silent Type, after learning that a doped-up Chris accidentally smothered and suffocated Adriana’s dog, Tony ominously snaps, “You suffocated little Cossette? I oughta suffocate you, you prick!” It’s such perfect foreshadowing that the earlier episodes seem to have been written with the outcome of Kennedy and Heidi in mind.

Righteous Retribution as the Explanation for Tony’s Lack of Sorrow

As previously noted, the most troubling aspect of the episode from the standpoint of character consistency and plausibility was not the fact that Tony murdered Chris. It was his vacuous expression during the killing and the fact that he never betrayed a moment’s genuine sorrow or regret afterwards. He remained, in fact, defiantly happy and unconflicted about it, especially to Melfi, and was sincerely troubled that neither she nor anyone else could see how Christopher’s death rescued Kaitlyn from a lifetime of risks and harm that she would naturally suffer as the daughter of a drug addict (and mob captain).
In his therapy scenes with Melfi, real and dream, Tony even makes the very contrast I raise, noting that he’s never felt this way after murdering any other person close to him. He alludes to his sorrow over Pussy and specifically allows that murdering Tony B left him “prostate [sic] with grief.” In effect, Tony himself is revealing that this killing feels righteous and justified to him on an instinctive level and is therefore not one about which he can feel guilt or sorrow.
That sentiment makes no sense if his dominant motives were those he talked about in therapy: Christopher’s animosity and resentment towards him after the Adriana hit and his drug-use and consequent risk to flip. Whatever weight those factors carry in justifying murder in the corrupt “ethics” of the mob (which, in any case, is less than the weight of the transgressions by Pussy and Tony B), they carry absolutely no legitimate moral weight outside it and could not sustain in Tony the sense of just triumph that he felt in response to Christopher’s death. What could inspire that sense of triumph is the perceived liberation of a child from a dangerous and toxic father, experienced subconsciously as vicarious retribution for the abuse and harm he himself suffered at the hands of his own father and uncle.

Significance of the Names “Kennedy” and “Heidi”

“Kennedy” and “Heidi” are the names of the young passenger and driver, respectively, in the car that sideswipes Christopher’s SUV before the fateful crash. The girls are barely onscreen a few seconds, just long enough to (somewhat artificially) learn their names in the following exchange:
Kennedy: Maybe we should go back, Heidi! Heidi: Kennedy, I’m on my learner’s permit after dark!
Much forum debate after the first airing of the episode centered around the significance, if any, of these names. I propose a related but even more basic question: why are the girls present in the scene at all?
Tony’s windfall opportunity to murder Chris and pass it off as death from accidental injury was entirely dependent upon being unobserved by others after the crash. Given Christopher’s intoxicated state and inattention to the curvy road while he fiddled with radio controls, a mere swerve and over-correction or swerve to avoid an animal (Tony’s crash with Adriana, anyone?) would have easily sufficed to trigger the accident but without the problematic involvement of another car, the driver of which would have to be made to flee the scene illegally and in contravention of the ethics and instincts of at least 95% of the motorists on the road. So the very fact that another car is involved, complicating both the story and the filming, suggests some symbolic or subtextual design to the involvement related specifically to the momentous event occurring right after the crash.
One aspect of that design is revealed and amplified when a grieving Kelly shows up at Christopher’s wake with dark hair framing her face and large, dark sunglasses covering her eyes. A member of the crew remarks, “Look at her. Like a movie star.” An odd look immediately crosses Tony’s face as he spontaneously responds, “Jackie Kennedy”, noting Kelly’s resemblance to the widow of John F. Kennedy.
In my mind, this striking moment in the episode can have only one purpose, and that’s to evoke Johnny Boy in relation to Christopher via a kind of symbolic math. If Kelly = Jackie Kennedy, then Chris = JFK = Johnny Boy since JFK was the explicit parallel figure for Johnny in In Camelot, the first episode of the series depicting cracks in the foundation of Tony’s paternal hero worship. When that foundation completely crumbles inside Tony’s subconscious a season and a half later, it’s entirely fitting that the JFK/Johnny parallel is renewed.
As for the name “Heidi”, most folks around these parts felt it was meant to evoke the idea of “orphan” because of the famous Swiss orphan tale of the same name and because Kaitlyn (and Paulie) both lost parents in the episode. That’s an entirely plausible analysis that requires no expansion, although I’m inclined to think there’s more to it than that, starting with the analogy of Tony himself to “Heidi”. No, Tony was never technically orphaned, though he arguably suffered more as the son of Johnny and Livia than if he had been. He was certainly deprived of real parental love and guidance, on both sides, and that roughly equates to the definition of “orphan”.
Before discussing this episode for the first time, I never knew that Heidi was the story of an orphan, only that it was some kind of tale for children. And I knew that only because of the epic 1968 football game between Joe Namath’s Jets and the Oakland Raiders, the climactic ending of which (an improbable comeback by the Raiders) was cut off abruptly for television viewers at the end of its scheduled broadcast slot so that a movie version of Heidi could begin airing on time. I was only four at the time of this debacle but recall my parents talking about it – and the considerable chaos it caused at NBC and at telephone switchboards around the country – for years afterwards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game
It wouldn’t become clear until the end of Made In America, but there’s an obvious parallel to the Heidi phenomenon in the wind-up of The Sopranos. Consider that, like the Heidi Game broadcast, Made in America featured an abrupt, unexpected termination of excruciatingly tense action at a penultimate moment, pre-empting audience experience of what appeared to be an imminent and momentous climax. The Sopranos ending may not have disabled an entire telephone network, but it certainly generated an enormous amount of controversy that, for better or worse, persists to this day.
Beyond that, there were enough other football references in the final Sopranos episodes, and especially Jets references, to warrant further consideration of this football connotation for “Heidi”. In Remember When, Tony’s betting losses on Jets football games prompt his call to Hesh for a bridge loan. Later that same episode, Paulie annoys Tony and company with yet another old tale, this one relating how, after witnessing Joe Namath stagger drunk into a bar the night before a game, he bet a load of cash the following day on the Jets’ opponent. In Chasing It, Tony gets inside information on a Jets football game and is irate when Carmela refuses to bet money on it. The episode features a closeup of a large newspaper headline, “Jets Bomb Chargers”.
In Blue Comet, then-current coach of the Jets, Eric Mangini, makes a cameo appearance in Vesuvio, with Artie informing a suitably-impressed Tony so the two can go over and shake hands. News articles at the time clarified that the cameo wasn’t Mangini’s idea but the idea of Sopranos producers, who contacted him months in advance and made accommodations in the shooting schedule around his availability. So this seemed more than a casual desire to have some generic celebrity show up.
That especially seems true considering Mangini was given no dialog and that his meeting with Tony and Artie was only depicted in the silent background of a conversation between Charmaine and Carmela. Mangini’s only purpose on set was apparently to show his face briefly and to have the fact of his identity (Tony has to tell a bewildered Carm that Mangini is the head coach of the Jets) permeate the minds of the audience and the subtext of the scene, which is ultimately about chickens coming home to roost on Tony and Carmela because of the lives they chose.
As alter egos for Tony and Carmela throughout the series, folks who took the proverbial “other path” in life, Artie and (especially) Charmaine engage in subtle gloating in the scene. Football coaching was firmly established as Tony’s “road not taken” in Test Dream, so having an actual football coach present in the episode where the unsavory and downright deadly consequences of his chosen vocation are crashing in all around him provides dramatic ballast. All the better to have the coach in the scene be the coach of the team involved in the Heidi game in view of the ending planned for the following episode.
And speaking again of that ending, the wall behind Tony in Holsten’s is consumed with four large murals specifically brought in by the production crew for the shoot. The largest and most centered depicts a huge, light-colored building with lots of windows, somewhat reminiscent of the Inn at the Oaks in Tony’s coma dream. It’s apparently a high school, however, as it is flanked on either side by images of football players in full uniform with what appear to be names and year of graduation engraved at the bottom. To the side and extreme left is a mural of a tiger and the caption “Class of 1973” at the bottom. The tiger is presumably the mascot for the team and school represented in the other murals. So there is a strong symbolic presence of “football” in the last scene of the series, particularly of high school football from roughly the era when Tony would have entered high school.
Finally, though it may be completely insignificant, when Tony tells Carm about the accident from his hospital stretcher in Kennedy and Heidi, he mentions that he re-injured his knee, “the one from high school.” That certainly sounds like a reference to an old high school football injury.
If these loose strands from multiple episodes are indeed intended to connote football in relation to the name “Heidi”, what does that actually mean in the context of the episode Kennedy and Heidi? What does football have to do with Tony killing Chris or, more precisely, with him killing his father in the guise of Chris?
The linchpin in that symbolism, it seems to me, is Tony’s old high school football coach, the guy who would have been his coach when he originally injured his knee, the guy Tony dreamt repeatedly of trying to silence or kill, the guy whose puzzling duality in Test Dream suddenly makes sense when he’s viewed as a classic, Freudian composite of opposites, specifically a composite of Tony’s opposing father figures with Johnny dressed in the physiognomy of Coach Molinaro by Tony’s subconscious in order to render acceptable imagery of his latent, patricidal feelings.
If you further allow, as I do, that the Johnny look-alike shooting at Tony with a scoped rifle (ala Oswald/”Kennedy”) in that same dream is yet another Freudian “reversal into the opposite” by Tony’s subconscious to disguise his repressed paternal rage, then the Kennedy/Heidi connection is pretty clear. The names are presented proximate to the crash to connote that, in killing Chris, Tony has finally acted out the Test Dream imagery that haunted him for years: he has (symbolically) killed his father, the “Kennedy” and “Heidi” of his dream.

“He’s Dead”

In my judgment, this explains Tony’s otherwise puzzling, peyote-induced insight when he proclaims, “He’s dead,” after winning at roulette on 3 successive spins, prompting him to fall to the floor in spectacular and uncontrollable laughter. What other, real death could have inspired such a euphoric and epiphanic reaction? What real death could Tony only have appreciated while in a drug-induced, altered state of consciousness?
Many felt the line referred to Christopher because he’d just died, obviously, and because Tony’s gambling luck suddenly changed afterward. That analysis never made sense to me.
First, Tony plays roulette at the casino while sober when he first arrives in Vegas and loses every round. Chris was already dead at that time, as Tony well knew and accepted. Indeed, Tony was never in any state of denial about Christopher’s death (or about having killed him.) He embraced it, both consciously and in his dream therapy session with Melfi after the crash.
The “he’s dead” insight occurs only after Tony takes peyote and notices a sudden and complete about-face in gambling luck. Why would he need psychedelic drugs to suddenly realize what he already knew and accepted about Chris? And why would Christopher’s death be tied in his mind to his own gambling luck anyway? No prior connection between those two things had ever been suggested.
On the other hand, Tony’s sudden escalation in gambling, which coincided with the agitation and intensification of his latent rage towards his father(s), could easily be seen as a subconscious rebellion against the stern, anti-gambling lecture Johnny imparted the night Tony witnessed the cleaver incident. To the extent that the rebellion results in huge financial losses and self destruction, it obviously fails. His father retains ultimate power and authority. To the extent the rebellion results in huge winnings, it succeeds, and Tony vanquishes his father.
That conquest was the ineffable and elusive “high” that Tony was subconsciously pursuing in Chasing It but which he could not articulate to Melfi. Thus the sudden change in gambling fortune on his Vegas trip is easily tied in Tony’s drug-altered psyche to a euphoric realization that he has conquered or symbolically killed his father, none of which Tony could appreciate without a vastly altered state of consciousness.
And that leads to why he went to Vegas in the first place. He asks that question out loud to the Vegas prostitute, Sonia, immediately before admitting that Christopher once mentioned taking peyote with her. Tony then confesses to having always wanted to try the drug.
Clearly, then, he didn’t just happen to pick Vegas and didn’t just happen to make contact with this girl. His subconscious was pushing him to that venue because he craved the enlightenment of a peyote experience. So while Tony’s real motives for the murder, and for his otherwise inexplicable jubilance afterward, were completely closed off to his conscious mind, somehow he sensed their existence and yearned to unlock and understand them. However his peyote revelations didn’t stop with simply understanding why he killed Chris.

“I Get It. I Get It!”

Tony’s desert epiphany is a bookend to his near-death coma experience and, I believe, can only be fully understood in relation to it. Yet exploring that relationship is a journey all unto itself, calling not only for consideration of the coma episodes and Kennedy and Heidi but the meaning of the cut to black that ends the series. While exploring the religious and spiritual underpinnings of those episodes is of even more weight and interest to me personally than the issue of Tony’s motives in killing Christopher, it deserves and demands its own, dedicated discussion. For now, I’d simply like to posit what I strongly believe Tony’s epiphany to have been with only minimal argumentation as to why I hold that belief.
The epiphany is presaged when Tony enters the casino on his peyote trip and notes that the roulette wheel is built on the same principle as the solar system. The ball spins round and round the center or “sun” of the wheel because of two delicately-balanced but largely opposing phenomena: the momentum of the ball (which, without the wheel, would carry the ball away in a straight line) and the centripetal force of the wheel (applied by the rim, which continuously pulls the ball towards the center even as the ball’s momentum continuously pulls it on a path perpendicular to the centripetal force.) The antagonism (or cooperation, if you prefer) of the forces gives rise to a unified system: an orbit.
If this sounds a bit like the Bell Labs scientist’s explanation of how two tornadoes are in fact just facets of one, unified system of wind, it’s likely no mere coincidence. As Hal Holbrook’s character argued, separateness is a mirage. The universe, and everything in it, is one big soup of molecules interacting in cause/effect fashion according to laws, making it one whole, not a bunch of discrete parts. “Everything is everything,” as the black rapper reduced it.
That was the philosophy that really made an impression on Tony in the days and weeks following his coma. The principles of quantum physics articulated by Holbrook’s character are likely as close as you can get to a scientific codification of Bhuddism and therefore reinforced much of what the Bhuddist monks conveyed to Tony in his coma. The monks laughed when Tony claimed he wasn’t Finnerty and explained that there really is no “you” and “me, that death would bring an obliteration of individuality. Separate consciousness – and the consciousness of separateness – is an illusion of the living.
So all this laid the philosophical groundwork for Tony’s Las Vegas trip. In that trip, Tony seeks out a girl with whom Chris had slept, then sleeps with her himself. He mentions having refrained from a longstanding desire to try peyote because he always felt the weight of his responsibilities, an implied contrast to Christopher, who always indulged in drugs despite his responsibilities. The idea that Tony was seeking to almost live life in Christopher’s skin in the Las Vegas portion of the episode was something several posters mentioned in first discussions after Kennedy and Heidi aired. Even the girl, Sonia, remarks how similar Tony and Chris are, a somewhat dubious observation that somehow offends Tony but which also helps define his impending epiphany.
That epiphany is spurred when the rising sun flares at him over the desert mountain vista. This recalls Tony’s earlier comparison of the roulette wheel to the solar system. It also resonates completely with the fact that Kevin Finnerty was a solar heating salesman from Kingman, Arizona, a town which, not coincidentally, lies 95 miles southeast of Las Vegas and shares the same desert landscape. Also not coincidental, IMO, is the fact that in the prior episode, Christopher spoke of the perks of joining witness protection and of “living large” in Arizona.
So I believe that, in that desert sunrise on the cusp of Arizona, in fulfillment of his identity as Kevin Finnerty, solar heating salesman, Tony saw his “son” – Christopher – “rise” and realized that, in murdering him days before, he (Tony) was really “rising” as a “son” against Johnny Boy. And in that linkage, he suddenly realized that “everything is [indeed] everything.” He is both Chris and Johnny Boy, both abused and misguided son and abusing, misguiding father. He is murdering uncle and would-be murdered nephew. He is both the mother that sees suffocation as mercy killing and the son who is suffocated. Christopher is both his son and his father. Johnny Boy is Coach Molinaro. “Kennedy” is “Heidi”. Opposites are really two sides of the same coin. In that fleeting moment of insight, Tony was truly feeling “one” with the universe.

The Second Coming

The episode following Kennedy and Heidi is titled The Second Coming after the Yeats poem that grips AJ in the English lit class he’s auditing. While the poem speaks to the bleakness of his depression and outlook on life at that particular time, there’s little doubt that – like everything of substantial weight in the Sopranos universe – it ultimately relates, first and foremost, to Tony. First referenced in the Cold Cuts therapy session dealing with pent-up rage where Tony’s deep shame from the cleaver incident is finally revealed, the poem seems the veritable inspiration for the storyline (as interpreted in this article) that culminates in Christopher’s murder:
The Second Coming By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The widening gyre, the orbit that breaks down when the center can no longer hold, is clearly a parallel to the decompensation of which Melfi warned, the point at which Tony’s defenses after Junior’s second murder attempt could no longer hold and the underlying pathological rage at his fathers would take over. True to the poem, a “blood-dimmed tide was loosed”, inspired by a perverse compassion for the “innocent”. While “the best” all mourned Christopher and thought his death a tragedy, Tony, “the worst”, was full of passionate intensity and could not understand why no one else saw the greater good in Christopher’s death.
The “revelation” occurs in a “waste of desert sand”, imagery easily compatible with Tony’s “I get it” moment in the Nevada/Arizona desert. The uniquely depraved look on his face as he suffocated Christopher is evoked by the line describing a “gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun”. “Twenty years of stony sleep” refers to the decades of denial Tony maintained, the defense mechanisms that kept him all his life from confronting and admitting that, in some very real ways, he hated his father. It’s a figurative sleep that was suggested literally in the noted fact that so many episodes in season 6B started with Tony in a deep sleep. Somnolence was suggested even in the choice of the song “Comfortably Numb” as soundtrack in the moments immediately preceding the crash, the moments right before the hour of the “rough beast” finally arrived. Even the incidentals are perfect allusions, as with the image of “stony sleep” being turned into a nightmare by a “rocking cradle”, or, in this case, by a car seat with a branch sticking through it.
I’m intrigued by the line describing the emerging beast as having “lion body”. It may mean absolutely nothing. But among the story points worth considering in relation to it are the tiger on the wall in Holsten’s and the enigmatic cat in Made In America.
More obscure is the fact that in Remember When, the single episode most explicitly dealing with the violent release of stifled paternal rage, Carter Chong described his grandfather as a “lion” and noted that his father owned “Grumman” stock. (Grumman manufactured a number of high-profile fighter military aircraft, most of them named for some kind of cat, e.g., Panther, Jaguar, Tomcat, Tigercat.) Carter was reviewing these facts to himself in the scene immediately preceding his vicious attack on Junior, suggesting that, in acting out on his stifled paternal hatred, he was adopting the predatory, aggressive characteristics of a wild cat. Notably, when Junior, the paternal surrogate who modeled this kind of aggressive behavior to Carter, was seen at the end of that episode bruised and literally defanged, his sunken mouth void of false teeth, he was stroking a harmless little housecat on his lap. Once a lion, the former mob boss was a lion no more.

Asbestos Dumping as a Metaphor for Tony’s Toxic Spill of Rage

Kennedy and Heidi opens with a controversy between Tony and Phil Leotardo over asbestos disposal. One of Tony’s contractors was removing asbestos from old buildings, while following none of the strict (and expensive) asbestos-handling laws regulating worker and public safety, and was seeking to dump completely uncontained truck-fulls at waste stations controlled by Phil. Phil’s guys were denying the trucks the right to dump. As a consequence, huge, openly-smoking asbestos mounds were building up at job sites.
After Christopher’s death, Tony was doing little to find a solution, skipping town to gamble, get laid, and get high and leaving the contractor high and dry. Finally, near the very end of the episode, the contractor dumps heaps of asbestos at dawn in an open marsh area resembling the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that gained widespread use in the 19th and 20th centuries as an ingredient in various building industry materials – including wall compounds, insulation, and roofing materials – primarily because of its extreme insulative properties and resistance to heat and fire. In the last 40 years, it’s become better-known for its cancer-causing and toxic effects on those mining and working with it in manufacturing, demolition/remodeling, or other “raw” environments.
Both the heat resistance and toxicity of asbestos make the shoddy removal/dumping storyline a compelling metaphor for Tony’s equally shoddy “dumping” in Kennedy and Heidi. The smoldering heat and flames from his hatred towards his father and uncle were contained beneath his consciousness by an insulating firewall of denial and repression. In essence, this denial and repression was Tony’s psychological asbestos, and it (more or less) contained the heat and fire within him for 47 years.
But it finally broke down, allowing the flames to rage and do damage and necessitating a messy disposal. Unfortunately the breakdown didn’t happen where it should have, in his therapist’s office as the result of honest introspection and dialog about little things like his uncle trying to kill him twice and his father indoctrinating him to murder at 22. That would have been the equivalent of careful, legally-compliant asbestos removal. Instead the breakdown occurred in a roadside ravine and the resulting “waste [in the] desert sand” was every bit as toxic as the smoking piles illegally dumped in the Meadowlands immediately before the desert epiphany and which we saw reprised in the very first shot of the following episode.
Think about that for a moment. Tony’s “I get it” moment was literally sandwiched between shots of noxious mounds of asbestos blowing in the New Jersey wind, a significant clue that some other kind of perversely cathartic disposal was in the middle of that sandwich.

The Orbit of the ‘Blue Comet’: Long Journey to Nowhere

It’s fair to ask: if the broad strokes of my interpretation are valid, what impact did the epiphany have on Tony going forward? After the drugs wore off, did he actually retain any specific understanding of his subconscious motives for killing Chris? Was he left only with the impression that he had enjoyed a very brief moment of enlightenment but without intellectual distillation of the enlightenment itself?
Because the insight was founded upon the secret that he had murdered Chris, even if Tony had retained it, he couldn’t overtly share it with anyone. Still, I lean toward the interpretation that the specifics (at least the ones I proffered) were lost to him when the altered state of consciousness ceased. When he tried to describe the magic of what he experienced in the desert to his crew, he could only come up with the most mundane, inadequate words: “The sun . . . came up.” They all looked at him like he was half retarded.
He was slightly more specific with Melfi, offering that he saw “for pretty certain” that this reality is not all there is. He couldn’t define the alternative but was still convinced there was “something else”.
He did speak in therapy of appreciating a balance and unity in opposites that he hadn’t appreciated before, a “ying” [sic] and “yang”. And he offered that “mothers are like buses . . . the vehicle that gets us here,” but that, once here, we are all on our own, individual journeys (mothers included.) So, to the extent his epiphany comported with what he revealed in therapy, it seems to have had little to do with fathers and with Christopher’s murder and more to do with letting go (finally) of some of his issues with his mother.
But perhaps the best clue to his residual state of understanding came when he indicated that some of what he thought he had grasped in the desert now eluded him. “You think you know, you think you learn something . . . like when I got shot,” he begins. Then, speaking specifically about the peyote experience, he reports that the insight gained is “kinda hard to describe. . . . You know, you have these thoughts, and you almost grab it . . . and then . . . ftt.” He flicks his fingers away from his chin as if to indicate “nothing”. So, to paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fragment of what he knew remains, but, apparently, the best is lost.
It wouldn’t take long for all of it to be lost. By the time Tony sits with AJ’s female therapist in Made In America, “going about in pity” for himself because of who his mother was, he has come full circle, essentially back to where he was to start the series. Like a “blue comet”, his orbit was highly elliptical, if not erratic, and carried with it the potential of veering off into deep space or crashing into the sun. But despite killing his own nephew, having a near-death experience himself, and saving his son from an act of suicide, the orbit held. The sober breakthrough never came. The repudiation of his father and of his way of life never took hold in his consciousness. And so, by series’ end, we, like Tony, were exhausted from a long journey that ultimately took us nowhere.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

I found my friend's body in bed, sitting up against the headboard. His apartment door was left ajar, as if inviting outsiders to view the gruesome discovery within. He called himself Ancient Dark, AD for short.
AD came into my life roughly two years ago, shortly after my 31st birthday. The dinner at my parent’s house that night had left me feeling like a hollowed-out shell. They were worried, more so than usual. Here I was, their only child, a full decade older than all his co-workers and still clinging to the bottom rung of the corporate ladder. I was a quality assurance rep for an app company that specialized in casino games like pachinko. I spent eight hours a day at my desk, playing digital slot machines over and over across a series of smartphones and tablets, logging any issues I found. It was monotonous. It wore out my eyes. It made me hate games, an industry I adored ever since I received a Sega Genesis for my 10th birthday. I’d spent the last four years doing this with no promotion save for a few meager raises.
I attended university to work in video games. It was six years and a sizable amount of loans studying digital art and graphic design. I drew intricate alien landscapes and steampunk robots for classes that asked me to imagine my own virtual universe.
The assignments fueled dreams that I would work on major projects like Metal Gear Solid or Uncharted. Say, by the age 25 or so. It was a dream my parents shared as well. After all, a few of my classmates already made close to six figures working for major publishers like Ubisoft and EA. And they were my age.
Why not me?
As I drove back to my apartment that night, I realized the answer: It was something I’d known for years, but never consciously considered until that night: I was Boring, with a capital B: Single. Underpaid. Under-inspired. Overworked. Prone to bouts of Netflix binging and gaming marathons that left me glued to the couch each weekend. I should’ve been looking for better opportunities. I should’ve kept creating new art. I should’ve set deadlines. I should’ve updated my ArtStation page. I should’ve. I should’ve.
I wasn’t.
That’s when I saw him: Pasty skin. Greasy-haired. Heavyset. Pushing 300 pounds. He wore a Legend of Zelda Triforce T-shirt. This was AD. He left the apartment just below mine, carrying a couple of trash bags to the dumpster. I didn’t even know there was someone living beneath me and I’d been at Oak Hills for two years. Of course, I was usually never out of my apartment after midnight and this was close to one a.m.
We only made fleeting eye contact that night. I stopped the car to allow him to pass through the parking lot. In a moment, he nodded and looked at me. AD never told me his age, though from his receding hairline I guessed somewhere in the mid-40s. But those eyes… They were the eyes of someone decades, perhaps even centuries older. And though I only saw them for a few seconds that night, they chilled me to my very marrow. There was something about that guy... Something fathomless and unknowable.
Afterwards, I started taking my trash out late at night, hoping I would run into this mysterious recluse again. A month later, we met in earnest while I was headed to my car.
“Cool shirt,” I said in an awkward attempt to strike up a conversation. He was indeed wearing another cool gaming shirt, this one featuring the Umbrella Corp logo from the Resident Evil franchise.
“Thanks!” AD’s voice was dusty-sounding. He didn’t offer any further conversation so I added--
“You know, I feel so bad. I’ve been living here for a while and I don’t even know your name,” I said. “I’m Shiro.”
“AD,” the hulking man explained. He didn’t offer to shake my hand or anything, though I was glad of that. His hands looked especially sweaty. “It stands for Ancient Dark.”
“Oh, that’s...” I wanted to say weird, but that would be mean and dismissive. Clearly, the name was self-imposed. “Neat,” I said.
“It’s also my handle,” AD said, referring to his online username.
The mention of games led to us talking about our favorite consoles (mine: Sega Dreamcast, his: PlayStation 2) and titles (mine: Metal Gear Solid his: Half Life 2) and finally, our own feeble involvement in the industry.
“I’m a programmer myself,” AD explained. “In fact, I’m working on my own sort of mobile game right now.”
“Awesome,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound disingenuous. I was interested, but I’d also met many people who were “developing their own games” that turned out to be nothing more than a glorified version of Pong. “What’s it about?”
AD stared into space for a while as if I’d just asked him to calculate rocket trajectories in his head. “It’s… well, it’s based on these dreams I had as a child,” he explained.
“Really? That’s very...” But I didn’t finish my thought because AD was already walking back to his apartment.
“Sorry. I gotta get back to work,” he said, not turning around.
You’d think such an abrupt end to the conversation would’ve made me never bother talking to the man again. But I sensed a longing in AD. He seemed like someone with very little experience in social interaction and our brief conversation clearly taxed his emotional state, something I could relate to during my hellishly lonely high school years. Hell, I was still largely this way.
I was taken by the notion of his game. Granted, I knew virtually nothing about it, but something in his words captured my interest. A light cracked open in my memory when AD mentioned childhood dreams. In its hazy illumination I found something that I didn’t even know was missing and wondered how I ever lived without it: My own childhood imagination.
Life was anything but boring in my youth. I made up my own languages spoken only between my friends and I on the playground. I created a board game from rocks I found in my backyard once. I painted my father’s guitar and made music banging on paint cans.
And I had the most wonderfully colorful dreams: visions of vast ruins in a drowned world, a world covered in deep, perfectly clear water that inspired equal amounts of awe and terror. Somewhere down the line, through all the school assignments and job interviews, student loans and unpaid bills, those swirling colors of my youth turned grey, leaving me a bored and listless young man.
I met Ancient Dark in person only one other time, shortly before he died. But during the intervening months we kept in touch regularly through GChat. I found out he lived as a shut-in, or “hikikomori” as he liked to say. I told him he couldn’t be a hikikomori because he wasn’t Japanese, but other than race he pretty much fit the bill. He didn’t work, living off savings from his parents’ life insurance and an allowance from his remaining family. He never left his apartment except to take out the trash. He paid rent by direct deposit. Groceries were delivered to his door each week. He never had friends over. He never went to the apartment complex’s gym or laid out by the pool. He never talked to anyone on the phone except his aunt and uncle, his only remaining relatives. He didn’t have any friends he’d met in real life during the past four years... Except me.
Most of our conversations centered around the videogames we were playing, but each day I would ask him about his own project. He offered vague replies.
ShiroK1987: So what’s it about?
AncientDark: Well, it’s kind of a horror game, but it’s also about our childhood. It’s got fantasy elements.
ShiroK1987: Ok… So what’s it about?
AncientDark: It’s hard to explain. (This was his most common answer.)
ShiroK1987: Do you have a title?
AncientDark: Yeah. My name. Ancient Dark.
AD never explained to me where this name came from or why he chose to call himself by it. My guess was that he just liked the sound of those two words together. They do have a sort of poetry.
ShiroK1987: Well, can I at least see some images? I don’t even know if it’s a 2D side-scroller or a FPS or anything...
AncientDark: I don’t have them ready yet, but it will be a first person adventure. 3-D. Fully immersive.
ShiroK1987: How could you be unwilling to share even one image? Are you scared I might steal your ideas or something?
AncientDark: No. It’s not that. It’s that this game… It’s so different. I can only show you… When it’s finished.
By this point, I was fed up with all the sidestepping. AD was clearly lying about this project. It probably didn’t exist at all. He had lied that first time we met because he didn’t want to continue a real-life conversation that night and now he was stuck with this stupid story. Maybe he wanted me to think of him as this videogame programmer because I’d think he was cool. Maybe he was worried he’d lose me as a friend. I offered him a chance to come clean.
ShiroK1987: Look. It’s okay if you’re not working on the game. I know it’s really hard to keep up with something. Completing stuff is the hardest thing in the creative world. We’re always second-guessing ourselves.
AncientDark: It’s not that. Not at all. I’m close. Very close. I promise. It will be done.
I stopped bringing up the game in our chats after that. A couple months passed. I’d almost forgotten all about AD’s project until one night when he sent me this:
AncientDark: Do you wanna come over to my place?
My immediate thought was no. Over the months, I’d created this mental picture of AD’s apartment. There would be trash strewn everywhere. Towers of old pizza boxes. Piles of dirty underwear and socks. Cockroach nests. The fetid stink of someone who bathes once a week. I pictured the homes of people on Hoarders. I pictured this cliche shut-in apartment that was a death-trap to any who dared enter. But then he wrote--
AncientDark: I want you to test out my game.
AD told me the alpha version of his game was only on his iPhone and he wanted to watch me as I played, taking notes on his computer. He wrote that it would only take a few minutes. I figured I could handle a few minutes in his apartment. I knocked on AD’s door.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said, leading me inside.
I was shocked. The place was practically spotless. Almost no trash. No dirty clothes. No cockroaches. Everything was white and pristine. It was a cleaner than my own apartment and all my friends called me a “neatfreak.” The “mess” was just a smattering of empty energy drink cans and one pizza box.
“Here. Have a seat on the couch,” AD said.
I sat on the couch. It looked like it’d been purchased just yesterday. Perhaps it had. Maybe AD bought all new furniture and had his place professionally cleaned so as to impress his first guest in years. But that seemed crazy.
The iPhone and a pair of wireless headphones rested on the coffee table before me. The screen was turned on. It displayed a single touchscreen button, the international symbol for start: a half circle with a vertical line above it. I held the phone and put in the earbuds.
“Hold on. One moment.” AD got up and turned out the lights, plunging the whole apartment into darkness, which was odd given that it was midday outside. Had he blacked out the windows?
I was contemplating telling AD that I was not feeling well and then rushing from the apartment when he sat next to me on the couch and said: “Okay. Just press start and let yourself relax.”
Relax? AD was a big guy. He could easily knock me out with one swipe of his massive arms. But that also made him slow. I scooched over a bit, giving myself an easy out in case things got weird. Then I pressed Start.
The screen faded to a deep blue. I quickly realized it was the blue of water. Deep, clear water. Probably a hundred feet to the bottom.
I could see strange fish swimming among odd ruins that were bone white and massive in scale. There was something so unnerving about the clear view. It was inviting me to see all of the ocean’s darkest secrets.
I looked up. I was onboard a small rowboat, drifting over these ruins. My hands were sore and calloused. They had been holding onto two oars. I could smell the salty ocean air. I could feel my butt resting on the damp bench in the center of the boat.
There was no iPhone in my hand. There were no earbuds. There was just me and this drowned world. The hull gently rocked in the waves as I rowed towards the crumbled remnants of a mysterious civilization.
I was dreaming. And not just any dream. It was the exact dream I’d had virtually every night when I was eight years old. Back when the world was as mysterious as the ruins beneath me. I dipped my hand into the water. It’s cold temperature was almost electric. I laughed. Was I dreaming? Did I literally pass out when I pressed that button? Or something worse. Had there been some electrical shock that coursed through my body and overloaded my heart?
Was I dying? Was this my version of the Pearly Gates?
That’s when a big swell rocked the boat, nearly tipping me out. And suddenly I remembered something else about those childhood dreams, something I seemed to have forgotten over the intervening years. There was always--
I leaned over the side and saw it, as silent and large as a submarine: this enormous black shape, ever-shifting, sometimes shark-like, sometimes squid-like. Always menacing. It was swimming my way. Three hundred meters. Two hundred meters.
I grabbed hold of the oars and pulled back as hard as I could. I rowed and rowed and rowed till my arms felt rubbery and my legs were stiff. That’s why my hands were so calloused.
Still, the creature pursued, staying in those crystal clear depths. Beckoning me to look at it. To stare into its multitudinous orange-red eyes.
I kept rowing. Ancient walls appeared on either side of the boat, riddled with algae-covered hieroglyphics depicting monstrosities unknown to any religion or science. I turned around. A third wall rose from the water, blocking my path forward.
I had rowed the boat into a dead end.
And that’s when the silent beast started to rise, its fluid shape finally coalescing into something solid. Something I could recognize. The alien turned familiar. Its gelatinous body melted down till it was my size. My shape. My face. I was staring at myself, only this doppelgänger was empty. It stared back at me with hollow eyes as dark as coal.
I opened my mouth to scream--
A thunderous vibration turned the world black. Then bright white. Black. White. Black. White.
I blinked my eyes, staring down at AD’s iPhone in my hand. I was back in his apartment, sitting on the couch. AD stood across from me, holding an iPad. He typed furiously.
“Sorry about that. There was a critical bug. I had to do a hard reset,” he said, not looking up from his tablet computer. “But you experienced it, right? You saw it? You felt it?”
I set the phone down on the coffee table and took out the earbuds. My heart was jackhammering. Had that just happened? Maybe I was electrocuted. Maybe it was all a hallucination. “Did I…?”
“You were lucid dreaming,” AD said. “I had the environment set up and everything, based on parameters from your subconscious--”
“My subconscious?” I stood up, feeling lightheaded. “You saw my subconscious?”
AD set his tablet on the kitchen counter. He was beaming. “That’s the game. It’s different for everyone. Now you see why I couldn’t tell you about it before. You wouldn’t have believed me. You’d of thought I was a nutcase.”
I did think that, but I didn’t tell him. “How?” I asked. My brain struggled to process even basic thoughts after everything that had just happened.
AD got me a tall glass of water from the sink. He sat me back down on the couch and then he explained everything.
“I was very sick as a child. I spent weeks in bed. I’d read a lot. Played video games. But mostly, I slept. I’d sleep fourteen hours straight some days. And when I slept, I dreamed. They were the most vivid and incredible dreams. The kind of dreams that felt like you’d actually traveled to another world. I know you had them too. I saw it in your eyes.”
“But how did you…” I gestured to his phone, hoping that would complete the question my brain was too fried to ask.
“That’s the most amazing part,” AD said. “You see, I was working on the API for this big finance company. It was an insane deadline. I worked nonstop. I would code for eighteen hours straight. I skipped most meals. I stayed up all night. I don’t think I slept for an entire week. It’s hard to tell. I blacked out the windows cause the daylight was too distracting. I completely lost track of time. By the time I finished, I was almost certain I’d lost my mind. But the code was solid. It’d worked. And when I was all done, I flopped down on my bed. And I drifted into the deepest sleep. It felt like it had lasted years…”
I was amazed AD could talk this long, given that he never spoke more than a few words out loud to anyone. He reminded me of a criminal who’d been holding back information for so long and was now compelled to confess everything.
“And for the first time since I was kid, I dreamt. I had the same vivid faraway dreams, but this time was different. This time, I was aware. I was lucid. I explored every corridor in this maze. And chiseled on its walls were these strings of numbers and letters. It was a code. It was a programming language I’d never seen before. One you’d never learn in school. A code that was baked into the universe itself. When I woke, I only remembered part of it. And for the last four years, I’ve been dreaming. Dreaming and coding every day, trying to piece together all those strings. And you know what that language told me?”
I shook my head.
He picked up the phone. “That we dream in code. With the right prompts we can enter those dreams and we can control them. We can live in the worlds we visited each night so many years ago… We can stay in them forever…”
That was the last time I saw AD alive. A few weeks later, he sent me an email explaining that he’d completed a beta version of the game that he was going to test that night. He asked if I would test it as well, but I declined. The experience at AD’s apartment had left me feeling very small, as if my mind were this tiny boat adrift in a vast ocean, subject to every rise and dip of the waves. I’d experienced a very large wave that day. One that almost capsized me. I didn’t think I could handle another.
Aside from my work, I’d stopped playing video games after that. I rarely went online. I actually started hanging out with my friends more. Grabbing drinks. Going out to the movies. I joined a dating website. I wanted to get back out there. To feel that I was alive.
When I didn’t see AD online the day after his beta test, I figured he was just busy fixing more bugs in the software. But more days passed with no word and I grew increasingly worried. We chatted at least every other day. By day four I decided to go down to his apartment. That’s when I noticed the front door was open.
I called 9-1-1 after discovering the body. They came and zipped AD up in a bag and carried him out. I went to the station. It was a formality. They just wanted to know how I’d discovered the body. What our relationship had been. The coroner's report stated that AD died of a combination of dehydration and exhaustion. Apparently, he hadn’t eaten or drank anything for four days. It was a baffling finding, one that still casts me in a suspicious light with the authorities to this day.
But I could never tell them what had really happened. I could never show them what I’d found clutched in AD’s stiff hands as I saw him sitting there in bed, that blank white screen illuminating the endless stare in his glassy eyes. His expression was not one of shock or horror. There was no fear or pain in those eyes.
There was just pure, unencumbered fascination.
I took AD’s phone and earbuds before the police arrived that day, an action that has certainly fueled suspicions regarding my involvement in his death. I did it because I didn’t want anyone else falling into the game’s endless trap. Just press start and enjoy your dream-journey to oblivion.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
As I write these words, I feel a soft ringing vibration from the bottom drawer of my desk where I placed his phone and earbuds. It hasn’t stopped for hours.
The waters are calling to me. They’re beckoning me to jump in.

A sea of suffering called me from her shores. I answered her call, charted a course for the unknown and swam out. No more a child playing in the gentle break of the surf, I was the sole survivor of a shipwrecked life. There was mutiny, fire and disasters of every kind before the hull broke in half and the depths swallowed my life whole. I was lost at sea where only sea monsters survived, and since it is better to eat than to be eaten, I became one.
It is true that I survived Hurricane Katrina with my father in New Orleans, and that before our two months together were over, he threatened to shoot me with a nine-millimeter. But before I tell you about that, I need a few paragraphs to tell you about my girlfriend from high school, and that whole thing starts with a large shipment of blotter acid, printed with pink elephants. Supposedly it came from the Lavender family, whatever that meant, and it made an unlikely couple out of us.
My family and I were out of town for Christmas break of my senior year, but I can't remember where we went. I think it was Mexico, and while we were gone, the captain of the cheerleading team took some of that acid with two of my friends. They tried to come see me, but since we were out of town, they couldn’t. Somehow their journey to find me and my absence mixed with the LSD to simulate feelings of love and longing for me in her. When I got back, this girl I barely knew wanted to hang out with me. She was the head cheerleader for her junior and senior years, made good grades and loved her mother. I skateboarded, slept through classes, resented the preppy kids, and wore skulls on my black tee shirt.
Towards the end of our relationship, I stole 200 dollars from our friend and disappeared for 24 hours with her vehicle, until I came back and we screamed at each other. Later she dropped me off at my parents’ house, and I hurled my cellphone at the pavement in the driveway under the oak tree. Its bark bloodied my knuckles, and it felt like some bones might be broken in my hands and wrist. Inside of the house my parents and I screamed before they told me to leave and locked me out. They called the police. I stuck my fist through the window in a door on the front porch and turned the old knob to let myself in. When the cops showed up I was eating a hot dog.
“Put the hot dog down! You are under arrest!”
But it didn’t start out like that for us. The first time we hung out, I took two of those pink elephants, and the Jimi Hendrix coming out of her speakers caused my brains to leak out of my eyes and nose and puddle itself in an awkward Technicolor mess on my shirt. She kept her cool and comforted me as I tried to clean it up. We rode to school every morning after that and knew each other in ways that no one else did. The girl shed tears over my addiction and wrote privately in a journal about how much she loved me when we went out.
After the overdose that I have already told you about and the episode with Stanky, besides the rest of our miserable 18 months together, she had enough. She moved on, and the break up played in my head over and over again. It left a smoldering heap of twisted metal and mental torment like a train wreck of my own emotions and the memories we created together. I staggered. I struggled to breathe. I fell to my knees as images of her smile and the love she once held in her eyes faded away from in front of me like smoke slowly dissipating or the mirage of a desert oasis, I would never reach.
I punched myself in the face until I had two black eyes. I called her 50 times a day. I wrote a poem to tell her how pathetic I was and left it on her windshield in a psychotic spider's web of scotch of tape while she was at work once, but I never got her back. I lost her forever, and I only had myself to blame.
Anyway, that gives you an idea of how things were going for me around the time that Katrina came to town, but I should also tell you about the job my uncle gave me. It was delivering trays of medical instruments and every kind of orthopedic implant to different hospitals for the company representatives and the surgeons they did business with. I disappeared into the ghetto in the middle of a delivery one afternoon and would not answer my phone. Somehow the 70,000 dollars’ worth of medical equipment ended up where it was supposed to go, but I disappeared to my friends’ house that night. In the morning my uncle called to tell me he didn’t want me to give up on life.
My cell phones never had a voice mail message, but if they did, it would have said something like, “Hi, you’ve reached Riley. I’m not able to take your call right now, because I am smoking crack. Leave your name and number, and I’ll be sure to ignore it, until I need something from you. Thanks.” That brings us right up to the account of the hurricanne, because my friends only let me stay with them for a few days before they evacuated. My mom picked me up from their house and took me home to help my dad board up the windows. I stayed with my grandmother and Uncle after that.
The night before Katrina made landfall my cousin and I watched the satellite footage of the huge storm bearing down on the gulf coast just below New Orleans. My uncle had rented hotel rooms for his ex-wife, my cousins, my grandmother and me, and during the storm, the windows cracked on the 21st floor of the Lowes Hotel across from Harrah’s Casino. Raindrops could be seen ripping through the city in the currents of wind pushing through the streets, and the wire and plaster materials used to construct the exterior of other buildings fluttered in the air like pieces of tissue. There seemed to be a kind of divine wrath being poured out onto the city. At least that’s what people were saying, because there had been seven senseless and violent murders in one night just before the storm.
Management fed us and moved us down to the 15th floor to another room, but the water didn’t work. Eventually the storming stopped, and we made phone calls to people we cared about. I tried to call the girl whose house I slept at before she evacuated and was happy to talk to her. After that I called my mom.
“Riley! The levees broke! I need you to come get me from the house and bring me back to the hotel.”
“Okay. Is poppa coming?”
“No. He has too many animals at the clinic. I tried to talk him into it, but I don’t think he will come.”
“Okay. Well I should probably stay with him.”
“Yeah. I think that would be best but come get me and bring me back to the hotel, please.”
My grandmother let me take her Camry to get my mom from the house, and I went up Tchoupitoulas to get there and remember the feeling the houses gave me. They were abandoned and desperate and vulnerable prey to the looters and pillagers running around the city. Once I picked my mother up at the house and headed back to the Lowe’s Hotel down St. Charles, men hung halfway out of cars they did not own and sweated trying to get them started. All storefront windows had holes smashed into them, but everything inside was already gone.
Our dog had puppies during the storm, and my dad told me about how he went outside to see what it was like and got locked out. My mom couldn’t hear him knocking so he was out there for over an hour in the rain and wind. We slept on the roof of the front porch that first night, but somebody at the hotel had given me some Xanax. I had 20 dollars in my pocket and decided that I would sneak out the front of the house and take the Camry to go smoke crack.
He flashed his light on me from the front porch roof as I started the Camry and took off into the dark. No automobiles made any noise in the streets, and not one streetcar ran up or down the tracks. Telephone poles lay on the ground with their power lines tangled in messes of large live oak limbs that covered St. Charles Avenue from one end to the other. It was a dangerous prospect taking off like that into the desolate city in a small car, and it was almost impossible to get the Camry from Palmer Avenue all the way to ghetto by the parish line, but I did it.
When I got to the ghetto by Leake Avenue and Oak everyone in the neighborhood converged in the streets. An atmosphere of panic hovered over us, and they walked around with the energetic fear of bees in a hive worried they would perish. Water came out of the drains and pooled in the streets. There was a man carrying a large box fan on his shoulder in the crowd, and he had the twitch in his walk that I was looking for. I flagged him down, and he ran over to the car.
“What’s up, wodee?”
“Looking for a 20.”
“I got you. Let me put this in the car.”
He put the fan into the back seat of my grandmother’s Camry and took my 20 into a house. Historic buildings across town lay in heaps of ashes smoldering, and other buildings waited to be consumed by fire or looted. A deluge of black water destroyed whole neighborhoods where families once lived and kids once played. Pandemonium swept across the city. Those who remained realized that our beloved New Orleans was drowning, and it looked like the city might never recover even if it survived this catastrophe. I sat in the car waiting for the crack head to come back with my crack rock, and my father sat on the front porch roof of our house wondering if I would come back with the car or get killed trying to smoke crack in the chaos.
I lost the hit in the car before I could smoke it. There was nothing I could do to recover it, so I got out and tried to cut a deal with a guy who desperately needed gas. He said he would help me out, and we tried to siphon gas out of the car, but it didn’t work. Since I tried to help he waved his friend off who followed us around and looked like he had his hand on a pistol in his waistband. When I got back to the house my father gave me a Tylenol PM and begged me to sleep.
In the morning the crack had worn off, and we began to navigate our stay in post Katrina New Orleans. We parked the Camry at his clinic in Jefferson Parish and rode around in the old Landcruiser. Sometimes we picked up the displaced people walking up and down St. Charles and took them to Oschner Hospital. There was one lady who carried a bunch of cat carriers with frizzy, frazzled hair and looked like she had lived her life as a recluse in one of the nearby neighborhoods, but the flood brought her out. When we stopped and asked her if she wanted a ride or needed help she just turned around and walked the other direction. Sometimes we got calls at my dad’s clinic from people who wanted us to break into their houses and rescue their animals, so we did.
At night we tried to sleep outside, because it was so hot. Mosquitoes hung around us in softly humming clouds and bit hard even through sheets drenched in Adam’s Flea and Tick Spray. I tried to cook some steaks over a fire but had caked the seasoned salt on them in the dark so badly that we could barely eat them. There was a silence that filled the air and gave us a dread we had never known about the future of our lives.
The destruction of the city matched the broken emptiness inside of me. It was fitting for me to be there and see it all. Not that either one directly caused the other, but the dire straits of the city mirrored the reality of my own insides. My childhood pediatrician hung himself over the city’s devastation, while my father focused on the litter of puppies our Italian greyhound had to get through it. As if everything happening at the time wasn’t enough stress for him, I gave him hell by smoking crack, stealing money and getting violent.
I found my sister’s Adderall prescription and took the whole thing at once. Then I chugged warm beers we had until I couldn’t talk or sleep, and I smoked crack with a pimply skinned lady and her boyfriend in a crumbling apartment building called the Studio Arms by Oschner Hospital. On the way back home the cops stopped me for being out after curfew but let me go.
We made trips to the house in Orleans Parish during the days and shot the trunk of a magnolia tree with the 9-millimeter out of boredom once. Two members of the National Guard robbed the house while we slept at the clinic. Both were arrested and received dishonorable discharges.
After a month my dad got me a job with a contractor who lived in Harahan, and on our first job we demolished the insides of a man’s house, whose wife had just divorced him and left with his daughters a few weeks before the storm. We carted mildewed art projects made of construction paper and Elmer’s glue and photo albums in wheelbarrows out through the front door and into a dumpster. Every single memory he had of his daughters’ childhoods had fallen under the chalky brown water line a foot below the ceiling. The man sweated and took pictures hoping that his insurance company might pay him for his losses, for the things that have no price. I quit after a week.
Sometime towards the end of our time together in the shambles of a post-Katrina New Orleans my dad got on the phone to help me get the 2300 dollars FEMA gave to survivors of Katrina, and after that I got into it with my dad. It was over something stupid, but I got him in a headlock and rammed the top of his skull into the corner of a doorway behind the clinic. We struggled for a few minutes before we stopped, and he said,
“You attack me like that again, Riley, and I’m gonna shoot you. You hear me?”
I knew he meant it, and he would have been right to do it with the way I acted. It reminded me of the time he told me he wanted to fight me as a teenager but remembered how much he paid for my teeth to be straight. I tore off in the Landcruiser up to Baton Rouge where I stayed with my mom and sisters at my grandmother’s until I could figure out what to do.
Eventually, my mother and I devised the plan for me to go live in California, with my friends who had all moved out to San Francisco and planned to grow weed. They needed another roommate to make it work, so I told them I would be out there soon. My mom bought a ticket, but it would be a week or so before I could fly out. In that last week, my friend stole a car and picked me up in the middle of the night. By the time the sun came up we were trying to buy some crack in the ghetto with a fake 100-dollar bill, but when the dealer wanted the rocks back I rolled onto my back and kicked him in the face and ground his fingers under my heel before he fell out of the back seat. We may have run over him, but we definitely drove into a ditch before we escaped. All the while the kid in the back seat next to me snored and had a strand of drool hanging from his lip to the floor and his head between his legs. My mom had to come get me out of a crack house the morning of my flight to San Francisco, and my father hadn’t talked to me since we’d fought last.

Oklahoma City's event list.

Ongoing

• Art Show at DNA Galleries (Plaza District - Oklahoma City) Thru Sun, Oct 6th Start Time: 6:00pm
• Fall Festival (Orr Family Farm Event Barn - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Nov 9th Celebrate all things autumn at the Fall Festival at Orr Family Farm in Oklahoma City. Go through the maze, ride on a…
• Guthrie Haunts (4524 Riverside Cir - Guthrie) Thru Sat, Nov 9th Visit Guthrie Haunts for a terrifying Halloween experience that's full of scary fun. This haunted house is sure to…
• Hicks and Booneshine (Noir Bistro & Bar - Oklahoma City) Thru Mon, Nov 25th Live talk show with Spencer Hicks and Kristy Boone.…
• The Musical Swings (Bicentennial Park - Oklahoma City) Thru Sun, Oct 13th Make your own music at Bicentennial Park during The Musical Swings exhibit. This interactive public art installation in…
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (The Boom - Oklahoma City) Thru Thu, Oct 31st The Boom, a combination club and live entertainment venue in Oklahoma City, puts on a production of the Rocky Horror Picture…
• Wizarding World of Tiger Safari (Tuttle) Thru Thu, Oct 31st Harry Potter fans old and young will love the Wizarding World of Tiger Safari in Tuttle. This unique attraction invites…

Wednesday, Sep 25th

• 🎓 2019 Flu Clinic (St. Mary Episcopal Church - Edmond) Start Time: 6:00pm • No Appointment Needed • Vaccines available: Flue Quad (4 strain), 65 + flu, pneumonia, Tdap, Hepatitis A/B, MMR, Shingles, and more • All vaccines are filed too existing insurance, so be sure to bring your insurance card. • Cash pricing available for uninsured. • Vitamin B-12 injections available for $15 due at time of service.…
• 🎡 The Adam Larson Quartet (University of Central Oklahoma - Edmond) Start Time: 7:00pm
• 🎡 Adam Larson Quartet (UCO Jazz Lab - Edmond) Start Time: 7:00pm On the cutting edge of modern jazz trends the UCO Jazz Festival is thrilled to host Saxophonist Adam Larson and his quartet. A regular at 55 Bar and Smalls in New York City, Adam Larson is defining what it means to be a modern jazz saxophonist.
• 🍴 Anthem Drown Night! (HiLo Club - Oklahoma City) Our local friends at Anthem Brewing Co. have some great beers! Every Wednesday night from 9pm to close enjoy $8 Drown Night! Their Power Pils will be flowing!
• Avatar Country World Tour (Diamond Ballroom - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm
• Carrie Underwood in Concert (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Oklahoma's own Carrie Underwood is bringing her Cry Pretty Tour to the Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City. Special…
• 😂 Coolzey (IA) / Jabee / Nymasis / Trip G / Alan Doyle @The Deli (The Deli - Norman) Start Time: 10:00pm @[226995237328592:274:Coolzey] out of Iowa hits Norman on his Fight The American Celebrity Machine tour. Coolzey brings Golden era hip-hop roots planted in black Iowa dirt and tempered by 90s alternative era rock influence yields a juxtaposition of the dark, horrific nature of life paired with a slapstick and comedic view of the world, allowing…
• 🍴 Dope Poetry Night (ICE Event Center - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:30pm Every Wednesday night at the Ice Event Center Sports Bar and Grill located at the heart of Oklahoma City! Sign ups begin at 7pm and show begins at 7:30pmish. Free Admission! Free vendor set up! Bar Restaurant
• Home Free (Rose State College Hudiburg Chevrolet Center - Midwest City) Start Time: 7:00pm Home Free is heading out this fall on their Dive Bar Saints World Tour and coming to a city near you! They'll be at Hudiburg Chevrolet Center in Oklahoma, OK on September 25th, 2019. Mark yourself as attending on this event page if you're joining us. Tickets and VIP are on sale now. We hope to see ya there! Tickets are $24.50, $36.50, $46.50 &…
• Literary Voices 2019 - an evening with Kristin Hannah (Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Annual fundraising dinner to support the Metropolitan Library System of Oklahoma County.
• National Cavalry Competition (Historic Fort Reno - El Reno) Thru Sat, Sep 28th The National Cavalry Competition at Historic Fort Reno is a wonderful opportunity for re-enactors, active and reserve…
• Runaway June (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm
• SINGO Wednesdays (Lower Bricktown - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 6:30pm Beat the midweek hump with the new bar game that everyone is talking about! SINGO is a new and exciting musical spin on the traditional game of Bingo. Instead of listening for a number, players are listening to their favorite music. Enjoy 1/2 price domestic drafts & discounted appetizers! Plus we will be giving prizes each night to the winners.…
• 🏃 Tai Chi and SAIL Classes Stay Active & Independent for Life: Wednesdays and Fridays (Edmond Senior Center - Edmond) Start Time: 1:30pm Come join us for these free exercise programs. Tai Chi class is one of the most effective exercises for the health of mind and body. SAIL (STAYING ACTIVE AND INDEPENDENT FOR LIFE) Sail is a fitness program for older adults, which can be done sitting or standing. Performing exercise that improves strength, balance and fitness is critical for…
• Taste of Western (Oklahoma City) Taste of Western unites the restaurants that make Oklahoma City's Western Avenue district delectable as they…
• 🎓 Teachers ½ to eat, too! (The Melting Pot - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 5:00pm Teachers and administrators can ring in the school year with a sweet deal. Every Sunday thru Thursday in September, a school ID will get teachers and administrators a half-priced Four Course Classic Experience. It’s our way of saying “thank you” for all you do!
• 😂 Triple Feature Week Oklahoma City!!! (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Sep 28th
• UCO Edmond Jazz Festival (University of Central Oklahoma - Edmond) Thru Sat, Sep 28th Come to the UCO Jazz Lab in Edmond for a music festival you won't want to miss. Presented by the UCO School of…

Thursday, Sep 26th

• 🎓 Brian Gorrell and Jazz Company (UCO Jazz Lab - Edmond) Start Time: 7:00pm Free concert/Jam Bring your horn and enjoy the music of Brian Gorrell and Friends. The band will kick off at 7pm and eventually open it up for guests to sit in. Brian W. Gorrell serves as Director of Jazz Studies for the nationally respected program at the University of Central Oklahoma Jazz Lab in Edmond, Oklahoma. A former member of the…
• Chris Janson w/ Special Guest Wade Bowen (Lucky Star Casino - El Reno) Start Time: 7:00pm Headliner: Chris Janson Special Guest: Wade Bowen
• ♪ Dave Alvin And The Guilty Ones (The Blue Door - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm
• DCCC Annual Action 2019! (Del City Community Center - Del City) Start Time: 5:30pm Del City Chamber is hosting "A Night at the Ballpark" for their annual auction! Join the fun by purchasing your ticket today. It's sure to be a home-run!! Individual Ticket - $65 Silver Sponsor - $400 Gold Sponsor - $750
• Hayes Carll in Concert (Tower Theatre Studio - Oklahoma City) Enjoy prolific country music singer Hayes Carll in concert at Oklahoma City's Tower Theatre. A roots-oriented…
• 🎨 Hispanic Heritage Month: Noche de Película y Arte (Norman Public Library - Norman) Start Time: 6:00pm ¡Únete con nosotros en la Biblioteca Purcell mientras vemos "Coco" y hacemos artesanías divertidas! Para todas las edades. Join us at the Purcell Library as we watch "Coco" and make some fun crafts! For all ages.
• ♪ Katie and Kelly Duo back again (Red Brick Bar - Norman) Start Time: 9:00pm Outlaw Country, Red-Dirt, Southern Rock and Blues
• 🏃 Koda CrossFit at Together Square (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 5:45pm Thursdays 5:45-6:45pm September 5–November 21, 2019 $5 per person, pay upon arrival All levels Bring water Together Square is the perfect spot to discover the benefits of the incredible Koda Crossfit Workout. Join us Thursday evenings at 5:45pm beginning September 5 through November 21 for an hour of training. By performing a wide variety of…
• National Cavalry Competition (Historic Fort Reno - El Reno) Thru Sat, Sep 28th The National Cavalry Competition at Historic Fort Reno is a wonderful opportunity for re-enactors, active and reserve…
• 🎭 The Red Velvet Cake War (Chickasha Community Theatre - Chickasha) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 7:30pm Don't miss this hilarious show!!
• Stuffed Animal Sleepover (Edmond Historical Society - Edmond) Start Time: 6:30pm Join us for the first ever stuffed animal sleepover at the Edmond Historical Society & Museum!! Your favorite stuffed animal can join us for a night of fun at the museum! Come join us in your pajamas on September 26th at 6:30 PM in your pajamas for a craft and a story time, and then after you leave, your animal will go on an adventure at the…
• ♪ Supersuckers "Evil Powers Tour" (89th Street Collective - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:30pm Supersuckers with support TBD This show is all ages. Tickets are $13 in advance at ticketstorm.com, charge by phone 18669661777, purchase hard copy tickets at any Uptown Grocery/Buy For Less location or Starship Records in Tulsa.
• 🎓 Teachers ½ to eat, too! (The Melting Pot - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 5:00pm Teachers and administrators can ring in the school year with a sweet deal. Every Sunday thru Thursday in September, a school ID will get teachers and administrators a half-priced Four Course Classic Experience. It’s our way of saying “thank you” for all you do!
• 😂 Triple Feature Week Oklahoma City!!! (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Sep 28th
• UCO Edmond Jazz Festival (University of Central Oklahoma - Edmond) Thru Sat, Sep 28th Come to the UCO Jazz Lab in Edmond for a music festival you won't want to miss. Presented by the UCO School of…
• Voice of the Heartland (The Sooner Theatre - Norman) Start Time: 7:00pm
• Wine for the People: Iberian Exploration (Vast - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 5:30pm Iberian Exploration: Spain & Portugal From invasions to exploration, the history of this area is as diverse and intriguing as their food and wines. Gain a deeper understanding of the terrain, grape varieties grown, cuisine and lifestyle without leaving town. Once you have seen what they have to offer, we are sure one or both of these countries…

Friday, Sep 27th

• 😂 5th Annual Funniest Person In OKC - Sign Up Form (The Paramount OKC - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm
• The Barber of Seville (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) Experience one of opera's most beloved performances at Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City, as Painted Sky Opera…
• CannaCon (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 10:00am Following Oklahoma's legalization of medical cannabis, the business of legal cannabis is now in full swing in Oklahoma. CannaCon will provide an interactive gathering of like-minded professionals uniting leading pioneers and entrepreneurs with investors and experts discussing the latest industry developments.
• 🏆 Central OK: University of Central Oklahoma Women's Soccer vs Rogers State (Edmond) Start Time: 7:00pm University of Central Oklahoma Women's Soccer vs Rogers State https://www.bronchosports.com/calendar.aspx?id=6408
• 🎡 Day Out with Thomas (Oklahoma Railway Museum - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 1:10pm
• 🎡 Day Out with Thomas (Oklahoma Railway Museum - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 2:50pm
• 🎡 Day Out with Thomas (Oklahoma Railway Museum - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 4:30pm
• Drowning Pool in Concert (Diamond Ballroom - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Metal down and head to Diamond Ballroom in Oklahoma City to witness an energetic night of heavy metal tunes as Drowning Pool…
• Market on the Meadows (Shawnee) Day 1 of 2 Head to a beautiful country meadow for a fun weekend of shopping during Market on the Meadows. Located outdoors in Shawnee,…
• Medicare & Social Security- Capitol Hill (Downtown - Edmond) Start Time: 10:00am Medicare & Social Security Informational meeting. Agency: Insurance Department, Oklahoma - OID Contact Phone
• 🎓 Museum of Osteology at Wildlife Expo 2019 (Lazy E Arena - Guthrie) Start Time: 8:00am Planning to attend the FREE Wildlife Expo at Lazy E Arena this year? Be sure to stop by our booth! We will have our touch tables available with REAL animal bones and furs from native Oklahoma animals. Be sure to enter our raffle for a FREE birthday party with up to 30 attendees at SKELETONS: Museum of Osteology (https://bit.ly/2jX77xb) Plus,…
• National Cavalry Competition (Historic Fort Reno - El Reno) 1 day left The National Cavalry Competition at Historic Fort Reno is a wonderful opportunity for re-enactors, active and reserve…
• 🎭 Naturalist EP Release Show (89th Street Collective - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 6:30pm Join us for a very special night as we celebrate the release of our brand new EP "It Could Be Anywhere." Thank you so much for all of the love and support over the years. We can't wait to spend yet another night with all of you! This show is all ages. Tickets are $10. Lineup: Naturalist BadLand (FFO: Touche Amore, Birds in Row) ...and in the…
• Newcastle Nightmare (Newcastle) Thru Sat, Oct 26th Newcastle Nightmare is a unique haunted attraction located south of Oklahoma City that chills and thrills guests who dare to…
• 🎭 OCU Eagles: 2019 Season Opener: The Music Man! (Oklahoma City University - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm
• 🎭 The Red Velvet Cake War (Chickasha Community Theatre - Chickasha) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 7:30pm Don't miss this hilarious show!!
• 😂 The Sorcerer And The Comedian 3 (The Paramount OKC - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm
• 🏃 Tai Chi and SAIL Classes Stay Active & Independent for Life: Wednesdays and Fridays (Edmond Senior Center - Edmond) Start Time: 1:30pm Come join us for these free exercise programs. Tai Chi class is one of the most effective exercises for the health of mind and body. SAIL (STAYING ACTIVE AND INDEPENDENT FOR LIFE) Sail is a fitness program for older adults, which can be done sitting or standing. Performing exercise that improves strength, balance and fitness is critical for…
• ♪ Talk of the Town and The Sallee Quintet Live (Legacy Park - Norman) Start Time: 7:00pm Come out to Legacy Park 9/27 to hear some of the best jazz, big band, and golden era tunes around! Starting at 7 pm, The Sallee Quintet will be kicking things off with some classic jazz and swing tunes followed by big bands sound of the golden era with @[1325813540800951:274:Talk of The Town Orchestra] at 8 pm! See you there!
• Tony DeSare (UCO Jazz Lab - Edmond) Start Time: 8:00pm See Rising Star Male Vocalist Tony DeSare live as he takes the UCO Jazz Lab stage in Edmond.…
• 😂 Triple Feature Week Oklahoma City!!! (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) 1 day left
• Trivia Night (Black Mesa Brewing Co - Norman) Start Time: 6:30pm
• 🎡 Ty England (Oklahoma Int'l Bluegrass Festival Festival Site - Guthrie) Start Time: 7:00pm Ty England will be performing live in Guthrie Oklahoma September 27, 2019 at the Oklahoma Born and Branded Festival. Paid Admission only. Ty England is an Oklahoma Native who is currently touring nationally. Opening band is The Cameron Newby Band. Oklahoma Native Cameron Newby is coming home from Nashville to perform for the Festival. No…
• UCO Edmond Jazz Festival (University of Central Oklahoma - Edmond) 1 day left Come to the UCO Jazz Lab in Edmond for a music festival you won't want to miss. Presented by the UCO School of…
• 🍴 ZOObrew (Oklahoma City Zoo - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Good beer for a great cause! Taste flights from more than 40 breweries at ZOOfriends' 11th annual fundraiser hosted by the Oklahoma Zoological Society. An evening of live music, great food and wild prizes awaits – all in the heart of the park! Take in the tastes of the city while you enjoy exclusive after-hours access to the Oklahoma City…

Saturday, Sep 28th

• 🏃 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team Fallen Heroes Half Marathon (Oklahoma City) On Saturday, the 28th of September 2018, the 45th IBCT will host its ninth annual event in recognition and remembrance of the eighteen brothers and one sister from its ranks who made the ultimate sacrifice since September 11, 2001.
  The proceeds will be presented to the National Guard Association of OK and will be earmarked for the Fallen Hero…
  
• Backwoods Country Music Show (The Centre Theatre - El Reno) Come to the historic Centre Theatre in downtown El Reno to experience the Backwoods Country Music Show. Featuring…
  
• Oklahoma City Cancer Walk/Run (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Embark on a 5K run around the Myriad Botanical Gardens in downtown Oklahoma City, or walk the route for a slower-paced…
  
• El Reno Carnegie Library FanFest (El Reno Library - El Reno) Head to the Carnegie Library in El Reno for a bookish festival that's sure to be fun for the whole family. Enjoy food…
  
• Lovelytheband in Concert (Tower Theatre Studio - Oklahoma City) Catch indie-pop band Lovelytheband live as they take over the historic Tower Theatre in Oklahoma City. Best known for…
  
• Market on the Meadows (Shawnee) Day 2 of 2 Head to a beautiful country meadow for a fun weekend of shopping during Market on the Meadows. Located outdoors in Shawnee,…
  
• Mufflers on Main (Main Street - Blanchard) Head to Blanchard and take a stroll down memory lane with a classic car show in an old-fashioned setting. Mufflers on Main…
  
• National Cavalry Competition (Historic Fort Reno - El Reno) Last Day The National Cavalry Competition at Historic Fort Reno is a wonderful opportunity for re-enactors, active and reserve…
  
• Newcastle Nightmare (Newcastle) Thru Sat, Oct 26th Newcastle Nightmare is a unique haunted attraction located south of Oklahoma City that chills and thrills guests who dare to…
  
• OKC Pagan Pride Day (Wiley Post Park - Oklahoma City) At the OKC Pagan Pride Day, everyone is welcome to come together for a day of food, fun and education at the Wiley Post Park…
  
• Oklahoma Wildlife Expo (Lazy E Arena - Guthrie) Day 1 of 2 In September, Guthrie's Lazy E Arena will be transformed into Oklahoma's largest indoor and outdoor recreation…
  
• Old Oak Farms Flea Market (Minco) Old Oak Farms Flea Market features fall fare in every variety. Gather in Minco and get into the Halloween spirit by browsing…
  
• Old Volks Show (Wild Horse Park - Mustang) See Volkswagens from their earliest makes and models to their newest editions at the Old Volks Show in Oklahoma City.…
  
• OU Sooners vs Texas Tech University Red Raiders (Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium - Norman) Get ready for some edge-of-your-seat action as the Oklahoma Sooners take on the Texas Tech University Red Raiders at…
  
• Plaza District Festival (Plaza District - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 11:00am oin us for the 21st Annual Plaza District Festival! - Saturday, September 28th -
  
• Prairie Moon Market Day (Wayne) Join the folks from Prairie Moon Primitives for a day at the farm featuring vendors with handmade crafts and amazing…
  
• Red City Radio in Concert (89th Street Collective - Oklahoma City) Catch Oklahoma City-based band Red City Radio live as they make a stop at 89th Street to perform for the home crowd. Rock…
  
• 😂 Triple Feature Week Oklahoma City!!! (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) Last Day
  
• UCO Edmond Jazz Festival (University of Central Oklahoma - Edmond) Last Day Come to the UCO Jazz Lab in Edmond for a music festival you won't want to miss. Presented by the UCO School of…
  

Sunday, Sep 29th

• Exit 107 Live Family Music Festival (Newcastle Casino - Newcastle) Newcastle Casino invites you to enjoy some family-friendly fun. At the annual free Exit 107 festival, guests can munch on…
• FrightFest (Starlight Amphitheater @ Frontier City - Oklahoma City) Thru Thu, Oct 31st This Halloween season, visit Frontier City in Oklahoma City for a day of thrilling rides and fun activities for the whole…
• Grape Stomp Festival (Canadian River Vineyard and Winery LLC - Lexington) The Canadian River Wine Festival invites all ages out to Slaughterville for a fun day at the winery. Enter the Lucille Ball…
• Newcastle Nightmare (Newcastle) Thru Sat, Oct 26th Newcastle Nightmare is a unique haunted attraction located south of Oklahoma City that chills and thrills guests who dare to…
• Oklahoma Derby Day (Remington Park - Oklahoma City) Celebrate the Oklahoma Derby in style at Remington Park Racetrack & Casino in Oklahoma City. In addition to the 10 stake…
• Oklahoma Wildlife Expo (Lazy E Arena - Guthrie) Day 2 of 2 In September, Guthrie's Lazy E Arena will be transformed into Oklahoma's largest indoor and outdoor recreation…
• Starset in Concert (Diamond Ballroom - Oklahoma City) Get ready for a fantastic rock and roll experience as Starset, Palisades, Hyde and A Brilliant Lie rock the Diamond Ballroom…

Monday, Sep 30th

• Calexico and Iron & Wine in Concert (Tower Theatre Studio - Oklahoma City) Two indie folk groups join forces for a memorable night of music at Oklahoma City's Tower Theatre. Hear Calexico and…
• FrightFest (Starlight Amphitheater @ Frontier City - Oklahoma City) Thru Thu, Oct 31st This Halloween season, visit Frontier City in Oklahoma City for a day of thrilling rides and fun activities for the whole…
• Newcastle Nightmare (Newcastle) Thru Sat, Oct 26th Newcastle Nightmare is a unique haunted attraction located south of Oklahoma City that chills and thrills guests who dare to…

Tuesday, Oct 1st

• FrightFest (Starlight Amphitheater @ Frontier City - Oklahoma City) Thru Thu, Oct 31st This Halloween season, visit Frontier City in Oklahoma City for a day of thrilling rides and fun activities for the whole…
• Less than Jake & Bowling for Soup in Concert (Tower Theatre Studio - Oklahoma City) Enjoy some of your favorite 1990s and 2000s alt-rock hits as Less than Jake and Bowling for Soup share the stage at the…
• Newcastle Nightmare (Newcastle) Thru Sat, Oct 26th Newcastle Nightmare is a unique haunted attraction located south of Oklahoma City that chills and thrills guests who dare to…

See Also

• OK Gamers
• Techlahoma