Ep. 156 | Ch 9-12 | Convergence | Book 6 | Dead World | By Craig Alanson

0:00Welcome back. Here's where you left off. Spore this ahead for chapters 9 through 12 of Convergence, book 6, Dead World by Craig Allison. So we had a bunch of stuff go on in these chapters and I think we can both agree that the best part of these chapters is Bifar Boutseed. Well, yes and no. Yes and no. Mashaap names. Awesome. I don't want the mash up names, but it's not like the best thing in this chapter really. It's entertaining. It's like, two vix and Star Trek. No, yeah, that is exactly where my hair is. Two vix. Like the thing you want to call and I was totally into it. And I was like, I want more mash up names. I was sitting there trying to think of the other mash up names you could do.

1:02That Boutseed I'm on board with again, you know, we had a couple other possibilities, but I think Boutseed was a good thing with it. It is, but again, it's not the wow factor of the last four chapters. What was the wow factor of the last four chapters for you there? It's kind of funny though, because I had a feeling you'd be asking me this question. So this question would come out because after I read the, the reading assignment, I sat there for a bit. I had already sat there for a bit and wondering, okay, what's actually been happening since chapter one? That's how far back I went and I realized the two things here. One, this is not your typical convergent style of, of plot, right? Because this is very, it's the best way to describe it. It's almost like you're building a world all over it. It's like the walking dead man. It's like the walking dead man. It's not like it's not like chapter five, they start fighting.

2:06Chapter six, they're still fighting. Chapter seven, they have to solve this thing. This is more like, more like we got into this situation because we don't know. We start figuring it out, sort of figuring it out, figuring it out. Okay, this is not what's supposed to be. This is all, they know it's an alternative universe. This is not their timeline. They know all that, right? But what I'm totally enjoy more about right now where we are currently in the book is, is, is, is, is they're trying to solve something that they can't figure out, right? Even, even, even, even, um, Kazoo Erie says, like, this is kind of hard because we keep going away from something we don't know, going to a place that we don't know and why. Right? And, and even, even, even, what's his name? He really says, like, I agree with you. I, we just need to get out. We just need to figure out what's going on. So they actually had a task, let's go find a radio, let's go figure out who's actually listening, who's listening and all that stuff. And they had all that.

3:07It was really, really nice that, that they, they tried to solve an issue or trying to, um, try to go through step by step and how to do it. And for me, that's actually the more, more, um, it's a lot, it's easier for me to, it that's probably right now is the best part is trying to figure out what's going on. Right? And that was for me, but so much better, right? And it's like, it's like, it's like when they first went in another, you liked, you liked that part because they didn't know what was going on. They didn't have that information, they didn't have the gods, they didn't know what was happening. We met all, we met Kevin and so forth. Is that the sort of idea you're talking about? Yeah, because, because right now from, for the past few books, they were go, go, go, go. Right? Now they're slowing down. And I told you, I, I love this part, I love the series like this that, that they have this massive go, go attitude and plot line. And by the time to get to this book, everything slowed down.

4:10And when they slowed down, that's when you start realizing, okay, how much information can you give us without getting us bored? It captivates us. This is why, this is why it's very, very important for me, for, uh, my opinion for writers to slow it down a bit sometimes, right? For, for everyone to catch up at the same time, it gives the, um, it gives the reader the, the extra information. It gives a bit more, um, more, more personality of the, it gives the, give the audience, uh, the opportunity to know the personality of character. More character development. Yeah, more character development. Yeah, it's, it's, it's more, it's more like enhancing what they already have as a character, right? And for, in, in, in this case, uh, you can actually see it. You can literally see how the character is actually evolving again. In the same time, it's very subtle, but not like a massive change, right?

5:11And in my opinion, that's the best part right now. It's that because it's, I totally enjoyed it because it's, it's, it's, it's a feel boring, right? I think that's what I was talking about. Like Macarius is a bell getting it on, getting that relationship going as good, you know, uh, Jacelle, she's doing her own thing over here, sort of learning more, and sort of excited to learn all about this stuff. She doesn't know. We got, in a way, I actually was saying this, I think in the last, last one or the one before that I wanted the two of them to be more forefront and Mike and Isabelle to take more of a backseat and sort of that sort of has happened a little bit in this book, which I kind of enjoy a bit because I want to see them expand their characters and, and, and move forward. But also I do like to see, I mean, we've joking about the mashup of boots in his eb, but I actually think that's great because it's going to make them be closer even though there was this adversarial stuff.

6:11So it's sort of like that bond that's coming together because boots has that bond with Duke where that is that grudging respect. Now he's going to possibly have it with a zeb. So it's also getting them closer together as well. Don't you agree? Okay, okay. And sometimes too that everyone still don't trust a zeb. Period. It's kind of funny though because they, I think it was Mr. Boot says that treat a zeb like a chin. Why are you asking permission? You are a wizard. Talk to him like a wizard. As soon as the cast start talking to him, hey, I need you to hear right now. Get out here right now. It sort of gives the changes dynamic between cast and a zeb. But at the same time, a zeb is more like, oh, hello, that's completely different from what I'm used to. Right? And you notice, you started noticing that because as soon as cast say something, a zeb

7:13is being snark about it and cast the lady said, shut up. Listen to me. Give me the freaking answer. And actually happened. He tells them the answer. And at the same time too, as he is still not giving a full answer, I have a feeling that he's trying to tell him something without telling him because he wants cast to learn about it. And I have no problem with that because it's actually a very nice thing to see, right? But for a zeb not telling him right away or getting, another was getting cast to figure it out, it makes cast a lot more powerful as a wizard. But you agree? I agree that cast is coming into his own. He's starting to understand things a little bit. It's funny because a zeb has always been the source of information. But in a way, almost always, a zeb hasn't really given him information, but pointed out

8:13the blaringly obvious thing that cast hasn't been able to figure out on his own. Which to me, it's like, did you really help him or you're just a buddy saying, dude, try it this way. That really feels like a lot of times that a zeb is giving to cast. So cast is figuring things out because a zeb rarely gives him the answer. He challenges him to figure it out for himself. And in a way, I respect a zeb for these like, dude, just figure out for yourself. You're almost there. Go on. You know, you can do it. I enjoy that aspect of his use personality. Of course, the arrogance, the constant hungeriness, you know, that's a bit annoying, don't you think? That's his care. That's him is like, it's his own personal trait. I don't really care about that. Right? It's nice. It's funny. It's hilarious. But at the same time too, having a zeb there helps cast move along, but at the same time, remember, a zeb is his cast is dictionary for magic.

9:21Mr. Boots is his dictionary of the nether. Right. And Macarius. And Macarius and Jazeal is his moral compass. And Mike is a bell. You're a rollier. Keep on going. The bell is his strength. That's a good analogy. You should try to crack about that. That was a good analogy. I know. Jesus, my God. They only took us this long to get figured out one out. Yeah, I know. But just imagine, if you look at that way, like each character, it gives, if you compare cast to a Theo, theon. It's completely different now because cast has his ports that he needs. Even there's times in the reading chapters that Theo is like, oh, I didn't know that Casabé can do this. I didn't know Casabé can do this. Actually, that's a good point. Theo had the realization that Cas actually knows more than him and it scared the bejesus

10:26out of him. Yeah. And he knows that he can be more powerful than him. Right? And which also is like, damn, I got it. I mean, that's why they're laying the trap for them and so forth, which also is something I wanted to talk to you about because they don't automatically know that's where they're going to come back to. I know they found the backpack and so forth and all of this, but they don't know that that's where they're going to come back through automatically, right? No, because it's kind of funny though. You said that because they're, their third thought actually makes a lot of sense, especially if you're in this side. If you look at it in their perspective, that there's a good chance to come back in the same place because they left the card and left all the equipment, even even they gave me a question, why did they leave their equipment here? It doesn't make any sense. But if their plans come back here, at least they have, they have stuff ready to go just to get everything in another, right? So the way of thinking actually makes a lot, it makes sense. Like, I won't fault them to that, right? They gave, they, they just react to the information that they currently have, right?

11:31And if you, if you look in a way that, hey, we are going back, our enemies are coming back in the same spot because they have equipment there. And yes, I'm going to put my mountain here, shoot whatever comes out relatively getting the same by it does work, right? You don't want any need to come back alive, right? And for them, doing that makes, makes good. But at the same time, I want to talk about the on because the on is kind of, you know, interesting in this one because he remember he was injured from the last book because of Luria Tower fell on top of him. And, and he's still being restricted to putting irons in this, in this leg around his arm, but he can't create magic. So that makes a lot of sense. But at the same time too, if you read between the lines based on what he's saying that, that even his own monologue saying that he, he's saying that, yeah, Kazim is a lot stronger. Kazim Marcelo, I have a feeling his, his buddy there is like, knows that he's, he's

12:36planning something, right? And I have a feeling that Bush come to shove, he will jump into the nether. Oh, God, yeah, God, yeah, no, I completely agree with that. I think his plan is to let Raphael do his thing. And as soon as the portal opens, he's like, see ya, who jumps through. That's definitely, if it doesn't go down that way, I don't know what's going to happen. That just seems the most logical, logical progression of Theo's storyline here of anything. It's just really funny. I agree though. Yeah. And what do you think about the, the whole, theon plot line, the plot story right now, like currently? I'm okay with it. I mean, I agree with you that, you know, he needs the resources of the order to both heal and to both find where it has in them when he's, he's playing, he's playing injured. When he's probably not as injured as he's playing on to buy time to find where they're at.

13:41And now that he knows that Kaz is a much more powerful wizard than his, him, he's much more worried. He thought he was the endoom be all. He knows it isn't the case now. And it's probably got him really worried. So as you said, he's going to, he's worried. He believes that they've gone into the nether and are going to make all the deals with the gods and come back and he's, he's going to be left out of the loop. So he's the one who wants to go into another to, to correct that. And I figure, you know, my theory is this is that either in 1945 or 1944, which is when Kaz and them originally went back and killed the squad. He opened up a portal and then the nether god with a three split went back then. Okay. Now whatever the nether god is doing back then, whatever god, whatever portal they opened up, whatever convergence they did, that God is a control of the area because they have the zombies and so forth and then another whatever the foxes and stuff.

14:46So he has that control. So now we're in 47. Okay. Because basically the control of the area, he notices that Kaz and them are there. Somehow I think Theo is going to go back to 45 because I feel like we're winding up for Theo's introduction, probably at the end of the book to being in the past to be like, hey guys, I'm here. You know, like I made a deal with the, that seems like an interesting plot point to me. What do you think about the theory? Oh, it makes a lot of sense. But the only thing that I'm kind of like questioning is how does he know he should go back to 44. He doesn't know that she go back to 44. He just knows that when a portal, when he, when he himself muddles around with a portal because of Raphael and all of them, opens one up, says, see you guys, jumps through. He doesn't know he's going to go back to the past because Kaz didn't know he was going

15:46to go back to the past when he originally did it. You see my point. You think there's going to be a back to the future thing that he goes back to the past but accidentally to 44. Yeah. Oh, and he saw Kaz killing those soldiers. Yeah, like, well, either that would be, you know, remember the order are powerful back then. And if he connected up with the order of the past, then the order was with the Nazis. And then he betrays everybody, including the Nazis and the order with another God that's there, whatever another God it is. He's the king guy back. I can see that plot line. I really can. Because if you look at that logic itself, let's take with that logic itself. If the on, found a portal went back to 44 by accident, let's just use this scenario by accident. He saw Kaz and his guys killed those soldiers. Let's just use that as a scenario right now because that's what we know that he went back blah, blah, blah, blah.

16:47If it just goes back there, he saw them from the behind from from some where it's like, he just killed the portal opened to go back to the another, right? This is where we are. It's still part of the book. Do you think if if your scenario said he went back to 44 by accident, he kept that portal open, right? No, I think I think that another God came through that portal, the one that was in the Zebes Amulet. Well, yeah, we know that. We know that. But we're just looking at the perspective of that. What happened if if if the on went back to the same location where Kaz opened that portal in 44 to go back to the another? I think I think it's I think if you think of like wormholes where they connect to various areas. And in the beginning of the book, he made a lot of talk about three portals. So one of them goes one where one so I'm thinking from that logic, right? He's going to connect those back later on in the story to say, this is where this portal went. This is where we know that the Difty, you know, she's she's back in the present, right?

17:52She got pushed back out, right? She's in the nether still in the present. And so she's the only one connecting the present to the past right now as far as far as we know. But I tend to agree with you about the plot line right now where I think the majority of it is going to be in the past in 47. And I think knowing Craig, he likes to have a little twist there. I think the Theo twist is a reasonable thing to think it might become. Oh, my God, we're just speculating now because it's too many of these happening, right? So well, okay, let's rewind them for just a minute. So they find the radio, okay? And they hear the Morse code, okay? And then they have the conversation about the enig machine. And by the way, when the enig machine conversation was happening, I'm like, no, no, it's not going to work. No, no, you don't know it works. I was like, as they were, I was listening to the book. I was like, I was reading it and I was like, I'm like, this is not going to work.

18:56You don't know how the enig machine works. No way. You can't just figure it out. Actually, it's not fiction. The book is fiction. The book is fiction. No, they actually outline the real, they actually outline the real reasons it won't work. And it's legit reasons. So Craig actually uses real life logic to determine why they can't do it. Anyway, that doesn't matter. They find a signal going on. And that's the part that I want to focus on. What do you think about the Morse code signal? Yeah, that's. They found a signal at night, right? And remember, theory from Mike is like everyone's dead. No one's alive. Okay, that's been the ongoing theory since chapter one, right? Now they heard this Morse code coming out. The sort of speculated this could be German. Could be using the enig machine. Blah blah blah blah. Right?

19:56But here's the thing though, if someone's still alive, in using encrypted codes, and this is if this happens around the world, would you use an encryption to find out if people are still alive? Actually, I had the exact same thought. There's two answers to that. Number one, you would use an encryption if you knew that somebody you didn't want to hear was listening. Number one, number two, you would use the encryption also if it was the only thing you had to use. Like in the words, it's the only machine or the only transmitter you had at that time. So those are the two. If I remember correctly, enigma is a separate machine from the radio. True. Actually, this is true. That's right. So that's the case.

21:01If that's the case, you think that outside France, digital war. Well, it's an interesting question. I mean, if the argument is and we'll just use the word France as the geographical area, Germany conquer a lot more than France. So is that possible? Sure. No, it's it's it's it's based on history. Yes. Okay, June and World War II. It's an off-front France, right? But remember, we only see France outside Paris. And I agree. Right. And they heard an encryption coming in again, part of my, part of my analysis is based on a comment. If you are the only one in the world left, try to figure out who's out there. I do make it. Would you? Would you make an argument against that?

22:01I do make an argument against that. They were searching many different frequencies to find a signal and they had to look for it. Back in those days, everybody was using radio waves and so forth. There would be signals all over the spectrum if the world was talking, you know what I mean? And they only found this one signal. So that implies to me that the world has kind of gone quiet. Do you see my point? I see your point, but at the same time, why are you planting crypts something that you're trying to figure out someone's still alive? Well, the argument is the people that you're sending the message to can read it or to it's some sort of automated thing that was originally encrypted that no longer matters, which I don't really have the answer to yet, which is an interesting point. But I think it lends to the scale to say the world has gone quiet, I think. Yeah, I agree. I think the world does.

23:02This is why it was very confusing when they, this is why it was very confusing when they, this is why I, I literally stopped for a bit and like, if the radio signals encrypted and you're, if you, the person is transmitting it, trying to find out who's still alive, it does not make any sense. The only thing that makes sense right now, in my opinion, is in front, in Paris, or just surrounding Paris, just, Paris is the middle of France. So there's a big radius around Paris could be officially dead. The rest of the world still alive and still at war, right? Or a massive power shift happened and we're just haven't heard the other side yet. Yeah. I don't know. You know, my experience at Craig's writing is that he likes to shroud things until he releases it, right? And we're definitely in the shroud phase of his book right now.

24:05Like we're in the middle of it. We're in the, I suspect for the next two reads, we're, we're just going to be in the middle of it where he's not going to reveal too, too much. In fact, I would make the argument he's been sprinkling theoth here. I think Theo is going to come back maybe in the next few chapters to do something because he's been sprinkling it in there for like, you know, a few, a few paragraphs here and there, don't you think? Yeah, I agree, I agree. That's going to be interesting. I can't wait to keep reading because there's a lot of things that I, there's lots of unanswered questions that needs to be answered. So what do you think is going to happen next? What, what, where do you think we're going? We have the radio signal. We have the, what do you think they're going to, because I mean, they brought up a really good point during these chapters and Kaz himself says, what the heck are we doing? He brings it up himself. We're just running away. Well, that's actually a very good, this is my story earlier in this, uh, earlier in this episode that they are running away from something they don't know, going to a place that they don't know with zero direction whatsoever.

25:07They heard this radio, this, this radio, and they don't know what to do with it, right? And this is, this is where, this is where I said in the beginning that this is the fun part of this book right now because there's the unknown, unknown of what's going to happen next, right? And if some miracle, there's just some miracle to figure out the code, right? It's just some miracle. Let's just say, yes, we found the code book blah, blah, blah, we figure it out. This is where they are right now. That's fine and dandy. If they end up showing up there and saying that, uh, hell, that everyone's dead, it's just automated thing. That's just when it gets more interesting because this is where, because it would be nice to see their, their, the lowest part of where they are now, right? I want them to be defeated because this is when it gets more, if they get more defeated, they lose hope trying to figure out what's going on and they start going up and be defeated. Okay. So again, define being the, how do you define being defeated? Because to be, they've been defeated a couple of times or they're on the run.

26:10I mean, they're running from something. They're running away from zombies. That's what they're doing right now. They're running away from zombies. I think that's legit reason to run. I don't you think that's legit reason to run away. It is an incredible legit reason to run from zombies. I am not denying that at all, but they don't know the cost of that zombie, zombie infected pairs. They know they're speculating. You remember all this right now, they're 100% speculating everything, right? They're 100% speculating. They're not even sure if it's more or less, if it's actually the one who did this. They don't know. They're just speculating, right? And you never know as he was, I'm going to be back to the Netherlands. We don't know. We just don't know. Right. So for them running towards something that they don't know, it's kind of interesting. Having the radio signal running towards the radio signal is a lot more plausible going

27:12forward. If they ending up decrypting it, okay, it's some miracle that they do. They're going to run straight to the radio to wherever the signal is coming from. Right? And this is when it gets interesting. As soon as they, I think, I think if they do go that route, they're going to see it's on a main thing and they see a bunch of journals, a bunch of like reports. This is when they're going to sit down and like, what the hell is going on here? I don't know what to do anymore. That's my go to right now. How about yours? Yeah. I think I agree with your assessment there. I think that we're going to go towards the Morris code. We're going to try to figure out more about who's out there. I wonder what's between us and that moment though. And my thought process is more interaction with the zombies and maybe making contact with this other, another God. Remember, Kaz has been imbuing objects with power now.

28:17So he kind of has a battery for his magic. And so that means he can wheel more, which might lead us to some other magical discovery that we're, we're the running around that he hasn't been able to find up to now because now he has some stored up energy. He's just interesting that they were using the gods fighting for them. It's like God lightning where they get stored stuff up. I did actually enjoy that plotline too, but I think what we're moving towards is either him being contacted by the gods there or having a plot twist, which I don't know if we're going to have an XC chapter is probably not. It's a little slow for Craig, but it should be interesting. Join us next time as we review chapters 13 through 16 of convergence, book six, Dead World by Craig Allenson.