Redwood Bureau – “PARALLAX” (Phenomenon #7667)

Podcast: Redwood Bureau
Host/Voice: Eeriecast Network, featuring Josh Tomar as Agent Conroy
Date: August 30, 2025

Main Theme:

In this intense and atmospheric installment, ex-Bureau operative Agent Conroy exposes the harrowing story of Agent Hale—a Bureau survivor “rewarded” for his loyalty by being forcibly bound to a mysterious, powerful artifact and sent into an incomprehensible anomaly. The tale is a sobering warning about how the Redwood Bureau commodifies and destroys the people it uses, and a chilling look into the consequences of weaponizing the unknown.

Key Discussion Points & Segment Breakdown

I. Introduction: The Bureau's Way ([02:08])

• Conroy sets the tone, describing Bureau protocol:
  • “Cipher Conroy’s busy cutting upstream, the kind of busy that makes whole departments sweat…”
  • The Bureau continues its dangerous experimental work, treating people as expendable resources.
• Theme: Survivors are not rewarded; rather, they are recycled for even more dangerous assignments.

II. Agent Hale’s Induction: The Paper Cage ([03:32])

• Hale returns to duty: Cleared by psych eval, still physically and mentally scarred from previous trauma.
• Bureau’s bureaucracy: Processed with cold efficiency (“No ceremony, just the scrawling of a pen and the door opening for the next body.” (04:00))
• Consent on paper only:
  • Hale is given the illusion of choice.
  • Notable quote: “The first paragraph said that being briefed was consent, whether or not I agreed to act.” (04:29)
  • Intimidation and legalese replace real agency.

III. Preparation & Binding: Artifact Telemetry Harness ([06:15 – 11:30])

• Fitted with an artifact/harness:
  • Scene of body horror: Restraints, invasive implant of the "telemetry spine," and the attachment of a sentient-seeming harness.
  • Notable moment: “There isn't a word for that class of pain if you haven't met. Wasn't a slice or a spike. It was a decision being made across layers that didn't know each other before now.” (10:22)
• Testing the harness:
  • Its alien intelligence “corrects” his gestures, enforces posture, and modulates breathing.
• Isolation: The clinical language and focus on “functionality” underline how expendable agents truly are.

IV. Mission Briefing & The Cost of Service ([14:30 – 19:30])

• Hale “commended” for resilience—but only as a means to deploy him.
• Notable quote:
  • Agent Hale’s observation: “Files are where promises go to be folded.” (17:01)
• Job description: Sent into an anomaly (“artifact X Field 13”) with a support team. His body is now both tool and test case.
• Bureau doublespeak: “You’ve been selected, for a limited duration operation of extraordinary significance…The equipment acclimation you’ve undergone places you in a cohort of one.” (15:44)

V. Entry to the Anomaly: Encounter with the Black (“Not Water”) ([27:00 – 35:00])

• Description of the sphere: “It was a kind of black, so dense the light around it seemed to fall in and not come back out.” (29:24)
• Crossing the threshold:
  • The harness guides him; time and space unravel; sensation and memory through body horror and surreal transitions.
  • “It was like walking through the memory of water that had never existed.” (31:49)

VI. Team Breakdown: Blurred Reality, Body Horror, Loss ([35:00 – 40:00])

• First casualties:
  • Men succumb to mind-bending hallucinations and impossible physical transformations (centipedes erupting from a man's face, another’s jaw splitting open to reveal a second mouth).
  • Notable scene: “Little domes pushed up under the skin of his face, first near the cheekbone… something thin and jointed forced through… fell into the not water without a ripple.” (36:45)
• Command lost, panic spreads:
  • “Hold… Don’t look forward. Don’t look back. Put your eyes on the shoulder in front of you and keep them there. Empty your head.” (38:40)

VII. At the Heart: The Triarch and the Test ([41:30 – 47:30])

• The artifact’s trial:
  • The harness forces Hale to self-inflict, cutting and severing a braided cable inside himself to realign with reality.
  • Agonizing detail: “The first push went through its surface with a sound like two teeth tearing flesh. The second entered me. Pain came white and complete.”
• Cosmic entities awaken:
  • “A mass around them declared itself by what it did to the dark…” (47:10)
  • Entities described as “processions of tendrils, thick as columns and thin as wire, all of it organized around a hunger that had never known disappointment.”

VIII. Escape: Across Realities, Against the Bureau ([53:00 – 63:00])

• Return is not freedom:
  • The Bureau seeks to contain or neutralize him on return—he’s now a liability or even a phenomenon.
  • “Contain him.” (57:16) – The chilling bureaucratic order.
• Hale fights back:
  • Executes a violent, tactical escape using the suit’s dimension-hopping powers. “I solved the ones I could touch and moved through seams for the ones I couldn’t.” (59:01)
• Breakout:
  • Flees in a stolen APC, the harness now his only partner. “We’ll do it your way until the bill comes due.” (63:00)

IX. Conroy’s Conclusion: The Bureau’s True Nature ([64:19])

• Cynical denouement:
  • The Bureau will chalk losses up to “deviations,” but never learn the right lessons.
• Notable insight:
  • “You cannot strap a leash to an artifact and expect the unknown to respect your wishes…Every time they cross a boundary, those consequences ripple out.”
• Human cost emphasized:
  • The language, time and again, swaps “agent” for “asset.” “Understand what the room has decided you are.” (65:20)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “The first paragraph said that being briefed was consent, whether or not I agreed to act.” – Agent Hale ([04:29])
• “This paragraph carries the sentence… being read into this compartment constitutes acceptance of the assignment without the operational brief.” – Insight Liaison ([05:00])
• “There isn’t a word for that class of pain if you haven’t met. Wasn’t a slice or a spike. It was a decision being made across layers that didn’t know each other before now.” – Hale, on receiving the implant ([10:22])
• “Files are where promises go to be folded.” – Hale ([17:01])
• “It was like walking through the memory of water that had never existed.” – Hale, upon entering the anomaly ([31:49])
• “You cannot strap a leash to an artifact and expect the unknown to respect your wishes.” – Conroy ([64:35])
• “If you’re inside and still counting losses, read your orders twice. The language swaps agent for asset. Understand what the room has decided. You are.” – Conroy ([65:17])

Tone, Style, and Atmosphere

• Language: Clinical, procedural, with a vivid undercurrent of anxiety and horror.
• Atmosphere: Dread-soaked scenes of claustrophobic procedures, surreal and vivid depictions of otherworldly horror, followed by staccato violence and exhausted, cynical resignation.

For New Listeners

• This episode is a haunting look into the Redwood Bureau’s inhuman cost—where people become tools, failures are attributed to “anomalies,” and the arrogance of controlling the unknown leads to disaster.
• At its core is Agent Hale's transformation from loyal operative to disposable “asset,” and his violent effort to regain autonomy when the Bureau predictably turns on him. The story’s horror is not just in the phenomena, but in the bureaucracy's cold, perpetual machinery.