in which Corin receives a call, the crystals in Hell yield some interesting images, the Division of Erotic Experiences is renamed, disbanded, and reinstated, and She who lurks at the edge of the woods (like you’d expect) “wins” the Ruin-A-Life Drawing. Do Evil Better.

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Intro: What you are about to hear is coming to you straight from the darkest corners of your mind.

Hello and Welcome to the Kakos Industries Corporate Shareholder Announcements. At Kakos Industries, we help our clients and everyone everywhere to Do Evil Better. My name is Corin Deeth III and I am CEO. Shareholders I apologize,  it seems my allergies have affected my voice. Let’s dive right in, shareholders. 

Today’s broadcast is coming to you from a hobby project you don’t remember starting. It’s in a cardboard box, and you found it wherever you needed to find it, whether that was on your dining room table, in the backseat of your car, or really anywhere else we need to reach you. Inside the cardboard box, you see a variety of components and some circuit boards. Are they mini computers? Do you remember how to code well enough for that? Or perhaps they’re something more analog, but you’re not sure you remember how to solder. Have you ever soldered? It’s unclear at this time. And what is that? Those might be surface mount components. You might have a soldering iron, but do you have a heat gun? And that’s definitely yarn. Where are your knitting needles anyway? Well, it’s probably best for you not to worry too much about any of that right now. At the appointed time, these broadcasts began and whatever’s in that box started to play back this sound for you. There could be speakers in the box, but there is no guarantee that the speakers are where the sound is coming from. The sound might be coming from something else entirely, like a dying capacitor or some sort of battery powered system on a chip. I understand that this project comes to us from a collaboration between  our Division of Liquidation and Radek Has Too Much Stuff Inc. Somehow, we got a radio in there. I understand that the quality is a bit inconsistent depending on which box is your particular unfinished project. You might be a bit confused at this moment as to whether this unfinished project is yours from some Internet impulse buy or a radio we gave you specifically for today, and it’s possible for both to be true. At the end of this broadcast, shareholders, you will have a difficult decision on your hands and I am sorry for that. You will either need to finish the project, or put it back on the shelf. Disposing of it is unfortunately not an option. You never know, you might get back to it some day. Please do not begin working on anything until the announcements have finished. 

I should also remind all of you listening that this broadcast is only for Kakos Industries shareholders. If you’re not a shareholder, the only way to ensure your ongoing safety is the find the small box inside the unfinished project bringing you these announcements that is labeled “in case not Evil.” You will need to break the glass. In the process you will have done something so heinous, so unforgivable, so terrible, that you will instantly become one of us. What is that thing? Well, you’ll find out if you have to. Time is running out. I’d break that glass if you have any doubts. 

(ringing)

Seriously, Soundman, why do we even have a phone in here. Has it ever been anything worth answering?  No, it hasn’t. You know it hasn’t. Don’t give me that, Soundman. Sure, it can be important, but there are people who can take care of it. You know we have chains of command, and that there is someone responsible for all of my other duties while I’m in here. No, I don’t know who that is. If I knew that it would violate some kind of conflict of interest clause. No, it makes perfect sense, Soundman. And also, I did all of my work already for today so we wouldn’t have any interruptions. Okay, okay, fine.

(answering)

Hello?

(pause)

Hello? Soundman, I don’t think there’s anyone on the line. Let’s move on.

(hanging up)

I know that you like to have a little update on what happened during the last broadcast during this introductory segment, shareholders, and I’ll do my best now to give you that information. Fourest is still weird. He’s in the woods somewhere talking to birds, and I do mean that literally. His recent broadcasts have been in bird tweets. He is attempting to learn the language of the birds. This is certainly possible to some extent, although we typically think of the language of various birds as being somewhat limited and species specific. I guess we’ll find out if there’s something he knows that we don’t. Briefly, he also attempted to communicate in bear roars, but he decided that the bear community was smaller than the bird community and needed fewer broadcasts. I wish I was joking about all of this. It really seems like he’s tripping balls. 

Let’s see, then there’s Junior’s mind palace. We intervened before he could requisition what he called “one hundred and fifty bodies, life still in them.” We didn’t have enough disposable employees, and the hours they work are technically too long for interns. All the same, we want this situation to grow slowly in case it is going to grow out of control. I don’t know how we pull the plug if there is any issue, but we will. We might have to work that into the systems somehow. Junior won’t like it, but it may be a requirement if he wants to keep adding brains to his whole situation there. Right now, he’s got twenty people attached to his machine. That’s probably enough. We can’t complain too much about his methods, though. He’s already developed LSXD, which is the working title for a hallucinogen with which the hallucinatory experience ends exactly when you want it to. That is a serious advancement in psychedelic technology that may lead to some exciting developments down the road. Junior told me that the molecules are beginning to speak to him. We’re keeping an eye on that. 

We recently had the Festival of Mud. Or, well, we tried to. But the Earth and the Water just wouldn’t stay mixed. Due to a scheduling difficulty, both festivals happened at the same time, but people had to decide which one was more important to them personally. It was forbidden for some esoteric reason to participate in both. When I asked Grace for details, she just kind of shook her head. Enough said, I suppose. The Earth festival largely revolved around covering people’s bodies in various kinds of earth. The water festival largely revoked around being dunked in pools of water and seeing how long you could commune with the water before needing to come up for air. There was one casualty. We’ve kept Wiley Kyo’s body submerged in the vat he was in after his passing so that his communion with the water could be perpetual. 

On an unrelated note, I took my personal submersible to visit Kakolantis, the most disappointing experiment we’ve ever undertaken. All I will say for now is that there is evidence of sea peoples. Very interesting. 

We also recently had Evil Con. This year, the theme for Evil Con was Fighting Dirty. Numerous Divisions and private companies that are clients of ours unveiled fascinating ways to show up to an honest fight, and then fight dirty. Giant Ass Things in General showed up with the largest brass knuckles we have ever seen. Thorgonus Imports showed us an alien ooze that can reduce a single combatant to a toxic goo in moments. Our very own Division of Truculence, Bellicosity, and Pugnacity developed a gun that fires punches. An impressive showcase all around. 

Coming up we have the Festival of Innovation. Ordinarily, this festival looks a lot like engineers putting everything they’ve got into making fearsome fighting robots capable of untold violence, and then having them fuck each other. There seem to be some repressed feelings there somewhere. Not sure what exactly. Anyway, this year, each of the teams brought a big server that was evidently loaded with some sort of machine learning algorithm, and they connected them all to each other and allowed the sex-fighting to occur at the speed of electrons inside the computers. We got a detailed report on how many of these interactions each team won. There were millions of trials in an effort to regress to the mean and know whose sex algorithm was truly the best. The best at what? Yeah, great question. I cannot tell you. The scoring system I looked at resembles nothing from any sexual activity I’ve ever taken part in or wanted to take part in. Many of them seem to exist only in a multidimensional matrix that humans do not occupy in the real world. Or any other living thing. This was truly on another level. All the same, I am told that Giant Ass Algorithms to Knock Out Your Bottom, a company related to Giant Ass Robots to Kick in Your Face, was victorious. I have the data. I cannot tell you what the data means. 

Kakophonia, our never ending music festival, apparently just had clown punk night. I didn’t go, but I do have a description of the event here. It says, “Honk, motherfucker.” I don’t know about you, shareholders, but all of my questions are answered. 

(a different ringing)

Is that a different phone? No, Soundman, I’m not going to answer it. Aren’t you concerned by this fucking up the sound quality? Doesn’t it bother you that it’s interfering with the perfection that we sculpted with your technology and my notes? What do you mean your duty is only to record and broadcast what happens faithfully? This is getting in the way. I have stuff to talk about, Soundman! Okay. Fine.

(answering)

Hello?

(pause)

Hello? Soundman, it’s no one again. No heavy breathing. No creeping. No uncomfortable tone. No offers to buy my land in East Jangus Nowhere. Hello? I almost wish it was something weird. Yeah, fine, I’ll knock on wood.

(hanging up)

I found Middy passed out in the Kakos Archives. Well, the archivists found her, and apparently I’m one of her emergency contacts now for some reason. She was suffering from similar symptoms to the other Tabithas I had down there doing research, and also to Violet Trudge when she was down there. There was a nosebleed, and apparently she took a hard fall. She was in the section for Ta, which she later confirmed was her looking for information about the other Tabitha. Her… aunt? Mother? Source? I don’t think our language has evolved properly to grasp these concepts. Apparently, she followed protocol and requested the archivists assist her and bring her to the right section, but apparently there’s something so nasty in between TAA and TABI that she was struck by the usual consequences. I offered to put the other Tabithas on the task , but she refused. There’s something weird between that family and the related people who took the name, and some day I will learn what it is. She’s been recovering for the most part. Tabitha prime has not been forthcoming with information, but I think she’s still sensitive about her sister abandoning the family trade decades ago. 

So I didn’t send the Tabitha-In-Name-Onlys down to the archives, but I did have to dom them in some other way. I’m going to say that I didn’t know about this device before and that I did a web search to find out information on how to be a better dom (I’ll allow you to believe me or not), but I have had all of the other Tabithas doing their usual work with metal rods forcing their arms out to maximum extension. It’s slowed them down enough that they don’t seem to be doing much conspiring at the moment. It’s keeping them busy, and it just barely counts as sexual, which is meeting their expectations in important ways. 

It’s now time for today’s Q&A Segment. Today’s Q is “Can I get a bite of that sandwich?” Yeah. Yeah, you can. Are you sure, though? Are you sure you’re ready? Are you sure you’re PREPARED for that? Are you confident you know exactly what you’re in for? Get in here, bud. Grab a bite. We’re in this together now. 

I have news from the Division of Erotic Experiences. Recently, I submitted paperwork that simultaneously changed the Division of Erotic Experiences into the Division of Erotik Experiences with a K instead of a C in erotic, and formed a new Division called the Division of Erotic Experiences with a C in the correct place, circumventing some of the issues I was having with firing everyone and shutting down the Division. Then, I personally went down there with a team of movers, loaded up the Ho Hunk Ulus and took it out onto the lawn in front of the building. There was… um… another corpse in there that they were trying to remove that they didn’t tell me about because they thought it would make me mad. Well, it’s not in there anymore. There’s not there to be in anymore. I blew the cursed thing up. Then I thought I would go have a chat with the team that made the device. That’s when I found the newest Satisficer prototype resting in an enormous pool of blood. We checked, it’s all of their blood. I have allowed some of our scientists to begin investigating the device to see how it possibly killed all of these engineers and designers, but something tells me I’m going to hate the answer more than not knowing. We’ve begun filling in a new team of engineers and designers for The Division of Erotic Experiences. The one with the letter C, which replaced the old one. The one with the K after the name change has been disbanded. I’m pretty sure this counts as breaking the streak even though the name change and creation of the new entity were instantaneous. You know, maybe streaks are overrated. 

Meredith Gorgoro, the overseer in our Hell labor camp, has been able to get some surprisingly clear images from the crystals that she and the laborers found in the caverns. So far they’ve been able to confidently discern three different organisms recorded in it. One they’re calling the Gellosus because of the way it looks like gelatin. Another is called the tooth beast because all they can see are its teeth. It kind of dips in front of the crystal for a second. The last is the Phallustree. I asked them why they named it that. They said because it looks like a big willy. I asked if we could name it anything else. They said no. They couldn’t think of anything else to call it. We’ll rename it when we get a better identification. So far, the things we’ve seen aren’t recorded in the fossil record here on Earth. At least not the way they look in the images captured in the crystal. 

The Division of Kaiju Battle Reenactment has recently reenacted A Thinking Pile of Broken Toys vs. A Broken Pile of Toying Thinkers. It’s difficult to say that the Thinking Pile of Broken Toys defeated the Broken Pile of Toying Thinkers when the Broken Pile of Toying Thinkers was already so defeated, but that’s the gist. This was a difficult watch. It was accurate to the event, but that did mean that toys were just beating the hell out of sad philosophy majors, and not even in a sexy way. We all dutifully watched until the very end. Then we went home to process what we had witnessed.

The Division of Figuring Out What All of These Keys Go to has recently opened the safe in the floor safe in the old Division of Creative Accounting Office. Inside is yet another safe. Whatever we find in there will be long past the statute of limitations by the time it’s open. 

The Division of Dams and Water Management, now basically headed by Kimmie, has continued to make progress on mixing pools of Matmos. Apparently, as the pools mix, the robe-wearing cultists who oversee the Matmos and have previously needed to be subdued, have more or less gotten on board with the process. They describe the feeling as a bit like the pins and needles you feel when a limb falls asleep. Systems are waking up, bits are being reincorporated. It’s becoming clearer that Kimmie is on the right path. Clarissa and Hedera, my liaisons to the Matmos have been doing more work and slowly finding themselves in the dark business casual realm. There have been ripple effects if you’ll pardon the pun in the general fashion here at Kakos Industries. I’ve seen some adjustments made to allow for more interesting suits, which is honestly a relief. Have you ever worn a suit? It’s a fucking prison. 

I have news from The Division of Secret Societies. Wynona Grimbal is preparing for her next round of hazing. She doesn’t know what’s in store for her, but she’s been keeping her middle fingernails short just in case. I did mention that she was married previously, so I was confused about what in the birds and bees realm she would need help with, but I have come to understand that her ex spouse contributed to some rather significant body image issues and that she has slowly been finding herself again through the strength training that initially made her a candidate for this process. I understand that while the beauty pageant is hard on this body image stuff, behind the scenes, during the fight club component, the body positivity has been a great help. The smooching hasn’t hurt either. We’ve authorized her to take the next steps at her own pace. 

It’s time for today’s Employee Spotlight. Today we are highlighting Policarpo Sara from The Division of Coming Down and Returning All of the Packages We Don’t Need. It turns out, we didn’t need 3000 jars of strawberry jam or twelve complete professional laser tag sets. Thank you, Policarpo Sara.

They say that Evil once dropped out the bass, but only to bring it back slower, harder, louder, and nastier. This is Things We’re Taking Credit for Now. Today, we are taking credit for Electro swing, steampunk pop, and all of the missteps of your youth. Obviously we can’t be completely certain that we did these things. It’s possible in the strictest sense that something else could have caused them. But we all know what really happened. You’re welcome, and we’re not sorry.

She who lurks at the edge of the woods (like you’d expect) has won today’s Ruin-A-Life Drawing. As a result, the life of She who lurks at the edge of the woods (like you’d expect)’s nemesis will be ruined. That nemesis is Stephanie Mann. We gave the Wheel of Misery a robust spin and it landed on the space for Garlicky. From this day forward, Stephanie Mann will be 86% more garlicky, which is a lot more garlicky to be. People will be able to smell Stephanie Mann approaching from several meters away. For Evil measure, She who lurks at the edge of the woods (like you’d expect) will have a harder time satisfying the garlic craving. Congratulations on the win, and best of luck.

The Damnation and Ruination Squad, that team tasked with carrying out the Wheel of Misery’s dictates, is currently doing their job around Kakos and elsewhere wearing monokinis. At least, it looks like a monokini, but for all I know, they might be big ol’ thongs just stretched up to the shoulders. What I’m hinting at is there’s a lot of wedgie going on. I’m a little concerned they might be losing circulation.

(ringing)

How many different phones do we have in here? No. It’s not going to be anything, Soundman. It’s not going to be a person or a robot or anything. Not even an ad. No. I’m not answering it. You answer it. Go ahead. You can pick it up.

(answering)

Well?

(a pause)

Well? Shareholders… the color has drained from Soundman’s face. What is it? His hands are shaking. What is it? He’s putting the phone down, off the hook. He’s suggesting that I should continue with the announcements. What did you hear, Soundman? He says… it was nothing. But the most nothing he had ever heard. He says it was as if the void itself was calling, trying to reach into him, but you know that voids can’t reach into anything, they can only pull little bits of you out towards. The only way the void can make contact is if you get closer, if you allow yourself to be drawn in. The emptiness, the hollow, it can only reach us when we reach it. The loneliness, the sorrow, the unquenchable expanse, he felt for it. He needed to touch it, to lose a piece of himself so it could know that there was something there, but of course, naturally, the vacuity only takes, and it destroys everything it knows completely. It can never know us completely, at least not until we’re gone. 

Damn, Soundman. Shouldn’t have fucking answered it, huh? Shouldn’t have yielded to the void or whatever, huh? This fucking guy. Always on my dick about something. 

This brings us to the end of today’s broadcast. As I warned you earlier, shareholders, you have two options with this radio. It’s an incomplete project, You do technically possess the skills necessary to complete it. But it’s going to take a few hours, and you’re going to have that pain in your neck when it’s done. The other option, though, is you’ll have to put it on a shelf and come back to it later. An unenviable decision. The numbers are next. 

27

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27

27

28

27

27

277

27

4

27

4

4

RYAN: Kakos Industries is written and produced by Conrad Miszuk, who is also the voice of Corin Deeth, and the composer of the music. The introductions and credits are read by Ryan L Jenkins, the son of the father of the cousin looking for revenge.

Find transcriptions and more at KakosIndustries.com. That’s K-A-K-O-S-I-N-D-U-S-T-R-I-E-S dot com. Visit store.KakosIndustries.com for merchandise and get wonderful benefits by becoming a subscription donor at kakosindustries.com/patreon. Join our community at kakosindustries.com/discord and follow us on social media. Fan art really makes our day. Drop us a line for whatever reason at inquiries@kakosindustries.com.

CONRAD: Special thanks to our esteemed shareholders, Kristina Kirkland, Bryan Slizard Becker, and Churlington Beesecoat The Third, Esquire. Also thanks to honored employees Calico, Carson Lukas, and DaeTheDruid, who started singing when things were getting intense, distracting everyone from the realities of life. The Division of Beanies, Booties, and Construction Projects That Are Probably Too Large for Yarn, directed by Theo Cornet, has completed work on the yarn saunas, and has instead started trying to develop a knit bidet. The Division of Obscure Vintage Technology, directed by Craig Czyz, has acquired an old synthesizer with capacitors that literally explode when you play. The Division of Subtle Efficiency Increases, directed by Danniel R Smith, has increased efficiency by hinting at an ice cream social if certain targets can be met.  The Division of Kakos Kafeteria Reviews, directed by Seth and Josh, has reviewed Nutritional Slop. “Left you full, but with a strange concern about what just happened to you. 17/23”. The Division of Improbable Cookbooks, directed by Hayden Neff, has been working on Just Feet. Assuming you can find the requisite animal and vegetable feet, you’re in for a technically edible time.  The Division of Villainous Introspection, directed by Sarah, is considering what textures make them feel the most Evil. Jagged metal is under consideration. The Division of Animal Stacking, directed by The One True Dave, has stacked one thousand clams. They’re not all one on top of the other though.  The Division of Lesser Known Napping Locations, Directed by Sass Master J, has recently taken a nap in the cockpit of the Earth Ravager, which has not been technically decommissioned, but also has not been used in years. The Division of Unnecessary Competitions, Directed by Mike A, has organized a competition to see who’s dad is the strongest. The Division of Deeth Divination, directed by Jack Delancey, watched Corin step into bathroom 99-34-B.They tell us, “Time to buy.” Our esteemed shareholders, honored employees, division heads, and other Patreon patrons are the best. If you want a thank you in the credits, your own division, or other great rewards that help to keep this show running, please head to Kakosindustries.com/patreon. That’s Patreon: p-a-t-r-e-o-n.

RYAN: Doing Evil can take a lot out of you,  legalize it.