Speaker 1: This episode is intended for mature audiences only and contain
scenes of violence. Specific content warnings can be found in
the show notes.
Speaker 2: You are now listening to Observable Radio.
Speaker 1: By there, This is Cameron Siuey, the creator of Observable Radio.
In this our second episode of the interim season, we're
bringing you three early tales that I wrote pseudononymously under
the name Joseph Kay on the Internet some fifteen to
twenty years ago. I've resisted the urge to edit them
in any way, shape or form other than to have
them be read by our ensemble and with some audio treatment.
We're hard at work on season two and we'll be
bringing you more news soon. But for the next few months,
we'll be continuing to bring you short stories and other
ephemera once a month on this feed. Finally, I'd like
to dedicate this episode to the memory of David Burmister,
who taught me just about everything I know about short
fiction and who influenced decades of students as a teacher
and a director. Thank you, Dave. And now three early tales.
Speaker 3: Special I awake as always to the click and were
of a thousand hidden cameras and the rising glow of
ambient lights. Over the next ten minutes, the curtains that
line my bedroom will part, gliding on mechanized tracks, and
the honey to sunlight of dawn will stream into the wide,
circular room. I entertain, for the briefest moment, the thought
of hurling myself at the windows and plunging a half
mile to the ground. I hold on to the little
fantasy of wind and sky and falling for as long
as it will remain, dreaming of those magnificent moments of
freedom and choice, even if I were not a coward.
There are a thousand unseen barriers and safeguards. I cannot
see them, but several parents are doubtlessly just outside the door,
and would be between me and the window before I
could leave the bed. Like each morning before, I let
the dream of freedom evaporate until the next. A woman
beside me I cannot recall her name, shifts and rolls
to embrace me. I wrap my arms around her and
return the affection, but there is no love in it.
She is young and soft, skin still stretched taut over
her athletic frame. I know that in my youth I
would have buzzed with anticipation and lust simply upon seeing her,
But now I only take solace with the momentary ghost
of emotion. Her skin is warm, and her fine and
downy body hair is smoother than the silk of the sheets.
I find an abstract pleasure from this closeness, something akin
to happiness. When our bellies synchronize, breathing pressed close as
they rise and fall in an alternating rhythm. Her breath
is hot and damp on my chin and neck. It
only takes me a few moments to tire over, and
I push her away to swing my legs to the
edge of the bed. The black marble of the walls
and floor of my bedroom are heated to my exact preference,
so I walk naked into the large bathroom. Behind me,
two parents enter to silently take the protesting woman away.
Every morning, I try not to focus on the buzzing
of small servos and motors as the cameras pivot to
keep me in view it all time. They must be
completely autonomous, but it amuses me to think of a
thousand uniformed parents tediously tracking my every move sixteen hours
a day. They would be madder than I by now,
the routine begins, not identical every morning, but a tiny
repertoire of ordered tasks combined in a different order than
the day before. Shave, shower, preen, pose, smile, evacuate, masturbate.
By altering my routines with random reorganization, it gives the
impression of variants where there is none. The parents tell
me that this is just one of the reasons my
channel is still so popular, despite being functionally identical to
my father's and his father's before us. I have a
flare for fakery, for showmanship. It makes them beam with pride,
and I favor them with an empty hull. Oh smile.
I can choose what I want to do for the
rest of the day from an approved list. Another beautiful
facade of freedom. I can hold courts over one hundred
gladiators and command them to tear each other apart. I
can paint on a canvas one hundred feet dollar. I
can inhale hallucinogens and stumble through the thousand acre wildlife
preserve on the outer decks of the tower. I can
copulate with my choice of limitless young men or women.
I can beat a child until his skull caves in.
It is, of course, a limited form of choice. I
cannot go back to bed and weep. I can never
say stop, I cannot leave the tower. I'm at my
most honest. I believe in the eight hours of broadcast
solitude each night, locked in the blacked out bedroom of
silk and marble, with whatever warm body has caught my fancy.
These are the times that I can admit to myself
that I would never be able to exist outside the tower.
I know nothing about the outside, and the parents and
my concubines can only tell me of the millions of
people that love me. I don't know how a real
person lives. I only know my world. I spend the
morning in the museum, aimlessly wandering through ancient paintings and statues.
For the afternoon, I practice horseback riding on one of
the open air decks. I do this partially because I
told the parents I would be in the Harim all day,
and it amuses me to think of them struggling to
adapt the programming and the wasted resources. When I'm done
for the day, I retire to the balcony with a drink.
The jagged spires on the horizon look like teeth as
they swallow the sun, and I can feel that cold,
familiar not in my guts, that unease and dread at
the crawling passage of time. When the sun goes down,
I start to think about the world below me, spinning
awake just as mind settles down to sleep. I've been
careful not to conceive, but that can never last. I
have no illusions about this. Sooner or later I will
have a child. Doubtless. The parents are already weeding me
off the contraceptives in my meals. Oh, I grow ill
at the thought. So I stand to complete my nightly ritual,
to gaze into the looking glass. The elevator descends through
the vast interior space of the tower towards the lower
levels below the surface. I keep quiet on the ride,
no music to interrupt the silence. The parents love of
this portion of my night, such a wonderful flair for
the dramatic. They say, I do it because it is
the last thing that keeps me sane. The guards on
the other side are like the parents, only their uniforms
are different, distorted reflection in the mirror. They smile at
me with genuine love and affection, and allow me to
pass into the viewing chamber to look upon my future.
My father, a man I have never met, lies on
a soiled mattress in a sterile metal chamber. They only
love you for so long. He stirs slightly, but I
know he cannot see me. His eyes are now lidless,
each orb a milky ball of scar tissue. His mouth
is lipless and dry. His bleeding ums hold only a
few shattered teeth. His ears are gone, the skin pulled
tight around the holes and sewn shut with black cord.
His limbs terminated in raw stumps at the wrists and
ankles when I first was allowed to see him. Now
they are gone completely. I've watched them break, bend, and
vanish and slow bites over the years, and there are
only scarred pits around his gunt torso now there are
deep fresh gouges in his gut. Every time I think
he simply cannot endure more, he astounds me by continuing
to live. When my time on the channel ends, each night,
hiss begins. The tower goes deep underground, and that is
my father's world, the nightmare reflection of my own. For
the last few months, they have begun to open him up,
to take ragged slivers from his organs. Since they took
his tongue and lips. He has no shame about gibbering,
wailing wordlessly. I have no love for this man, no
pity for this thing. I can barely feel pretty for myself.
But he is my mirror, portrait of my future. The
people that love me now will grow weary and will
fall in love with my inevitable son. And when I
am of no more use to them, I will pass
through the dark surface of the glass and become the
figure in the mirror. Same people will delight in watching
my slow and surgical dismantlement for eight hours every night.
The mechanical arm on the ceiling descends, looping a hook
through the harness around my father's broken body, and carries
him into the next room to prep him for the show.
He begins to shriek, utilating cry of helpless terror. Thrashes
in the machines embrace, but it cradles them almost gently
as it takes him from my view and into someone else's.
I look away, return to my room, my emotionless and
hollow in the dark. The channel changes.
Speaker 4: Long story short.
Speaker 3: I hate the whole lever and he.
Speaker 5: Couldn't stop me.
Speaker 1: Man, what's the thing?
Speaker 4: What thing, that thing man right there on your shirt. Jesus,
what the fuck could calm calmed down? Do not don't
tell me to calm down.
Speaker 1: Just stop, okay, stop freaking out.
Speaker 6: What the fuck is it doing there?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 4: It's You're gonna wake it up?
Speaker 5: Is it?
Speaker 3: Great?
Speaker 4: Observable Radio enamel pins They're unexpected finally wrought and hard
enamels and shades of c RT green on a gun
metal backing. Get yours at the Observable Radio Company story.
You are now lying from Observable Radio.
Speaker 7: Thall, something is wrong. Consciousness drifts back to me lazily,
like an incoming tide, as my mind and body awake
in stages. At first, it is dark and I have
no form, just a terrified animal spark suspended and a
featureless abyss. My primal four brain sense useless impulses to
my unanswering body, demanding that I run and hide. But
I'm still. How long I drift there I do not know,
and the darkness of hours time. Gradually I become aware
of muted sensory impressions, the faint hiss of venting gas,
the dry taste of recycled air. It is utterly black, however,
darker than I would have believed possible, and I slowly
realized that my eyelids refuse to open. I am aware
of them now, thin sheets of flesh that tug across
my face but remain closed despite my best efforts. Even
without them, I can still sense the glass and metal
frame around me. With a dawning wave. I realize how
cold I am, so cold that, for a hideous and
protracted moment, I believe I may be on fire. I
begin to panic, still trapped inside my nearly lifeless body,
wanting to slither and crawl away from the pain. My
lips part with a tear of flesh, and I can
feel blood trickling into my mouth, growing instantly cool as
it runs between my clenched teeth. My jaw remains locked
in place, the muscle straining weakly beneath my cheeks. I
want to cry, to sob like a child bathed in
quiet despair and helplessness, and my cocoon of self pity.
Higher functions of my mind begin to slowly emerge, grinding
like rusty gears into use, and I try to calm myself.
I am alive, I tell myself, this is all perfectly normal.
And at any moment one of the ship's medics will
carefully open the capsule, place the tip of a plastic
ball between my torn lips, and squeeze warm, sweet electrolytes
down my parched throat. This maternal image of comfort steals
my quivering body, and I begin to breathe regularly, and
my reason begins to return. If I am awake, then
we have arrived. A long, silent passage through the endless
night of interstellar space has ended. If I am alive,
then we are in orbit around Etta Cassiopie. I breathe
evenly and smooth, and catch a tinge of something in
the air, a faint whiff of chemical corruption from the
dry sterility of the ventilation. The blackness beyond my closed
eyes pulses briefly with light, registering a soft red glow
as it diffuses through the vessels and capillaries of my
closed lips. My cracked lips amid little white sparks of pain.
As I can toort my face, tugging my eyelids open
with a quick and agonizing jerk of the head. Fluid
weeps from the corners as I blink convulsively. At first,
I am terrified that I am blind, and then slowly
ledges of my tiny capsule resolve in the faint red
light of a blinking led The glass is just a
few inches from my face, and I can see my
breath against it, a wet fog that briefly flowers into
ice and quickly evaporates into the dry air. Beyond the
glass is nothing, a silent and yawning darkness. My heart
is thudding in my chest now, and my limbs seem
to twitch and tug on the safety restraints around my
ankles and wrists. The tight glass coffin and the empty
abyss beyond seemed to crush me between them, twining threads
of claustrophobia and agoraphobia around my chest, and I struggle
to breathe evenly. The light should beyond. Someone should be
here by now. Something is very wrong. Movement at the
periphery of my eyes causes me to turn my head
in a sharp and stinctual move. The weary, atrophied muscles
of my neck scream in agony, and my eyes grind
through sandpaper filled sockets. I gasp, and my eyes filled
with warm, welcome tears that without gravity simply cloud my
eyes like a lens through the watery haze. I see
a passing wave of dull red light, illuminating briefly the
dimensions of the space in the dark, and then drifting
out of sight. I shake my head, grating my teeth
against the dry, tearing pain of movement, and fling the
tears from my eyes. They drift away in little silver
spheres and freeze. Moments later, I blink my eyes and
try to focus again on the darkness. I barely realize
that I have stopped breathing. When the light returns. It
has a red emergency light, spinning silently, but is far
too dim and far too slow. It crosses the room
like a broom, briefly revealing the faintest glimpse of the
space beyond. I see rows of dark containers, dozens of them,
each containing the vague shadow of a figure. My eyes
dart around the scene, unable to absorb any details, only
the vague sense of scale and shape inside the room.
I strain my eyes to focus each time the light passes,
but I can't make out anything in the dimming light.
There is nothing in the darkness that can tell me
what has gone wrong. I didn't see the window at first,
but I gradually became aware of it. As faint pinpricks
of starlight catch my eye, I lock my eyes and
focus on the drifting stars, as my heart threatens to
burst from my chest and my lungs suck in frigid
air and gasps. Calm, I repeat over and over, like
a mantra to myself. Calm. If I can just get
control of my breathing and be patient, someone will come
to help. Well, I can answer. There is an explosion
of light from beyond the window. I squint, feeling my
iris's spasm, and struggle to contract. Outside the porthole, there
is a blue and cloudy world, looming and massive. My
eyes adjust and I can do nothing but drink in
the sight of the oceans.
Speaker 6: And the land the planet.
Speaker 7: Light seeps into the cabin and illuminates the rows of
glass and steel tubes, and I can finally make out
the occupants. Most of them are frozen and dead, pale
blue and white wraiths with lips and eyelids pulled wide
and open by contracting muscles. A few of the containers
are smeared red and opaque. Each has the same flower
of frozen blood and cracks where it's occupies us to
beat his skull against the glass. I tug again on
my restraints as panic overwhelms me, my limbs thrashing against
the restraints. I realize I am silently asking for God,
begging escape from this frozen mausoleum. My eyes lock onto
the planet, now wide and filling the window, and my
heart stops. In the blue ocean, I see the distinct
silhouette of the European coast.
Speaker 6: My mind reels and I catch my eyes against the disorientation.
We never left. The fever of panic breaks, and I
begin to feel a glimmer of hope. We never left.
I'm not gonna die in orbit around an alien world.
I'm home. I can still be saved. These thoughts start
to warm me, and I stop dugging against the straps.
Measured breath returns, and I close my buffy, swollen eyes
and allow my heart to settle. I open my eyes again,
gazing down onto the Earth, and a sudden wave of
nausea rises in me before I really understand what I've
just seen, striking a sharp line across the face of
the globe, the terminus between night and day divides Europe
and Africa.
Speaker 7: On the day side, I see the polar ice, a
stretching white sheet that has all but absorbed the Scandinavian
Peninsula and coils around the rest of the continent. On
the night side, there is primal and elemental darkness. There
are no cities, no lights. There is emptiness. As quick
as it came, the Earth slides out of view, showing
only her frigid and lightless night, and dropping the cabin
into a final cold darkness. The red claxon light has
stopped spinning. The lights inside my coffin have stopped blinking.
Speaker 6: I am left.
Speaker 7: Alone and the.
Speaker 6: Frozen dark.
Speaker 4: With the dead.
Speaker 6: Terror claws at me. My body is shuddering and useless,
with blood.
Speaker 4: My eyes.
Speaker 8: I suck hand a deep lungful of the dying hair and.
Speaker 2: Scream Where the hell did you get these?
Speaker 5: Mom? You can't just barge in. This is my I
found these in your backpack.
Speaker 2: What is this?
Speaker 5: Stickers?
Speaker 2: Okay, they're stickers. Look at this. Some of these are holographic.
Have you used any of these?
Speaker 5: It's not a big deal.
Speaker 2: Taught you how to do this stuff? You all right?
I learned it from watching.
Speaker 5: You parents who have observable radio stickers. Have children who
have observable radio stickers? Are your children purchasing them at
the Observable Radio company store? Check their browser history today you.
Speaker 4: Are now by Observable Radio.
Speaker 9: Sick or the algorithm. Sometime during the third consecutive nights
spent huddled over the toilet, insides heaving and shuddering as
I vomit forth what seems to be everything I've ever eaten.
I realize what's happening. He is trying to poison me.
That's all so elegant, so perfect, and so clear that
I start to laugh, but another barrage of wretching forces
me into silence. The next morning, I throw the contents
of my meager kitchen away, wrapping it three times in
black plastic, and burying it deep in the apartment's communal
dumpster to prevent some unfortunate transient from the cross fire
of his wrath. I am out the door of the
complex and half way to the corner store when I
realize he knows must know where I would shop, so
instead I pick a direction and walk, enjoying the chill
winter airs. It soothes the ragged shreds of my insides.
I turn at random intervals, following an improbable path out
of my neighborhood until I find a small grocery with
an unfamiliar name. Once inside, I fill a small plastic
shopping basket with foods and brands that once I would
never have eaten, soy milk tofu, strange tins of ethnic
foods whose ingredients I can't recognize. I can feel my
stomach reborn in the anticipation of an untainted meal. I
prepare the food in a fog of nervous anticipation, trying
to focus on savoring the exotic aromas and the grease
spitting sounds of the frying pan. When it is done
and the meal sits before me on the chipped and
stained plate, I can only stare paralyzed by doubt. By
the time I can raise a single spoonful to my
chapped and split lips, it has long ago grown cold.
It tastes clean. But this brings me no joy, so
is every meal before this. An hour later, I try
to tell myself that the mounting pain is only fear
and anxiety. But before the stroke of midnight, I am
again crouched in the dingy bathroom, surrendering the day's work
into the porcelain mouth of the sewer. I pack up
the remaining food and dispose of it with the same care.
I eat out the next day, layering debt onto the
last of my credit cards and restaurants on the opposite
side of town. I feel the eyes of every patron
upon me, and wonder if any of them are in
his employ By dark, it is clear that he is
more clever than I ever imagined. I am a wash
in despair. As I spend another sleepless night, gagging and
sobbing on the tile floor, I imagine the algorithm, the
perfect predictive models at his disposal, charting my every move
across the city with unerring accuracy.
Speaker 7: Every time I.
Speaker 9: Think I've outwitted him, I walk willingly into his web.
There is nothing left to do but wait for the
jaws of his trap to close. So I wander the
city a broken man in a fit of misplaced hope.
I buy a candy bar from a vending machine in
a theater lobby and hold it close like a talisman.
When I get home, I fill the bath a few
inches deep with rust colored water and hold the little
plastic wrapped bundle beneath the water and squeeze. I know
that I will see it, but it still breaks my heart.
A thin, almost invisible stream of bubbles picks out the
point where a foreign object has pierced the protective layer.
Through the haze of gnawing hunger. I convince myself to
try just one bite, and to take the chances. This
is a gamble that I do not win. In the
small hours of the morning, I press my fists into
my empty, protesting belly, and I imagine the legion of
his followers sliding silently through the restaurants and producisles of
my life, slipping hypodermic needles into carefully selected packages of food.
They ruin and corrupt at his whim, surgical and efficient,
before vanishing into the throng of the city at my approach.
They have none of the compassion and love that I have.
They are less than human. With his fearful intellect pulling
their strings, they will always be one step ahead of
me until I learn to think in new ways, to
chart new cognitive pathways and turn the game back upon him.
So I tell myself, this is what i'man I spend
the first day of my new life in the cramped
living room of my apartment, organizing my thoughts with clean,
sterile efficiency, and conserving what energy I can from my
wasting body. Night brings the wretching sickness, but all that
arises is water and pills, half digested in the bilious fluids.
The pills, of course, not for the first time, I
feel a sharp twinge of respect for the crystalline perfection
of his plans. I dump the last of my dozen
prescriptions into the toilet and watch as they dissolve into
pink and blue clouds. On the third day, I am
rocked with a sudden clarity and sense of purpose that
shocks me in its intensity. My will penetrates through the
starvation malaise. I must win or I will die. The
rashes and soars inside my cheeks are deeper, and I
can feel the gentle sway of loose teeth when I
clench my jaw. He is still winning, but not for long.
There's still time. Water I can collect from the roof
in a small army of cheap hardware store buckets. I
know that somewhere in the byzantine plumbing of the aged
building there must be one of his infernally clever devices
a tiny pump, squatting like a predator and pulsing its
vile contents into the water main. I'll have to give
up bathing, a small sacrifice. The rain water will keep
me alive for a while longer, but I must find
a way to eat. The answer comes to me in
mismatched puzzle pieces over the next few days. While gently
working another loose molar from my bleeding gums, the pieces
suddenly snap together, and a warm, smothering blanket of epiphany
coats my aching frame. The clattering of the tooth into
the sink basin is like the ringing of bells. Late
in the frigid afternoon, I begin another unconscious journey, drifting
through the city on shaking and atrophied legs, knowing full
well that he is watching. But this, my beautiful solution,
is beyond even his reach. I choose the house at random,
and then, in one final attempt to baffle the algorithm,
turn around and choose another house across the narrow, tree
lined street. I sift through the mail. It's a small
sample size, but enough to confirm the most necessary of facts.
A single occupant, the poor man, is surprised to have
a visitor at all, and his face contorts with fear
as I force my way inside. I'm flooded with guilt
and regret as I push him to the floor and
strike his skull with the crowbar I pull from the
folds of my jacket. No, I must steal myself. This
is his fault. He has dragged us both to this moment,
and this poor man like me is just another of
his victims. I make quick work of the meat, the muscle,
memories of summer spent hunting in the mountains flaring up
with each quick cut, severing ligament from bone. I allow
myself a quick bite, a feast to my shrunken and
withered stomach. The iron and mineral salt taste floods my
head like a vapor, and I bawl like a child
in relief. I waste nothing and leave behind only slick
bones and awful I want so much to thank this
man for his sacrifice, but I can think of no
fitting tribute, so I whisper my gratitude to his remains.
When I have the meat wrapped up in plastic and
packed tight into my rucksack, I light a single candle
on the top floor of the little house and turn
the gas stove on high. I'm not yet home when
I hear the low rumble of the explosion, a wave
of thunder from the distance that crashes over me. The
pulsing lights of fire engines highlight the black column of
smoke rising into the sky. I walk on, leaving the
chaos behind. For the first time in more than a month,
I sleep like a babe, my body healing as pure
and untainted nutrients penetrate mysels. I am not yet well,
but after a few more meals, I will be ready
once more to fight him. I know I can beat
him now. I know the algorithm can only predict the
actions of my past self bound by the laws and
morals of the old world. That world is dead. I
am a free man.
Speaker 4: You have been.
Speaker 1: Listening to Observable Radio. Tonight's episode three Early Tales was
performed by the Ensemble featuring Wendy Hector, Cohen Edenfield, Chris Strau, Purporina,
and Phil van Hest. Written by Cameron Suey, Produced by
Cameron Suey, Phil van Hest, Properina and Hector. Edited by
Cameron Suey. Our psychology consultant is doctor Earli Soliel Art
by Krinn Fletcher. Our theme is the back Rooms, performed
by Mew. Additional music from this episode provided by by
Lotus Golden Anchor Jweya, Edward Carl Hansen, Tim Koolick Van Sadano,
Ethan Sloane, and Ferrell Wooten. Observable Radio is listener supported
thanks to all our patrons and listeners, including Kathleen, John Tidd, Russ,
Rick Callison, Brianna and Zach. Patrons fund the production costs
of the show, as well as get access to behind
the scenes information, extra production material, a discount at the
Observable Radio Store, and an ad free early release feed
of this show, all at patreon dot com slash Observable Radio.
With the help of our patrons, we've just launched the
Observable Radio Company store at observable radio dot com slash store.
There you'll find new stickers, an enamel pin, and our
very first T shirt on sale and shipping anywhere.
Speaker 5: In the world.
Speaker 1: We'd be grateful if you stop by to take a peek.
Now here's a trailer from lux Radium Productions for their
sci fi audio Dramaropolis, a murder mystery in neon Utopia.
Thank you for listening and stay tuned.
Speaker 7: My god, how can this all be?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 7: Stanley?
Speaker 5: He wrote, guy gets the dream invitation, and I still
told him not to go.
Speaker 6: Man, look at me.
Speaker 3: The whole world works just the way they want it to,
however they want it.
Speaker 7: That's Metropolis, which is why you need to get out here.
I'm telling you now. They'd never let anyone like me
on that island. Stanley, where is he?
Speaker 6: What do you know? I don't know.
Speaker 4: He's just fanished.
Speaker 8: What do you think happened to your friend? Who do
you think made that happen?
Speaker 7: You have taken an incredible risk coming here.
Speaker 10: It's a cage.
Speaker 7: It can't be, can't it. There is something very dark happening.
Speaker 8: I can't explain the dread, but it is here.
Speaker 1: We have a moment right now, this narrow window where
we are the only ones who know the secret.
Speaker 4: I cannot believe they built this place.
Speaker 1: If we can use it the right way, we can
make a world that actually works.
Speaker 6: Why did they make it like this?
Speaker 4: But if we.
Speaker 1: Bungle it, if we let this opportunity slip away, then
the world is lost. It's health, the mouth of health.
Speaker 5: You know what we have to do?
Speaker 10: No one ever dies in Metropolis. Spend a minute here
see if We're Not wrong.
Speaker 1: Metropolis an audio drama, a Lux Radium production, coming to
a podcasting platform near you September twenty twenty four. Follow
along at Luxradium dot org or on Instagram at Metropolis
Underscore podcast. Spend a minute here see for not Wrong