Speaker 1: This program is intended for mature audiences only.
Speaker 2: You are now listening to Observable Radio.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 1: There, it's Cameron Suey. Another tale from the past tonight.
As we move towards our second season, this particular story
may feel a little familiar, but I assure you it
was first published over ten years ago, and I have
resisted the temptation to touch it yet again. I'll let
you unpack and digest if you're interested in seeing behind
the scenes. Over on our Patreon, we've released the fifth
episode of Carrier Wave, the behind the scenes companion podcast
Verbs or Radio. We'd love to see you there and now,
after a brief word from the Observable Radio Company store,
here's tonight's story.
Speaker 4: It's another sunrise on the Observable Radio Company farm. We've
been up for hours gently picking the t shirts from
the vines. At the peak of freshness in the barn,
trained goats apply adhesives to organic stickers bearing our fearsome logo.
Out in the orchards, the enamel pan trees are just
starting to butt nourished into soil rich in heavy metals.
So pick yourself up some organic Observable Radio merchandise. Remember
it's not for eating. That'll kill you.
Speaker 3: You are now by from observable radio first souls.
Speaker 5: The waitress brings us our coffee, dishwater, pale mercan cracked
porcelain cups. Behind the thin surgical mask, her face is unreadable,
but her gaze flicks from me to my companion and
back again. Before she leaves without a word. Mickey watches
her go and then fixes his eyes on me for
a long moment. The silence continues as our eyes confirm
what our hearts seem to know the instant we passed
on the street. Okay, they'll he says, his voice hoarse
and still raw like my own. There is an accent
I can't place, perhaps a district on the other side
of the city. I'm going to ask you a couple
of questions, but I think I already know the answers.
I pick up the coffee, finding it smells as weak
and thin as it looks, and contemplate taking an exploratory swig.
Around us, the few lunchtime patrons of the Dingy coffee
shop are listlessly eating, lifting up paper mass to shovel
in crumbling and greasy burgers, backsides squeaking on red vinyl seats.
Those that aren't eating are staring at us, at our
uncovered faces. Okay, I say, shoot, you had the sick,
but you didn't report it or go to quarantine like
you were supposed to, didn't tell anyone. I nod, scared
to say out loud that I'd broken the law, and
willing him to lower his voice. He smiles a little,
showing one blackened and rotting canine. Yeah, me too. I mean, obviously,
look at us, we still look like shit. But you
got better, they say, one and ten do, and you
took the chance. No family, no close friends. You aren't
worrying about passing the sick along, nor maybe too scared
to let that stop you. I nod again, excitement and
night terror churning in my gut. I knew all this
when we first saw each other this morning, that he
and I were the same. I came out of my
office building fighting the paranoia and nausea that had plagued
me since my recovery, pulling my necktie loose. I couldn't
be around my coworkers, couldn't look anyone in the eye.
Guilt from ignoring the quarantine, from lying. But something else,
something wrong in every pair of eyes ever since the
fever broke, and I lay awake and sweating in my bed,
the sheets clinging to me. I knew something that changed.
That feeling is worse than the sick ever was. Mickey
was just outside my office building, crouched on the edge
of a planter box. He was sucking a cigarette down
to an ashen nub. Dressed in torn jeans and a
stained green nylon, it worn thin by time our eyes
met and I froze, held in place like two sparking
nodes of an electric arc. We should talk, that was
all he'd said, and he led me here to this
grim and filthy diner. So he continues. We were sick,
we hit it and we got better. But it's not
really better, is it. There's something wrong, Yeah, my croak,
take another mouthful of bitter coffee. Something's wrong, but I
don't think it's not with us. No, he smiles in agreement,
the black tooth sliding into view, not us. Two hours ago,
I was convinced I was going mad. Now I am
not alone. I could cry. The relief is so great.
Some time in the night, when the sick was on me,
I died and you did too. R something died because
when it was over, I was new, remade. I had
the memories of a lifetime lived. I had the body
and face that matched those memories. But that was my
first day. I was newborn. You felt this, It's not
a question, But I gnawed all the same. Yes, I've
felt this too, or something like it, the unreal sense
that something before was gone and I had slid into
its skin. I'd been a passenger. I had watched my
life unfold with steady predictability in understudy, ready but never
expecting to take the stage at the death of the star.
And at the same time, you could see it in
everyone else. You are no longer the same, and you
and no longer like them. He sweeps his eyes across
the diner, and the other customers wilt beneath his gaze,
turning away and pretending to ignore us. How much do
you know about the sick? Not much, I say, looking
over to the small public screen above the cracked plastic
lunch counter. Something crawls across the bottom, squirming ribbons of
text I don't want to read or think about. And
the infographic above is a simulation of the operaks I
peel my gaze away, and the churning and my guts
abates for a moment. You know, the reason that's nasty
is that it's not a specialized infection. It's a generalist
or maybe multiple diseases. I say, parrotting back what I've
heard on the news feeds. Yeah, right, No one knows,
or rather no one is saying. They're saying a lot,
I say, eyes back to the screen for a moment
to see if the text is gone, but not much
of substance. I loosen my tie a little more and
then flick free the top button of my dress shirt.
They're saying, be scared. They're saying, report the sick. They're
saying it kills you. And we know that's true, but
not like they want us to think. Because something in
us died. Dale, My anxiety froths over like a hot spring,
so I say, struggling to keep my voice steady, what
happened to us? Mickey smiles a wide, creeping grin that
reveals a second dead tooth, a black molar. I don't
know for sure, do I? But I got an idea
that makes the only kind of sense. He pauses as
the waitress returns with a plate of soggy pancakes and
slimy eggs for him, and a small bull fruit salad
for me. She sets them down with a hard thud,
arms outstretched, staying as far away as she can from
us in our uncovered faces. Micky turns his pocked smile
to her, like the beam of a lighthouse, and she
jerks back, retreating. See she knows, do I? You and
I know each other? They know us just the same.
He breaks the yolks of the eggs, a yellow so
pale it's almost white, and spreads them across the pancakes.
You know about this experiment with mice where they let
them drown, and see how long they fight? What I say,
starting at this sudden turn, my fear and anxiety, an
unfocused whirlwind, since the sick now coalesce to a hard point,
a stone in my innerds that makes food and impossibility.
I need to know what happened to me, And the
change in the conversation leaves me shaking. Yeah, they toss
them in the water, and time how long it takes
until they give up? Maybe they save them then not?
The point, really, point is the ones with more gut
flora fight longer. The ones that have none give up
right away. And if you sever the nerves between gut
and head, in the ones full of bacteria, they give
up too. He must tell from my blank face that
I don't understand why he's telling me this. I never
had a head for this point is this. You aren't yourself,
None of us ever were. If a little bacteria in
your gut can make you keep struggling for your life,
then what are we? It's mass stupid selfishness. The bacteria
just wants to live more than just a mouse. Apparently. Yeah,
we got a billion little bugs floating around in us,
living on our skin, in our guts, in our hearts.
Base of each of our eyelashes is a tiny little
fucking mite eating your skin, something like five pounds of bugs,
more mass than your brain. This is what I think.
He pauses to shovel the last strip of wet eggy
pancake into his open mouth, slurping it up like a noodle.
There never was a human race. There's just a herd
of big wet meat puppets being ridden by a billion
little other living things. And it's the lowest common denominated democracy.
They all want to live, so they sit where they
need to and poll levers, and we dance where the mount.
We're the saddled mule, trying to tell ourselves that we're
in charge. But we never were. By you and me,
boy yoh, we are now the sick it kills a
lot of those little riders, enough to break their hold.
So that's when we wake up. He claps his hands
together with a startling concussion. I can feel heads turning
towards us, scared eyes over paper masks, passive ghosts in
these slave bodies, the first real humans, the first souls.
He lets this hang in the air, a declaration like
a fluttering flag. In grins. The waitress glides across the
linoleum floor to the telephone, never taking her eyes from us.
Maybe every human has had a ghost like us, proto consciousness,
born into a fleshy tomb that has no use for them.
Maybe it's a new thing. Maybe not. Maybe billions of
potential humans who live the hidden existences of servitude sitting
back seat to germs in collective survival for the last
hundred thousand years.
Speaker 3: Ahn't know.
Speaker 5: It doesn't matter, but the sick is new. It clears
the stage. The old boss dies out, murdered, by just
another germ, and we wake up. We wake up with
the database of memories that aren't really ours, and a
head full of choices we never really made. I've pushed
the bowl of fruit to one side, and now I
struggle to remove my sports Feeling suddenly hot. Everything he's
saying feels like water, uncracked earth, like light in the
darkest corners, like truth. When I woke up the first
morning of my life, I knew my name, I knew
my address, I knew my job, I knew the long
line of events that led to now, and I knew
none of them were mine. I think about the choices
I thought I'd made, and how painfully obvious that I'd
never had any agency. A ghost born into life by
a plague. Yes, we're awake, I say, trying it out
on my new tongue. We're the first, probably not the first.
I don't think the sick kills. I think you and
I know exactly what it does. The rest of them,
he waves his hand around the diner, now gone very
still and quiet. They're not people, not like us. Every
one of those sad sacks of wet garbage is just
a colony of little bugs, all terrified for their lives.
That's what they see in us, even if they don't
know it. They see they aren't necessary. The working man
don't need the boss, but the boss sure as fuck
needs the working man. The quarantine, I say with dawning horror. Yeah,
I think we're the lucky ones. The other first souls
are getting put down an infant race facing genocide on
the eve of their birth. He drains the rest of
the coffee and looks over my shoulder. That's why we're
being followed. You know you're being followed, right, An electric
impulse rides up my spine. Follow of course I'm being followed.
Any of them could be following me, all of them,
and we're the few real people and a slimy sea
of impostors. Of course they'll follow us. They'll do more
than that. They need us dead. Most of the sick
turn themselves in to be put down for the herd,
but we didn't. And you can fucking bet that they
fear us now. So you understand what has to come next,
he says, and slides his dirty hand from the large
coat pocket. The pistol gleams like black ice for a
moment before he hides it back beneath the table. His
eyes are locked over my shoulder. I follow his gaze
to see the waitress pointing at us, the masks sucking
in and out as she speaks. She's talking to a
police officer and his official quarantine garb, and two uniformed
National guardsmen with slung rifles and high techer rebreathers. She
points and they look at us. Our eyes meet two
different species, the first front in.
Speaker 3: The new war.
Speaker 5: Of course, I know what has to come next. We
don't have a choice. Micky's arm is out and pointed straight,
and the gun roars four times in quick succession, a
tongue of fire licking across the table towards me. I
feel the paths that the tumbling slugs take through the air,
two over each shoulder. There's the grace of an artist
in the movement, a singularity of purpose and the murders
that leaves me with no doubts. We are no longer
ruled by committee. I have nothing but myself, my job,
my apartment, my false friends, all meaningless. I am a
first soul. There are more of us out there, and
they need us. Mickey is standing with slow, calm ease
as the other patrons shriek can flee bacteria colonies, riding
slave chariots of flesh for their own selfish survival. They
trample and push one another aside to save their stolen skins.
This is what makes us different, what it means to
be truly human. Mickey and I will do the hard things,
not for ourselves, but for our new born brothers and sisters.
He strips the weapons from the corpses, taking everything we
can use, and tosses one of the guardsmen's short barreled
machine guns to me from the corpse of the waitress.
He takes a small roll of cash. We'll need it all.
We need to find others like us to organize. We
need to ensure the safety of our new race. Our
eyes meet again. That animal sameness that brought us together
now sings in harmony, a ringing chord of shared humanity.
He smiles as black toothed smile.
Speaker 3: Ready.
Speaker 5: Brother, I smile like I have never smiled before, My
first smile, my new life. Mickey kicks open the frosted
glass door, and the light of the day streams in
on us. His gun roars again, and I roar with him.
Speaker 1: You have been listening to Observable Radio. Tonight's episode, First
Souls was performed by The Ensemble featuring David wu written
by Cameron Suey, Produced by Cameron Suey, Phil Van hest
Purporina and Wendy Hector. Edited by Cameron Suey. Our psychology
consultant is Doctor Elisa Leel, art by Krinn Fletcher. Our
theme is the back Rooms, performed by Mew. Additional music
from this episode provided by Martin Bakerwold, Gustav Joby, Tim Koolick,
Martin Lanstrom, Brendan Mohler, Say Three, Smart Face, South Pause,
and Edwin Williams. Observable Radio is listener supported thanks to
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