Speaker 1: There was a new payphone in town, at least if
Speaker 1: you believe what some anonymous conspiracy theories it posted on
Speaker 1: the internet. Someone on the local paranormal form had posted
Speaker 1: a photo of a payphone, which, to be fair, was
Speaker 1: in fairly decent condition, and they had insisted that it
Speaker 1: had been installed recently. More likely than not, it had
Speaker 1: been there for a few decades, and neither the poster
Speaker 1: nor anyone else had noticed it until recently. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure the only people who pay those things any mind
Speaker 1: anymore are kids who genuinely just don't know what they
Speaker 1: are or what they're for. But the poster remained quite
Speaker 1: adamant this particular payphone was a new addition, so only
Speaker 1: evidence being some low resolution screenshots from Google street View
Speaker 1: from the approximate location where he was talking about, none
Speaker 1: of which showed the phone. Even granting that the phone
Speaker 1: was new, that still didn't make it paranormal. The guy
Speaker 1: wasn't really making a very coherent argument about it or
Speaker 1: why it was. He just kept rambling on and on
Speaker 1: about how the phone would only work if you put
Speaker 1: in a shiny FDR dime minted prior nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: when they were still made from ninety percent silver. He said,
Speaker 1: give it silver and you'll see what. He refused to
Speaker 1: elaborate on exactly how we figured out the phone and
Speaker 1: only work with old American coins. Everyone pretty much just
Speaker 1: assumed that he was full of it and the thread
Speaker 1: fizzled out. But I just so happened to have a
Speaker 1: coin jar filled with interesting coins that I've found in
Speaker 1: my change over the years, and he only took a
Speaker 1: moment of sorting through them before I found a US
Speaker 1: dime from nineteen sixty three. I honestly couldn't think of
Speaker 1: a better way to spend it. I decided to check
Speaker 1: out the phone just after sunset, in the hopes that
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be too much traffic that might make it
Speaker 1: difficult to make a phone call. It was right with
Speaker 1: post said it would be, and as I viewed it
Speaker 1: with my own eyes, I was instantly convinced that I
Speaker 1: would have noticed it if it had been there before.
Speaker 1: The thing was turquoise, like some iconic household appliance from
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. Its color and its pristine condition clashed
Speaker 1: so much with the surrounding weathered brick buildings that it
Speaker 1: would have been possible not to notice it. Standing in
Speaker 1: front of it, I could see that there was the
Speaker 1: logo of a cartoon atom, a silver inlay beneath the
Speaker 1: name Oppenheimer's Opportunities, and a calligraphic lettering. Beneath the atom
Speaker 1: was an infinity symbol followed by the number of fifty nine,
Speaker 1: which I assumed was supposed to be read as forever
Speaker 1: fifty nine. It had to have been a modern day recreation.
Speaker 1: There's no way that it could have been over sixty
Speaker 1: five years old and still looks so good. It had
Speaker 1: a rotary dial and was befitting its alleged time period.
Speaker 1: Beneath which was a small that should have held the
Speaker 1: usage instructions, but instead it held a poem If it's gold,
Speaker 1: it glitters, If it's silver shines, If it's plutonium, it blisters,
Speaker 1: Won't you please spare a dime? That at least explained
Speaker 1: how the original poster figured out that he needed silver
Speaker 1: dimes to operate the thing. Why I didn't just come
Speaker 1: out and say it. I'm not sure that I would
Speaker 1: have gone looking for something that might give me radiation burns.
Speaker 1: I briefly considered leaving and possibly coming back with a
Speaker 1: gey your counter, but I figured there was no way
Speaker 1: this thing was the demon core or the elephant's foot.
Speaker 1: I also didn't have the slightest idea where to get
Speaker 1: a Geiger counter, and by the time I found one,
Speaker 1: it was entirely possible the phone would be gone before
Speaker 1: I got back. I wasn't willing to let this opportunity
Speaker 1: slip through my fingers. Even if the phone was radioactive,
Speaker 1: brief exposure couldn't be that bad, right, I gingerly reached
Speaker 1: out and grabbed the receiver, holding it with a folded
Speaker 1: handkerchief for the radiation. I guess shut up. It was
Speaker 1: heavy in my hands, and even through the handkerchief I
Speaker 1: could feel it was ever so slightly warm. It was
Speaker 1: enough to give me an uneasy feeling in my stomach.
Speaker 1: But I nevertheless slowly lifted it up to my ear
Speaker 1: to see if there was a dial tone. I was
Speaker 1: hardly surprised, you know, it was completely dead. After testing
Speaker 1: it a bit by spinning the dial or tapping down
Speaker 1: on the hook, I put a modern dime in just
Speaker 1: to see what it would do. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened, so
Speaker 1: with nothing left to do, I dropped my silver dime
Speaker 1: into the slot. I waited to see what would happen.
Speaker 1: As the dime passed through the slot with a rhythmic,
Speaker 1: metallic clinking, I could feel soft vibrations as gears inside
Speaker 1: the phone word to life, and the receiver greeted me
Speaker 1: with a melodic, yet unsettling dial tone. I would describe
Speaker 1: it as forcefully cheery, like it had to pretend that
Speaker 1: everything was wonderful even though it was having the worst
Speaker 1: day of its life. It was a sensation that sank
Speaker 1: deeply into my brain and lingered for long after the
Speaker 1: call had ended. Thank you for using Oppenheimer's opportunities psychotronic atophone.
Speaker 1: An enthusiastic, prerecorded male voice greeted me, sounding like it
Speaker 1: had come straight out of the nineteen fifties. Here at Oppenheimer's,
Speaker 1: our mission is to preserve the promise of post war
Speaker 1: America that the rest of the world had long turned
Speaker 1: its back on. A promise of peace and prosperity, of
Speaker 1: nuclear power too cheap to meter, and nuclear families too
Speaker 1: precious to measure. A world where everyone has his place
Speaker 1: and newest place, a world where we respected, rather than resented.
Speaker 1: Our betters were proudly dedicated to bringing you yesterday's tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Today you are promised flying cars at at Oppenheimer's Opportunities.
Speaker 1: We've got them. We'd happily see the world reduced to
Speaker 1: radioactive ashes then fall from its golden age, which is
Speaker 1: why for us, year after year it's forever fifty nine.
Speaker 1: Please keep the receiver pressed firmly against your ear for
Speaker 1: the duration of the returning procedure. We're honing in on
Speaker 1: the optimal psychotronic signal to ensure maximum comfortability. Suboptimal signals
Speaker 1: can result in serious side effects, so for your own sake,
Speaker 1: do not attempt to interrupt the signal. If at any
Speaker 1: point during the procedure you experience any discomfort, don't be alarmed.
Speaker 1: This is normal. If at any point during the returning
Speaker 1: procedure you would like to make a phone call, we
Speaker 1: regret to inform you that service is currently unavailable. If
Speaker 1: at any point you would like the returning procedure to
Speaker 1: be terminated, you will be a grave disappointment to us.
Speaker 1: For all other concerns, please dial zero to speak to
Speaker 1: an operator. Thank you again for using Oppenheimer's Opportunities. Psychatronic
Speaker 1: out a phone your only choice in psychotronic returning since
Speaker 1: fifty nine the recording ended abruptly, replaced with the same
Speaker 1: insidiously insipid dial tone as before. I started pulling the
Speaker 1: receiver away from my ear, only to be struck by
Speaker 1: a strange sense of vertigo. Everything around me started to
Speaker 1: spin until my vision cut out, refusing to return until
Speaker 1: I placed the receiver back against my ear. When I
Speaker 1: was able to see again, the scene around me had
Speaker 1: changed into the silent aftermath of a nuclear attack. Not
Speaker 1: just an attack, an apocalypse. Not a single building around
Speaker 1: me was left intact. Everything was toppled and tumbling to dust,
Speaker 1: dust that I could feel fill my lungs with every breath.
Speaker 1: The air was thick, gritty, filthy. I was amazed it
Speaker 1: was still breathable at all. Didn't smell rotted because there
Speaker 1: was no trace left of life in it. It was
Speaker 1: dead it with dusty air that no one had breathed
Speaker 1: in years. Radiation shadows from the victims caught in the
Speaker 1: blast were scorched into the numerous nearby surfaces, many of
Speaker 1: which still bore tattered propaganda posters that were barely legible
Speaker 1: throughout the haze. The city had been bombed to hell
Speaker 1: and back, and no effort at clean up or reconstruction
Speaker 1: had been made. It had been abandoned for years, if
Speaker 1: not decades, And yet there was no overgrowth from plants
Speaker 1: reclaiming the land. Nothing grew here anymore, nothing could. The
Speaker 1: sky above was a strange, shiny canopy of rippling clouds,
Speaker 1: illuminated only by a strange pale light. Somehow I knew
Speaker 1: that radioactive fallout still fell from those clouds, even to
Speaker 1: this day. Long ago, hundreds of gigatons of salted bombs
Speaker 1: had blasted civilization to ruins in a day, while sweeping
Speaker 1: the earth in a apocalyptic firestorms, throwing billions of tons
Speaker 1: of particles high up into the atmosphere. Now all was
Speaker 1: silent except for that intolerable psychotronic dial tone and the
Speaker 1: insidiously howling wind. And then, when I realized that those
Speaker 1: two were the only sounds, did I realize that they
Speaker 1: were perfectly harmonized with one another. I looked up into
Speaker 1: the sky at the ash clouds they should have washed
Speaker 1: out long ago, and I realized it wasn't the wind
Speaker 1: that was howling, It was them. The ripples and the
Speaker 1: clouds were constantly forming into screaming and melting faces before
Speaker 1: dissipating back into the ash. I was instantly stricken with
Speaker 1: dread that they might notice me. I wanted so desperately
Speaker 1: to flee and cower in the rubble, but I was
Speaker 1: completely unable to move my feet. I wasn't even able
Speaker 1: to pull the phone away from my ear. So I
Speaker 1: did the only thing I could. Summoning all the strength
Speaker 1: and will that I could manage, I slowly lifted my
Speaker 1: free hand, placed my index finger into the smoothly spinning rotary,
Speaker 1: and dialed zero. Don't worry, came the same voice as
Speaker 1: before through the phone. It sounded much more like a
Speaker 1: live person than recording. This isn't real, not for you
Speaker 1: and not for us. You just needed to see it.
Speaker 1: Nuclear annihilation is an existential fear no one ever knew
Speaker 1: before the Cold War, and it's one that's been far
Speaker 1: too quickly forgotten. One can never be galvanized to defend
Speaker 1: a world in decline the same way they would a
Speaker 1: world under attack. A world rotting from within invites disillusionment, descent,
Speaker 1: and despair. A world facing an external threat forces you
Speaker 1: to fight for it, to love it wholeheartedly, worts and
Speaker 1: all without the threat of annihilation. Every crack in the
Speaker 1: sidewalk is compared to perfection, and we bemoan the lack
Speaker 1: of a utopia, as if that were something we were
Speaker 1: entitled to and unjustly denied. When you see the cracks
Speaker 1: in the sidewalk, don't think of utopia. Think of what
Speaker 1: you are seeing now. Think of how terrifyingly close this
Speaker 1: came to reality, and how terrifyingly close it still is.
Speaker 1: And yet you must not let the terror keep you
Speaker 1: from aspiring to greater things, As the fear of nuclear meltdowns,
Speaker 1: radioactive waste, and mutually assured destructions stunted the progress of
Speaker 1: atomic energy in your world. The instinct of fear fire
Speaker 1: is natural, but the drive to understand and tamement is
Speaker 1: fundamental to humanity and civilization. Decline is born of complacency
Speaker 1: as easily as it is from cynicism. You must love
Speaker 1: and fight for both the present and the future. Do
Speaker 1: you understand yet? Or do I need to turn the
Speaker 1: ataphone up another notch? Who? What are they? I managed
Speaker 1: to choke out, my head still turned upwards, eyes still
Speaker 1: locked on the faces forming in the clouds now sun.
Speaker 1: I already told you that this thing can't make phone calls.
Speaker 1: The man said, but not without some irony in his voice.
Speaker 1: But to put it simply, they are the dead. The
Speaker 1: nukes that went off in this world weren't just salted,
Speaker 1: they were spiced too. The sound waves produced by blasts
Speaker 1: were designed to have a particularly psychotronic resonance to them,
Speaker 1: causing every human consciousness that hurt it to literally explode
Speaker 1: out of their skulls. Explode, I asked, meekly, attention to
Speaker 1: my own head, having already gone far from comfortable. That's right, coblmo,
Speaker 1: the man shouted. The intention was just to maximize the
Speaker 1: body count, but there was an even darker side effect
Speaker 1: that the ball makers hadn't dared to envision. Those disembodied
Speaker 1: consciousnesses didn't just go and line up at the pearly gates, no, sir.
Speaker 1: Caught in a psychotronic wave, they rode it all the
Speaker 1: way up into the stratosphere and got caught in the
Speaker 1: planet's spanning ash cloud. Their minds were perpetually stuck in
Speaker 1: the moment of their apocalyptic deaths, and since their screams
Speaker 1: are all in perfect resonance with each other, they just
Speaker 1: grow louder and louder. That wind you hear, it's not
Speaker 1: wind it's billions of disembodied voices trapped in the stratospheric
Speaker 1: ash cloud, amplified to the point that you can hear
Speaker 1: them all the way down on the ground. So my
Speaker 1: head's going to explode and my ghost is going to
Speaker 1: be stuck haunting a fall out cloud for all eternity,
Speaker 1: I demanded in disbelief. Disbelief, I desperately clung to you,
Speaker 1: as it was the only thing keeping me from succumbing
Speaker 1: to a full existential meltdown. Oh, not to worry, Son,
Speaker 1: As long as you don't resonate with them, you'll be fine,
Speaker 1: he assured me with a warm, fatherly tone. Your head
Speaker 1: won't explode and you won't get stuck up there in
Speaker 1: the ash cloud. Just listen to the dial tone. Let
Speaker 1: your mind resonate with it instead. Once you believe in
Speaker 1: the wonders of the atomic age, you will be free
Speaker 1: of the fear of an atomic holocaust. No, you're lying.
Speaker 1: The only signals coming from the phone, not the sky,
Speaker 1: I managed to protest, Son, Paxton Brinkman doesn't lie. My
Speaker 1: psychotronic returning makes it impossible for me to consciously acknowledge
Speaker 1: any kind of cognitive dissonance. The man tried to assure me.
Speaker 1: So when I tell tell you something, you had better
Speaker 1: believe that this is the one and only truth in
Speaker 1: my heart. That's what makes me such a great salesman,
Speaker 1: ceo and war propagandist. Honestly, the screaming coming from the
Speaker 1: cloud is both real and fatal. And if you don't
Speaker 1: let the otaphones countersignal do its thing. I'm telling you
Speaker 1: your goose is cooked. I'm sorry, Is it just cooked? Now?
Speaker 1: Is that what the kids are saying? You're cooked? Son,
Speaker 1: San's goose. You said it yourself. You said it yourself.
Speaker 1: This isn't real. You wanted me to see the apocalypse
Speaker 1: so that i'll embrace salvation, your salvation, I managed to croak.
Speaker 1: There are no ghosts in the fallout. You just want
Speaker 1: me to be too afraid to reject you. To hang
Speaker 1: up before you finish doing whatever it is you're trying
Speaker 1: to do to me. There was a long pause where
Speaker 1: I heard nothing but the screaming ghosts screeching dial tone,
Speaker 1: before Brinkman spoke again. If you really believe that, then
Speaker 1: go ahead and hang up the phone, he suggested, calmly.
Speaker 1: I stood there, panting heavily, but saying nothing, my fingers
Speaker 1: still clutching the receiver and pressing it up against my ear.
Speaker 1: I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the nuclear healthscape
Speaker 1: around me, trying to focus on the fact that if
Speaker 1: it wasn't real, the dial tone that was trying to
Speaker 1: rewrite my brain was the real threat, not the imagined
Speaker 1: ghosts in the fallout saturated stratosphere. But the louder the
Speaker 1: dial tone grew, the less forcefully cheerio it sounded. Didn't
Speaker 1: sound sincere necessarily, but it sounded better than eternity as
Speaker 1: a fallout ghost. I began to wonder if it would
Speaker 1: if it would be better to end up like Brickman
Speaker 1: then risk such a horrible but it'd be more rational
Speaker 1: to choose the more pleasant hell. Was it worth the
Speaker 1: risk to ensure that my mind remained my own? Slowly
Speaker 1: but surely, I gradually loosened my grip on the receiver
Speaker 1: until I felt it slip from my hand. As the
Speaker 1: sound of the dial tone faded, the vertigo that I
Speaker 1: had felt from before came back tenfold, and an instantly
Speaker 1: debilitating cluster headache overcame me. As I cried out and
Speaker 1: collapsed to the ground. The pain was so intense that
Speaker 1: I could barely think, and for a moment I did
Speaker 1: truly think that my head was about to explode. To them,
Speaker 1: my consciousness was to be condemned to a radioactive ash
Speaker 1: cloud for all eternity. Before I lost consciousness, I remember
Speaker 1: hearing the Brinkman's voice again, wafting distant, dream like from
Speaker 1: the dangling receiver. Son, You've been a grave disappointment. When
Speaker 1: I woke up, I was in the hospital. Someone had
Speaker 1: called an ambulance after they found me collapsed outside. When
Speaker 1: I told the healthcare workers at least my story, you
Speaker 1: told me there'd been no phone there and it never
Speaker 1: had been. They weren't sure what was wrong with me
Speaker 1: or if I was lying deliriously. They kept me for observation.
Speaker 1: The fact that there was no phone and no evidence
Speaker 1: that any of it had been real was enough to
Speaker 1: make me seriously doubted it ever happened. I spent several
Speaker 1: hours just thinking about what else could possibly explain what
Speaker 1: happened to me, and that's when the radiation burns started
Speaker 1: to appear. The doctors estimated that I was exposed to
Speaker 1: at least two hundreds of radiation, maybe more, too soon
Speaker 1: to say if I received the fatal dose, but it
Speaker 1: definitely would have been if I stayed on the phone
Speaker 1: much longer. The doctors are flabbergasted over how I could
Speaker 1: have received so much radiation, and they are specialists sweeping
Speaker 1: the streets with guy your counters to find an orphan source.
Speaker 1: I wish I knew where I could have gotten one
Speaker 1: of those earlier, and again I suppose I didn't really
Speaker 1: need one. I was warned, after all, if it's plutonium,
Speaker 1: it blisters. Now it seems that I and my goose
Speaker 1: who maybe cooked either kids. It's me, mister Creepasta, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to tell you thank you so much
Speaker 1: for watching tids or for listening to tonight's episode of
Speaker 1: the podcast. And as always, I want to give a
Speaker 1: very big thank you to everybody who supports me over
Speaker 1: at patreons patreon dot com slash mister Creepypasta. I cannot
Speaker 1: thank you guys enough. You guys have been there when
Speaker 1: I'm struggling like a half of the past year, and
Speaker 1: it sincerely helps me stay alive. So thank you guys
Speaker 1: so much for being supporters. That goes for everybody who
Speaker 1: is down in the description as well as Acid System
Speaker 1: Ball Arms, The Rat Bake, Ratler, Grandson, Mendoza, Brinna Crow, Brimstone, Panemonium, Caltuna, Shame,
Speaker 1: Smoker Dealer, Chicago Hity Man, Corey Kenshin, Crown Up by
Speaker 1: a Way, Crusader, Jocobo, Curs, Pox, Primark, To Go to Best,
Speaker 1: Thaka Polson, Don't Taking Kaid, Dina Krass, Ellie Hotmeyer and
Speaker 1: Chanted Buns, est To Bean Jellahalsey, Hayes's Nephew, Himo, Jerry
Speaker 1: Hour Minute, Second Time, Jay Keams, Jennis pat Jordan, Humble,
Speaker 1: Kin Krab, Mister Marcus, Splitz, Old Penguin, Peaceful Buddha, Cycle,
Speaker 1: moul Red, Shadow Cast, Remember the Son Rinku, Star, Salty Surprise,
Speaker 1: Samara Line Seclude, Simba's Buddy, Mojo Sky, Harper Smiley, The
Speaker 1: Psychotic Sully Man, Tlly Sue, the Shabaz Brothers. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, and honestly, thank you to everybody, even those
Speaker 1: guys that are in there for just one dollar. It
Speaker 1: really helps me out. Once again, that's patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash mister c Pasta or if you guys like to
Speaker 1: just listen, honestly, that helps me out a lot too.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much for being here, Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening, thank you for watching, and sweet dreams,