Breaker Whiskey

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“Letter date?” - that was your last message. As in…the date on the letter? It’s April 6th, 1975. What’s important about that?

Four, six, one, nine, seven, five. Our first thought was coordinates, of course, and it’s the right amount of numbers to be a latitude, but seventy-five isn’t a valid number for the seconds. So maybe it’s just the degrees and minutes and you’ll send the seconds through later? Or it could just be the degrees and you want us to leave out the year entirely. If it is a latitude, we’re not that far from it. We would just need the longitude, obviously.

We’re getting somewhere, I think, so let me know if this is entirely the wrong track. Otherwise, we’ll keep working away at it. 

[click, static] [beeps]

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Don’t say aloud

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Harry’s letter…what about Harry’s letter? Are you asking if we’ve talked about it? Or…what? 

As it so happens, we haven’t talked about it. It’s not really relevant anymore, is it? She doesn’t need to know that I was worried sick that she’d been killed and I don’t need to bring up the fact that she secretly likes Hank Williams. She hasn’t mentioned my Rothko lie so…we’re even. 

It’s not like the letter was really all that revealing anyway. It was mostly…logistical. And yeah, it was clever of her to sew it into the jacket, but honestly, I’m kind of pissed that she wore the jacket to butcher chickens. And butcher them badly. God forbid she gets any of her clothes dirty. 

I still have it. Not that it’s very wearable anymore but. I don’t know. I had to abandon the house I’ve lived in for six years and the car that took me back and forth across the country, so I don’t have a lot of things worth sentimental value. 

If we were going to talk about any kind of correspondence…well, you think she’d have some specific things to say about what I’ve said on here over the last year. Both the good and the bad. And the…vulnerable. 

Anyway, I don’t understand why you’re asking about Harry’s letter. Is there some kind of…information she shared that you think would be useful? I don’t think it’s very smart of us to revisit any of the old potential meetup spots and you’re sending us West anyway so…again, a little more clarity please. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

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Letter date?

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You do know that you’re going to have to give me a little more than “West” right? I mean…we’ll do it, we’ll start going West now, but there’s still a lot of West left, so I need you to narrow it down. 

She keeps calling me Whiskey. Harry, I mean. And she seems to really not mind—she seems to even like that I call her Harry but I never expected her to even call me Abi with any regularity but…

She said that she started to think of that name when she thought of me because listening to all my transmissions made her feel like she was finally meeting the real thing. The real me. I said that I’d never tried to hide from her before, that other than certain…feelings, I’ve always been exactly who I am. She—well, she skated right over the feelings bit, which I’m honestly grateful for—and said that it’s different, to hear someone talk when they think no one is listening. That she started to understand more about the way that I think, the way I feel things. And she’s started to think of that person, the real me, as Whiskey. 

I think it’s a little more than that to be honest. I think…I think Abi—Abigail is the person that she betrayed. The person she lied to, that she hurt, whereas Whiskey is someone who spends a lot of time talking about her, but maybe isn’t carrying as much anger around as Abi was in those last few months we were together. 

I sometimes wonder if she would want to go back to being strangers if we could. I sometimes wonder if I would want that. If I’d been alone when I got here—pretending, for sake of argument, that I ended up in this little wasteland of a world through some other means. What if I’d been alone and I went on my road trip and Harry was the person I found. In that context, what would we have been to each other now?

It doesn’t matter in any case—life doesn’t work like that. I can’t forget everything I know about her and everything she’s done to me even if I tried. Even if I could…that’s the easy way out, isn’t it? And nothing with Harry has ever been easy. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

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Harry’s letter

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, Birdie, we’ve gone North. We’ve gone so far North that we’re quite literally at the Canadian border. I’ve never been to Canada. Well, I guess I have now—the moment we got to the sign, I stopped the car and Harry and I both jumped out and ran for the other side of the border. One of those moments where we both had the exact same idea at the exact same time. 

I missed that. The way that we can be in perfect sync. Sometimes on a job, we could communicate with just a look. The whole crew had that ability to some extent, but it always felt…you know. Better. With Harry. 

Things have been…better. With Harry. I demanded she tell me anything else she’d left out about Pete and her snitching and…I think I know everything now. Even if I have no idea what to do with it. But it’s cleared the air some. Made me understand her a little more. Even if I’m still furious so much of the time…that fury is not aimed solely at her anymore. 

It’s her birthday today. June 30th. She didn’t mention anything to me—it’s not like we’ve got a wall calendar hanging off the rearview mirror or anything, so it was only when I was doing my usual marking of my atlas that I realized. 

I didn’t get her a gift, obviously. A trip to Canada, I guess. When I wished her a happy birthday, she just sort of…quietly said thank you and that was that. 

We’re both a year older and not any wiser for it. We know more now, about the world, about each other. It doesn’t feel like—I’m not sure what other secrets we possibly would have to reveal to each other. And yet, I don’t feel like I actually understand anything. I’m still just…out to sea. 

I don’t know. I miss Donnie. I wish I could talk to him about this stuff, I wish—I wish I could talk to him about Pete. I wish I could have someone else’s perspective on her. On us. And the real problem is that, despite everything, I still—

The look on her face when she got to the other side of the border. We were both out of breath and red faced, like kids who had raced to the front door. And she smiled so big and she looked at me and said “Didn’t I tell you once that I’d take you to another country someday?”

I honestly couldn’t believe that she remembered that. She said it one time, years ago. I remembered it of course, because at that time I was looking for any kind of scrap that she…

We were at a new exhibit at the Morgan Library—rare manuscripts, I think from the renaissance, I can’t really remember. Pete—(voice cracking) uh, Pete, um, loved—loved stealing manuscripts. They were hard to steal, because they had to be so delicately handled, but Harry knew how to do it, which gave Pete an advantage that most thieves didn’t have. With big exhibits of them, we could steal just one, not a whole collection, and still get a really good deal for them. Especially since there is always a wealthy person out there who wants to own one just for the sake of having something rare and won’t fuss too much about where it came from. 

Anyway, we were casing the place, her and I, because Harry could spend hours looking at every corner of an exhibit and make it seem totally natural, like she was just looking at the art. She usually went alone, just to get the layout of the exhibits, but we’d never tried robbing the Morgan Library before, so I went with her to get a sense for the whole building’s security. And we…

We had a good time. We had a really good time. We laughed at all the weird margin drawings that the monks would leave in the books of hours, or whatever they were, and Harry would tell me about the history of when and where these things had been written and, if she’d been to the place herself, she’d talk a little bit about what it was like now. I’ve never been…anywhere. And when I told her that, she said, “I’ll take you someday. Everyone should leave the country at least once”. 

Actually, I think she said “continent”. That’s…obviously not possible now. Well, I guess we could go to South America but…I’m just happy she remembers that conversation at all. I thought about it for weeks afterwards. What she meant by it. The implication that she would be with me if I traveled. That she’d be the one to take me. 

You know, I could get her a rare manuscript for her next birthday—I could walk into any museum in this country and walk right out with one, just like I did with that painting in Santa Fe. 

"Her next birthday”…guess I am thinking that we’ll still be, well, that we’ll still be alive and that we’ll still be together a year from now. But I really don’t know that for certain, do I?

Anyway, should we keep going North or…do you want to give us a little direction here? Literal direction, in this case. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

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West

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I’ll—I’ll get to your latest in a second but first…

I’m already having a hard enough time ordering my thoughts—talking out loud on the radio and spending my days talking to Harry…it’s like my brain is more active than it’s been in months and I feel like I’m bouncing from thought to thought with no order or intention. 

And it’s so much worse than usual right in this moment because Harry just told me something that…

I don’t know why she didn’t tell me this a year ago—maybe because when she first confessed everything I refused to hear more about it. But I talked to her about what I was saying yesterday, the messed up logic of her view of me and her view of Pete and she—she said it was different. Because what Pete did was cold blooded murder, not an accident, not an escalation of a confrontation. And I didn’t buy that, how could she know, she wasn’t there and she—

It was his partner. Um, two of the people who died—one was a teller who refused to open the vault and the other was um— (pause) was a seventeen year old boy who tried to take Pete’s gun away. And that’s—I mean, I didn’t expect one of them to be just a kid—but I figured that’s what happened, that something went wrong, someone tried to interfere, a gun went off and—

But the third person was Pete’s partner. His…mentee, his protege. The two of them, after they did get into the vault, after they—well, they, um, snuck out through the back and Pete—Pete shot him point blank in the head and left him in the alley behind the bank. Which…does put the other killings in a different light. Suddenly the death of the teller doesn’t seem like a robbery gone wrong, but instead…

It’s different. That’s what she said. I mean, she also said that she doesn’t want to kill Junior, that she doesn’t think that’s a way to solve anything, but that she’s had to think it all through anyway. She had to consider it, because if it was the way to make things right with me, then she would—

But she knows it’s not. She knows it wouldn’t fix anything, especially since she already learned that taking extreme action to protect yourself from the possibility of harm can lead to something so much worse. Because that’s why she turned Pete in. Because she felt it was just a matter of time until he did what he did to his old mentee again, but this time to me. She didn’t think she could convince me that he’d ever hurt me—and…she’s probably right about that—so she…made a different choice. 

And now I have to live with this knowledge and figure out how it changes my entire world view and feelings about one of the most significant relationships in my life. 

[click, static]

So…I’ve had some things to process. Clearly. But I’m not—I’m not ignoring you, especially since what you said—

“I’ll transmit safe location”. That’s what you said. Birdie does this mean…are we going to meet?

I assume you mean a safe location for you to…leave me something, or somewhere Fox can’t find us or…I don’t know. I know what I’m hoping for and I also know that I need to hold that hope tightly so it doesn’t grow out of control. 

I don’t know how you plan to transmit a location without Fox or Junior hearing it, but I have no doubt you’ll come up with something. 

So for now I’ll just…wait. I’ll wait and I’ll keep going North. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You want to explain what? All of it? You want to explain everything to me, is that what you’re saying? Because I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—you can transmit as long a message as you want, just make sure it repeats and I’ll sit by the radio and transcribe it all out. 

When we got that message, Harry asked me what an explanation would change for me. She wants to know if I’ll—if you really do tell us everything and it all makes sense and the world becomes clear, and after all of that, it really is true that killing Junior would put us back…would that change my perspective on it. 

And I—well, I told her I don’t know, because I don’t know. I can’t know, not really, until I know what I don’t know right now. When I don’t have the information, I can’t predict how it might change what I think. 

But if I’m honest with myself, I really doubt it would change that much. I’m not a killer. I don’t want to be a killer. I know that technically I am, but I—well, I don’t know! I don’t feel less guilty about Billings just because I didn’t mean to kill him, I still fought with him. But Harry seems to think it’s different and that’s what I don’t understand. 

How does she look at Pete and decry what he did and then look at me and say it’s okay and I can do it again—I killed a man and can kill his son and that’s not as bad as what Pete did. It doesn’t make any sense to me, that logic. And I can’t imagine a world in which Harry would want to do this particular bit of dirty business herself so it would be - it would be me.

It doesn’t matter—I’m not entertaining the idea. No matter what we learn. No matter what you tell us. 

[click, static]

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I’ll transmit safe location

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Have you ever read The Screwtape Letters, Birdie? 

We’re stopped off the highway for some lunch—Harry has set up a little fire so we can have something hot, I don’t know why. She knows I’m not fussy about what I eat, especially on the road, but maybe she just wanted to stretch her legs. 

It is…a lot harder to be stuck in a car with her than a house. I’m happy to sit there and focus on driving, let the static of the radio fill the silence between us, but Harry has never been one for awkward silence. Angry silence, judgmental silence, cold silence, comfortable silence even…sure. But if she feels like she’s not the one controlling the silence…well. 

Anyway, she was telling me about The Screwtape Letters. It’s a C.S. Lewis book. When she started in on explaining it to me, I really had no idea what she was talking about—I thought she was just trying to cut the tension between us. But it ended up being sort of relevant. Relevant to you specifically.  
It sounds nothing like the Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe stuff he wrote, though I guess those were meant for kids and this one was not. It’s about these two devils—demons? Servants of hell, I guess, I don’t know exactly what they’re called in the book. Harry says it was supposed to be a satire, but nothing about it sounded that funny. 

The older demon, Screwtape, is writing all these, yeah you guessed it, letters to this younger demon Wormwood. And he’s telling Wormwood how to corrupt the soul of this one human. Which, to me, seems a little ridiculous. In my experience, human beings are pretty corruptible, I can’t imagine that you’d ever need two demons on the job. I don’t know, maybe this one guy was particularly upstanding. 

I don’t know if you’re picking up on the resemblance yet, but Harry thinks that you and Fox are a bit like Screwtape and Wormwood, with me caught in the middle. I told her I’m hardly a pure of heart person that needs to be tempted into surrendering my soul to Satan or whatever, and besides, aren’t we already in hell? She didn’t take that very well. 

Between this and the Asimov, you’ve got to wonder if some of these authors knew something the rest of us didn’t. Did they get punted into their own timeline offshoots only to somehow find their way back?

The long and short of it was that Harry does not think I should trust you. Because for all we know, you and Fox are playing a twisted game over the ownership of my immortal soul. 

But I do trust you. Maybe I shouldn’t. Actually, I probably shouldn’t. But I do. I just wish you could explain it all to me. Even just one thing. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

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Want to explain

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[click, static]

‘Keep going north’—very helpful. Not at all an answer to the question I was asking, but…okay. What the hell. Why not. It’s guidance of a sort, I’ve got nothing better to do and I actually haven’t been to—

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I guess I shouldn’t say where it is I’ve been or haven’t been, given that that might give us away, the state we’re in now. Then again, if Fox can find us wherever we are and tell Junior…

[click, static]

But, okay, fine. We’ll go north. 

You know, Harry’s got a lot of opinions about you, Birdie. If I didn’t know any better, I might say that she’s jeal—

[click, static]

She’s not very pleased with you. She’s…frustrated. Which I get. I’m pretty much always frustrated with you. But I still like you, for some reason. I still like talking to you. I’ll never forget the first time we spoke, really spoke, in dits and dashes. I don’t think I’d ever experienced that kind of joy before. Not until I found Donnie. 

Harry…Harry did finally get an apology out for that. For her part in that. For the part I feel she played. She cornered me in the kitchen this morning—we’ve been staying in this little house for the last week, I think we’ve probably got to move soon but for now we’ve been getting by. Though it is weird to be in a new space with her. She’s always somewhere I don’t expect. But I guess I don’t really expect her anywhere anymore. I’m so used to not seeing her. 

I keep trying to not see her, if I’m honest. I’ve spent a lot of time in my car, scanning all the open channels and looking at my atlas, trying to figure out where we should go next. Even when we’re in the same room, I try not to look at her for too long. Because I know that if I do, I’ll—I’ll let her talk to me. I’ll let her apologize. 

Apparently she wasn’t keen on waiting for me to cave. She withheld the hot water and stood in the doorway and wouldn’t let me leave or get tea until she said her piece. 

It was clear that she’d practiced it. Or, at the very least, come up with a plan of what she wanted to say. 

She said she was sorry for Don. That she had never wanted anyone to get hurt, that she’s lived every day in terror since Junior showed up at the house. Terror that he would catch up to her or, worse, catch up to me. That’s what she said. That it would be worse. 

And she said, straight out, that she does feel responsible, for all of it. She always has. Even when we thought it was nuclear war or some rampant disease, she thought it was just…the universe punishing her. She seemed…annoyed, that I’m the one the universe chose to punish for my decision. Almost like she’s offended that she’s not the main character of the world. 

Maybe that’s unfair. Probably that’s unfair. Maybe she was annoyed because she doesn't want me to be punished. She did say—she said I didn’t deserve it. That I didn’t deserve any of it, that she would take on the burden by herself if she could. 

She also did assure me that she had no idea about any of this—the timelines, Birdie and Fox, the direct consequences of my actions. She really was just scared that something terrible would find us if we left the safety of our house and I guess she was sort of right about that, even if she didn’t know it for certain. 

She said she’d do anything to make it right. That all I had to do was tell her what I wanted and she’d do it. 

I have no idea what I want. She can’t fix the things that are broken and I also…I wouldn’t know how to make demands of Harry. I’m too used to being the person who steps into line, I wouldn’t know where to begin making a new path. 

Anyway, going north. We’ll do it. At least I’ll have someone in the passenger seat with me this time.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[click, static]

Breaker breaker, this is Whiskey calling out for any goddamn clarification from Birdie. 

We’ve been talking about it more, the whole “Junior is already dead over there” thing. And we can’t think of any other explanation than the one we first came up with—that he must have died over in the original timeline, the “correct” timeline, whatever you want to call it, and that…because he no longer exists there, removing him here would allow our timelines to merge. 

But I need to know, is that…right? I mean, I know that that’s been the solution for a while—or at least we’ve been operating under the assumption that that was the solution—but does he really not exist in that other timeline anymore? Is there nowhere for him to go if we—if we did fix it? Through some other means?

(sighs) I don’t know. There are plenty of things in this world that can’t be fixed. Time can’t be turned back on itself—at least, I don’t think it can, but, god, after everything I’ve learned this past year, who knows what’s possible—

I can’t think about that. There’s only so many insane hypotheticals I’m willing to humor. 

Harry wants so badly to fix it. Even knowing that it was me killing—that it was Billings’ dying that brought us here I think she…I think she heard me when I talked about where the blame stops. And I don’t mean just heard my broadcast, I think she really…heard me. I think she understands that I can hate myself for what I did and be furious with her for putting me in that position in the first place. 

In all these years, she never—she never called me a murderer for what I did. She knew that sometimes the guilt would fill me up so much I’d start to drown and she…she never held me under. 

I don’t know if she judged me for it—judges me for it. If it changed the way she saw me—she never gave any indication that it did but finding out that Pete messed up and killed—I mean, it changed her perspective on him enough to rat him out, destroy his life. Destroy all our lives.

Maybe it’s because it was an accident or self-defense but neither of those things ever made me feel any better about what I did, so… Maybe Harry sees killing Junior before he can kill us as some kind of self defense but I don’t think it is. I’m not sure I believe in preemptive strikes. 

I just…I don’t know what to do. I could really use a little guidance here. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

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Keep going north

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

So Harry—

Well, she told me something interesting today. I’ve been—well, the whole point of doing these transmissions on my own is that it’s my time, my words, my choice to tell you what I want. By that nature, I’ve been wanting…privacy, I guess. Which is silly, maybe. Wanting privacy from one person so I can speak to the whole world, whatever’s left of it. But it—well, it doesn’t have to make sense for me to feel it. 

And even if it so often feels like I’m just talking to myself, that I’m just speaking thoughts out loud and no one hears them, maybe there’s something to be said for actually saying these things to people. For letting some of those inside thoughts out. 

Harry told me—well, that she’s started to enjoy being called Harry. How’s that for a surprise? Over months of hearing my transmissions, she felt like—she said it felt like forgiveness, every time I called her that. Like I must be important to her still if I was bothering to give her a nickname, to give her some space in my head as someone unique. 

“Some space”—like she doesn't know she’s consumed entire sections of my thoughts. And for once, I turned the question back on her—why she always calls be Abigail instead of Abi if nicknames are supposed to be a sign of affection. Seems like maybe she was just being hopeful in assuming what it meant for me, given that she doesn’t seem to abide by that rule. 

Except, well, turns out it was just another way of keeping her distance. Formality as the bricks in the wall between us. 

She’s started calling me Abi since she got here. She’s even called me Whiskey a few times. I’m not sure what to do with that. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Harry’s asleep—went to bed hours ago and I just…can’t. 

[click, static]

In all the time away, I forgot. I forgot how much I like Harry. And that’s different, isn’t it, than being in lo—

I mean, I like her the way I like—liked Donnie. And Pete and Richie and Francis and Sylvie and Martha and Millie and every single person I’ve ever cared enough about to spend time with. 

I like her weird little bits of trivia, and her love of puzzles, and the way that she sees art as something important and vital in the world. I like her sharp sense of humor and how she’s gotten worse and worse over the years at pretending not to find my jokes funny. I like that she cares about doing right, but not doing good. Her moral compass is…well, it’s fucking infuriating, but its hers and she sticks to it. Okay, maybe I don’t like that as much as I respect it. 

I like that she demands respect. She always has. The guys always respected her and any time we were out and a man would be creepy toward her or condescending or just…annoying. She never took it. And I never did either but I’m —Harriet’s not built like I am, she’s slight and soft and feminine and men often think that means—

She’s strong in other ways. Ways that matter. Ways that I’m not. It’s not just the strength of her convictions, her immovable morality but the way that she weathers every single storm with grace and never breaks. We’ve both had our share of hardships, and they’ve been different kinds of hardships, but…I don’t know. 

If she’s telling the truth, which I think, finally she is, then she spent six years in the company of someone she wanted, someone she knew wanted her back and she denied herself out of a sense of guilt fueled by that moral compass. I denied myself out of fear, out of insecurity and doubt, but she…she resisted getting what she wanted because she felt she didn’t deserve it. 

I don’t know, maybe that isn’t strength. Maybe that’s just cruelty. Or maybe it’s neither of those things—I’ve never been a reliable character witness when it comes to her. 

[click, static]

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I keep—I keep calling her Harriet. I hear it, feel the shape of her name in my mouth, and it feels…not wrong, but—well, I grew so accustomed to using her nickname—the nickname I had for her, the one that I’d use to talk about her to other people. But with her here, I find myself saying “Harriet” even when she’s not in the room. It’s…helping a little, in some ways. Helping me keep my distance, reminding me that she’s not just an abstract idea in my head, the way she has been the last year, but that she’s a real, three dimensional person who’s here and who I still…

We finally talked about your latest messages, Birdie. And she—she agrees with me. That you’re probably saying that Junior needs to die in order for us to go back to where we’re from. Because…well, in that timeline we’d be free people, wouldn’t we?

Are we? Do we exist back there too the way we do here? Are there infinite versions of us in infinite timelines? If we fixed things here the way that Fox says they can be fixed, would we just…be absorbed into whatever life we were in back there? 

I—I honestly doubt that Harriet and I even speak anymore. If we hadn’t escaped, we would’ve—according to Harriet—been let go and turned witness. I would’ve refused to testify and maybe…maybe that means the deal would’ve been bad and I’d just go to jail anyway. But even if I didn’t, even if I was somehow free, I don't think I’d have talked to her again after what she did. Fucking all of us over like that, out of some misguided fear about Pete…she’s the only other person in the universe who doesn’t want to kill me right now and I’m still not sure how to forgive her. If I can. 

Sometimes I think that maybe forgiveness isn’t necessary. For me to…for us to…

I wonder how many versions of us figure it out. Figure us out. I wonder if any versions do. Or if we’re fated to get close, but never step over the line. 

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“Dead over there. Where you’re from.” 

So. Junior is…supposed to be dead? In the—the proper timeline or whatever you want to call it? So if he…if he died here…

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Nope, I can’t think about that. Not—not right now anyway. Maybe later, Harriet and I can…

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I guess I haven’t really said much about our grand reunion. Well, it wasn’t that grand. I told her where to go, she remembered enough about the song to figure out where it was, and she showed. 

It’s…it’s fine. It’s good. It’s terrible. I don’t know. We—

Well, we’re not really talking about anything, you know? Everything that happened before I left, everything that’s happened since, her being alone this whole time, me finding Donnie and then… 

Harriet actually—well, unlike Donnie, she wanted to come on the radio with me, “if I insist on broadcasting still”. But I…

I told her no. I don’t know who’s listening to this anymore—or at all. I never know if Birdie is going to drop off the face of the earth, or if Fox gave up, or if there are other people out there who can hear my voice and just not speak back. But this is…this is mine. And maybe it’s selfish, but I’m not—I’m not gatekeeping the radio waves from Harriet. She has her own radio, if she wants to broadcast, she can. 

But I don’t want to argue with her on here. I don’t want to have my thoughts and feelings and perceptions called into question when I’m just trying to get all those things out, work through them. And she hasn’t done that so far, not yet but I— I can’t think straight around her. And I need to be able to…I need to keep a level head. I need—

We still haven’t talked about Don. She started to say sorry, but I cut her off before she could finish. I couldn’t bear to hear how to finished it. Would it have been “sorry for your loss”? Or “sorry you blame me for Don’s death”? “Sorry I betrayed you”? “Sorry I led you on for years and we still haven’t—“ 

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It is both harder and easier to be angrier at her when I’m with her. Easier because I have something to aim at, because sometimes I’ll look at her and I’ll see her face in the moment that I told her I—

And then other times, she’ll enter a room and I’ll get that whiff of lavender and turpentine and everything inside me just…melts. 

I want to be able to make her the villain in my story—I remember thinking…those first few days I was driving around, I remember thinking that if I found someone, if I really found someone else and we got to talk and get to know each other and really form a bond…well, you know how you practice conversations in your head? Ones you had ten years ago, ones you’re planning to have, ones you know you’ll never have. Well, I would practice talking to this imaginary person and telling the story of my life. It would be so easy to make Harriet the villain—rival into turncoat into nemesis. There’s a clean narrative there, one that I wouldn’t have to lie about to tell. Leave certain things out maybe but…that imaginary person, they’d believe me. They’d be on my side. 

But I didn’t find anyone. I just kept talking to the open airwaves and it was so much harder to keep the story straight when I wasn’t telling it all at once. When my feelings on the subject changed every day. When I hadn’t seen Harriet in months and I started to miss her so badly I’d get in my car and start driving back to Pennsylvania only to turn around when I had to stop to refill my gas tank. 

I never told you that, I don’t think. I spent so much time, wasted so many miles driving back to her. I always turned around right back around again, had to watch the same road go by. 

So maybe I haven’t done a good job of making the story simple, me as hero, her as villain, but the story I’ve been telling is still mine. And I don’t—I’m not ready for her to tell her side of it. 

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“He’s already dead”? What the hell does that mean, Birdie? Is Junior dead? Did something happen to him? Did Don…injure him somehow when they—I mean, is that what happened? Did he get into an accident? Did Fox do something to him?

Fuck. All this time, everything that happened, Don—and this is how it ends? Junior is just…dead?

I don’t know how to feel about that honestly. When I told Harry—I mean, god, why am I even on here talking about this with you? I can just go talk to Harry about it, she’s here, she’s in the next room—

Just…clarify what you mean, Birdie. For fuck’s sake. 

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Dead over there. Where you’re from

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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Well, another day on this stupid fucking street corner, sitting in my car, hoping that Harry remembers all the lyrics to a song she heard a decade ago. I might live on hope, but even I have my limits. 

And yet, here I sit, staring out at an empty street and trying not to lose my mind. I don’t know what to do with the message that Fox sent. 

“Junior dies you go back”. I told myself I wouldn’t listen to anything that Fox has to say—and I don’t want to—but I can’t exactly help hearing them, and once I have…

Is that why Birdie went silent the other day? Not because they had to go, but because they didn’t want to answer my question? Confirm my worst fear?

Junior dies, you go back. I don’t accept that price. If it even is true. And why would it be? What about him being gone would fix things? I don’t accept it. I won’t do it. I—

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Oh my god. Harry. 

She’s—she’s here. 

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He’s already dead

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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I’m bored. All I’ve done since I got here is sit in my car on this street corner and wait. Harry had farther to travel, I guess, but not by much. Maybe she didn’t hear me. God, part of me hopes that’s it. A big part of me hopes she didn’t hear anything I said yesterday. A part of me wishes that you didn’t hear it, that no one did. But what do I have to lose by putting it all out there now? I wasn’t really honest with Donnie when he asked and I—I really regret that now. 

Maybe she did hear me talk about where I was going and she’s decided it’s not worth it. After everything I’ve said on here the last few weeks, I’m not even sure I could blame her. 

What does she owe me anyway? What do we owe each other?

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What if…what if she’s had the same thought that I’ve been having? That something needs to happen to one of us, or to Junior, to make things right. What if she thinks that she can fix what’s broken? What if she thinks that’s how she finally repents?

I’d really love to hear from you, Birdie. Give me…give me some kind of direction here. Please. 

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Junior dies you go back 

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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I just realized—I never even finished my story the other day. I got distracted telling you about that other fight, the one we had when I came in from the cold. 

After she said that, about our future, I stormed off. Obviously. I couldn’t stand there and look at her after I’d revealed so much in one simple sentence and been completely rejected so I took a shower and ignored her for the rest of the day. Then, that night, I was sitting by the fire, and I remembered, I was reading—god knows what, I don’t think I was paying attention to a single sentence, I think I just wanted something that would make it look like I wasn’t just sitting and moping—and I fell asleep. 

And when I woke up—well, I was woken up. I felt something, on my face, a warm brush of something and I opened my eyes and Harry was there, pushing my hair off my forehead. And she’s bookmarked my place in the book too, closed it and put it on the coffee table and then she’d…

She jerked back the moment I opened my eyes. But there was no mistaking what she’d been doing. And I just…lost it. That’s what broke me. That she’d show me affection only when I wasn’t awake to see it. 

I never expected—never planned to ask her outright. But I did. I just asked her what she felt for me. What she wanted from me. And she—she fucking refused to answer. Fifty seconds earlier she’d had her fingertips tenderly stroking my hair and she couldn’t answer a simple fucking question. So I told her my answer. 

I told her—I told her I’d been in love with her since the first time I saw her laugh. That I’d respected her first, stood in awe of her art knowledge, her talent, her expert way of handling beautiful things. I’d watch her hands when we were packing up the goods and thought I’d never seen someone treat something with such care and make it look like art unto itself. Like some kind of meditative practice. Like something holy. 

And then, the moment it left my mouth, I told her that was actually a lie—that I’d really been attracted to her first, and then came the respect. And that I’d bounced between those two feelings and complete irritation for months and months and then I saw her crack up at a dumb joke and it was like an air raid siren went off in my head. I immediately knew I was in the kind of trouble I wasn’t going to get out of. 

And the whole time—the whole time I’m telling her this, she’s just backing away and shaking her head like she doesn’t want to hear it. Like I’m being cruel to her in saying it. And I say that I thought that maybe, maybe, she felt the same way but clearly I was wrong. And that it’s been long enough, and the house is…in shape enough and that she’s got enough supplies and know-how that she’ll be fine, probably, and now she’s looking at me like I’m crazy because she doesn’t understand yet what I’m saying. 

So I tell her outright—I have to go. I have to leave, have to see what’s out there, who’s out there, because staying here now that I know we have no future is torture and that’s when she shouts at me. That she’s the one who’s been agonized all this time. That she’s wanted me for so long, but she never had the courage to do anything before and that she couldn’t now because it would all be a lie. That she couldn’t let me think she loved me when I didn’t know that she’d betrayed me. 

Well, she didn’t say exactly that. I was the only one who used…that particular word in the conversation. Not betrayed, the—the other one. I’d never used that word for anyone before, not since my parents, and never in that kind of context. And she couldn't even…

It didn’t matter. Once she started telling me what she meant—started telling me the truth, the full truth…it was worse than any rejection would have been. She tried to explain it away, tried to say that she was trying to protect me, that she wanted to get us both out of a bad situation but all I heard was that she’d betrayed me and then lied about it. All I heard was that she, like always, thought she knew what was best and removed my own wants and needs and fucking free will from the equation entirely. 

And then she begged me not to go. She begged me to let her make things right and I…I couldn’t look at her like that, after all that, and walk away. So I didn’t. I stayed and I—

I stayed and I punished her. I didn’t speak to her, didn’t let her try to apologize, I barely stayed in a room if she walked in. And then even that got to be too much to bear. 

So I did the thing she was most afraid of, and I left. 

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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You know what? I think it’s shit that you betraying us was something that was supposed to happen. Apparently. But me protecting us…that’s what fucked everything up forever. You loved throwing that into my face when you finally told me the truth. That if I’d just trusted you, I never would’ve tried to escape, I never would’ve killed Billings, we wouldn’t be fugitives. 

Little did you know, right? Just how right you were. If I’d just trusted you. Except…you gave me no fucking reason to trust you. You told me nothing about what was happening, as far as I was concerned, we were just two prisoners being transported, not fucking…states’ witness or whatever the fuck you were. You didn’t trust me enough to tell me. 

And you know what? You were right about that too. I would’ve told Pete. I was loyal to him and I—well, I would’ve tried to talk you out of doing something stupid but if you’d told me after you’d already gone to the feds, yeah, I would’ve ratted you out to Pete. A snitch for a snitch. 

None of this would’ve happened if you’d just trusted us. And if I do see you again, if you do come find me, then I think we need to have a very long conversation about what trust looks like from here on out. 

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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I keep replaying our fight in my head. The one that marked the beginning of the end. 

It’s weird, I remember so many things she said with perfect clarity. “Do you have any idea what kind of torture it’s been sharing a space with you all this time?” She shouted that at me. Harry so rarely shouts—the fact that she was raising her voice for so much of the conversation was almost as jarring as what she was saying. 

Torture. Here I thought we’d been living in relative peace and every day was torture for her. Torture she thought she deserved. Torture that, since that fight, I’ve sometimes thought she deserved. 

Except it wasn’t just her being drawn and quartered, was it? In denying herself something she thought she didn’t deserve, she put me through the wringer too. 

That’s how the argument started. I finally just…snapped. There’s only so much one woman can take, you know? And the signals I got from Harry had always been mixed, but that night…I was sitting by the fire, Harry was in her studio, as she so often was and I was…honestly, I don’t even remember what I was doing. I’d fixed yet another leak in the roof that day, the house had really been starting to fall apart and there was only so much I could do and—

That’s the thing, we fought earlier that day. I came in from outside and it was—it was a fucking cold day, you know one of those February days where it feels like winter is never going to end and my hands were frozen solid and when I came into the kitchen, I was—I was rubbing them together, trying to get them to warm up and Harry had already put the kettle on and she came over and—and she stepped right up to me and put her hands around mine. And we stood there, barely a breath apart, her body heat sinking into mine, my eyes still watering from the cold air outside. 

There were so many of those little moments—moments when she’d look at me and I’d think…here it is. Finally. After years of holding my breath, the exhale is finally coming. 

But then she stepped back. She started fixing me tea and it felt like I was going to suffocate, from holding the air in for too long and we’d—well, she’d agreed to go out more the last few years. To that picnic, on small hikes, supply runs that were a little more far flung and so I—I tried to get some relief, from all of it, from the cold and the breathlessness and so I said something about going somewhere warm. A vacation. I suggested we go on a fucking vacation. 

And of course it turned into the fight that we always had when I made that suggestion—how we were safe where we were, how we didn’t know what else was out there and I—well, I think I did tell you about this particular fight once, maybe, because for a long time it was the only part of that day I could allow myself to think about—but I—I told her that we were never going to move forward if we didn’t literally move forward, that we wouldn’t have a future together if we kept standing still and that was the first time either of us had ever spoken anything like that out loud and she just said “we don’t have a future either way” and that…that was that. 

(laugh) What fucking irony, huh? Both of us arguing about the future when we were in one of our own making. 

Did you know, Harry? Did you know that things weren’t safe out here? Did you know where we were all along? 

If I find out that you—I mean, I’m already having a hard enough time forgiving you for—there are some things that I’ll never get over, Harry. 

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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I’m. I’m here. Where I said to meet me. If you remember that day in Philly, if you remember the song, if you remember the lyrics well enough to know where I’m talking about…it’s a lot of ifs. But I’m not sure what else to do. I’m not even sure I want to see you but—

What other choice do we have? I tried being away from you. But we’re tied together, whether we want to be or not. We were always connected, weren’t we, but it was by choice. We chose to work together, to be part of the same crew. We could’ve walked away at any time. You could’ve walked away. Why didn’t you just walk away?

Instead, you ratted us out, you cut a deal on my behalf—you sliced a fish hook underneath my skin and dragged me along with you and when I tried to wriggle free, all I did was get you stuck to that very same hook. And now I worry that if we pulled it free from our flesh, we’d both bleed to death.

The thing—the thing that really infuriates me is that…I was ready to forgive you. I was ready to move on from it, move forward, figure out how to deal with our new reality together. Hell, there were times when I thought I should just sacrifice myself so that you could live. That’s how much I—

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I didn’t want you living with the consequences of my actions. When all I’ve been doing for years is living with the consequences of yours. And now Don—Donnie’s dead.  And I still have no idea who to blame. 

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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I’ve still got the fucking ingredients for ambrosia in my passenger seat. Donnie—

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He—he made fun of me for calling him “Don” when I talked about him before we actually found each other. Because I almost never called him that to his face. But it was like all that time had passed and he became a cardboard cutout of himself. Don D’Agostino. Pete always called him Don—so did Harry actually—but Richie and I, all his friends really, called him Donnie. I didn’t even notice that I instinctually reverted to that until he asked why I’d been referring to him as Don on the radio. 

I don’t know how to refer to him now. 

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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She said it was the right thing to do. That the gravy train had to stop at some point, and that she wanted to get off before she became a casualty of it. I think that’s a pretty fucking presumptuous thing to assume—plenty of thieves don’t get caught and we were good. And, besides, she could have just quit! She didn’t have to be doing what she was doing, but when she found out about Pete…

When I’ve said that I never knew much about Pete’s life, that was true. Mostly. I really never did know anything about his personal life or what he’d been doing before putting together this crew. I never asked and he never volunteered any information. 

But that wasn’t the whole truth. I didn’t know much about his life then but Harry…Harry filled in some blanks. 

Pete wasn’t just an art thief. It wasn’t all penthouses and auction houses for him, apparently. He started with banks. And something like ninety percent of all bank robbers get caught, but Pete was…the best of the best. The feds had no clue who he was, barely even had his height and race. And then, one off the robberies went bad and he—a few people died. Three people. 

So he came back to his hometown of New York to disappear among the millions. He cooled his heels and then he started in again, just on a higher brow racket. 

I don’t know how Harry figured this out. We…we didn’t get to that point in our conversation. (scoffs) “Conversation”, there’s a euphemism for it. Argument? Screaming match? Dropping a nuclear bomb into our tentatively okay existence? I was a little more focused on the revelation that the person I’d been living with for six years had betrayed me and the people we cared about. The revelation that my mentor had killed a few people…

I don’t know. I’m still not sure…Harry has no reason to lie. Not about this. And, I guess, there were things through the years that made me think Pete’s past was a lot more checkered than even your typical thief. But I wasn’t lying when I said he always seemed like a stand-up guy to me. He was. He was good and kind and fair and the fact that he made his money through illegal endeavors felt really secondary to all of that. 

I’m not sure the knowledge that he’s killed people—multiple people and not—not entirely by accident, not like—

It should change things. I know it should. And it isn’t that I don’t believe Harry, even not knowing how she found out about it, it—I don’t think she would have done what she did unless she’d been certain. I’ll give her that. But it hasn’t reshaped who Pete is in my head. 

He took me in, mentored me, was a friend. He made me his ally when he could have just as easily made me an enemy. He saw something in me. Something worth…something worth attention and care. And I hadn’t had that since my father died and I—

I’ve thought a lot about what I would have done if I’d known before. I’ve shared nearly every other thought I’ve had in my head besides these ones, because I had to make room somehow, over this past—god, year, since I learned the truth. 

What if Harry had come to me first before going to the feds? What if I’d been the one to uncover Pete’s past and not her? What would I have done?

I wouldn’t have betrayed him, that’s for sure and fucking certain. I probably would’ve confronted him about it. Maybe. I would’ve wanted to hear his side of things. I would’ve wanted to know why he did what he did, how he felt about it now. And maybe I wouldn’t have—well, I wouldn’t have understood it, the way I do now, if I’d known before, because if I’d known, we never would’ve been arrested and I’d never have killed Billings and—

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I still think I would’ve been sympathetic. Empathetic. I don’t know. I would’ve given him…grace. Forgiveness. Even if it isn’t mine to forgive. I would’ve loved him just the same. 

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Harry said that she could never—she said that she wasn’t honest about how she felt because she was too swallowed up by guilt, was too scared to tell me the truth and have me run away and too scared to start anything when she had this secret but what if it wasn’t that at all? What if the way she felt about me—the way she’d ever be able to feel about me—changed the moment Billings hit the pavement? She found the truth out about Pete and stopped caring for him in a blink. She saw what I did, so surely—

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Well, in any case, I guess she was right. I did run away. 

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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I’m tired of taking all the blame, Harry. I know—I know it’s my fault that we’re here, it’s my fault that Junior’s here, it’s my fault that Don is dead and Leann lived the end of her life alone, but it’s not only my fault. I’m not the only one that led us here. 

I made a choice—a bad choice in terrible circumstances—and, you know what? I’m not sure I did choose it. It was an accident, I got unlucky, I made a mistake. I chose to try and escape, I chose to try and help you escape and it cost a man his life. 

But we would have never been there in the first place if it hadn’t been for you. And I’m fucking tired of pretending like I’m not mad at you for it. 

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Who am I kidding? I haven’t been pretending anything—it’s more that I’m mad at you for a different thing every other week. But I’ve been keeping your secret. I’ve been keeping it from Birdie and Fox and Junior and whoever else is listening here and I kept it from Don. And he died thinking he had two friends in this world. Me. And you. 

And that’s a lie. I’m done with telling that lie.

You weren’t his friend. Not really. I’m not sure you’re even my friend, even if you think—

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Did you hear my conversation with Birdie the other day? That they have a not-quite-friend-not-quite-enemy in Fox? That they tried to meddle in things and it went very very badly? Any of that sound familiar?

You betrayed us, Harry. You—you cut a deal with the fucking FBI to get off scot-free and you set us up. I don’t know how I spent so many years not suspecting a thing because we’d never even been close to caught before but that night, out of nowhere—

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Maybe I haven’t been pretending to not be mad at you for it, maybe that has been very fucking apparent, but I think I’ve been pretending—even to myself, especially to myself—that I can forgive you for it. 

I’m not sure I can. I’m not sure I will.

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

We—we figured out where Junior was holed up. I couldn’t say that on the radio when we were still…I didn’t want to mess up anything we might attempt by blabbing about it. Even if we weren’t agreeing on what we wanted to attempt. 

He wanted to kill Junior. I wanted to run. It’s a big country, we can—I’m confident that we could hide. Junior could keep coming and coming but if we went far enough and remote enough and I threw away my radio and just lived with Harry and Don, gave up hope finding anyone else…we would’ve been okay. Finding us would’ve been a nearly insurmountable task. 

Then again, with Fox giving coordinates out of peoples’ locations…maybe not. That was Don’s argument. I figured we could defend ourselves if it came to that but…

But he wanted to go home. He—he was so much the same, but I think being here, alone…I think it broke him somehow. He was…harsher, had a shorter temper. I didn’t—it didn’t fucking matter, you know? That he had this look in his eye or that he snapped a little more because we were together and also, I understood. I got softer and he got harder and the central difference between our experiences is that he was alone and I wasn’t. If I’d been by myself all that time, I think I’d be out for blood too. 

I didn’t want to believe…

It turns out he was right. I think he was right. I know Birdie didn’t answer me, but what if Junior dying is the solution? I don’t understand how but, would I…

No. I’ve already—I’m paying for what I’ve done. And it’s not my right to try and undo that. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I—I’m not sure what to do with that. “You seemed lonely”. 

You always do this, say just the right thing to keep me wanting to talk to you—

[click, static]

I know I seemed lonely. I was fucking lonely. I am fucking lonely. But if you’re observers of all of this shit—and there’s no way that we’re the only ones, I know that—then you have to be observing a lot of really lonely people. Why me? Why choose to talk to me? Why…(sigh)

[click, static]

[a beep]

Am I going crazy or did you just—

[click, static]

[four dots, two dots]

Say again. 

[four dots, two dots]

“Hi”. You’re saying fucking…hi. 

Well. Hi. 

[four dots, two dots]

Is this Birdie?

[one dot]

I guess you remember. I— I want to be happy to hear from you, to talk to you, I do, but I…

Okay, same as last time—one dit for yes, two for no, three dits if the answer is too complicated to explain and one dash for “I don’t know”—and I better not hear those last two very much. Alright?

[click, static; one dot]

Right then.

[click, static]

Did Junior kill Don?

[one dot]

Did he— did he mean to?

[one dash]

It was a struggle, wasn’t it? They got into some kind of altercation and…

[one dot]

Right. (deep breath) Right. 

[click, static]

Okay, uh, what else ask you…if you’ve been listening, am I right? Am I right in thinking that when I killed Billings, I branched us off into another future, and dragged Harry and Junior and Leann and— and Don and who the hell knows who else? Am I right about that?

[one dot]

Okay. I mean, not that I totally believe but…okay. 

You and Fox—you’re observers. Do you control the timelines?

[two dots]

Who does?

[one dash]

You don’t know? You don’t know who your own boss is?

[two dots]

Fuck. 

Is it God?

[two dots; one dash]

No, you don’t know. Okay. Helpful. 

Do you know Fox? Personally?

[one dot]

Are you friends?

[two dots]

Are you enemies?

[one dot; two dots]

A yes and a no. I’m guessing that means it’s a little more complicated than just friends and enemies. 

[one dot]

Yeah, okay. You both work for the same…entity though? You’re both bookkeepers for the universe or whatever you want to call it?

[one dot]

Are there others?

[one dot]

Where are they?

[click, static]

Okay, yeah, I guess that’s hard to answer yes or no. Are they observing different timelines?

[one dot]

How many timelines are there?

[one dot]

(scoff) Yes, there are many? What, is the number infinite?

[one dot]

Oh. How many are you looking over? Dozens?

[two dots]

Hundreds?

[one dot]

Shit, okay. And it’s the same for Fox?

[one dot]

And you don’t like each other…when you said you betrayed your job, did you betray Fox?

[two dots]

No. Did you betray your boss? Another…coworker?

[two dots]

Also no. 

Did you betray…the people you’re observing?

[one dot]

Because what—because you observed wrong?

[click, static]

Did you interfere? Did you try to fix it?

[one dot]

Yes. And it went wrong. People got hurt. 

[one dot]

Yeah, well, that’s the way it fucking goes, isn’t it?  

Is that why you don’t like Fox? Because they’re trying to…I don’t know, are they trying to fix it in their own fucked up way?

[one dot]

They’re the one who turned me onto the Asimov book…that’s what they want, isn’t it? They want one perfect exact timeline?

[one dot]

And they’re going around to a bunch of different timelines, trying to correct it?

[one dot]

Jesus. Do I—do I have to die for that to happen? Do we all have to die?

[two dots]

Thank god. Does Junior have to die?

[click, static]

Birdie?

[bad interference]

Birdie?

[click, static]

Birdie are you there?

[click, static]

Shit.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, but here’s what I don’t understand—and, yes, I know I’m not supposed to be talking to you, I’m supposed to be clearing my head and enjoying the fucking warm weather and—

Why did you even talk to me in the first place, huh? Why reach out at all if you’re not supposed to interfere. And sure, you never gave me anything actually useful or actionable, not in the way that Fox did but— 

[click, static]

I also…listen, my head isn’t exactly cool, but I’m not quite as—that is to say, I’ve calmed down a little. And I realized that it was really goddamn stupid of me to just…drive away from where Harry was just because I—

Well, I’m still furious. I’m sick over what happened with Don and I’m not sure how I could look you in the face, Harry, not when none of this would’ve happened if you’d never—

[click, static]

But you’re the only ally I have. Or, at least, the closest thing to an ally that I’ll get. So I don’t want to abandon you entirely. 

I’ve been trying to think of the best way to communicate a location to you without revealing anything to Junior and I’ve really had to dredge this memory up, so I have no idea if you’ll…

There was a song playing when—that job that we did in Philly in sixty-six? We went to that all-night diner to talk about the plan and Richie and— the guys were arguing over what to use their one quarter for to play on the jukebox and as they were going at it, a song was playing that I knew but that you didn’t. Or, at least, you didn’t like it if you did know it. And I was tapping my foot in time and my leg was bouncing the bench we were sharing and you snapped at me to stop and then I snapped back and Pete snapped at the guys and basically all of us were in a terrible mood that started with you losing your patience. 

That song. There’s a place mentioned in that song. I’ll be there in two weeks. Meet me there or don’t. I…it’s not that I don’t care. I just—I can’t be responsible for you, anymore. You have to make it on your own.  

[click, static]

[beeps]

-.-- --- ..- / ... . . -- . -.. / .-.. --- -. . .-.. -.--

You seemed lonely

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You ‘can’t interfere’? Are you trying to make me fucking furious? What the hell has all of this been then?

[click, static]

Observers, huh? That’s what you are? And that means…what exactly, you’re bookkeeping for the universe? Making sure that everyone who does something bad, who makes the wrong choice, gets their just desserts? 

(sighing) I can’t do this. I’m—I’m clearing my head, okay? I’m not in fucking New England anymore, I’m not in the tri-state area, Junior can spend all his time searching Massachusetts and New York for me and he won’t find me. And you can keep sending messages to me but I—

I’m just done.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I’m—(sigh) I don’t know how much I’ll be on here, I don’t know what to say. What the hell can I—

[click, static]

How can you say this doesn’t need fixing, Birdie? How can you look at this situation and behave like this is the way that things are supposed to be? Is this your system, your version of Eternity? Is this really how you want to be spending your existence, watching people suffer for a single mistake they made?

[click, static]

I—I’m in Maine. Waking up after putting him in the ground, I just wanted to be near someone—

[click, static]

I’m not this naive. I’m not this desperate. After everything she’s done, after everything you’ve done, why should I trust either of you. I’m—I need some time to myself. I’m turning around, I know you’re probably still at the gallery, Harry, but get in your car and go somewhere else, and—and—

[click, static]

I’m going somewhere else. I don’t know where yet but even I did I wouldn’t—

[click, static]

I know no matter where I go, you’ll be able to reach me, Birdie. So just tell me. Who are you? What’s your stake in all of this? 

[click, static]

[beeps]

--- -... ... . .-. ...- . .-. ... .-.-.- / -.-. .- -. .-..-. - / .. -. - . .-. ..-. . .-. . .-.-.-

Observers. Can’t interfere.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Harry, I’m sorry but I’m…I’m not coming. Not—not right now. I don’t know when I’ll be able to—I mean, I know I can’t stay. I know that I have to keep moving, that I can’t let myself become a sitting duck for Junior to—

[click, static]

I buried Donnie today. It took…all day. It wasn’t easy or pleasant or—

I just wanted to give him some peace. I think I picked a spot that he would have liked. I did what I could to make a marker and—

[click, static]

Fuck. I just can’t believe he’s gone. Nothing about it feels real. Nothing about finding him even felt real, I was just getting used to the idea and now he’s—

[click, static]

It’s not that I blame you, Harry. But I also…don’t not. I know this is all my fault, that we’re here, that Don is—was here—that Junior feels he needs to get revenge or find his way out through blood but—

How far do we go back, you know? How far until we find the root of the blame? Billings’ death was the catalyst, but I never would’ve tried to escape if we hadn’t gotten that flat tire. Is it the prison’s fault for not taking care of their vans? Is it some administrator’s fault for transferring us to wherever it was we were going? Is it Pete’s fault for deciding on that job? Or all of our fault for not fighting back the moment the cops found us. 

Or is it your fault, Harry, for us being in that position in the first place? For your selfish and short-sighted—

[click, static]

Goddammit. 

[click, static]

I buried Don today and all I can think about is every single thing I did that led to this point. Back then, sure, but also…this week. Yesterday. A month ago. If I hadn’t sought him out, if I hadn’t found him, if I hadn’t left to find you—

[click, static]

If I’d just listened to Fox. 

What if I had listened? Did you know this would happen, Fox? Is that what you were trying to communicate to me? If so, you did an absolute shit job. If there was a way—if there is a way—for me to fix all of this, you need to tell me, and tell me plainly. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

-.. --- . ... -. .-..-. - / -. . . -.. / ..-. .. -..- .. -. --.

Doesn’t need fixing

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[content warning: death and violence]

[click, static]

It doesn’t even look like it was on purpose. He wasn’t shot, it’s not like Junior came here and—

[click, static]

He tried to get on the radio to tell me. It wasn’t—it wasn’t interference or something wrong with the equipment, it was just that he was already—

[click, static]

Why did you go outside? Why not stay put by the radio after you called me? And what were you trying to say? Your voice was so weak and—

[click, static]

He was—he was stabbed, I think. And there’s a bruise on his face that wasn’t there when I left so they must have had some kind of fight and why would you stab him, Junior? Why that? Or was it that Donnie had the knife first and rushed you and—

I keep playing out every possible scenario in my head and they’re all ghoulish and terrible. But I can’t stop it. Like a film reel going round and round in front of my eyes, a million ways to die, a million ways to be killed. The—the injustice of it, the irony. I want to throw up. It shouldn’t have been him. It should’ve been me. I just found him and—

[click, static]

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[content warning: death]

[click, static]

He’s…he’s dead. Donnie is… 

[click, static]

I got back and I wasn’t even out of the car before I saw—

[click, static]

His body isn’t even cold yet. He’s soft to the touch, if I’d just driven faster, then maybe he’d—

[click, static]

But I didn’t. And he’s not. He’s…oh, I’m gonna be si—

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I got—Donnie and I, we rigged up a long range radio to transmit slightly off frequency—

Apparently, after hearing snippets of my transmissions, Donnie got…uncharacteristically into radios. Being in New York, he had access to way more information than I did and has surpassed my knowledge by…a lot. I guess having a decently functioning radio and Birdie to occupy me early on left me less inclined to really dig in. 

Anyway, he figured out a way to transmit off the normal channels and still be received through my radio by me just turning the Delta Tune knob and thirty minutes ago—

[click, static]

Maybe I’m being worried over nothing. He’s been sending me updates, not extensive, just check-ins and little observations about how things have been going—we chose some predetermined times for me to switch over to the off-frequency and at our last check-in—

It’s probably nothing. Interference or a bad connection, or something wrong with his push-to-talk. Because it sounded like—

[click, static]

It’s better to be safe rather than sorry. I’m only a few hours away—though still have several hours to go before I reach Harry, I think I over did it on the zagging—so I’m just gonna…I’m gonna go back. And I think I’m going to insist he comes with me. We can—we can find new supplies and all the rest as we go forward after picking up Harry. It’s more important now to stick together.

Well, either way, I picked up the ingredients for ambrosia salad so…at the very least, I can make it for him now, rather than later. If a ladder has fallen on him or something, at least I’ll be able to cheer him up. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey Alpha Romeo calling out for anyone else who might be out there. 

[click, static]

Maybe my mistake this whole time was not staying in the Northeast—everything is so close here, and now that I know why—or at least, I have an idea why certain people are here and others aren’t—it stands to reason that most of the people who’d be in this place would be in the Northeast. That’s where most of my life was centered and…

Well, I guess there’s no point in using any callsign or code name. If I have other enemies out there beside Junior…well, I’m not sure who they’d be and I’m not sure how it gets worse, so… 

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, Channel 19, this is Abi Rogers driving through New England, looking for other survivors. 

[click, static]

Maybe it’s strange to use that word. What did we survive? The last seven years living on our own I guess. Survivors of my mistake. 

In any case, I’m zig-zagging as I move up north, just to be safe, and I’m going to be on this channel all day on the off chance I come into someone’s radius. A long shot, I know, but I’ve been feeling more optimistic lately. 

It’s odd, isn’t it? Not too long ago, I came face to face with a man who wanted to kill me and then one of my mysterious fair weather friends tried to repeat that particularly unpleasant encounter. By all accounts, I should be feeling the most downtrodden and scared that I’ve felt since I got arrested. 

But finding an old friend, someone I truly never thought I would see again…it’s like air in my lungs. Despite being alone, Donnie really is so much the same person he was when we first met. It’s like a warm cup of coffee, talking to him, hearing his ridiculous stories, being teased by him. It’s easy to fall back into the regular patterns.

The other day I said he thought I was softer than I was, but what he actually said was “you seem sadder than you were, Abi”. Which I guess I can’t fault him for noticing. Even with how happy I was to see him, there’s still this cloud…

I don’t know if I realized how much it had sunk into who I am. Loneliness isn’t new for me, hardship, fear—while there have been new kinds of challenges these last seven years, the fundamentals of who I am haven’t encountered anything they can’t bear. 

I have been missing people more than I thought I would. As in—if you’d told me a decade ago that I’d be stuck in a place without strangers, a place where I just had to focus on living, and I could technically do whatever I want, I’m not sure I would’ve seen that as a bad deal. But the reality…well, being with Don has just put into stark focus just how much I miss talking to people. Being in New York reminded me just how much I loved getting lost in a crowd. 

So there was bound to be some change in demeanor, I think that’s pretty normal. I have no idea how Donnie was able to stay sane by himself all these years, how he was able to stay so much the same. 

I think being around Harry has been making me sad for a really long time. It’s a funny thing, that. When I first told Donnie that that’s where I’ve been—that Harry and I have been hiding out—he made a joke that I’d won the top prize in this shitty world. That he often felt like locking the two of us in a room until we could work things out. 

I had no idea—that our…dynamic was so apparent to other people. But according to him, it was a point of discussion amongst the other three. Which is absolutely mortifying and also, strangely validating. So he was plenty happy for me that I’d finally been given the time and space to knock down whatever wall was holding us back. He couldn’t comprehend why, over six years, we never managed to do it. 

And, of course, I can’t really tell him why, can I. I didn’t understand why myself until the months before I left, didn’t understand why Harry kept herself at arm’s length, I took her coldness for disinterest, not guilt. So I just told Donnie that we’re both too stubborn to make the first step. After all, that’s not exactly wrong. 

(sigh) I don’t know, maybe it’ll be different this time. Maybe now that everything’s out in the open, now that we know why we’re here, that it was my fault, now that we’ve got a little bit of the gang back together…

I’m not saying I’m over it. I’m not saying forgiveness is that easy, but maybe…maybe we can move forward.

Either way, I don’t feel sad anymore. Not like I have been. The loneliness that I felt with Harry, that got worse these past months as I’ve driven all around this country, that was at it’s most engulfing when I found Leann…it’s like that weight has been lifted off of me. Moving forward shouldn’t be so hard now that I’m not dragging it.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, Donnie and I have been having a fun time playing, well, if not “house”…”normal weekend away and the world is just outside the door”, but now that we’ve just…agreed to disagree about Junior, we realized it’s time for the old crew reunion to be complete. 

Donnie thinks it’s going to be easier for me to just go get Harry, than to try and broadcast something to tell her where we are that could be picked up and deciphered by Junior. So I’m getting in the car today and head North. Once I get her and come back…we’ll figure it out from there. There’s no reason that Junior would be able to find us where we’re at—not if he hasn’t found us so far—so I think we’ve got a few more days at least before we need to seriously consider moving. 

But we’re rats in a maze here in the Northeast. It’s three against one now, so I’m not exactly concerned but after hearing about my whole encounter with Junior, Donnie went into that protective older brother mode he would get in sometimes, the one that led him to teach me self-defense. Another thing about him that hasn’t changed. 

He’s staying behind to “fortify” the place we’re staying, whatever that means, and to start building up the kind of supplies we’ll need to safely move to a new spot. Sounds to me like he’s expecting a war, but there really is no reasoning with him when he sets his mind to something. 

I don’t know, maybe war is exactly what we’re doing. If it is, we’ve got a much better chance of surviving now than I did a week ago. With both Donnie and Harry…well, trying to stay alive with two whole other people to pick up the slack feels like luxury. 

But I don’t want to be at war with anyone. Though, if I have to be, there’s no two people I’d rather have in the trenches with me.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, we’re at a bit of an impasse. Neither of us will budge on what we think the right way forward is so we’re going to…

Well. I don’t know. We’ll figure something else out. A compromise. 

We need some more supplies first. We can’t actually survive on beer and beer alone. Though it has been nice to drink together like the old days. Donnie said he hasn’t had very much to drink the last few years, just a beer on special days or when things were particularly hard to handle. Sounds like he spent the first two years—

I don’t know if this is okay to share. I guess he told me all this stuff. Not you. 

He agrees with me about the cigarettes. That it’s a fucking tragedy they taste the way they do now. There’s lots of things that we both miss from the real world, and not just sex and cigarettes. 

Donnie misses ambrosia. You know, the fruit salad? I could never stand the stuff, but he loved it. And I think…I mean, I could probably make that, right? With canned fruit? Any marshmallows I find might be pretty stale at this point but…yeah, I bet I could make it. 

One of us should have something we want.  [click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

God, it’s fucking helpful having someone else around to bounce ideas off of. My stupid hungover brain wasn’t exactly functioning at the highest point this morning but I think we burned through so many conversational topics last night that over breakfast we actually talked seriously about this whole…deal. Not just the Junior of it all, not just the basics, but the particulars of how this fucked up world works. 

He agrees with most of my theories—that we’re in a separate place, but time marched on normally without us somewhere else. That the photographs are a glance into that place. He’s heard some weird sounds though the years too, so the sounds of cars, the tornado siren…all that stuff, everything he’s heard, he agrees that it’s probably bleeding in from that place. From home. Or maybe other timelines, because we’re definitely not the only people stuck in a place like this. That wouldn’t make any kind of sense. 

He’s less certain to say with any finality what he thinks the situation with Birdie and Fox is. We both have a hard time with the idea of any kind of all-knowing, all-powerful entity, but we’re also both familiar with being on a government’s wanted list so…the idea of some kind of surveilling body isn’t crazy.  
That’s what he thinks they are. That they’re supposed to be monitoring us, monitoring the other timelines, which is why Birdie disappears sometimes. And he had the thought—the idea that maybe that’s why they use morse code too. That maybe it’s easier to transmit over long distances using only morse, that maybe they’ve got some kind of relay system built into the country. Which would make sense, I guess—something that existed before the timeline split off, something that’s maybe operating off of old telegraph lines. What’s a longer distance than trying to communicate across all of space and time?

That still doesn’t answer the question of where Birdie and Fox are. Are they here in this timeline? Are they in the real world? In somewhere in between? And…who are they? Part of the US government? Independent scientists? Something other than human?

I’m not sure we’ll ever know, but it’s been nice to theorize with someone. And I’m not holding my breath that Birdie or Fox will respond—and I’m not sure I even want to hear from Fox—but that’s bothering me less than it usually would. It’s easier to bear not knowing when I’ve got someone else who is equally as clueless as me. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(tipsy) Donnie and I have kissed and made up. 

Well, obviously we haven’t kissed. But, you know what I mean. We drank a lot of beer—apparently the moment he got to Massachusetts, he started stockpiling, which is really so typical. But it helped. Our issues are resolved. Without anyone having to kiss anybody else. 

(a laugh) Poor Donnie. He was pretty sad when I told him I hadn’t found anyone else beside Leann and Junior. Not that there’s no one else out there to find but…you know. The odds don’t look great. But the poor guy hasn’t had sex in seven years and I think it’s making him crazier than not having anyone to talk—

[click, static]

(off mic)—c'mon

[click, static]

(off mic) —not. Sh! (on mic) Anyway, not like I’ve seen any action in the last seven years because I haven’t. Despite what some people might—

[click, static]

(off mic)—not ever, I promise. (on mic) He doesn’t believe me. But he should. If I did have anything to report, I’m sure you would’ve heard about it already, my night people, my listeners, because I’m not sure I would’ve ever been able to fucking shut up about it. Oh, come—

[click, static]

He’s laughing at me. This is an absurd conversation. (off mic) And you’re an absurd person. (laughing) Oh yeah, well how about the impressions, how do you—

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, Donnie is driving me crazy, in that way that he always had, that I guess I’d just forgotten in the years and the distance. And I just need to…

[click, static]

I needed a break. 

I wonder if bull-headed people just draw in other bull-headed people. Like attracts like, right? Or maybe it’s simply a necessity of our profession. Or maybe we were drawn to criminal enterprises because we’re stubborn and immovable. Either way, it feels like every single person in my life—both back in the real world and here—is fucking…intractable. 

We’re still not agreeing on the best approach. I’m—well, I’m obviously not going to say what the nature of the disagreement is. Whatever we end up doing, if we end up doing anything, I clearly can’t tell you until after its done. If then, even. 

I will say, my need to speak my feelings and thoughts into my CB has definitely been tempered by finding Donnie. Sure, maybe I’m not as uncensored with him, but that has less to do with trust than with actually getting a response back. It is easier to say everything that comes into my head to a radio that doesn’t talk back. I trust Donnie with my life, would tell him practically anything he wants to know, but he has things to say to me, and it…I don’t know, it quiets everything in my brain. 

Even if he is driving me up the fucking wall. I hadn’t realized how much I’ve been inoculated to Harry’s particular form of crazy-making behavior. Not that I was unbothered by her—that isn’t the case at all, that’s for fucking sure—but more that I eventually stopped immediately blowing my top when we’d get into a snit. But even sharing a space with a new person, the littlest things are irritating. Tripping over his shoes, having him yell “what?” when I’m talking to myself and he thinks I’m talking to him. Hearing him talk to himself and doing the same. 

None of it…it’s not a problem. That’s not why I’m sitting in my car talking on this. The argument we had—it’s not about leaving your shoes out. I’m just. I guess I’m making an observation. About how ill-equipped I feel to be around other people, even when it’s all I want in this world. 

It doesn’t dull the joy—the argument, the annoyances. I’m still on the top of the world. Just hearing his voice in the morning as he grumbles about waking up feels like the sun coming out after a storm. I might want to throttle him right now, but I still wouldn’t let him go for anything. And I think he feels the same way. 

Anyway, I should get back to him. Signing off. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey calling out for Harry—I don’t know if you can hear this where you are, or if you’re even listening, or if you’re just waiting in that gallery for me to show up, but you might have to wait a little bit longer. 

Donnie wants to solve the Junior problem. And we both think it’s probably safer for you to stay put where you are while we figure it out. 

We’re currently…in disagreement over what solving that problem looks like. And Junior is probably listening to this, even if you’re not, so I shouldn’t say more. But you’ve got the radio and the car, and I’m sure you’ve been able to find supplies up there, so just…sit tight for a bit. There’s no point in all three of us being in mortal danger if we can help it. 

Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

So, today I asked Donnie what he remembered about me.  I thought you all might enjoy an update. 

At first he, of course, turned the question around on me. I don’t think he heard my entire transmission the other day talking about it, about feeling safe around him, but he knows I’ve talked a little about everyone—and yeah, I think I’m okay to talk about my perception of Don, and how accurate it is, and still respect his rule that I don’t reveal too much about him or his life. 

Huh?

[click, static]

Yeah, he says it’s fine, as long as I’m being honest about what the says about me. Which is fair. 

And—

[click, static]

(laughing) I’ll take that as a compliment. 

Don says I’m a regular Jean Shepherd. Maybe that’s not a cultural reference that’ll land with everyone, I think he may have just been a New York guy—he had this radio show on WOR, for us “night people”. That’s what he calls—called—all of us who were fighting against the…what was it?

[click, static]

—that’s right, yeah. The “creeping meatballism”. Of course you remember that.  Mediocrity, basically. And the celebration of it.

Shep could talk and talk and talk and he’d talk about everything from his childhood in Indiana to railing against cultural conformity and, yeah, I guess I get the comparison. What can I say, I get why he did this for so many years. There’s something to speaking all your thoughts into a radio. 

But back to the point I’m trying to make—Don is basically who I remember him being. Yeah—I remember you being pretty easy-going and warm, when you know someone at least, but when you’re serious about something, you’re serious. There’s no arguing with you or talking you out of it. 

You also deflect questions about yourself or your feelings with humor, which—

[click, static]

Okay, yeah, that’s fair, I do that too. But you remember me differently than I was. I’m still pretty straight-forward, and I don’t take shit from you, which you always liked, but it’s…easier to be around me. Don’t shake your head, that’s right! You said I used to be harder. That living here, with Harry, has made me soft. 

What?

[click, static]

—not right now. Because I don’t want to—

Okay, clearly there’s a reason Shep didn’t have a co-host. I think I’ll call it there.

So goodnight, dear night people. Goodnight. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You know, it’s so funny how people don’t change, even in the kind of extraordinary circumstance we’re in. The apocalypse, an empty world, seven years of trying to find each other and Donnie still cannot wake up before ten AM. 

I don’t know when I became an early riser. I thought it was one of those things that just happened as you got older, but it clearly doesn’t happen to everybody. Donnie’s older than me and he still sleeps like a teenager. 

I…I’m not sure where to begin in talking about him. We spent hours yesterday, sitting at the kitchen table and shooting the shit. We had a hell of a lot to catch up on. 

I know you might be curious, whoever you are, what Don was up to all this time. But that’s another thing he wants to keep to himself. I’m not sure why—from what he’s told me, it’s not like there’s anything particularly of note from the last seven years, aside from the particulars of surviving—but I’m going to respect his choice. I guess that’s another way that he hasn’t changed—you spend decades keeping certain information siloed from one part of your life and other information siloed from another part and that just becomes…normal.  

That was a bit of a theme among the crew, I guess. Pete was incredibly  secretive about his home life—where he lived, who he lived with. He could’ve had a wife and kids for all we knew. Don didn’t talk much about his family, even though he saw them all the time, and they didn’t know about us; even Harry’s parents were still around, in New York no less, but I didn’t even know that until we were here. As far as they were concerned, she was a up-and-coming painter, which wasn’t untrue just…incomplete. 

But besides being nostalgic about Chicago sometimes, Richie seemed to be like me — his whole life was one complete piece. Maybe that’s why we always got together at his place. And I guess we each had people—girlfriends, mostly—who we didn’t introduce to our…professional life, but I’m not sure either of us really took pains to hide it.  Or, ever got very serious or committed in those parts of our lives.  

I’m not good at compartmentalizing I don’t think. I guess that goes hand in hand with the way I tend to fixate on a particular thing or person, but I just don’t know how all of them could stand to lead such different lives depending on who they’re with. I don’t share Don’s inclination toward privacy, even knowing that talking on here might eventually lead to my ruin. 

Not that I’ve told you everything. Not everything I have told you is true. But I don’t feel like I’m hiding when I talk on here. 

That said…god, it is different talking to Don. (laughs) I mean, christ, it’s—it’s so good. To talk to someone who talks back, to talk to someone who knows me. I don’t have to explain certain things, I don’t have to make excuses for who I am or what I do. Not that I—well, I think I have done that a little, to you. Not knowing who I’m talking to, well, it makes me want to be a better version of myself, one who had a…I don’t know, dignified job. One who contributed to the world in a positive way instead of breaking it. 

Don, god bless him, does not seem that pissed about the fact that he’s here because of me. Don’t get me wrong, he hates being here, he’s furious he is, but when I explained everything—my theory that killing Billings created some sort of branching timeline that we’re all stuck in, everyone who was affected by that action—he…he got it. He got why I did what I did. And he doesn’t blame me for it. After all, how the hell would I have known what would happen? There is…there is some comfort to be taken in that. 

When he asked—I mean, he wondered why he was here of all people. He hasn’t seen Pete or Richie anywhere, and he’s looked, so he couldn’t figure why he was singled out. They were all awaiting trial so why is he—

[click, static]

I told him about Leann. That there are some random ripple effects, that there might be even more people out there who we’ve never even met that had the trajectory of their lives changed by what I did. That we may never really understand how and why the dominoes fell the way they did. 

[click, static]

Anyway, I’m gonna see what I can scrounge up for breakfast. Maybe by the time he wakes up, I’ll be able to surprise Don with something. Seven years and he hasn’t once had the pleasure of waking up to someone else having made breakfast. 

[click, static]

We haven’t talked about that yet, not really. The fact that he was alone and I had Harry. Whenever I tried to ask…

[click, static]

So, yeah, I’ll be off the radio for the rest of the day. We have even more catching up to do.  
Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

So…I found him! I fucking found him. I don’t even—

[click, static]

The whistling. I thought I was losing my mind at first. It was so weak, and kept going out before I could catch all of it but I knew—

I mean, that’s our whistle. Our lookout whistle. Who else could it be but Don? And after all this time and so many attempts to find Birdie or…or anyone, driving around until the signal got stronger actually fucking worked. 

I— what?

[click, static]  

(calling out off mic) —because I have to! Just—hold on a sec, okay? 

Sorry, he— Don doesn’t get why I’m telling the radio this news when there’s a guy out there trying to kill me but I want Harry to know and I—

I want you to know. 

I don’t—I’m not sure who you are in this scenario. Maybe Birdie, my first friend in this world, even if I’m not sure they are a friend. Maybe…

Look, the fact that my transmissions got all the way to Harry when I was in fucking Los Angeles…maybe…maybe other people are out there, hearing me. If there’s even the slightest chance—

[click, static]

—(off mic) you could just tell them yourself. (to the mic) Alright. (off mic) Yeah, that’s fine, just let me finish—

[click, static]  

Donnie refuses to come onto the radio. Apparently whistling is as much as he’s willing to reveal about what he sounds like. So those “morse code freaks” don’t have more intel on him. 

He’s also requested that I stop talking about him and his family on here. Which I will do. But I’m still…well, I think you deserve to know, dear listener, what it’s like to finally be with someone after all this time. 

God, I still can’t believe it. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy. It’s like every holiday ever all at once. Like I’ve been walking through the desert for years and finally, finally stumbled on an oasis. 

[click, static]

Don’s laughing at being called an oasis. (off mic) Yeah, I would never have guessed it either!

(to mic) Sorry, things are a little chaotic, clearly. I—well, I’m going to go have a goddamn conversation with a goddamn human being, in person and everything. 

So…signing off. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Except I don’t, remember? Because I had to abandon the car that I’d been driving and all the supplies I’d built up over the last few months after the last time Junior tried to kill me. 

[click, static]

“You have gun too”…I swear to fucking god. What is your game Fox? Who are you? Are you just bored? Has my intrepid journey through the country not been enough entertainment for you? Are you hoping to manipulate me into some kind of OK Corral final stand?

It’s not going to work. I don’t have a gun anymore and even if I did, I wouldn’t—I will defend myself, and I’ll defend Harry, but I’m going to do everything in my power to avoid a situation in which I would have to defend us. 

Fuck this. Fuck you. I’m—I’m done. 

Birdie, if you’ve got any opinions or insight on any of this, now would be a great time to pipe up. 

[click, static]

[a strange whistling sound]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You said it could be fixed. Weeks ago, Fox you said—I think you only sent the message once, maybe because you were worried Birdie would interfere, but I—I heard it. And I…I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t let myself hope yet, not when I was already so hopeful I would find Don. 

Was this what you meant by it being fixable? Is my death at the hands of that boy the way to fix this? Did you send me to Junior so that he’d shoot me and everything would go back to the way it was?

God, that can’t really be the answer, can it? I know I’ve said—I mean, I’ve wondered. It does make a certain kind of sense—my actions brought us all here, all these people are being collectively punished for something I did or, at the very least, were punted here because of something I didn’t do or…something I would’ve done. I would’ve done something back in the real world that would’ve eventually affected Leann’s life in some way. And because I’m not there…

I’m guessing that’s why Don is here too. Because Harry is. And maybe without her, because he wasn’t actually in the building at the time, there wasn’t enough evidence to—

[click, static]

Why am I even trying to work this all out? What does it matter? We’re here, with each other, and I don’t see how that changes. Because I’m not going to just walk into my own execution, not now, not when I’m on my way to—

[click, static]

I just don’t believe that the solution to this is going to be in the barrel of an angry boy’s gun. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

-.-- --- ..- / .... .- ...- . / --. ..- -. / - --- ---

you have gun too

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(a slight intake of breath)

[click, static]

Do you think I’m a fucking idiot, Fox? Did you think that you’d earned my trust simply by the virtue of being one of the few people in the world I talk to? Did you think that having sent me Leann’s coordinates before meant I would blindly follow wherever you led?

I know I said there was no harm in trying, that it’s good to have hope, but that doesn’t mean that I’m new to this. That doesn’t mean I was going to be fucking stupid about it. 

[click, static] 

I think you’ve forgotten who I am. I wasn’t some sort of criminal mastermind, or bad-ass GI Joe, but I spent my life sneaking and thieving and never getting caught. In fact I wouldn’t have been caught if— 

I’ve been taking care of myself since I was fifteen years old. I’ve learned when to trust people and when not to and I’m fucking good at calculating risk. And maybe I’ve let myself get soft this last year, maybe I’ve wanted to trust a little more than usual but that trust has always been conditional. 

I don’t know what you’re playing at, but if you were banking on me just driving right up to the coordinates and announcing myself, you’re not very good at whatever you’re trying to do. 

And I know what you’ll say—maybe Junior just also heard the coordinates and just beat me there. Except I didn’t say how close I was to the coordinates you gave. I was fucking close. And he was already there. I even checked the hood of his car, that stupid VW—it was cold. He’d been there for a while. You sent me to him.

You sent me to him and either you knew exactly where he was or you told him where to go first. Because it looked like he was waiting. And he had—he had a gun, Fox, and I’m sure he would’ve shot me on the spot. He was waiting for something. For someone. 

So I waited too. I watched him for two hours. And you know why I think you told him where to go and then gave me those coordinates? Because he started to talk. I’m not someone who is going to judge someone else for talking to themselves, I would be a fucking hypocrite if I did. But he was…he was yelling. He was yelling for me. He was furious when I didn’t show up. And it…it made him look even more frail. Like the scared little kid he practically is. The gun was shaking in his hand. I doubt he could’ve shot straight if he’d tried. 

Junior might be inexperienced, he might be ill-equipped, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous. The way he was shouting, the anger that’s inside him…you don’t have to know what you’re doing to be a threat. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Maybe it’s fucking foolish of me to even attempt it, but the coordinates aren’t far and the last time I found a dead body—if these are really coordinates of someone alive and I have a chance to get to them before anything happens…I’m not taking that risk. 

It’s a small diversion but Don didn’t show up at the house. No one did. And maybe…maybe Fox is doing me an actual favor and there will be someone at these coordinates, someone who is alive and well and maybe…maybe it's even Don. Maybe this is how I find him. 

And if not…well, there’s no harm in trying. There’s no harm in having hope. I’m pretty sure hope is what’s kept me alive this long. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I think I’m close. To finding Don that is. I got to his uncle’s house and there’s definitely evidence that someone’s been living here. I guess it’s possible that his uncle, or his cousins, were also affected by the ripple, but…how? Don kept what he did from his family. Then again, I still don’t know how Leann ended up here—I have a feeling I’ll never really know. I guess, in the end, it isn’t all that important. She met her fate, and there’s nothing I can do about it now. I just have to live with it. 

But Don, I can still find him. There’s open cans in this house, the place is in a certain amount of disarray that makes me think…someone’s been here. It’s dusty, but I swear there’s some tracks through the dust, like someone’s walked through. So I’m gonna stay here for the night, and see if he comes back. Or, if whoever lives here comes back. 

[click, static]

I’m sorry for taking too long to get there, Harry. But just think—maybe by the time I drive up to the gallery, I’ll have Don in my passenger seat. It won’t be just us anymore. We’ll actually have someone else to talk to. Someone to mediate, more likely, not that Don is the paragon of diplomacy. 

But it’ll be good for us, I think. Yeah, it’ll be good for things to not be just us anymore. 

[click, static]

And we—we don’t need to tell him everything, okay? I’ll tell him what happened, why were here—he needs to know, especially with Junior out there. But I won’t tell him what you did unless you decide to. And I’m not sure it’d be the best idea. So…your secret is safe with me. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

....- ..--- / ..--- ..... / ....- ..--- / --... .---- / .---- ....- / ----.

42 25 42 71 14 9

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I remembered that Don had family in Massachusetts. His uncle and cousins ran a deli in a town called Winchester—the way that man would talk about the sandwiches they’d make…god, what I wouldn’t do for one of them right now. 

Anyway, I figured it couldn’t hurt to check the place out. He wasn’t at the deli—I didn’t expect him to be, that would’ve been quite the fucking coincidence, but I did find exactly what I was hoping for. An address on an old bill. Presumably, his uncle’s home address. 

It’s a few towns over, so I’m headed there now. 

[click, static]

This area is nice. I haven’t spent all that time in Massachusetts, at least outside of Boston and Provincetown. But it’s warm and sunny and there’s a little humidity creeping into the air and (deep breath), I don’t know, it’s nice. Despite everything, I’m feeling…hopeful. 

It reminds me a little of where I grew up. There are more houses and the houses are closer together—I’m sure there are parts of Massachusetts that are rural, but I am squarely in the suburbs. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that spring has finally arrived and the changing of the seasons always makes me think of home. 

[click, static]

Huh. I haven’t thought about my childhood home as home in a long time. Home has been nebulous, ever-changing in my mind. But I guess if I’ve ever had a touchstone, it’s the house I grew up in and…New York City. Touchstones of a different kind. But places that my mind always leaps to if I’m confronted with something that reminds me in the slightest of them. 

I don’t think you can ever really run away from home. That’s more or less what I did, but it lingers, always. You can never undo the way that you’ve been shaped. You can pour new concrete over the broken sidewalk, but the footprints left on the previous layers will always be there, waiting to be revealed when the fresh new coat eventually erodes. 

[click, static]

(a small laugh) I can hear Harry’s voice in my head correcting my metaphor. Making it about paint—where you grow up is the charcoal sketch and no matter how much you paint over a canvas, the layers and textures are always there. But I don’t know painting. Not that I know concrete but…

That’s one of those things I always figured would be the deciding factor in whether or not Harry—I mean, she’s sophisticated, you know? I don’t know if she can hear this up in Maine—I’m sure she can, but maybe she doesn’t have the radio turned on. She’d probably be happy to hear it anyway. That I think of her as sophisticated. But she is. Her secret love for Hank Williams and all. She appreciates fine things, delicate things, beautiful things. 

And I’m not any of that. I’ve always been rough and blunt—the finest thing I do is picking a lock or breaking a safe and even then, sometimes brute force is the best way forward. Harry is a painting, and I’m a block of concrete. 

[click, static]

God, I hope Don isn’t listening to this. He’d never let me live it down. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Alright, I’ve done my final checks of all of Don’s regular hideouts and he’s still nowhere to be found. But I’m not giving up hope entirely. I guess I should say they’re my final checks for now. I figure after I go and find Harry we can come back to NY and look together. 

I realize he might not be in the city anymore, but I don’t know where else to look. And I don’t know, maybe it will be nice for Harry and I to revisit the old spots. Staying in Richie’s loft really has me thinking about all those old times. I think I’ve spent more time in this apartment than any apartment I’ve actually lived in. I guess that’s not true. Maybe spent more time awake than any apartment I ever lived in. Because I only slept over here a few times. But the times were always good, weren’t they. That’s how it feels now anyway. 

There’s a part of me that knows that can’t possibly be true. The version of Harry in the past, in my thoughts, changes all the time. I remember her at times harsher than she probably actually was and at other times sweeter and more forgiving. And maybe it’s because she was both those things—all of those things, all at once, all the time. Or maybe it’s because my feelings on her continue to change. 

I don’t remember when I first—I mean, I remember what I thought about her the first time I met her. And I remember what I thought about her when we were in that prison van, driving through the dark. Before I knew what I know now. Before I’d done what I did. 

But it’s the in between that’s…not hazy, but like a watercolor where all the paints have run together. In the near decade we knew each other before everything happened…I mean, I always felt strongly. When I disliked her, I hated her and when I liked her, I…

I don’t remember when it started. I don’t remember when that swirl, that storm of feelings—well, it’s not that it ever went away, but there started to be this thing underneath it, informing everything. At a certain point, when I disliked her, I didn’t hate her anymore, I was just frustrated and tortured. And when I liked her, well, I was also frustrated and tortured. But I don’t know when that started, I don’t know when she became someone who was so far beneath my skin that it didn’t matter what I felt about her moment to moment because it never changed the fundamental truth that I wanted to be around her. 

Anyway, I don’t know if I’m making sense, it’s late and I’m planning to get up early tomorrow to start driving, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, being in this space. I couldn’t stop thinking about if this living room was the place that that feeling first started. I can't stop thinking about my own recollections of Pete and Don and Richie. Were they who I thought they were? 

Was Pete always this central, stable pillar in my life? This person I could lean on and rely on and who I still didn’t know all that much about. In my mind, he’s been such a morally upstanding figure, somebody that…somebody that I think about when I start to spiral about the things that I’ve done and I just think—Pete. Pete would still stand by me. He’s loyal and he’s good. Then I think, he was a criminal. Just like me. He lied and stole and tricked people. So that image in my head of him being…I don’t know, Captain America is…well, it must not be entirely true. 

And it’s the same with Don and Richie. I remember them being, well, knuckleheads, but knuckleheads who cared. Who I had started to feel safe around even if in the beginning I wasn't so sure about them. But again, is that just thinking about how I’d feel if I saw them now—that the mere presence of other people would help me feel some sense of normalcy, some sense of calm. 

Memories are a funhouse mirror, aren’t they? We never really know if what we remember is true. I’m not even sure we remember events with any sort of clarity. I used to think that the one thing we did know was how we felt about things, but now I’m not even sure that’s the case. And the strangest thing of all is that everybody experiences this. Everybody has versions of people in their lives that exist in their memories. And we can never really know how another sees us, how another person remembers us, or judges us for our actions. Anyway, I am gonna find Don and when I do, I’m gonna ask him what he remembers about me. 

And when I see Harry, I’ll…

I don’t know how this time apart might have changed the version of me in her head. 

[click, static]

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, I think I’m—I’m ready to read this note now. Beyond just the date and the first few lines. 

“April 6th, 1975

Abigail—

I’m okay. If you do find this, I have a feeling you’re going to have questions about the blood. You always have questions about everything. It’s one of your best qualities and also one of your most infuriating. Though I suppose I should be grateful you’ve been dogged in your pursuit of the truth. Maybe this can be repaired.” 

I don’t know if she means the jacket or…

“It’s chicken blood. I am not as capable as you when it comes to butchery.”

That’s…that’s as far as I got after finding the note. The relief hit me like a freight train but…

I don’t want to be capable of butchery. I know that’s not what you meant but I…

Anyway. Moving forward.

“I’m sorry I didn’t reach our meeting in time, but after that man came to the house, I went to ground. I heard a car in the distance a few times over the last few days, but I couldn’t be sure it was you. 

I got the car you left me. And the radio. I’ve been transmitting out regularly but I’m going to guess that you haven’t heard me. That’s what I’m choosing to believe anyway, given I’ve sent you more than a few messages over the months, with no reply. And, yet, somehow, I’ve heard many of your transmissions—not all, and they are very often full of static and breaks in the signal, but you have reached our garage even from Los Angeles.”

She crossed out something here. I think it says…(crinkle of paper) "I thought about joining you” but I can’t read the rest. Goddammit, Harry…

“Do you remember that one diner that we went to every month for all of ’69? I know that you’ve been to a lot of roadside diners in the last ten months, so maybe they’ve run together in the way that they’re almost purpose built to do. The one down the street, the one we could walk to—we haven’t been back in ages, because I got spooked the one time the neon sign flickered back to life, but we’d carry thermoses of tea and pretend that we were going out for a morning cup, because the monotony of our existence was threatening to destroy us both. 

Whether you remember it or not, that diner has a working radio. I believe it too spooked me when there was a power surge, even if it was just static. In any case, I’m no longer at that diner, but I was briefly and heard several of your transmissions. There was no way to speak back to you, as it wasn’t that kind of radio, but it was picking up your signal just the same. 

I’m not in the state anymore. I threw the jacket from the car as I drove out of town, a final ditch attempt to contact you. I had a feeling you would take it with you if you found it, despite the state of it, and just had to hope that you would find these pages sewn inside the lining. 

I’ll keep transmitting, so we can find a time and place to meet, but there are conversations I don’t want to have over the airwaves, or in a letter. So I’m going to give you instructions now, that I’ll keep repeating on the radio, in the hopes that you’ve found this even if you can’t hear me. 

Do you remember the show I did up north at that gallery near the water? You’d been in Provincetown with Francis for a few days and he drove the both of you up for the opening. It wasn’t a particularly short journey, but manageable. You both stayed the weekend, at that little B&B that shares its name with one of the planets. 

I don’t think you thought very much of my show. It was one of my more abstract periods. I know you never cared much for that style, but I do have to wonder if you’d have been more generous to it if you’d known what inspired it. Then again—”

And she crossed that out too…

“It was still nice having you and Francis there. I always wondered why you’d agreed to come. You seemed so unhappy to be there. It makes me wonder if my demeanor made you think that I was unhappy to have you there. That was never my intent. 

I’m headed there now. I think you left me with enough fuel to make the journey, and I want to get somewhere familiar that isn’t terribly close to where we've been. Meet me there. 

I don’t want to write the name down, for fear that someone else will find this jacket and this note, but I’m going to assume you remember. 

I remembered. The place where we had the picnic. I remembered. And I always knew that you were winding me up about Rothko, but I liked arguing with you. It’s why I never told you that I like Hank Williams. At least, I learned to. 

Harriet”.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

She’s alive. I can’t believe it but she—

In the Carhartt—I, I put it on after I couldn’t go back to sleep and I was pulling it tight around me when I heard this crinkle—it’s like she knew—

It’s fucking chicken blood—

I’m sorry, I just need—a need a second, I—

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I woke up in the middle of the night—I’m still at Richie’s loft and I— for a second, I thought I could hear laughter from the other room. 

When I was very, very small, my parents would have these two couples over for dinner once a month. They would play faro—which is an absolutely ancient game that my mom’s dad used to play with her when she was growing up and, I swear, my parents were the last people in the world to play it—

But anyway, they’d have their friends over and we’d all have dinner together and then they’d play cards until about midnight—or at least, it felt like they were up until late, but I guess I was going to bed so early then. But our house wasn't very big and my room was just off the kitchen, the only room where we had a table big enough for six people and I’d fall asleep to the sounds of their murmuring voices. And if I woke up at all, I’d hear that—their hushed laughter, like a warm breeze coming in from the next room. 

That’s how I feel. In this loft, in Sylvie’s shop, in this whole city—like I’m just the next room over. Maybe I was just dreaming about the times we used to have in this loft, or maybe I really did hear laughter from the living room. Because I’ve heard things before—I’ve seen things. The man in the hotel room in Colorado—I think he really was there. I think our worlds overlapped, just enough, that we got a glimpse. 

And maybe that’s happening here. Richie isn’t in this loft anymore, not unless he got out early, but there’s something nice, comforting, in thinking that this place, even now, with whoever occupies it, is still filled with joy. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I went to Sylvie’s shop. 

She’s still there. I’m—I can’t believe it—she’s still there, doing her thing as far as I can tell, customers and all—

[click, static]

Jesus, I just realized—she’s not there-there. She’s not here. She’s there. God, fuck, um—not to give anyone false hope—I wanted to see if I could prove my theory about the polaroid, or at the very least gather some more evidence in such a big city and I was looking for Don in this pizza place right down the block from Sylvie’s shop and thought…what the hell. 

It’s clear that no one’s been in here in years. Which makes sense. Don knew Sylvie, a little—or at least by reputation—but this isn’t a place he’d spend time in I don’t think. So I’m probably the first one in here since ’68. And it’s…

Well, it’s strange. And sad. And lonely. And a little bit comforting. Which really describes so much of the experience of being back in New York. 

I went to my old place. And by that I mean, I went to the last apartment I’d been living in—I was a few months into a sublet that I’d probably have been in for at least half the year, a friend of a friend of a friend’s place I’d sublet before. And, well, I actually got some of my own fucking clothes which is…god, I’d missed my boots. These nice steel-toed ones that I’d bought for myself after my first significant take. It’s nice to have them back. 

But there wasn’t much else there that was…mine. I mean, the place was never really mine. I did take a few polaroids, and things had been moved around, so I’m assuming the tenant came back and is living here again. I guess they either didn’t care that they missed out on a few sublet payments or they found someone else to live here while they were gone but…well, I’m glad I didn’t fuck up their life. 

But being at Sylvie’s is like…being at home. The smell of it, the sound of glass and china rattling in their cabinets as you walk through the shop. I loved this place. And it feels good to be back, even if I am alone. 

Sylvie would often work on project at the register—the shop was rarely full, but you could hardly tell if anyone else was in it with how winding and full it is. So it’d be easy for her to miss a customer if she didn’t camp out at the register. 

It looks like she was working on an old Tiffany lamp right before…

I wonder if one of the crew brought it to her. It’s a nice piece and genuine Tiffany lamps always go for a decent price. I wonder if she finished it. I’m looking right at it but I wonder where it is now. 

So, anyway, I took a photo of the counter and there she was—I got lucky with the timing because she was checking out a customer who was buying an old mantle clock. There was a big pile of fabric in place of the Tiffany lamp, so I guess she’s mending things at the moment. That always relaxed her. 

She looked…she looked like Sylvie. Older, of course, but no worse for wear. 

I hope she’s happy. I hope she doesn’t wonder about me. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(sighing) I’ve tried his apartment, his favorite bar, all of the old haunts, even a few apartments of girlfriends I knew he had now and again. I even drove out to Long Island to see if I could find where his mom was living—I found her in the book, but no one was home. Which is…odd, right? If Don’s here, it would stand to reason that his presence would ripple out to his family but…well, I guess I have no idea if she was even still alive when we were arrested. He didn’t talk about her much, mostly just about her recipes. But he liked to keep all the crime stuff away from her, I think. 

Maybe that’s why she’s not here. Maybe him being here and him being in prison is just the same. I don’t know if Don would have ever told her what happened to him—called her or written her from jail—because he didn’t want to disappoint her. So, maybe to her, her son is just gone, and would have always been gone, and the how or the where doesn’t affect her life enough to make a difference. 

I knew it would be hard—I knew finding someone in this city without being able to be in a million places at once would be hard, but part of me thinks that he must have left the city and never come back. 

Which is sort of unthinkable in some ways—like Pete, Don never thought about leaving New York. Richie would talk sometimes about missing Chicago, and wanting to go back there, but Don and Pete and Harry would’ve died in New York if they’d had any say. 

But I also see why maybe…he’d want to leave now. 

The city is…very eerie all empty like this. Worse than Vegas or Denver, maybe because I know this city, I know what it’s supposed to sound like, look like, feel like. I know what it feels like when it’s teeming with people. There’s a sense of…wrongness now that there’s no one here. Maybe he just couldn’t take it. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(laughing) Against every single fucking odd, Don is alive. He’s alive and here and—

[click, static]

I can’t believe it, the first place I decide to check—Richie's shitty fucking Alphabet City loft—and Don has left a fucking note. It’s—well, it’s just so Don.

[click, static]

(clearing her throat) “To whoever the fuck might be out there reading this—if you’ve found this, that means you knew Richie, and knew him well enough to go looking for him, which means you’re either one of our crew or you’ve got a few screws loose and you were friends with Richie because of his personality. But, screws loose or not, if you’re in this empty world then I guess I’d like to know you. You can come on over to—“ And then he wrote his address, which I am not going to read out loud “—or—“ and then the name of his favorite bar, which I’m also not going to tell you, “where I am most days.” (laughing) Classic Don.

“And if you’re Richie and you’re reading this—where the hell have you been?

P.S. You still owe me fifteen bucks for that Mets game—never bet against the Mets.”

Maybe things aren’t so bad. Maybe even if this whole crazy situation can’t be fixed…maybe we’ll still be okay.

I’ll see you soon, Don.

[click, static]

[beeps]

.. - / -.-. .- -. / -... . / ..-. .. -..- . -.. 

it can be fixed

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I had the thought—Harry’s contact, whoever they were, whoever she had worked things out with at the…well, whoever it was she was working with, I didn’t ask, I was still so fucking—

[click, static]

They have to be here, right? And it’s not like I’m some great friend of Johnny Law, but surely whoever it was, if they are here, they’d still care about stuff like someone getting murdered. Maybe…maybe I could get them to help me find Harry, or figure out what the fuck to do about Junior. 

If that person is out there, they’d be in New York, right? They’d have to be. And so would Pete and Don and Richie—hell, maybe even Sylvie, though just like Francis, she was already in her golden years so I’m not sure—

Well, regardless, I’m halfway to New York. I don’t think it matters if I tell you I’m headed there, because if there’s one place that’s good to disappear, it’s New York. Even without all the people, there’s hundreds of streets and thousands of buildings and millions of rooms to hide away in. Even if you got on the highway right now and raced there, I still don’t think you’d be able to find me. 

Which…maybe doesn’t bode well for the likelihood of me finding any of my old crew—or whoever Harry was conspiring with—but at least I have an idea of where to look—apartments, old hangouts, penthouses we’d robbed that I’m sure any of us would take advantage of living in now…I’m not going in totally blind. 

God, it would be nice to have someone else with me. I mean, that’s always been true, after the first few weeks of getting some fucking real alone time for the first time in six years, after I’d come down from the righteous fury that was still—

Well, it was nice, for half a second. To be on my own, to be totally unfettered. But for most of this extended roadtrip, it would’ve been nice to have someone by my side. Navigating, scanning the radio channels for anything, playing road games or whatever. Driving so that I could sleep in the passenger seat. 

So there’s rarely been a moment where I didn’t want someone with me. But right now…there’s a reason I started running with a crew when Pete invited me, instead of carrying on on my own. I’d been doing fine, pulling in decent hauls by myself, but even though you’ve got more people who have noisy fucking footsteps or who might make a stupid mistake that might cost you, it always feels…safer with someone else around. 

I wish I had someone to watch my back. I wish I had someone to help me find Harry. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I’ll be next if what? Fox, if you’re trying to tell me that I’ll be next if I go seeking out Junior, if you’re trying to tell me that there’s a next to be, that he already got to Harry—

Shit. Fuck, what the fuck—

[click, static]

And what was with the long tone, huh? Is that you, Birdie? I get the feeling you two don’t like each other, but blocking out each other’s messages or talking over each other is not helpful to me, so keep that to your own time. Communicate on a different frequency, I don’t give a shit. Just stop getting in the way. I’m not interested in whatever petty sci-fi overseer timeline bullshit rivalry you two have going on. 

[click, static]

Is that what you meant, Birdie? When you said you betrayed your job and hurt people? Was Fox one of those people you hurt? Because, jesus, that sure would be a fucking weird coincidence, wouldn’t it? Both of us trapped in some kind of weird locked horns battle with the one person who betrayed us and ruined our lives. 

Are you and Fox also—

[click, static]

This is a distraction. It’s just my fucking luck that the moment you two start chiming in again—the moment I start to maybe fucking understand what the hell is going on here—

I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Clearly. 

I don’t want to be next. Not if Harry…look, I’m not saying I’d go in her place, I’m not saying I’d die for—

[click, static]

Why does anyone have to die? Why can’t we just talk like human beings? Do you really want to kill the only two people you know to exist in this world, Junior? Is getting revenge worth being alone for the rest of time?

[click, static]

Then again, maybe you’re having the thought that I’ve had—that if you just kill what got you here, remove me from the board, and Harry too for good measure, you’ll go to bed, your deed done, and wake up the next morning right back in the world. Maybe you think spilling our blood is the only way to right the ship. 

And you know what? I can’t even tell you you’re wrong. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Please—please—

[click, static]

Junior, if you—I’ll come to wherever you are right now if you get on the radio and tell me—

[click, static]

I found my Carhartt. I—I wasn't even looking for it, not really. I was getting some more supplies, at one of the last grocery stores in the area that we hadn’t completely depleted of non-perishables and in the parking lot there was—

[click, static]

I’m not there anymore, just in case you’re hearing this. But I’ll go back. I’ll go back right now and you can do whatever you want to me, just please tell me that she’s alive. 

There’s blood on the coat. A lot of it. Too much. And it still smells of cigarette smoke and the woods behind our house, but it smells of chamomile and turpentine too, and also iron, metallic and turning the fabric stiff, the entire right side of the jacket like tarp under my hands—

If she’s—I mean, if she’s really—I don’t know what I’ll do—

[click, static]

I’ve felt no ill will toward you, Junior, even after you attacked me, but if you did anything to Harry I swear to god, I’ll—

[click, static]

I’ll—

[click, static]

Please just tell me she’s okay. 

[click, static]

[beeps and then a tone that distorts the rest of the message]

-.-- --- ..- .-.. .-.. / -... . / -. . -..- - / .. ..-.

Youll be next if

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know how to find Harry, I don’t know what to do about Junior, I don’t know if any of this can be fixed. 

Can a timeline be corrected? Can we go back? Back to the real world, I mean, not back in time, though I guess…

I actually have no idea if I would go back in time. I mean, of course, if I could undo what I did, I would but would that mean—it’s not like I want to go to prison. 

Then again, according to Harry, that was never going to happen. I’m still  not sure I believe her. I’m still not sure it wasn’t a rotten situation all the way through. And would that alternative really have been better?

[click, static]

I don’t mean that, of course it would have been better. But, no matter what Harry says or thinks, we would have had to—she said only she would have had to—

I don’t think I could have betrayed Pete and the guys like that. I don’t think—

[click, static]

Wait…if we’re not there…if Harry’s not there, that means she wouldn’t have—and without her, they could—

[click, static]

Holy shit, I’ve got to go to New York. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

What if he’d killed me?

[click, static]

I mean it, Harry. What if I hadn’t been fast enough, or what if he’d been able to truly catch me by surprise. What if he’d gotten the upper hand and he’d killed me? 

It isn’t…it isn’t hard. Or— well, it isn’t easy. But the gap between keeping the upper hand in a fight and the other person getting it is razor thin. The tables can turn in a millisecond. All it takes is one mistake, or moving the tiniest bit too slow, or slackening your grip by an inch. I know this. You know this. You watched it happen. 

I hadn’t even planned on—I didn’t have a grand escape plan. And I know you didn’t, you were so infuriatingly calm when they loaded us into that van and told us we were being transferred to god knows where. And of course now I know why you were calm, but at the time, I thought you were just trying to imagine you were somewhere else. But I wasn’t, I was stuck in the present, terrified of where we were headed, scared of how dark the world was around me, the further we got from civilization. I half thought we were being taken to the woods to be shot. 

But I still didn’t have a plan. It was just…when we got that flat tire and he had to open the back to get the spare, I saw a window and—

Part of me thought it would be good just to run. Leave you behind and run into the pitch black forest. But I couldn’t— I couldn’t do that, especially not when you were shouting at me to stop, but I thought you were shouting at him, because he’d gotten his arm around my neck and I didn’t think that dragging him to the ground like that would’ve—I didn’t realize how close we were to the bumper, how little it takes to crack someone’s neck at just the wrong angle. 

[click, static]

It wasn’t lucky. That’s not—it was terrible. But then it was done, just like that, and it could’ve happened just as quick with Junior at the house. 

Would you mourn me? We’re not in the same place anymore, no longer each other’s sole conversational companion, so would me being dead and gone make a difference to you? Would you think about all the things you never said, never did, and have regrets? Or would you be relieved that you didn’t have to think about any of it anymore. That you would never have to make the choice of how to behave toward me, ever again. 

I can’t think about the other side of this conversation. I find myself furious at imagining what your reaction would be to my death—to coming home and finding my body in the front hall—because I can’t bear to turn that question on myself. 

If you’re gone—

[click, static]

Junior…Billings, I don’t know what you would want me to call you. But, if you’re listening, I know what I want to ask. Not that you—you don’t owe me shit, obviously. I don’t know how long you’ve been listening to me, what you know about me, but I can’t imagine much—if any of it—has made you more sympathetic to me. 

But if I could ask for one thing, it would be to leave Harry out of this. If we meet again…I won’t hold it against you if you still want to kill me and succeed this time. 

But please. Please. She’s not the one you hate. She’s not to blame. I am. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Look. A lot…a lot has happened in the last few weeks. And I’m…well, I think I’ve found an okay place to stay safe for a few days, catch my breath, figure out what my next move is. A house that’s got some clothes that look like they might fit me, some canned goods, woods around it that should be good for setting up rabbit traps. Plus the gas stove still works, so I’m…well, I’m really cooking with gas. (a weak laugh) Sorry, I’m…I’m fucking tired.

Setting Harry and Junior to the side for the moment—not like I ever really can do that, they’re on my mind constantly, a merry-go-round of thoughts and fears that never stops—but. Setting them to the side for a moment. 

I’ve been putting my thoughts in a row. Organizing the disparate threads of morse code messages and evidence and Asimov books and…

I am somewhere else. We are. We are in a time of our own, separate from the world we knew. I killed Billings and we…branched off. I took Harry with me because she was there, Junior because it was his father I killed, and Leann because…the random rippling of chance. 

And if there was one ripple big enough to affect Leann, then that means there must be other people out there. I’m sure of it. But maybe they have no way of reaching me—maybe they’re not hearing me at all, even though it seems like my transmission radius is a lot bigger than it should be—and that’s a mystery I don’t feel particularly inclined to solve at the moment, bigger fish and all—maybe they’re just all spread out so much that the odds of us running into each other are vanishingly small. 

But there are others. I know that. And that’s enough for now. 

So. The photos. I’ve been looking at the Denver ones again and I had a thought…the weird watch, the slightly strange clothes…what if that’s—

What if it’s 1975, but just…over there. What if that’s where the sounds come from too? A collision point of timelines, some overlap that bleeds through in sound and in polaroids, for some reason. And the reason that Junior didn’t show up in the photo I took is because he wasn’t standing there in normal 1975. Because he’s here. But the people in Denver were there, just…unreachable. The camera is a little window into the real world. 

I don’t know, it’s just a theory. But it’s got me wondering—why me? Why this choice? If time and space split every time someone accidentally killed someone—

Well. Maybe that is what’s happening. Everyone in their own little pocket of punishment after making a choice. But we make thousands—tens of thousands—of choices every single day. What makes one choice more potent than another? Is there some preordained “correct” order of things we’re supposed to be following, just like Eternity?

That’s really the ultimate question isn’t it—Birdie and Fox and what they both seem to know. The way they seem to be able to communicate with me no matter where I am. The way they only communicate through morse code. Are they…they’re not god, I refuse to believe that, but are they Eternity somehow? Are they…monitoring me, monitoring everything, to make sure things are just right? But if that’s the case, then what are we still doing here. Why hasn’t Andrew Harlan come and repaired what I did to put everything back in its place. 

It really does all sound like science fiction. Maybe it’s all true, maybe I’m right on the money, or maybe none of it is. And I’m not sure who I would believe if anyone told me which it was. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I was going to—I was going to write him a note. And leave him the watch. That’s what I was doing when I was at the house. I was leaving a note for Harry, with instructions about the car and the radio, and I was also writing a note to Junior to say…

Well. I hadn’t gotten very far yet. I started with “I’m sorry” but then I got stuck because just those two words looked so…hollow on the page. Incomplete. Insufficient. I’m sure he’d agree. 

The boy doesn’t know how to fight. Not that I—I mean, I sure as shit had never gotten into a fight before, but Don taught me some basic self defense. He was into that…kung fu stuff. Bruce Lee movies and all that. And he was always so worried about me walking through the city late at night which was sweet in its own way, but…

Anyway. I’d never been in a fight, but I’d been in plenty of high stress situations, and had Don’s voice in my head, so I think I—I mean, I guess you don’t know how you’re going to react when you get into that kind of thing, but the fight instinct took over and I—

Junior wasn’t operating off of fight instinct or staying focused under pressure. He was all rage. I’m not sure he had a plan on how to ki— If he did, it flew right out the window when he saw me because he just went for me without thinking twice. And the thing about being all rage…you can definitely land some body blows—and he did—but you’re vulnerable to distractions. You’re vulnerable to showing your weaknesses. And with his slight frame…

I don’t think I hurt him too bad. I was careful this time. I guess having that one prior experience of fight or flight…I don’t know, I just wanted to get him off me and get out, and just thinking about that gave him enough opportunity to give me a black eye and bruised rib. 

I’m lucky. I know I am. But I’m—it’s the stupidest thing, I’m mad I didn’t get to finish my note. To Harry, sure, if she ever goes back there and if he didn’t destroy it—

He probably destroyed it. That’s what I would do. If I were him. I’d make it impossible for me to find the one person who might be an ally, and I’d…I’d think about how can get a second swing at killing me. 

I am sorry. I know that’s not enough. I know that being apologetic about killing your father is the shittiest consolation prize anyone has ever received. But it’s true. And it’s what I have to offer. 

I don’t know if it makes a difference that I didn’t mean to. I don’t know if it matters that I just wanted to escape and that, for a split second, I thought I was going to die. I know you probably see me as some immoral criminal who destroyed your family, your future, your life. And…

I’m not sure I have a defense against that, actually. I am a criminal and I did destroy your life. But I don’t like to think of myself as immoral. Am I…complicated? Yeah. Do I have, perhaps, a slightly different view of what’s acceptable than the average person? Sure. I made my living breaking the law, I’m not trying to argue for Citizen of the Year here. But I’m not a bad person. I’m not. 

I’d never hurt anyone before. Not ever. That’s not the kind of criminal I was. Hurt some property, some pocketbooks, but never a person. And what I did to your father has stuck with me every single day since it happened. It was the biggest thing to ever happen to me, and that’s before I knew that it…caused all of this. 

And that has to say something, right? I’ve spent the last…nearly seven years living in a world that was empty and apocalyptic, with no explanation as to why, and that still didn’t loom as large in my head as taking a man’s life. 

I’m not…I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m not asking for absolution. I’m…

[click, static]

I actually have no idea what I’m asking for. I’m not sure I’m even asking you to spare my life. I—

I’m not sure. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(sigh) So. I think I should probably explain some things. Again. 

I’m—if I sound different at all, it’s because I’m on a new CB. I tried to broadcast yesterday but I don’t think I was coming through at all—the radio kept spitting static back at me and it took me a second to figure out that something was wrong with the push-to-talk button. The mechanism inside kept slipping and—

Anyway, this isn’t important or interesting. Other than to say…I’ve got a new radio. And a new car. And…no other supplies really. It’s like I’m starting from scratch again, like we did in ’68 and I’m—

[click, static]

I’m trying not to be scared by it—daunted, I’ll allow, but there’s no room to be afraid of the circumstances I find myself in. Not when everything else is so fucking terrifying. 

He—

[click, static]

I shouldn’t have been broadcasting from the house. Even for a few minutes, it was foolish. Arrogant and risky and—

He found me. He walked through the door to the garage and he—

There was a moment, when we just looked at each other. And I could see his father in his face. The same eyes, the same ghosts of dimples on his cheeks. Even more prominent than on Billings face, actually, with the way that Junior’s face is sunken. Like he’s been underfed for years. Which, I suppose, he probably has been. Especially if he’s been alone. 

I wanted to ask, wanted to say—something. There’s so much I want to say to him, so much I want to ask him, but we stared at each other for that brief moment and then, before I could even open my mouth, he was lunging at me. 

It is the same cologne. As his father. I wonder if he wears it because it reminds him—

[click, static] 

Well, if there was any doubt that Junior wanted to kill me…I have my answer now. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(a lot of static and cutting in and out) Breaker breaker, this is WAR1974 calling out for anyone on the line. 

[click, static]

Does anyone read?

[click, static]

Does anyone read?

[click, static]

Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me?

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but I’ll be quick, I promise. 

I came back to the house. I staked it out for a good three hours first, to be sure that no one else was here, but it’s clear that someone has been here. The house is torn apart since I was last here—I don’t know what Junior is looking for…maybe nothing. Maybe his father’s watch. Maybe he heard my broadcast the other day. Maybe he just wanted to break anything and everything in his path, just because he could. 

A lot of our supplies are gone too—I don’t know if Harry took some when she left or if he’s taken them, but I just hope they’re being used by someone. I’m still not sure how to feel about the whole Junior thing—I’m mostly trying to not think about it at all if I’m entirely honest—but I’d be happy to inadvertently be feeding him or helping him survive somehow. Mi casa es su casa, I guess. 

I’m not thrilled about my Carhartt jacket though—that seems to be missing as well. I’d been hoping to…I don’t know, I didn’t really pack all that many sentimental objects when I left but I wanted to—I don’t know. I liked that coat. And coming back here made me realize how much I missed—

[click, static]

Well, I fucking miss cigarettes that’s for sure. If I ever have a garden again, I wonder if I can figure out how to grow tobacco and roll my own. Though, at this point, with everything I’ve been dealing with, I might have to resort to smoking the seven year old packs lying around. 

Anyway, the jacket is gone. It wasn’t on its usual hook and I searched the whole house and its…gone. I’m assuming Junior didn’t take it, but I can’t remember if it was here last week when I came back to the house for the first time. Maybe Harry threw it out the day I left. Maybe she took it with her when—

(scoffs) Probably not that. More likely she just tossed it. Or cut it up into scraps to line the chicken coop. 

I should get going, I think. It’s not good to linger. But I—well, I left Harry a note. On the off chance that she does come back here. It’s got the same info I’ve said on the radio, with a new meeting place in case…

Well, in case. I also—well, I wrote—I know he probably wouldn’t want to hear what I have to say, so maybe I’ll just keep it and—

[click, static]

(sigh) I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know if there’s anything I should be taking with me from the house. Any other bits of sentiment, any remaining supplies. 

I have this feeling…I don’t think I’ll ever be back here after this. I think—

[a creak of the door opening behind her] 

(gasps) Wh—

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Harry, if you can hear this, I’ve fixed up another car for you. It should run just fine, and there’s two canisters of fuel in the trunk, so you shouldn’t have to siphon any of your own for a while. There’s also a radio hooked up in it. So…

Well, that’s sort of pointless isn’t it? I put the radio in there in case you haven’t found another working one, but in order for you to find this one, you’d have to have a working radio to hear this message. 

It took me the better part of two days to put it all together and get it to where I thought you might find it. It’s near where we used to go to get firewood. Not that far from the house, but far enough I think it’d be a pain for Junior to find, especially considering all the other cars that are in that area. And it’s—I made a point to find a car that was your favorite color, to make it easier to find and also in the hopes that…I don’t know, maybe you’ll happen to walk past where I've left it and you’ll see it and some instinct will tell you to see if it works and—

[click, static]

I’m grasping at straws, I know I am. I’ve been searching all over, every single day and I don’t see any sign of you. There have been a few times where I thought I heard another car, but I have a feeling that probably belongs to Junior. I was too afraid to follow the sound and double check. Every time, I just go in the opposite direction. 

There’s one other thing I’m going to try, but it’s a long shot too. But what else am I supposed to do? I can’t stop trying. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, even if Harry—

Well, I’m still alive and with what is looking like a pretty serious situation on my hands. Junior is clearly here because of me. And if Harry ran from the house because he showed up, then she must have been thinking the same thing I’m thinking which is that he wasn’t dropping by for a cup of tea. 

What does he want? What would I want if I were him?

I’d want back to the real world. I’d want my dad back. I want to punish those who took him from me in the first place. 

You know, even after all the “you are the stone” business I still thought…maybe this wasn’t me. Maybe it’s the choice that Harry made, the one she kept from me for six years, that broke us off into some alternate version of the future. After all, she's the one who—and if she’d just told me then then maybe I wouldn’t have—

[click, static]

I guess it doesn’t really matter. Because it really was me, wasn’t it? This was all my fault. It wouldn’t be him—it wouldn’t be Billings son who’s here if this was all about what Harry did. 

I have to assume the worst, I think. Both about what Junior—god, I guess I am just calling him that now—wants and about…about Harry. 

I think I’m going to—

[click, static]

Fuck, I guess I really can’t talk about that shit on here, can I? I can’t work through my problems or plans out loud, at least not before I’ve done them. 

I never could have expected that would be so lonely. To keep my thoughts to myself. But it is. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

It isn’t…it isn’t Billings. Fox was right. Or at least—

[click, static]

I should explain. I don’t know for who’s benefit but…

I went back to the house this morning. I didn’t— I didn’t go in or anything, I…well, I staked it out. I know the woods around the house like the back of my hand, felt fairly confident that I could stay out of sight and see if anyone was going in and out. See if Harry had come back. 

She hasn’t, as far as I can tell, but he’s still hovering around. He drove up in a shitty old VW that sounded like it was gasping for breath and went inside for…fifteen minutes? And then he left again. Doing what I’m thinking is probably a daily check. To see if anyone has shown up. To see if there’s been any change. 

God am I glad I had the common sense not to broadcast that I was going back today. 

I don’t think he saw me. Though I’m not sure what would have happened if he had. I got a good look at him and it wasn’t…

The weird thing is that it did look a little like Billings. Same blond hair, same light eyes—I was too far away to really get a sense of the color, but it’s such a sunny day and his eyes were kind of…glowing in that way that blue or green eyes do when the sun is shining in them. 

Harry’s eyes do that. 

But he was—he wasn’t an average sized forty something guy. He’s…slight build. Reedy like he doesn’t eat very much. Maybe a little on the shorter side. Felt like I could snap him in half just looking at him. And he’s…young. Early twenties I’d guess? If that? Still had some baby fat around his cheeks, but I thought I could see some dimples too. Or the hint of them, just like…

Am I dealing with some kind of time travel? Is this the young Billings, traveled…forward in time to prevent something that’s already happened? It makes no sense. I know that I haven’t traveled back in time, because I’ve read just about every single newspaper from 1968 that I could get my hands on, just to have something to do. 

I took a photo. So that I could look at it later, see if I could remember anything else about Billings, if he had a mole or a scar that would give him away. Or else see if I could recognize whoever this person is. 

Except the picture—I mean, I took it from far away but I could see him through the viewfinder, I should be able to see him in the photo too. But instead there’s just…nothing where he should be standing. 

It’s more evidence that, for whatever reason, photos are showing me something I can’t otherwise see. People that aren’t there; empty space where there shouldn’t be. 

That mystery will have to wait. I have to go meet Harry. 

God willing. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

Junior

 .--- ..- -. .. --- .-.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

What do you mean it’s not him? I was so certain—I mean, of course I knew there was a possibility that it was someone else, just wearing the same cologne, but why would Harry leave, why would the back door be broken? Why would my flight or fight instinct have kicked in so hard the moment I felt his presence in the house?

I guess I’ll—

[click, static]

Well, I guess I shouldn’t say what I’m thinking, what I’m planning on here. I guess I should just do it. Because on the off chance you’re lying to me, I don’t want to give—

[click, static]

Fuck, Harry, where are you?

Please, let me know that you’re okay. Somehow. Send up a flare or go back to the house or—

Actually, don’t do either of those. And I can’t tell you where I am, not on a public channel. I’m not sure you can even hear this. If you do have a radio, maybe you can hear this but not respond, or not broadcast far enough to reach me. I just have to hope that’s the case. 

You know that place that we went once in the spring of…’71? ’72? I can’t remember, they all blur together after a certain point. But that day stands out shining gold from all the rest. It was a really good day. The first crop of strawberries had come early, and you made shortcake and you let me drive us all the way to…well, to that town we picked up bottles of champagne in, which I’m not going to say the name of because then we found that place, where we had the picnic. Strawberry shortcake and champagne for lunch…we got a little drunk. Just tipsy really, on the champagne and the perfect sunny day we had, unseasonably warm. 

And we didn’t argue for a whole afternoon. Well, that’s not true, we argued about everything, but it was…they were arguments that didn’t matter. You tried to convince me that Rothko is one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century and I told you I just didn’t get it. You got so red in the face—because of the sun, because of the champagne, because of how impassioned you were describing his style to me, explaining what was so revolutionary about it. I tried to poke holes in it all, telling you it was just big blocks of color, that all his stuff looked like someone trying to decide what color to paint their living room and gave up halfway through. (laughs) You hated that. But anytime I said anything particularly offensive to you, you would push on my shoulder with your palm and the more we had to drink, the more you let your hand linger, tracing your fingertips down my bare arm whenever you pulled back. 

So I couldn't exactly tell you the truth—that I like Rothko. That I didn’t agree with a word I was saying. That maybe I did, at one point in time, but you’d been telling me about his art for so long that I’d started to see it differently, that I’d gone to an exhibit of his art once without you, just to try and understand what you saw, try and understand you. That I had your voice in my head the whole time, pointing out everything special in the paintings and that that made me love him. That the way you see art, the way you see the world, made me love a lot of things. 

If I’d told you that, you would’ve stopped pushing me. So instead I pulled your pigtails like we were kids on the playground. And you pulled right back, teasing me about my music taste, saying you could take the girl out of the country but you couldn’t take the country out of the girl. And I know you’ve never liked that kind of stuff, but you still got me to recite all the lyrics to “I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry” and then you made me sing them, even though you know I’ve got a shit voice and you leaned your head on my shoulder as I sang and I think…I think you liked the song. I think you liked something. 

[click, static]

Meet me there. In that place where we had that picnic. In the hour before the sun sets. On Friday. That will hopefully give you enough time to get there from…wherever the hell you are.  

Just…come find me. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I moved again. I’m torn between thinking it would be good to find a place to bunker down until I can figure out what’s going on, or find Harry, and thinking I should just keep moving, never stop driving. Except driving definitely draws attention—he could hear the sound of the engine from…who knows how far away, now that the world is as quiet as it is. 

I know I should just get the hell out of dodge and leave Pennsylvania entirely. And I’m not saying I haven’t, I could be as far as Vermont or Tennessee or Indiana by now. But—I mean— 

Harry. I can’t just give up on her. If she doesn’t have a car then she can’t have gotten far. But of course, when the whole world is a hiding place, even a small area is like looking for a needle in a haystack. So I just keep moving. Hoping I’ll see some sign of life. 

And I guess I’m hiding too. There’s no other word for it really. All that time on the open road, doing whatever I wanted, broadcasting all the time, I got so used to being unfettered. Especially after so many years trapped within the four walls of a house for all intents and purposes. But now, he could be around any corner. Driving down the road, my eyes are peeled not for anything out of place, anything that might point to someone out there, but for danger. Human danger. 

And talking like this, now, feels foolishly dangerous. Maybe he can follow the signal, maybe I’ll slip up and say something that gives away where I am. But what other choice do I have? If I’m going to find Harry, if I’m going to get any kind of explanation from Birdie or Fox, I can’t give this up. 

I can’t imagine what he’s thinking if he can hear this. Is that how he found the house in the first place? Because he heard my broadcasts, heard me talking about Pennsylvania and Harry and thought…

He shouldn’t have anything against Harry. Not really. I’m the one who—

Part of me thinks I should just let him do whatever it is he wants. That that will somehow…set things right again. That it will set me free, set Harry free. Even if I think my freedom would come in the form of death. 

Maybe that would be worth it, to send Harry back to wherever it is she really belongs. She shouldn’t have to live with the consequences of my actions, even though I’m living with the consequences of hers. 

But me and him? Our fates are too intertwined to be untangled. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

Not him

-. --- - / .... .. --

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, sorry, I— I had to move. I thought I heard…

(a dark laugh) It’s just like the early days again. Jumping at every sound, looking over my shoulder. Except at least then I had Harry and now she—

[click, static]

I have to think she ran. I have to think that wasn’t his first time in the house and that she ran. Because the alternative—she’s dead and buried already, he’s abducted her…is that what this is? He took Harry already and he came back for me because we’re just rats trapped in a maze laid out for one dead man’s revenge? All that shit about Eternity and stones and ripples and this really is just purgatory after all. 

Fox said I didn’t destroy the future. Just my future. You can’t put emphasis in morse code but I think I got it anyway. 

I don’t even know his first name. Billings. That’s the only name I have for him. I only heard it once or twice from the other guards as we were being loaded into the transport. 

He had green eyes, blond hair. He had a kind of crooked tooth in the front of his mouth and the fairest hint of dimples on his cheeks—I’ve spent so much time thinking about how he probably had a really sweet smile. 

He was older. Mid-forties, maybe? He wasn’t a small guy, but wasn’t all that tall either—I guess he was the epitome of average height and build. I think about that a lot too. How even though I’m tall and pretty hale and hearty even before I spent six years chopping wood and fixing holes in our roof, I’m still…well, a male prison guard my same height in the prime of his life probably would’ve been able to…

I don’t know. Maybe what happened would have always happened. Maybe his middle age didn’t make him slower, or weaker, and I always would’ve—

[click, static]

Yeah, I can’t do this. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Alright, okay, I’m thinking I should maybe explain some things. 

[click, static]

Though you’d think by this point I’d earned some explanations of my own, but then again I guess I have the advantage of speaking in words, not dits and dahs. But I did say I’d happily sit by the radio for hours and translate whatever you wanted to send me, so if you do have explanations to give…

I’m not sure who I’m even addressing this to at this point. 

I’m…I’m safe. For now, at least. I won’t say where I am, obviously. Not when this transmission might be heard by—

[click, static]

It doesn’t make any fucking sense. But maybe it’s the only thing that does make sense. The man, in the house—god, he might still be there, he—

I recognized his cologne. And it could be—I mean, it could be anyone, right, for all I know it’s the most common cologne there is but…

I’m the stone. I caused the ripple. I killed a man who was just doing his job and, in doing so, destroyed the future. 

And somehow, that man broke into my house. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

Not the future. Your future

-. --- - / - .... . / ..-. ..- - ..- .-. . .-.-.- / -.-- --- ..- .-. / ..-. ..- - ..- .-. .

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(whispering)

Someone…someone’s here. 

[click, static]

It’s not Harry, I know Harry’s footsteps, I know the shape of her shadow, and this is not her. I don’t…

[click, static]

I’m in my closet. They’re—whoever they are—they’re still moving around the house, quiet and slow, like they’re…

(a hushed laugh) Well, it’s like they’re casing the place. They’re moving like I used to back when I was robbing penthouse apartments. 

And maybe—I mean, I had the thought that maybe it was Pete or something, but—

I mean, it’s a person. Even if my instinct to waking up to someone moving through the house like they didn’t want to be heard was to hide, it’s still a goddamn person. There is someone else in this world and they’re alive. 

And I was about to risk it, was about to go out there and see who it is and introduce myself but the closer I got to my bedroom door…

I caught a whiff of something. A—a cologne or a…I don’t know, but it…my stomach fell to the floor. Because I know that smell, it’s burned in my brain for the rest of my life but there’s no way—

[click, static]

Except if I’m right…then I’m in danger. If I’m right, then whatever is going on with Harry might be a lot worse than I thought. 

I need to get out of here.  

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You’re not anywhere. 

I checked everywhere I could think, I had my radio on the whole time and you’re not…

I don’t know what to do, Harry. There’s no sign of you. I don’t know how to fix this. 

I did fix up the back door hinge just now and taking a closer look…this hinge has always been a problem, I mean I should’ve just replaced it years ago but I think it would’ve required refitting the doorframe, because I’m pretty sure it’s a problem with the wood, not the hinge itself, but, well. It’s not loose in the way that it has been before. It…the wood around it is splintered. And I checked the other hinges too and the wood around them looks…stressed. Like the door was forced. 

Did something happen here? Nothing really looks out of place, there’s no sign of a struggle but…

God, what am I doing? Trying to be some kind of amateur sleuth and read a crime scene where there is none. The back door is old as shit. Maybe you had your hands full coming inside and pushed it a little too hard. Who knows. 

But then again, what else am I supposed to think? There’s something wrong here and I know it’s only been a few days but if you’re not here then maybe I really did imagine you and—

[click, static]

At least all the power in here still works, so I’m going to hook up my CB in my bedroom and keep it on all night. Just…tell me you’re okay. Tell me where you are. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, I am officially concerned. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but the truck was’t in the drive like usual so I just assumed…

I should have checked the whole house. But I’m so used to never coming into the garage because I know how much you hate your studio being disturbed but when I woke up this morning and you still weren’t home, well, I went in anyway and the truck is still here. In the garage. 

It’s running fine—that’s where I’m broadcasting from right now, though obviously I turned the engine off. And I have to say, I’m impressed that you were actually listening when I told you to bring it inside for the winter if you weren’t going to be driving it much. But if you’re not out there driving this truck on a supply run, where are you?

I—I took the other car. Which, I’m sorry to say, is now somewhere in California, having been put out to pasture. But unless you finally decided to take an interest in car mechanics after all this time, I don’t know how else you’d be getting around. I know you love your walks—or, you did, eventually, once you got past the worst of the paranoia, but…you never went on a walk this long. 

If you’re—if you’re dead in a ditch somewhere, I’m going to be fucking furious, Harry. 

[click, static]

It’s…weird. Being in here. It feels like being inside your head somehow. It’s a goddamn mess, which I didn’t really expect. I’m sure you’ve got your own system—though who the hell knows—but I definitely can’t make sense of it. I’m glad to see you pulled the radio in here though. Maybe you did hear some of my transmissions after all. 

Is that why you’re not here? Because you heard me say I was coming and you didn’t want to see me? You’ve enjoyed your life without me so much that you couldn’t bear to have your peace shattered. 

Except…you’ve been thinking about me. I know you have. And maybe this is why you never wanted me to be in your studio in the first place. 

There’s…a lot of me in here. Paintings, sketches…not all of my face always but you must have known that I’d recognize the curve of my own ear, the shape of my hands.

Have—have you been doing this all along? Or just since I left? Were you always coming in here and spending hours perfecting the color of my hair when some days you wouldn’t even speak to me—

[click, static]

Is this why you asked for the stories behind all my scars? So you could render them in perfect detail, knowing exactly what made them and when? I thought you wanted to know more about me, but maybe it was just an avenue for your art, one of the few subjects that you had access to, too tired of painting birds or trees or images from your own mind. 

Or did you ask because you wanted to know? You talked once, about how painting helped you understand the world, or yourself; how that was one of the things you loved about it, one of the reasons you started painting in the first place. Because when nothing else made sense, charcoal and oil and your own hands were able to bring shape to the world. 

Were you trying to understand me? Or were you trying to understand what you felt about me? Or was guilt swallowing it all up that you couldn’t uncover anything else. 

I just…I need you to come back and explain what this is all about. Because in a room full of canvases and color and stray sketch pages, I keep turning and seeing my own face. I’m everywhere.

[click, static]

There’s a lot of other art too, of course. And it’s all…it’s fucking beautiful. Your art has always been so beautiful. 

I…I’ve added to your collection. I picked up a painting when I was in Santa Fe, something that I thought was pretty and that I thought you might—

Well, I’ve left it in here. In case you want to do anything with it. It’s yours. 

There are also—well. I wrote you some postcards. But I obviously had no way of sending them to you so I just…held onto them. But you might as well have them now. 

I don’t know why I’m saying all of this on the radio like I can’t say it to you face to face. You’ll be back and you’ll probably be annoyed that I left stuff in your studio without asking. There’s no need for me to leave anything for you, not when I can just hand it to you. 

But I just have this feeling…

I’m going to look for you tomorrow. Drive to the usual spots, take a walk in the woods behind the house. And because I’m fucking considerate, I’m going to leave a note. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Hey Harry? Where are you?

[click, static]

You could have at least left a note. Something to let me know that you’re okay, that you’re not de—

[click, static]

What happened? When did you leave? Maybe if it was June, I’d be able to look at your garden and figure out just how long its been since you last tended to it, but you’d only just be putting new seeds in the ground now and I’m not going to go digging up your garden if you’re just out at the store. 

That’s…that must be it. You ran out of canned goods and you had to go looking for more. And I bet you’ve had to go a bit of a ways away considering we’ve cleaned out everything in a thirty mile radius. 

Right, so…I’m not going to freak out. Yet. I only got here twenty minutes ago, I’m sure it’ll be…

It’s strange, being back. Everything looks pretty much the same—though I did notice the back door has come loose at the top hinge again. You know, I’m sure that’s something you could figure out how to fix on your own. It’s not hard. (sigh) But I guess I’ll go ahead and fix it again. I might as well, I’m here. 

I didn’t expect the smell of this place to hit me so hard. When you’re in a space so long, you stop noticing the sensory aspects of it—the smells, the sounds, the way the light shifts throughout the day, throughout the seasons. All things I didn’t know to miss. But now that I’m confronted with them again, I realize just how much…

Lavender and chamomile, with an underlying layer of turpentine. That’s the smell. Harry got into making her own soap a few years ago. Anytime I happened to get a whiff of one of those flowers on the road, I’d—

It’s different. In context, it’s different. Knowing the origin ot…

Despite everything, despite all the shit you’ve done and my own foolish fucking heart, I think I—

Yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing you, Harry. At the very least, I’m looking forward to seeing the look of complete surprise on your face when you walk through the front door and see me. 

[click, static]

[click, static]

Hey Harry? Where are you?

[click, static]

You could have at least left a note. Something to let me know that you’re okay, that you’re not de—

[click, static]

What happened? When did you leave? Maybe if it was June, I’d be able to look at your garden and figure out just how long its been since you last tended to it, but you’d only just be putting new seeds in the ground now and I’m not going to go digging up your garden if you’re just out at the store. 

That’s…that must be it. You ran out of canned goods and you had to go looking for more. And I bet you’ve had to go a bit of a ways away considering we’ve cleaned out everything in a thirty mile radius. 

Right, so…I’m not going to freak out. Yet. I only got here twenty minutes ago, I’m sure it’ll be…

It’s strange, being back. Everything looks pretty much the same—though I did notice the back door has come loose at the top hinge again. You know, I’m sure that’s something you could figure out how to fix on your own. It’s not hard. (sigh) But I guess I’ll go ahead and fix it again. I might as well, I’m here. 

I didn’t expect the smell of this place to hit me so hard. When you’re in a space so long, you stop noticing the sensory aspects of it—the smells, the sounds, the way the light shifts throughout the day, throughout the seasons. All things I didn’t know to miss. But now that I’m confronted with them again, I realize just how much…

Lavender and chamomile, with an underlying layer of turpentine. That’s the smell. Harry got into making her own soap a few years ago. Anytime I happened to get a whiff of one of those flowers on the road, I’d—

It’s different. In context, it’s different. Knowing the origin ot…

Despite everything, despite all the shit you’ve done and my own foolish fucking heart, I think I—

Yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing you, Harry. At the very least, I’m looking forward to seeing the look of complete surprise on your face when you walk through the front door and see me. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Harry?

[click, static]

Harry, do you read?

[click, static]

Okay, that’s…good. I don’t know that I want her to hear this. But I feel like I need to say it out loud or I’ll go crazy keeping it in. 

I’m nervous. I—I pulled over because I turned onto a road that I’ve driven down a million times before on supply runs and it was the most familiar thing I’ve seen in nine months and all of a sudden it got so real. My heart started pounding, my palms were sweating on the steering wheel…

[click, static]

(laughing) I’m just nervous! It’s stupid, it’s not like—I mean, I know what to expect. I’m going to walk into the house and call out for Harry and she’s not going to respond because she won’t be able to hear me from the garage and then I’ll put the kettle on and she’ll only come in from her studio when she hears the whistle go, which for some reason is audible from the garage. And I’ll pull two mugs down from the cabinet and make tea the way we like it—black for me, steeped for two minutes; two sugars and steeped until it’s bitter for her—and Harry will pull out some kind of muffin or scone or something from somewhere and pretend like she didn’t put nuts in it specifically because I like them and then…I don’t know, then she’ll make some comment about how I’m back so soon and I’ll…

I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe she’ll ask if me being back means I forgive her and maybe I’ll say that I’m not sure I need to forgive her before we can—

[click, static]

Or none of that will happen. And instead she’ll be unpleasantly surprised that I’ve come back and she’ll ask me to leave. She’ll say that I’m not welcome anymore, that I resigned my right to call that place home the moment I pulled out of the drive. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Well, welcome back to the fucking party, Birdie. Once again, telling me that a place isn’t safe. 

Do you really think that I’m going to trust you? Do you really think I’m going to listen to whatever you have to say? Where the fuck have you been? I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been talking to someone else—also through morse code, so maybe you know them but they…well, they have been at least a little more helpful than you. 

And now you’re telling me that it’s not safe back home? Why would I believe you? I went to Denver and there was nothing there. Just ghosts in photographs and phantom concerts. And if you are telling the truth, and it’s not safe? Well, then, I have to go back, don’t I. I have to make sure that Harry’s okay. 

Anyway. I’m only about forty miles from the house so…Harry, if you can hear me…put the kettle on, bring out that one bottle of whiskey you’ve been hiding for three years. We’ve got a lot to talk about. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, so, I’ve been marinating on all of it, the book, the messages from Fox, what Birdie told me all those months ago. And something is starting to crystallize. 

Eternity’s whole purpose was to make the smallest possible change in order to preserve the one future they wanted. Nöys and her people could also time travel but they allowed for multiple futures. And her forcing Harlan to choose between killing her and saving Eternity fundamentally changes the future and destroys this patriarchal system of reality control and…well, I guess in that sense, Nöys is the hero of the book. She allows for there to be freedom in the way that reality unfolds. So, maybe Asimov was trying to say something positive with that even if a lot of the ways Harlan thinks and speaks about women is…

…not the point. The point is…Nöys is a stone. So is Harlan. They’re these individual people who create these ripples that radiate outwards and affect everything. 

I…it really is an inventive story. Maybe not entirely my cup of tea, but I don’t think I could have come up with it. I might be living it and I wouldn’t have thought of that kind of intricate world. Even now, I’m not totally sure I understand it. At least not as it pertains to me. 

Harlan betrays his job because of his love for Nöys. Birdie said they betrayed their job. That they hurt people. Fox seems to know things about this place, this time…whatever it is, that you wouldn’t know unless you were…

Look, Fox, if you’re trying to tell me that Eternity is real and that you’re somehow moving the pieces on the chessboard of reality and that’s why I’m stuck here…I don’t know if I buy that. I have a hard time with omnipotence. 

But…my life is what it is and maybe a little science fiction is not out of order. Maybe…maybe the choice I made did create some kind of hidden century, maybe it did…end the future. But I—I don’t know if I can handle that if it’s true. 

[click, static]

(sigh) God, I’m tired. 

I should get back to the house by the end of tomorrow. Hopefully Harry will be able to put these puzzle pieces together better than I can. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

Do not go back. Not safe.

-.. --- / -. --- - / --. --- / -... .- -.-. -.- .-.-.- / -. --- - / ... .- ..-. . .-.-.-

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, so I’ve been reading this fucking book, The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov and I finally finished it …

Listen, it’s not really my thing. Not that sci-fi isn’t my thing, but I’m not sure this kind of sci-fi is up my alley. And why are male writers so weird about women so often?

That’s not the point. The point is…I assume you’re trying to tell me something with this. That you’re trying to say that this somehow holds the answers. 

I’m going to assume also that it doesn’t hold all the answers. That it’s more of a…nudge in the right direction. A shorthand for you to use to try and easily explain complicated shit to me. 

You know, you’d think Birdie would’ve been able to figure something out like this, right? Presumably they’ve also read books. 

Anyway. The End of Eternity. It’s about time travel. Or, well, not time travel, but—actually, there is literal time travel, in these things called kettles but it’s not time travel the way we think about time travel, you know, it’s—

Let me start over. There’s this guy, Andrew Harlan, he’s the main character, and he works for this god-like organization called “Eternity” that basically…alters reality to make humans suffer less. But they can only go back in time so far because the technology to go upwhen and downwhen—that’s what they call going up and down the…timeline, I guess, which I think is sort of cute actually—so, yeah, they can only go back in time so far because that technology was only invented in the 27th century, and they can only go so far forward because after a certain point, the world is just…empty. And they don’t really know why.

So, yeah. There’s that. And Harlan brings Nöys—that’s this woman that he falls in love with when he’s in a certain time and that time is supposed to be altered, so she’s going to disappear—or, the version he knows of her is going to disappear, she’s going to change because of the way that Eternity is going to alter reality and he’s you know, falling in love with her and he doesn’t want her to change so he brings her on a kettle to one of those empty centuries to hide her from Eternity and keep her safe, keep her trapped in amber.

Which…well, listen, I have a lot of thoughts about that, but I’m not here to get into what Asimov is saying about women or being in love or any of that. I’m here to try to understand what the hell you want me to get out of this. 

I haven’t time traveled. I’m not in some kind of far, distant future after humanity has ceased to exist, because everything’s the same, just minus all the people. If I’m living in the Hidden Centuries, why do they look the same and how did I get here?

At the end of the book…well, it turns out that Nöys isn’t exactly who she said she was, surprise surprise, and she and Harlan have this stand-off. She’s from a version of time that also had time travel, but not Eternity, so they had lots of different futures instead of just the one that Eternity would always be making by altering reality. That’s Eternity’s big thing—that’s what people like Harlan would do. They would go to different times and do different things so that Eternity could perfectly shape the history and the future of the world in the way they thought it should be shaped. But Nöys…her time didn’t do that—they came about the technology a different way and saw things differently. And she tries to convince Harlan that that’s the better way to do things and I guess he does get convinced because all of a sudden, something in reality changes and the kettles disappear, so it turns out that Eternity never happened—oh, they have this stand-off in the 30s—the 1930s—somehow, so it’s before Eternity is invented and Harlan choosing not to kill Nöys in the 1930s prevents the future from ever happening and so Eternity isn’t created. I think. And the book closes with “the end of eternity, the beginning of infinity” which is a nice sounding phrase, but I’m not sure it means anything. 

I’m not sure any of this means anything. Trying to explain it out loud, I feel like a total crackpot. What, exactly, am I supposed to be gleaning from all of this? [click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Alright, I’ve mapped out a route back home—back to Pennsylvania and I think it’ll take me…four days? At most? It’s pretty snowy up here, I wish I were taking the southern route, so I don’t want to push it too much. A few days is not going to make a world of difference, but me spinning out on black ice and wrapping the car around a tree will. 

[click, static]

I don’t know…I don’t know what I’m going to say to her to be honest. Because as far as I know, the last eight months for her have been business as usual. And probably particularly uneventful in the last few months. There’s never anything to fucking do in winter. She will have stashed up enough produce for the winter, just like Leann did, and it’ll be too much for her to eat, just like it was for Leann. So used to growing food for two people, and now needing to feed only one. But god, I hope she didn’t just subsist on veggies and bread. Or maybe that’s enough, maybe she’ll be fine eating like that. 

Maybe she went scavenging for canned food. Maybe she finally taught herself how to butcher the chickens. Well, I guess she knows how, I told her how, I showed her how, she just never wanted to. 

Always my job to get my hands dirty I guess. 

[click, static]

I wonder how close to Pennsylvania I’ll have to get before she starts being able to hear my transmissions. Before I start being able to hear hers. The fact that she reached me, once, all the way in Wyoming…well, that had to have just been skip. Unless she’s figured out something I haven’t, which isn’t impossible, but…

I guess it won’t really matter. I don’t need to tell her that I’m coming, I don’t need to check if she’s still there. She’s still there. 

She is. 

She has to be. 

[click, static] 

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I feel…hungover. It feels like my brain has been spinning nonstop and reading this fucking book—

My thoughts can’t land on any one idea, I’m taking in too much information and spitting too many theories out that it’s all becoming mush and I’m not sure anything I’ve said on here has made sense in weeks and I—I don’t want to be doing this fucking alone anymore!

[click, static]

There. I said it. I don’t want to be doing this alone. It’s—it’s too much. Even if I’m the one responsible for all of it, if I’m the one who has to carry the burden of the horrible truth that I discover at the end of all this…I don’t want to hunt for that truth by myself anymore. 

I—I could go searching for other people that I think might still be here. Based on the ripple I caused. But that’s…it feels potentially extremely fruitless. And I know that Harry is here. I don’t know if she’ll be happy to see me, if she’ll even be at our house anymore, but I…

I know she wants answers just as much as I do. 

I have to go back. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“F not here” — I assume by F, you mean Francis. And not that I’m going to take your word for it, but it’s…it’s interesting. That you should say that. That you should know that.

I think maybe I’m starting to understand. Well, maybe not understand, but I…I’m beginning to form a theory. Maybe.

So, there’s a pond. The pond is quiet, maybe has some ripples in it from what’s swimming underneath the surface, or the wind, the rain—the normal stuff that a pond experiences. And all those things create some kind of…chain reaction. But again, it’s the usual things—a frog dies, a tadpole grows legs, algae blooms, whatever.

But if you throw a huge boulder into that pond, everything goes fucking bananas. It kills a duck or displaces so much water that fish drown on dry land and then…

You have an empty pond? You have a series of smaller ponds? The water evaporates? I don’t know where to go from there. But if Harry, Leann, and I are all fish that got thrown into another pond by the water splashing around the boulder then…

[click, static]

(frustrated sigh) I’m not sure that that’s anything.

I wish there was…I don’t know, a book I could read, a scientific journal, something. I’m going to go into the next library I find and see what I can dredge up. Because this all feels vastly beyond my comprehension.

I—it occurred to me…well, am I a terrible person for thinking of my art fence before thinking of Martha? It’s not that I didn’t care about her—sure, we were never committed, but I cared.

I think I’ve just been hoping that I wasn’t important in her life to really have an impact. She was this bright, uncomplicated spot in a pretty messy life and I hope…I hope she stayed that way. I hope we were both a refuge for each other, an escape from our real worlds. And that, because of that, the mistakes of my real world didn’t shake hers.

[click, static]

[beeps]

.- ... .. -- --- ...- / . -. -.. / --- ..-. / . - . .-. -. .. - -.--

Asimov End of Eternity

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I didn’t—I guess I’m not totally numb to everything. I didn’t mean to…go on like that yesterday. I—(sigh) if anyone is listening, maybe just ignore everything I’ve said this week. It’s not—I didn’t mean anything by it. Let’s just—let’s move on.

[click, static]

It’s only been, what, a handful of weeks since I left Los Angeles? But I find myself needing to lay out the same stuff that I tried to understand when I was there—what I know, what I don’t know, and what questions I have.

I guess I have a little more information now, though god only knows what I’m supposed to do with it. I’m trying to wrap my head around how I could cause such a ripple but…

(laughs) There is something so…

I got out. I fought and clawed my way out of imprisonment, I got Harry out too, and we were free. I’m not saying that we didn’t deserve to be held responsible for our crimes but…

Actually, fuck that. What we did—stealing art, jewelry, antiques—who cares? I mean, sure, the people who owned the stuff cared, but they were wealthy enough to buy more. But because those people were powerful, we got—

Well, joke’s on us, huh? It’s clear that we’re getting our due anyway. From the frying pan into the fire. The grand irony of the universe. Like a cartoon, dodging the anvil falling from the sky only to go careening off a cliff.

All of that. The choices I made. What I did. It was supposed to get me out, but it just…it never stops. The waters never calm and I’m—I’m going to drown.

If this really is—I mean, if Leann was the farthest edge of the pond, to continue to beat this metaphor into the ground, then Harry would be the water right where the stone hit, right? It makes sense, I dragged her right along with me, just like she dragged me along unknowingly with her choices. But it clearly didn’t stop there. So who’s between Harry and Leann?

Who’s lives did I touch? Who was I intertwined with enough to truly affect their life?

Is it sad that the first thought I had was about my landlord? That’s a pretty direct effect, right? I disappear, I stop paying my rent and things snowball from there. But then I thought, well, I was going to prison anyway, so it’s not like I was going to keep paying rent either way.

[click, static]

Is that…is that the difference? I—I did something, caused a ripple, and it…

[click, static]

(shaking it off) But where’s Pete? Don? Francis? We all got caught for the same thing—well, not Francis—but I…

Well, shit, I didn’t go up to Provincetown, did I? I never really thought there was a chance he was there.

Is that—is that where I should head to? See if Francis was hit by the ripple? I mean, he would be old, but that doesn’t mean…

God, I don’t want to find his body. I—I’m not sure I could take it.

But what choice do I have?

[click, static]

[beeps]

..-. / -. --- - / .... . .-. .

F not here

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Except, if I were dead, how does that explain Harry? I obviously have some…guilt over what I did that I think would factor into my brain making up a weird purgatory of no people and mysterious, possibly all-knowing beeps on the radio that feel like they’re taunting me more than they’re helping me. But, even if I didn’t spend my life thinking there was an afterlife, I could see my subconscious deciding that the best way to process what was happening was to justify my death somehow through creating a punishment. 

Because, let’s be honest, if I’m dead, I know how. I know why. What I did—what I was trying to do in this case, in this case—that failed and I didn’t make it out and deep down I decide that “hey, this is probably for the best, because here’s what would happen if you did succeed, do you really want to live like that? But even if all of that was true...I don't know that my brain could resist giving me something I did want. Someone I want. 

Harry seems real to me. Annoyingly so. Real and exactly who she’s always been to me. No substantial change, despite everything we’ve been through. And I’m not sure I’d punish myself that much. Maybe I just don’t want to believe I would.

So if not dead…then what? We’re back to square one, which is me as the stone, setting a ripple around the world that destroyed nearly everything. 

[click, static] 

I’m not sure I should be so cavalier about this stuff. Talking about my own death, my own final gasping breaths of life. But ever since finding Leann, there’s a sense of unreality that I can’t get over. I’m sure there’s a real name for it, something a psychiatrist would immediately be able to identify, but I never did see a shrink back in the world. Because I mostly didn’t have to deal with shit like this. 

But I’m outside my body. Outside everything. And I want to figure out what this all means, find the truth, the answers that I’ve been wanting for so long and also….it feels almost inconsequential now. Like nothing I uncover or grow to understand will actually change anything. 

I’ll still be alone in the world. I’ll still have done what I did. Harry will still have betrayed me. And I’ll still be in—

[click, static]

It’s not like learning certain things changed anything. Knowledge can’t kill love.  

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, alright, sorry, I think I had a mental breakdown yesterday. Um, another mental breakdown. Maybe this is all some kind of prolonged breakdown and I’m actually sitting in a padded room somewhere. 

The thing I almost asked—I’m not sure I even want to say it out loud, it’s idiotic. 

[click, static]

I was going to ask if you’re god. There. See? Fucking stupid. 

[click, static]

But, then…who are you? What are you? If I’m the one who caused all this, then how do the two of you fit into this?

I just keep circling back around to…

[click, static]

I’m dead, aren’t I? That’s—it’s the thing that makes the most sense. Or, I don’t know if that’s true, it doesn’t explain everything, but it would explain…

Well, if I’m dead, then Birdie, Fox, Leann…it’s all a twisted figment of my imagination. There is no ripple because this is just my own personal hell, some kind of ghostly afterlife where nothing makes sense and there’s no way out and nothing and no one else is real. But I can’t bear to be alone, even in death, so…

People say that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die, but maybe it’s not really like that. How would we actually know anyway? I guess, near death experiences. I’ve never had one of those, not really. So maybe that is what happens when people are facing down death, they see everything like a movie reel behind their eyelids. 

But what if..what if that’s not what it is. What if, instead, we see our future, our afterlife flash before our eyes? And there really isn’t an afterlife at all, but instead whatever it is we were imaging in our actual life…it flashes before our eyes but because we’re dying, the moment seems infinite. That blink of time, a life’s worth of feelings and beliefs and speculation about the universe, compacted into the last few seconds before our hearts give out. 

Maybe all of this is the final burst of comprehension from a dying brain. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“You are the stone”. 

[click, static]

Does that? Does that mean what I think it means? That…that all of this—what the world is now, the lack of people, Leann—are you trying to tell me its all my fault?

How could—how does that even work? If—if this really is about something I did…I mean, fuck, I don’t know what to do with that. Even though it’s something I’ve thought about, something I’ve worried about, I never actually believed I had that kind of power. 

Is it…is it because of…?

[click, static]

Jesus, why am I asking you? I haven’t even told you what I—

Wait, okay, if I’m the stone, I’m the one who made a ripple that somehow dragged Leann into all of this, then how do you fit into this, huh?

And by you I mean both you morse code lunatics. Are you connected to me somehow? I mean, you must be, right? Except you seem to know what’s going on here, even if you won’t tell me, so are you…

I mean, are you—

(laughing)

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“There are others. Some connected, some not”. That’s what you said. 

[click, static]

Fuck, why am I still listening to you? You and Birdie both, you know just how to play me, know when to give me just enough tantalizing information that I find myself sitting by the radio, just waiting for your next transmission. 

It’s…(laughs) I’ve had this completely out there thought every now and then that you—one of you—is actually Harry after all. I don’t know if it’s just because she’s now my only reference point for people that aren’t me, or if it’s the psychological mind games, but there are just some moments…

It’s ridiculous, I know it is. Not only because of the information that you’ve both given me—I mean, some of it might be crap, stuff that Harry could’ve made up, but the coordinates sure as shit were real. It’s not just that though, it’s that…

I don’t think Harry is that cruel. She liked to play with emotions, that’s for sure and certain, but she wouldn’t…she wouldn’t get my hopes up like this, over and over again. Or, I mean, she did do exactly that a lot over the last fucking decade but—

Harry wants there to be other people just as much as I do. She might not admit it, might be too scared of the potential consequences to go and seek answers out herself, but she doesn’t like living in this world anymore than I do. She just…she’s just convinced herself that it’s penance. That being trapped with me, forced to look at me every single day but never—

[click, static]

You know, that’s what she said to me in that last big fight? One of the things she said anyway. That it was torture, for her. Sharing a space with me, orbiting around each other like planets on a collision course. But it was karmic justice, that she would have to be in the gravity well of the one person who has the best reason to never want to speak to her again if she told the truth. 

And, of course, she was right about some of it. I didn’t want to speak to her after she told me the truth. Especially since I’d finally told her the truth, the full truth that’s made every day since I met her a kind of slow burning agony—

[click, static]

Anyway. Harry wouldn’t mess with me, not in this way. She wouldn’t give me false hope, not when she’s holding onto her own with bloody fingers. 

So maybe if I can figure out the cause, the—the stone that caused the ripple for lack of a better way of putting it—maybe then I can figure out where those waves might have gone. And maybe on the other side of that ripple is other people. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

You are the stone

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, this sucks. 

[click, static]

Not talking about where I’ve been driving…it sucks. I want to talk about what I’m seeing, the landscapes, the funny town names, the strange roadside attractions. But I worry that if I do, I’ll easily give myself away and then…

Well, I’m not sure what I expect the worst case scenario to be, but I’m getting…paranoid again. A bit how I was when we first escaped. A bit how Harry always is. 

I did find something today that I don’t think would give away much, because I’m sure this isn’t the only one that exists but…it’s a tiny little church. Like, tiny tiny. Basically just an altar and enough room for a few people to stand. What on earth is this for? The world’s smallest parish? Private prayer? They’re certainly not filling the pews on Sunday, there aren’t any pews. 

It’s overgrown, like everything else, and it’s even more lovely because of it. Like it's not a house of worship for god, but for nature. As small as it can be so as not to intrude on the free landscape around it. 

I have very rarely thought about what my imaginary wedding would be like, mostly because, well, I never really thought I’d have one. Not only for the obvious reasons, the, you know, legal reasons, but because even if it was allowed, or we just wanted to do it for us, fuck whatever the law or the church says…I don’t know that I ever really thought I’d find someone for life. And then, when I did meet somebody who—

Well, there were other problems, weren’t there?

But if I were to have a wedding ceremony, even just for the hell of it, I certainly never would have picked a church. But I think I could see a wedding happening here. A tiny white chapel, surrounded by green, just big enough for the people you trust the most. Pocket-sized and private. 

It’s a silly thought. I doubt they ever had weddings at this chapel. Most people want a lot of people at their weddings, a big celebrations. This church couldn’t hold all of that. 

[click, static]

I just want to be able to share this with someone. For finding the other survivors to finally become easy. For there to be others to find. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

There are others. Some connected, some not.

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I feel a little bit like I can breath again, being back on the road. Even though I never slept in Leann’s house, I spent a lot of time in there, at all hours of the day, and it got…oppressive. Even after days of the windows being open, fresh cold air coming in, it still…

Well, I’m happy to be out of there. 

[click, static]

I think I can safely say that ghosts aren’t real. Or at least, Leann’s ghost was nowhere to be seen. I’m glad that her…spirit or whatever it might be isn’t stuck here, but it really doesn’t help me understand what the deal is with Este’s Park or the Denver photos. 

The Denver polaroids…I keep looking at them, trying to find more anomalies, trying to make out the finer features of the faces, but nothing reveals itself. They just start to look odder and odder the longer I look at them. Like everyone is…wearing a costume, or something. Like everything is just slightly off. 

They still don’t seem like ghosts. It feels more like…looking through a window, into somewhere else. Standing in the doorway of Dorothy’s home, all sepia-toned and shadowy, and looking out into the colorful world of Oz. Except I can’t step through. I’m just stuck inside. 

Maybe the camera is revealing something I can’t get to. Maybe…maybe I really am dead after all, behind some veil that makes me invisible to the living world. Maybe the man I saw in Estes Park wasn’t a ghost at all, but a living man, surprised to see me, a ghostly figure in his otherwise normal hotel room. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I know I said I wasn’t listening anymore, but you’re the one who knew Leann existed in the first place so…not that I’m going to take your word for it, but:

If I understand what you’re telling me…Leann was just collateral damage of some bigger ripple. Which, yeah, thanks for stating the obvious. Clearly something bigger than all of us happened and we’re the suckers that got hit by the waves. So does that mean that everyone else…drowned?

Leann didn’t do anything, she’s not connected…and all I can think is that I am connected. Is that what you’re trying to say?

Not every ripple affects every pond in the world. Obviously, some things are big enough to destroy everything, the meteor killing the dinosaurs. But maybe…maybe it’s not about everyone being bowled over by a wave, but about certain people in a certain pond…not connected directly but swimming in the same soup…maybe those people are all here because of some rock that got thrown into that pond. 

Jesus, that makes no fucking sense. And even if it did make sense, it wouldn’t help me figure out what the fuck pond I’m in. 

[click, static]

I am heading out today. Getting away from North Dakota, leaving Leann in peace. I don’t think…I don’t think I’ll be telling you where I’m going. If anyone out there—any other survivors, real human beings who want to talk to other human beings—if any of you hear this, tell me where to meet you and I’ll drive to you. But I don’t think I’m going to be detailing my own movements, at least for a while. All of this…none of it feels right. I’m not taking any chances that aren’t necessary, not anymore. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

There’s nothing for me here. All I’m accomplishing by staying is intruding on Leann’s privacy and making myself lonelier. 

I don’t believe in the afterlife. Or, at least, I haven’t as a general rule. But Leann did. She believed in God, believed that dying was just an inevitable next step in a long journey. Toward the end, she welcomed death, even if she was beginning to have doubts about where she was ultimately headed. 

I think it’s unavoidable, in circumstances like ours. Thinking of hell, I mean. Whether you truly believe in it or not. I didn’t read all her final entries over the radio, it didn’t feel right when…well, I don’t know if it was a fever or if everything just finally got to her, but her last words didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I felt strange enough reading them, I wasn’t about to broadcast it. 

But it was obvious where she thought she was going next. And that makes me so…she didn’t deserve to go out thinking that. To die alone, so full of fear. No matter what kind of person she was. 

Not that there’s any evidence to suggest she was anything other than a good person. But she wondered this plenty, and I can’t help myself from wondering either—

What did she do? To find herself here, in this terrible hollow shell of a world. 

What did you do, Leann?

[click, static]

[beeps]

[click, static]

L did nothing. Not connected. Ripple big.

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“September 12th, 1974. I am not well. The last few years have been harder on my body than I ever expected, but I’ve made it through, against all odds. But it seems to finally be taking its toll. 

I do not know what it is that ails me, but I know it is serious. I am faint and weak, and though I have no appetite whatsoever, I do my best to feed myself. But it becomes harder and harder each day. Writing just these few sentences has already taken more energy than I can fathom, but I have to finish these thoughts before they flee my mind forever.  

I’m coming home, Harry. It is my deepest and last wish that I should see you again, but there is a secret fear inside of me that I won’t. I know where you are. You went into the arms of the Lord in Heaven above when you went to your eternal rest and it was always my plan and solemn vow that I would join you there one day. 

But what kind of loving God would do all of this to a devoted servant? Why would He leave me here without you, without our girls, without a friendly face in the world, if not to punish me for something I’ve done. I once thought that this was a test, a trial to show my strength and devotion to the Lord, but there is no glory in the death that stands in my  doorway now. I do not feel like a martyr upon the cross. More like a sinner cast onto coals. 

What have I done to deserve this hell? There’s a rattle in my lungs and a fog in my head most moments I am awake, but I think it is the loneliness that is killing me once and for all. I’m so sorry, my love, I tried to be strong for you, to be brave, but I cannot bear it any longer. 

If I have failed in my test, I am sorry for it. But I have to think that hell is full, and warm, and that that might be better than this place.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

"February 2nd, 1974.  The winters are getting harder and harder. It isn’t so much that the storms are worse, but that there is so much more unpredictability to them. I know the weather patterns of my home like I know my own name, but I hadn’t fully appreciated just how reliant I’d become on the Farmer’s Almanac. 

There is also the matter of my age. I feel the cold so much more now, and long even more for the warm comfort of my dear Harry.  

Oh, Harry, what has happened to us? There are days when I curse your name for leaving me when you did, for condemning me to this life alone. For I was alone even before this purgatory I’m in now. Now, I can pretend that our girls are out there still, living off the land just as we taught them, and unable to contact me. I can imagine that they are happy. But when you died, I knew you were gone forever and that I would forever be alone in the world from then on. What is my life without you?

On days in which my head is clearer, I find myself thanking God that you went when you did. I can be selfish at times,  and I want you with me more than anything, but I am glad that you do not have to live with this uncertainty and fear. 

I’m tired, Harry. I want to see you again, my love.” 

[click, static] 

I don’t know—I don’t know why I read that one aloud. There’s nothing in it that—

I’m so sorry, Leann. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“June 10th, 1972. The crop is looking better this year than ever. I believe I have this whole gardening process down pat now. I think I may need to expand my icebox this winter, as it’s looking like I’ll have too many vegetables to eat on my own. Between the produce I’ll be able to freeze and the game I expect to hunt this summer, I should be even better prepared for winter than I was last year. 

It is incredible how much there is to hunt now. It feels as if the deer are walking right up to my doorstep, offering themselves up to be eaten. There is no one else to scare them away. 

Once again, I find myself contemplating leaving North Dakota and seeking out other survivors. The radio has continued to yield no results. Neither have the regular trips I make to Bismarck. Nothing around me has changed except for the seasons and the unencumbered growth of the land beginning to overtake the roads. 

But I am no longer a young woman, and I feel that age in my bones more and more every day. What if I were to set out only to have an accident on the road, or run into bad weather or, worse, some danger that lurks out there that I can’t yet imagine? What if I find no trouble, but also no way to survive either? I’m afraid to leave my home for too long. It would only make sense to travel in the warmer months, and I can’t neglect my garden for too long. But then I look over the abundance I have and think that it is terribly selfish of me to have all of this to myself. Too many vegetables to eat and people out there who may have empty stomachs. 

I’ve decided, at least, to get the old signal fire going again. It was a right pain in the hiney to keep up those first few months, but now that every other part of my life is turning like a well-oiled wheel, I don’t think it will be too much of a burden to keep up. Perhaps this time someone will see it.”

[click, static]

So that’s how she was surviving—planting and hunting. She writes about some looting as well—that’s what she calls it, but I don’t think it’s looting if there’s no one to commit a crime against—but that’s mostly for supplies and equipment. So…just like us, it seems. It turns out she doesn’t just know how to do all this stuff because off her job, but also because of her father and her husband. It sounds like she and her husband both grew up living off the land. I found an old photo of what I think is Leann’s childhood home, and it looks like a one-room cabin. I doubt it had running water, let alone electricity. This house that she was living in probably felt like more luxury than she needed. I know what that feels like. 

And she was trying to contact people. I doubt a regular shortwave radio from North Dakota could have reached Pennsylvania, but then again my morse code friends seemed to have figured something out. If I had just put my foot down, insisted that we get a radio going…

There’s no point in wondering “what if”. But I still hate that she was out here, trying to reach out, while we were holed up in that stupid fucking house, blocking out the world. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I—I found her diary. And it…well, it feels wrong, it is wrong to read it, but I’ve done a lot of wrong things to survive, and this feels like just another for the pile.

She didn’t write in it very often, at least not after 1969. There are some entries before the incident, just mundane life stuff that I didn’t do much more than skim. It isn’t relevant and I don’t want to violate her privacy more than I have to. 

So it’s best to focus on the entries from ’68 on. At first, it seems like she didn’t notice that something was wrong—it seems like her life was pretty isolated to begin with, spending most of her job outside, on her own, living alone and talking on the phone every two weeks with her daughters. 

Her husband—he’s been dead for a few years it looks like. Or, god, nearly a decade now, I guess. A few years when this whole thing started. His name—

(a dark laugh) You won’t believe this, but his name was Harry. Boy, was that a shock to the system when I read the words “Since Harry passed”. I felt like I was going to faint for a moment before I remembered where I was and what I was reading. I had to take a break for a while after that.  

I’ve had to take breaks a few times. Just reading about someone else’s life is…

I’ve flipped through the journal, and the last entry looks like it’s from a few months ago, with only a few entries each year the last few years. I guess that makes sense. I know I would have very little to write about if I had kept a journal the last five or so years. That first year, sure, but since then…well, not much happens. 

I guess that isn’t true for the last six months. A lot has happened, even if it doesn’t feel like it—I’m barely closer to finding anyone or understanding anything than I was when I started, but compared to the small, monotonous existence of Pennsylvania, my head spins when I think about everything I’ve done since I left. 

I have been keeping a journal of sorts, I guess, in these broadcasts.  I don’t even know who I’m talking to anymore, but you’re getting almost every thought, any substantial event that takes place. If that’s not a journal, what is?

But just like all these transmissions I’m making, I don’t expect Leann’s journal to hold many answers. If she’d known any more than what I did, surely she would’ve figured something out, would’ve left this place, would’ve—would’ve lived.  

Then again, maybe she knew exactly what happened and decided she was better off alone. I’ll just have to read and find out. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static] [a cacophony of beeps] [click]

Okay, okay, I get it, just stop. 

[click, static, beeps]

(sighing) This isn’t—this isn’t helpful. Maybe you can’t hear what I’m hearing, but two messages are coming in at once and as a result, I can’t hear a goddamn thing. A fox yapping and a bird chirping at the same time and I’m the fool trying to make sense of both of them. 

If you truly care for me to understand what you’re trying to tell me, then you can figure something else out, something that’s not…this. Meanwhile, I’m going to be doing my own goddamn investigating. 

I’m going to figure out how Leann lived. Surviving on your own, especially all the way up here, out here, and especially at her age…its no easy feat. Maybe she really was just proficient in survival because of her job, maybe that was enough, or maybe she wasn’t totally alone the whole time. Maybe the husband in the photos…maybe he was with her and died years ago. Maybe her daughters are still out there and have been gone from home for one reason or another. Maybe she had people to help her, people to rely on, people to…goddamn pass the time with. 

If she did, I’m going to find them. Even they are—even if they did eventually…

It matters that she’s dead. Of course it matters. I really, really wish that she wasn’t. But, dead or alive, she’s here. And that’s what matters. She’s existed in this strange after-world, right alongside Harry and I, without any of us realizing it. And as far as I can tell, the three of us have nothing in common beyond being women who are decently self-sufficient. Leann was born here, in North Dakota, and doesn’t seem to have traveled more than a few hundred miles from this general area her entire life. I don’t have an exhaustive list of every place that Harry has ever visited, but I’m pretty sure she’s never been out this way. So none of us crossed paths. 

Harry and I were criminals, and Leann worked for the government…but for the Bureau of Land Management. That’s hardly—I mean, it’s not the FBI, it isn’t like our paths would’ve crossed once Harry and I got arrested. And maybe it’s not important that we would’ve crossed paths or not, maybe it’s…maybe it’s some kind of weird gene we all share or something, something intrinsic in each of us that’s caused us to survive when everyone else…

What, evaporated? Leann’s body is the first that I’ve seen. If we were all immune to something, we’d see everybody who wasn’t. 

I have…I have no theories. After the thing with the tornado siren, I started to think again that maybe…maybe it’s not that everyone else is gone, maybe it’s that we’re somewhere else. That maybe that dark feeling I have sometimes about this being purgatory or hell is right. It’s what I deserve, and for years I didn’t understand what Harry would’ve done to earn the same punishment but then she—

[click, static]

I don’t know what Leann could have possibly done to land herself here.  And if it is some sort of cosmic punishment, well…where the fuck is everyone else? There are things that I’ve done that I’m not proud of, that I carry a hell of a lot of guilt and shame about actually, but I know there are worse people than me. Is this a perfectly calibrated hell for people who have done something bad but not that bad? Maybe Leann was a shitty mom, or was stealing money from her job, or…who knows. But if she had done something like that, then her and Harry being in the same place…sure, I can see that. 

But I don’t belong with them. What I did was so much worse, objectively.  I know that. I don’t pretend like it was right or noble or anything like that. Necessary, maybe,  or at least I thought so at the time—

[click, static]

I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how we’re connected. And maybe I’m looking for a connection where I’ll never find one, maybe it’s just weird fucking coincidence but that doesn’t feel…right. If only three of us made it past 1968, there must be a reason. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I…I’ve thought about staying here longer. About starting to sleep in the house to see if I can see any ghosts. Because why not right? I’ve seen plenty of things by this point that would suggest that as a possibility. Maybe the ghost in Estes’ Park was the ghost of someone who’s body was in one of the hotel rooms—it’s not like I checked every single one. Maybe if I hung around, I’d see Leann too. 

But what would be the point? She wouldn’t know what the hell was going on, and I don’t think I could talk to her. It would just be another person out of my reach. And sure, maybe I would confirm for good that ghosts are real, but what would that tell me, really? Other than reemphasizing what I already know, which is that I’m way in over my head. It wouldn’t help me, to know that. And I’m…I think I’ve learned enough this week. I’m not sure I want to know more. 

I know the important things. That I don’t know shit and that I’m alone. 

[click, static]

[a cacophony of beeps]

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(on the verge of tears, softly) 

Harry? Harry can you hear me?

[click, static]

Please, Harry, I need—if you can hear this, just please get on the radio and talk to me. I don’t care what you say, I just need—

[click, static]

What are we going to do, Harry? What are we going to become if we stay like this? I have all the time in the world to seek answers but that just means I have all the time in the world to never find them. Life is so long, this woman—she lived to be sixty in this world and we—

[click, static]

I can’t keep doing this. Another two, three decades like this? Only to die one day, never to be found, decaying in the open air while the rest of the world continues not to move around us. 

I think I’m going insane. We would joke about that, you and I, do you remember?  We’d have our “sanity days” where we’d do something that reminded us that we were real, and that time was marching forward, even if it didn’t feel like it. We’d tell each other a story the other had never heard, or run around outside like kids, or see who could eat one of your scones the fastest. Small stuff, dumb stuff.   [click, static]

Do you think Leann had anything like that? She must have been so lonely. 

[click, static]

We’re responsible for that Harry. You and me. We could’ve helped this woman not be lonely but instead we stayed in that stupid house and—

[click, static]

Please. Please just get on your radio and tell me I’m real. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Leann Smith. That was the woman’s name. I, um…I don’t know what the ethics are of nosing through someone’s home when they’re lying dead in the other room, but no one’s here to tell me not to. And I wanted to—I guess I wanted to know something about her. I wanted to know if there was some…connection, I guess. 

Because that would…it would lend some kind of sense to all of this, right? Harry and I both being alive still—that makes sense. We were together when whatever happened happened and we were intentionally hiding from the world at the time. If something, you know, swept through civilization, we were isolated from it. 

Mrs. Smith, here, well she was isolated too, I guess. She lived all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere, by herself. At least I think she lived by herself. I found a stack of old mail that I guess she must have kept this whole time for…sentimental reasons? I get that, I think I would’ve done the same if I’d be living at my own address. And the mail was only ever addressed to her. If someone else lived here, there’s no evidence of them, and a woman who kept mail from six years ago would’ve almost certainly kept traces of whoever she lived with. 

But there are—well, there are photos. Photos of her with a man—her husband maybe—and then, eventually, with kids. The most recent photo, based on her age in it—she’s got her arms around two women in their…late twenties I’d guess? Younger than me. Or, at least, younger than I am now, though I guess probably not the year this photo was taken. 

Leann herself is—was—sixty-one. I found her driver’s license and her work badge. She worked for the Bureau of Land Management. Probably how she survived this long on her own, she must have picked up some useful skills in that job. 

She had an interesting job, a husband at some point, and two daughters, if I’m interpreting all the photos correctly. Granddaughters I think, or something like it, based off a letter she got, a woman writing about her beautiful daughter Grace, turning one soon, would Leann come visit? She lived a full life—fuller than mine in a lot of respects. Sure, I’ve had excitement and variety but never…

She really does look peaceful now. I thought—well, I thought about burying her, giving her a proper rest, but…I don’t want to move her. Not when she seems to be resting just fine already. I wish I knew anything about what she believed in, I would’ve liked to…I don’t know, pray or say words or sing, no matter how tone deaf. Something to show that she’s—that someone was here, someone knows she’s gone. Someone will remember her. 

I thought maybe I might find a will with the funeral arrangements she’d wanted but all her safe had was a gun, which…that was a bit surprising, um, and what looks like an old engagement ring, and a stack of cash. None of which is particularly useful to me now. 

At least I got to break a lock more intricate than one on the front door of a house. It wasn't a very good safe, but it kept me occupied for nearly a minute. That’s something. 

I— I’m not really sure what I’m going on about. I feel…I feel very far away from my body right now. Like I’ve been watching someone else walk casually through the house and open cabinets and rifle through papers. Like that can’t possibly be me, because surely I’m somewhere having a breakdown over the last few days. 

(a slightly manic laugh) But nope! It’s me, I’m the one who has suddenly gotten very comfortable occupying the same space as a dead body. Isn’t it amazing how quickly human beings can adapt to something? I feel like that’s all I’ve done the last six years—actually, I feel like that’s all I’ve done my whole life—adapt, adapt, adapt. The great adapter, that’s me. 

Why wouldn’t I adapt to this new reality that other people did survive but that I don’t get to talk to them? It’s just another piece of information. And information is neutral, easy to digest. And all I’ve done today is gather more and more information and while none of it has proven to be particularly useful…well, I have it now. And that’s something, right? It’s got to be something. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You didn’t know? I’m assuming you’re not saying you didn’t know they’d be here, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything else noteworthy at these coordinates. You sent me there to find them, that’s the only thing that makes sense. 

So, in that case, are you saying that you didn’t know they’d be dead? 

I guess…I guess I can believe that. I’m not sure I do, because I don’t believe anything you say to me, but I could believe that. After all, I haven’t had any direct contact with Harry in six months—though I guess she tried to reach out to me a few months after I last saw her in person. But for all I know, I could drive back to Pennsylvania right now and find that she’s—   [click, static]

No, I can’t think like that. I can’t—maybe I should go back. Just to…check. 

[click, static]

She said I would never make it a year. That I’d be back once I’d gotten sick of driving, once the loneliness had driven me sufficiently insane. That that would happen even faster if I didn’t find something to take care of. 

[click, static]

I can’t go back. Not just because she—

I need to sort all o this shit out. I’m not listening to any fucking cryptic morse code messages anymore, but you need to tell me what the hell you’re playing at with this. What you were hoping to accomplish by having me meet this person. 

And you need to tell me if there’s anyone else. You give me more coordinates and I’ll listen to those. But that’s it. Unless you do a hell of a good job explaining this whole situation that you’ve dropped me in. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[content warning: reference to vomiting, dead bodies]

[click, static]

“Call me Fox”. That’s all you have to say for yourself? After what you just—

[click, static]

I’m not going to call you anything. I don’t know what—or who—

Do you know Birdie? You must, right? Birdie and Fox, both communicating only through morse code…who the hell are you people? What did you do to that—

[click, static]

(a dark laugh) Well, now I know. Now I know that there are other people in the world. Or, were. There have been, this whole time. If I had to guess, I’d say that that woman had been dead for…a few months maybe? If I had just—

[click, static]

Why would you do this? Why would you send me to find a stranger’s corpse? 

[click, static] 

I…I slept in my car last night. Which isn’t exactly new for me, but it felt different, knowing that I was parked outside a perfectly good house with a perfectly good guest room—I’ve slept in plenty of strangers’ homes, in plenty of guest rooms and master bedrooms and children’s rooms and all of them—all of them—have been empty. 

For the past six months—hell, for the past six years, I have dreamt about finding a house that isn’t empty. I’ve imagined what it would be like, not just to sleep in a guest room, but to be someone’s guest. 

I cannot be a guest in that house. You can’t be guest when the host is lying in their own bed, eyes shut like they’re—

[click, static]

I got sick. In the house, yesterday, about fifteen minutes before I tried to contact you. I, um, I threw up right on their bedroom carpet. I—I cleaned it up eventually. I don’t know, it felt like the right thing to do, like, polite, you know even if the whole house already smelled like—

[click, static] 

I’ve seen a dead body before. It isn't that. I watched both my parents die, I saw a really terrible motorcycle accident on the highway once. But those were…for lack of a better term, they were, um, fresh. Which is its own kind of horror, but what’s in there, what’s in that house, the decay of it. The…the loneliness. 

[click, static]

I don’t want to be found like that. I don’t want to find Harry like that. But if we both—I mean, is there anyone left to do the finding? There—I still can’t get over the fact that someone was here. Not a person from six years ago with a body that somehow stuck around, but someone who has been here, who died, it seems, peacefully in their sleep sometime in the last year. I don’t know anything about what happens to a body after it dies, but I know that the body inside that house has not been lying there for six years. 

Why? Why did you do this? Do you have any idea just how cruel it is? To show me that someone was here all along, and that I’m too late?

[click, static]

[beeps]

didn't know

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Who—

[click, static]

Who are you? I’m not asking anymore, who—

[click, static]

I don’t know what—what the fuck you’re playing at but…

It’s not you. What—who I f—

[click, static]

It can’t be you. You can’t have transmitted something to me just last week, not when—

[click, static]

But you knew. You knew what I would find. Why—how—

[click, static]

Why would you send me here? 

[click, static]

Who are you?

[click, static]

[beeps]

-.-. .- .-.. .-.. / -- . / ..-. --- -..-

Call me Fox

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT] I swear to god, I really am going to lose it. Really, really lose it. 

There’s nothing here. Not only are you not here, but there’s literally…nothing. It’s an open field. 

I’ve double, triple, quadruple-checked the coordinates and I’m pretty positive I have it right, so…

I mean, I guess it’s a general area. I’m not particularly used to reading longitude and latitude, so I’m only…ninety-five percent certain I have the right idea about how wide of an area it is. So it’s not like my search is over but…

The whole area is flat and empty. As I’ve discovered, a lot of America is flat and empty. What am I looking for? If it’s signs of human life, I haven’t found it. 

I guess…thinking about how Harry and I have lived…it’s pretty rural, pretty empty and hard to find. Which was the point. So maybe you were thinking the same thing. Maybe you’ve got a farm somewhere. Living off the land, far away from any civilization…and I just can’t see it yet, it’s just past the horizon. But I’ll check every house, every barn, every broken down car I see. Once I see any of those things. 

If—if you are hearing this, just…step outside and start shouting. Wave a flag, flash a light into the sky, anything. I’m pretty sure I can hear and see for miles out here. 

And I’m so close. I can taste it, we’re so close. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

They’re coordinates. That’s—they’re coordinates! 

I think. 

46 degrees 40 minutes North and 100 degrees 52 minutes West. At least, that’s what I’m assuming. Any other combination of North, South, East, West puts me into the ocean or…Mongolia, so I’m just going to go with my gut here. 

It’s North Dakota. I would guess maybe a ten hour drive—I’m already on the road and driving fast. Maybe I’m completely wrong and you’re yelling at your radio begging me to pull over and look at the numbers again and understand something but I…

Maybe I want them to be coordinates. I want you to be real—to be someone other than Birdie and to be telling me where to find you. I haven’t been to North Dakota yet, there’s still a chance that people are out there, that you want me to find them. To find you. 

(laughs) I don’t know what—what am I gonna say to you? Would it—would it be strange to give you a hug? I’m not even that affectionate of a person but it’s been so long since—

[click, static]

Who is the last person that you hugged? Is it someone that you’re with? Are you with people? Looking through the messages I’ve received, I think you started to talk to me around my birthday. If I had to guess. Which means that you’re the one who told me the tornado system wasn’t automated, which makes sense, maybe Birdie didn’t know that either. 

It also means that you’re the person who told me I didn’t belong. But I’m choosing to see that as a…problem with tone. You can only convey so much meaning with dots and dashes and maybe you were trying to tell me I didn’t belong on the West Coast because you’d been hoping I would go North instead of West. I don’t belong where there are no people and you know that—you know I’ve been searching. Maybe you were trying to say I belong wherever you are. 

I’d like to hug you for that. For telling me the truth about things, about the warning siren, for giving me something to look for. Maybe you’re affectionate with someone every single day but me—

Well, Harry was the last person I hugged. Obviously. Six years with someone, it’s bound to happen. But that was a few years ago now. She—maybe she is a physically affectionate person naturally but we rarely—

I’d had a nightmare. I get them sometimes, as you know. Or, maybe you don’t know, I don’t know how long you’ve been listening. Maybe everything I said before getting to Vegas was lost to you. Surely you would’ve told me about the warning system before then if you had heard me. 

But, well, anyway, I get nightmares sometimes. About…well, it’s not important, but Harry—no matter what she felt about the situation that led to the nightmares, she never judged me too harshly for having them. And a while back, I—I think I woke up screaming. It was a bad one, it felt so real, and she came rushing in, thinking that something was really wrong and then she—-

Human comfort can mean a lot even when it’s given by someone that—that you—someone who doesn’t—

Well, our relationship has always been about as clear as mud, but she comforted me then. Held me until I stopped shaking. And that wasn’t the first time she’d done something like that, but it was the last. 

But then again, sometimes, when she cut my hair, she’d…well, I thought…

She lingered. Her fingers in my hair, on my neck. Touching longer and more tenderly than they had to. 

[click, static] 

Just…when I get there, whoever you are…you can hug me. I give you full permission. 

And whoever you are, just…stay there. I’m coming as fast as I can. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I am…losing my mind. I cannot for the life of me figure out what this means. 

Together, it’s 464,010,052…or, I mean, I guess if it’s together, it could be a phone number, though I have no idea if 464 is an area code anywhere…certainly not to my knowledge. 

Besides, I do think they’re separate numbers. Which brings me to 4,640 and 10,052…or they’re not values at all. 10052 does look like a zip code and a New York one at that—100 is Manhattan, but, unless I’m seriously misremembering something, there is no 1005. And what would the other number be? An address maybe, 46 40th Street…no East or West but both of them would be Midtown. Or, in the outer boroughs, I guess. 

Some kind of code? It’s not any morse code shorthand I know, like CQ or SOS…numbers aren’t really used for that kind of stuff. It could be a book code…page 46, 40th word; page 100, 52nd word but what book would it be? 

I wish Harry was here. All those random bits of trivia she has stored in her head, her love of puzzles…she’d be able to see a pattern that I’m not seeing. 

…But then she’d probably figure it out and also figure out a reason why we shouldn't trust it or follow it or whatever it is you want us to do with it. 

Me. Want me to do with it. Not us. Because she’s not here. Because she didn’t trust me enough to come with me, didn’t trust me to keep her safe, didn’t trust that this journey would be worth taking. 

And maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m the one who’s crazy for trusting that a totally new stranger who didn’t even bother to say hello or introduce themselves is worth deciphering a message from but…if I die, I die. There’s only so much uncertainty and loneliness a person can take before they’ll accept any risk. 

I could really use a hand here. If you’re trying to tell me something, I’m not gonna get it on my own. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey calling out for—

[click, static]

Well, I’m not sure, actually. I thought…I thought Birdie had started transmitting again and even though things sounded a little different to me, I didn’t think much of it, thought maybe the signal was just getting weaker, except…

Birdie has never sent me numbers before. Let alone a string of them without any other information. And listening to them over and over again, trying to understand what they mean…it’s hard to deny that something is different. I thought I’d just gotten so good at translating morse, but you—whoever you are—you’re transmitting slower. I’m sure of it now. 

Which begs the question…how long have you been transmitting? When was the first time I noticed things sounding a little different? When is the last time Birdie sent me something? I have all the messages written down, so I’ll go back through and see if I can pinpoint…

Okay. But first: 4640 10052—those were the numbers you sent through. And I’m damned if I have any idea what it means. It’s not a phone number, or a zip code…it might not even be two separate numbers, though there was a significant gap between them.  

Math has never been my strong suit. So if you want to give me a hint, mysterious stranger…

[click, static]

God, you really are a stranger, aren’t you? There’s someone else out there. 

I—I can’t believe it. 

If this is Birdie and you’ve just changed the style of your transmissions, please tell me? I can’t bear to get my hopes up. 

[click, static]

And if this is Harry messing around somehow, I will come back to Pennsylvania and destroy all your paintings. 

Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I found the tornado warning system. The one that I’m pretty sure I heard, based on its location. And it’s…

Well, you were right. It has to be triggered manually. But not only is no one here or anywhere nearby, not only is there no sign that anyone has been here, in this room, this county, this state, beside me, but…

It’s broken. The siren, it’s broken. It doesn’t work. It looks like it’s been broken for a while.

I’m going to drive around and check as many systems as I can but…

What the fuck.

[click, static]

[beeps]

....- -.... ....- ----- / .---- ----- ----- ..... ..---

4640 10052

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey, fruitlessly searching for the grail. 

I found what I’m pretty sure is the spot I pulled over to when I heard the siren and I’ve gone north, east, and west, with absolutely nothing to show for it. The flat, empty and open nature of driving through Kansas was bad enough when I was doing it for the first time, now that I’m back in places I’ve already been, I feel unbelievably trapped. No matter what direction I go, I feel like I’m driving in circles. 

The only direction left to go is south. And then…if I can’t find anything in that direction, I guess I’ll try every direction again, just with a larger radius. 

The problem is that I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I’ve been checking government buildings and anything that looks remotely related to the government or the military—I’ve even been checking schools. And…nothing. 

Quests really aren’t what they seem like in fantasy novels, are they? I'm glad I don’t have monsters to fight, but I wouldn’t say no to some degree of eventfulness. Anything to shake up the tedium of driving, driving, driving. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

No dog. I didn’t really expect to find one. And I told myself I wouldn’t get my hopes up and yet I’m still disappointed. 

That’s just the way it goes, isn’t it? Disappointment finds you no matter how much you try to protect your heart. I never really believed that I’d find the dog again—at this point, I’m not sure I believe I even saw it—and I never really believed that if I did, it would lead me to answers, the truth, people. And yet, here I am, let down. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the dog, about what I said after I’d seen it. That I wanted to be taken care of like that dog. That I was jealous of it. And the more I think about it, the more I’ve reflected on the last six years, on what they were like, on what they weren’t and on what I know now that I didn’t know for most of those years…

Were you keeping me like a loyal dog, Harry? Giving me just enough affection and positive reinforcement to keep me from biting your hand? Making sure that my kennel was comfortable so that I didn’t try to leave it, but never giving me too much because, after all, I’m just something to share space with, to bark at the door when there’s danger. 

It isn’t even like I was some kind of lapdog, a pet that got nothing but love and gave nothing in return, but there’s an…obedience, that you brought out in me that I hate. Even in all our disagreements, in all my frustrations with you, I still always listened to you. 

Because there was always hope. There was always the possibility of something and I know you said that you never could—

[click, static]

You knew. You knew that possibility was keeping me at heel. And I’ve been so useful to you. Let’s be honest with ourselves, Harry, for once—you would have died years ago without me. Sure, you’re sufficient now, I don’t think I could have left if—

[click, static]

You’ve learned. You’ve become more capable over the years. But at first? I did everything. I kept us alive. I kept us safe. I got us out of that prison transport in the first place. And you knew that you needed me. So you took care of me in turn, just enough to make sure I’d stick by you. Even when you also knew that you’d already—

[click, static]

I’m not jealous of the dog. I’m jealous of my past self. Of her naiveté. Of the hope she felt. Now I’m left living in the perpetual disappointment. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey driving East. 

So Colorado was a bust. Kind of. The polaroids are something, even if I don’t know what they are yet, but I definitely didn’t have some kind of dramatic confrontation—collision—while I was in Denver. I didn’t even get any idea of what that would look like. 

On to Kansas then. Back to Kansas. To chase a tornado or, at least, the warning of one. 

I don’t know a lot about tornados or their emergency systems—obviously—so I don’t have the most concrete plan. I figure…well, I marked on my atlas where I saw the dog, so I’m going to start there. Maybe now that I’ve been gone for a while, the dog has taken to wandering the highway again and I’ll get lucky. 

From there, I have a general idea of where I first heard the siren. My best guess would be that the sirens can’t be heard from more than a few miles away, so I’ll do what I did in West Virginia and triangulate the epicenter as best as I can. Except, unless the siren is currently going when I get there, I’m going to be guessing on which direction the siren was coming from, so it might take me a bit longer. 

Then again, I have time. I may have wasted the last six years—maybe if I’d set out a few months after we found the house like I’d wanted to, we’d have a whole community of people already. It doesn’t matter now. You can make the choice to change your life when you make it and not a moment before. And all you have to do is hope you do it in time for you to live a bit of the life you want, instead of the getting of that life being the last thing you do before you die. 

Well, I’m not near to death. I feel like I have something to do for the first time in a long time—maybe ever—and I’m done wasting time. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I thought getting some sleep and getting out of the city might help me clear my head, that I’d wake up and have a cup of coffee and look at the photos I took and they’d be…normal. 

They’re not. They’re exactly as they were when I last looked at them, which is to say…not normal.  Those people—those ghosts—are still there and I’ve spent nearly an hour looking at all of them as closely as I possibly can, trying to find any kind of clue as to what they are. None of the faces—as much as I can see them—are familiar, but I guess that’s not a surprise. I’ve never been to Colorado. 

But the thing that—I mean, it’s better this way, but the thing that has me truly scratching my head is…well, now that I have these polaroids, some part of me expected to look closely and find all the peoples’ eyes wide in terror, their mouths open in a scream. If this is some kind of…remnant of whatever happened here, shouldn’t there be a trace of terror?

But no, they’re just normal people dressed normally, going about their normal days. They don’t look distressed or shocked or like anything unusual is happening to them at all. 

There is one weird thing. Weird-er thing, I guess, beyond the very fact of the figures. One of them—a polaroid I took of a park—has a man really close to the camera. He’s in profile, like he’s walked into frame as I took the photo, and he’s scratching his forehead or adjusting his glasses or something. The relevant bit is that his hand is up and the watch on his wrist is facing the camera. I first was checking the time to see if it matched the time I took the photo and then, of course, I couldn’t remember when I took the photo, so that ended up not being helpful at all, but the watch itself…

Well, I may have never been the hippest or most fashion forward person in the world, but I’ve always worn a watch, like most people. And I have never seen a watch like this—it didn’t have any hands, instead it was like a flip clock, where it’s just the numbers of the hour and minutes. But the strangest of all is that the numbers looked lit up. Almost like they were on a TV screen. 

As I’m saying it, it sounds like nothing. I know, I can here it. But it’s something that’s out of place. And anything that’s out of place is worth noting. 

Even if I have no idea what it means. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I took a look at the polaroids I got yesterday and there are…

[click, static]

It doesn’t make any sense but there are people in them. 

Not—not fully, not completely. Not as if they were standing there in front of me, some kind of reverse vampire that can only be seen in photos. 

Though, that’s mirrors, isn’t it? Vampires can’t see their reflection. It doesn’t matter—

[click, static]

It’s like the nuclear shadow thing I was talking about except, they aren’t shadows. They—they’re both more and less distinct than that. Not stark and clearly visible silhouettes, but with more…dimension. More detail. I feel like I can see a real face in one or two of them. 

[click, static]

How is that…how is it possible? What are they? Is this what Birdie was talking about?

Am I in a city of ghosts?

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker Channel 19, this is WAR1974 in Denver, CO. 

[click, static] 

Breaker, breaker, does anyone read?

[click, static]

(sigh) Yeah. Figures.

I’ve combed every inch of this city, I’m sure of it. Driven every highway and side street, gone into any building that seemed to have electricity, even climbed to the roof of one of the taller buildings and looked over the whole goddamned place and there’s…

There’s nothing. Lights and sounds, yes, but the lights are unreliable and the sounds don’t seem to be coming from anywhere. I feel like a crazy person, darting back and forth across the city, chasing phantoms. 

I’ve taken a bunch of photos throughout the day. I don’t know why. I guess because I can now, and because…

It doesn’t make any sense. This has to mean something. Whether it means that I can’t see whatever it is that makes this place worth avoiding, or it means that Birdie wanted to keep me out of here and was lying about it being dangerous…there’s something here that I’m not getting. 

And meanwhile, the CB stays quiet. No morse, no old radio broadcasts, nothing at all. If you are somewhere in this city, Birdie, you may have gotten what you wanted. I’m not sure I can find you. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]   There’s…there’s music. I don’t—I don’t know where it’s coming from but it’s—it sounds—

[click, static]

I took my time to actually drive into the city—so much time it was dark by the time I was done circling the place. I just wanted to be careful, you know? And the darkness actually sort of helped in some ways—it made it easy to see that the city has a lot of electricity—almost as much as Vegas, which is weird, because it’s not like this is the kind of hot destination Vegas was. 

But maybe that’s what you meant by “collision point”—that there’s more power here for some reason. But despite the flickering lights, I didn’t see any movement or anything that looked remotely dangerous so I figured it was safe to drive into the city, even if it is getting late. 

But the further I got in, the more…sound there was. I even turned off the CB for a bit and rolled down my windows to listen—it’s not like I was receiving any transmissions anyway. 

And there were sounds of…cars. Not…consistent, not like the sound of a busy road or a highway in the distance, but the occasional far away honk, the pop of a backfire, the screech of a skid. I tried to follow the sounds, find whatever was making them but there hasn’t been anything and then…the music. 

It stopped a few minutes ago. And it was almost like there was—well, if I didn’t know better, I would say that there was the murmur of a crowd. Applause and then…

I don’t know, I’m clearly hearing things. I followed the sound as best I could and it actually seemed like it was coming from one place. And when I got close, I could hear—singing, actual singing, not from a record but—

I didn’t recognize the song, but it was something about a “green-eyed lady”, those were the only lyrics I was able to pick up on. And then the song ended and there was that rumble like an audience and then…nothing. 

I’ve run up and down this street half a dozen times looking for any sign of a record player or electricity or anything at all that would explain why it sounded like there was a concert here a moment ago but—

But there’s nothing here. Well, that’s not true—there’s a half finished building. A skyscraper, actually—maybe not by New York standards, but certainly compared to the rest of the buildings—still covered in scaffolding, a crane on top of it. Not exactly a concert hall. 

Maybe I am truly losing my mind. Maybe I just need some sleep. 

[click, static]

Harry has green eyes. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Tire chains. All that preparation, packing the car with everything I could possibly need for any contingency, and I forgot snow chains. The West is strange. Just this morning I left the beautifully alien desert-like world of Utah and four hours later, hit a snowstorm in Colorado. 

The snow is beautiful too—a different kind of beauty from Zion, but beautiful all the same. It keeps knocking me over, the grandeur of this land, the…breathtaking splendor of it. 

And what did we do with it? We preserved some of it, sure, but at what cost? It’s hard to look at all these places and not see what it cost us. It’s hard to look at perfect white snow blanketing the world and not see the red that stains it all. 

I don’t know, maybe I’m just feeling maudlin. It’s this feeling of dread inside me—not the feeling that I had in Estes Park, this dread is all mine. But I’m dreading going to Denver tomorrow and finding out that Birdie was right, and that it’s too dangerous and I’m woefully unprepared. I’m dreading going to Kansas afterward and finding nothing and no one at all. 

I’m so goddamn lonely. Not the normal kind of lonely either, the kind of lonely I’ve been most of my life. I mean, god, I’ve been lonely a lot these last six years sharing one house with another person and…

I miss people. I don’t know why it took me so long, but I really miss people. It isn’t abstract anymore, the way it was when we were holed up in Pennsylvania—now I see it every day, how empty this place is, how beautiful but empty. How I’m the only one around to appreciate it. And that’s wrong. I don’t know that we’ve ever had it right, but I know this isn’t right either. 

We drove out so many people, killed so many people—people we thought were different from us and people we probably considered family—just so we could take everything the land was worth and then put up a sign saying it was protected now, and you have to move through it by our rules. 

And yet, still, I goddamn miss people. In all their messy flawed selves. And this—where we are now, where I am now—it must have cost us something so much worse than anything before. I’m just not sure why I’m paying the price for it. 

Or maybe I’m the one that got off easy. 

[click, static]

Anyway, I got tire chains. Picked up a polaroid camera too, finally—I’m going to stay the night in whatever this city is that I’m in and hope the storm lets up by morning. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey, calling out from Zion National Park. I found an old guidebook to the country’s parks a while back—and some history books too, figured I’d finally give myself that higher education I never got—and while I haven’t exactly shaped my trip around the thing, I like to take a gander every now and then and figure out if there’s anything off my route worth taking a detour for. And while I might be on more of a mission than I have been up to this point, I still  think this detour was worth it. 

It’s as stunning as the book says it is. And I’d heard about it of course, it’s probably one of the more famous parks, but I’m not sure I had any idea what it was supposed to look like. Not that knowing would have prepared me at all. 

It’s enormous and colorful and…overwhelming. That’s the only word I seem to have. Like so much of the land out here—the grand canyon, the pacific coast—it feels like the land of giants. Like I’ve been shrunk down and need to be careful where I tread, in case I step into the shadow of a canyon and become invisible to the giant stomping around above me, ready to be crushed under its foot. 

Zion means something, I think, to people, but hell if I know what that is. Aside from the occasional holiday or, I don’t know, food, Harry and I never talked much about religion. But it is a religious word, I’m pretty sure. Or a political one? I remember it being in the papers a few years before everything went all wonky. I never spent that much time on the news beyond who was running for President and lord knows I haven’t thought about any of that stuff in years. There’s no more news now that there are no more people.

I wish I’d paid more attention. 

But anyway, I guess it meant something to the Mormons, because that’s where the park got its name. Or, something like that, the guidebook doesn’t go into detail beyond saying that it used to be called the Mukuntunweap National Monument, which is a Paiute word—and I’m probably butchering both of those pronunciations. But they changed it because it was too hard for people to spell and because the Mormons looked at the land and saw some kind of holy temple, I guess. 

I’m not sure what to make of any of that, if I’m honest. Other than to say that I sort of get what the Mormons were feeling about this place—it is so beautiful, I think I would see God in it if I believed that He existed. And I’m glad that people thought to preserve it, make it a park; I’m glad we didn’t stick a highway through it or tear down the trees to build a suburb but at the same time…

Well, was it holy to the Paiute people too? Did we drive them out before declaring this place ours and worth protecting? That sounds like something we’d do. Were the Paiute the ones that named it Mukuntunweap in the first place or did we do that after we took it from them? I doubt they found that word hard to spell, so why is it that the name had to change? Who gets to make these decisions? And why?

I keep thinking about what you said. That I don’t belong. And maybe I don’t. Maybe I don’t belong in Los Angeles, maybe I don’t belong in Pennsylvania or New York or America or anywhere. I’ve talked about my fairly itinerant life and what it means to build a home and maybe home where you hang your hat or maybe it’s the people you belong to. I belonged to my parents, I belonged to Pete’s crew. I thought I belonged with Har—

[click, static]

All I know is that you don’t get to decide where I belong. And maybe I don’t get to decide either, maybe no one is the master of their own fate, or maybe all of us are. Maybe the earth decided that human beings didn’t belong in it at all anymore, and like a New York City exterminator trying to get rid of cockroaches just…missed a few.

[click, static]

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

It’s been exactly six months since I left. 

I can’t quite believe it. It feels so much longer than that in some ways and in others, it feels like it was yesterday that I took my keys and went. 

It’s funny, reflecting on that day now. I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it before, but I sure think about it a lot. The day of my liberation. I’ve been referring to it like that in my head for six months, with a grand story to go along with it. 

Me, getting so fed up with Harry, with being stuck in that house, with not knowing what was going on, that I tugged on my boots and put on my coat, grabbed my keys in a huff and started the car, no destination in mind, just driving to drive and then not stopping. Like some kind of grand escape—and I know about escapes. 

That’s not how it was at all. It was deliberate. It was planned. Anything else would’ve been stupid as hell—I didn’t know what was out here, I needed to make sure that I had food and clothes and clean water and extra gasoline and whatever else I might need. 

I’m back on the road this morning, heading East once more, like hitting the far west coast slingshot me right back toward the way I came. I don’t know why really, but part of me is…sad to be leaving so soon. Maybe because I haven’t had that feeling of rightness—of belonging—before. But belonging in a place pales in comparison to figuring out what’s going on. To possibly meeting someone. 

I’m trying not to get ahead of myself. Even if you say that someone would’ve had to be there to turn on the alarm, I can’t—I can’t bear to get my hopes up and be disappointed. So I’m choosing to believe that it was somehow…tripped, and if I find something different, great. But I’m not going to expect it. 

I was mapping out the route and it would take me about three days to get back to Kansas if I really hustled. But the fastest route is going to take me straight through Colorado again. So I might as well hit Denver first, try to understand what the hell that whole thing was about. With the supplies I picked up yesterday, I should be prepared for…well, for anything. 

I hope. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Alright, I think I’m nearly ready to hit the road again. I drove around a bit today, partly to see more of LA in case I don’t come back and partly to look for supplies. And I hit the jackpot. 

There’s this enormous supply store, army surplus place—I’m not really sure what it is, but it’s right off Santa Monica Boulevard and seems to be an emporium of anything you might need for the end of the world. I refilled all the basics—first aid kit, kerosene, lighters, C-rations—grabbed some new knives and tools now that mine have dulled a little. I even found a ton of batteries that hadn’t corroded, so, yeah, jackpot. 

This place even had fucking potassium iodide tablets, which I guess are supposed to help with radiation poisoning, so I grabbed some of those, you know, just in case. I don’t know how I could possibly encounter radiation now, but, you know, I want to be prepared for every eventuality. 

So I stocked up on weapons too. Which feels…odd. And to be clear, to anyone who might be listening, my first instinct is not to treat any potential other survivors as hostile. I’m certainly not hostile. But, I don’t know, anything could happen, right? With all the weird shit of the past six months…I mean, not that a machete or a gun could help me against a tornado or a ghost, and that dog certainly didn’t seem rabid or dangerous but…

I’ve stuffed them deep in my trunk. The gun and the machete. This place had fucking machetes for god’s sake. I’m not planning on using either of them, at any point, but…well, I don’t know what I don’t know, right? That’s really what it comes down to. Anything could happen. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Well, not quite as quick as I’d wanted but thanks for getting back to me within a day at least. 

Yes. You said yes. Which means…shit, Birdie. That’s…I’m not sure even how I should react to that. It feels—I mean, its revelatory, isn’t it? I—

[click, static]

Sorry, I’m…I’m overwhelmed I guess. The thought that, after all this time, there really is someone out there to find…

[click, static]

No, you know what? I can’t think like that. I can’t assume anything. Not yet. Not until I found out for certain. 

Which I guess…I guess that means I’m going back to Kansas first. So…so much for California sunshine. I wonder what Kansas in January is like. Probably not as nice as LA. Not that it matters. This is obviously more important. If someone—

[click, static]

Nope. Not going there right now. You know what I am thinking in this moment though? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this at the time? Why are you telling me now? What kind of game are you playing with me? I swear to god, Birdie…

[click, static]

Did you ever see that movie “Gaslight”? You know, the one where this shitty guy tries to make his wife believe she’s going insane? He keeps dimming the lights but when she notices, he just tells her she’s seeing things?

This feels a little like that, Birdie. Like I get on here every day and talk about how the lights aren’t as bright as they usually are and then you send me a message saying that the lights haven’t changed at all. And then when I start to believe you—start to trust you over my own eyes—you change your tune and tell me there are no lights at all. 

Well, fuck you. I’m going to go see for myself how bright the lights are. And if I find that you’re the person that’s been hiding away in Kansas…well, I’m not sure what I’ll do. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“Tornado not automated”—at least this message isn’t as cryptic as the last but…it’s unsettling in a different way. 

Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Birdie? That the tornado warning system is…what, triggered by a person, not the tornado itself? That it would’ve been turned on by—by an actual human being? That that’s the only way it would’ve been turned on? 

I—yeah, I’m actually going to need you to answer me before I do anything else. I need to be certain that I’m understanding you. So. Please. Don’t go dark again. Tell me if I’m right. Did a person turn on that tornado siren back in Kansas?

[click, static]

[beeps]

-.-- . ...

Yes

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is WAR 1974 calling out from Los Feliz, Los Angeles. 

Huh. Low-s Feliz. Loss Angeles. Is it Loss Feliz? Loss Fell-IS? Lows Fell-IS? Francis always said Low-s Feel-iz, but I have no idea if he was right. I know nothing about Spanish, so I’m pretty sure I’d butcher any pronunciation. 

Anyway, it’s a new day, I’ve made a shit ton of lemonade with all the lemons I picked in the neighborhood and I’m feeling…well, if not good. Motivated. I’m setting the gloves and Harry aside, the cryptic message and Birdie aside, and I’m ready to start anew. 

Except…I don’t actually know where to start. I’ve written down everything I know, gone through it over and over and none of it is clicking together in any kind of coherent way. The best lead I have is what happened in Estes Park and, by extension, whatever the deal is in Denver too. 

That’s as good a place to start as any. Circle back to Denver, danger be damned, and try to see if that city holds any answers. 

But if there really is something there that could harm me…how do I prepare myself? What kind of danger am I looking at? I guess I could get some weapons, get a bigger, sturdier car—

Oh yeah, I didn’t mention the car I did settle on after the old one broke down. It is a thing of beauty—a 1965 Ford Thunderbird. Red and hardly driven based on the mileage. I picked the first car that worked on the 210 in order to get myself here but then when I saw this baby a few streets over I couldn’t resist. It might not be the most practical—not a ton of storage space—but who needs stuff anyway, right? It can hold all the essentials. That’s what matters. 

But would it hold up in whatever…collision is in Denver? I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to find out. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

---- .-. -. .- -.. --- / -. --- - / .- ..- - --- -- .- - . -..

Tornado not automated

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Fuck you, Harry. You absolute goddamn sneak. 

I threw everything from the old car into the new pretty haphazardly, and I decided to really organize it today, take stuff out of my bags, switch out my cold weather clothes for warm weather ones and I guess I haven’t dug into all the pockets yet, because I found…

You knit me goddamn mittens, didn’t you? Snuck them into my bag before I left like some kind of…

I packed this bag myself, it was empty when I did, so I know these aren’t left over from…I mean, even if I hadn’t packed it myself, what would they be left over from? A trip we never took? And the mittens, they’re blue, which you know is my favorite color you goddamn—

[click, static]

Of course I find these when I’m in Southern California. When I need them the least. There’s something…there’s something in you hiding a fucking handcrafted thing that took you time, you hiding it for me to find, me only finding it when I no longer need it. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. 

But I’m too…I’m too taken off guard to try and figure out what the hell it means. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, laying everything out for myself, part two. I got so distracted the other day with all the Birdie bullshit that I didn’t even think about the stuff I do know because I’ve experienced it. Once again, seeing my world through the lens of someone else instead of just fucking trusting my own instincts. 

I’m going to try to go through anything and everything that’s felt slightly off or unusual, no matter how small or inconsequential. 

So, let’s start small. The dog in Kansas. Stray dogs are one thing, but that one looked so well loved. So clean. But Kansas was so empty—felt like one of the emptier states I’ve been to—and I looked. I tried to find the dog, to see where it lived, to see if anyone was there taking care of it and came up with nothing. 

Speaking of Kansas, the tornado. The tornado isn’t weird in of itself—Kansas gets tornadoes—but the alarm…there wasn’t very much power in Kansas. And I’m not sure how those sirens work, but presumably they’re on some kind of grid, which would suggest that I would’ve seen some kind of power on somewhere, but there wasn’t. So another case of phantom power? A grid for just the warning system that didn’t power anything visible? I have too many questions about it. 

Vegas had a lot of power, so the fire alarm going off makes a little bit more sense to me, especially since a fire alarm system is contained within one building. But was there even any fire? That’s the question—did the alarm just get tripped somehow, with a power surge or by something else…by someone else. 

Power in general! It doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason why sometimes it’s on and sometimes it’s not. A jukebox playing music, but no power on the electric stovetop. Like someone bothered to fix the wiring just to play music but not eat. 

Maybe I’m putting personification where there is none but it’s…weird. It’s all weird. 

Then there’s all the lack of evidence—the lack of damage, the fact that stores are still well stocked instead of picked over…all the cars just left abandoned even though they’re all full of gas and perfectly fine as far as I can tell, beyond the wear and tear that happens when a car is left to the elements for years on end. 

Harry trying to contact me. That’s maybe not evidence of anything important but, um, it still feels…noteworthy. 

And finally, the big one—the Stanley Hotel. There were so many weird things. No power but my radio turned on. That feeling of dread. Seeing that…vision. 

A man. An ordinary man. Who could he have been? What could he have been? Was he really seeing me?

I’ve been thinking about nuclear shadows. Apparently, when you drop a nuclear bomb, the blast bleaches everything, that’s how strong the light from the explosion is. So when something—or someone—is in the way of that light, their shadow doesn’t get lightened. The shape of them is left behind, so they say. 

Sometimes I feel like that. Like I’m a blast shadow of my former self. Maybe that’s what he was too. Some kind of…remnant. Echo. Of some time before the blast. 

[click, static]

I don’t know, none of it makes sense. I can write it all down in ink and still can’t read what any of the words mean put together. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Sorry, I got all worked up in my last transmission that I had to go outside and—well, I wanted to chop wood, but that doesn't seem like a common past time here, which isn’t a surprise, so I just went around the neighborhood picking as many citrus fruits from trees as I could find. I just needed to do something physical. 

I’m just…I feel like I’m the only person not laughing at the circus. Or maybe I’m the clown, I don’t know. But how does this keep happening to me. How do I keep ending up entwined with people who fucking lie to me—

[click, static]

It must be me, right? I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly trusting person, but maybe I am. Maybe I’m just fucking gullible. Or maybe I just want to believe the best in people. But it keeps failing me. I keep trusting all the wrong people and ending up hurt and frustrated and…

It isn’t even that I trusted Birdie. I didn’t. Not completely. I trusted them as much as circumstance necessitated. I had to take them at their word, because what else was there? Better to assume they’re telling the truth than live in a prison of suspicion and conspiracy…   

No. Fuck it. Let suspicion reign. Maybe if I’d been a little less trusting of Harry, I wouldn’t have gotten my heart—

[click, static]

Jesus, this whole neighborhood is going to be out of fruit by the time I’m done! 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Alright, I’ve had some time to calm down. Get my head on straight. And maybe I should stop broadcasting entirely, but now that I’m on the other side of the country, who knows, maybe there will be some people here. Maybe this will finally reach sympathetic ears. 

Also, I’ve gotten pretty used to talking out loud into this thing. It helps me think. So. 

Here’s where I’m at—I spent the weekend looking through all my notes of everything that Birdie has said and every weird thing that’s happened and I’m going to lay it all out—everything I know—and try to figure out how the fuck it connects, if it does at all. 

[click, static]

So. Messages that Birdie has sent me that make me fucking angry: 

Telling me to stay out of Denver because it’s a “collision point” and then refusing to explain what that means. 

Telling me I was wrong about my actions not having consequences and then refusing to explain what that means. 

Saying that their job was important, that they betrayed it, and that it hurt people and then, you know, not explaining it. 

And here are the things I know about Birdie—or I think I know: 

They’ve been in the same spot this whole time. They’ve never encountered anyone else. They’re pretty good with a radio, having gotten it to broadcast this far, they don’t have physical speaking capabilities, and they’re trained in Morse code. Though to be fair, I’m technically trained in Morse code by now, so I’m not sure how revealing that is as a biographical fact. 

And here are the things that Birdie has definitely lied about: That they don’t know what happened. 

[click, static]

I don’t know if you found out what happened between you first contacting me and us talking in real-time. But one of your first messages to me was that you didn’t know what happened. And then when we spoke, you said you did, but that it was too complicated to explain in Morse code. So which is it?

[click, static]

Of course there’s a chance that you’ve been working much harder than me at actually trying to figure out what happened and you did it, you figured it out, but…well, Occam’s Razor right? I’ve spent nearly half a year driving around the country, looking for people, looking for answers and, sure, I haven’t been scientific about it, but I must have had a better chance of stumbling across something than you, a person who seems to have been sitting by their radio nonstop for 6 years. 

Then again, there were those weeks-long stretches where you didn’t contact me at all, so maybe…

[click, static]

No, the simplest explanation is that you lied. If I’m being generous, maybe you lied because you didn’t know if you could trust me and then, over the course of a few months, you decided you could. You decided you trusted me enough to talk to me and tell me the truth. But to what end? Why tell me you know what happened, if you couldn’t explain what happened? What would that accomplish?

And that’s such a huge thing to lie about—I mean, I’ve lied in these transmissions, I’ve lied to you, but nothing big. Nothing…consequential. I choose to just not say anything at all instead of telling a big lie. But that’s a big lie, Birdie. That’s an intentional lie—whether the lie was that early message you sent me or when we talked, whichever one it is, it’s a big lie. And it has me thinking…

You don’t make that kind of big lie unless you’re confident in your ability to deceive. That’s the kind of falsehood that’s spoken by an experienced liar, not an amateur. So it wouldn’t have been the only lie you told me. 

But experienced liars don’t fuck up unless they start to lose track of what lies they’ve told. So if you fucked up when you talked to me and told me the truth—that you do know what happened—then, well Birdie, that tells me you’re losing track of the lies. Which means that everything you’ve told me—everything—isn’t to be believed. 

Which puts me…well, if my intent here is to lay out everything I know that I’m pretty sure I’ve already failed. I know fucking nothing. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Fuck you, Birdie. 

Are you serious? You don’t contact me for weeks except to say “Happy Birthday” and now you send me the first substantial message since the last time we talked and you said some stuff that you still haven’t explained and this is what you have to say to me?

“You don’t belong?” 

What the hell does that mean? Who are you to decide where I do and do not belong. If I feel like I belong here, then I belong here. And if this is some kind of twisted way of driving me out of Los Angeles because you’re here—which, don’t think I didn’t notice that your message sounded a little different, maybe like it’s clearer or closer, I don’t know but—well, then you have failed to do that because I’ll search every inch of the city to find you if you’re here. 

“You don’t belong”. Fuck you. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey calling out from my driveway. Well, my current driveway, I’m not sure I can call it mine. 

Although, if “you break it, you bought it” still applies in this upside down world, then I guess the house sort of is mine. 

I broke it. The house I mean. The wiring, at least. I know, I know, I said I wasn’t going to do constant work, turn this place into the Winchester Mystery House like Harry always accused me, and I’m not! There are just some basic improvements that are going to make my life easier. Turns out, the power doesn’t work in every room, so I was trying to figure out what went wrong with the wiring and in the process, it seems I’ve cut out power to the whole house. Way to go, Whiskey. 

So that’s going to be my project for the weekend it seems. And obviously this means I can hook up the radio inside, but I’ll be sure to check in through the day, so Birdie, if you feel like chirping at any point, that’d be great. Just do what you usually do and set those messages to repeat. 

But not even your absence or royally fucking up the wiring can dampen my mood. It’s so beautiful here, so warm and bright, and it feels good to have a concrete project ahead of me. Things feel right here. It feels like I belong here more than I ever belonged in Pennsylvania. Sun on my face and lemon trees on my block. 

My block. My house, my terrible electricity. Even if I only stay for a few weeks, it feels good to have something I chose, instead of something I had simply because that’s the situation I landed myself in. 

New year, new start. Things are going to be better. They have to be. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

You don't belong

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I picked a house a little bit at random the other day - it was on a block of a bunch of sweet craftsman homes and this one had a nice tree in the yard and when I went inside the power actually worked so… 

I guess that isn’t entirely random. But it isn’t like it was entirely deliberate either. But it turns out, it’s nice. It’s really nice. All the furniture is, well, it’s dusty as hell, but it’s nice furniture. The kitchen is a pretty decent size and has this big window that looks out on the backyard. Which is, of course, very overgrown, but with a little bit of work—

I don’t know why my instinct is to settle down here. I know I said I wanted to take a break from driving for a little while and that’s true—especially now that the days are short—but I keep looking around this place and thinking about how long certain repairs are going to take me, or what kind of garden I could turn the backyard into. 

What kind of garden I could turn it into, that is. I’m hoping that being in a warmer climate will make it easier to grow things, but I’ve still got to start simple. Pick produce that’s hearty, hard to kill. 

See? I keep having thoughts like that and then I have to stop and remind myself that I don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t have to make a home, or anything, just because I’m tired. I can just…relax in a place for a little while. It doesn’t have to be constant work. 

[click, static]

Not that I’m going to just sit here and what…read? Walk around the reservoir—

Oh yeah, there’s a really beautiful lake near here—the Silver Lake reservoir. I think I made the right choice with this neighborhood. I’ve certainly christened it, what with waking up in a bar this morning, I…

I think I may have gotten a little carried away. I had my radio with me and I’m not sure if I said…well, let’s just say I had a lot to drink and I don’t totally remember if I got on and broadcast anything after the beach so if I did let’s just pretend I didn’t. 

Anyway, I’m not going to be a total layabout. I’m not gonna wake up in a bar again. Part of why I wanted to take a beat, have one central living spot for a little bit is to…process everything. It feels right, now that I’m on the other side of the country and it’s almost been half a year since I left. The right time to think back on the trip so far and…yeah, process. 

Because there are things—a lot of things—that don’t make any sense to me. And for so long those things have been too small or too mysterious to really do anything about. I’ve had nowhere to start when it comes to figuring out what the hell is going on, what the hell happened in Estes Park, what the hell your whole deal is, Birdie. I’ve been taking notes on everything you’ve ever said, every weird thing that happened to me on the road, and maybe it’s time for me to…Dick Tracy it. Get out the red string and try to put the clues together. Or, at the very least, figure out the best things to ask you when I eventually do get you back on the radio. And I'm going to. 

I meant what I said on New Year’s Eve. I’m going to find you. And that’s…that’s not a threat. But it is a promise. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Harryyyyyy. 

[click, static]

(very drunk)

Harry, Harry, Harry. Harriet Harriet Elaine Stadtler. 

Happy New Year! 1975. Who’d’ve thought, huh? Who would’ve thought we’d make it this far and who would’ve thought that we wouldn’t be ringing in this year together. 

D’you know this is the first year in ten years that we haven’t spent New Year’s Eve together? I know, isn’t that crazy? But Don’s New Year’s party, we were always both at Don’s New Year’s party. We would both get  drunk at Don’s New Year’s party. And stay up until truly absurd times—I guess I’m right back into that habit. It is currently…three AM looks like? On New Year’s day. 

Don’t worry, I didn’t drink and drive—I didn’t have anything with me to drink on the beach, and I didn’t want to sleep in my car, so I drove back to Los Feliz and found a bar and then proceeded to drink nearly everything in it. Can’t ring in the new year without a toast. 

I think you’d like this place. The…the Dresden. Plush booths and a piano. Your kind of spot. The kind of spot that I went on that date, uh, at, uh, the one with K. 

You never liked her. Because of course you knew Sissy. Everyone knew Sissy—is that how I know Sissy? Did I meet her through you? Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because you and Sissy got along like a house on fire but apparently you hated K because when I told you I went out with her you were such an asshole about it. 

I mean, you were an asshole about a lot of things, but that, that really pissed you off. I always thought it was because maybe you liked K. And I always hoped it was because—

[click, static]

You wanna know what my real new year’s resolution is? To get over—to stop thinking about you. You take up so much space in my head, Harry, you always have. Pete used to make so much fun of me for it, because even when we  were both doing jobs—when he and I were doing jobs—that you weren’t on, apparently, I would find ways to bring you up all the same. He thought I was fixated. 

He was right. He was always right about everything. He was. I was fixated. I am fixated. And I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired of thinking about you when I’m not sure that you’ve thought about me in a whole year as much as I think about you in a single week. 

Did that make sense? Is anything I’m making saying sense? Is anything I’m saying making sense? Sometimes you’d look at me like I was speaking a different language and I never could get you to really understand what I was trying to tell you when I said—

[click, static]

Well, understand this. They say to begin your year the way you intend to con-continue on and this year, for the first time in a decade, I’m beginning the year without you. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Well, here I am, just under the wire, broadcasting a few minutes before midnight. 

It took me the better part of yesterday and today to find a car, load it up, get into LA, and try to figure out what neighborhood I want to stay in. And then to figure out from there what house looked like it might still have power or have the capability to have power. 

I think I found a little spot in Los Feliz - Francis told me about this neighborhood once, and how much he liked it, so it seemed a good place to start as any. And it’s cute! I think it’ll be a good spot to settle in, it’s more or less in the middle of things. 

I’m sure it used to take people hours to get to the beach from there, but with no one on the roads and no traffic laws to follow, it only took me about fifteen minutes. A straight shot down Santa Monica Boulevard. 

That’s where I am now. The beach. I drove my car right onto the sand. Why not? There’s no one here to stop me. Though I guess I am going to have sand in my car now. 

It’s…it’s something else. The Pacific ocean. I knew it was big but… (whistles). Right now? At night? It is unfathomably huge. Just…gargantuan. It’s like the Earth just stops, goes sailing off a cliff into utter darkness. 

[click, static]

Five minutes to midnight. I guess it’s time for me to come up with some resolutions. 

It’s already midnight on the East coast. Well past. Isn’t that strange. It’s already 1975 for Harry. It might already be 1975 for you too, Birdie. What are your resolutions?

Okay, I’ll start with the simple one, the easy achievable one. 

Go to all contiguous 48 US states. I’ve only got thirty to go, I think I can manage that in twelve months. 

And that brings me to the more complicated, much harder one: to find you. 

We’ve been doing this dance long enough, Birdie. I think I’ve earned your trust by now, even though you keep breaking mine. If I have to drive all the way to Alaska I’ll do it. But I’m going to find you. I’m going to learn everything I can about radios, and skip, and I’m going to figure out how to track where you’re broadcasting from. And then you’re going to tell me what you know about what happened in ’68. And everything else that you’ve been keeping from me because it’s too complicated to explain. I deserve to know. Just on the merits that I’m one of the last people on earth, I deserve to know. 

And I’ll—I’ll tell you about what happened back then. What I did. I’ll tell you everything, answer any questions you want. But we’ve got to do that face to face. Even if it’s still dots and dashes, or writing things down, or sign language—I’ll learn, I picked up a book on it a few states back—we’re going to be in the same room and we’re going to goddamn communicate. 

But for now. I’m just going to sit here, looking out into endless black and listening to the waves crash onto the shore, the only indication that anything is even there. 

[click, static]

Here, listen to the ocean for a bit. Maybe it’ll bring you peace like it is for me. 

[ocean sounds]

Happy New Year. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Well, it finally happened. My car finally broke down.

I’ve been standing on the side of the…210, I think? For the last two hours trying absolutely everything I can to fix the thing, but I think it is well and truly dead. Which is…inconvenient, to say the least. 

It’s not as if I can’t find another car. I just wish this would’ve happened once I’d already settled in for the night, not twenty miles from Los Angeles. But that’s never how things go, is it. You get the flat tire when its raining and you’re already having a bad day. Your coat zipper breaks just when you get down the block from your place on the coldest day of the year.

Murphy’s Law, that’s what it’s called right? Or…no, that’s “everything that can go wrong, will”. Is there a law of the universe for when something goes wrong just when its most inconvenient for it to go wrong?

Maybe that’s just the rule of my life. 

I’m sadder about this car breaking down than I thought I’d be. It’s not like I’ve even had it that long but it’s…it’s been a good, reliable companion these past—Jesus—nearly six months I’ve been gone. It’s driven three thousand miles, gone through eighteen states, been my luggage, my bed, my kitchen, my home. It’s kept me grounded in the real world during the times when I felt I might truly go insane. 

And it’s been my lifeline to you, Birdie. And you, Harry, if you’re listening. Without this car, I’d have only been able to use the CB sporadically at best. I’m just grateful that even while the engine has crapped out, the electricity is working fine still. For the time being. 

But, it’s December 30th, and I guess if there’s a good time for something to die, it’s the day before the end of the year. I can start 1975 with a fresh new car. And I have my pick of them—in Los Angeles, I bet I could find something really nice. 

I just have to get there first. I have to get myself and all my stuff into a new car, that works. 

So, I might be going quiet for the rest of the day and tomorrow too. Hopefully it won’t be longer than that. I’ll hop back on the horn once I’m in LA. 

Alright, this is Whiskey, signing off.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Dear Harry, 

I’m writing to you from the Hoover Dam. I forgot that it was so close to Vegas, so I’m glad I took a closer look at my map before leaving the area entirely. Feels like one of those places that’s good to cross off the list. 

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but whatever it was I was wrong. It’s…it’s strangely beautiful. Enormous and powerful and alien. This whole region is alien, like being on the surface of Mars. I think I’m close to where Area 51 is, or that whole Roswell thing and I get it. I do. I get why people look at this landscape and think “aliens crash-landed here”. Even the dam itself, we built it, but the design of it, the way it fits into the land around it, it looks like it’s from another world.” 

[click, static]

Aliens are another one of those things I think I have to reevaluate. Like ghosts. I always thought aliens were more likely—how could it be that we’re the only creatures with life in the entire universe?—but I certainly never believed that they’d been here. Like ghosts, that was for crackpots and conspiracy theorists. 

But now…I don’t know. I don’t think aliens came and built entire civilizations or anything, but did they crash land in this part of the US and get hauled in by our government? Maybe. Who am I to say that that’s impossible. 

I’ve gotten off topic. Back to the postcard—looks like its from another world…

It doesn’t look like it belongs here. And I don’t think I belong here. I don’t think either of us do. We’re like this dam, shoved into an environment that clashes with us, like we’ve been plucked from our usual habitat and thrown into some kind of bizarro world—“

Then I ran out of room.

What do you think, Harry? Do you think you belong in a house in Pennsylvania for the rest of your life? Or are you still trying to reach me?

I’m headed to LA now. And I’ll be there for a little while maybe. In case you wanted to…

Well, just in case. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static] (sigh) Well, I think I had my fill of good cheer last night. I don’t think I’ve been hungover like this since I first got on the road. Back in that cabin in the country with the bourbon. 

But that’s the spirit of the holiday, right? “Spirits” of the holiday. (a weak laugh) Sorry, that was terrible. 

Do you know why it’s called a cup of good cheer? Apparently cheer used to just mean someone’s face or expression so “good cheer” meant good mood and what puts people in a better mood than alcohol? 

Or we say that because we cheers. Which we do to make sure our cups aren’t poisoned or to ward off bad spirits or…something. 

I don't know, Harry used to talk about all this stuff. She was full of weird random trivia. I don’t know how much of what she told me about any given thing was true, but then again, I don’t know how much of it has an answer. Do we really know where toasting came from or are we just guessing?

Anyway. It’s not like I had anyone to cheers with yesterday. But I definitely spilled some of my own drink throughout the day, so hopefully that counts toward whatever warding off of malevolent spirits I need. It seems to be working, at least, I haven’t seen anything since Estes Park. 

There’s still an eeriness to this place though—the lights flicker because the power keeps going on and off. I’ve gotten scared plenty of times by a slot machine suddenly turning on and making a hell of a lot of noise. Music coming from other rooms and then stopping. The power grid here is so strong and still has so much residual power from god knows what that it’s like being in a life-sized pinball machine, sounds and lights going at random. 

Maybe it should freak me out more. Walking through what feels like a rat pack themed haunted house. But I’m just grateful to have music and a working water heater. And I’ve found plenty of places to hook up the CB, and it hasn’t turned on with phantom power even once. Until I see someone appear in front of my eyes, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Speaking of, lord, I need a shower. Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is WAR1974 broadcasting live from Las Vegas! 

[click, static]

I assume cheers went up around the world at that. Merry Christmas everyone! May you all be safe and sound and warm and full of good cheer, merry and bright, whatever sounds most festive. 

Speaking of festive, I did find a Christmas record and while I’ve been indulging myself most days with whatever music I can—I finally got to play those records I picked up in West Virginia, so I’m glad I took them—it occurred to me that you, dear listener, may not have had the same luxury. So, here you go, a Christmas medley to bring you that holiday spirit: 

[click static]

[Christmas music plays, Whiskey hums occasionally]

Merry Christmas, world. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

It’s Christmas tomorrow. I don’t know how that’s possible but it is.

You’d think it’d be easy for me to keep track of, especially considering my birthday is five days before, but in some ways that makes it harder. My parents—they got that it could be hard for a kid to have a birthday so close to a big holiday. It was hard to have any kind of celebration with fellow kids, what with most of them being with family for the holidays and what not. 

But thankfully, my parents were never very religious, so Christmas didn’t need to be a huge deal. Mostly we would bake and eat and I’d get presents on my birthday, not Christmas. And then with Harry, well, I’d try to cook some of my favorite holiday dishes that my mom made—yorkshire puddings and hollandaise sauce and all those delicious fatty things that stick to your ribs—but inevitably the ingredients we had access to would lead to some very lackluster meals, especially with me at the stove. 

Harry’s Jewish anyway, so she would mostly let me do whatever I wanted on Christmas. She likes the…the frippery of it, she said. New York at Christmastime, fancy shop windows, roasted nuts on street carts, garlands everywhere, that kind of stuff. But, unlike everything else in our lives, it wasn’t something she had a strong opinion about, so it usually fell to me to decorate or bring in the holiday cheer if I wanted it. 

When it came to celebrating any holidays—Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Yom Kippur, Halloween, whatever—we were sporadic at best. Sometimes it was nice to give the months and years some shape and sometimes we’d look up and realize it was mid-December and we’d missed all the fall holidays. 

Birthdays were the only things we were consistent on. It helped that mine is in December and Harry’s is in June. A nice six month gap to give us a good rhythm. 

Anyway, I was planning on leaving for LA today but then when I realized…well, a Christmas in Vegas sounds as good as a Christmas anywhere else. At least here I’ve got good champagne and scattered access to a working record player. Maybe I can even dig up some holiday records. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(sighs) I suppose I should thank you for the birthday wishes, but I’m not feeling particularly gracious. Instead, I’m frustrated. I’m nearly to California—I think LA is going to be my next big stop, seems like a good place to ring in the New Year—but, I’m nearly to the other coast and it has me thinking about…what this is all for. 

I came out here to find other people. That’s what I told myself. But after the first week, when it became so clear that other people were going to be hard—if not impossible—to find, it became about something else. Or…I allowed it to be what it was always about. Which was me. 

I needed to get away. I needed to move forward. Literally, I guess. And then you. Even in my heart of hearts I’m not sure I expected to find you. I’m not sure I thought I would ever speak to another person ever again. And it brought hope back into my life. 

I hadn’t realized how much I was missing hope. How vital of an emotion it is. But with hope comes disappointment. And I didn’t think I could be disappointed with people anymore, not after—

[click, static]

Anyway. I’ve made it all the way across the country, nearly, and what do I have to show for it? A weird ghost story, Dean Martin’s suit, and a fair-weather friend. And maybe I was focused on just getting out, getting away, but I’m tired of not understanding the world. 

It’ll be a new year soon. 1975. Halfway through a decade—a decade in which I’ve seen exactly one other person in flesh and blood. I don’t know that there will be people to find in Los Angeles—or any answers at all—but I think it’s time I settle in somewhere, maybe just for a bit, a few weeks, and figure out what the hell I’m doing. Because I can’t drive around this country forever. Moving continuously is not the same as moving forward. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Dear Harry, 

I’m goddamn sick of speaking to you already. At least with Birdie, there was some kind of response. And maybe you are responding. Maybe you’re somehow hearing this and shouting into your radio, trying to get me to hear you. 

That’s sort of a funny image, actually. Finally, I’m frustrating you as much as you frustrate me. 

Do you remember my last birthday? The bottle of wine and the game of Clue? Of course you do, you remember everything. Every shortcoming, every perceived slight, 

This is the first birthday I’ve spent alone since my sixteenth. Isn’t that strange. 

And that birthday…it snuck up on me. My dad had died so recently and—well, anyway, you know most of this already. Know more about my teen years than anyone in the world. We had to have something to talk about for all those years. The times before we knew each other always seemed like safe territory. 

Even before I got to New York, before I made any kind of friend, I would at least try to celebrate in a bar, or a diner, or somewhere with people around. And then there were those years where I did have friends, even if they were fair weather ones, and then there was you and it’s hard to have a birthday party and not invite the person you live with and sometimes I think—well, we had fun sometimes, right? Celebrating things?

Anyway, it’s strange to be alone now. Stranger today than all the other days, though I can’t really explain why. There’s no difference in this day, not really. 

I’m not sure what I expected in choosing Vegas to spend my birthday. It isn’t like I can play any of the games on my own or catch a show or go to a steakhouse. But it seemed…festive. 

I keep thinking about what Birdie said when we talked. That I was wrong when I said my choices didn’t change the world. Maybe I misunderstood them, maybe they were messing with me, I don’t know but…

Sitting here, in a casino at the Sands, in Dean’s suit, drinking champagne that I’m fairly certain costs several hundred dollars a bottle, and looking out on an empty hall of chance, I… 

Chance and choice. The only forces in the universe. 

I have made a series of choices that have brought me here. You made a series of choices that pushed me here. Looking around…well, we — both of us — decided to spin the roulette wheel, if you want to put it that way. But we don’t decide where the ball lands. We have free will, but everything is a game of chance at the end of the day. 

So why…why should I feel guilty over that? Why should you? I mean, there are other reasons you should feel guilty, but not for that. I know what you’d say—that it wasn’t chance that steered our hands, but choice. And I’d say that the choice to die or not die isn’t much of a choice at all.

Choice brought me to Vegas but chance drove me to the Sands and to Dean Martin’s suit and this bottle of champagne. Chance led to both of these things being ultimately valueless, except for the value they provide to me. It doesn’t matter what happened in ’68, what kind of choices people made, there isn’t any choice a single person could’ve made that led to all this. There’s some other force at play here, something bigger than me or you or anyone. Something bigger maybe even than chance. 

Happy Birthday to me. 

[click, static]

[a voice almost cuts through the static]

[beeps]

.... .- .--. .--. -.-- / -... .. .-. - .... -.. .- -.--

Happy Birthday

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Dear Harry, 

To think I was craving unpredictability just last week. 

I’ve had to leave the Caesar—or, I guess I didn’t have to, but—well, I was working on getting the record player going this morning when the fire alarm started blaring. Scared me right out of my skin, let me tell you. 

So I gathered up my things and did what any sane person would do and evacuated. I’d gone through my usual safety checks before settling in, but it’s a huge hotel, so I didn’t get to all of it—with all this power actually working, I wouldn’t be surprised if something sparked and caught fire. But there wasn’t any evidence of smoke or fire, so who knows. Better safe than sorry, I say. 

God, thank god for automated emergency systems. Whoever came up with those really did the apocalypse a favor. Without the tornado warning and the fire warning and everything…well, I could be dead several times over. It’s a pretty good argument for sticking to hotels over homes, I guess. If only people had these things in their homes. 

Anyway. Fire or not, I’m out of Caesar’s now. And moving hotels actually proved to be an excellent choice, because I got to the Sands—that’s the only other hotel I recognized the name of, mostly because of Frank Sinatra at the Sands, the record. And I guess he and the rest of the rat pack must have come here a lot because guess what? I think I’m in their room. 

That’s right—I got to the Sands and came up to the fanciest suite I could find and what does the wardrobe have in it but Dean Martin’s suits. His name is stitched right into the collar and everything! I couldn’t believe it. 

It’s pretty late now, but tomorrow is the big 3-5 and now I know what I’m going to be wearing as I fix myself up whatever celebration I can. I think I’ve earned a day of treating myself, even if treating myself in this case means wearing a dead man’s suit. 

Night, Harry. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Dear Harry, 

You would hate Las Vegas. 

There are so many places I’ve gone over the last few months that you’d hate. The cheap roadside motels, the kitschy tourist attractions, the dive bars I’ve frequented. 

That’s something I haven’t been all that forthcoming about. I mean, there’s plenty I do during my days that I don’t talk about on here. Some of its mundane but some of it is…

Well, I have a ritual, of sorts. Before I leave a state, I find a bar—usually a dive bar, but sometimes I go for the really fancy hotel bars if I’m in a city—and I pick a bottle from the very top shelf and I pour myself a finger of whatever it is and I toast to all the people who have passed through that state, that city, that bar; all the people who are no longer here for reasons that I don’t understand and it’s…well, it helps keep me grounded, I think. Doing that in each and every state I go to. It’s the closest thing I’ve had to praying in a long time. 

You’d like the hotel bars, I think. Maybe you’d find some of the stops I’ve made silly or unappealing, but there are things about this whole winding road trip that I think you’d enjoy. Fancy hotels being one of them. 

I’m staying at Caesars Palace right now because…of course I am. It’s the most iconic hotel on the Strip and I don’t have to pay anyone to stay at it. 

I’m actually not sure if it’s the most iconic, it’s just the first one I saw that I recognized the name of. As much as you would hate Vegas—and you would, you would hate it—I do think you’d appreciate just how plush the beds are and the soft hotel robes and the truly top shelf liquor they’ve got. My stately toasts aren’t the only time I pour myself a glass of something, obviously, so I will definitely be partaking tonight, once I’ve figured out how to route the power to a record player in this place. 

I shouldn’t be surprised that the one place I’ve been to that has multiple buildings lit up in power is Las Vegas. Whatever grid they’re on, whatever generators they had running the lights and the slot machines and the stages, well, they’re clearly powerful as hell, because huge portions of Caesar’s has power. Currently, I’m talking to you from my hotel room. Well, apartment more like. It’s got a fucking staircase in it. A little balcony that overlooks the living room, where there is, I kid you not, a grand piano. And everything is really…pink, for some reason. 

It is the biggest and nicest hotel room I have ever been to by miles. And there’s a record player here—with a huge, phenomenal sound system, but for some reason that’s not working, I think because some of the outlets in here are dead. Once I get off the horn, that’s going to be my project. Well, maybe my project for tomorrow, it is pretty late. 

I took a big break in the middle of the day today and sat out on top of my car just…looking over the desert. Nevada really is something else, like being on another planet. And then to have Vegas just pop out in the middle of nowhere, like a mirage—it’s a real trip. Beautiful, in its own way, but weird. And weirdly exhausting too—you see Vegas long before you get to it, which makes driving down the road toward it feel like you’re not moving at all. You can see it, you can see your speedometer all the way up at eighty and the city isn’t getting any closer. It’s like you’re standing still. 

All in all, it’s been a pretty tiring day. And I’ve got lots to explore tomorrow so…I guess I’ll go now. 

Goodnight, Harry. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Dear Harry, 

I have no postcard to write on, but I’m still going to address this missive to you. I need to—it’s hard, to go back to talking to everyone after so many months of talking to someone. And you’re the only other someone I know, so you’ll serve as stand-in for the time being. 

You’ve probably never been ignored by a friend. You’ve been ignored by me, but I’m not sure you ever considered me a friend. 

I don’t know what I consider you. A pain in the ass, a force of nature, the only person I trust. 

That’s…that’s quite the realization to have, actually. But it’s true. You’re the only person alive I trust. Though that trust is conditional. It didn’t used to be. I used to trust you with everything—the truth, my life. I thought I could trust you with—

[click, static]

Well, the truth and my life should have been enough. And it wasn’t…it wasn’t just because I had to. It wasn’t just default. You’d always been honest with me—brutally so—and you’d kept me alive these past six years, even when it would have been easier not to bother. But then you had to go and—

[click, static]

I don’t know why I still trust you. With the truth and with my life. Maybe it’s because I think you should trust me. I think I—I’ve earned it, I—

And not because—I never wanted you to trust me because how it all began, I never wanted to hold that over you. Make you feel as though you owed me. Maybe you do owe me. I don’t know, I don’t know what to think now. 

That was something you put on yourself. You could’ve left at any time, you didn’t need to repent or—

[click, static]

I think, you know, if you can hear this, you’re probably disagreeing with me out loud as you sit in your studio. That’s where I’m imagining you’re keeping the radio. 

But maybe that’s wishful thinking, maybe I just like the idea of you having it nearby, so you can hear anything that might come through—

[click, static]

Oh, you got me all mixed up. 

[click, static]

Anyway. I know you disagree with me. I know you think that the choice I made was extreme, that we could’ve figured something else out, but…I don’t think that’s true. I think it was the best option we had and I think if I hadn’t been there, you would, you would have made the same choice. You think that you can outsmart anyone, that you can clever your way out of any situation, but that is provably not true. You would do what had to be done. 

“But that’s what I’m saying, Abigail, it didn’t have to be done at all” —that’s what you’re saying right now, I can hear it perfectly in my head. And not just because it’s a conversation we’ve had before. Because I know—I know you. And I know…I know you. Despite everything, despite what you—

[click, static]

See? I don’t even need you to radio back, I can do both sides of this conversation. I don’t need anyone to be on the other side. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

It’s been nearly two weeks since I last heard from you, Birdie. You asked about the difficult choices I’ve made in my life and then fucked off and it’s a little hard to think that those two things aren’t related. 

God, to think I almost told—

[click, static]

I don’t know what’s going on with you. I don’t know why you haven’t sent me any messages since that one. I don’t know why you missed our…radio date, or whatever you want to call it. It’s not like this is the first time that you’ve gone silent for days or weeks, but this is the first time since we actually spoke to each other. And it’s a little hard to think that those two things aren’t related. 

Wherever your head is at, I’m not interested in obsessing over it. I’ve done that before, the “I have all the freedom in the universe but I’m trapping myself in a cage on someone else’s behalf” and let me tell you, I have no interest in doing it again. If you exist, Birdie, I have to believe that someone else does. Possibly multiple someones. And as long as I keep moving, I increase my chances of actually finding one of those someones. 

So you do whatever it is you’re doing, Birdie, and I’ll be just fine. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Snagged another postcard today. Just a generic landscape of Utah, but it’s pretty. Rich oranges and warm sunlight. I’m not filling out an address obviously, which means I’ve got the whole postcard to write on and…anyway.

[click, static]

“Dear Harry,

It feels strange writing these postcards now, knowing you might be listening. My friend, Birdie—that’s right, I did meet somebody out here—picked up your transmission but I didn’t. They’ve got some wild setup that allows them to pick up a lot of frequencies from enormous distances. If you hear any morse code on your radio, that’s them.

So I’m not really sure that you are listening. I can’t hear you, so there’s a good chance you can’t hear me. But if you can…

The truck still works. Or, it should, if you’ve been taking care of it like I showed you. You could get in it right now and start driving. I’m going to Las Vegas for my birthday. You could meet me there.”

[click, static]

Anyway, I should get on the road. Whiskey out.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey, sitting on the hood of my car, looking at newspaper rock. 

You know, the further West you go, the newer all the buildings get, but the older the land. Does that make sense? Maybe it’s just that there’s more of it out here—more land I mean—but it feels like back East we completely destroyed what evidence there was that people have lived on here for a long time. I don’t know of any place like this on the East Coast. 

So. What is this place, you ask? Newspaper rock. Well, it’s a rock, obviously. And it’s got all these carvings on it. Petroglyphs, I think they’re called. From…I don’t know, thousands of years ago? And they’re of all sorts of things—animals, people, animals and people together, people riding horses, that kind of stuff. I can’t…I’m not sure if it’s telling some kind of story, but given the name, I assume historians think it’s a depiction of a significant event, or a few significant events. 

I wonder how much we were really able to figure out about it. I don’t know anything about archeology or translation or if this is even a language or just, you know, a nice painting. I recognize the shapes, but I don’t understand what it’s trying to say. 

There’s a metaphor for my whole life. Or, at least the last six years of it. Even now, talking to you, Birdie, I understand the words you’re using, and the order you’re putting them in makes sense, but I don’t know what you’re saying. Harry always spoke deliberately, with perfect diction and five dollar words and I’m not sure I ever really understood her. I’m not sure she ever really understood me, either. At least, not what I was really trying to say. 

How do historians learn to translate dead languages? How do they know they’re right? How do I know that anything I ever say is being heard in the way I mean it?

Maybe this is all too philosophical for ten in the morning. I just…I wish I had my own Rosetta stone, you know? Something to make it all make sense. Something to tell me the meaning behind the words. 

Signing off. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I’ve been…slowing down this week. Everything from the tornado in Kansas to Estes Park feels like a blur. It’s getting dark earlier and earlier now and I don’t much care for driving in the dark when I’m the only one on the road, so I’ve been taking longer to get from place to place…

I’m planning on going to Vegas for my birthday because…well, why the fuck not, right? And I think there’s a part of me that thinks if I just really drag out the process of getting there, I’ll delay my birthday somehow. 

My last birthday…we were in a good period, actually. Or, at least, an okay period. Things were…peaceful. The falls in general were always pretty peaceful. We still had the optimism of people who’d spent the summer in the sunshine, and we’d finish up our harvest, start stocking up for winter…there was ritual in it. 

Harry baked me a cake. A carrot cake, because we always had a ton of carrots, but she didn’t bother with frosting because, according to her, “carrot cake with anything other than cream cheese frosting is an abomination” and, well, obviously fresh cream cheese isn’t exactly easy to come by. But despite that, it was nice. It was…it was delicious, actually, she’s always been a very talented baker. 

So we had dinner and cake and a bottle of wine that she’d stowed away early on—that was a surprise. Both that she’d had the foresight to stash it and that she brought it out for my birthday. When I asked her about it, she said…

Well, actually, she didn’t say anything. I’ve  spent a lot of time playing that night over and over in my head, playing lots of nights over and over in my head, imagining how the conversations could have gone, that sometimes I forget what really happened. And what really happened that night is that I asked her why she was wasting a special bottle of wine on me and she just said “well, it’s not all for you”, and topped off both our glasses and that’s not really an answer to the question at all, is it? I wish she’d said—

[click, static]

We didn’t do presents, obviously. Not for birthdays or Christmas or anything. But we’d usually spend holidays playing some kind of game—chess or one of the few boardgames we had or whatever card game we could best remember. And that night, she suggested we play Clue, which was my favorite game and she never liked playing it much, so that…that felt like a weird sort of gift. 

And for that whole night, it felt almost like the old days. Like we were in Richie’s Alphabet City loft, like we were standing on the edge of something; of finally getting along, of finally understanding each other. 

Turns out we weren’t. Instead, that was just one of the last good days. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Yeah, I’m just going to keep talking to you like you’re listening. Because the alternative is reminding myself that there’s a nonzero chance that Harry is the—

[click, static]

Anyway. Hey Birdie. You’ll never guess my luck today. I saw the lights on in a roadside diner—I still cannot put together why some places have power and some don’t—and when I walked in music was playing. 

That’s right, their jukebox was working! And that was exciting enough as it is, but I did have this moment when I first heard tinny music playing that…well, someone had to have been there to pick a song right? Put in a quarter and everything. So I barged right in and searched the whole building—the kitchen, the back office, the bathrooms—and when that didn’t turn anything up, I pretty much ran circles around the property like a chicken with my head cut off. 

There was nothing. And when I took a closer look at the jukebox, it seemed like it was a free one so…I guess there must have been some kind of power surge that caused a circuit to trip and turn it on or…

Who knows. I’m not an electrician, as much as I’ve very carefully tried to be throughout the years. Whatever happened, music was playing. It wouldn’t let me actually pick a record, but it didn’t matter. It was a dream to get to listen to some real music again. The Four Seasons, Peggy Lee, Elvis…it felt like the world was full again. 

I’m getting used to too much weird shit, I think. The CB working without a power source, jukeboxes randomly tripping on, you sending me messages that contain all kinds of red flags and me just…

You kind of distracted me, you know that? I was pissed at you. The whole Denver thing, not responding to a lot of the stuff I’ve sent you that I think warrants a response—I don’t know, I’m starting to feel a little crazy, Birdie. But then you show up and talk to me live and it’s like…all that stuff ceases to matter. Because you’re there and you’re real and I never know what you’re going to say next, but none of that makes you trustworthy. 

Give me a reason to trust you, Birdie. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey calling out from…somewhere in Utah.  

I don’t expect anyone to call back. I haven’t heard from you in days, Birdie, and you missed our date, so I’m assuming the worst. That you’ve decided you want nothing to do with me, or that—

Well, I don’t think anything happened to you. You’ve survived this long, so unless you had a heart attack and dropped dead—

[click static]

Shit, I really hope you didn’t have a heart attack and die. I’m gonna feel like a real asshole if you had a heart attack and died. 

[click, static]

That’s what killed my dad, you know. A heart attack. Dad died of a heart attack, mom died of cancer, which I think makes my family the most statistically average it’s possible to be. 

I think it’s fifty-fifty the way I’ll end up going. My life isn’t exactly stress-free and lord knows I’ve smoked enough in life to warrant lung cancer. At least I’ve had the goddamn pleasure of cigarettes. My mom, poor thing, just got fucking unlucky. She should’ve picked up smoking the moment she was diagnosed if you ask me. Enjoyed those last few months. 

I used to think I’d die from sheer stupidity. By doing something dumb and reckless. A car accident, getting killed in the course of a robbery, doing the wrong drug. 

Not that my drug phase was particularly long. Calling it a phase is probably even a stretch. I think I’ve done exactly two drugs. I prefer booze. 

But even being drunk is…I’ve never liked having my objective perception of the world changed. My life has always had too many secrets and too few trusted confidantes, that letting myself get out of control, or slip into a different state of mind always felt too risky. 

And now…well, I’m sharing every secret and stray thought I have with the entire world. And my perception of the world has been plenty challenged. Who needs drugs when you can just hallucinate ordinary men in hotel rooms?

[click, static] 

I turn thirty-five next week. And it feels young. I mean, when I entered this whole new weird world back in ’68, I wasn’t even thirty yet. Thirty-five felt unfathomably far away. And now here it is, both like I blinked and woke up six years later and also like I’ve lived several decades in that time. 

I could have a good thirty years left at minimum. I used to worry that I wouldn’t have enough time to soak up every little bit of the world that I wanted to, that I’d run out of time, die before I was full satiated. 

Now I’m not sure what the best case scenario is. I have nothing but time to fill and what used to be an all-you-can-eat buffet is now an empty table. The only food on it is imaginary, the phantom tastes and smells of a world that no longer exists.  That’s the thing about being so alone—you just stagnate. We need other people to provide variety, unpredictability. Otherwise we atrophy. 

I’ve gotten unpredictability on the road, it’s true. Weird feelings, unexpected roadside attractions, tornado warnings. But I can’t rely on tourist traps and automated weather warning systems to provide all my life’s variety. 

That’s what you were giving me, Birdie—one of the things, anyway. Unpredictability. The thrill of not knowing what you were going to say or when you were going to say it. You surprised me. Please keep surprising me. 

[click, static]

As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“Dear Harry, 

Today I saw the Grand Canyon. And it was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. The picture on this postcard doesn’t do it—“

And then my pen exploded, so there’s a big ink splatter on half the card now. Not a lot of room left to write. But if there were, I guess I’d say…

[click, static]

“The picture on this postcard doesn’t do it justice. The colors are what’s really hard to capture—there are too many of them for me to name. But you’d find them on your palette by taking four colors and blending them in various ways to get a dozen more. I never understood how you did that. How you started with a few bright tones and discovered every shade between that existed. How you did it so expertly, without any hesitation. 

You rarely hesitate. It’s one of the things I envy about you. It’s one of the things that made you so good at your job. You didn’t rush, you were always so intentional and careful and sure of yourself. And I didn’t hesitate on the job either, but in other things…

The only time I saw you hesitate when it mattered was—

Well, I guess the important thing was that I didn’t hesitate. 

Did you…did you try to reach me? Did you get another radio? Are you calling out? Can you hear this somehow? 

What—

[click, static]

What did you want? Are you okay? Are you just bored? Do you want to talk to me specifically or are you just lonely?

Never mind. I’m not sure I want the answer to that question even if you could reply. 

I hope you’re okay at least. I trust that you are. You can take care of yourself. And you don’t need me for anything, you made that very clear.” 

[click, static]

I guess all of that wouldn’t really fit on a postcard.

Probably for the best. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I was writing a postcard from the Grand Canyon to Harry and my pen exploded. My fingers are covered in ink and it made me think—

[click, static]

Harry’s hands always had something on them. Paint usually, or dirt from the garden…ink even. She found this old typewriter in the house and got me to fix it up for her despite the fact that I knew nothing about typewriters. I was able to figure it out—you work on enough mechanics, including really tiny ones, like the electrical wiring for the miniatures, and you can figure out pretty much anything that’s designed well. 

And typewriters are beautiful machines it turns out. I hadn’t used one very much before then—it’s not like I ever needed to for my job and I never took typing classes or anything—but I fell in love with this one. It was an old model—from the thirties, if I had to guess—and the design was both beautiful and complex. Intricate but obvious. 

(huff of laughter) God, what a metaphor that is, huh? (mumbling) Harry sure knew how to pick interests that perfectly reflected her. 

But anyway, Harry spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to refill the ink reel. It had obviously dried out long ago, but she was convinced she could resoak it in ink and it would work again. Turns out, it’s not quite as straightforward as that. But she kept at it, trying paint, ink from the pens we had, whatever she could. After the first few attempts, it was something she only ever worked on when she was particularly angry with me. 

That’s how I knew we couldn’t repair what got broken in that last big argument. Every day, she had ink on her hands. 

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I’m on my way to Salt Lake City, land of the Mormons. I have no idea what to expect from a city built by people who don’t drink or smoke or, god, even have caffeine. Maybe it’ll be just the same as every other city in America - half of the ones back East were founded by Puritans and teetotalers. 

I never had much use for religion. I remember my parents bringing me to church sometimes when I was a kid, but they weren’t that devout themselves so it never really sunk in. 

And no, my weeks on the road have not changed my mind about God. Not even that weird encounter in Colorado. Whether it was a trick of the light or a hallucination I was having…

[click, static]

Who am I kidding. Trick of the light? It wasn’t a trick of the light. And I’ve never hallucinated in my entire goddamn life, I can’t imagine that all this driving has had such an impact on me that I’ve suddenly started now. 

I’ve mostly been trying not to think about it. A ghost, a spirit, some kind of angel or demon…whatever it was, I haven’t seen anything like it since and I’m—

Even if it was a ghost, just because I believe in the afterlife doesn’t mean I believe in gods. And I’m not sure that’s what it was! I’m not sure I do believe in the afterlife! Maybe it was just…

[click, static]

Maybe I should pick up some Mormon writing in Utah, see if they have anything to say about it. 

I have always wondered about the multiple wives thing. How does that work exactly? Even if all the women really were happy with the situation—which I’m not saying is impossible, it just seems like a system where maybe they don’t get that much say either way—I can’t really fit the puzzle pieces together in my head. Is it easier if you all have one relationship within the larger…structure, or does everyone have relationships with everyone? I mean, I lived in New York for years and hung out in the art scene, I knew people who had both kinds of situations, and it never made sense to me in those cases either. Not to say it didn’t work for the people I knew, I’m just not sure it’d work for me. 

With the benefit of hindsight and plenty of time to reflect over the last few years, I’ve come to recognize that I…fixate. It hasn’t happened very often in my life, but when I lo—when I like someone, really like someone, I get a little bit of tunnel vision about them, whether I realize or not. And if I ever got that person, I don’t think I’d be selfless enough to share. 

Maybe that’s unhealthy, I don’t know. It certainly hasn’t helped me have good romantic relationships. I think one of the reasons I never was really able to commit to Martha is because by that point I was already crazy—

[click, static]

It wasn’t fair to Martha. The way I was I just wish I’d figured it out at the time, either to tell Martha the truth, make her understand it was never about her or to, ideally, give myself a smack upside the head and get over whatever feelings my heart decided to develop without my consent. If I’d known what I felt back then—really felt—I would’ve done everything in my power to make sure I stopped feeling that way. 

[click, static]

What about you, Birdie? Did you leave a partner behind? If the world were suddenly full of people, is that something you’d want?

I guess I can ask you about it on Thursday. Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay so… 
(sighs) “What choice marks”. That’s what you sent. I guess I should have seen that coming. It’s the question I’d ask too.

[click, static]

I’m surprised you haven’t put it together yet. We both know I haven’t been careful about what I say on here, what I say to you. I know you figured out that I was an art thief long before I told you. And I’ve already said a lot about…

[click, static]

We got caught, right? I’ve told you that. That last job…we got caught. I’m still not sure how, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. And that was a few months before we—

[click, static]

We were being transported. Harry and I. There’s a—um, there’s a federal prison in Pennsylvania and the two of us had gotten into a little trouble at the county jail that we’d been in before that so we were sent up the river.

I guess it isn’t really called that if you’re sent to Pennsylvania. We weren’t going up the Hudson to Sing-Sing, we were—

[click, static]

You know, I don’t actually like talking about it very much. It wasn't a particularly shining time in my life, you know? It’s not like I hadn’t spent time in jail before—a night here or there throughout my twenties for one thing or another, but this was…

I don’t even know where the guys ended up. I guess I should’ve been thankful that Harry was on the job with us, otherwise I’d have been entirely alone. It’s not like we shared a cell or anything, though if you count six years trapped in a house together in the woods then…

[click, static]

I shouldn’t joke about that. It’s not the same. Yeah, I complain about the last six years with Harry, how suffocating they were, how lonely and isolating and stifling it all was, how frustrating to be stuck with her and have no idea what was going on in the wider world but it beat the alternative by a long shot. Even before I knew there was a chance I could go back into the world, even when it seemed like the smart thing to do was stay in that house with her for the rest of time, it was still better than being where we were headed. A cage of your own choosing right? And even if the world hadn’t been flipped upside down, maybe enough years would’ve passed that we could’ve gone somewhere and started over.

[click, static]

I don’t mean together necessarily. I mean, we each could’ve gone wherever we want, taken on new names, dyed our hair…I don’t know. We assumed that our escape would’ve made us wanted fugitives—and I’m sure it would’ve if there’d been anyone to do the chasing—but I don’t know, I have to think that two art thieves would hardly have been on the FBI’s most wanted list forever or even to begin with. We could’ve figured something out once the initial heat had died down. I mean, it’s not like we were murderers or—

[click, static]

I don’t—

Look, it’s not important. What’s done is done and I’m not sure I owe you an explanation, not when you haven’t given me one for why you feel so guilty about your job. Other than the vague assertion that you’ve “hurt people”.

And you know what? You don’t have to tell me. Let’s just agree to skate past those parts of each other and move on, okay? There’s nothing to be gained from pulling out the skeletons from each other’s closets.

[click, static]

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday. ------ [TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Hey Birdie. 

I got to the Grand Canyon. 

I can’t believe I called it a hole in the ground. It is…so much more than that.  

I’ve never seen anything like it. 

I drove right up to the edge—who was gonna stop me, right? And now I’m sitting on the hood of my car, watching the sun rise. 

The colors are extraordinary. The light and the shadows, the different shades of the earth. The bits of reflected light from the river down below. 

This isn’t—I don’t know what you meant yesterday in saying I was wrong about the impression I’ve left on the world, but I don’t think you really appreciate the comparison I’m making. I’m not denying that I’ve made choices that have had…devastating consequence. Even if you take some of the lesser choices—the ones that I don’t feel regret over—they obviously still had an effect on people. Every piece of art I helped steal had some kind of ripple effect. 

But the real mark—the one, the last one I left, I guess…I know—I mean, I can only imagine the, not even ripple, the wave that that left. I know that there are some decisions that will leave permanent marks. On you just as much as others. 

But I’ve—I guess I’ve comforted myself with the fact that it didn’t matter after all. Even if we hadn’t—even if I hadn’t done what I did, everything was about to change anyway. The “incident” or whatever it was happened and changed the world overnight—or maybe really gradually, I don’t know. Everyone either died or was…raptured? Moved into underground cities? Abducted by aliens?

I was a meteor, maybe. But the crater is impossible to see because a much bigger meteor came along and blew away the earth around my crater. I’m one wave inside of a tsunami. 

I—I think maybe I know what you were trying to say though. I’ve been thinking about it—and about you and what I know about you—and you seem to walk around your life with this immense burden of responsibility on your shoulders. You told me that what you did—whatever happened with your job—still matters. And I'm sorry, I’m sorry it’s still haunting you. 

But if you’re trying to tell me that what I do matters, that it matters just as much as whatever happened with you? Trust me, I get it. I heard that particular lecture pretty often, for six straight years, I don’t need it from you. Don’t project your guilt onto me. 

So I’m just going to sit here, watching the sun rise over this beautiful, natural phenomenon, and marvel at the fact that as much as I matter, nothing I could ever do would erase this view from the world. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

.-- .... .- - / -.-. .... --- .. -.-. . / -- .- .-. -.- ... ..--..  What choice marks?

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker breaker, this is Whiskey calling out for Birdie. You here?

[one beep]

Hell yes. How long’ve we got today?

[five beeps]

Five…five minutes? We have five minutes?

[one beep]

Okay, Jesus Christ. Well, I’ve been thinking about this, what I would ask. So let’s go, one beep for yes, two for no, three beeps when the answer is too complicated, and one dash for I don’t know. Alright?

[one beep]

Okay. Have you known who I am this whole time?

[two beeps]

No…okay, did you guess my name?

[two beeps]

Then how— 
Have you—have you seen me, in person somehow? Not that that would help you know my name…

[two beeps]

Did I—this is embarrassing but—have I told you my name and I just forgot?

[two beeps]

Okay, well, that’s a relief that I’m not broadcasting my name everywhere. 

[two beeps]

No? I am broadcasting my name?

[two beeps]

No again—

[dash dot dash dot; dash dash dot dash]

Can you do that again?

[dash dot dash dot; dash dash dot dash]

CQ - oh, seek you. Um…there was—there was a CQ for me?

[one beep]

What—you mean, so, you did hear my name over a broadcast?

[one beep]

Holy shit…what else did they say?

[two beeps]

So you just heard my name?

[one beep]

Do you know who it was?

[two beeps]

No, why would you. I don’t even know why I’m asking really…there’s only one person it could’ve been. And considering you sent me a message of my full first name, despite it being more to tap out…well, she’s the only one who doesn’t use the shortened version. Harry, that is. She’s the only one who knows I exist other than you. Who else would it have been?

So…Harry got a radio, learned how to use it, and broadcast something to me. Looking for me. 

[one beep]

Jesus, okay. How did I miss this?

[click, static]

Right, um, was it the middle of the night?

[two beeps]

Hm…oh- was it while I was camping? When I left the radio behind?

[one beep]

Shit. I wonder—god, I mean if I had been there would I have been able to…

Have you been able to get into contact with her?

[two beeps]

Have you tried?

[two beeps]

Would you try? I mean—what am I saying, I don’t know why I—

[click, static]

Do you think I should try to contact her?

[click, static]

I guess that’s not something you can really decide, huh? Do you think you have the capability to contact her? I’m not sure I do. 

[one long beep]

One dash— don’t know, right?

[one beep]

Okay, so you’re not sure if you could contact her, but you did pick up her broadcast. But not on purpose?

[one beep]

Yes, it was on purpose?

[two beeps]

Wha—oh, yes as in ‘that’s right’, it wasn’t on purpose. Okay, I clearly need to be more intentional in my phrasing. Do you think you picked her up on skip?

[one beep]

Right. Okay, I…I don’t know what to do with any of this, to be honest. 

[click, static]

Shit, okay, I don’t want to run out of time with you. I need to ask about the message you sent last night. You said “you’re wrong”. 

[one beep]

Wrong about what? I mean—was it something I said yesterday that I was wrong about?

[one beep]

Okay, I was talking about the meteor crater, right? So…I mean, I’m assuming it wasn’t about the crater itself. What else was I talking about…

The fact that we have no control over the impact that we make? You disagree?

[two beeps]

No, that’s not it. 

[dot dash, dash dot dot dot, dot dot]

I recognize that—my name, right? Well, the shortened version. 

[one beep]

So it was something about me that I said?

[one beep]

What, that the choices I’ve made didn’t change the world?

[one beep]

What? That’s what you think I’m wrong about?

[one beep]

Birdie, what does that mean?

[two long beeps]

What? Oh that’s—that’s goodbye isn’t it. 

[one beep]

Wait, you can’t leave yet, what do you mean?

[two long beeps]

Ugh, fine. But you’ll be here next Thursday? Same time?

[one beep]

Alright, I guess I’ll have to just live with that—but explain in your next transmission please. 

[two long beeps]

Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

So, I’m on my way to the Grand Canyon, but apparently Arizona is full of cavernous earth. Because I’m standing in front of an absolutely enormous hole in the ground. 

A meteor crashed here. I had no idea. Which is weird, right? Isn’t that something that everybody should just know? That we have an enormous meteor crater in our country? It feels noteworthy. 

But no, I only learned about it from a road sign on Route 66. Thank goodness for tourist trap advertising, I guess. There’s a little viewing deck and everything—apparently, the meteor crashed here over fifty thousand years ago. The viewing deck has a pair of binoculars pointed at an astronaut suit they put in the middle of the crater. Which is a bit of an odd choice if you ask me, but looking through it does give you an idea of the scale. 

If this is just a random meteor crater, how big is the Grand Canyon going to be? Was this all mundane to the average Arizona resident? I don’t know that I could handle it—the idea of driving around my state and stumbling across these massive voids of space. It’s too much—it’s too much of a reminder. 

A rock—a fucking rock—fell from the sky fifty thousand years ago and even now, this land is unusable. The Colorado River pushed through the ground for so long that it wore away at the very earth. 

Random chance versus persistence. Two opposite ends of a spectrum with the same result—nothing where there used to be something. The world, reshaped. 

There’s nothing we can do, is there? To ensure that we carve the path that we want or to be certain that we’re not eroding everything around us. It doesn’t matter if we make one spontaneous decision or we work hard at something for years—the result could be exactly the same. It could be the opposite of what we were going for. There are plenty of rivers in the world that have been flowing for just as long and haven’t made that kind of impact. There are plenty of meteors that hurdle through space without creating mass destruction. 

I don’t know whether to be comforted or disappointed by that. I told you I left my mark on this world already and that I wasn’t sure if I liked what shape it took and that’s true—but maybe there was nothing I could’ve done to make it different. After all, I haven’t had the power of a strong current or a burning meteor. 

I guess I should just be grateful that the impression I left wasn’t a mile wide. I left my mark, but it won’t still be visible in fifty thousand years. It didn’t change the curve of the world. 

[click, static]

[long static] 

[beeps]

You're wrong

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I haven’t heard from you, which I’m trying not to read into too much. It’s not like we haven’t gone days—or weeks, even—without talking but I guess I’m feeling—

Well, between talking to you—actually talking to you—for the first time and you knowing my name…

Is this what it feels like to be…vulnerable? I know I’ve told you about K not calling me back and Millie moving away and my parents dying and—it’s not like I haven’t been vulnerable before. I have. Of course I have, I’m human. 

But it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to be. Well, I guess not that long if you count—

[click, static]

It doesn’t work out that well usually, does it? Caring about someone. Caring what they think about you, how they feel about you. Wanting to talk to them, to know them. There’s no way to do any of that—to have anything meaningful—without rolling over and showing your soft underbelly. And I’ve been kicked in the gut one too many times, Birdie. 

I thought the last one might kill me. 

But nothing has yet. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[beeps]

[click, static]

I—I’m not sure I translated this message right. Except, I must have. I’ve gotten pretty good at this over the weeks and I listened again and again to make sure I had it right but how—

[click, static]

How do you know my name? That’s—I have to think that’s what that message is about. You wouldn’t send that randomly, it wouldn’t make any sense. Which means you know, you know that’s my real name, and that would be a hell of a first guess if you were just going off of the fact that it starts with A. 

You better start explaining yourself soon, Birdie. If you’ve known who I am this whole time, then…Well, Jesus, I’m not sure we can ever build that trust back.

I assume—well, I’m counting us on still being on for Thursday, so I guess you can do your best to explain it to me then. 

But the explanation better be fucking good. 

Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

.- -... .. --. .- .. .-..

Abigail

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Hey Birdie.  
I’m still…

[click, static]

I can’t believe we talked yesterday. It doesn’t feel real, it happened so fast and it still doesn’t feel real. But it is. It is real. You’re real. You’re real and you can hear me and I know that we’ve been communicating for months now but I didn’t realize just how different it would feel to have you responding in real time to me. 

Is it a sort of cumbersome way to have a conversation? Yeah, maybe. But it’s still the most scintillating interaction I’ve had in years. 

The same message came up a little while after you signed off—which was pretty abrupt by the way. Th, 9AM, Thursday 9AM. It broadcast for a little while and I’m not sure if its a holdover or you saying that you want to talk again next week? I hope it’s that. Either way, I’ll be sitting by the radio waiting. 

Just like you’re a date that has no interest in me.  

You said you don’t want me to know you. But I—I want you to reconsider, Birdie. I’m not going to—to hurt you, I’m not going to judge you, I’m not going to ask too much of you. Or, at least, I don’t think I will.  I’ll try not to. 

I know what it’s like to have something that you want to hide. Or to want to hide from the world completely. I’ve felt that—I’ve felt that for most of the last six years. And I know what it’s like to not be able to hide. I couldn’t, after everything that happened, because Harry was there. And I could never hide from her. 

But I think even hiding would’ve gotten tiring after a while. Aren’t you tired?

[click, static]

[beeps]

.- -... .. --. .- .. .-..

Abigail

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Birdie? You there?

[one beep]

Is that…is that you? Are you really here?

[one beep]

Okay—okay, jesus christ—wow. Hi. Oh my god, hi.

[click, static]

Right, I guess we’re not gonna have me translating full morse sentences in real time. Though—I’m up for that if you are?

[two beeps]

Two dots…that’s the letter “I” but…maybe you’re thinking what I’ve been thinking if we ever got a chance the talk. One beep for yes, two for no?

[one beep]

Yeah? Okay, do it again. One beep for yes. 

[one beep]

And two beeps for no?

[one beep]

Okay, how long do we have?

[two beeps]

No? Oh—yeah, I have to ask yes or no questions, huh? Can you stay for an hour?

[two beeps]

Half an hour?

[two beeps]

(sigh) Fifteen minutes?

[five beeps]

Five…five? You can stay for five minutes?

[one beep]

Ugh, okay. I guess I’ll take what I can get. What are you doing that you can only stay on the radio for five minutes? I’ve got all the time in the world, I could sit by the radio all day. Where do you have to be?

[click, static]

Right, yes or no. Um…are you safe?

[one beep]

Okay, that’s good. 

Will you tell me where you are?

[two beeps]

Why not?

[click, static]

Yeah. Alright, Whiskey, focus on the important questions…

Huh. That’s funny, I guess I really have started to think of myself as Whiskey. I mean, obviously that’s not my name, but after so many months of referring to myself by it, I guess it’s starting to worm its way in. 

Jesus, sorry, I’m so used to just saying every thought I have out loud but you’re here, you’re really here. 

Is Birdie your real name?

[two beeps]

That’s what I figured. Did you—did you pick a code name because you’re talking to people you don’t want to know the real you?

[one beep]

Really? How many people are you talking to??

[one beep]

Yes—yes, what?

[one beep]

Oh, one. One person. You’re just talking to me?

[one beep]

And you don’t want me to know who you really are. 

[click, static]

(sigh)

Okay. Right. That’s—well, you don’t know my real name either. But you do know everything else about me. 

Are you…this is a stupid fucking question maybe, but are you a young person? An old person? A kid somehow?

Um, okay, wait, so I’m thirty-four, I’ll be thirty-five in a few weeks actually. Are you older than me?

[one beep]

Yes. Okay…um, I don’t know why I asked that, what does it matter. Are you—do you know what happened in ’68?

[one beep]

You do. Well, can you tell me?

[one beep]

Yes? You will?

[two beeps]

You won’t?

[one beep]

Well, which is it?

[three beeps]

Is it too hard to explain over morse code?

[one beep]

Do you think we’ll ever talk face to face? Or…voice to voice or, I don’t know, some other method?

[one long beep]

One dash, not dot. Is that…I don’t know?

[one beep]

Right. Okay. 

Um, whatever happened in ‘68…did it happen everywhere? The whole world?

[one beep]

(sigh) Okay. That’s what I thought but it’s still…

I don’t know what to ask you, Birdie, I’m sorry. I—there’s too much! There’s too much I want to know. I want to know what you know about what got us here, I want to know who you are, I want to know what your job was, but I’m running out of time and I—

Is whatever’s in Denver related to what happened in ’68?

[one beep]

It is. If I went to Denver, could I figure out what happened?

[two beeps]

Are you just saying that because you don’t want me to go?

[one beep]

Yes? You are just saying that?

[two beeps]

No. Oh, yes, you don’t want me to go? Because it’s dangerous?

[one beep]

Okay but…look, it’s great to be talking to you and all but why the hell should I trust you?

[click, static]

Birdie?

[one long beep]

You don’t know. Great. Helpful. 

Denver, the collision point. Does that collision have to do with other people?

[three beeps]

Three dots. Too hard to explain over Morse, huh? Yeah, that feels like it’s going to be a pretty convenient excuse. 

[two long beeps]

Two dashes, what does that mean? That’s…M, what does that…

[two long beeps, then one very long beep]

Birdie? Birdie. 

[click, static]

Oh.  I guess our five minutes are up. Two dashes is goodbye. 

Then, goodbye, Birdie. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Um, so…I translated your most recent message. 

Sorry for getting distracted—I was figuring out what the best way to go to the grand canyon was and it seems like there’s…basically one way from here, so that’s sorted now. 

But, well Birdie, you did it again. You left me a fucking cryptic message. 

“Th. 9AM.” 

That’s all. I’m assuming the “Th” stands for Thursday? Day and time? Which is…tomorrow. And I really hope this isn’t a Denver situation and there isn’t something I need to avoid at 9AM tomorrow, because I would really need more information than that. 

The other option—and maybe I’m crazy for thinking this, for hoping this. But maybe you’re telling me to be on the radio tomorrow at 9? You know where I am so you know my timezone—at least, I hope you do. I’ll probably just sit on the radio starting at 6AM to be honest. I have to assume you’re somewhere in North America. 

If you are telling me to be on the radio tomorrow, I have to think it’s not just another morse code message. You’ve never told me to listen at a specific time before, you seem to have it rigged up to continuously broadcast. 

So that means…

Birdie, are we going to talk? Really talk?

I guess…I guess I’ll find out. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“It still matters” - I asked you a question ages ago. I only just remembered. I asked you if what your job—if what happened with your job—if it still mattered. Now that we don’t have jobs and careers and all that. 

And you’re saying it does. Which could mean…a lot of things. It could mean that your job has something to do with…all of this. Or it could just mean that you still care. 

I really hope it’s the latter. 

[click, static] 
I’m a little—I’m kind of embarrassed about yesterday. You were trying to share something about you—about the way you feel, answering one of my questions—and I made it about me. About me and the person who annoys me most in the world. Which is the opposite of what I want to do when I talk to you. 

So I promise. I’m listening. I care about you and what you have to say. I promise I won’t make it all about me all the time. 

And I  will definitely stop talking about Harry. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

- .... / ----. .- --

Th 9AM

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, Breaker, this is Whiskey heading west from Albuquerque.

[click, static]

“It still matters”. That’s what you said: it still matters I’m not sure what you were referring to with that…I don’t even know what I was talking about. 

My…friends? Or—my crew, that is. I was telling you about Harry and I being nice to each other…is that what still matters?

I’m not sure what matters anymore when it comes to Harry. I’m not sure what ever mattered with her. With…us. 

All those years together and what kind of impact did it have, really? None. Our existence left the barest footprint these past six years. We might as well have not existed. Why does any of it matter?

I guess you could say we mattered to each other? In the sense that the only thing we touched since the world emptied out was each other. 

Each other’s lives, that is. We didn’t—not that—

[click, static]

I do…there are things that feel like weird echoes of the lives we lived in proximity to each other. I’ve finally cut my own hair, but it’s…

I’m not sure I would’ve taken that painting if it weren’t for Harry. I’m not sure I would’ve bothered to go to that museum at all. I don’t like paintings that much.  
But it felt like I had to. Like I’m—like I’m doing it for her because she can’t. Which might make sense in a sad sort of way if she were dead but she could’ve—

(sigh) I’m so fucking mad at her. 

[click, static]

I…I haven’t told you this, Birdie. I don’t know why, I’ve told you everything else. But I’ve picked up something to the tune of seven postcards since I last told you about keeping an eye out for them. And I’ve written to Harry on each and every one of them.  
I don’t know why. I don’t know why I keep putting cinnamon in my coffee even though that’s how she likes and I never did it before I met her. I don’t know why the few times I’ve passed a sign for a town or road or anything with the name Franklin, I’ve circled it on my atlas, thinking about how Harry grew up in a town called Franklin and always complained about being from a place that shares a name with a dozen other places in the country. 

I’ve even—my perfectly organized trunk? All the tools just where I want them, the food in one place, the cookware in another—that perfect system that I’ve had in every car I’ve ever owned and the few places I lived long enough to implement any kind of system—the system that Harry destroyed within two weeks of us settling into a permanent spot? That system is useless to me now. I put the coffee can in the food section because I’m not an insane person, but I keep looking for it next to my toiletry bag because Harry liked to keep the coffee and tea next her toothbrush on the kitchen sink so that she could brush her teeth while she brewed her morning cup. That’s nuts! Just walk the extra two steps to the cabinet! 

(sigh)

Everything that used to work just…doesn’t anymore. I guess, in that sense, it does still matter, the way we treated each other. Maybe if we’d been kinder to each other the whole while, more accommodating, I wouldn’t be looking for tea bags in my toothpaste. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

- .... / ----. .- --

Th 9AM

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Harry was right. Santa Fe is gorgeous. 

You know, being here, thinking about it being Harry’s favorite, thinking about the fact that she could be here, right now, with me, and she’s not…

(sighs) It wasn’t…it wasn’t all bad. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Since I arrived, since going to the art museum, it’s like I see her around every corner, and I imagine what she’d look like going through the galleries, or pointing out the unique architecture, or insisting we find ingredients to make one of her favorite Santa Fe meals, whatever that might be. 

It’s—it’s made me—I’ve been remembering the good times, I guess is how you’d put it. There was this one time, before everything happened actually, before that last job, way before—

Richie had this unbelievably shitty loft in Alphabet City. Barely any heat, exposed wires, groaning pipes, warped glass in the old windows, just the whole thing. He was the only one of us who lived on the East side—even me of the unpermanent address tended to stick West—but he was also the only one who owned his place. Well, and Pete. We were all pretty sure that Pete owned a whole fucking brownstone in Brooklyn, but we were never able to confirm it. He was pretty secretive about his personal life. 

But, anyway, Richie would sometimes let me crash at his loft and he had us all over with some degree of regularity—the place was huge, so great for big parties. The crew wasn’t big of course, but he’d invite all his weird beatnik friends and Harry would bring her art friends and Don would bring the guys he grew up with who’d always have some kind of Italian fruitcake with them and Pete and I would stand in the corner friendless and drinking heavily. 

And one night, we’d all been there for hours and the crowd had dwindled and it was really just us and Don was doing his truly awful Perry Como impression and Harry and I were on the couch just…in stitches. And I think both of us were pretty sauced by that point, because once Don took mercy on all of us and stopped, someone had the brilliant idea of doing a game of charades. Harry and I were on the same team and we just…I don’t know, it was fun. It was really fun. We kicked everyone’s asses, it was…we were so in sync, it was strange. But Harry didn’t make fun of me for my pedestrian choices of what to act out and she didn’t pick anything that she knew I wouldn’t get and it was like…

“Oh. This is what it could be like if we were nice to each other. I didn’t expect it to feel this wonderful”

Anyway, then we sobered up and everyone went home and I passed out on Richie’s couch and then I didn’t see Harry again until our next job nearly two months later. And it was like that night had never happened. She was just as cold and condescending as ever. And I was just as snide as I always was. 

But for that one night…I don’t know, it felt good. It felt like how things were supposed to be. 

With your mysterious job and all, I wonder if you had any friends in it. If you ever goofed around with them. Or if it was all serious, all the time. 

It must have been, right? If it went as badly as you say, hurt people, it must have been serious right? 

I mean, I dn't know why I’m even asking, I—

[click, static]

I still don’t trust you, but not talking to you is worse. 

[click, static]

[beeps]

.. - / ... - .. .-.. .-.. / -- .- - - . .-. ...

It still matters

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

The painting is sitting in the passenger seat now. It is my companion. 

I wish I could explain why I took this one in particular. But I just…I liked it. It made me smile the moment I saw it. Gave me a kind of good ache right behind my ribs. 

It reminds me of my mom. I don’t know why. She never went to Santa Fe, I don’t think. I don’t know that I ever heard her even reference it. It’s about as far from what she knew in her life as you can get in this country. 

But there’s something about the colors in it. They just made me think of her. So I took it. 

I don’t know why I said I don’t know what caused Harry to change. Of course I know. Or, at least, I think I do. But she…it’s been six years. Not to say that she should be over it, or even that I’m over it but…at some point you have to move on, right?

Yeah. You have to move on or you’ll die driving yourself insane. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

There’s a saying about bad habits. Or maybe it’s just habits. Habits die hard. Bad habits die doubly hard, I guess. 

Although maybe I shouldn’t be considering it a habit—it is what I did for a living. And is it really bad now? I don’t think so. 

I stole a painting. That’s what I’m trying to say. Just the one. Because I could. Because I wanted to. 

“Santa Fe Mountains in October” by some Pearson guy. I’ve already forgotten his first name. Maybe I should’ve taken the placard too. 

It was the New Mexico Museum of Art - nice place. Harry’s favorite, as it happens. I don’t know how she would’ve gone through the museum, what she would’ve paid attention to. We’d probably still be inside, to be honest. I have no doubt that she could spend hours and hours and hours inside an art museum. 

Isn’t that funny? That Harry and I have never been to a museum together? I mean, not to actually go to the museum. We’ve been in plenty museums and galleries before, after hours, illegally, taking stuff. And she’d make a comment here or there about a piece of art—not even the stuff we were taking, though that she’d always give a lecture on on the way there or after the job. Why it was important, how much it could really be worth, why it had to be transported the way it did. But she never tried to fence anything herself. I don’t know why. She could’ve moved to that part of the whole process and made just as much money—maybe more—and would never had to have left her home. She could’ve been like Francis, living amongst her own art, working with Pete and me to get what we stole to wherever it would fetch the highest price. 

But she didn’t. She wanted in on the action. She wanted to take the art, wanted to be there as we broke in, wanted to run down the clock as she carefully stored each work of art for transport while the rest of us stood lookout, terrified that we were always seconds away from being caught. 

I think she liked the risk too, is what I’m saying. I think she liked it just as much as me, or she would’ve made a living doing a million other things. 

I don’t know what happened to take her from the woman I knew, the woman who’s eyes would light up any time we were taking on a job that had new complications we had to solve to the woman who refused to venture into a world with no one in it.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(sigh) Alright, you sent me a message last night that just said “Santa Fe”. That’s fucking…

Well, I assume it means you want me to go to Santa Fe. Well, I am. I’m already here, actually. And not because of your message but because I was close and it’s November and I’d honestly rather be in New Mexico than Colorado, so. 

I’m not even really a hot weather person, to be honest. I wasn’t raised in a hot climate, I’m not built for it. But the dryer and the warmer the weather, the easier the driving is. To a point, anyway. Too hot and driving becomes a misery. 

(groaning) Ugh…I don’t know, Birdie, I’m—when I’ve talked to you lately, I feel like I can hear myself better. Like the words I’m saying are really landing in my ears and it’s all so….

I can feel myself being sanded away at the edges. Becoming less interesting, less engaged. Becoming a shell. 

[click, static]

That was always my greatest fear with staying. That we’d become husks, living simply to stay alive and for nothing else. Harry seemed content to garden and cook and read and paint and I…

I just wanted to live, you know? Really live. Harry says that I’m just an adrenaline junkie who hasn’t done anything risky or stupid for years and I should just go jump in the lake in the middle of January because “what could be more adrenaline inducing than freezing to death?” but I think she’s wrong.  
It’s not…danger that I miss. Sure, my job had risks to it, but I was careful. I didn’t want to get caught. I didn’t get any thrill from the chase. I was never chased, actually, outside that one time and look at how that turned out. 

I liked the unpredictability. Every job had new challenges and sure, new risks, but no one day was ever the same. 

That’s what I miss. And lately, I can feel my days becoming the same, even if I’m in a different place. What happened in Estes Park wasn’t…good or fun but at least it was something different. And now I’m just right back where I was months ago, which is listening to someone else, following the directions of someone I’ve been forced to trust because of circumstance and it’s putting two things into clear focus: 

I don’t want to passively live my life by someone else’s rules—not yours, not Harry’s. 

And I don’t trust you. 

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Alright, your most recent message. Let’s talk about it. 

“Collision point in Denver”

Birdie, what the hell? 

[click, static]

You can’t just leave a message like that and not follow up. We’ve talked about this. I know that our communication capabilities are limited but this is completely absurd. “Collision point”?? What does that mean?

Maybe I should stop expecting things from you. Maybe you simply being there, being someone to talk to, is enough. Maybe it isn’t fair to want answers on top of that. 

But the least you could do is stop sending me fucking cryptic messages that I can’t do anything about. 

[click, static]

Then again, if Denver really is that dangerous somehow, I guess I did do something. I drove around. I guess you did me a favor.  
It doesn’t feel like a favor. 

[click, static]

Because…collision point…collision is a fucking weird word to use. If some kind of bomb had gone off, I don’t think that’s the word you’d pick. So what’s colliding? In order for a collision to happen, there needs to be some kind of…what, an immovable object and unstoppable force, right? Or two unstoppable forces, I guess?

And that—well, that would imply other people. You can’t have some kind of momentous force without something putting it into action. And the most likely catalyst for something that would be dangerous enough to avoid would be…other human beings. 

So if you’re telling me that Denver has other people and you’re trying to warn me off them—Birdie, I don’t care if they’re the worst kind of apocalyptic barbarians. They’re people. And I want to see them. If you’re just trying to manipulate me or—or hoard me for yourself somehow, well, I’ve had enough of—

[click, static]

It’s not too late for me to turn back and go to Denver. It’ll never be too late for me to turn back. 

And I don’t know that you’ve given me a good enough reason not to.

[click, static]

[beeps]

... .- -. - .- / ..-. .

Santa Fe

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I think…um, I’ve been on edge. All week, ever since I left the Stanley.

Maybe it was driving past Denver that set me off, set me thinking about Harry again. You ever gonna tell me what the hell that was about? You ever going to respond to any of the bonkers transmissions I’ve sent in the past week or so?

[click, static]

I’d…I’d really like to come see you, Birdie. The loneliness of this—of this weird stilted conversation of ours—it’s…profound. A profound loneliness. The kind that’s so deep I’m worried if I leave it in my bones for any longer it’ll just stick to them like tar, never to be scrubbed clean.

This isn’t what I signed up for. I came out here because I wanted to see things yet, but mostly because I wanted to see other people. Harry knew what she was doing—she didn’t want to leave and she didn’t and she knew that would mean being alone. Even if I’m the one who eventually drove off, she might as well have handed me the keys.

If I met you, I don’t think I’d miss her as much as I do. I miss her like you miss…a loose tooth that you’ve gotten used to poking with your tongue, that you’ve learned to eat around. And then you finally go to the fucking dentist and get the thing fixed or torn out and it’s better, you’re not in pain anymore, but it’s also…strange. You got used to shaping your life around this terrible, protruding sharpness and now it’s gone and suddenly your tongue feels too big for your mouth.

I don’t know how to eat anymore. How to talk, how to bite down, how to fill the space where that tooth was. It’s just…a hole.

[click, static]

Whiskey out.

[click, static]

Collision point in Denver

-.-. --- .-.. .-.. .. ... .. --- -. / .--. --- .. -. - / .. -. / -.. . -. ...- . .-.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Hey Birdie. I’m, uh, I’m on route to Santa Fe, now, I guess. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go—it’s supposed to be beautiful, and cultural, and it’s very much on my route, so…

Not that I have a route. I have to stop following invisible rules. Just because it’s the next major city on the highway I’m currently following doesn’t mean that—

(sighs) Harry fucking loves Santa Fe. She’s been a bunch of times. I guess they have—had—a pretty vibrant art scene out there and she used to talk about how gorgeous it was, how delicious the food was, how much she’d like to show me—

[click, static]

Actually, maybe I don't want to go, I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to see it with—

[click, static]

No, no, I should go. I’ve never been. I haven’t traveled very much and basically never for the purposes of leisure—a trip taken for the sole purpose of eating and drinking and looking at extraordinary things, that’s… 

…well, I guess that’s what I’m doing now, kind of. Even if it…feels different. 

If I really could send a postcard, I’d put one right in the mail for her from…whatever Santa Fe’s most famous museum is. Show her what she’s missing. Show her what she could be doing if she would just stop—

[click, static]

That—that was our last fight. Well, our last huge fight. I think I—I maybe mentioned that we weren’t talking all that much the last few months before I left and that’s true. What we did say to each other wasn’t particularly civil, but it was all…inconsequential. Bitching to each other about house chores or making snide comments…

The fight that led to that cozy atmosphere was—it wasn’t about Santa Fe, specifically, but about…the outside world. I wanted to—well, I wanted to do this, what I’m doing, right here. What I’ve been doing, for the last four months. And she…

[click, static]

She wanted to stay inside. She wanted to protect us from the world by keeping us from it. Even though we had every reason to believe that we wouldn’t get caught if we ventured further out. And I tried to convince her, I tried to explain that even if there were other people out there, clearly we wouldn’t be a priority. I tried to make her see that the likelihood of running into anyone who even knew who we were or what we did was so slim, but she just…

She dug her heels in, like she always fucking does. She’s intractable when she wants to be, and trust me, she wants to be a lot. It’s what made living with her such a fucking nightmare. Everything had to be just so and she would be so condescending when I didn’t get the temperature of the tea right or whatever the fuck it was and the most infuriating thing is that I know she didn’t actually care if I did it right, she just enjoyed riling me up, wanted to pass the time somehow, wanted to exert control over whatever she could, which I get because I was the same way with the endless house repairs, which drove her insane because she wanted to build a home and “how can you turn a house into a home when you treat it like the Winchester mystery house!” That’s what she’d say. “Not even the spirits would put up with the constant work.” 

It’s good. Yeah, it’s good that I got out of there. Because I haven’t been to Santa Fe, I hadn’t been to Colorado, I haven’t seen the Pacific. She has. She’s done all of that. She could stay inside and be content and root where she was planted or whatever but I need sunlight to grow and I tried to tell her that. I tried to tell her that I couldn’t see a future for us if we stayed stuck—

[click, static]

Jesus christ, I’m—I don’t know what I’m saying. She really…she drives me up a wall and I miss her and—

[click, static]

I—I’ve gotta—

Whiskey, signing off. 

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, maybe I’m not doing great. I can’t get his face out of my head. The way he looked as he was leaving, suitcase in one hand, other hand on the doorknob, turning around like he forgot something. Turning around like he wanted to say goodbye to me. But that doesn’t—

[click, static]

I’m trying to…focus on other things.

I took a branch from the national park back in Wyoming—I know you’re not supposed to do that, but it was on the ground, it’s not like I took it off a tree. So I feel like it’s okay.

But I was thinking I might whittle it into something. I haven’t whittled in fucking ages, but I used to be okay at it and it’s not like i’ve got any materials to build miniatures. 
What do you think, Birdie? What shape should I carve this little piece of wood into? A bird? Make a little keepsake that I can give you when we meet?

Yes, I said when. I’m deciding to hold out hope. I think I saw a ghost the other morning, so nothing is impossible for me anymore. Here I am, moving about the world, totally alone, and surviving. Thriving, one might say, despite any midnight breakdowns I may or may not have had.

They said it couldn’t be done—that leaving Pennsylvania would be the end of me. But it’s not. I’m sitting on the hood of my car on the side of the highway in Colorado, whittling a stick from Wyoming into a bird for an anonymous friend who only communicates in dots and dashes.

The impossible happens every day. And I’m not dead yet.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

The stupid thing is, with all the weirdness at the Stanley, I didn’t even take a look around Estes Park that much. And it looked like it is beautiful.

Sure, I got a lot of beautiful lakes and mountains in Wyoming. And it’s not like I can’t come back if I really want to.

But I don’t think I’ll be staying at the Stanley again.

I forgot to tell you—when I was driving out of Wyoming, right near the highway was this enormous statue of a rabbit with antlers. One of those jackalopes, I think it’s called. Some weird Wyoming legend. I don’t really get it, but it’s kind of cute—a little antlered bunny.

[click, static]

Where do people come up with this stuff? Bigfoot, the loch ness monster, jackalopes…and how do these ideas gain so much traction with the public? I mean, I know there’s actual myth and legends from different cultures and religions but that’s not what these are. These are…these are made up by somebody who tells their friends, you know? But what makes it so that those friends want to share it with their friends and so on and so on? How many potential monsters are out there ready to become myths and are just being held back by the fact that their creator just doesn’t have very many friends?

[click, static]

Do you believe in stuff like that? The…legends, the urban myths? Ghosts?

I never really did. I like a good ghost story as much as the next person, don’t get me wrong, but it never struck me as…real. There’s way too much evidence to the contrary and I always felt that if any of it was real, no matter how rare it was, surely it would be unavoidable to hear about. Surely there would be real evidence. If people were experiencing real ghost encounters, there’s no way we’d all go about our business as if everything was normal. People aren’t that good at keeping secrets.

[click, static]

But now…after everything that happened…

There still isn’t hard evidence. How much can I trust my eyes really?

There was already so much about the world that I didn’t understand before this and now I understand even less. And I fear I’ll never fully understand anything ever again.

So, I guess, sure, why can’t jackalopes be real? Nothing about this whole place, this whole country, driving around it, feels real. Nothing about my life feels real.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is WAR1974 calling out from Route 36, heading South.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to Denver. I’ll drive right past but…I assume that’s okay? You still haven’t told me anything about why I should avoid it, so—

[click, static]

I think—I think my last transmission probably cut off. I was in the hotel, in that room, Room 217, talking on the CB somehow when all of a sudden, whatever phantom power had been keeping it going just…died.

The moment it did—in the exact moment the radio went dark, not a second before—there was this flicker. The man that I’d seen, the—the ghost? Hallucination, whatever. He appeared again, just for a moment. By the door. Suitcase in hand, looking over his shoulder as he put his hand on the doorknob. He was looking around the room like he was expecting to see something. And for that one second, I could’ve sworn that he saw me.

That’s impossible right? I mean, the whole thing is impossible. The weird feeling, my CB turning on by itself, with no power hookup, seeing a person who isn’t there…none of it makes sense.

And he looked…he just looked like a normal person. He wasn’t dressed in, I don’t know, old timey clothes, he didn’t have chains around his arms or gashes in his face or any of the things you would expect to see on a ghost. 
He didn’t look like a ghost.

[click, static]

God, am I a person who has opinions on what ghosts are supposed to look like now?

Anyway, I’m doing better now that I’m away from there. It was—it wasn’t scary exactly—

[click, static]

Alright, no, it was fucking scary. But it was scariest when I was in my room alone that night, not when I followed the feeling and saw the apparition the next morning. That was just—

That was walking into the wrong room and seeing another hotel guest checking out. That’s all it was. Except there were no other guests. There’s never any other guests at any of the places I stay. And maybe…maybe he never checked out.

[click, static]

I’m glad to be putting that place in my fucking rearview.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

So I…I followed the feeling this morning.

Somehow, I managed to fall back asleep last night. I didn’t sleep well—I don’t remember any of my dreams, but I think they were nightmares. They must have been. Because I woke up and that feeling wasn’t gone.

That feeling of dread. Of something standing, just off to the side. And it still doesn’t feel like mine which—that doesn’t even make any sense to me so I can’t even imagine what it sounds like.

I keep a little running calendar in a pocket notebook—not that dates are important, but it’s helped me feel a little more sane over the last six years. Today is Halloween. I’m sure there’s some kind of joke in there, but I don’t know what it is.

[click, static]

Why did you tell me to stay out of Denver, Birdie? Does it have something to do with what’s happening to me now? I don’t believe in ghosts, or hauntings but—

[click, static]

Room 217. That’s where the feeling took me. That’s where I am now. I’ve been walking around with the CB and—

I wish I could tell you how this worked. But I left my room on the top floor and just started walking. It was like playing a game of hot and cold. Stepping slowly down long hallways, waiting for the dread to get worse. Following the dread all the way down, the feeling growing stronger and stronger like a screeching sound that gets so loud it almost buckles your knees.

Like tuning a radio. Searching through the static to find a frequency you can click into.

The CB is still on. It—it doesn’t make any sense. I’m holding it, completely detached from any source of power and it seems to be—I mean, it’s working. The light is on, all the frequencies seem to be receiving, even if it’s just static. I don’t know if it’s sending any signals out but—

How is this happening? Someone explain this to me.

And it…it changed. As I walked, the static changed in time with that feeling in my gut. Like my hand was on the dial, turning, turning, except it wasn’t. It wasn’t picking anything up—just static—but the static changed. Like it’s responding to something here. Like it was waiting to be in the right place.

Room 217. That’s where the static cleared. That’s where the feeling led me and it’s—

[click, static]

It’s just a room. An ordinary room.

There’s nothing here.

[click, static]

I thought—for a moment, I thought—

[click, static]

When I walked in—all the curtains were drawn, it was dark. Hard to see anything beyond what was illuminated by me opening the door.

I saw a man. Dark hair, beard. Packing a suitcase. As ordinary as the room he stood in. 
The door swung shut behind me and he vanished. But I could have sworn that, before he did, he looked at me. Like he was surprised by the sound of the door. Like he could hear it.

I checked the whole room. Threw open the curtains, checked every channel on the radio.

But no, there’s nothing here.

There’s—

[sudden dead air]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(heavy breathing)

[click, static]

(whispering)

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I…I woke up a few minutes ago, heart pounding. I don’t know why.

[click, static]

There’s nothing…wrong. I looked out the window, there’s no figure in the trees, the door is locked, the entire hotel is empty, I checked. I wanted to be sure that there weren’t any wild animals that had gotten in, or any hazards that could lead to a fire or—

This hotel is somehow even bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside. Or at least, it feels bigger. Its winding and rickety—charming in the daytime and now that it’s dark…

No, it’s still charming. It’s charming. It’s just a historic hotel in a vacation town and the only reason I’m feeling like this is because I spent a whole week sleeping outdoors and now that I’m back in what passes for civilization these days, everything is off.

It did make it easier, coming into the mountains. Getting out of the feeling that the world stretched on, endless and empty—it was the right choice. But now I’m claustrophobic. Nothing fits in my body correctly anymore. Like I’m Alice in Wonderland, and at first I took the potion that made me too small and now I’ve taken the one that makes me too big and nothing fits. My bones hurt, my chest is tight, and my vision is blurry, like I’m looking through a window streaked with oil.

And I woke up, all of a sudden. That doesn’t happen to me. I’m a good sleeper—I wake up to sounds, but even when I do, it happens gradually. I arrive at consciousness by degrees. When enough of my brain is awake, I decide if I need to get up and figure out what the hell the sound was, and if I don’t, I fall back asleep easily.

There was no sound. There is no sound—this whole place is as quiet as a tomb. But I woke all at once; deep in sleep one moment, wide awake and springing out of bed the next. And still, there’s no sign of what jarred me from sleep.

Maybe I had a nightmare. If I did, I don’t remember it.

But I have this lingering sensation that something is wrong. And the feeling itself, it sits wrong in my body.

Does that make sense? The feeling is one of—of dread, I think, but it also—it doesn’t feel like mine.

[click, static]

God, that’s fucking insane. I sound totally cracked. I didn’t used to be like this, I don’t think. But first the tornado, now this…you must think I jump at every mouse and spider that I see. But I don’t. I worry about stuff, yeah, sometimes I feel anxious, but I don’t get scared. The only times I’ve gotten scared are the times that are appropriate—nearly getting caught, running for my life…the tornado, I think that was justified. 
But nothing is happening. I’m sitting in a nice hotel bed, in a nice hotel, in a nice town, and it’s like there are claws hooked into my chest. Pulling. And not like they’re trying to rip out my heart, but like I’m supposed to follow.

I don’t know what I’m saying…

Maybe it’s a panic attack. Maybe it’s fucking heartburn.

But I can’t shake the thought—the one that’s been running through my head since the moment I woke up—I can’t shake the thought that this feeling, whatever it is, is not my own.

[click, static]

I didn’t find a generator or a battery last night. But when I woke up, the CB was already on. It’s…Birdie, it’s not plugged into anything.

But it’s on.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I feel like I can breathe again. I’m in Estes Park, a beautiful little…resort town? I don’t know, it seems like a place the fancy muckety-mucks would come to. It’s tucked in the mountains, but not so far that I’m worried about Donner Party-ing it. There’s a gorgeous lake and a cute little downtown and this stunning great white building overlooking the whole place. The Stanley Hotel—it’s pretty old, according to the plaque on the front, and it’s enormous. And I’ve got it all to myself.

I haven’t actually gone inside yet. I wanted to radio you to let you know I’m okay before I settled in for the night. I’m taking the CB with me, but the chances of the place having power to plug it in…maybe I can grab a battery from a car parked out here, or maybe if I’m really lucky, they’ve got a back-up generator. We’ll see if I get lucky. If not, I’ll talk to you in the morning .

[click, static]

But for now, I’m okay. I’m not in Denver, and I’m fine.

I’m still a little annoyed with you if I’m honest, but as long as you get back to me soon with some answers, I’ll let bygones be bygones.

This is Whiskey, going dark.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I barely slept last night, thanks to you. I know you’re probably thinking, “yeah, Whiskey, you idiot, you slept in your car in October in the middle of Colorado, of course you didn’t fucking sleep”. And sure, I was a little cold, but I’ve got thermals. Mostly it’s the—you don’t realize it. Just how unnerving open spaces are until you’re in them.

It should be better, right? It’s not looking out on our backyard and seeing a figure amongst the trees. When you’ve got woods around you, the whole world becomes a series of shadows. Shapes and forms with dimension, ever shifting and hard to parse for how they blend together when the light changes. But you get used to the shadows. And they create a sense of place, a sense of being.

The openness of where I am—the infinite horizon and endless sky…you start to lose yourself in it. It was the same feeling I got in Lost Springs—because you can see everything around you, your brain starts playing tricks. What aren’t you seeing? Surely it’s impossible to perceive every object, every figure for miles and miles. Surely, there’s something just off in the distance waiting for you.

At least with mountains and trees, you know there are things you can’t see. You know where the shadows are. You know where not to tread.

[click, static]

I need to get out of here. Go toward the mountains, where the shapes are more discernible, the dangers more obvious.

Whiskey out.

[click, static]

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

What does that mean?

[click, static]

Birdie, I’m serious, if you’re listening to this right now, tell me what that means.

[click, static]

“Stay out of Denver”? That’s all? You knew I was headed to Colorado, why didn’t you tell me before now?

[click, static]

Is this a prank? Is that what you’re doing? Trying to pull some kind of sick joke? Because I’m going to be furious if that’s the case.

Why? Why do I need to stay out of Denver? What’s there? What do you know?

What aren’t you telling me, Birdie?

I mean, I know there’s a lot you’re not telling me. I mean, I know there’s a lot you’re not telling me and there’s plenty I’m not telling you. And I know that you’re trying to convey the most vital information the quickest, but the directive of “stay out of Denver” with no other explanation is pretty disturbing when I’m an hour from the city.

What if I hadn’t heard it? What if I hadn’t pulled over to fucking translate it? What then?

(sigh) God, Birdie, I’m grateful for you but sometimes…

[click, static]

You know, I only pulled over to decode your message because it’s already dark and I figured once I got to Denver I’d just pick a hotel and pass out and I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. I’m tired. All day—all week, I’ve been—

[click, static]

And now what am I supposed to do? I’m close to Fort Collins, I guess I could find something there, but is that…is Fort Collins…should I stay out of Fort Collins too?

You’ve got me freaked out, Birdie.

It’s so open out here. I’m on I-25 and…I don’t think I realized how flat Colorado could be. The Rockies don’t look that far but…

It’s too open. I—maybe I’ll just sleep in my car. It has locks that work, I know every sound it makes, I’ve got several knives in here…

“Stay out of Denver”. Jesus Christ, Birdie.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Lost Springs, Wyoming. The smallest town in America.

I don’t know if that’s actually true. I passed a little rundown sign outside of Cheyenne advertising it—or, I guess not advertising it. Proudly proclaiming it. There’s nothing really to advertise.

According to the sign at the town’s edge, the population of Lost Springs is five. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the population is now down to zero. I—

[click, static] 
I’m not sure why I wanted to come here. I thought—well, this is going to sound fucking stupid, but seeing that sign and thinking of a tiny town with a tiny population made me think of my miniatures. Like Lost Springs would be a tiny dollhouse set. I mean, with a name like Lost Springs, you know…

[click, static]

It’s not like that really. It’s one road, obviously—there’s a post office and store and a bar. And to be clear, the post office and store are one building, the bar’s on the other side of the street. There’s a few other buildings but I can’t tell what they are.

I did go into the bar and, I guess it should come as no surprise, but their liquor selection was not particularly impressive. But I’m wandering around the main street and it’s…

[click, static]

I don’t know. The weather is turning. Makes sense, I guess, now that we’re in the final days of October. It isn’t raining or anything but…

Well, maybe I’m a little suspicious of gray-green skies now.

[click, static]

I thought it’d make me feel better, coming here. That there would be something idyllic in it—surely those that chose to live in a town with only a few other people did it for a reason. They removed themselves from society, entrusted themselves to a few other hands for something.

It isn’t that it’s a bad place. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s…a town. It’s a town that’s small, yes, but otherwise looks just like half the towns I’ve driven through in this state or any state. It isn’t special or…somehow magical. There probably isn’t any reason why the people who lived here lived here other than it’s where they ended up.

And it just…

[TRANSCRIPT]

Hey Birdie I—

(yawning)

[click, static]

Man, I guess it’s been a while since I slept in a really good bed because I found a motel last night and I knocked out like the dead dead. And I am feeling better—less like roadkill (yawning) and more like a person who might even consider hiking again someday.

[click, static]

I, uh—I got your message. I think maybe you started broadcasting it late last night, I thought I heard some beeps from the car as I was falling asleep.

[click, static]

But I can’t have, can I? The car wasn’t on. So I guess I was just hoping to hear from you. But…

Regardless, I got it this morning, um, I’m really sorry I worried you. I’d promise that I’ll never do it again if I thought I had any hope at all of keeping that promise but I don’t think I do

[click, static]

Would you be mad at me if I said it’s kind of nice to be worried over?

Is that shitty of me?

[click, static]

Because it is. It’s nice to know that someone’s worrying. That someone would notice if I suddenly fell off the face of the earth.

And you know, it goes both ways—how are you doing, Birdie? I don’t think I’ve asked in a bit, which shows exactly what kind of friend I am. But I’d love to hear from you—about you—more, if you’re willing to share.

[click, static]

Alright, I think Denver is gonna be the next big stop. There’s a town on my way out of Wyoming I want to check out first, and I’d love to find another not-too-dusty motel to sleep in, so it might be the day after tomorrow that I actually get to the city. Um, it’s been a while since I’ve really gone to an actual city, I don’t know what I’ll do there, but I’ve never been and I’ve heard good things so…why not?

[click, static]

[long static]

[beeps]