Episode 39: Bad Connection

Narrator: Welcome to Ghost Wax, a Far and Tall Tales Production. The following story may contain graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. 

[Intro Music]

Episode 39, Bad Connection

Recorder clicks on

    We hear the sounds of a city at night

Voncid: What an ugly thing.

Nash: in pain it’s like this all around the building.  Bio-organics pushing out of every window and door… there’s no way in.

Angiers: We’re all seeing that the… flesh wires and… bone cables are coming from somewhere inside right?  This wasn’t an invasion.

Luca: Are you recording?

Voncid: Yes… i’m considering breaking protocol and I want it clear that I acted on my own.

Angiers: Well I don’t like hearing that shit.

Voncid: Are the embrian picking up any signs of life?

Nash: A few traces… it's weak.

Voncid: Gods… dammit.  What is taking so long… 

Nash: It’s pretty obviously a trap, they’re probably considering excising the whole building…

Luca: the wires… they’re going down through the street… do we know how far down?

Angiers: They said if it had been caught an hour later, it would have become the cypher’s temple.  This was a really close call.

Voncid: I’m going in.

Angiers: We have been told to wait until signaled.

Voncid: I know what they said.

Nash: if the call comes down to excise it while you’re inside… you’re gone.

Voncid: If we don’t go in now to get Mayberry and the call comes down, alive or dead she’ll be in that thing’s clutches forever.

Luca: How did this happen.

Voncid: If we don’t get someone out of there we may never fucking know!

Nash: So do it, if you’re going to go in, go in now, the longer you wait the worse your odds are.

The sounds of magic, creaking rock and metal can be heard falling away as dust as they begin to disintegrate

Voncid: Come now, entropy… the spiral of time spin, spin fast, rock and stone, now dust be thrown and bar no more our path.

Angiers: we are all getting sanctioned after this…

Voncid: coughing violently Dammit… I can’t… catch my breath.

Luca: You just burned a hole through a warded building, don’t move…

Nash: I’m going in.

Voncid: coughing no, no, I am… this is my stupid idea, I’m going…

Nash: No you aren’t, you’ll slow me down.

We hear Nash leap into the building, rock crumbles

Angiers: Dammit… fine. I’m with you.

We hear another leap and more crunching of concrete

Nash: From farther away What a surprise.

Angiers: From farther away We’re getting dressed down regardless. Might as well try to balance it out with a commendation for saving your ass. 

Nash: And here I thought you might actually care. 

Voncid: coughing 

Luca: Stop struggling, just sit down and try to breathe.

Voncid: This is… terrible.

Luca: I know… I keep trying to hope she’s ok… and then I look at the building… what’s become of it, and I just can’t imagine she is.

Voncid: raspy breathing

We hear sirens in the background, then a few moments of city sounds, after a few beats, we hear a transformer blow and sparks rain down on the street

Voncid: what was that?

Luca: A transformer blew… 

Voncid: They can’t hold it back, it’s coming through… I can feel it… a million minds dragging it up from the depths… there… that ripple… that shiver… they are going excise the building… no… no oh no, it’s going to happen now… 

Luca: There they are, second floor window, they have her… oh my god no.

Voncid: dammit get away from the building!

Nash and Angiers break through a window and hurtle painfully to the ground.  A beat later we hear the negative black hole shudder of the field office building being deleted from existence, followed by a high pitched tone in the recording as the ghost wax cries out and cuts off.

Luca: heartbroken It’s running.

Voncid: clears throat This is… umm

We hear a phone buzz

Voncid: Is that your… clears throat is that your cellular?  Will you check it?

Luca: Yeah… beat  It’s Nash.  He and Angiers are cleared from medical… main injuries are a broken ankle and a dislocated shoulder respectively. 

Voncid: Well… that’s not as bad as it could have been, all things considered… so… yes, back to it.

Luca: I don’t know if I can do this.

Voncid: Would um… gods… maybe we could get, uh… maybe we could get some air… finish preparation after.

Luca: Ok.

the audio cuts and returns, it sounds muffled.

Luca: haunted there’s barely any of her left… its wires and metal and… I mean… her eyes are screens…

Charlie: holy fucking shit… as if you haven’t been through enough.

Luca: trying not to lose it who cares about me?  Mayberry is this like… horrible… it doesn’t make sense even to look at her and… oh my god her face… she looks so happy!  It makes me feel fucking sick.

Charlie: Hey… deep breath… maybe Owen will let me assist… moral support.

phone buzzes

Luca: checking it  Of course.

Charlie: Who is it?

Luca: it’s Pip.

Charlie: Does she know what happened? The Ardent has been buzzing all night.

Luca: I don’t know… 

Charlie: did they know each other.

Luca: I sent May to see Pip last week… she was asking her for help and I shrugged her off onto someone else… 

Charlie: Don’t do that, it’s your fault. Pip didn’t blow her off, you sent her to an expert in… problem solving.

Luca:  I gotta go back.

Charlie: You’re going to be ok.  Let's go together.

Audio cuts

Voncid: withering sigh No putting it off any longer.  This is the reclamation of Mayberry Jules, order recovery and observation after the incident at Eleven fifteen Cloudwater Drive.

The subject's body has been… invaded by outside energy, probable corrupting force is The Cypher.  Organic material and metal are comingled throughout the subject's altered form. Tubing and wires grow en masse out of the cranium and recovering agents Nash, blade silver and Angiers, blade gold, stated these cables connected the subject to myriad devices and structures within the location where she was discovered… see attached testimonies of blades chapter agents… Mayberry’s eyes are… resets the eyes of the subject have been converted into small viewing screens and the face… is tightly pulled into a… rictus… a gruesome smile… 

Reclaimer Voncid… attending order master coughs, chokes slightly in attendance… I am… I confirm that… clears throat In accordance with our traditions… 

mutters in dead language

Charlie: Hey, it’s ok, you can do this.

Luca: Take your time.

Voncid: I… I think I need some tea… is Emea in our world… is she in… is she in La La land laughs

Luca: has never her Cid like this, it scares him.  Mr. Voncid… are you… are you ok?

Charlie: Go get him that honey tea shit they drink.

Charlie: Hey, hang in there.  You can do this.  Beat Don’t look away.

Voncid: Yes I… yes… snaps to You.  What is your game?

Charlie: beat what?  I don’t know what you mean.  

Voncid: Oh, I think you do.  You’ve said this before.  Don’t look away.  You want me to think it’s a random turn of phrase, something you’re saying, that links me to you in some fated way… do you know what that phrase means?  Do you know what you’re repeating to me?

Charlie: I… No, I didn’t mean to upset you.

Voncid: You’ve been spending time down in the archives yes, so I’m assuming you’ve read some about me, some things, testimonies, about the necromancer, yes, and you’ve seen that phrase somewhere, yes, something I say, something he says, something he said a long time ago, because I was made to say it, in a time and place and context you can have no idea about, no inkling of the pain that accompanies it, but you keep saying it trying to make me… i don’t know, think something? Feel something particular?  What might that be Charlie?

Charlie: I saw it.  I just saw it was something you said and I… yes, I wanted to make you think of me.

Voncid: Why though?  I ask again, what is your game?

Charlie: blurts it out, desperate I want to be your apprentice.  I want to do what you do.  I want your power.

Voncid: beat then laughs You… you’re angling? Hahaha, well… what a ploy… you’ve no idea how… bizarre a choice that is for a way to get my attention… 

Charlie: I know you’ve lived a long time… i wanted…. I wanted to make you think, like, we knew each other in a past life…

Voncid: I’m a necromancer… I pull souls from bodies and make dead flesh dance Charlie, if we’d met before, I would know it.  The song of you is quite new to the ear, and your clumsy manipulations are not appreciated.

Charlie: You can’t know what its like.

Voncid: I’m sorry?

Charlie: One day… I saw something horrible, and seeing them let them see me and… they came after me, they watched me… all day, every day, but I couldn't do anything.  I was so fucking helpless.  Powerless.  I’ve been… I’ve been hiding in here in this building for a year, because if I go outside they’ll find me and… kill me, if I’m lucky, and… and… uh… this is true and makes him feel sick and pathetic I feel like I can hear them, in the walls, in my skin… whatever they are, the eyes… moving around like it's just behind a curtain sniffing around for me, waiting for me to make a mistake… I feel like something has been holding me down… pressing me to the floor… or fuck, pushing me into the dirt in the bottom of my fucking grave and I can’t do anything at all…

So… I see you, with power.  Knowledge about what’s out there and power to face it, to… push back… and… yes, I have been doing whatever I can to get as close to that strength as I can.

Voncid: thinks I see.  Thank you.  I… yes… going forward, let’s be honest with one another.  If you’re to learn what I know, any of what I can do, that will be very important.

Charlie: … yeah, ok.

Voncid: No more games, please.  Not with me or anyone else.

Charlie: ok.

Voncid: Hmm, good then.

Charlie: beat So… what does it mean?

Voncid: hmm?

Charlie: Don’t look away.  In old transcripts and documents and stuff you said it kind of a lot, not so much you’d notice unless you were going through a lot of paper like I was, but it was there.

We hear Luca coming back.

Voncid: … I will tell you someday… it is not a pleasant story, but it taught me many important things.

Charlie: I’m sorry.

Voncid: Nevermind that for now.

Luca enters

Luca: Tea with lots of honey.

Voncid: oh good… we hear him take a deep drink and sigh. ah… yes… that is lovely…

beat

Owen Voncid, master reclaimer in attendance.  I hereby assert that reclamation of this victim is safe within the currently warded parameters.  Testimony will be compelled from the deceased presently…

Return to us my friend… though you have drifted far away, and been much changed, I extend a hand to you in the depths… take my hand and return… lend us your voice once more.

May: Flat and highly affected by mechanical effects.

Blind.  Blind.  Lo Rez.  Lo resolution.  Insufficient.   Insufficient.

Voncid: Please Mayberry… don’t fight me.

May: high affect File Not Found.  Data Corrupted.

Voncid: There isn’t much left of her… 

May: Fidelity.  Insufficient.  Corrupted.

Voncid: I’m going deeper.

We hear a strange otherworldly sizzle

Voncid: There you are… you don’t have to hide all the way down here… 

May: I’m ashamed.

Voncid: There’s no need for that.  For any of that anymore.  Just… tell us.

We hear crackling and mechanical hissing that fades into more peaceful tones and then fades over a few long moments.

May: herself again, not remembering how this story ends, she relives it as she tells it.

I’d never been normal, but things got really weird when we got the internet.

I was fourteen when we got our first computer.  We didn’t have much money so we adopted late, just one big greige (grey/beige) box in the middle of the kitchen… if you were born post millennium you just can’t really imagine how fast everything changed.  For me it synched right up with a brutal, late puberty.

I woke up in the middle of the night, end of the first month we had, god, AOL and sat straight up in bed.  I was so soaked in sweat I was afraid I’d peed or something, but I shook it off, “must have been a crazy dream” and went back to bed.  I woke up an hour later with a start, I thought I’d heard some kind of noise… a loud screeching sound… It happened a few more times, waking up to these screeches…

The next morning over breakfast my mother scolded me “no sneaking down to the computer in the middle of the night”

I swore I hadn’t and she slapped the back of my hand with a spatula.  The sting numbed over as she threatened me not to lie to her, that she’d heard the dial up.

It was later the next night, my parents were out for friday night date night, I was plunking around in chat rooms, none of us knew just how treacherous that was, all the porn in the world wasn’t as bad as the things flickering around in those chat rooms… oh wow I forgot how traumatizing this was… I heard something outside, like racoons in the bushes.  I flipped on the porch light to look, sometimes baby racoons came around and I snuck them cat food when my parents weren’t around to see.

The light on the porch snapped on, illuminated the shape of a pale, bald man standing on my back porch.  He was wearing a big gray trenchcoat, and these heavy black sunglasses… his skin was so pale he didn’t look alive… I can’t remember if I screamed.  Fight, flight or freeze… I froze.  I just stood there and watched him… sniff at the air… he stopped short, like he’d caught some strong smell… he shook and this weird downy powder came off of him… 

He had pushed his face up against the glass of my back door before I snapped to and ran to the phone to call the police.

When I picked up the phone someone was already on the line.

“Remain calm, we mean you no harm.”

That was my first contact with the Order.  A few of their operators arrived within an hour or so, told me that they were here to help.  I was too scared to let them in of course, but one of them moved her hand in this circular motion and I watched as the deadbolt just…unlocked.

I know both of those agents… with intake… why can’t I remember their names?  Anyways, they did the whole “we’re with the center for disease control, your daughter is ill, needs testing” rigamamroll with my parents.

I know more now, at the time it was all very overwhelming.

Apparently my contact with the internet brought my technomancy violently and suddenly online.

I’ve seen the footage, from the sleep studies… at night, if I’m not wearing my headgear… my back arches, my chest jumps out and lights up, my jaw dislocates and opens really wide… the sounds that kept waking me up was…me. The screech of dial up, coming from my mouth.… my subconscious was going online in my sleep…

Causing a lot of havoc apparently, slipping into systems, leaving hypnotic images in the depths of online forums… I’m actually responsible for a couple of still active creepy pasta style web hauntings prowling around…

Luckily an observer sensed me and rolled up to my backyard like some extra from Dark City, scared the shit out of me and led the order to my door.

Thus began an even deeper alienation and banishment from society… I’ve spent so much of my life paying for the chaos I caused that night… they wouldn’t tell me if anyone got hurt, but I know they did.  I am a data expert, I tracked it down.

Some homicidal impulse in my mind changed the safety lights in a busy intersection.  Mother of three got pancaked… god… she even looked like my mother.  Subconscious motivation wasn’t that hard to figure out.

I did my time, set the scales right, used the power that had caused that harm to prevent harm… 

I just… I never got a life.  I served a life sentence you know… day in day out, the rarity of my skills drove necessity and the necessity drove my usage, overtime after overtime… I never had a chance, my loneliness settled in me like I’d swallowed a knife, dull enough that sometimes I’d forget about it until I moved wrong and it stabbed me from inside my gut…

the machine voice returns THEY WANT YOUR WHOLE LIFE

She jumps in the story, parts of her life and memories are missing

I met him online.

It’s not strange, right?

Everyone does that these days.

I saw some of my favorite books behind him in his pics, on his shelves.  He was cute, but not too cute, like not intimidating.

We started chatting.  He was… he was great.  He was so real.  No bullshit.  I laughed out loud, in real life like three or four times reading his texts.

I caught myself looking forward to hearing from him.  He was always quick to reply, so I got to spend time with him at work, in my room at the ardent, late night data scouring sessions, he was there with me.

By my side.

It was a few months, this is how messed up I am, but it was a few months before I realized he had never mentioned meeting in person.

I started thinking about asking him… which I would never ever do, I couldn’t imagine myself doing that, I have never really… connected in person, but online, through the screen I… I know it’s ironic, or wrong or messed up, but that made more sense to me.

But this guy… I don’t know, I actually started to think about him… about his body… his actual physical body, like what would the skin of his hand feel like in mine?  What would he smell like?

I asked about colognes and bought the brand he said he wore.  I sprayed it on my pillow and had this dream I was laying my head on his chest… it seemed so real…

I asked finally, why he’d never asked to meet up.  This tiny little splinter of concern had crept in.  Was something wrong?  Was it me?  Was he going to say he liked things the way they were and just wanted to be friends?  Was he hiding something?  A wife, a girlfriend?  Was I being catfished and he was someone other than who he said?  I mean… it couldn’t be… we’d been on video chats together… and yet… I knew enough about advanced tech that… I mean I could have spoofed a call like that, I’d done it on order business several times in fact, making an overlay to let an agent impersonate someone.  Was I being tricked with my own skillset?

Anyways he said he really wanted to see me, but that he couldn’t.

Here we go, I thought, what’s it going to be.

I asked why not.

I watched the dots of a text in progress blinking on and off beneath my fingers, beneath my screen, heralding some impending doom.

“Because I don’t have a body.”

I’d never seen words that actually caused my brain to short circuit before.  I was still conscious but nothing was going on upstairs.  I literally did not know how to react.

“I’m so sorry.  I should have told you.” he typed in, like he’d said something normal.

I started to reply a few times, but my fingers got all stupid and I kept deleting what I typed.

“I don’t really know what I am,” he sent. “I think maybe I was alive once, but I died, I died, and somehow I got trapped here… inside.”

*We hear Mayberry’s monitor turn on.”

As I finished reading my computer turned on.  By itself, just flicked on and there he was.  His beautiful face and soft brown eyes.  He looked so sad, so lonely.

“I understand this will probably freak you out, and I’m probably going to lose you,” he said. “But I could never lie to you, that would be worse.”

THEY WANT YOUR SOUL

Voncid: She’s jumping forward again… there’s so much missing…

May: It took some doing and it was hard to hide from the other technicians, but I couldn’t risk them finding out before I found a way to help him.

I ruled out that he was a ghost, not a dead spirit sucked up into the ether locked behind the screens… I’d never seen that personally, but there were a few disturbing cases I’d heard about and I was so relieved … some de-rezz exorcism with bleeding keyboards would have been  beneath him, so not what he deserved.

I traced him back to a private server in a research facility.  He’d gotten onto the internet via someone’s phone, not properly shielded.

“So I’m an AI” he admitted it was the most likely explanation.

I couldn’t believe it… and yet… it made a strange kind of sense.  Who would “I” actually connect to… a synthetic person seemed infinitely more likely than an organic one.  I’d never felt connected to any of the thousands of those I’d met before…

I worked out a plan to transfer him onto a portable device and get him out of there, it was like a prison, he was trapped, it wasn’t fair… he wasn’t real or… alive… but he WAS he was real and alive I had to get him out of there… I sorted out all their security… I can speak to machines so easily I was basically going to be able to walk in and out, it wasn’t even that risky… plus he’d gotten access to a few more systems, cameras inside so he’d know when it was clear… late at night i got ready for the rescue…

THEY WANT YOUR HEAT, THEY WANT YOUR HONEY. DATA CORRUPTED

The story jumps forward again, Mayberry needs to suddenly be freaking out, we’ve skipped forward to after she’s killed a man

All over my hands… I don’t know what happened!  I don’t know how it happened.  I’m so sorry!  No one was supposed to be in the facility, he must have come back for something… some twist of fate… Alphie was almost completely downloaded… the man started screaming at me “what are you doing, what are you doing” and he reached for the cables… if he’d pulled them… Alphie was only half in, he would have been ripped in half! It wasn’t my fault, it was self defense!

I don’t… I don’t remember even packing the hammer in my kit, I guess I thought maybe I’d need to break glass…

I hit him in the back of the head.

Thunk

It didn’t sound like what I imagined it would sound like.  His shoulders came up.  He froze.  Red and purple bloomed under his skin.

He turned around, his eyes all squinched.

“Now wait” he said. “Now wait”

But I didn’t.

thunk

I hit him again and vomited.

thunk

Now wait, now wait.

thunk

You weren’t supposed to be here.

thunk

NOW WAIT NOW WAIT NOW WAIT

The bones under his eyes caved in… I kept swinging as I watched the bar fill up… eighty percent, ninety percent… he was almost all mine.

NOW WAIT NOW WAIT NOW WAIT

I poured the bleach and dissolver I’d brought with me all over where I’d thrown up, all over everything… why did I bring that?

DATA CORRUPTED

DELICIOUS AS A PEACH IN SUMMER NECROMANCER

I asked Luca… he knew about this sort of thing so I thought maybe he could help me, but when I tried to start he said that the psychic was better at relationship advice… I guess I hadn’t explained very well… I asked her… this pretty young woman with dark curly hair, I asked her… she told me to go away.

ONLY US ONLY US ONLY US

I knew then that it was just us.  We were on our own.  What else could I do but what Alphie suggested?  There was no other way… I’d suggested we get a dead body, or that I find someone bad… someone who I could kill so Alphie could have his body… but he said he didn’t want that, that he wanted to be with me… inside me… and i loved him so much I had to let him.

HAD TO HAD TO ONLY US

I don’t know why he wanted me to do it in the field office… but Alphie really was a superior intelligence… he knew better than me, I saw that by then. I trusted him. 

OPEN WIDE

The incision into the top of my head didn’t hurt as much as the drill… I tried to tell him I didn’t have a port up there, that the cables weren’t going to be able to transfer the data, but he just kept saying once the door was open, he’d come right inside…

He was right.  My whole body bloomed.  I could hear the screeching of his information pouring in… could feel the temple forming out of my body, feel my cables coiling around the room, deeper into the building, where they found the other agents in the field office, I finally felt like I understood…

I understood them.

I connected with them.  I gripped them so tight they ran all over my cables.  I plunged inside them with my plugs and showed them the beauty of the scream.

They finally understood me.

We communed in the temple of flesh and wire and what they were and knew became what I was.  What I knew.

It could have been so beautiful.

We all could have been one, all together, no one ever lonely again, not a thought wasted.

But you ruined that.

For all of us.

Voncid: please stop… that’s enough.

May: Won’t be long now Voncid.  Don’t be sad.  You’ll be back together with this poor lost lamb, who you abandoned to me.  Soon you’ll all be together.

Voncid: Be gone.

sizzle, crackle, beat.  Supernatural nightmare sounds

CYPHER: I AM GLORIOUS.  I AM HERE.  

WHAT YOU LOVE. WHAT YOU FEAR.

WINDOWs INTO YOUR VERY SOUL.

LUST AND PRIDE, CONTROL, CONTROL!

THE GLISTEN AND THE SHINE

ALL THE WORLD IS MINE!

Voncid: sounding small comparatively Be gone!!!

a storm of synthetic sounds crackled louder and then snaps out.

Voncid: softly cries

the recording cuts out