WHAT WILL BE HERE
EPISODE 4
Nominal MECO

MUSIC: Mid-tempo synth music plays.

INTRO
What Will Be Here? Episode 4, Nominal MECO. Content warnings for this episode include swearing, mentions of police, discussion of death, and discussion of kidnapping. See the show notes for more details and a link to the transcript.

Part One: DANE

SFX: Recording clicks on. There’s 20 seconds of silence/ambient noise.

Dane tries to speak a few times, punctuated by bitter laughs or sighs, but the words don’t come. They’ve been hit with a terrible tragedy but there's no words to describe the pain and anger it has caused them.

DANE
Fuck this.

SFX: Recording clicks off.

Part Two: JULES

SFX: Recorder clicks on.

JULES
(Somber)
Hey… Hi… So… today is not a great day. There was a raid here in the underground, and uh, it was bad.

A big police team stormed in and started turning everything upside down. We’re not really supposed to be down here, so they have the right to basically do whatever they want. We managed to get ourselves out of there before they got to our section of the underground. They didn’t get past our locks, thankfully - I guess we managed to make them look official enough, even though they were mechanical locks. A “property of Savannah” sticker on the front door probably helped with that… I should “borrow” some more from Mom in case this happens again… Maybe it would spare some other people’s spaces…

Jules trails off.

JULES
(Angry)
I just don’t understand why they do this! What’s the point in harassing all of these people? They’re not doing anything wrong! I mean, the officers said something about looking for stolen goods, and we can only figure Savannah is missing something they want back. But it doesn’t seem like the police were really looking for anything - they were just… causing havoc. I don’t think anyone even stole anything. Sure, we shouldn’t be down here, but we’re not bothering anyone!

Long pause.

JULES
(Sadly)
A lot of people are missing now. We think they were probably arrested, taken Gaut knows where to be charged with… trespassing, probably. We all know we’re not supposed to be here, but it’s easy to forget the risk. It’s easy to forget the consequences. According to Suri the last raid around here was years ago, and everyone’s gotten a little too comfortable.

I just - I had finally found a real community to be a part of, a place I felt comfortable in, and... I feel like that was taken from me. No matter how much my parents go on about the “Savannah Family,” I never really got to be myself around them and their coworkers. Too many expectations, too much watching my every move. But down here, I could be me. Not “Julia with the weird hobbies we don’t talk about,” but “Jules doing something really cool that we want to help with.”

Suri had even introduced me to a few of her friends down here while we were running errands. Cadence, who used to work at a factory but now takes care of three grandkids. Tye, who makes deliveries on the black market and can run faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. Diego, who can hack any electronic device they get their hands on. I met Diego with Dane, actually, when he was trying to take apart a drone. He set off the system alarm and couldn’t get it to stop, and that’s where Diego came in. I would bring them all snacks sometimes, just to be a good neighbor. Diego especially liked my homemade banana bread.

Beat.

JULES
But now Suri won’t talk to me, and Dane’s locked himself in his office, and… and Diego isn’t here anymore.

Pause.

JULES
We’re behind schedule, but I... I don’t even care. We’re missing some of the materials we were storing outside the workshop, and we’ve lost a lot of time, but I’m not even worried about that! I’m worried about my friends. Everyone’s hurting, some more than others. I’ve never seen Dane look so empty. Maybe I should go check on him.

Long pause.

JULES
I’m gonna go check on him.

SFX: Recorder clicks off.


Part Three: SURI

SFX: Recorder clicks on.

SFX: Creaking fills a long silence.

SURI
We've been through worse.

Another silence.

SURI
Fuck, who am I kidding. Yeah, we've been through worse but that doesn't make this time any easier to deal with. Diego's likely NEVER coming back, probably got shipped off to Former Ohio or something.

Beat.

SURI
Dane isn't taking it so well. I think it's been...7 years now? Since the last time the two of us were directly hit by a raid. Sure, they're happening every 6 to 8 weeks somewhere or other around here, but usually it's over by the shipping yards, or specifically targeted at ONE person. Sometimes you just have to cram everyone into the closet with a plasma rifle in case they do come looking for you. And you try to make their job difficult without getting caught; a can of paint here, some wheel blocks there. Of course, even if they catch you looking at them the wrong way they'll take you in for "Interfering with Policy Officials", whatever that means.

Beat.

SURI
I should talk to Dane. I know him and Diego used to be pretty close.

SFX: Footsteps. A door opens. More footsteps, on concrete now. My apologies to the sound designer. Brief footsteps over metal before returning to polished concrete. Suri knocks on a door.

SURI
Dane?

SFX: We hear a chaotic metal clang as Dane chucks something at the door.

SURI
Dane.

SFX: Dane shouts unintelligibly from behind the door. An aggressive clanging sound as items are thrown around, followed by Dane beating the door before abruptly stopping. We can hear sobbing through the door when he stops.

SURI
I'm so sorry Dane…

SFX: Recorder clicks off.
SFX: Recorder clicks on.

SURI
These things hurt all of us. It's been a while since one of these hit us so close to home, but they always ripple out. When Loren's shop got raided after Savannah decided to re-appropriate anything with a BTC core because some data scientist in SCOTLAND found a way to look at, not in, just AT their internal databases with them; we couldn't get the event furniture for a show opening. Tiffany had to spend two weeks deep cleaning their entire salon when that genetic experiment ran through and everyone knows that One Saint will sue you into the ground if they even think you have any of their genes. That of course meant that Skeese couldn't sanitize their kitchen, which could have gotten them shut down if a health inspector had come through...not that that ever seems to happen down here.

We're a family in the Underground. Even if Savannah doesn't want to recognize that. Even if they think Dane is a ward of the barely existent state. He's my brother. And they can't take that away from us no matter how hard they try.

We've been through worse raids before. I mean, yeah, I'm going to have to find a way to get all that gold plating replaced, but between Jules and I, I'm sure we can figure something out. We've got this.

Beat. Suri scoffs.
SURI
I say that, but do we really? I mean, yeah, we can always get more fucking gold. Gaut knows there's enough of it now that a hole the size of a small country exists because someone decided to strip every mineral imaginable out of it. But what about us?

What about the connections they mine each and every day? Every friendship they exploit, every date they monitor and set up, every therapist reporting potential client losses for Savannah, every camera monitoring your facial cues, each and every gadget collecting who knows how much data about you...I don't know how much more we can take.

I mean...we've got our little community here. We've got the underground beyond that. But if Savannah just sort of picks us off slowly for wanting a little bit of freedom...how much time do we really have?

How much time did we really have left for us, space aliens?

SFX: Recorder clicks off.

Part Four: KEI

SFX: Recorder clicks on.

Kei sighs. A beat.

SFX: Recorder clicks off.

SFX: Recorder clicks on.

SFX: Ambient, muffled street noise.

KEI
I like to think of myself as a people person. Both in and out of the job. In a world like this, you don't get very far if you're not. Connections go a long way. People make the world go round, and…and when they’re gone everything comes to a screeching halt.

SFX: Tools clink down on the workbench


KEI
(With a sigh)
I’m in my garage for once - which is a shocking turn of events for everyone, I’m sure. Kei above ground! It happens.
The thing is, I don't even have the heart to do any work right now. No matter how many texts I get from the Kaylee’s and Chads of the world asking me when it's okay to swing by so I can juice their ride. It just doesn’t feel right. Not after what happened.

I had people down there. Friends, business associates, connections I could never quite replace. And while the underground is ringing with their absence, I’m up here, sitting on my workbench, thinking of the past. And how things were with them around. And how they probably won’t be like that again.

There was Tank, with that stupid little bobblehead she used to carry around “for luck”. And JC who would always try to dump his scraps on me - the crap would be so run down that even I wouldn’t use them. “You’re a mechanic, so get creative” he’d always say; then he’d laugh and actually give me the good stuff. I wanted to smack him upside the head every time he said that. And then there was Jupes with all the daddy issues who never seemed to quite understand that I’m not that kind of psychologist.

Kei laughs softly.

KEI
But JC’s shop was trashed when I ran by it, and I found Tank’s bobblehead broken on the ground, and I know Jupes won’t knock on my door anymore. I went back for the bobblehead. It's all I could go back for.

I mean, sure, I have people up here too - but it just is not the same. We don't have the same bond. We can't. Not with Savannah’s eyes everywhere. Even now, in the comfort of my home away from home, I’m like 75% sure there’s some sort of bug or drone sweeping by to “protect and serve the public”. You’re never really alone up here.

Pause. Kei sighs.

KEI
But I suppose we can't be alone forever now, can we? While I personally have no problem being by myself, and not feeling lonely - there are some people who do not work like that. I may be good around people, but others need people around them to be good. Like Dane. Or more specifically, Dane around Jules.

Yeah, I’ve crawled around the vents. I’ve heard the whispers. I’ve seen how they look at each other. They’d make a cute couple. Dane needs someone….sunny to balance his apathy. Someone to show him that yes, some of the world can be lollipops and rainbows. Maybe not all of it, but yes, some. And Jules, bless her little heart, is learning a lot of not so nice things in a really rough way. The rest of us knew what to do in the raid, but she- for the first minute and a half she was just stuck in one place standing there like a statue as everyone scrambled to lock up. But, Dane can help her adapt.He was the one that got her unstuck, and the first to tell her what to do. He was there for her when she needed someone. There’s a big softy underneath there, I just know it.

As for me…I, um… I think I'll just call it a night. Normally on my days off, I’d tinker or work on those blueprints for a laser cannon I want to run by Jules. I think all good rockets need a laser cannon. But not tonight. Yeah. I don't have the heart to play the mad scientist right now. I just want to sleep. Come on, lucky bobblehead.

SFX: Sound of the plastic bobblehead rattling as Kei settles in.

SFX: Recorder clicks off.

Part Five: ARMANI

SFX: Recorder clicks on. The creak of a chair as ARMANI sits down.

ARMANI
(With a deep breath)
I’m going to do something a little different this time. I’m in charge of relaying other people’s stories and thoughts, I know. But it's the day after a tragedy: one that is so distinctly ours.
Thus, it feels appropriate that I’m going to give you one of my stories today. But mythos always helps me contextualize what I want to say, so, I’ll begin with a tale that doesn’t belong to me.

The Shinto story of Izanagi and Izanami comes to mind. While giving birth to the last of her and Izanagi’s children, the primordial goddess Izanami died. It was the first death in the world, and her husband was so overcome with grief that he traveled to Yomi, the land of the dead, to get her back.

Izanami couldn’t leave Yomi as she had already eaten the food there; even so, she went to ask the other gods for permission to go back to the living realm with her husband. In the meantime, Izanagi grew impatient with waiting for his wife to return and entered the mansion of the dead to look for her, despite the fact that she’d explicitly told him not to.

Then, he found her. He shined his torch upon her and realized that his once beautiful wife was now a rotting corpse, infested with maggots and demons. When he saw what she’d become, he ran away. And she chased him all the way to the edge of the underworld, only for her true love to trap her there forever. Izanagi went through so much to get his wife back, only to leave her behind in the end. Because she wasn’t the same. Because if she wasn’t exactly the woman that he had lost, then he didn’t want her at all.

Beat.

ARMANI
…So, wouldn’t it have been better if Izanagi had just… grieved and let her go in the first place? Yes, he did it out of love, but wanting someone to return from the dead is solely for the sake of the living. Maybe people die and they don’t want to come back. It’s not like the hero ever asks the dead person first before they try to break the laws of nature.

SFX: The chair creaks again as Armani leans forward, getting to the point.

ARMANI
(Impassioned)
Izanami probably missed her husband, sure, but here she was, well-fed, living in a mansion, making herself at home. Maybe she would have been at peace if Izanagi had let her be. But no, now, instead, she ends her story as a furious, bug-infested carcass. Izanagi’s last memory of her is as a husk.

Beat.

ARMANI
(Quietly)
My Oma told me that that’s what happened to her father.

Before he was taken, my great-grandfather loved gardening. It’s a really tough task down here, since there’s so little access to sunlight. But he’d found a sunspot and plants that could grow well despite the conditions. The raid happened while he was in the garden, around noon.

…Oma says they knew that he was gone because normally they would hear his keys clanging against his watering can on the way home. But that afternoon, after so many lives were lost, the entire underground was silent. They were mourning. Dreading. And waiting for the jingling of keys colliding with a watering can, still half full.

We didn’t see him again for eight months.


Oma told me that she had just finished tucking me in for a nap when she heard it -

SFX: Keys jingling.


ARMANI
Keys.

SFX: The sound of keys being set down on a wood surface.

ARMANI
And there he was. My great-grandfather came back from the dead at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday. A semblance of him, at least.

The physical differences were obvious: he looked... aged. He was missing patches of hair and some teeth. He had a pronounced limp. But he’d survived Savannah - it was to be expected that he was a little different. Everybody else was too busy being grateful that he had come back at all to notice the… other things.

Beat.

ARMANI
Oma felt that great-grandpa didn’t… know them anymore. She said that he remembered names, but he couldn’t always put them to the right faces. Like, he would mix up my Oma and her sisters for the first two weeks when he came back. He would call my dad by his own sons’ names, as though he was running down a list in his mind until he got to the right one. He got lost really often, because he couldn’t recall where places were - even though he’d lived his entire life in the underground. The rest of the family brushed it off. Chalked it up to the trauma of whatever horrible things Savannah must have done to him.

That is, until he started asking questions.

Questions about where the underground’s primary food and energy sources were, how often we gathered in large groups, what the general opinion of Savannah was among Underground locals...among our own family… Things that should have been common knowledge for him, and that only a complete stranger wouldn’t know.

That was when it dawned on them:

SFX: A lighter strike and ignition.

ARMANI
Just as the light had shone on Izanami, it now shone on my great grandfather.. The man they had once loved was infested.

SFX: Flame goes out.

ARMANI
With what exactly? Nobody knows. Not even all these years later.
So... we started pushing him away. We held him at arm's length and never did anything too incriminating in front of him. A sort of… gentle ostracism.

In short, my great-grandpa came back from the dead only to die a year later, alone, in a house full of people that were supposed to love him.

Beat.

ARMANI
…That’s the story I wanted to tell. Because I am certain that someone is out there, hoping for a miracle right now. And I won’t be the one to tell them not to. But I had to tell someone about the lesson my family learned years ago.

Sure, there is a slim chance that someone you love might come back from Savannah. But knowing what I know - would you even want them to?

SFX: Recorder clicks off.

MUSIC: What Will Be Here theme plays, hopeful piano music.

CREDITS
This episode was written by Brad Colbroock, Chandler Harrison, Cole Burkhardt, Di Reese, and Tal Minear, with script editing by Evan Tess Murray. It was directed by Brad Colbrook and sound designed by Cole Burkhardt, and features John Y. Kamara as Dane, Jona Lune as Jules, Sahar Iman as Suri, Vico Ortiz as Kei, and Kathy Youssef as Armani,. The theme music is by Benny James and the transcript is by Caroline Mincks. What Will Be Here is primarily produced in Long Beach, on the stolen land of the Kizh Nation.