THE HARBINGERS
EPISODE 3: SEVEN DEVILS
Transcript
TEASER
(Stately chamber music plays as our scene fades in.)
NARRATOR: Sinclair University. October, 2018.
(A door opens, then closes. Footsteps approach.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Eria aldro syrandel.
ADAM BLACKWELL: I’m - I’m sorry? Sir?
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Eria aldro syrandel.
(McCandless presses a button, which causes the music to stop playing.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: What do you think?
ADAM BLACKWELL: I... think you might be talking to the wrong person, sir.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Oh?
(McCandless picks up a piece of paper.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: You’re Adam Blackwell?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yes.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Second year transfer from Oregon State, Adam Blackwell?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yes.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: You’re in my office right now because I told someone “Go get me Adam Blackwell who transferred from Oregon State” and you’re the person they went and got me? You’re that Adam Blackwell.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yes, but -
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: I’m not talking to the wrong person.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Professor McCandless, I -
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Sit down.
(Adam sits down.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: You’re not in my class, Mr. Blackwell.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Adam’s fine, sir.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: You’re not in my class, Mr. Adam.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Just Adam is - No, sir, I’m not.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Why not?
ADAM BLACKWELL: You, uhhh, you wouldn’t let me. I tried to add it to my schedule during shopping period, but -
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: The university cares about average class size. If I let more than seventy-five people enroll in the intro class, they get cranky. When they get cranky, they don’t pay for my trips to active archeological sites. You understand.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Abso - absolutely. Yes, I get that.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: We teach the intro class every semester. It’ll be there for you in four months.
(A pause.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: You seem unsatisfied.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Well... with all due respect, sir, you don’t teach the intro class every semester. And with all due respect to your colleagues, when the other professors in the anthropology department teach it, it’s not a seventy-five person class. From what I understand, when it’s not you teaching it, sometimes it isn’t even a ten person class.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Which is why you’ve been sneaking into my lectures.
ADAM BLACKWELL: I - I can explain that.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Even though I said no auditors.
ADAM BLACKWELL: I didn’t think that - I’ve just dropped in from time to time to hear the lectures, I didn’t think -
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Eria aldro syrandel. What does it mean?
ADAM BLACKWELL: I... I think it’s... “all things have an... image?”
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: “All things have a reflection,” actually. But not bad. That was carved on something called the Childers Column. Do you know what that is?
ADAM BLACKWELL: No. Yes, I know what the Childers Column is.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: You have not just been sitting in on my classes. You’ve been doing the reading. You’ve been doing the extra credit reading.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Sir, how could you know - ?
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: About ten percent of the class I teach is in a dead language. You get good at seeing who is waiting for you to stop saying weird old words that mean nothing to no one, and who... understands. And then you get good at noticing which of the people who understand aren’t in the class registry.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yeah, I’m sorry. I just -
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: You’re already taking five classes.
(McCandless flips a page over.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Intro to linguistics and semiotics, early medieval history, a seminar on English literature, a historiography class, statistics... that’s more than a full load.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Not all of my credits from Portland State transferred.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: And you’re still finding time to crash my lectures three times a week and get passably good at a dead language?
(A pause - then a book lands on the desk with a flumph!)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: That’s for you. Call it an audition. I want two thousand words on the original translation of the Childers Column, and I want it by Friday at six.
ADAM BLACKWELL: But - sir, this - I don’t know if -
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: That’s Roser and Langholtz, the best guide we have to the Harbinger languages. That’s my personal copy too, with my annotations, so I’ll want that back at the end of the semester.
ADAM BLACKWELL: At - at the end of the semester?
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: I’ll meet you here every Monday at six, and I’ll have some work for you to do. You’ll get it to me by six on Friday. If you are late one time, we are done. If you half-ass your work one time, we are done. If you half-ass your work in other classes, if you don’t end the semester with at least a three-point-eight, we are done. But get to December without disappointing me... and I’ll make sure you are in every class I teach for the rest of your time at Sinclair. Do we have a deal?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Y-yes! Sir that would be - I can’t tell you - it would mean so much to - I really appreciate you taking a -
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Yes, yes, very good. While I’m sure those sentence fragments are going to lovely places, why don’t we just leave it at this: Professor Julian McCandless.
(They shake hands.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Adam. Adam Blackwell, sir.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: It’s a pleasure to meet you, Adam Blackwell. I think we’re going to do some great work together.
(The scene fades away and the episode’s opening theme begins to play.)
ANNOUNCER: Audacious Machine Creative Presents: The Harbingers. Created by Gabriel Urbina. Episode 3: "Seven Devils.”
(The opening theme resolves and fades away.)
ACT ONE
(The scene fades in. The familiar ticking clock of the offices of Skinner, DeVries, and Wiseman. Skinner flips through some pages as she speaks.)
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Tell me about... Julian McCandless. Your mentor, the person who first taught you about the Harbingers. What is he like?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Oh, he’s like... five foot ten, five foot eleven? Thereabouts?
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Dr. Blackwell...
ADAM BLACKWELL: He’s the Andrew Jolliet Professor of Archeology and Anthropology at Sinclair University, a position they literally invented just so they could give it to him. He got a doctorate at twenty-seven, and tenure at thirty-two. He has, in his lifetime, completely changed our understanding of how the Harbinger languages work, and he’s only fifty. Nobody in the world knows more about the Harbingers than he does.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Nobody except you, of course.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Nobody. Professor McCandless knows a lot more than I ever will.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Adam, do you have a doctorate from Sinclair University?
ADAM BLACKWELL: I do.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Do you have a Harbinger ring that lets you do magic?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Sure, and -
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Did you use said magical powers to teleport the city of Boston to the moon?
ADAM BLACKWELL: I did, but -
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Great. If you would like to get through what’s about to happen in one piece, do me a favor and never fucking say that there’s someone out there that might know more about this stuff than you do, understood?
(A pause. Adam takes a shaky breath.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: There’s a difference between what I can do and what he does. That’s all I’m saying.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: You became his student in... 2018?
ADAM BLACKWELL: My first year at Sinclair, back when I was an undergrad. He took me under his wing. I took five classes with him before I graduated. Then, three years later, I went back and became one of his grad students.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: And when did he start having an undue amount of influence over you?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Who said he had an undue amount of influence over me?
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Good boy. I’m gonna start to throw curveballs like that your way every now and then. No, here’s the real question: In an interview from 2028, you claimed that your time studying under Professor McCandless was the most influential in your life. That before you took a class with him, you weren’t interested in anthropology or archeology or Harbinger culture. If he’d been teaching a class on chemistry, you’d now be a chemist. You said this is the man who set you down the path of what has become your life.
ADAM BLACKWELL: I was promised something about a real question somewhere in here...?
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Yes, and here it is: does the Andrew Jolliet Professor of Archeology and Anthropology at Sinclair University wield an undue amount of influence over the most powerful man in the world? Put it another way: if this man told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Or if this man told me to teleport a whole city into outer space, would I do it? I don’t know. He hasn’t ever done either of those things.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: But he did tell you to follow him to one of the remotest, most dangerous parts of the world, which you did. And to enter an ancient tomb, which you did. And to -
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yes, fine, point made. I don’t know what to tell you. He... was smart. And he knew how to teach in a way that... invited you to come up to his level. So many of my college professors made me feel like I was an ant next to them. Professor McCandless could explain something in a way that made you feel like you could rise up to where he was.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Next slide please...
ADAM BLACKWELL: His lectures were... a joy to listen to.
(We hear the familiar scene transition sound. We are now in an auditorium.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Okay, now this is what we in the business affectionately call the Chamber of the Seven Devils.
NARRATOR: Sinclair University. October, 2018.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: That is not it’s official name, of course, but I find it a bit catchier than Room A14 of the Lancaster Site. They found this place in the Kerguelen Islands, more commonly known by their slightly dramatic nickname of the Desolation Islands. If neither of those names ring a bell, it’s a small archipelago found in the way, way southern part of the Indian Ocean. The islands are considered one of the most isolated places on Earth, so, you know, book your next vacation now.
(Some laughter from his students.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: All kidding aside, this is actually the first Harbinger site that was ever discovered, all the way back in 1778. It’s also the only extant structure we’ve ever found outside of the Antarctic continent itself. And until very recently, when we actually started discovering the ones in the Antarctic continent itself, it was more or less all we had in terms of Harbinger sites. So, you know, weirdos like me have spent about two-hundred years really picking this place apart.
(A bit more laughter from the students.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Now, you’ve probably noticed a couple of interesting things about this building. For starters, it’s startlingly well preserved for a building that’s approximately six thousand years old. Part of this is due to the fact that this was actually the lower level of a temple complex. Half of it was built above ground, with a mirror image below ground. Back in the seventies, when the brutalists got obsessed with the idea, they called it iceberg architecture. But as with so many things, the Harbingers did it first. Next slide, please. As above, so below. That’s what the old alchemists used to say. Harbingers called it “The Law of Correspondence.” Eria aldro syrandel. All things have a reflection. To every action an equal, opposite reaction - a little preview of Newton they gave the world all the way back in the 4,000’s B.C. As you can see here in this conceptual reconstruction of what the full complex would have looked like... the Harbingers lived this principle through and through. Everything they built, that we’ve found at least, seems to have been put together in the iceberg style. That’s what saved this particular site - the elements ate away at the top layer, but the bottom one stayed relatively well preserved. Next slide, thank you.
(The click of a slide projector.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Now, the next interesting thing you might have noticed is this room is actually a perfect heptagon - or it would have been when it was in pristine conditions, anyway. It’s a big, big room with seven corners in it. And in each of those... a statue. Most of them were too worn down by the time we found them, but - next slide - these two you can see a remarkable amount of detail on. Chamber of the seven devils. Seven is a big, talismanically important number in Harbinger studies - it crops up all the time. So be on the lookout for it. These are devils number four and number six. Erodeo and Saelix. And the room above would have been the room of angels, with seven more statues. Again: mirrors, reflection, above and below. Next image, please.
(Another click from the slide projector.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: That’s too Judeo-Christian of a name, by the way. I want to acknowledge that. If we’re going for as a literal a translation as we can, it should be something like... the chamber of guardians and the chamber of challengers, but the place was rediscovered by French explorers so...
(McCandless scoffs.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: If the Harbingers had a concept of gods, we haven’t found much about them yet. But we’ve found a lot of records about their concept of the seven angels and a lot a lot about the seven devils. Lots of different fables and allegories, chiseled into stone beneath the ice. Most of them talk about them as these... forces. Trying to reshape the world. And if they came to you, they could give you power. The power to change the world. The trick, of course, was to ask yourself... Am I changing it into what I want it to be? Or into what they want it to be? Thank you, Elodie, you can - you can shut that off, now.
(The slide projector is turned off with a click!)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: And we can get the lights up too. Umm... so this is usually the point in the class where someone goes... you know, who cares? Who cares? Some very old people lived on some very old rocks and they had ideas about things like angels and devils and powers and so what. Who cares? Maybe you don’t. And... for certain people, nothing I could say could change that. But for me? Here’s why we should care: To study a culture’s religion is to study that culture’s notion of the ideal human being. Sometimes only subconsciously, but still. When we call something a god, what we’re saying is “This is what, as a culture we are going to try to be. This is what we’re aiming for.” Christianity is a religion where an all-powerful man is always right. And, well, we’ve gotten pretty patriarchal in most places where the majority ticks Christian on the census form. The ancient Greek pantheon were a big, squabbling family who had to work together to get things done. Even when they hated one another, which was a lot of the time. They were one of the first places to try out this crazy idea called democracy. We act like our gods. But with the Harbingers... you have a mythology where the divine beings from a higher plane of existence are not all-powerful. Where they can only affect the world when we open the door for them to do so. So if we act like our gods... what does a concept of spirituality based on... cooperation do to a society? In a world where god depends on man to act upon reality... what does the ideal man look like?
(A pause.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Okay, that’s... that’s enough heady stuff for one day. Does anyone have any questions?
(Some hands go up. The scene fades away.)
ANNOUNCER: The Harbingers will be back after these messages.
ACT TWO
ANNOUNCER: And now... back to The Harbingers.
(The scene fades back in. We are back in the lawyer’s office.)
CLAUDIA SKINNER: You don’t actually think of yourself as a god, do you?
ADAM BLACKWELL: That’s - that’s not the point. In the Western World, we think of a god as someone that creates out of nothing. He snaps his fingers and the world changes. How would our way of interacting with the world change if our concept of the divine was of a being that... What?
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Doctor Blackwell... Look, in my profession, there is a subtle but important distinction between a right answer and a correct answer. A right answer is factual, but not always appropriate, do you understand? Good. The next time anyone asks you if you think of yourself as a god, the correct answer is no, for fuck’s sake!
ADAM BLACKWELL: Okay, that is not -
CLAUDIA SKINNER: I mean, seriously -
CLAUDIA SKINNER (SIMULTANEOUS WITH THE BELOW): - I need you to actually hear the words that come out of your mouth, because while you pontificate about sociology and theoretical geopolitics the whole world is terrified of what you are going to do next because need I remind you that -
ADAM BLACKWELL (SIMULTANEOUS WITH THE ABOVE): - I am trying to make a larger point about cultural anthropology, about the way that we reckon with spirituality and how it comes to shape our thoughts and you are just trying to make it into - what? An ego thing? Because that is not -
CLAUDIA SKINNER: - half a million people are dead?
(A pause.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Six hundred thousand. Just... for the record. From what I understand, the estimate is that there where six hundred and forty-five thousand, seven-hundred and seventy-seven people in... in Boston that day. So no. You don’t need to remind me.
(A pause. Skinner lets out a low breath.)
CLAUDIA SKINNER: I’m... Sorry. That was not... my most sensitive. Would you like to take a break? We’ve been... at this for some time.
ADAM BLACKWELL: I’m fine to keep going.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Okay. Suffice to say... McCandless is an important figure in your life?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Suffice to under-say. I would have followed him to the ends of the Earth.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: You did follow him to the ends of the Earth. Tell me about the Robinson Site.
(Adam chuckles a bit.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: It’s... it’s hard to describe.
(The scene fades away, the steady clock of the office replaced by the howling winds of an Antarctic wasteland.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Have you ever been?
CLAUDIA SKINNER: To Antarctica? Can’t say that I have.
ADAM BLACKWELL: It’s not as remote as it once was, since what happened. Tourism’s gone way up, mostly amateur archeologists and Harbinger groupies, hoping to catch a glimpse of the world that came before. But that’s now. Back then? When I first went? It was just... endless. White that went on forever. As far as you can see, with just the occasional rocky outcropping or nunatak to break up the great expanse. If you go during the half of the year when it’s day, the sky and the ground reflect each other like a perfect mirror. If you go during the half of the year when it’s night, you get to freeze in the blackest dark that anyone will ever see.
(A pause. The wind blows around us.)
CLAUDIA SKINNER: What was that word? A noon-talk?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Nunatak. Greenlandic term. It means a point where the top of a mountain pokes out from under ice or snow. It’s the sort of thing that happens down there. You go, “That’s a rock.” No, that’s a mountain. A mountain that’s been buried. And that’s when you understand just how much snow you’re standing on top of. Of course, we’ve changed that. Climate change means a lot of that has melted away. The mountain ranges of Antarctica are actually looking like mountains these days. Which is how we found it.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: An-Serith.
ADAM BLACKWELL: (correcting her pronunciation) An-Serith. The great lost city of the Harbingers. Buried for millennia beneath a hundred and twenty meters of ice. Well, what was left of it, anyway. Discovered by French-Australian archeologist Hélène Robinson in the late nineties. It had taken over twenty years of excavating to reach the lowest chambers. Eight months before I got there, they’d broken through a big stone slab - found a shaft that seemed to go all the way to the bottom. It’s why McCandless was so excited to get out there that year.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: How is it possible for an ancient city, even one that’s half-built underground, to have been created on a continent where the average winter temperature is minus fifty degrees? How did they survive?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Oh, early theories were architectural. Great convection systems built right into the foundation of the building structures, able to keep the city as a whole habitable during the dark part of the year.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: What’s the modern theory?
ADAM BLACKWELL: A wizard did it.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Hmmph. Fair enough. That’s where it happened?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yeah. The third day after I got to Antarctica. My first day down in the crypts. That’s where it happened.
(The wind fades away. We are now somewhere quiet. There is the electric whine of a lift descending towards us.)
NARRATOR: Robinson Archeological Site. The ruins of An-Serith. November, 2025.
(The lift reaches the bottom. It opens as someone steps off of it.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Oh my god... oh my god...
(There’s the chirp of a walkie-talkie. Through it, we hear McCandless’s voice. The walkie-talkies keep making chirping noises as the two of them alternate who is speaking.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Blackwell, you doing okay down there? You make it to the bottom? Over.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Professor. Yeah, I’m all the way at the bottom. I’m off the lift. Over.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Okay, step back. We’re sending it back up for the next person. Over.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Copy that, I’m all clear. Over.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: What’s it look like, kid? What are you seeing? Over.
ADAM BLACKWELL: It’s... beyond words. It’s one thing to see pictures, but to actually be here... Over.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: You are breathing the air of the Harbingers now. Over.
Adam LAUGHS a bit at that - what a wild thought!
ADAM BLACKWELL: The walls, they... they actually sparkle. Over.
(Over Adam, there appears to be a distant banging sound.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Yeah. That’s the sapphire. We still don’t know how the hell they were working it like that six thousand years ago. Or how the hell they got it down here. But it’s incredible to see it, isn’t it? Over.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yeah. The chamber’s big, too. Bigger than I expected. Must be at least... what? Twenty-five feet, end to end?
(Another bang - more pronounced.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Umm, over.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: I think that’s about right, yeah. You see it yet? The sarcophagus? Over.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Umm, I... yeah. I think so.
(A pause as he moves through the space.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Okay, I’m next to it now. Erun caler Sarkor der... here lies Sarkor, first son.
(Another distant bang over him.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: We still have no idea who this is? Over.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: That’s what I brought you out here for. Fresh eyes on the problem. Over.
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yeah... Celrun Silambar. That’s what it says here. That’s... what? The Distant One? Yeah? Over.
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Either that or The One Who Travels Distances, yeah. The current best guess from the linguistics is that he was some kind of traveler or diplomat, but we haven’t seen anything that would back up the claim that -
(The loudest bang yet, this time accompanied by the sound of shifting rock and breaking metal.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Oh holy - Adam, LOOK OUT!
ADAM BLACKWELL: What? What is - ?
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Get clear, get away from the - !
(A horrible crashing sound. Followed by a long moment of silence.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: For a moment? I really thought I’d died. But just for a moment.
(A chirp from the walkie-talkie.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Adam? Adam, are you there? Come in, Adam!
(The scene fades back to the lawyer’s office.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: The good news is I wasn’t dead. The bad new is that cable on the lift they’d used to lower me into the site had snapped. The lift had fallen, crashing into the sides of the shaft as it went, dislodging a couple thousand pounds of icy sediment as it fell a hundred and twenty meters.
(We hear the ghostly echo of the falling lift colliding against the sides of the tunnel.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: So you know, kind of a mixed day for me. Oh, and I’d also sprained my ankle. Fine, let’s call it a bad day.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: How long were you down there?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Two days. Little more, but basically... two days. Most of it in the dark, in total silence. I’d use my flashlight a bit, I’d talk to Professor McCandless and hear about how they were scrambling to get me out of there. But I knew I needed to conserve the power. So a lot of it was just... very dark. And very quiet.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: How did you keep it together?
(Adam laughs.)
ADAM BLACKWELLL: Oh, I very much did not keep it together. I was... in a tomb. Beneath a football field of snow. Barely any food, barely any water, a dead body all around me. Yeah. The falling debris that came into the room, a piece of it had hit the sarcophagus, smashed it apart. Whoever Sarkor, Distant First Son was, now bits of his very old remains were all around me. I was... practically breathing him. So yeah. I did not keep it together.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: And that’s when you found it?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Yeah. That’s when I found it.
(A drone as the scene fades back to the Antarctic tomb. We hear as Adam shivers in the cold.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: I hadn’t moved much. What with my leg and the... dead body of it all. Which is how I hadn’t seen it. It must have been in the sarcophagus, too. Just sitting down there... all this time. A silver ring.
(A strange whoosh goes through the air.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: A silver ring that had been down there for the better part of all of human history.
(Adam removes his glove.)
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Tell me... is it good archeological practice to just… put on a six-thousand year old ring from an active digsite?
(Adam shivers violently.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: But I... I thought I was going to die. This was a tomb and I was going to die here. Might as well become part of the history of the place.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: And what happened? When you put it on?
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Does anyone have any questions? How about the class stowaway? Mr. Blackwell?
(We can hear McCandless and Adam from the earlier scene, even though the atmosphere of the tomb is still around us. The two scenes blend together.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Professor, what does contact with these... devils look like? What does the Harbinger tradition say about what meeting one of these beings was like?
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: A good question. Well, it depends on which account you’re looking at - uhh, different carvings depict different things. But overwhelmingly, they describe it as... an explosion.
(There’s a sharp ringing in the air. A low sound is building up…)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: An explosion of the mind.
(There’s a boom. All around us are strange, distorted sounds.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Some of the fables and allegories speak of the communion with these old powers as a kind of... moment of clarity. A point of delirious, feverish revelation. Where for one instant, you could see everything that came before you, and everything that’s coming after.
(There’s voices around us, sounds, locations, all going too fast and too distorted to be comprehensible.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: It’s the kind of thing that could drive people mad. But for those who weren’t broken... sometimes they would return with knowledge. Divine knowledge, or knowledge of a lost age, lost in the ashes of history.
(A beating heart starts to pound.)
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: That’s what... the stories say anyway. But... who knows.
(The heartbeat grows louder, faster.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: What was it like, to put on the ring?
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: Who knows what making contact with a power like the ones the Harbingers myths describe would actually be like...
(The distorted sounds fade away, leaving us with just Adam’s heavy breaths and his heartbeat. Underneath it, a drone builds up.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: It was pretty much the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me. And when it was over... I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I just... I needed to get out of there. I was just staring at the pile of debris and ice that was blocking the shaft that led back to the outside world. And all I could think of was... “I want this ice to be gone. I want this ice to be gone.” And so I just... screamed it. Those exact words.
(The drone reaches a crescendo as Adam says:)
ADAM BLACKWELL: ORASH KARE KILDRUN ARUN!
(And suddenly, with a fast whoosh, it all goes away.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Or at least... I thought I did. And then a moment later...
(Rocks shift around, debris falls.)
MAN’S VOICE: Wait, I think I see it! I think we’ve made an opening!
(The scene fades back to the lawyer’s office.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: They called it a miracle. A beautiful miracle. Nobody thought they’d be able to dig me out in time. It was way too much ice. No way. But... I got out.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: And... when did it become clear that you could do magic?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Not for a bit. I spent most of the following week unconscious. Another one drinking grandma’s chicken noodle soup at Davis Station. But... eventually people started asking questions.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Why did they start to ask questions?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Because twenty days after I got out, someone found approximately two-thousand pounds of icy debris and shattered mineshaft lift in the middle of nowhere, about seventy miles to the West of the Robinson Site. And nobody knew how it got there. Turns out a wizard did it.
(Skinner flips through some of her notes.)
CLAUDIA SKINNER: That word you just said... a miracle. Do you believe that’s what happened to you?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Have you ever heard of Cleopatra’s nose? The thought experiment, I mean, not the... actual nose. Well. It’s a fallacy. Blaise Pascal I think. Basically, back in the Roman days, a nose like Cleopatra’s was a symbol of beauty, and nobility, and virtue. It was part of the reason why Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony both fell in love with her, which led to them both having children with her, which led to wars, and alliances, and betrayals, and geopolitical fractures, which eventually directly contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. So, the fallacy goes, if Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the empire would have never fallen and we’d all be speaking Latin right now. It’s one of the first things they teach you not to do in my profession. You don’t make the fate of the world rest on Cleopatra’s nose. A little thing is just a little thing, it’s not the reason for huge, earth-shattering consequences. Everything just... happens. But I have to confess... with everything that’s happened... I do wonder. What if I hadn’t transferred to Sinclair? What if McCandless hadn’t taken a chance on me? What if I’d been late on one of his assignments one time and he’d kicked me to the curb? What if I hadn’t gotten to go with him to Antarctica?
CLAUDIA SKINNER: What if Miss Stirling had gotten to go with you?
ADAM BLACKWELL: What if the cable hadn’t broken, or if the debris hadn’t hit the sarcophagus, or I hadn’t found the ring in the dark? It’s... a lot of little things. All leading up to one big thing.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: So... do you believe that there is some kind of higher power at work here?
ADAM BLACKWELL: I... I don’t know, Ms. Skinner. But I remember thinking how unlikely what happened to me was. And when I found out that Amy had a ring as well... The chances that there would be two of us, it felt... yeah, it felt kind of miraculous.
(A pause.)
CLAUDIA SKINNER: Except... there aren’t two of you, are there?
ADAM BLACKWELL: No. No, there aren’t.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: By my last count...
ADAM BLACKWELL: ... there are seven of us. Seven of us that can do magic. Seven.
CLAUDIA SKINNER: And how does that make you feel?
ADAM BLACKWELL: Honestly? It scares the shit out of me.
(The scene fades away as the episode’s closing theme begins playing.)
ANNOUNCER: This has been The Harbingers. Created by Gabriel Urbina. Come back on October 30th for Episode 4, "Send My Love." Today's episode was written by Gabriel Urbina. It was directed and sound designed by Jeffrey Nils Gardner. It featured the voices of Andrés Enriquez as Adam Blackwell, Emmy Bean as Claudia Skinner, and Joshua K. Harris as Julian McCandless. Today's episode also featured the voice of Clayton Faits. Our original music was composed by Nicholas Podany. Recording engineering and dialogue editing was by Zhuolin Wu. Our original show art was created by Cassie J. Allen. The executive producer for the series is Eleanor Hyde. You can learn more about the show, see a timeline of the events of our story, and become a supporting member at AudaciousMachineCreative.com. This is an Audacious Machine Creative production. Thank you for listening.
(The episode’s closing theme concludes and fades away.)
ADAM BLACKWELL: Today's history tidbit: on October 16th, 1904, stone tablets depicting ancient Harbinger myths became a part of the permanent exhibit at the Pitts Rivers Museum in Oxford, England.