S2.5E7 Dear Mr. Heyerdahl

As he slowly comes to peace with the voice inside of his head that narrates his every thought and action, Dusty checks his emails to find people reporting that they have developed superhuman powers.

CAST
Collin Estes: Dusty
Timothy Vilgiate: The Narrator

Written and produced by Timothy Vilgiate

Newest episode, automatically posted to this blog.

Narrator: Late into Sunday night, after agonizing over the coverage of his video in mainstream media, Dusty realized that he had not...
Dusty: Checked his email, yeah, yeah, I know, I get it. Can you chill out?
Narrator: The audience needs an antecedent in order to understand this scene.
Dusty: What audience? There is no audience.
Narrator: Well, actually...
Dusty: Just let me check my goddamn emails.
Narrator: Alright. If you insist.
Dusty: (Sighs) The inbox was full.
Narrator: The way you say that, there’s just...no conviction. No suspense. No emotional weight.
Dusty: Simmer down, buddy, I’m not exactly going for a Nobel Prize in Literature here, alright? I’m just gonna ready my damn emails.
Narrator: I’m just trying to offer some feedback. If you want to narrate, you need to do it with some soul.
Dusty: (Sarcastically) There were lots of emails in the inbox. I clicked on the first one. (Normal) Not exactly thrilling material here. Alright, lets see...Subject line... alien related problem with my blood. Interesting. Let’s see what it says...

mr. heyerdahl

strange things have happened to me since the terrorists dirty bomb yesterday afternoon and although i know it will all it all sounds very crazy, after seeing your video it all makes sense. i think i have been affected by some kind of alien radiation which has permanetnly altered my physiology, almost giving me some kind of what i believe to be superhuman powers. i am worried that the deep state which you talk about at lentgh on your blog may be watching me now and may be aware of the powers i have been given. perhaps even preparing to take me into custody to use me as a souper soldier.

you may be asking yourself what kinds of powers i have. well ill tell you. yesterday was a mosquito bit me and it exploded on contact. at first i thought this was a lucky fluke. but soon enough iwas proved wrong. another mosquito flew up shortly after this one and it blew up right as it tried to bit me. just went “pop!” and went away. another. then another. then another. they make a slightly hissing sound when they explode and then its just a loud pop, i do not know why it happens. its satisfying the sound it makes but its not right. just not right. when a nurse in the medical tent drew blood from me yesterday, it did not explode the syringe. nothing changed. since i was released my wife and i have tried feeding my blood to several wild animals (its less weird than it sounds) and all of them have exploded. not with fire or anything. just the same big popping sound.

as far as i can tell its just my blood that makes them explode. they explode as soon as they eat my blood. are you aware of anyone else experiencing this problem since the accident? do you think this is the work of the deep state. if you could tell me please itd be good thank you mr. heyerdahl i await your response

dave

Narrator: Dusty was struck by the claims made in the email—had the explosion they’d witnessed exposed Dave to radiation similar to what had been experienced by Phillip?
Dusty: Is that a rhetorical question, or are you expecting someone to answer that?
Narrator: Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. You didn’t want me. Pity. Please carry on.
Dusty: (Outloud) Exploding mosquitos. Hmmm...let’s read the next one.

Subject: The spiritual connection between man and machine

Dear Mr. Heyerdahl,
I think you’re onto something with this alien stuff. The other day, I was outside cleaning the truck (It’s my baby: a 2017 Ford  F-150, Ecoboost V6 with 510lbs of torque, 450 horsepower, blue) when I heard the explosion from the sinkhole. It happened maybe a mile from my house, and I was worried something would happen to my truck, so I got in, and tried to drive it away from the sinkhole. I drove as fast as I could, and after the military checked me out, i went home and headed to sleep early. but I kept having these dreams!

In these dreams, I’d see my truck rolling through the pasture, coming towards me, calling out to me with this voice I can’t quite explain. The sun was always setting, the car on the horizon, until we meet each other in the middle of the field. The machine wanted me to drive it. I tried to push it to the back of my mind but the dreams kept getting stronger. I heard the truck crying out to me. Without my baby, I couldn’t fall asleep. I crept into the garage and cuddled up in her flatbed. I felt like I had a newfound spiritual connection with the vehicle—at first I thought this was just because I’d almost lost her, but as I sat there in the bed of the truck, I could feel every gear inside of her engine—every cylinder—I could feel the gasoline in her fuel tank, the metal in her subframe, the pipes in her radiator.

I was connected to the car. I stood up, my eyes closed, in the back of the flatbed, and imagined my key in her ignition, turning her on, hearing the roar of her engine—and there it was. In real life. The car started just with me thinking about it, and it felt stupendous. The way the car shook, its vibrations made us one. Standing there in the flatbed of the car, I pulled us out of the garage and I sped down the highway. Folks looked at me and stared—probably figured i was some kind of silicon valley type with a self driving car. The car drove along that road like a hot knife curving through butter, so smooth and elegant. We made love, in a way that I believe can only be explained by alien magic. That wasn’t a dirty bomb. It was aliens. It was aliens that want us to love our cars. To treat them like family. Please let me know if you’d like to meet up. I can drive to you.

Sincerely,
Danielle

Dusty: Another person saying they got superpowers.
Narrator: It can’t be a coincidence, he thought.
Dusty: No, I didn’t. I didn’t think that, because you narrated the thought right as I was about to think it. Alright. Let’s see this next one. Subject line looks interesting: my cousin can run real fast since that dirty bomb went off. How fast, I wonder? Hmmm...

he’s not like extremely fast but he’s still real fast and i think its cause of the radiation or something. also lifted my sister over his head. she’s not that heavy but he couldn’t do that before.

Jo

Dusty: (Outloud) Another one. But...I don’t know. Sounds a little...weak.
Narrator: Completely agree. 100%.
Dusty: Alright. Next up...oh boy. How about that heading?
Narrator: You’re telling me!
Dusty: Calm down, lets not get all chummy. This ones starts out with “Superparrots” It says:

Dean
Huge fan of the blog. Love what you’re doing. Met parrot this afternoon who speaks fluent English. Government superparrots? Video is in the folder.
Susan

Dusty: Should we watch the video?
Narrator: You’re asking me?
Dusty: I...I don’t know. You seem to have a decent handle on what’s going on.
Narrator: Maybe later.
Dusty: Alright...lets see. Rand Paul, delete that one, no Scott Walker, take me off your mailing list you neofacist fraud, don’t think I’ve ever shopped at Kohls, Gary Johnson, America’s favorite fake libertarian, Glenn Beck...okay...Think I’ll read that one...Okay. Another one. Subject Line: Husband obsessed with carpentry

Ever since the bomb yesterday, my husband has been obsessed with carpentry. He keeps going on about it. He had no idea how to hammer in a goddamn nail until yesterday and now he keeps going off about what kind of mitre saw he should buy to get the right bevel on these shelves. Has he been abducted by aliens?
Pat

Dusty: It’s almost like people think they need to report any slightly abnormal thing to me.
Narrator: But, what Dusty had not yet considered was the possibility that the energy which had given other people strange powers also simply altered the interests of others. Dusty: Good point. Worth considering. Okay, next one. Oh boy...subject line: Too much weed + alien wormhole = ???.

Hey
I found your blog man. I’m pretty sure that I was affected by the wormhole. I took some edibles today and it was way too much for me so I was out in the woods by my house when the explosion happened. Anyway since that happened man I’ve been feeling like super high and everywhere i go people are hungry. like super hungry. its really sucked cause i work at taco bell and we sold out of every goddamn thing. one of my coworkers got fired because he broke down and ate an entire thing of beans and cheese he was so hungry. He was still hungry though after he ate all that. You can understand my concern. I am considering cutting myself off from society since I feel really bad going around in public. Everyone gets so hungry. No matter what they’re doing. I don’t know if this is some kind of cruel experiment or what but i was hoping you could help. It’s make my life a living hell and I really need your help.

Dusty: Poor guy.
Narrator: But, thought Dusty, at least he wasn’t on harder drugs when he was exposed to the radiation.
Dusty: Sure—imagine being on crystal meth or LSD—something like that. Anyway, lets move onto the next one. Hey, look at that!
Narrator: Dusty, slowly warming to the presence of the narrator in his mind, pointed at the subject line on the screen, and let me read it out loud. “Aliens disguised as birds.”
Dusty: Don’t get ahead of yourself, buddy. I’m not so gung ho about your voice in my head yet.
Narrator: Of course not, I’m sorry.
Dusty: Anyway. Here it goes.

A bird I noticed in the Walmart parking lot was speaking to a group of crows, in a mix of bird sounds and almost perfect english. When I left, the birds were in a flock, flying around the city. I thought this might be of interest. May be shape shifter type aliens disguised as birds. this happened about 6 hours after the explosion.

Dusty: Another parrot sighting.
Narrator: Even animals were affected—perhaps the impacts of the radiation were wider reaching than anyone realized.
Dusty: That’s probably why they were screening people. To see who was exposed, who would have altered physiology. But obviously, some people fell through the cracks. But if the animals were affected...
Narrator: It all started to make too much sense.
Dusty: Of course. The cows...the birds...even the plants could have been altered. Maybe that was the real attack.
Narrator: Dusty stared stupefied at the screen before he
Dusty: I clicked over to the next email. Single girls from Ukraine? Ha! SPAM. Scott Walker again? Man, he must really be worried about the next election. SurvivalBlog...Guns and ammunition...email from Aunt Amelia...Here we go. Guy from India’s head connected to mine. He writes...

This will sound like a case of schizophrenia. It’s not. I don’t know where else to turn. I was about a mile and a half from the sinkhole yesterday and something just didn’t feel right. I felt this weird...growth on the back of my head. I told the doctor but he said there was nothing there. I tried grasping onto it and feeling it but no luck. I could only percieve it there. An entire other skull attached to my skull. Around seven pm, the owner of the skull woke up. I could hear all his thoughts and see everything he saw. And what was more, he could see everything I could see. He kept reaching back to try and see what was behind him, but couldn’t feel anything either. The two of us could talk, sort of. His name is Rohit and he works at a small textile factory in Mumbai. The two of us have had some good chats but we both agreed that something needed to be done. He promised me he’d email you too once he figured this out.

Dwayne

Dusty: I clicked over to the next one.

Subject line: I bless the rains down in Africa

Heyerdahl
You won’t believe me but here it goes
You know the song Africa by Toto
ever since the dirty bomb explosion i can emit the sound to the main melody from my fingertips.
it’s a totally useless superpower. why would the aliens do this to me?

Toni
Ps: Video...

Narrator: Dusty watched the video, finding the hum mesmerizing, yet impossible to include due to US Copyright Law.
Dusty: Ha! That’s exactly what would happen if this were a show of some kind.
Narrator: Dusty thought, naively.
Dusty: Here, the next email. Corroborating what we heard before. It says “Conjoined to American

hello my friend
my head is attached to an american man. his name is dwayne and he is a tae kwon do instructor at a community center in texas.
he is nice but...why...?
we both wanted to email you.
thx
rohit”

Dusty: And then the next one...

“I’m growing a thumb on my sternum. No clue why. No clue how. It’s an opposable thumb. It bends and everything. Aliens? IDK.”

Dusty: He skimmed to the middle of the next one...

“When I stepped through the mirror, I entered a world where everything was still, and I could walk back into the real world through any mirror I wanted and almost no time would have passed. Last night I went into the other world, and I got this feeling I wasn’t alone...”

Dusty: And the next one...

“Ever since the sinkhole, this weird gunk has been seeping out of my pores. Once I get it on something, it hardens into this weird, almost frictionless plastic thing. I’ve just been telling my friends that I’m using a new lotion but they’re seeing through it. Through the lotion, and my lie.”

Dusty: The next one...

“I know exactly where Swedish DJ Lucas Nord is and what he’s doing at all times of the day. I don’t know how to explain it, I just know, and it feels wrong.”

Dusty: Another...

“There’s a colony of ants outside my house, acting real strange, making these weird noises, building structures out of dirt—trying to talk to me or something...”

Dusty: And another...

“A bunch of new contacts appeared in my phone, all with my name, and we’ve all been texting each other. We’ve figured out we’re living in parelel universes...”

Narrator: Prying himself away from the emails he’d recieved, Dusty headed to bed. That night, as Dusty fell asleep, his mind spun off its axis, confused, disoriented, suddenly uncertain of everything he thought he once knew.
Dusty: You don’t have to put it like that.
Narrator: Dusty feared that he, and the whole world, were bystanders to a war so fantastical and horrific in its size and scope that it could not be fathomed. That for every few people that recieved some kind of whimsical mutation or banal ability, there was a man, somewhere, who could travel through time, kill every living thing in the universe, and then make almost everyone forget it had ever happened. There were aliens pulling the strings, infecting the earth with this strange energy, mutating and warping the fabric of reality. He drifted into a dark, dreamless sleep.
Dusty: Dreamless, except for you. Your voice. And in that sleep I realize that even if you seem like something apart from me, I am you. You are a voice inside of my head speaking thoughts to me that when waking I am too afraid to speak. Hearing your voice in my head, loud as thunder.
Narrator: You built me to protect yourself. To tell you all the things you already know, but haven’t yet acknowledged. To keep you company. To let you believe that there is a story, that you are the main character in that story, that the story is being told, that someone is listening.
Dusty: Goodnight, omnipresent voice of the narrator.
Narrator: Goodnight, Dusty.
Dusty: See you in the morning.