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.

------

[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]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[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]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[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]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[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]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[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.

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

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[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]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[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] 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[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]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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]

“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

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[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

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.