Earth, Again
Ten years after humanity was forced back to a permanent pre-electric age, sixteen-year-old Liv learns her pacemaker battery is failing. Her father Robert — a former NASA engineer — leads a desperate thousand-mile horseback journey across Montana, Idaho, and Washington to reach a secret military prototype that might save her life. What they find at the end of the road will matter as much to the human race, as it will to Liv.
Earth, Again
5 - Simple Calculus
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
At a mountain tunnel, passage comes at the price of belief.
https://wildskystudios.com
Earth again. Episode five. Simple calculus. By Chris Cahot.
SPEAKER_11I'm fine, Callaway.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_11You've been riding next to me for two hours.
SPEAKER_02Nice morning for it.
SPEAKER_11You can spread out. I'm not going to fall off my horse.
SPEAKER_02I like the company.
SPEAKER_10Robert, we need to water the horses.
SPEAKER_15There's a creek crossing in a few miles. We'll water there.
SPEAKER_10The horses need it now. Listen to them.
SPEAKER_15Three more miles.
SPEAKER_10Robert!
SPEAKER_06I've got a horse back here drinking our own sweat. Pull over, or I'm pulling over without you.
SPEAKER_02He's been like this since we left.
SPEAKER_10I know.
SPEAKER_02He'll break the horses before we make billings.
SPEAKER_10I'll talk to him.
SPEAKER_02He won't hear you. Not after what happened with Liv.
SPEAKER_10Then what?
SPEAKER_02Give him the day. Let him ride it out. Tomorrow he'll listen.
SPEAKER_10And if the horses are lame by tomorrow?
SPEAKER_02I'll manage the horses. You manage him.
SPEAKER_10How are you feeling?
SPEAKER_11Fine.
SPEAKER_10Liv.
SPEAKER_11I'm okay, Mira. My heart's beating. I can feel it. I've been feeling it all morning. I can't stop feeling it.
SPEAKER_10That must be exhausting.
SPEAKER_11Yeah.
SPEAKER_10Can I check your pulse? You checked it an hour ago. Humor me. 68, steady, strong. Same as last time? Better than last time.
SPEAKER_11Everyone's looking at me like I'm already dead. Nobody's Dad won't turn around. Callaway won't leave my side. You check my pulse every hour. Harlan keeps finding reasons to ride behind me so he can watch my back. I'm not stupid, Mira. I know what you're all doing. I know what I look like to you now.
SPEAKER_10What do you look like to us?
SPEAKER_11Fragile. And I get it. I do. But if you all spend the next 800 miles watching me die, I'm going to lose my mind before my pacemaker gives out.
SPEAKER_10Fair enough.
SPEAKER_11I mean it.
SPEAKER_10I know you do. And you're right. Well work on it.
SPEAKER_11I'm not scared of it, Mira. I know what my odds are. I just don't want dad to be alone.
SPEAKER_10I'm still checking your pulse.
SPEAKER_11I know.
SPEAKER_14Billings.
SPEAKER_11I've never been in a city before. Not that I remember.
SPEAKER_06This isn't a city anymore.
SPEAKER_10This is where I trained as a nurse. Saint Vincent's.
SPEAKER_06I did not know that. Shall we go check out the hospital?
SPEAKER_10No. Not long after the collapse. It burned to the ground. Shit.
SPEAKER_15I'm sorry, Mira.
SPEAKER_11It's so big. How many people lived here?
SPEAKER_15A hundred thousand?
SPEAKER_02More with the surrounding area. Stay on the main road. Let's not split up.
SPEAKER_10Is anyone here?
SPEAKER_02If they are, they're watching from inside. And they don't want to be found. And that's fine. We don't want to find them.
SPEAKER_14There.
SPEAKER_15That building. The sign says pharmacy. The windows are broken, but the door's still on its hinges.
SPEAKER_10Pull over.
SPEAKER_04Cleaned out.
SPEAKER_10Most of it. But look, check behind the counter. The things people grab first are the obvious ones. Painkillers, antibiotics, anything in a bottle with a name it recognized. The things they leave are the things they don't understand. Epsom salts. A lot of it. Nobody wanted this? And here. Iodine. Half a bottle. That's worth more than gold right now. Good antiseptic. Water purification. Thyroid support. Take it. Suture kit?
SPEAKER_14You're kidding.
SPEAKER_10Surgical sutures. Sealed package. Whoever cleaned this place out didn't know what they were looking at. This could save someone's life.
SPEAKER_14Anything else?
SPEAKER_10That's it. Absolutely salts, iodine, and sutures. From a pharmacy that used to stock 5,000 items.
SPEAKER_02Where's Liv? Across the street. She wanted to look at something. She what? She's fine, Robert. I can hear her from here.
SPEAKER_11I know what it is. I've seen drawings. I just wanted to hear it. Nice to be out of the city. I didn't like that. It was all too close.
SPEAKER_06Listen. Hear that? I don't hear anything.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. What about it? That sky. It's the wrong color. You can feel it. The light's gone flat. No shadows. And the wind stops and the birds go quiet, and the sky looks like the inside of a tin can. That's a front moving in. A big one.
SPEAKER_06How big?
SPEAKER_02I've seen this twice before in Montana. Both times people died.
SPEAKER_10How long?
SPEAKER_02Six hours, maybe less. The temperature's already dropping. Breathe in through your nose. Feel that? The air's got an edge it didn't have an hour ago. We need shelter. Real shelter, not an overpass. Something with walls and a roof that'll hold against sustained wind, and we need it before dark.
SPEAKER_15We keep riding. We make distance while we can and find shelter when we have to.
SPEAKER_02Robert, this isn't a rainstorm. A February blizzard on the Montana Prairie will kill every one of us, including her. Then we ride fast and we find something fast. That I'll agree with. The real snow is behind it. Anyone see anything? Structures, signs? Anything off the road? Nothing.
SPEAKER_06Open country, both sides.
SPEAKER_10How far have we come from buildings?
SPEAKER_15Fifteen miles.
SPEAKER_02Maybe 18.
SPEAKER_10There has to be something.
SPEAKER_02There doesn't. The stretch of 90 runs through ranch country. Your town is Columbus and that's another 20 miles.
SPEAKER_11That came out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_02That's the front edge. Hold on to your collar. Pull it up over your face.
SPEAKER_16How far to Columbus? Too far. Keep moving. Stay tight. It's going to get thicker. Keep the horse in front of you in view. Damn, I can't see the road. Nobody can. Close up. Get the horse's nose to tail. You can't see the rider ahead of you if you're too far back.
SPEAKER_10Lip. Stay between us.
SPEAKER_11I'm here. I'm right here.
SPEAKER_16Stay on the road. Feel the pavement under the hooves. You hit grass, you've drifted. I I can't see anything! Don't look! Just ride! Follow my voice!
SPEAKER_10We have to stop! We can't stop out here!
SPEAKER_16Rope! Give me the rope! I'm tying us together! Each horse to the next. Liv, stitch this around your spinal horn. Humbling! Tie off your pommel! Keeper! Where's keeper?
SPEAKER_06He's here! Me and my horses, live!
SPEAKER_16Okay, let's move. Here. Help me with it. Get inside! Horses first! Everything inside. We okay?
SPEAKER_10Where's Harlan?
SPEAKER_06Um yeah. Here. Keeper's okay too.
SPEAKER_11What is this place?
SPEAKER_02Hang on. Tom cobbled together a few torches for us. Give me a second. There we go. That's better. County trucks, plough, sand. Look. There's a stack of road salt. And that's a wood stove in the corner. Looks like a highway maintenance depot.
SPEAKER_15Let's look around. See what we're working with.
SPEAKER_02A can of kerosene, heffful, some shop rags, a couple of old tarps.
SPEAKER_06Is that a wood stove or is that an oil drum someone cut a hole in?
SPEAKER_02It's an oil drum someone cut a hole in. But it's got a chimney pipe through the wall. There's ash in the bottom. It works.
SPEAKER_07I've got several pallets over here. I'll start breaking these down for firewood.
SPEAKER_10Let me see hands. Everyone. Callaway?
SPEAKER_02Working fine.
SPEAKER_10Robert?
SPEAKER_02Numb. They move.
SPEAKER_10Harlan.
SPEAKER_06Stiff, but I can feel them.
SPEAKER_10Liv? They're okay. The tips are white. Let me see. Okay. Don't rob them. Stick them in under your armpits. Just let the blood come back. It'll hurt. It already does.
SPEAKER_02How long does a storm like this last? This is a bad one. Could be six hours, could be three days. I've seen both.
SPEAKER_06We're all right, boy.
SPEAKER_02We're alright.
SPEAKER_11He's doing the math again.
SPEAKER_10I know.
SPEAKER_11I can hear him. He paces and then he stops. And then he breathes in a certain way, and I know he's dividing distance by days and subtracting what we just lost. How many days do I have?
SPEAKER_10What happened at the ranch? The pause? When a pacemaker battery gets low, the device drops into a backup mode. Slower rate, fewer features, less power draw. It's trying to stretch what's left. But during the switch, there's a gap. A few seconds where the device is between modes, and your heart has to manage on its own. That's what you felt.
SPEAKER_11How do you know that?
SPEAKER_10I did a cardiac rotation in nursing school. You never told me that. You never had a cardiac event before.
SPEAKER_11So you know what's happening to me.
SPEAKER_10I know what the device is doing. It's downthrottling, reducing its output to extend the remaining charge. That means your heart rate will trend slower. You might feel lightheaded when you stand up quickly or wind it sooner than usual. The pauses? They might happen again. Probably will. They'll be short, and the device will restart itself. Until it can't. Until it can't. But that's why we're going to Seattle.
SPEAKER_11What do I do when it happens? The pause.
SPEAKER_10Get low, sit down, or lie down. Don't fight it. The device is working even when it feels like it stopped. Your heart has its own rhythm underneath the pacemaker. It's not gone. It's just slow. The device kicks it up to where it needs to be. When the device pauses, your natural rhythm takes over for a few seconds. It'll feel like you're drowning, but you're not. You're waiting.
SPEAKER_11Waiting.
SPEAKER_10Shallow water. Your head's above it. It just won't feel that way.
SPEAKER_11Thank you for not lying to me.
SPEAKER_10You'd know if I was. You're too smart for that.
SPEAKER_11Dad lies to me. Not about the big things. About the small ones. He says we're fine and we're making good time and the battery's holding. He doesn't know any of that. He just needs to say it.
SPEAKER_10That's not lying. That's parenting. What's the difference? Intent.
SPEAKER_06We still got that elk jerky? I believe it's supper time.
SPEAKER_10We do.
SPEAKER_15Thank you.
SPEAKER_10For what?
SPEAKER_15For what you told her. I heard. I was. I was over there trying to calculate something I can't calculate, and you were over here telling her the truth. I should have been the one to do that.
SPEAKER_10Robert.
SPEAKER_15No. You did the right thing. I don't know the device the way you do. I know the physics, but you know the medicine. I should have asked you weeks ago.
SPEAKER_10You didn't want to hear what I'd say.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_15I didn't. Downthrottling. That's what it's doing? Yes. So the pauses get longer and more frequent. Until the battery drops below the threshold the device needs to restart.
SPEAKER_10I don't know the timeline. Nobody does. It depends on the battery chemistry, the ambient temperature, how hard lives heart is working. Cold makes it worse. Exertion makes it worse.
SPEAKER_15And we're riding through a blizzard in February.
SPEAKER_02Can't tell from in here.
SPEAKER_14Under there. Somewhere. I can't even tell where the fields end and the road starts.
SPEAKER_10How deep?
SPEAKER_02Two feet. Maybe more in the drifts. We can still ride. Horses can handle two feet. Horses can handle two feet of even snow. This isn't even. There's drifts out there, four, five feet deep, and you won't see them until you're in them. And the crust might hold for the first few steps, then break. The horses will exhaust themselves in a mile. Then we pick a path. Follow the fence lines. Robert, look at it. There are no fence lines. There's nothing. I don't even know where the road is right now.
SPEAKER_06The horses can't go out in this anyway. They need to eat, and they need water. Not snow, water. Snow will drop their core temperature.
SPEAKER_02He's right. We melt snow, let it warm, then water them. That takes time.
SPEAKER_14Time we don't have.
SPEAKER_11What is that?
SPEAKER_02Trees. Ice on the branches. The weight breaks them. Listen. There's a tree line south of us. A quarter mile, maybe. Probably means a creek. Water. Water, wood, and maybe a landmark I can use to find the road. I'll go on foot.
SPEAKER_11Alone?
SPEAKER_02I'll be alright. Keeper stays. Snow's too deep for him, even without his injury.
SPEAKER_11How will you find your way back?
SPEAKER_02I'll keep the depot at my back, and I'll trench a track as I go. Two feet of snow. I'll leave a ditch a blind man can follow. If the weather turns again, I'll sprint right back.
SPEAKER_06I'll get some snow melting for the horses. I'll help. Leave the pot. I'll show you a neat trick.
SPEAKER_15Instead of melting the snow in a pot, which takes forever to get enough for horses, you just hang a large cloth sack near the fire. Then shovel the snow in. Catch the water below in a pot. A lot easier.
SPEAKER_06Nice. I like that. Alright, I'll look for a shovel.
SPEAKER_11Dad.
SPEAKER_14Yeah?
SPEAKER_11I know you're scared. I'm scared too. But we're going to get through this.
SPEAKER_14I'm the one who's supposed to say that.
SPEAKER_11Then say it back.
SPEAKER_15Yeah. We are going to get through this.
SPEAKER_11See? You just needed a running start.
SPEAKER_06Hey, I found a shovel.
SPEAKER_14Okay. Let's get this sack filled.
SPEAKER_02That's him. There's a creek. Running water under the ice. And the tree line follows it west. The trees are tall enough to break the drifts. The snow under the canopy is half what it is out here. Maybe less. Can we ride through it? Along the creek, yes. But that's not the main thing. The wind did us a favor. Out on the open ground, the fields, the rises, anything exposed, the wind stripped the snow down to hard pack. A couple inches in places. Bare ground on the ridge lines. It's only in the lee sides in the hollows where it drifted deep.
SPEAKER_15So we can ride the exposed ground?
SPEAKER_02It'll help. The scour pattern runs east west. Same direction we're going. We stay on the windward sides, follow ridgelines and drop into the tree line when we need to cross a low spot. It'll be slow. We'll have to pick our way, but the horses can handle hard pack.
SPEAKER_10When do we go?
SPEAKER_02Dusk. The moon's nearly full. It'll be bright enough to see the snow patterns. Dark ground is bare ground. We follow the dark. And I know where we are. There's a grain elevator a mile west of here. I can see the top of it above the snow. And that puts us near Park City. Bozeman's sixty miles. Sixty miles. Three days, maybe four, picking our way through this. Unless if the scour holds and we can find the highway. The wind clears asphalt better than the grass.
SPEAKER_03We rest through the day, water the horses, eat what we can.
SPEAKER_15And we ride when the moon's up.
SPEAKER_04Agreed.
SPEAKER_15Okay. We've got some flour and cornmeal. I'll make us a batch of Johnny cakes. Load up on some carbs before we get out there.
SPEAKER_02Now it's a plan. Alright. Sun's going down. Time to move. See that? Dark patches on the rises. That's bare ground. The wind scoured it clean. And there, the ridge running west. That's our road. What about the low spots? We drop into the tree line, follow the creek through the hollows, then climb back up to the next ridge. Dark ground is safe ground. White is deep. Stay off the white. There. That'll hold. Single file. Follow my track. When I stop, you stop.
SPEAKER_06That's better. She knows what dirt feels like.
SPEAKER_16Dropping down. Tree line. Stay close. It's deeper in here.
SPEAKER_10Look at that. The moon on the snow is almost daylight.
SPEAKER_15And there they are. The mountains.
SPEAKER_11That's what we have to cross?
SPEAKER_02Lord. Those are the Abserokus Mountains to the south. The crazies to the north. The gap in between, that's where I-90 goes through. The crazies? The Crazy Mountains. Supposedly named for a woman who went mad after her family was killed and she wandered into the mountains alone. Sorry, I asked.
SPEAKER_11The gap between them doesn't look very big.
SPEAKER_02It's not. Easy. Creek bed down here. Could get wet. Single file. I'll go first. Follow my track. It's holding. Come on. One at a time. Live.
SPEAKER_10Okay.
SPEAKER_02Great. Mira?
SPEAKER_10Coming.
SPEAKER_02Good job. You're up, Harlan. Okay. Robert, bring up the rear with the pack horse.
SPEAKER_15Come on, girl. Your turn.
SPEAKER_16Hang on to the okay. Getting run a little bit. All right. Before the legs are up.
SPEAKER_06She freezes thing and still we lose her.
SPEAKER_10Robert, give me your hands.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_10You're in freezing water up your waist. Give me your hands. Now. Oh no. What? Skin's going white. Robert. Your left hand. Can you feel your fingers?
SPEAKER_00I can feel the thumb. And the first two.
SPEAKER_10The ring finger?
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_10The pinky? No. I'll wrap these in something dry, but we need to get you warm. Hallaway. How far to the next shelter?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. Could be miles.
SPEAKER_10Then we ride fast. Talk to me, Robert. Can you feel anything?
SPEAKER_15Just my thumbnail.
SPEAKER_10Keep them moving. Keep making a fist.
SPEAKER_08I'm trying.
SPEAKER_10Talk to me, Robert.
SPEAKER_15I I don't know, Mira. It's it's all just none.
SPEAKER_16There. Off the road. See the roof line?
SPEAKER_10Yeah, that cabin'll do. Show me. The thumb is fine. Index in middle came back. I think the pinky's gonna make it. But the ring finger Say it. There's no circulation. Normally I'd wait, give it a day, see what comes back. But we don't have days out here. Dead tissue rots. Rot breathes infection. And out here, without antibiotics, infection kills.
SPEAKER_15How long do I have?
SPEAKER_10A day? Maybe two before the infection sets in. It's better to do it now. While you're warm and I can control it. Do it? To cut off his finger?
SPEAKER_15Okay. Fuck. I understand. Give me a minute.
SPEAKER_11Dad, wait a second. Let's talk this through more.
SPEAKER_15Simple calculus, honey. Our logic is sound. Anything in the way of us reaching Seattle has to go. I'll live. Just one minute. I need to get this ring off first.
unknownCome on.
SPEAKER_15Come on.
SPEAKER_10I could try to cut it off. The ring. There could be bolt cutters around.
SPEAKER_15No. Okay. I got it.
SPEAKER_11Do you want me to take that for you?
SPEAKER_15No. I want to hold on to her for this.
SPEAKER_10Alright. Come on over here by the fire. Where the light is better. Harlan? Do we still have that iodine?
SPEAKER_06Half a bottle, maybe less.
SPEAKER_10Just a little for the blade. The rest? We save for after. Harlan, can you get me a strip of leather for him to bite on? And I need something heavy. A rock, a piece of firewood. Something I can strike hard with.
SPEAKER_11Oh my god.
SPEAKER_10I wish we had something for the pain, but.
SPEAKER_15It's okay, Mira. Just cut straight and fast.
SPEAKER_10Now for after, I can use a suture kit we found, but you want to save it. I don't want to sound like a heartless bitch, but yes. If one of us needs any kind of surgery, it's literally a lifesaver.
SPEAKER_15Agreed.
SPEAKER_10I can cauterize the wound and wrap your hand up. It just won't be as pretty.
SPEAKER_06I trust you. Found a hammer.
SPEAKER_10Liv? You don't have to be here for this. I'm staying. Okay, darling. Callaway, we'll use your blade for the cauterizing. Put it in the fire now. Lay it right in the coals. I'll need it glowing hot.
SPEAKER_02Understood.
SPEAKER_10Okay, Robert. Put your left hand right here on this board. I'm going to place my knife on the joint. That will cut easier than the bone. One strike. Hard as I can. Then me cauterize, sterilize, and bandage. I'll be quick. Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00Ready.
SPEAKER_10Calloway. Hold his arm. Harlan, stand behind him. Be ready. Robert. If you need to pass out, that's okay. They'll catch you.
SPEAKER_00Get it done.
SPEAKER_10Okay. Bite down on this. I'm sorry, Robert. The cut is good. Callaway, your blade. Hold him real tight for this. Good. The eye dine now. Okay, hand me the bandage. That's it. It's over. We're done. It's all done.
SPEAKER_08Thank you.
SPEAKER_10Don't thank me for that.
SPEAKER_15I'm thanking you anyway. Liv. Here. Put my ring back on for me. Right hand.
SPEAKER_11Yes, of course. There.
SPEAKER_15There. Wrong hand. Sorry, Eleanor.
SPEAKER_11Does it hurt?
SPEAKER_15Hell yes.
SPEAKER_11At least it's not numb anymore. Right?
SPEAKER_10Robert. Get some sleep. We'll keep moving when you're ready.
SPEAKER_15I actually, yeah. I need to pass out. Two hours, okay. And no more.
SPEAKER_10Two hours. Promise.
SPEAKER_04Robert. Two hours. Time to move.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_14Storm's cleared. When did I down? We should move while it holds.
SPEAKER_10Robert, how's the hand?
SPEAKER_15Throbbing. And I can hold the reins.
SPEAKER_10Your left hand stays in your coat. Use your right hand.
SPEAKER_15Okay, Doc.
SPEAKER_11The stars are different from down here.
SPEAKER_15What do you mean?
SPEAKER_11On the snow. Everything's so flat and white that the sky starts at the ground. It's like riding through the stars instead of under them. I can see Polaris.
SPEAKER_15Where?
SPEAKER_11Four and a half fists. Same as before.
SPEAKER_15We haven't drifted south. Good.
SPEAKER_1147 degrees. Central Montana. I know where I am.
SPEAKER_10Harlan, talk to me.
SPEAKER_06What do you want me to say?
SPEAKER_10Anything. It's been hours. I need to hear you think clearly.
SPEAKER_06I'm thinking clearly enough to know I can't feel my left foot.
SPEAKER_10Dismount. Walk beside the horse. Get the blood moving.
SPEAKER_06Walking in this is not my idea of getting the blood moving.
SPEAKER_10Walk. Ten minutes. Then ride.
unknownHuh? Huh.
SPEAKER_02I've got something. What? A road. Running north-south. The wind's cleared part of it. I can see asphalt. Pretty sure this connects back to 90. We follow it north to the interchange. And we're on the highway again. You've been quiet today.
SPEAKER_11Yeah. Do you remember on the Powder River? I said I loved how big the world is.
SPEAKER_02I remember.
SPEAKER_11I still do, but for a new reason. When it's this big, I get to be small. Just a girl on a horse. Not the reason you guys are getting hurt. Not the reason my dad just lost a finger.
SPEAKER_15Getting lighter. Behind us.
SPEAKER_10Robert, look up ahead.
SPEAKER_15The mountains. They're in the moonlight, they were just a line. Look at them now.
SPEAKER_06A whole lot closer than they were last night.
SPEAKER_11They were there the whole time. Just watching us approach.
SPEAKER_02Three days since the depot. How far have we come? Sixty. Maybe sixty-five miles. We're past Bozeman. Three days for sixty miles. In February, after a blizzard. Take the wind, Robert. This is Three Forks, or near it. Where the rivers come together. The Jefferson, the Madison, and the Galladin. They make the Missouri here. Lewis and Clark named them. All three rivers. After the president and his secretaries of state and the treasury. They named them after politicians. The rivers didn't care.
SPEAKER_11What's she stepping on?
SPEAKER_02Look around you.
SPEAKER_11It's bones. They're everywhere. The whole field is just bones.
SPEAKER_06This is a Pishkin, a buffalo jump. See the cliff up there? For thousands of years, the people who lived here drove buffalo herds off that ledge. The animals fell, and the people below butchered them. Fed whole Indian nations, year after year, century after century. The bones piled up until they became the ground.
SPEAKER_10How long has this been here?
SPEAKER_06Thousands of years, maybe longer. The blackfeet, the crow, the salish, they all used jumps like this. Long before horses, long before guns. They'd build drive lines out of stone cairns and brush, miles long, funnel-shaped, narrowing toward the cliff. Then they'd get behind the herd and push. The lead animals couldn't stop. The ones behind them couldn't see. They went over by the hundreds.
SPEAKER_11That's horrible.
SPEAKER_06That's survival.
SPEAKER_15They didn't need any of it. Engines, generators, power grids. None of it.
SPEAKER_10They needed knowledge and patience and each other.
SPEAKER_11Mira, this is what you believe, isn't it? That this is enough. That it was always enough.
SPEAKER_10I think it's proof that people can live without the things we thought we needed.
SPEAKER_11The buffalo came back. We saw them. Thousands of them on the highway. The same animal that died here is alive out there.
SPEAKER_02It survived everything. The jumps, the railroads, the rifles, the near extinction, and now? The collapse. Ten years without hunters and their herds are bigger than they've been in two centuries.
SPEAKER_11So the species that survived was the one that didn't need anything except grass and space.
SPEAKER_02And time. Should be? I've never been inside it, but I know where it is. Mile and a half straight through the mountain. Comes out in Idaho. The old Milwaukee Road punched it through a hundred years ago. The Milwaukee Road was electrified.
SPEAKER_11What do you mean, electrified?
SPEAKER_15Electric trains lived. Not steam, not diesel. Electric.
SPEAKER_11In 1915?
SPEAKER_15People think old means primitive. It doesn't. The Milwaukee Road strung a hundred miles of copper wire over these mountains. From the plains of Montana to the coast of Washington. Substations every 30 miles converting power for the locomotives. The trains ran clean and quiet through these passes. No coal smoke, no soot, just current and a wire, and steel on a rail.
SPEAKER_11So a hundred years ago, trains were running on electricity through these exact mountains.
SPEAKER_02And now we're riding horses through them. Yes. That's the plan, anyway.
SPEAKER_10How's the hand feeling?
SPEAKER_06Down to a dull roar. Whoa. Smoke. More than one fire. And livestock. Goats, maybe. That's a settlement.
SPEAKER_11There's a wall across the road. I can hear something. Sounds like glass.
SPEAKER_15Those are insulators. Cermic caps they used to mount on the power lines to keep the current from grounding out. Someone's hung them from the old poles like decorations. They hung them like wind shimes.
SPEAKER_10And built right across the road. That gatehouse blocks the tunnel mouth.
SPEAKER_02Makes sense. Only passage through the mountains for fifty miles in either direction. If you control that, you control everything moving east-west through here. Easy. Two on the wall. Watching us. Let me.
SPEAKER_07Afternoon! We are looking to pass through the tunnel.
SPEAKER_05Where from?
SPEAKER_03Billings. Before that, further east.
SPEAKER_05What are you carrying?
SPEAKER_03Horses, gear, nothing dangerous.
SPEAKER_05Right up to the gate. Slow. Keep the dog close.
SPEAKER_02They've built the whole settlement out of the old railroad. Ties, rail, sheet metal. All of it's salvage.
SPEAKER_11What's that smell? Like rust and something sharper.
SPEAKER_15Creoso. Railroad ties were soaked in. It never goes away.
SPEAKER_11Whoa. Sorry, I hit something.
SPEAKER_02Don't touch it. We got things mounted on every pole. Old transformer casings, coils of wire, insulators laid out in rows. All of it arranged. Deliberate.
SPEAKER_11Are they shrines?
SPEAKER_12You can water the horses at the trough. There's a place to tie up past the Smithy.
SPEAKER_10Thank you. We've been riding a long time.
SPEAKER_12I can see that. You're the first to come through from the east since November.
SPEAKER_02We need to use the tunnel.
SPEAKER_12Everyone who comes here needs to use the tunnel.
SPEAKER_11I can feel it. The tunnel. It's like the mountain is breathing.
SPEAKER_12It does that. Winter air pushes through from the Idaho side. A mile and a half of cold stone exhaling.
SPEAKER_02We're on the old tracks.
SPEAKER_12Before you go further, can you read?
SPEAKER_11Yes.
SPEAKER_12Read what's above the tunnel entrance.
SPEAKER_11What we sent through the wire, we sent through ourselves. What does that mean?
SPEAKER_12It means electricity wasn't just in the machines. It was in us. The wanting, the reaching, the belief that we could push power through a mountain and call it progress. Those machines are gone. The question is whether the sickness that built them is gone too. Well, that's a way of seeing it. It's the only way of seeing it that kept us alive. Tie up here. Rest. We'll talk about passage in the morning.
SPEAKER_15We were hoping to go through tonight.
SPEAKER_12Nobody goes through alone. The tunnel's not safe in the dark. The floor's collapsed in places, there's standing water. The footing's bad for horses. We send people through at first light with a guide. That's how it works.
SPEAKER_06How much?
SPEAKER_12We'll discuss it.
SPEAKER_15Those poles out there. You know what they are?
SPEAKER_12I know exactly what they are.
SPEAKER_15They carried electric current. A hundred miles of it. Ran locomotives that hauled freight and passengers through these mountains for decades.
SPEAKER_12Yes.
SPEAKER_15That infrastructure. Those poles, this tunnel, the substations you probably pulled apart for building material. That was one of the most ambitious engineering achievements in American history.
SPEAKER_12So you say.
SPEAKER_15And you turned them into Robert. Into what? Altars?
SPEAKER_12Into reminders. That's what the poles are. The old bones of a thing that tried to go through a mountain and thought it could keep going forever. It couldn't. Nothing that needs a wire can. We keep them standing so our children know what the wanting looked like. So they can see how big it was and how completely it failed.
SPEAKER_15It didn't fail. It was stolen from us.
SPEAKER_12By what?
SPEAKER_15You know by what.
SPEAKER_12Say it.
SPEAKER_15Something came, and it decided we couldn't have electricity anymore. That's not failure, that's suppression.
SPEAKER_12Something came. Something bigger than us. Smarter than us. And the first thing it did was. Take the current out of the wire. You don't find that instructive?
SPEAKER_15I find it criminal.
SPEAKER_12A man standing in a place that was built, used, and abandoned in less than a hundred years, calling the thing that outlasted it criminal. We get people like you. Not often, but we get them. They come through here with that look, staring at the poles like something was stolen from them personally. Like the wire was theirs. I'm gonna ask you a question, and I need you to answer it honestly. Because my people are listening, and they know what the wanting sounds like. Are you carrying anything electric?
SPEAKER_10No, we're not.
SPEAKER_12Morning. First light. We'll talk terms then. After we've had a meal together.
SPEAKER_11Dad, come down.
SPEAKER_15That tunnel was electrified, Liv. The whole line was. They ran trains through this mountain at 60 miles an hour. Clean and fast and quiet. And now we're going to walk horses through it by torchlight because these people think the wire was a disease.
SPEAKER_11I know.
SPEAKER_15They're living in the ruins of the thing they're afraid of. Building houses out of the railroad that prove them wrong.
SPEAKER_11What else are they supposed to do? Get off the horse, Dad.
SPEAKER_12Elk stew. Breads from this morning. Eat.
SPEAKER_06This is good.
SPEAKER_10Don't talk with your mouth fool.
SPEAKER_06Yes, ma'am.
SPEAKER_11Thank you for the food.
SPEAKER_12Your guests. Guests eat.
SPEAKER_06Well now.
SPEAKER_12Plum brandy. We've got an orchard south of the wall. The fruit makes better alcohol than it does food.
SPEAKER_06Ship it slow, girl.
SPEAKER_11Thanks for the warning.
SPEAKER_01And I told him, if the goat gets out again, I'm not chasing it, I'm eating it.
SPEAKER_12Sit down. Eat your bread. No, sit down.
SPEAKER_02It was three elk. Three.
SPEAKER_13So the whole roof comes off. Just gone. Wynn took it clean. And Martin's standing there holding a hammer like he's gonna nail it back on.
SPEAKER_01And my mother used to tell us about the lights. Whole valleys lit up at night. You could see towns from fifty miles away just from the glow. Can you imagine? All that waste, all that energy just bleeding into the sky. Hard to picture. That's the point. It should be hard to picture. The shepherds gave us the dark back, the stars, the quiet. My children have never seen a light that wasn't fire, and they're better for it.
SPEAKER_10Robert, go easy on that stuff.
SPEAKER_11He's listening to them.
SPEAKER_09I know.
SPEAKER_12What is it that's bringing you through the mountain this time of year? We're headed to Seattle. That doesn't really answer my question.
SPEAKER_11I'm I'm sick. There might be medicine there.
SPEAKER_12What is it you need? We might have it. Or no folk closer who do. You get a lot of travelers through here? Enough to keep us in what we need.
SPEAKER_11Guess you're sort of using the tunnel the same way it's always been used then.
SPEAKER_12How do you mean?
SPEAKER_11I think she Oh, just that. Well, trains used to run supplies and people through here, right? And that's what you're doing too. Just not at 60 miles an hour. I just mean it's amazing, isn't it? How much you can do with the right people and some horses, right? That's right.
SPEAKER_12We've returned to the way things ought to be.
SPEAKER_01You disagree, that's alright. But you still eat our food, don't you? There.
SPEAKER_10He didn't mean that.
SPEAKER_15Yes, I did.
SPEAKER_13So, Billings. What's it like now?
SPEAKER_02Empty. Picked clean mostly. Some buildings still standing.
SPEAKER_13We send scavenging parties there in summer. Useful hardware if you know where to look. Metal, mostly glass.
SPEAKER_15But not wire.
SPEAKER_13No. Not wire.
SPEAKER_15What happened to the wire?
SPEAKER_12We buried it.
SPEAKER_15You buried it.
SPEAKER_12A hundred miles of copper, aluminum, and steel. The catenary wire, the feeder cables, the substation coils. Everything the railroad strung up, we took down. Cut it, coiled it, and buried it. Three summers worth of work.
SPEAKER_14Where?
SPEAKER_12In the mountain. Old mining shafts a mile from the tunnel. Sealed them after.
SPEAKER_15You buried a hundred miles of copper wire in a mine shaft.
SPEAKER_12We returned it to the earth.
SPEAKER_15You could have. Do you have any idea what that copper is worth? What you could build with it.
SPEAKER_12We know exactly what it's worth. That's why we buried it.
SPEAKER_10Robert, not here.
SPEAKER_15Not here. Not at the bones, not at the settlement, not anywhere, ever. Because every place we go, the answer is the same. Don't touch it, don't want it, don't remember it.
SPEAKER_12The correction took the current out of the wire for a reason.
SPEAKER_15The correction?
SPEAKER_12That's what we call it. What happened? The shepherds came and they corrected us.
SPEAKER_15And you call them shepherds.
SPEAKER_12They guide. They don't destroy unless we force them to. Ten years, and anyone who accepted the correction is still alive. The ones who fought it aren't.
SPEAKER_15The ones who fought it were murdered.
SPEAKER_12You think the shepherds just break machines? They don't. Sometimes they take the people too. The ones who won't stop.
SPEAKER_15What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_12A man named Dale. First winter here. He was an electrician before the correction. Couldn't let it go. Found a car battery in one of the wrecks on the highway. Just enough for a lamp. His daughter was afraid of the dark. We heard the shepherds that night. Saw the light through his windows. Bright. White, not fire. I was thirty yards away. I could feel it in my teeth. The house was untouched, but Dale and his daughter were just gone.
SPEAKER_15Bullshit.
SPEAKER_12The ones who fought it couldn't let go. And letting go was all that was ever asked of us.
SPEAKER_11Dad.
SPEAKER_15I'm fine. Letting go, a hundred miles of copper wire, and you cut it down and buried it in a hole because some machines told you to be afraid.
SPEAKER_12Nobody told us to be afraid. We chose it. Fear is what keeps the shepherds away. Fear is what keeps our children alive. If that looks like worship to you, you're not paying attention.
SPEAKER_15Oh, I clearly see your ignorance. And it looks exactly like worship. You wrapped the poles, you hung the insulators like like icons, you painted scripture above the tunnel, you built a whole religion out of not touching a goddamn light switch.
SPEAKER_12We built a community that has survived ten winters. What did you build? You came here. Missing a finger, carrying a girl who's sick with something you can't fix. 700 miles from wherever you think the answer is, and you don't have a thing to show for all that wanting. So tell me, what exactly did holding on get you?
SPEAKER_15You want to know what your shepherds cost me?
SPEAKER_12Robert, don't.
SPEAKER_15My wife died of pneumonia. Pneumonia. Do you understand what that means? A course of antibiotics, a week on an IV trip, a hospital with electricity, and a doctor who could run a blood panel. That's what would have saved her. That's what she needed. Not willow bark, not not prayer, not fear. Amoxicillin in a warm room. She drowned in her own lungs, in our house, in our bed, while I held her hand and couldn't do a single thing because everything that could have saved her was used up or buried or broken or forbidden by your shepherds.
SPEAKER_14She was 39 years old.
SPEAKER_04It took four days. Liv her all of it.
SPEAKER_15So yes, I'm holding on. Because letting go means my wife died for nothing. It means my daughter dies next. And you fucking people. You sit here in your graveyard and you call that peace. You disgust me. You have your faith, fine. Wrap your poles, sing your shepherds, bury every wire you find. But I have a theory. A hypothesis. Something out there. Past your tunnel, past your mountain. Something that might prove every one of you wrong. And we are going through that tunnel tomorrow morning.
SPEAKER_12No, you're not.
SPEAKER_14Excuse me?
SPEAKER_12The tunnel is ours. We decide who passes and when. And a man who stands in my hall, drinks my brandy, and tells my people their dead died for nothing, that man does not get to walk through our mountain. You can't. I can. And I have thirty people in this room and you have four. One of them is a child, and you can't walk a straight line to the door.
SPEAKER_13So sit down or leave, but that tunnel is closed to you.
SPEAKER_15If any of you zealots even try to stop us from reaching Seattle, I will find your copper graveyard and I will bury you in it.
SPEAKER_09Robert! Jesus Christ! That's it! Let's go! Then you can run with the wallers! Take your people outside now.
SPEAKER_02We're going. Let's get the horses ready. Yeah. Quietly.
SPEAKER_10In here. Sit down. I don't need to sit down. You threatened to kill them in front of their children. In front of your daughter.
SPEAKER_15They deserved.
SPEAKER_10What? What did they deserve, Robert? These people fed us. They gave us brandy. They were going to guide us through the tunnel in the morning. And your response is to threaten them? What is it about these people? What did they do that's so much worse than everyone else we've met?
SPEAKER_14You know what?
SPEAKER_10I don't. Tell me. Because from where I'm standing, they're not that different from my settlement. No electricity, community rules, making it work without machines.
SPEAKER_15Your settlement isn't like this.
SPEAKER_10It's closer than you think.
SPEAKER_03No, no.
SPEAKER_15You made the best of what you had. You and your people. You adapted. You didn't have a choice. And you built something anyway. I respect that. I've always respected that. But these people? They don't just accept it. They celebrate it. They thank the machines that did this to us. They wrap the poles in ribbons and they hang the pieces up like trophies, and they teach their children that the darkness is a gift.
SPEAKER_03Eleanor would have been fine. Do you understand that?
SPEAKER_14Some antibiotics, a weak advantage. She'd still be here.
SPEAKER_10I know, Robert.
SPEAKER_11I can stay with him. Liv. I've got it. You've got more important things to do.
SPEAKER_10He didn't mean it. What he said in there? The threat?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, he did. But he'd never actually.
SPEAKER_10I know.
SPEAKER_11Please fix it, Mira. If anyone can, it's you.
SPEAKER_10I'll try.
SPEAKER_04It's okay, Dad. I'm here. Eleanor? No. It's Liv. That's good. That's good. Horses are ready. We can go now if Not yet.
SPEAKER_14Mira, after what he just I know what he said.
SPEAKER_10And tomorrow morning, when he's sober, he's going to need a tunnel to walk through. Not a burned bridge behind him. Running in the dark gets someone killed.
SPEAKER_02So what's the plan?
SPEAKER_10I'll talk to her.
SPEAKER_02She just threw us out.
SPEAKER_10She threw Robert out. She told me to take my people outside. That's different.
SPEAKER_06She's right. The woman spoke to Mira at the end, not to Robert. She knows who the grown-up is. And if she says no?
SPEAKER_10Then we go through the tunnel in the dark, and you were right all along. But I'm asking first.
SPEAKER_14What do you need from us?
SPEAKER_10Stay here. Keep the horses ready. And for God's sake, keep Robert in that shed until morning.
SPEAKER_06What if he wakes up?
SPEAKER_10Lives with him. She's the only one he listens to anyway.
SPEAKER_04She doesn't want to I know.
SPEAKER_10Please tell her Mira is asking, not Robert. Mira. You've got some nerve. So I've been told. Your man threatened my people. He's not my man. He's a father whose daughter is dying, and whose wife died in his arms because there wasn't a bottle of antibiotics within a hundred miles. He drank too much of your brandy. And he said unforgivable things. I'm not here to excuse that. Then what are you here for? Passage. In the morning. With the guide, the way you do it. After what he did? You don't have nerve, you have brain damage. What he said was about his wife. It just came out aimed at you.
SPEAKER_04I think you could see that.
SPEAKER_05The girl. The one he said was sick. What's wrong with her?
SPEAKER_10Her heart. It's failing. There's a facility near Seattle that might be able to help her. That's why we're on this road in February. That's why a man who should know better just made the worst speech of his life in your dining hall. Seven hundred miles for a maybe? Because it's the only option left. And him? Is he going to be a problem on my mountain? He's passed out. You heard him. Pneumonia. No medicine. Nothing he could do. He hasn't forgiven the world for that. And he shouldn't have to. But he took it out on your people. And that was wrong. He'll be silent in the morning. I'll make sure of it.
SPEAKER_12I run a settlement of 34 people. I've buried six of them myself. Fever, infection, a fall from the wall. I know what it sounds like when a man is talking about his dead and not the room he's standing in. That doesn't make what he said acceptable.
SPEAKER_04No. It does not.
SPEAKER_12He doesn't talk to my people. He stays out of sight until you're through. I don't want my children seeing the man who threatened to bury their parents. Understood. And when you get to Seattle, whatever you find there, you keep it on that side of the mountains. I don't want to know what it is. I don't want it coming back through my tunnel. Fair.
SPEAKER_10That's not a promise, I hear. I don't know what we'll find in Seattle. I don't know if it'll help her. I can't make a promise about a thing I haven't seen yet. But I can tell you, I didn't leave my own settlement because I want to start the old world back up. I left because a girl is dying and her father needed help. First Light. I'll send Jonas to guide you through.
SPEAKER_12Don't make me regret this.
SPEAKER_04Thank you.
SPEAKER_12Don't thank me. Just get through the mountain and don't come back this way.
SPEAKER_04Well?
SPEAKER_10First Light. They'll guide us through. How? I told her the truth.
SPEAKER_14Which truth?
SPEAKER_10Robert's? Eleanor's? Liv's?
SPEAKER_14And she said yes.
SPEAKER_10She said, don't come back. Let's be up before dawn. I want to be ready before Robert opens his eyes.
SPEAKER_11We made it to the tunnel. The one Callaway said would take us under the mountain and into Idaho. Dad told a room full of strangers about mom. About the pneumonia. About holding her hand while she. while it happened. He's never told me any of that. I took a bottle of plum brandy and a room full of people he hated to break it out of him.
SPEAKER_04Then he threatened to kill them. Mira fixed it. I don't know how.
SPEAKER_11That's what Mira does, though. She walks into rooms where everything is broken and she finds the one person who can still be reasoned with. And she reasons with them.
SPEAKER_04Dad will be ashamed in the morning. He should be. He called me Eleanor. He thought I was someone he'd already buried. I almost didn't correct him.
SPEAKER_15Pierce Nahigian as Robert, April Lind as Mira. Look more as Calloway. Brian Squires as Harlan. The full cast list, visit Wildskystudios.com. Again is written by Chris Cahot. Enjoyed this episode. The best thing you can do is leave us a rating and review wherever you listen. The number one way new listeners find the show. If you want to go deeper into the world of Earth Again, join us on Patreon for bonus content and early access.
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