Full Body Chills - BUNKER: Connection Interrupted

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

A story of a world severed from all connection.Written by Megan Fridenmaker.  Full Body Chills is brought to you by Max. This Halloween, the movies that haunt you are available on Max. Stream all month long. Subscription required. Visit max.com. Looking for more chills? Follow Full Body Chills on Instagram @fullbodychillspod. Full Body Chills is an audiochuck production.Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

This episode was produced with immersive audio. For the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones. Hello, Armageddon! To all my Shurleys and skeptics, fans and foes, my doomsday depressed and wasteland woes, good evening! And thank you for tuning in to the Glowing Oasis. If you've blessed your ears with our show before,

how you doing? Surviving? But if you're new, I've got news for you. You're in the right place. I am your host, Mike Madness, and you are listening to the freshest frequency on this side of static earth. I hope you came thirsty, because we got the only music that'll quench your soul. And, uh, just a reminder, folks, we are taking calls, so if you have any requests,

or just want to chill with the old chatterbox here, go ahead and shoot us a flare, alright? Well, speaking of requests, if you please, those weak in the knees should sit on down, because now things are getting freaky. It's that time again. Time for our favorite soul-jolting segment.

Time to turn towards those frightful shores where the waves of fear lap in your mind, where the towers of terror peak into your waking thought like the static hiss over the radio. It's time, of course, for a scary story. We're on episode 26 of our radio series, and tonight we are tuning in to one hell of a tale. Remember the good old days, back when there was TSA, one-way streets, and political debates? Remember when it all went away? Like a headache was lifted, true, but not everything was sunshine and roses.

Take it from me. Like some of you, I've made bed below where the bombs don't blow. And like all of you, I know more was lost than your beauty sleep. Take a minute and think to yourself, what's the thing, not person, not love, the thing that you miss most pre-doomsday. Go on, think about it. But I guarantee you the first thing that comes to mind is wrong. Got it?

You sure? Now, let's be real. If you answered with anything less than five bars, you're not making the connection. Two words. Wi-Fi. Or maybe you forgot. That black glass coaster sitting on your desk. That useless box boxed away for when the world reboots.

With the internet, we used to run the world. Or maybe it ran us. We adapted to no adapters, but it sure as poor reception wasn't easy. Still, it could have been worse. How? Well, if you really want to know, gather around and listen. Close. And listen close. To those who come after. If anyone comes after.

This is our story. I pray it isn't yours. The events that shook the world barely touched my life, and I was so busy hunched over mounds of clay and plaster that I only heard of them after the fact. It started with the blips, as we took to calling them. The first was the cell carrier outages. Hundreds of thousands of people left without service, unable to place calls or send texts, communication broke down for several frustrating hours before things got back up and running. The second was social media blackouts. All platforms inaccessible in an instant. The horror. Respected reporters and tabloids alike had a field day. A teenager's

nightmare. Millions lost in ad revenue. Cyber attack? Terrorism? Glitch in the matrix? Official statements from the tech giants assured everyone it was nothing more than a minor malfunction. No need to panic. I never noticed. I was always a little more analog, shall we say. Give me a record player and a mound of clay, and I'd get lost in the transformation of something lifeless into something nearly breathing. So, cell phone not working? I didn't even take it into my backyard studio. Social media down? I only posted when I finished a commission, which could be anywhere from a few weeks to a month or so.

But those little blips kept happening. Radio going staticky for a day? Another blip. Emergency alert on your phone with no emergency in day? Another blip. Emergency alert on your phone with no emergency in sight? Another blip. You might think we should have seen the signs with everything we know now. But these weren't happening every day. I can count four spread out over the course of a year.

And with holidays and birthdays and months in between, well, you can't blame us for our short attention span. It was unusual, sure, but nothing world-ending. No, that came later. You don't realize how ubiquitous the internet is until it's gone. Cell service and radio waves too. One day you're at work or on the phone with your family when all of a sudden, poof, calls cut off, browsers shut down, and the world is plunged into a communication blackout. This one I noticed right away. I was taking a break from my record collection and had the radio playing. 80s hits droning softly as I concentrated on my latest commission.

Humming along to Bon Jovi, fingernails caked in clay, the bust I was sculpting was just beginning to take shape. It took me a few seconds to realize the music was gone. Silence stretched through my studio. But I kept working, assuming the radio would come back to life eventually. It didn't.

After a few minutes, I got up, rinsed off my hands, and tried to change the channel. Nothing. Not even static. It was still plugged in. Digital clock face reading 1.07 p.m. There was just silence. Even then, I chalked it up to another blip. Maybe an outage at the radio station. Nothing to worry about. Little did I know, that was the day the world went dark. The last great blip.

Almost all forms of communication died out in an instant. Entire industries shut down. Travel ground to a halt. The stock market crashed. And worst of all, no one knew why. Yet we assumed that someone would fix it. Well, someone had to fix it. We could survive for a time without it, this thread that connected us to the world. But it would come back.

It had to. And yet, a day turned into two. Into three. A week. A month. Newspapers boomed. Once again, our primary source of news. Postal workers became the most essential of workers as handwritten letters surged.

We'd been thrust 50 years back in time, before the age of the World Wide Web. Conspiracy theorists didn't miss a beat, loudly proclaiming an attack from an enemy nation. What would be next? Bombings? Bioterrorism? A full-scale invasion? None of the above. Life went on. Peacefully, even. My business took a hit, of course. Art is a luxury for most, not a necessity. I had enough money tucked away to survive, and until life got back to normal, I figured I would take the time to push myself creatively. Sculpt something I wanted to shape into being, not something I was paid to

make. There was a small relief in it, despite the fear, despite the great unknown of it all, I labored for weeks and months on a clay study of humanity after the last great blip. A series of sculptures that captured the first moments of panic, the search for something to fill the void, the importance of preserving the analog among the digital. Tucked away in my studio, I felt more alive than I had in the last decade. An artist's retreat, an introvert's paradise. But it was a paradise blind to the outside world. It was six weeks after the blackout. I was up earlier than normal, the sun just peeking over the horizon as I stepped onto my front porch,

steaming mug of tea in hand. The scent of rain lingered in the air from a storm the previous night. It was cool, but not cold. A perfect day, I thought. Then I saw my neighbor, Bill, I think his name was. A former IT guy. He hadn't done well after the blackout. I'd watched him come and go to job interview after job interview, seemingly with no success. That morning looked no different. White button-up, gray tie, briefcase in hand.

He walked out his front door and down his driveway, towards his car parked on the street. I called to him and waved my hand in greeting. I'd done it hundreds of times before. Bill and I weren't friends, but we were friendly, neighborly. Without fail, he would turn and wave, even when he was in a rush. He did not that time. Instead, he just kept walking, staring straight ahead, a look of nothing on his face, feet falling at an even pace down his driveway, to his car, past his car.

He continued down the sidewalk, walking seemingly with a purpose, but without acknowledging anything or anyone around him. It was odd, sure. But I'd been sequestered away for weeks, so I considered he'd taken a job close enough to home to walk there. He might not have hurt me. He might not feel well. He might not have hurt me. He might not feel well. He might have been having a bad morning. I tried not to let it bother me. Easier said than done. His blank face stayed fixed at the forefront of my mind, seeping through my hands and into the third sculpture of my series. Something inside me. Ancient, instinctual, told me Bill wasn't okay.

I tried to shake it off, believing that I was overreacting. I'd spent too much time alone. I'd read one too many articles claiming the communication blackout was the beginning of the end. Still, it was like an itch I couldn't scratch. Minuscule. A whisper that distracted me as I worked to smooth some sharp angles for my project, mimicking the look of nothing on Bill's face. I was up early the next morning, and again, I saw Bill, tie around his neck, briefcase in hand, walk down his driveway and towards the Again, I waved. Again, he ignored me. Again, his face. The emptiness behind his eyes.

Wouldn't leave my mind. What could I do, really? I wasn't a nosy neighbor. I wasn't close enough to Bill. To anyone, really. To ask if he was okay. So I tried to move on. Ignore Bill. Ignore the itch.

And after a week, I almost could. But then, it wasn't just Bill. I saw it with the children first. On my occasional drives into town or walking through the aisles of the grocery store. Young kids, preteens, teenagers, each with that unblinking, uncaring expression on their faces. Their parents whispered to each other with worry. An article in the newspaper theorized it may be a post-traumatic stress response brought on by the blackout. Another suggested a new illness.

Someone else mentioned boredom. After all, they didn't have their phones and tablets and TVs to stare at anymore. Some adults laughed at it. The ones without children, that is. Those kids and their technology don't know what to do without it. They can't live in the real world. They chided and jeered and ridiculed, until they realized it wasn't just the kids. And by the time they knew it was coming for us all, all of us, well, by then, it was too late. Driving into town became a game of who's still here,

not here as in physically present. The cashiers at the grocery store still loaded my items in the paper bags, still took my money. Parents still took their kids to the park and held their hands as they crossed the street. They were all still physically there, but mentally, mentally it was as if their slates were wiped clean. They were billboards, lifeless,

careless, superficial placards of identity. On one of my return trips home, I found myself parked in traffic. Outside my window, a woman held a cardboard sign. In rigid, sharp letters, the message read, No home. Please help. God bless you. I'll admit, the expression on her face sold for hopeless. But in this economy, everyone held the same dead glare. Still, I rolled down my window and held out some cash.

Not nickels or dimes, mind you, but $20. Here. She wouldn't move. She was looking straight at me. You can take this. Straight through me. Even as I waved the cash like a wild auctioneer. It's all for you. No one around paid any attention. So I pulled out more money.

First $30, then $50, then $100. So I pulled out more money. First, 30 bucks. Then 50. Then $100. It's $100! Just take the money! More than sympathetic, I was desperate. All I wanted was for the woman to cheer up. Or get mad. Or spit in my face.

Show me any emotion at all. Please, I'm begging you. But all of my bribes went unanswered. Traffic cleared. I kept driving but threw the hundred dollars out my window. In the mirror, the woman was a statue. The end was not some loud, frantic grapple for life. That's something the movies got wrong. There was no screaming, no looting, no nuclear bombs. People went to work, bought their groceries, walked their dogs. Life continued on, but only in its most basic sense. Needs were still met, are still met. Lungs breathe in oxygen. Stomachs are filled. Infrastructure is upkept. There's just less color to it all.

Less feeling. Just a silent surrender to whatever had taken their minds and made them putty. Still, my routine hadn't changed. I woke up. I made my tea. I walked to my studio. I took clay in my hands and channeled my inner thoughts into tangible creations. I thought I might just be different, immune, spared from the monotonous fate of the world. Looking back, I should have been scared, worried, at least, that it would get me too. But I wasn't.

I suppose that should have been my first red flag. I had felt so deeply all my life. And then, one day, I just felt less. It happened slowly, like a worm burrowing in my mind. Slowly, so I wouldn't notice my brain becoming Swiss cheese. Inevitably, I did notice. It was two and a half months after the blackout. Another day of doing what I'd always done, settled into my comfortable routine, when I stepped back from my working sculpture and didn't recognize it. I blinked. Once. Twice. As if I was waking up from a dream I just barely remembered.

It was the sixth piece of my series, and by far the quickest. The first had been a wild thing, taking nearly a month before I was happy with it. Its hands were reaching up to heaven, grasping for answers from on high. The second, a little more subdued, and meant to contrast with the first. A simple figure, looking down and inwards, as if he was seeing himself for the first time, but still full of detail, full of life, as close to life as clay could come, at least. The third was smaller still, meant to capture the quiet routine I'd begun to fall into as the world churned around me. I'd envisioned it as a soft form in the center of a choppy sea, with figures just barely rising from the waves as they scurried about their lives. And for the fourth, I'd meant to build back up in size and shape and texture.

A detailed self-portrait created as I sat in front of a mirror, capturing each hair on my head and each wrinkle around my eyes. I thought I had. I was proud of it when I finished it a week prior. Yet, as I looked at my creations, I realized I was surrounded by the work of someone I didn't recognize. The self-portrait was smoother than it should have been. Like I was looking at a ghost. At someone who was just barely formed.

And the fifth and now sixth installments of my collections were just blocks of gray clay with perfectly sharp edges and flawlessly flat surfaces. They had come from my hands, but they were not mine. I felt that itch return, that whisper-quiet, nagging feeling I first got when I saw Bill. It was the feeling that something was wrong. For once, I considered the fact that I might be infected. But with what? Before now, I never even thought of this as an infection. Was it airborne? Genetic?

Even though I play with mud, I'd like to think I'm fairly hygienic. I wash my hands, I steer clear of tight crowds. In my line of work, I avoided everyone and everything. So why did I have it? And more importantly, how do I get rid of it? I wasn't going to turn out like Bill, or that woman on the road. So that night, I loaded up my truck with as much clay and supplies as it could carry. Two days later, I landed at a friend's cabin, deep in the middle of a northeastern forest and miles away from modern civilization. My plan was to wait it out. I poured myself into my work,

focused on making it as expressive as possible. Anything other than the gray blocks of clay that never seemed to be far from my mind. It seemed to work. For a while, at least. Every now and then, I'd lose a day. Or find my sculptures to be a little more square than I remembered. I'd tighten the screws, strip my brain, hanging on the edge of senseless oblivion for as long as I could.

But then I'd blink, and suddenly morning would turn into evening. The clay bust I'd toiled over would be gone, smashed and smothered into a perfect cube. Dust collected on the shelves. Arthritis collected in my joints. I barely felt the passing of time as I fell further and further into nothing. When I looked in the mirror this morning, I looked almost 60. I felt 50 two days ago. 45 the week before that. My truck outside is a heap of rusted metal, and I am surrounded by blocks of clay, piled high in every room. I must have gone out to get more, but I don't remember. Tomorrow, I may be dead.

I'll still survive, maybe for years. But the next time I open my eyes, I may not be there. After the blackout, after the internet and browsers and phones shut off, it was almost like part of us shut off too. I saw it fading. First with Bill, then with the others. Now me. Now something is missing. Something that wasn't just Twitter or Uber or Google or Maps or Amazon or Zoom or DoorDash or Slack or Crypto or Venmo or AT&T.

It was something we couldn't name. The thought of it is gone. Erased like the features of my sculptures. Blank. In the aftermath, in between the years where I'm awake, I wonder what I'm becoming. If I've ever really changed. Maybe that something we lost never existed. Maybe the blackout shed light on our true selves. I'll never know. But I want you to know. I've used the precious little time where I am me to complete my work. My series of sculptures. The many clay blocks. Now stand the words which you're reading.

Heavier than their weight is the chisel and hammer. And whenever I try defacing these stones, I feel myself slipping. Every swing strikes at my resolve. Every letter cuts with strain. Yet, in this final insurrection, I am free. And me. So hear this. To those who come after.

If anyone comes after. This was our story. I pray it isn't yours. Hey! Hold on a minute. Look! What? What? What is that? I don't know.

But it looks ancient. Everything from the old world is ancient. But this? This is just a rock. It's not just a rock. It's like one of those stone tablets they kept in, um... Uh, what were they called again? Museums? Sure, it's like that. What do you think these markings mean?

Who knows? Probably nothing. I mean, they sort of look like numbers. Or lines and circles, maybe. It's a dead stone in a dead language. Come on, your mom's waiting for us back at the farm. Ada! Yeah, I'm coming. Sorry, dead stone.

If only you could speak. tackle the wireless wasteland? Remember, folks, I'm here every day of the week to and through the end of time. So tune in soon for another drop of dread followed by an ocean of good feels. And as for the weather, if you're feeling under it, I've got just the thing to chill you out. This is Mike Madness, and here's a sunshiny day. Full Body Chills

is an AudioChuck production. This episode was written by Megan Frydenmaker and read by Mike Kiporkin. Intro and outro written by David Flowers and read by Anthony Coons. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

I approve! you