The Magnus Archives - MAG 101 - Another Twist

Episode Date: May 16, 2018

Statement of Michael, taken from subject. Date unknown.Content Warnings for this episode are at the end of the show notes.Thanks to this week's Patrons: Eric Wagner, Scott Campbell, Simone Delaney, Emily L, Kyle Berry, Bridge, Mike Geary, Jordan Carter, Angela Stefanski, Anne VleeshouwersIf you'd like to support us, head to www.patreon.com/rustyquillEdited by Elizabeth Moffatt, Brock Winstead & Alexander J Newall.Performances: "The Archivist" - Jonathan Sims "Nikola Orsinov" - Jessica Law "Breekon" - Martin Corcoran "Hope" - Steve Violich "Michael" - Luke Booys "Helen Richardson" - Imogen HarrisSound effects for this episode provided by mshahen, Sir Smith, Fantozzi, SilentStrikeZ, cclaretc, Werra, amholma, jcdecha & previously credited artists via freesound.org.Check out our merchandise at https://www.redbubble.com/people/rustyquill/collections/708982-the-magnus-archives-s1You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast software of choice, or by visiting www.rustyquill.com/subscribe.Please rate and review on your software of choice, it really helps us to spread the podcast to new listeners, so share the fear.Content Warning for: Body horror Kidnapping Betrayal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hi everyone, Ben here. I'd just like to take a moment to thank some of our patrons. Eric Wagner, Scott Campbell, Simone Delaney, Emily L, Kyle Berry, Bridge, Mike Geary, Jordan Carter, Thank you all. We really appreciate your support. If you'd like to join them, go to www.patreon.com forward slash rustyquill and take a look at our rewards. Rusty Quill Presents The Magnus Archives Episode 101 Another Twist Oh! Oh, it does work.

What have you been recording? Anything spooky? Is it your Elias who listens? Hello! He's mine now and you can't have him back. Oh, don't worry. It's not for you. You won't even need a coffin. We're going to use every piece of you.

Now, could you two please move that thing somewhere far, far away? Not really. It needs to be near us. Well, just move yourselves away and take it with you. Gotcha. Right you are. Right, where were we? Oh, of course! So, Elias, can I call you Elias? Let me set the scene, as I know you can't actually see this. He's tied to a chair. Sarah wanted to use nails, but I talked her out of it because I'm a good friend.

You're welcome. And he is absolutely surrounded with waxworks. Not good waxworks though, weird ones. Wax faces where you feel like you almost recognise who it's meant to be, but then instead, it's downright uncanny. Oh, it's downright uncanny. Excuse me, I'm talking to your boss and I would thank you not to interrupt. You know, I must say Elias, can I call you Elias? You've not raised this one very well.

He is rude and he just will not stop asking questions. Oh, but now I can ask the questions. How are you feeling? Oh wonderful. Now about the whole skin thing. You see originally I was just planning to have you followed in case you found that ancient relic one. I mean, my goodness, it is very powerful. And if you didn't come through, well, you're quite powerful yourself. And more than that, you are symbolically appropriate. So I thought you'd make a lovely frock.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. And, well, I was going to wait, but, you know, have you ever had one of those backup plans that when you think about them, they're just more fun? So I thought, out with the old, in with... Well, in with the new. Oh no, I'm afraid he can't see you. Can you, Elias? Can I call you Elias?

What's the point of having a secret place of power if you can't hide it from a big stupid eye? Anyway, you sit tight. Lots to do. Oh, also, do you have a preferred brand of lotion? Because you have not been taking care of your skin and we really do need it in better shape before we peel you. All right, I'll just ask them to pick up a selection. Oh, archivist, what have you done now? Well, it's almost sad to see you like this. Almost? I've come to a decision, archivist. I'm going to kill you. It's earlier than I had hoped, but that's life.

I suppose your life. Before I do, however, I want you to understand even if it does go against my nature so ask your questions what ask. How did you find me? The eye watches, and the stranger conceals. But me? I lie, archivist. I am the throat of delusion incarnate. They can't hide you from me. What do you have to do with the unknowing? Nothing.

Nothing whatsoever. Except perhaps that I would like it to fail. Why are you here? I already said to kill you. But why? Because I don't want the circus to win and I don't want the circus to win, and I don't want the archives to either. Killing you myself is the best of both. And, of course, there's revenge. Revenge? I still don't even know who you are.

I am Michael. I was not always Michael. I do not want to be Michael. I was not always Michael. I do not want to be Michael. Being Michael stole the only purpose I have ever known. You were Gertrude's assistant, weren't you? No. But the tape, I heard you. No. You heard Michael. I...

What the hell are you talking about? Quiet, archivist. The cramped casket sings loud, but not loud enough to drown out screaming. The Michael on that tape was not me. When that person was Michael, I was something else. And now I am Michael, and that person was Michael, I was something else. And now I am Michael, and that person is gone. So you became him? No more than he became me.

It is rare that someone I take finds their way into being me, but it does happen. And Michael had help. What happened? Ah. A statement. Of course. Is your recorder running? Yes?

Say it, archivist. Statement of... Michael. Taken from subject. Date... The last day of the archivist's life. Statement begins. How far back should it go? To the beginning of me? Centuries? Millennia? How do you define the start of your being when in some ways you have always been?

Time is difficult to form. Michael Shelley, though, he is easier to keep track of. He was born, he was pointless, and he should have died. But before that could happen, he went to work for the Magnus Institute, that ivory tower keeping its prisoners ignorant in pursuit of knowledge. A dungeon full of idiot watchers. And Michael Shelley was no exception. When he was in school, he lost a friend to something like me. His friend was named Ryan, but those in power simply called him schizophrenic. I don't know if he was, but it doesn't matter.

He was so dreadfully afraid his world wasn't real that to make it so was almost nothing. Michael was there when he was taken. He never got over what he saw or didn't see. After much searching and despair, it drove him into the waiting arms of the Institute where he met Gertrude Robinson, the archivist. The archivist. Even being what I am, I have rarely seen anyone so adept at distorting the truth as Gertrude Robinson. Michael was protective of the frail old woman he believed her to be. So, so delicate, so forgetful, yet gently wise.

He cared for her he trusted her and she fed him to me she made him me to destroy our transcendence and she did not hesitate poor Michael he had been on trips for the institute before conferences did not hesitate. Poor Michael. He had been on trips for the Institute before, conferences, investigations.

Gertrude had made sure that all her assistants were ready, that none of them would be suspicious if they were told they were going abroad for work. So there was no doubt in his mind, no concern, when she told him that they were travelling to Russia. Perhaps if he'd have stopped to look up their destination, he might have discovered that there was no such place as Zemlya Sannikova. But he did not. He trusted her.

Even when they arrived in Dixon, at the edge of the Karas Sea, and they were picked up by a quiet sea captain called Peter Lucas. Even then, he trusted her. They travelled north through cold, far more bitter than any Michael had even conceived possible. And do you know what he worried about? What's he worried about? He worried about Gertrude Robinson, about how this poor old woman might cope with the chill. But now she was like iron and walked with a purpose that Michael had never before seen in her.

The water turned to ice as the Arctic approached and Gertrude's eyes turned cold. Then, at last, he began to be afraid. He asked her where they were going and was told again, Zemlya, Sanikova, Sanikovland. There was a great evil, she said, and Michael was going to help her fight it. Am I evil, archivist? Is a thing evil when it simply obeys its own nature? When it embodies its nature?

When that nature is created by those which revile it? Perhaps Gertrude believed so. Michael certainly did. When that nature is created by those which revile it, perhaps Gertrude believed so. Michael certainly did. He believed everything she told him. And it was me they sought to stop. Me and the others of It Is Not What It Is. Our great twisting.

The worker of clay had laboured for decades on that contorted, impossible edifice of doors and stairs and falsehoods and smiles. A thousand staring morsels stood and not one of them believed themselves sane to look upon it. And in the center, the door that would open to all the places that were never there, was me. I use the word apotheosis not because it is correct, but because I can only show you its truth when we are within the passages themselves. And this is what Michael and Gertrude found when they set foot on Sannikoff land, which does not exist, and never has. It was warm, and feeling its reassurance beneath his feet

was the last time poor, doomed Michael knew comfort. They walked through the green jungle of that forever elusive polar island, and up the gentle mountains that can never have a name, and at the top they found us through our spiralling laughter, and they saw us in all of our glory. And they saw us in all of our glory. Michael did not go mad, though no words he could have said would have convinced him otherwise. The mind does not shatter, archivist.

It is soft and malleable. It bends and twists and returns to what it was, though what you see and feel may leave their mark upon it. was, though what you see and feel may leave their mark upon it. If Michael thought he had lost his mind, it was only because what he saw with crystal clarity was simply not something that could be real. But Gertrude Robinson did not waver. She did not hesitate. She gave no indication that she saw anything more or less than what was expected. Hers was not a mind that left room for doubt. She stared into us carefully, her eyes scanning for something that was my heart looking for my door. And she found it. Perhaps I should have realised what was happening,

seen those two lonely figures approaching me, but I cannot tell you the existential joys of truly becoming, of an entireness finally crossing the threshold into yourself. So ecstatic was my completeness, I did not even hear my own door creak open. Because Gertrude had told Michael how he could stop us. She told him to walk through the door.

She told him to walk through the door. And even then, with so much of his mind shut down in panic and terror, he trusted her. And he went inside, closing the door behind him. But Gertrude Robinson had given poor, disposable Michael one more thing before sending him to me. She had given him a map. I couldn't say how she would have gotten such a thing, or if she somehow made it.

And yet it was a map. A map to me. It made no sense, lines overlapping and inverting, but once within, Michael knew which turns to make, which doors to open, which mirrors to shatter, until he became me. until he became me. Even sharper than the joy of becoming is the agony of being opened and remade.

To have your who torn bloody from your what and another crudely lashed into its place. To become Michael and to do so at such a crucial point in our twisting, in our becoming. Well, of course, it destroyed it. The impossible altar collapsed. The worker of clay tore out his veins to dissolve himself in crimson mud.

The others of us were cast to all the places that aren't. Some have still not found their way out again. And somehow, Gertrude Robinson was back on that boat before Sannikovland once again never existed. And all that was left was me Michael my very existence tied to my Weaknessesness. Wearing my failure as the very fabric of my being, reduced once again to feeding on the unsuspecting and confused. That is who I am. But you... you never tried to take revenge on Gertrude. She knew how to protect herself.

She knew what she was creating. And killing her was not as important. She wasn't as good an archivist as you are. So why not kill me before? I had hoped that you would stop the unknowing first. Destroy the workings of I do not know you. But instead you are here and may bring it about faster.

So better your death happens now. Is there anything I can do to stop you from killing me? If you scream loud enough, the circus may take notice of me, but I promise you will die far more pleasantly with me If you scream loud enough, the circus may take notice of me, but... I promise you will die far more pleasantly with me than with them. Okay. Good.

Right this way. Open it. Open it, and all this will be over. It's a... what? It's locked. It's not. Why is it locked? It can't be.

Well you try it. That's not... Oh. Oh no. Do you want to come in? What? Helen? Helen Richardson, but... Michael... Michael isn't me. Not now. What happened?

He got distracted. Let feelings that shouldn't have been his overwhelm me. Lost my way. And And now you're Helen? I don't know. I never know, not really. Do I need a name? No, I suppose not. Helen is better than Michael. But she's gone. Yes. As is Michael. There's only me.

Okay. Do you still want to leave here? Are you still going to kill me? No. That was Michael's desire, not mine. So what do you want? I don't know. Helen liked you, so...

There's a lot to consider. But I will help you leave. Wait, is this it Mike you're the distortion the the the liar what how do I know this isn't a trick and if it was what would you do about it Right, right. How long have I been here? There's no... it was hard to keep track of... Time is hard, archivist. It's difficult to follow without a proper mind, especially here. A while. Right.

Door is open if you're ready. No, not really, but... The Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 international license. Today's episode was written by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J. Newell. To subscribe, view associated material, or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. For more associated material or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook or email us at MailAtRustyQuill.com. Join our communities on the forum via the website or on Reddit at r slash The Magnus Archives.

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