NIC: Last time, I left you with an image of Geoff van Sant, standing with his back to a cliff, staring to a camera of some kind. It was hard to see him like that, just… staring, and not moving. It was clear that he was out there, somewhere in that area of the forest, but there was nothing in the video that indicated where exactly that might be, no discernable geography to orient around, no sounds of a factory or anything audible. At least, nothing audible to us.
The police took my report, but they had nothing in the way of answers. One constable, someone I’d spoken with in the past, recommended somebody who might be able to take a deeper look at that footage of Geoff. A friend of hers worked at a company in the private sector that occasionally did work examining audio and video recordings for the department. I spoke with a woman from that company over the phone, and then sent her a copy of the recording. Her name is Anna Yanis. She had some thoughts.
NIC: So, there’s one possible avenue toward a clue to Geoff van Sant’s whereabouts. I’ve asked Meerkatnip to try - again - to connect with Geoff’s brother Karl’s widow, but so far, she remains unable to do so. She’s not happy about it. MK doesn’t like people who don’t leave some kind of digital footprint.
After such a long break and so much action at the end of our last season, there are still so many aspects of this thing that I feel like I need to pursue, or consider, or whatever it is I’m doing here. I thought it might be interesting to share some of that consideration with you.
What is Tanis? An alien force? An environmental event? Another dimension? Or is it that old standby, ants at the side of a freeway who have no way of understanding what a freeway is? Am I going to find an answer to this question? I honestly don’t know. But I feel like the best way to get an answer to that one enormous question might be to continue to ask smaller questions. So, in that spirit, I’m going to ask a series of smaller questions. I’ve asked MK to do her best to help me make sense of where we’re at.
NIC: She was right. Cameron Ellis was certainly not to be trusted. At least, not fully. There were too many questions. All of those research studies, Veronika Pilman, Nathaniel Carter, Pacifica Station, the fact that there was nobody behind the wall… What else was he withholding?
I was definitely going to ask him about all of this stuff before I started working for him again, but first, I found something else. Something that might be related to The Breach. And I found it in the most unlikely of places: Nikola Tesla.
Nikola Tesla was a brilliant visionary inventor, what some might call a mad scientist. I’d been researching Tesla and a possible connection to Tanis from the beginning, trying to ascertain whether or not a trip he repeatedly took about fifteen years before the end of his life in 1943 by train from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, the end of the Lakeshore and Eastern Railway at Snoqualmie Falls to be specific, actually took place. The line of investigation I’d been pursuing indicated that this cross-country trip by rail most likely did take place, but it was far from a certainty. I’m not sure whether or not a trip to the Pacific Northwest had anything to do with Tesla’s more… radical ideas later in life.
Tesla’s brilliance was unparalleled when it came to his early experimentation with alternating currents. His work with dynamos, television, radio, and lightning directly resulted in many of the inventions that we take for granted today. In 1900, Tesla discovered, or believed he discovered, terrestrial stationary waves. He set about proving that the earth could be used as a giant conductor, and would respond just like a tuning fork to electrical vibrations of a certain pitch. At this point in history, most physicists believed that radio waves traveled in straight lines which made them ideal for short-range communication, but useless for long-range applications. This was many years before the discovery of an ionosphere that reflected radio waves would make long-range communication possible.
In 1937, Tesla wrote “The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy through the Natural Media.” He was working on charged particle beam weapons. He’d claimed he’d built, demonstrated, and used what he was calling a “death ray.” He said he was working on a weapon to end all war. Tesla claimed people had been trying to steal his plans but all of the spies and thieves left empty-handed because his invention couldn’t be stolen. He claimed that he’d never committed anything to paper. The blueprint for his teleforce weapon was all in his mind. Tesla went on to claim that he could split the earth in half like an apple, and that his teleforce weapon, or death ray, was capable of downing ten thousand enemy airplanes from a distance of two hundred miles.
Nikola Tesla died alone at the age of 86 on January 7, 1943. His body was found by a maid, after she ignored the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and entered his room. The cause of death was listed as coronary thrombosis. Tesla’s remains were taken to a nearby funeral home, and a death mask, currently on display in the Nikola Tesla Museum, was commissioned by Tesla’s long-time friend and supporter, Hugo Gernsback.
Two days after his death, the Alien Property Custodian, an office within the government of the United States, active during both world wars, acting on orders from the FBI, seized all of Tesla’s belongings. This was odd, considering Nikola Tesla was an American citizen. Everything was taken to a storage facility under Office of Alien Property seal. An MIT professor and technical aid to the National Defense Research Committee named John G. Trump was called in to analyze the items. After a three-day investigation, Trump delivered a report stating, “Tesla’s thoughts and efforts during at least the past fifteen years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character, often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power, but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”
In a box that was supposed to contain part of Tesla’s infamous death ray, Trump allegedly found nothing but a 45-year-old multi decade resistance box. We’re saying “allegedly” because, well, somebody was telling a much different story about what was contained in that box.
[Advertisements]
NIC: Meerkatnip had tracked down a series of letters, correspondence Tesla and man named Horace Birkin, correspondence that had been alledgedly left out of any and all historical conversations regarding Nikola Tesla. Due to an agreement MK with the entity that provided access to the letters, we’re unable to reveal that source. I will say, however, that the provenance of those letters is very convincing.
I’ve asked MK to read a few relevant sections.
NIC: That’s the last letter from Tesla. There were two brief, unanswered letters to Tesla from Horace Birkin asking for a response, but that was it. There was no other communication between the two men in that collection of letters. But there was something else.
NIC: So, Horace Birkin’s company had connections to Tesla and Kirlian. What does that mean when it comes to Tanis? I promised you a connection. Here it is:
NIC: She was right. TeslaNova and the Channel Photo Energy Corporation were the same company. At some point, near the beginning of World War II, the name was changed, or a subsidiary became the main company, or something similar happened. MK wasn’t able to pull any other details, but one thing was for sure: TeslaNova was connected to both Tesla and Kirlian.
But what does that mean as far as Tanis is concerned? Well, to find that out, we’re going to have to take another trip back in time to a world of darkness and ancient mythology; to the world of a poet named August Wick. But first I had an update on that video recording of Geoff van Sant.
NIC: Dr. Connie Lannaman works with Anna Yanis who we spoke with earlier. She’s been looking into
that video footage of Geoff.
NIC: So, Dr. Lannaman’s diagrams give us an approximate distance for the highway and the other roadway from the camera. Now we just need to look at thousands of miles of land and determine where this type of geography might be located.
MK said she knew somebody in Sweden who might have access to some advanced police equipment there. I asked her how somebody in Sweden was going to help us here in Washington state. I could see her shaking her head as she told me that a map is a map.
While MK’s friend in Sweden was looking for what I assumed would be an extremely long list of possible locations for that game camera, MK and I were looking into something else: August Wick.
[Advertisements]
NIC: And there it was. It was a photograph. We’d been looking through physical copies, photocopies of photographs that had been sent from Belgrade to The University of Washington in the mid-1990s to a graduate student named David Glass in order for him to complete his thesis on some aspect of Tesla’s work.
There were a number of photographs, many featuring a series of large trunks with the initials “N.T.” painted onto them, a whole bunch of letters and papers that appeared unrelated to our investigation, and the reason I’d stopped talking to MK and sat back on my heels. I’d found a series of photocopies of photographs of the box that was supposed to contain Tesla’s death ray. The photos, as reported, did not depict a death ray, but rather, the more mundane 45-year-old multi decade resistance box.
We had already seen most of these photos and the ones we hadn’t seen were generally just new angles of things we’d already seen from other angles. However, there were a few new images, including the last photograph in the series of decade resistance box pictures. That last photograph revealed something brand new.
In the last photo, the decade resistance box was open, and it wasn’t filled with the expected electronics, but rather something else entirely: what appeared to be some kind of grey shard, maybe petrified wood, or something similar. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the only thing we found among those photocopied pages.
In addition to the photograph with the strange shard, in fact, stapled to the back of that photocopied page were two additional pages. The first was a poem by August Wick. I’ve asked my friend and producing partner at Pacific Northwest Stories, Alex Reagan, to read that poem for you now.
NIC: The second page was from some kind of unlabeled and undated journal. I’ve asked Alex to read that page as well.
NIC: I hope whoever wrote that journal entry found their way to the tropics and a life free from the symptoms he’d begun describing in those pages. Searching “Morrow, Stevenson, and Fields” yielded nothing, or, at least, nothing that lead us to a warehouse in Britain filled with ancient artifacts. It was a dead end.
But there was a graduate student named David Glass who had attended the University of Washington in the mid-1990s. Meerkatnip tracked him down and our intern called to set up an interview
NIC: Marjorie Glass could have been in her sixties or seventies; it was hard to tell. She had long, shiny grey hair, and thick prescription classic Ray-Ban glasses. She answered the door wearing a Public Radio Alliance sweatshirt from some time in the 80s.
NIC: It’s Tanis. I’m Nic Silver. We’ll be back again in two weeks. Until then, keep looking.
SITE NOTE: Thank you to Melissa for this transcript. You're a rockstar!
The police took my report, but they had nothing in the way of answers. One constable, someone I’d spoken with in the past, recommended somebody who might be able to take a deeper look at that footage of Geoff. A friend of hers worked at a company in the private sector that occasionally did work examining audio and video recordings for the department. I spoke with a woman from that company over the phone, and then sent her a copy of the recording. Her name is Anna Yanis. She had some thoughts.
- ANNA: So, I’ve analyzed the video recording.
- NIC: Great! Were you able to find anything?
- ANNA: The low bit rate and angle of the lens indicate this was recorded using something like an automated game camera.
- NIC: Hunters use those cameras, right? They turn on automatically?
- ANNA: Right. Motion- or sound-activated.
- NIC: Anything else?
- ANNA: Well, there’s not much in the way of unique wildlife sounds; it’s all pretty standard Pacific Northwest.
- NIC: Right.
- ANNA: But, there is definitely a highway nearby. And some kind of smaller roadway in the area. Perhaps a logging, service, or residential road?
- NIC: Any idea as far as distance from the road?
- ANNA: We’re still working on it. I wanna have one of my senior technicians have a listen this week. I’ll send you everything we have after that.
- NIC: Great. Thanks a lot.
- ANNA: No worries.
NIC: So, there’s one possible avenue toward a clue to Geoff van Sant’s whereabouts. I’ve asked Meerkatnip to try - again - to connect with Geoff’s brother Karl’s widow, but so far, she remains unable to do so. She’s not happy about it. MK doesn’t like people who don’t leave some kind of digital footprint.
After such a long break and so much action at the end of our last season, there are still so many aspects of this thing that I feel like I need to pursue, or consider, or whatever it is I’m doing here. I thought it might be interesting to share some of that consideration with you.
What is Tanis? An alien force? An environmental event? Another dimension? Or is it that old standby, ants at the side of a freeway who have no way of understanding what a freeway is? Am I going to find an answer to this question? I honestly don’t know. But I feel like the best way to get an answer to that one enormous question might be to continue to ask smaller questions. So, in that spirit, I’m going to ask a series of smaller questions. I’ve asked MK to do her best to help me make sense of where we’re at.
- MK: What’s up?
- NIC: Did you get my email?
- MK: Obviously. That’s why I called. You’re gonna ask me questions again? Great. Do you do this every episode, or what?
- NIC: Not every episode.
- MK: Right.
- NIC: Is now not a good time?
- MK: No, it’s fine.
- NIC: Okay, so, what do you think about the airplane in the tree?
- MK: The disappearing airplane question.
- NIC: Yes.
- MK: That’s easy: you lost it.
- NIC: I’m pretty sure I found the same place.
- MK: Mm, pretty sure, exactly.
- NIC: Okay, what about the people who claim it disappeared overhead, right over the exact area Geoff and I found it?
- MK: What about them?
- NIC: Well, isn’t that at least interesting?
- MK: Not really.
- NIC: No?
- MK: No. I didn’t see any airplanes disappear.
- NIC: Right.
- MK: Anything else?
- NIC: Well, what about Raywood?
- MK: Uh, still under some kind of military or governmental control?
- NIC: Is anybody talking up there?
- MK: No. There’s a representative from a company working under a military security contract, but they just give a stock response.
- NIC: What stock response?
- MK: “We’re sorry, but we are currently unable to divulge operational information.”
- NIC: Right. What do you think about Cameron Ellis?
- MK: You know what I think about Ellis, you can’t trust him.
- NIC: Can’t or shouldn’t?
- MK: What’s the difference?
- NIC: Well, I realize that I shouldn’t trust him, but do you have anything… concrete or tangible? Anything -
- MK: He tortured that soldier guy, kept him from his wife.
- NIC: ...Yeah. I mean, he claims he’s helping Marcus Corey.
- MK: ...How does that sound to you? [pause] Nic!
NIC: She was right. Cameron Ellis was certainly not to be trusted. At least, not fully. There were too many questions. All of those research studies, Veronika Pilman, Nathaniel Carter, Pacifica Station, the fact that there was nobody behind the wall… What else was he withholding?
I was definitely going to ask him about all of this stuff before I started working for him again, but first, I found something else. Something that might be related to The Breach. And I found it in the most unlikely of places: Nikola Tesla.
Nikola Tesla was a brilliant visionary inventor, what some might call a mad scientist. I’d been researching Tesla and a possible connection to Tanis from the beginning, trying to ascertain whether or not a trip he repeatedly took about fifteen years before the end of his life in 1943 by train from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, the end of the Lakeshore and Eastern Railway at Snoqualmie Falls to be specific, actually took place. The line of investigation I’d been pursuing indicated that this cross-country trip by rail most likely did take place, but it was far from a certainty. I’m not sure whether or not a trip to the Pacific Northwest had anything to do with Tesla’s more… radical ideas later in life.
Tesla’s brilliance was unparalleled when it came to his early experimentation with alternating currents. His work with dynamos, television, radio, and lightning directly resulted in many of the inventions that we take for granted today. In 1900, Tesla discovered, or believed he discovered, terrestrial stationary waves. He set about proving that the earth could be used as a giant conductor, and would respond just like a tuning fork to electrical vibrations of a certain pitch. At this point in history, most physicists believed that radio waves traveled in straight lines which made them ideal for short-range communication, but useless for long-range applications. This was many years before the discovery of an ionosphere that reflected radio waves would make long-range communication possible.
In 1937, Tesla wrote “The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy through the Natural Media.” He was working on charged particle beam weapons. He’d claimed he’d built, demonstrated, and used what he was calling a “death ray.” He said he was working on a weapon to end all war. Tesla claimed people had been trying to steal his plans but all of the spies and thieves left empty-handed because his invention couldn’t be stolen. He claimed that he’d never committed anything to paper. The blueprint for his teleforce weapon was all in his mind. Tesla went on to claim that he could split the earth in half like an apple, and that his teleforce weapon, or death ray, was capable of downing ten thousand enemy airplanes from a distance of two hundred miles.
Nikola Tesla died alone at the age of 86 on January 7, 1943. His body was found by a maid, after she ignored the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and entered his room. The cause of death was listed as coronary thrombosis. Tesla’s remains were taken to a nearby funeral home, and a death mask, currently on display in the Nikola Tesla Museum, was commissioned by Tesla’s long-time friend and supporter, Hugo Gernsback.
Two days after his death, the Alien Property Custodian, an office within the government of the United States, active during both world wars, acting on orders from the FBI, seized all of Tesla’s belongings. This was odd, considering Nikola Tesla was an American citizen. Everything was taken to a storage facility under Office of Alien Property seal. An MIT professor and technical aid to the National Defense Research Committee named John G. Trump was called in to analyze the items. After a three-day investigation, Trump delivered a report stating, “Tesla’s thoughts and efforts during at least the past fifteen years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character, often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power, but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”
In a box that was supposed to contain part of Tesla’s infamous death ray, Trump allegedly found nothing but a 45-year-old multi decade resistance box. We’re saying “allegedly” because, well, somebody was telling a much different story about what was contained in that box.
[Advertisements]
- MK: Okay, so… you want me to start reading?
NIC: Meerkatnip had tracked down a series of letters, correspondence Tesla and man named Horace Birkin, correspondence that had been alledgedly left out of any and all historical conversations regarding Nikola Tesla. Due to an agreement MK with the entity that provided access to the letters, we’re unable to reveal that source. I will say, however, that the provenance of those letters is very convincing.
I’ve asked MK to read a few relevant sections.
- MK: Ready?
- NIC: Ready.
- MK: Okay.
- Tesla to Birkin - “The electrical actions I have observed surrounding the object give me certainty. We need to look up to the firmament above; there are messages from another world. I can hear them in the sound emanating from the object. They are here, they have come.”
- Birkin to Tesla - “It’s thrilling to hear that you’re making progress. The company is willing to expend any manner of assistance in your research. Please let us know your requirements, that we may send assistance immediately. There are no limits. Kind regards, H.B.”
- Tesla to Birkin - “The most exciting series of events has occurred. I believe I have developed a generator that will not consume any fuel; not coal, not oil, nor falling water. This generator will access the ambient medium. The object appears capable of direct access with the source. It’s only a matter of time. Will write more soon. N.T.”
- Birkin to Tesla - “Oh, joy, Nikola! This is outstanding news. We are anticipating receiving your results soon. Once again, should you require additional assistance, please advise. H.B.”
- Tesla to Birkin - “Accessing the ambient medium has proved simple indeed, but harnessing that power has proven challenging. I’d initial avoided direct contact with the object per our agreement, but, I’m sorry, Horace, I had to hear it. It was calling. It was awakened. It wants to teach us.
- “The ambient medium is cosmic energy. The central source, I believe, is the sun itself, or perhaps some combination of the earth and sun. My dear Horace, if this is true, if the power contained within the object is as I believe, then the very best is true, that we shall soon have constant energy in unlimited quantities.”
- Birkin to Tesla - “The company is impressed by the possibility of your unlocking perpetual motion using the object and requests confirmation of this result at your earliest convenience. Please keep your exploration confidential. We have received word that others have begun tracking your progress. We would hate to intercede before your progress is complete. H.B.”
- Tesla to Birkin, the final letter - “The object has been behaving in a strange fashion. I believe it has been attempting a form of communication all along. The sounds overwhelm me at various points, but nobody else seems to hear them. I’ve had to remove my team. I am working alone. I am close. I will write again soon. This is most exciting, Horace. N.T.”
NIC: That’s the last letter from Tesla. There were two brief, unanswered letters to Tesla from Horace Birkin asking for a response, but that was it. There was no other communication between the two men in that collection of letters. But there was something else.
- MK: Okay, so, I did a whole lot of digging into Nikola Tesla, but I couldn’t find anything directly related.
- NIC: There’s a lot of material on Tesla out there.
- MK: A shitton.
- NIC: Right.
- MK: But there’s significantly less than a shitton of information on Horace Birkin.
- NIC: So, what did you find?
- MK: Horace Birkin was the head of a company based in Colorado. The company was called the Channel Photo Energy Corporation, or CPEC.
- NIC: What did they do at the CPEC?
- MK: They did a lot of things, but it looks like research into new forms of energy was their primary concern.
- NIC: New forms of energy like whatever Nikola Tesla was working on?
- MK: Yeah, and it looks like Birkin was connected to Semyon Kirlian and his wife, Valentina as well.
- NIC: Who’s Semyon Kirlian?
- MK: Kirlian auras?
- NIC: ...Never heard of them.
- MK: ...Wow.
- NIC: So, what’s a Kirlian aura?
- MK: So what it boils down to is this: Kirlian brought some science to these quacks who’d been claiming they could see auras surrounding people.
- NIC: What kind of science?
- MK: He wanted to reveal the “halo,” or the “astral body,” or “astral presence” to prove that there was something else. Something after death.
- NIC: Right. Okay, I kinda remember Kirlian now, but didn’t Tesla accidentally discover this stuff earlier using high-voltage photography?
- MK: Yeah, that’s right, but Kirlian took it further.
- NIC: What do you mean?
- MK: I mean he used his Kirlian photography to take pictures of psychics’ fingers that glowed blue when the psychic was using his powers.
- NIC: [laughing] Okay.
- MK: He used the same techniques to photograph a leaf. The leaf’s aura remained full even when half of the leaf was cut off. Many scientists at the time believed this demonstrable halo effect was proof of the existence of biological plasma.
- NIC: What about now?
- MK: Well, even then there was scrutiny and skepticism. The skeptics pointed to the sketchy lab conditions and outside factors, like sweat, and heat. It’s pseudoscience at best, but even now there are people who believe Kirlian photography is the key to proving the existence of an afterlife, or astral plane, or feng shui, or whatever.
NIC: So, Horace Birkin’s company had connections to Tesla and Kirlian. What does that mean when it comes to Tanis? I promised you a connection. Here it is:
- MK: The Channel Photo Energy Corporation.
- NIC: What about it?
- MK: It definitely existed around the dawn of the nineteenth century, but I haven’t been able to find an incorporation date.
- NIC: What does that mean?
- MK: Just that they may have existed long before that time.
- NIC: So -
- MK: But I was able to find out what happened to the company during World War II.
- NIC: What happened then?
- MK: You wanna guess?
- NIC: Not really.
- MK: Come on… Nic, I bet the listeners are screaming into their phones right now.
- NIC: I don’t get it.
- MK: Nikola. Tesla.
- NIC: ...Yeah?
- MK: ...Really?
- NIC: ...TeslaNova.
- MK: [laughing] I really didn’t think you were gonna get it.
- NIC: Wait, so the Channel Photo Energy Corporation is connected to TeslaNova?
- MK: No.
- NIC: ...No.
- MK: No. The Channel Photo Energy Corporation is TeslaNova.
NIC: She was right. TeslaNova and the Channel Photo Energy Corporation were the same company. At some point, near the beginning of World War II, the name was changed, or a subsidiary became the main company, or something similar happened. MK wasn’t able to pull any other details, but one thing was for sure: TeslaNova was connected to both Tesla and Kirlian.
But what does that mean as far as Tanis is concerned? Well, to find that out, we’re going to have to take another trip back in time to a world of darkness and ancient mythology; to the world of a poet named August Wick. But first I had an update on that video recording of Geoff van Sant.
- NIC: Hello?
- DR. LANNAMAN: Nic Silver?
- NIC: Speaking.
- DR. LANNAMAN: This is Dr. Lannaman. Anna Yanis asked me to give you a call regarding, uh, that video footage you submitted for analysis?
- NIC: Right. Thanks so much for calling.
- DR. LANNAMAN: Sure.
NIC: Dr. Connie Lannaman works with Anna Yanis who we spoke with earlier. She’s been looking into
that video footage of Geoff.
- NIC: So, were you able to find anything?
- DR. LANNAMAN: Oh, yes, um, there’s quite a bit of information.
- NIC: Uh - really?
- DR. LANNAMAN: Well, you know, people are so used to using their other senses you’d be amazed what you can learn if you just shut your eyes.
- NIC: Of course. So… what -
- DR. LANNAMAN: Okay, so, um, I’d say the footage comes from a game camera, probably a Bushnell, or similar.
- NIC: Uh… a Bushnell?
- DR. LANNAMAN: That’s a brand of a camera.
- NIC: So what about the audio itself? Is there anything there?
- DR. LANNAMAN: There’s a highway, and another road.
- NIC: Right. Your colleague mentioned that earlier.
- DR. LANNAMAN: I’ve emailed you a couple documents where I feel like the roadways might meet, in relation to camera placement.
- NIC: Great. Thank you.
- DR. LANNAMAN: Sure, you’re welcome.
- NIC: Is that it?
- DR. LANNAMAN: Something that’s interesting is what’s not there.
- NIC: What do you mean?
- DR. LANNAMAN: Power lines.
- NIC: And that would be significant… why?
- DR. LANNAMAN: Well, I’m - I’m not sure it’s significant at all, it’s just that… well, I - I dunno for certain, of course, but I don’t imagine there are many places this close to a major highway and another roadway with no power lines nearby.
- NIC: That’s… that’s interesting.
- DR. LANNAMAN: It could possibly assist you in - in identifying the area.
- NIC: Great, well, thank you so much for taking the time out to look at this stuff.
- DR. LANNAMAN: Well, you’re welcome! And, good luck with everything, whatever it is, uh, you’re doing.
- NIC: Thank you.
- DR. LANNAMAN: Sure
- NIC: Goodbye.
- DR. LANNAMAN: Goodbye.
NIC: So, Dr. Lannaman’s diagrams give us an approximate distance for the highway and the other roadway from the camera. Now we just need to look at thousands of miles of land and determine where this type of geography might be located.
MK said she knew somebody in Sweden who might have access to some advanced police equipment there. I asked her how somebody in Sweden was going to help us here in Washington state. I could see her shaking her head as she told me that a map is a map.
While MK’s friend in Sweden was looking for what I assumed would be an extremely long list of possible locations for that game camera, MK and I were looking into something else: August Wick.
[Advertisements]
- NIC: So, what do you think?
- MK: Hm, I think that this is a colossal waste of time.
- NIC: Okay, just tell me how you feel, don’t pull any punches.
- MK: Well, we should be doing this shit online.
- NIC: But we didn’t find anything online.
- MK: Doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
- NIC: Right… [sighing]
NIC: And there it was. It was a photograph. We’d been looking through physical copies, photocopies of photographs that had been sent from Belgrade to The University of Washington in the mid-1990s to a graduate student named David Glass in order for him to complete his thesis on some aspect of Tesla’s work.
There were a number of photographs, many featuring a series of large trunks with the initials “N.T.” painted onto them, a whole bunch of letters and papers that appeared unrelated to our investigation, and the reason I’d stopped talking to MK and sat back on my heels. I’d found a series of photocopies of photographs of the box that was supposed to contain Tesla’s death ray. The photos, as reported, did not depict a death ray, but rather, the more mundane 45-year-old multi decade resistance box.
We had already seen most of these photos and the ones we hadn’t seen were generally just new angles of things we’d already seen from other angles. However, there were a few new images, including the last photograph in the series of decade resistance box pictures. That last photograph revealed something brand new.
In the last photo, the decade resistance box was open, and it wasn’t filled with the expected electronics, but rather something else entirely: what appeared to be some kind of grey shard, maybe petrified wood, or something similar. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the only thing we found among those photocopied pages.
In addition to the photograph with the strange shard, in fact, stapled to the back of that photocopied page were two additional pages. The first was a poem by August Wick. I’ve asked my friend and producing partner at Pacific Northwest Stories, Alex Reagan, to read that poem for you now.
- ALEX: (reading)
- It was a world of dark and slithering things
- Of wind and fire, of wet and mire
- Of sickly, crawling, shivering death
- Of putrid, milky, galling breath
- That moves like smoke across the ground
- Called by signs, by heat, by sound
- The twice-dead thing that left its horn
- The voice that brings the god stillborn
- King Wyrm upon his throne descends
- To tear, to burn, to split and rend
NIC: The second page was from some kind of unlabeled and undated journal. I’ve asked Alex to read that page as well.
- ALEX: (reading) I don’t believe Morrow died from exposure, like Fields or Stevenson. I believe it’s because of what happened after, although so many have died surrounding it. Morrow was only in the room with the horn for a few minutes. I think it was what happened in those few minutes that resulted in his death. He hid my small rock chisel and hammer in his camera case. He was going in to take pictures. But Morrow took something else that afternoon as well. He took a piece of the object. He chiseled off a shard of the horn.
- When they discovered what had happened, they picked him up at his bedsit. None of us saw Morrow alive again. Whispers and rumors pointed to his sending the shard somewhere, perhaps somewhere in America. The employees of a post office near the lab were taken in for questioning, but all they could remember was Morrow purchasing postage. Our lab access cycle was ending, and, although having access to the artifacts we’d been working with at the warehouse was thrilling, none of us were going to miss working in close proximity to the horn.
- It was different than the other pieces collected by the expedition. Nobody was the same after the horn arrived at the facility. Three of our team quit. One asked to be reassigned. And the others suffered certain… mental challenges going forward, including Stevenson and Fields, who died under mysterious circumstances, to say the least. I myself continued for another cycle before asking to be released. I’m currently waiting for them to close my file. I’ve been taking medication for the headaches, but the visions and the dreams are getting worse. My wife believes that a trip to the tropics might be just the thing. I hope she’s right.
NIC: I hope whoever wrote that journal entry found their way to the tropics and a life free from the symptoms he’d begun describing in those pages. Searching “Morrow, Stevenson, and Fields” yielded nothing, or, at least, nothing that lead us to a warehouse in Britain filled with ancient artifacts. It was a dead end.
But there was a graduate student named David Glass who had attended the University of Washington in the mid-1990s. Meerkatnip tracked him down and our intern called to set up an interview
- MK: So… where is this place?
- NIC: I thought you were using your GPS?
- MK: No, I’m playing a game.
- NIC: ...What?
- MK: Are you going deaf?
- NIC: I heard you say you were playing a game -
- MK: Okay, so your asking “what” was rhetorical?
- NIC: ...Yeah.
- MK: Cute.
- NIC: Could you use your GPS?
- MK: I was; I just lost the signal.
- NIC: Oh.
- MK: It’s up here.
- NIC: Okay.
- [Knocking, a door opening]
- MARJORIE: Hello?
- NIC: Hello, Marjorie?
- MARJORIE: Hi.
- NIC: I’m Nic and this is, uh, MK.
- MARJORIE: It’s nice to meet you both. Please, come in.
- NIC: Thanks.
- [Door closing]
NIC: Marjorie Glass could have been in her sixties or seventies; it was hard to tell. She had long, shiny grey hair, and thick prescription classic Ray-Ban glasses. She answered the door wearing a Public Radio Alliance sweatshirt from some time in the 80s.
- NIC: So, is David going to be joining us?
- MARJORIE: Um, I’m afraid not.
- MK: What do you mean?
- MARJORIE: David’s no longer seeing anybody, other than his doctors.
- NIC: Where is he?
- MARJORIE: Uh, he’s in the hospital. Western State Hospital in Lakewood.
- MK: You didn’t mention that on the phone.
- MARJORIE: I wanted to meet you. Well… him.
- NIC: You wanted to meet… me. What for?
- MARJORIE: So you could see my eyes.
- NIC: ...Sorry, so I could see your eyes… when?
- MARJORIE: So you can see my eyes when I ask you to help me.
- NIC: To help you do what?
- MARJORIE: To help me find out what’s happened to my son.
- NIC: What is it that you think that I can do?
- MARJORIE: I’m going to play something for you.
- NIC: Okay.
- MARJORIE: Can you help me with this computer?
- NIC: Um…
- MK: I got it. [pause] What are you looking for?
- MARJORIE: It’s a video in my email. But I can never remember my password.
- MK: That’s okay. Um… is this it?
- [Mouse clicks]
- MARJORIE: That’s it.
- NIC: What is it?
- MARJORIE: Just keep watching.
- FEMALE VOICE ON VIDEO: David, can you tell us where you are?
- DAVID: I’m in here.
- FEMALE VOICE: Okay, David, but where is here?
- DAVID: Inside.
- FEMALE VOICE: Inside. What do you mean, “inside,” inside the… hospital?
- DAVID: I’m in the hospital.
- FEMALE VOICE: Do you know which hospital?
- DAVID: It doesn’t matter.
- FEMALE VOICE: Why’s that? Why doesn’t it matter, David?
- DAVID: Because. It doesn’t care.
- FEMALE VOICE: What doesn’t care?
- DAVID: [whispering] It can see you… It’s waking up…!
- FEMALE VOICE: What’s waking up?
- DAVID: [whispering] It’s waking up!
- [Shouts, sounds of a struggle]
- FEMALE VOICE: David! What are you doing? David? David!
- [Loud sounds, screaming]
- DAVID: It’s! Waking! Up!
NIC: It’s Tanis. I’m Nic Silver. We’ll be back again in two weeks. Until then, keep looking.
SITE NOTE: Thank you to Melissa for this transcript. You're a rockstar!
