Speaker 1: Thirteen days of Halloween is a production of I heart radio,
Speaker 1: Blumhouse television and grim and mild from Aaron mankey headphones recommended.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion advised. Good evening, friend, I have something very
Speaker 1: special to show you, and the full impact of this
Speaker 1: particular place can only be felt on a cloudless night
Speaker 1: such as this. No need to change your nightwear is
Speaker 1: quite fitting for our destination. Come now, the heavens wait.
Speaker 1: Once again, we must ride in our trusty elevator, this
Speaker 1: time to the very top. Watch your step. Tonight we
Speaker 1: are going to see one of the architect's greatest achievements.
Speaker 1: You see, the design of this grand structure did not
Speaker 1: spring into his head unbidden. He ached to build his
Speaker 1: magnum opus, but sadly he was without inspiration until a
Speaker 1: late night journey to lad observatory, were he and a
Speaker 1: writer of some distinction together saw something in the stars,
Speaker 1: a pattern, a celestial plan that only he could comprehend.
Speaker 1: You See, the stars spoke to our architect and he
Speaker 1: responded with this place. Again your step, brace yourself for
Speaker 1: the universe. This is the great observatory, an exact replica
Speaker 1: of the facility where the architect had his empiphany, with
Speaker 1: minor adjustments here and there. This was the earliest part
Speaker 1: of Hawthorn manner to be built, and the plans for
Speaker 1: the rest did not solidify until he further decipher to
Speaker 1: heaven's secrets. Please gaze into the telescope. How clear the
Speaker 1: stars are from here? Yes, directly above us. Do you
Speaker 1: see the constellations of Malacoda, Acino and Barbariccia? Who Shapes
Speaker 1: the architect used in plotting the house's course, a house
Speaker 1: built to stretch the confines of space and time? Hello,
Speaker 1: who goes there? Ah, why am I not surprised to
Speaker 1: find you up here on such a night? Be Your
Speaker 1: dear and listen closely. We grow ever closer to our goal,
Speaker 1: the door. Remember you, remember you. To carry on. I
Speaker 1: shall fetch the Astrolabe. The magic of science is that
Speaker 1: it creates order from a parent chaos. This telescope captures photons,
Speaker 1: particles of light but have traveled billions of miles over
Speaker 1: billions of years, and transcribes them into a picture on
Speaker 1: a piece of glass you could hold in your hand.
Speaker 1: Your cell phone receives data encoded in radio waves and
Speaker 1: translates it into voices, images, symphony. Order from apparent chaos,
Speaker 1: where chaos really just means enough data points that we
Speaker 1: can't make sense of it. And some of sciences most
Speaker 1: effective magic is more biological than you'd care to think.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've heard that your body is filled with microscopic organisms,
Speaker 1: that they outnumber your own selves. It's true. Most of
Speaker 1: them live in your guts. There are nine point eight
Speaker 1: million microbes common to the human microbiome, identified sequence modified.
Speaker 1: Their combined genetic sequence is thirty times as long as
Speaker 1: the genomes of the humans who contain them. And with
Speaker 1: these microbes, science has programmed solutions to an astonishing number
Speaker 1: of human problems. Maybe you didn't know the bugs in
Speaker 1: your gut train your immune system, touch your central nerves.
Speaker 1: The actions and byproducts of the creatures living inside you
Speaker 1: can control digestion in diabetes, heart disease, your body shape,
Speaker 1: your mental health, and on and on. You can solve
Speaker 1: any of these things by taking one pillar or another.
Speaker 1: I take these for acne, to others for anxiety, but
Speaker 1: my parents were always uncomfortable talking about the anxiety part.
Speaker 1: One Night I was dog sitting for them and their
Speaker 1: fundraiser gala another chance for them to impress the sort
Speaker 1: of voters who only donate to the poor when they
Speaker 1: get an exclusive dinner out of it. I'd backed off
Speaker 1: els a crap called. I told them so that night.
Speaker 1: I really meant that. The couch called and a literal
Speaker 1: eternity of streaming video potential. Besides, their dog, little johnny,
Speaker 1: would poop in the closet if you left him alone
Speaker 1: for more than three consecutive hours. My intense hope for
Speaker 1: no one at the gala to let slip to my
Speaker 1: parents that I just accepted an internship with the public
Speaker 1: defense office was basically ruining everything I tried to watch.
Speaker 1: The first vaguely suspicious thing I remember was a deep
Speaker 1: rumbling in my gut, like a video game controller when
Speaker 1: your character takes a hit and another and another, a
Speaker 1: whole Combo. But I figured it was arrant gala anxiety
Speaker 1: or that the leftover tie curry had been finishing was
Speaker 1: a couple of days too old. Either way, I was
Speaker 1: actively ignoring it when Johnny parked up, jumped off his
Speaker 1: couch and quick clacked off down the Hardwood Hall toward
Speaker 1: the center of the House, and that was suspicious prime
Speaker 1: closet territory. So I followed. I found him sniffing at
Speaker 1: the crack to the lower level door. He barked at
Speaker 1: it once, as if experimenting with the sound. Then he
Speaker 1: shifted to a growl. My stomach shifted to the rumble,
Speaker 1: back but sharp this time, cramps snaking between my hips.
Speaker 1: That's when the smell hit me. Above the normal cellar
Speaker 1: must and sea salt twinge of that house, something sweet
Speaker 1: and thick I couldn't define, and the sound rushing so
Speaker 1: low I thought it was my heart beat in my
Speaker 1: ears until I realized it was the pipes. It was
Speaker 1: the house's blood, not mine, roiling through those pipes like
Speaker 1: the whole place was a shell I'd held up to
Speaker 1: my ear and my guts. I'd heard of colonies acting
Speaker 1: odd getting gassy before, but this hurt. I felt my
Speaker 1: skin crawling and when I looked down there was a shape, shapes,
Speaker 1: pushing my shirt outward and pulling, puckering down. It felt
Speaker 1: like to the bone, snatching the fabric away. I watched
Speaker 1: the flesh of my belly forming a moving image, ripples
Speaker 1: like smoke. A cold flush exploded from the base of
Speaker 1: my spine up to my brain, more hopeless than I'd
Speaker 1: ever felt before. The pills and without knowing that I'd
Speaker 1: started running. Have you ever us time while you were driving,
Speaker 1: your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road?
Speaker 1: Then you realize half an hour is past and you
Speaker 1: don't remember any of it. Somehow the meat of you
Speaker 1: functioned to drive the car while you were somewhere else.
Speaker 1: That's what it felt like when I came back to myself.
Speaker 1: I was standing on the front lawn of my parents house,
Speaker 1: the grass cold under my feet and Johnny's fur soft
Speaker 1: as he squirmed against my arms. There was a street
Speaker 1: light at the end of the driveway, pulsing brighter than
Speaker 1: dimmer than brighter, perfectly in time with my still twisting insides,
Speaker 1: and at my back the blistering heat of my parents
Speaker 1: house burning. Maybe I did hear something, a woff of ignition,
Speaker 1: that draw of breath of fire takes when it's catching hold,
Speaker 1: but all I remember is the sound my guts turning over.
Speaker 1: It felt more like instinct, but I don't think it
Speaker 1: was mine. I guess it depends on how much you
Speaker 1: consider what lives inside of me to be me. Have
Speaker 1: you heard of that thought experiment? Theseus's paradox, you know.
Speaker 1: Is a ship still the same ship if you've replaced
Speaker 1: every part of it. What if our initial blueprint isn't
Speaker 1: really us? How much needs to be added before we
Speaker 1: become ourselves? Does part of the mind, or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it, live in the gaps of that blueprint?
Speaker 1: They never did find an arsonist, the accelerant. It wasn't
Speaker 1: man made. It was more like a bio fuel. It
Speaker 1: was in the pipes, you know. They used micropes to
Speaker 1: make that stuff too. Maybe it was all an accident,
Speaker 1: meaningless chaos. But what if I was responsible? What if
Speaker 1: they were responsible? This symbiotic colony of creatures inside me,
Speaker 1: that army? Were they responding to something? Were they protecting me,
Speaker 1: or were they angry at me? I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: afraid of what might happen if I keep feeding them
Speaker 1: these but not as afraid of what might happen if
Speaker 1: I don't. M M Ah, something's wrong. I I apologize
Speaker 1: for stepping away. Oh, you look exhausted. Perhaps you should
Speaker 1: leave the stars to us for the evening and get
Speaker 1: some sleep. This is an astrolabe. Oh, I know it
Speaker 1: seems a little outdated to you such a thing, but
Speaker 1: there is something about it. The architect used this very
Speaker 1: tool to chart and measure the stars. That lends our
Speaker 1: little exploration a sort of symmetry, wouldn't you say? Tonight
Speaker 1: I will beat the stars and all the night of
Speaker 1: the ascension, we too will know where the door is located.
Speaker 1: So many secrets hiding out there in the chasms between Gods.
Speaker 1: You Sho would rest, my friend, great things are in
Speaker 1: store for us. Tomorrow. We will meet in the architect's
Speaker 1: personal chambers. Are Answers. We will undoubtedly find them there.
Speaker 1: For now at you. Thirteen days of Halloween was created
Speaker 1: by Matt Frederick and Alex Williams and executive produced by
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky, starring Keegan Michael Key as the caretaker. Today's
Speaker 1: story was written and performed by Lauren Vogelbaum and directed
Speaker 1: by Matt Frederick, additional writing and script supervision from Nicholas Dakowski,
Speaker 1: with editing and sound designed by Josh thane. Only two
Speaker 1: days remain. Tomorrow, another story. Children worshiped danger and love
Speaker 1: mystery most of all. We were eleven years old that Halloween,
Speaker 1: so we decided we would visit the witch house for ourselves. Remember,
Speaker 1: we like you, news stories. We like you. We're brave
Speaker 1: and no matter where we went every street. Let us,
Speaker 1: like you, to this place and the things beneath it.
Speaker 1: Thirteen days of Halloween is a production of I heart radio,
Speaker 1: Blumhouse television and Grimm and mild from Aaron Mankey. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows, and learn more about thirteen days of Halloween
Speaker 1: at Grimm and mild dot com.