Speaker 1: Yeah, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2: The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
Speaker 2: the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 2: I regret to tell you that very many American lives
Speaker 2: in love.
Speaker 1: What herd to shut from the car. He's dead. Whether
Speaker 1: he rebird to president or four hours, people must get up.
Speaker 3: And I.
Speaker 2: Am here in the in between, to collect their spirits
Speaker 2: and carry them to what comes next. This road is
Speaker 2: not on any map. It spans the thresholds between their
Speaker 2: most forbidden desires and their gris fear. All I ask
Speaker 2: for in payment is a tale and accounting of their
Speaker 2: lives and the great temporary that is the land of
Speaker 2: the living.
Speaker 4: These are their stories. This is the passage.
Speaker 2: February twenty fourth, two thousand and six. The psychological landscape
Speaker 2: of an American city in the dawn of a new millennium.
Speaker 2: The covetous and the criminalized, the sceptered and the marginalized,
Speaker 2: creators and their critics. This is a place where truth
Speaker 2: has splintered into as many self reflections as there are onlookers,
Speaker 2: millions of egos angling for positions on their own stages,
Speaker 2: desperate to be seen by themselves, a million voices screaming
Speaker 2: to hear themselves, all wanting to fit into their own experience.
Speaker 2: Trapolis where loneliness and madness come to dance. And soon
Speaker 2: there will be as many realities as there are souls,
Speaker 2: each projecting themselves on their own screens. Already it is beginning,
Speaker 2: the countless din of infinite echoes, all converging in an
Speaker 2: ugliness so intricate and baroque that it takes a true
Speaker 2: seer to divine the beauty in it. We meet one
Speaker 2: up sere today, a conjurer of the future, if you will,
Speaker 2: who spent her life struggling upward to see and be
Speaker 2: seen herself a knife that cuts through the gristle of
Speaker 2: the chaos of America to pull out its bloody, beating heart.
Speaker 2: And once she has to describe it to us so
Speaker 2: beautifully and viscerally that we cannot believe we've never seen it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there she is at the corner, there, waiting on this bus,
Speaker 2: though she's not quite sure where it will take her.
Speaker 5: Octavia, Come, Octavia, come.
Speaker 6: Oh am, are your only passenger today?
Speaker 2: Please take a seat.
Speaker 7: I seem to have forgotten money, No matter, can.
Speaker 2: I pay you with your words. Please?
Speaker 7: What do I call you?
Speaker 2: The ferryman?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 6: I am a fairy man too, I suppose I mean,
Speaker 6: I listen, I carry.
Speaker 7: I don't judge, do you.
Speaker 2: It is not my way to judge, But my passengers
Speaker 2: often seek validation.
Speaker 6: Why not? We all want some affirmation. But critics can
Speaker 6: be cruel. They will not hesitate to give a writer
Speaker 6: a bad review, even in death, God like in their
Speaker 6: power to destroy the things they can't understand.
Speaker 7: You want the truth. I was my worst critic.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, I wouldn't worry about your judgment anymore
Speaker 6: than any others. I've been judged my whole life.
Speaker 7: When I was a child, I was only told what I.
Speaker 6: Couldn't do, what I shouldn't do. Black girls don't write.
Speaker 6: Black girls certainly don't write science fiction.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 6: Black girls don't win Hugo and Nebula awards. Black girls
Speaker 6: certainly don't win MacArthur Fellowships.
Speaker 4: Hum.
Speaker 6: I didn't listen, though I blocked out the could nots
Speaker 6: and should not. I chose to hear another voice instead,
Speaker 6: Be who you are and not who someone else thinks
Speaker 6: you ought to be. A voice said to me, voice
Speaker 6: inside me. The same voice said rite I didn't have
Speaker 6: time for dreaming. I didn't have time for inspiration. I
Speaker 6: just wrote until it became habit. I faried hopes, I
Speaker 6: faried fears, California dreaming the American dream. What happens to
Speaker 6: a dream deferred? I couldn't tell you. I wrote, that's
Speaker 6: the truth of it and the dream of it.
Speaker 7: Some of us don't dream. We just do.
Speaker 6: We write, and their story is still inside me.
Speaker 7: Where are you taking me?
Speaker 2: Well, Octavia?
Speaker 6: That depends No, no, no, no, I want to go back.
Speaker 6: I still have work to do. I didn't have a choice,
Speaker 6: Just like this getting on your bus. There were no
Speaker 6: choices but to pick up my pen, clean toilets are right,
Speaker 6: be's some awful man, secretary or right? Be dead inside
Speaker 6: or right? I didn't have a choice. Writing is private
Speaker 6: until it isn't. Creating a story is a personal thing
Speaker 6: between you and eternity. No one has to know the
Speaker 6: worlds you create, the pain you exercise. It's an escape
Speaker 6: until one day someone gives you fifteen dollars for a
Speaker 6: few of your words, and you forget the privacy of
Speaker 6: it all. Writing can set you free. It was my
Speaker 6: way to freedom and of future. I couldn't see any
Speaker 6: other way to get there, And again I had no choice.
Speaker 7: The future chose me.
Speaker 2: Here it continues to choose you.
Speaker 6: You mean to say, I can't go back, only forward?
Speaker 6: Do I have to do it alone? I might have
Speaker 6: been too alone in life.
Speaker 7: I don't want to be alone.
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 7: Wait? Who is this?
Speaker 8: Do I know them?
Speaker 7: Hello? Did she not see me?
Speaker 2: She cannot?
Speaker 7: Who is she?
Speaker 6: I know her? A white woman carrying a young boy.
Speaker 6: That the dress she wears covers her from ankle to chin,
Speaker 6: but the hem of her skirt is caked in mud.
Speaker 6: The boy is soaking, wet and not shivering. I know her,
Speaker 6: I know the boy. They are out of time, but
Speaker 6: I know them like I know my own reflection in
Speaker 6: this window.
Speaker 2: Ah, there are more.
Speaker 7: And this young couple.
Speaker 6: They sit next to the mother and child, as though
Speaker 6: they cannot help it.
Speaker 7: They are tied to each other. I know them too.
Speaker 7: The woman looks like me.
Speaker 6: If I could have made myself over, younger, marriageable, fierce
Speaker 6: yet to come? I wonder if these spirits are kindred
Speaker 6: to me my ancestors perhaps, or my lineage.
Speaker 7: Or both? Are you doing this?
Speaker 2: I don't invite these spirits? You do, aliens, monsters, You've
Speaker 2: kept so many spirits with you. Why, I don't know.
Speaker 7: I thought I knew, but now I'm not so sure.
Speaker 8: Ah.
Speaker 6: A pregnant man, a womanish creature. He's letting her sit first.
Speaker 6: Now he settles in carefully next to her. His belly
Speaker 6: protrudes slightly. It moves like the ocean. Something, something is
Speaker 6: alive inside of him.
Speaker 7: Now I remember these people.
Speaker 6: Oh, somehow my characters never felt like something I gave
Speaker 6: birth to. I form them out of clay, like God,
Speaker 6: like Zeus. A man in a police uniform, a woman
Speaker 6: speaking Spanish, A man carrying a rifle, the barrel radiating heat.
Speaker 6: His whip is scaped over with blood strapped to his hip.
Speaker 6: I see the female alien with blood on her claws.
Speaker 6: An old man reads from a sacred text, but the
Speaker 6: teen beside him writes her own. The monster inside the
Speaker 6: pregnant belly stirs. The lady in the back, the one
Speaker 6: that most resembles me. One of her arms is missing, gone,
Speaker 6: and her husband cautiously holds the hand she still has.
Speaker 6: She is indifferent to the absence of her limb and
Speaker 6: the offer of his love. Sers not of this realm,
Speaker 6: shadows from another world.
Speaker 7: Aliens.
Speaker 6: Alien is the word we use to describe that which
Speaker 6: we cannot understand, which we cannot comprehend, something from beyond us,
Speaker 6: something unknown, that which we fear the most. Ferrymen, How
Speaker 6: many ways can you define alien? Is it by badge
Speaker 6: or country? Is it skin or planet? Am I a
Speaker 6: monster because my voice is too deep and my body
Speaker 6: too strong? Are women monsters for death? Or men monsters
Speaker 6: for making babies they don't want? I've seen it all,
Speaker 6: I wrote to make sense of it. Could ever tell
Speaker 6: me why bad things happened? Why evil people rise into
Speaker 6: power for generations? Why the silence endure?
Speaker 7: So I wrote?
Speaker 6: I shaped the horror into something beautiful. I wrote from
Speaker 6: the shadows. But shadows are real phenomenon, physical and obstruction
Speaker 6: of light. I wrote from the shadows to make you
Speaker 6: see them. I wrote in defiance to show people they
Speaker 6: don't have to bend to the judgments of others. They
Speaker 6: can live their own way.
Speaker 7: Look at that.
Speaker 6: The ocean at night. I love a drive up the Pacific.
Speaker 6: Host writers are the most treacherous of criminals. I hurt,
Speaker 6: I maim, I torture and kill. I set women on
Speaker 6: hard journeys and tear open the stomachs of pregnant men.
Speaker 6: I travel through time and space with no regard for
Speaker 6: the laws of science. This is the blessed audacity of fiction.
Speaker 6: I am stronger than Zeus on Olympus. Zeus fears me.
Speaker 6: You driver, you fear me.
Speaker 2: Ha ha.
Speaker 6: It is a new feeling for you. I can see
Speaker 6: that I haven't lived one life. I lived a thousand. Hell,
Speaker 6: maybe you've taken me on this journey before, maybe a
Speaker 6: thousand times. I am a criminal of eternity. People applauded
Speaker 6: and paid me money to hurt and maim and kill.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 6: I wish the applause and money had been easy. That
Speaker 6: was a much tougher.
Speaker 7: Journey one we're on now. But I have died before.
Speaker 6: I died when they rejected my skin and my words.
Speaker 6: I died when they rejected the tenor of my voice
Speaker 6: or the strength of my stature. After every story, I died.
Speaker 6: What becomes of you if you've died before, if you've
Speaker 6: died again and again?
Speaker 7: I need I need a hair high.
Speaker 2: I can't breathe in air.
Speaker 6: Smells strange, hair like a dream. The landscape outside lush evergreen?
Speaker 7: What road is this? Driver?
Speaker 2: You're changing it as we go? This too is your story.
Speaker 6: Hum A dissipation of the haze into crystal blue clouds
Speaker 6: are welcome. I like moments of shade as much as
Speaker 6: I like sunshine. Shadows too, of course, the shadows are
Speaker 6: a blessing these passengers on the bus. My character is
Speaker 6: my children, the parables of my life. I used to
Speaker 6: fear that they were wedged into tight sleeping places and
Speaker 6: shackled to me in long chains.
Speaker 2: But they aren't.
Speaker 6: I said I had no choice, but now I'm not
Speaker 6: sure that's quite true. I had many choices, but I
Speaker 6: was so decisive, so determined, I felt my path destined.
Speaker 7: And when I could not.
Speaker 6: Write, I took for granted all that I had already written. Still,
Speaker 6: every story I created created me. I wrote to create myself.
Speaker 7: So what becomes of me now?
Speaker 6: Ferrymen, I want to be free. I do not believe
Speaker 6: in heaven or hell. Heaven is for the naive and
Speaker 6: hell is for the jaded. For sensible people, I'd expect
Speaker 6: a sensible after life.
Speaker 7: There is no after or before.
Speaker 3: Is there.
Speaker 7: Just next to next to next?
Speaker 2: Then tell me what is next?
Speaker 7: This slow moving bus, where is it going?
Speaker 6: I used up eight lives, hence my name, to get
Speaker 6: to this last voyage.
Speaker 7: Is this the dying American dream? Is this the last
Speaker 7: underground railroad? With you?
Speaker 6: Crawling through my self pity until I can finally see
Speaker 6: the stars? Maybe my manifest destiny was to tell the
Speaker 6: truth until it slept. I always thought my life was unfinished,
Speaker 6: in need of revision. Maybe it is okay like this,
Speaker 6: When I say I have so much more to say,
Speaker 6: I forget. There may be other voices out there ready
Speaker 6: to write those words, because I am able to do
Speaker 6: both reach into the past and see into the future
Speaker 6: to find the truth.
Speaker 2: It did write the truth, didn't you?
Speaker 6: I wrote my truth. Sometimes it felt like vengeance, but
Speaker 6: the truth isn't vengeance. It's just the truth. I wrote
Speaker 6: these stories for me, and others were drawn to them.
Speaker 6: I'm grateful for that. And now these characters have chosen
Speaker 6: to be with me. Yeah, what do you say, Ferryman?
Speaker 6: Do they keep traveling with us? Or do I go
Speaker 6: the rest of the way alone?
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, I don't make the decision.
Speaker 7: Okay, then.
Speaker 2: It seems uh, this is your stuff.
Speaker 6: Look out the window, the beauty and terror of it all.
Speaker 6: It is there, with or without me. I can't accept
Speaker 6: that my words are eternal children, be well.
Speaker 2: Thank you for the ride, Thank you for your words.
Speaker 2: Where there was no path toward the future, she forged one.
Speaker 2: Where the path was dark, She cast the light. A
Speaker 2: photographer of the American psyche, Why then shouldn't she forge
Speaker 2: her own afterlife? Don't tell anybody. I do wonder what
Speaker 2: dreams she will spin into reality beyond the veil Ah.
Speaker 2: It's not for me to know. All I can do
Speaker 2: is listen and see her on her passage.
Speaker 3: The Passage stars Dan Fogeler as the Ferryman. Episode features
Speaker 3: Juliet Jeffers.
Speaker 2: As Octavia Butler.
Speaker 3: Written by Nicki Salcedo with additional writing by Dan Bush
Speaker 3: and Nicholas Dakoski. Our executive producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick,
Speaker 3: and Alexander Williams. First assistant director, script's supervisor and production
Speaker 3: coordinator Sarah Klein. Music by Ben Lovett, additional music by
Speaker 3: Alexander Rodriguez, Casting by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon.
Speaker 3: Editing and sound designed by Dan Bush, dialogue editing and
Speaker 3: sound mixing by Jan Campos. Additional sound editing by Racket Sound.
Speaker 3: Our supervising producer is Josh Than, created by Dan Bush
Speaker 3: and Nicholas Dakoski. Produced by Dan Bush, The Passage is
Speaker 3: a production of iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures.