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Speaker 1: Yeah, I am the fairy man.

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Speaker 2: The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,

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Speaker 2: the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.

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Speaker 2: I regret to tell you that very many American lives

5
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Speaker 2: in love.

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Speaker 3: What herd to shouts from the car, He's dead. Whether

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Speaker 3: he rebird to president or four hours, people must get

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Speaker 3: up and identifica.

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Speaker 2: I am here in the in between, to collect their

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Speaker 2: spirits and carry them to what comes next. This road

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Speaker 2: is not on any map. It spans the thresholds between

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Speaker 2: their most forbidden desires and their greatest fear.

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Speaker 1: All I ask for.

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Speaker 2: In payment is a tale and accounting of their lives

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Speaker 2: and the great temporary that is the land we're living.

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Speaker 2: These are their stories.

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Speaker 4: This is the passage.

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Speaker 2: Princeton, New Jersey, February nineteen sixty seven. The world is frozen,

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Speaker 2: smells of ice bleach. A winter storm passed through last week,

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Speaker 2: swallowing the township in a lovely blanket of snow, erasing

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Speaker 2: the ugly mud of late winter, replacing it with a

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Speaker 2: clean white palette, unblemished, pure but purity is fleeting. The

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Speaker 2: snow melts turns to the barriers of black slush, A

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Speaker 2: frozen reserme, who are a sieve for all the daily grime, debris,

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Speaker 2: and stench of the twentieth century, And it keeps it

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Speaker 2: on display until the spring melt. And so it is

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Speaker 2: with everything, All forms but sieves filtering the cosmic debris.

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Speaker 2: All figures are but a collection of particles caught in

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Speaker 2: a fleeting dance. All souls are but at ease in

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Speaker 2: the great river of time. So it is with my

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Speaker 2: next passenger, j. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the bomb,

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Speaker 2: a man of science, truly, a man so obsessed with

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Speaker 2: the pursuit of knowledge, so in love with the question

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Speaker 2: of how, that he pursues into a type of hell

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Speaker 2: for himself and for the Earth. No idea, no matter

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Speaker 2: how pure it appears, lives in a vacuum. It's one

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Speaker 2: thing to steal fire from the gods. It's entirely something

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Speaker 2: else to safeguard that power from other thieves. In this way,

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Speaker 2: humankind has continuously improved this arms technology since the Stone Age,

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Speaker 2: and now it wields a weapon so powerful it is

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Speaker 2: too destructive to be used. And the only way these

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Speaker 2: leaders can conceive of defending against complete annihilation is to

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Speaker 2: harness the power for themselves. It is not within range

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Speaker 2: of human imagination. What will happen when the world goes

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Speaker 2: to war with the technology it possesses Now, all of

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Speaker 2: the bombs dropped in the Second World War combined, a

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Speaker 2: war that wiped entire cities off the map, pale in

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Speaker 2: comparison to the destructive power of a single missile shrapped

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Speaker 2: into one nuclear submarine and wired to a trigger. Genghis Khan,

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Speaker 2: Alexander the Great Hitler, none of these had such power,

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Speaker 2: a weapon of gods in the hands of human beings.

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Speaker 2: As another of my brilliant passengers said, when such a

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Speaker 2: war happens, the one after that will undoubtedly be fought

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Speaker 2: with sticks and stones. Robert Oppernheimer was the father of

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Speaker 2: this nuclear age. On its surface, bright clean energy for

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Speaker 2: healthy families and a strong, secure nation, pure as the snow.

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Speaker 2: But beneath this blanket of white, this nation royals with

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Speaker 2: unsatiable lust forevermore power, ignited by fear and fueled by madness.

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Speaker 2: Oppenheimer sat at the starting line of this gray and

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Speaker 2: terrible arms race. He held the starting gun to the sky.

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Speaker 2: He pulled the trigger. Ah, Robert Appernheim.

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Speaker 5: Ah, so you've arrived I had not imagined you would,

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Speaker 5: But the world holds more than mere imagination can contain.

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Speaker 5: Are you death?

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Speaker 2: I'm here to offer you passage.

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Speaker 5: Interesting? Well, though I was a man of science, I've

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Speaker 5: become increasingly open minded since the first attack. A nice

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Speaker 5: car as well, no doubt, an illusion down to the

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Speaker 5: tint of the windows in design. The same bacon FBI

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Speaker 5: agent would escort me in, though I've certainly fallen out

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Speaker 5: of their favor these past years. Amazing how the destruction

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Speaker 5: of innocence is applauded with patriotic fervor, but warnings from

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Speaker 5: scientists are only cause for condemnation and ridicule. Come, do

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Speaker 5: you know how long the contamination dust from a single

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Speaker 5: nuclear test remains radioactive? How long it will be before

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Speaker 5: any nuclear sight can possibly hope to be habitable. Bombs

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Speaker 5: we dropped in World War Two were one one thousandth

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Speaker 5: the power of the devices tested to day, and the

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Speaker 5: devastation those first bombs cost. Do you hear them? You do,

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Speaker 5: don't you? The cries, sound of the wind on jagged rocks,

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Speaker 5: the sounds of broken bodies crushed by rubble ribs protruding

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Speaker 5: his pierced lungs fail to gather breath. I see all

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Speaker 5: of them, My God, I am all of them are I,

84
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Speaker 5: of course, and they are me. There is a woman

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Speaker 5: holding her child. She can't know what's happening. How could

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Speaker 5: any one? She only has time for instinct as she

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Speaker 5: clutches the child to her chest. The eyes are the

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Speaker 5: first to bear blest. It is she that could not

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Speaker 5: watch her child dissolve in her arms. To the outside world,

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Speaker 5: it would seem their suffering ended in no time at all.

91
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Speaker 5: But we physicists know that time is simply an abstraction.

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Speaker 5: It exists only as a convenient wa to denote our

93
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Speaker 5: shared ongoing entropy. And I tell you our collective decay

94
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Speaker 5: and destruction is more intertwined than I ever thought possible,

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Speaker 5: the interconnected structure of the universe. But I have made

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Speaker 5: mistakes in my life. No, to call them mistakes would

97
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Speaker 5: be disingenuous. I intended, worked towards, and accomplished what I

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Speaker 5: set out to do. I have begun to pay for

99
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Speaker 5: those actions, and believe we are a short distance from

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Speaker 5: where I will suffer for a time eternal, if there

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Speaker 5: be any justice. Now that I've died, the pain is worsened.

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Speaker 5: It seems to have taken on a more minute physical quality.

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Speaker 5: No longer does a simple nervous system, easily dulled with medicine,

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Speaker 5: quickly overwhelmed and protected by the brain's defenses, solely carry

105
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Speaker 5: the burden in parts of me unknown, I feel the

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Speaker 5: atomic fires that have killed thousands of people over I

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Speaker 5: am their collective anguish. Yet I observed myself too. Why

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Speaker 5: not me? Why did my life bring me to this

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Speaker 5: vantage point? What are the chances of the billions of

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Speaker 5: people who have ever lived and died? What are the

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Speaker 5: chances that I would end up on this side of

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Speaker 5: the bomb? Why did I not drown with those burning

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Speaker 5: as they sought relief by flinging themselves into the river's currents.

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Speaker 5: Why did I not vomit irradiated blood in such quantities

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Speaker 5: I shouldn't be possible. Why was I faded to only

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Speaker 5: observe from the safety of the far shore of position

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Speaker 5: and stature? But even still, there is another aspect. I

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Speaker 5: witness the loss of the survivors, and I know it

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Speaker 5: will never cease. Whole families disintegrate it into their constituent parts.

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Speaker 5: But how much worse is it for those who survive

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Speaker 5: their mourning? They're guilt. It's not even the eventual suicides,

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Speaker 5: the poisonings, the self inflicted gunshot wounds. Those are a relief.

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Speaker 5: I witness the unending grief of those left behind. I

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Speaker 5: don't suppose you'll tell me where we're going until we

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Speaker 5: get there, and do not worry if you are capable

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Speaker 5: of such a thing. I have no protestations as to

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Speaker 5: my fate. I long for it. I imagine these voices

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Speaker 5: are a manifestation of my guilt. The human psyche is

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Speaker 5: capable of infinite fantasy and metaphor. Why is it then

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Speaker 5: that empathy escapes us? Can't you hear the anguish in

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Speaker 5: their voices? I suppose guilt is a sort of penance,

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Speaker 5: But the sickles of their screams continue to rip away

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Speaker 5: whatever noble intentions remain within me. When it began immediately

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Speaker 5: after Hiroshima, I awoke screaming, thinking the culprits tore it

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Speaker 5: my flesh. I soon realize the truth. Their punishment cuts

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Speaker 5: much deeper than box. And what can be done about

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Speaker 5: my agony? My oppressors rend fundamental matter through the terrible

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Speaker 5: strength of their collective emotion. Is there any wisdom, consciousness,

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Speaker 5: any evolution? At all, any evolution at all, it can

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Speaker 5: be achieved through such absolute suffering. H excuse me, my blood,

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Speaker 5: it seems sharpness in my throat, like a rusted blade.

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Speaker 5: My executioners are infinite in number, an infinitesimal in size.

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Speaker 5: I posit that they are not comprised of matter, but

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Speaker 5: of the vast empty space between matter. As the misshape

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Speaker 5: and nuclei of our experiments wrapped their way round Earth,

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Speaker 5: buried themselves into our crops, our water, our bodies. The

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Speaker 5: lamentation of those I damned came in their wake. Those

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Speaker 5: who tear me asunder speak no words, for anguish is universal.

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Speaker 5: It should be me too, endlessly torn apart adam by

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Speaker 5: anam neurons, screaming all the while I have witnessed each

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Speaker 5: death a hundred times over, every second of the day.

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Speaker 5: No even in the spaces between seconds, in the gaps

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Speaker 5: between perceptions. They tears what is me, the electricity between synapses.

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Speaker 5: But these horrors do not twist or mutate my DNA

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Speaker 5: I into it in every detail, the horrors and atrocities

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Speaker 5: that we, the members of the project, our government, and

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Speaker 5: our people have freely distributed. Perhaps my soul is at

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Speaker 5: the very flash point of fault, the ground zero of blame.

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Speaker 5: But I do not see myself as a martyr for

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Speaker 5: some higher cause. I am not so vain to think

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Speaker 5: that I am the only one due to be held responsible,

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Speaker 5: or that my suffering is the inevitable path to some

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Speaker 5: sort of deliverance. Though if this were impossible, I have

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Speaker 5: spent the vast majority of my life trying to be

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Speaker 5: of benefit to humanity. And what has that gotten us?

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Speaker 5: Absolute destruction. Three weeks exactly from the Trinity test to

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Speaker 5: the annihilation of Hiroshima, irrationalized our work to ourselves. Scientists

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Speaker 5: are good at that. It should be blasphemy for me

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Speaker 5: to even speak of heaven. If I, for all my crimes,

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Speaker 5: am not destined to be an inmate in a Hadean cell,

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Speaker 5: who among us is? The molecules that comprise the victims

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Speaker 5: of my crimes disperse across the Earth, searching on the westerlies.

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Speaker 5: They have found me. The energy interlaced between their elemental

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Speaker 5: bonds is anguish, plain and simple. These atoms are pulled

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Speaker 5: from infants, mothers, tests, subjects. They cling to my bones

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Speaker 5: and sing to me of every life destroyed. The truth

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Speaker 5: of physics is this there is malice between atoms. Nations

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Speaker 5: agree not to blow each other to hell. Pinkies swearing

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Speaker 5: on crossed fingers while they wear the smile of a

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Speaker 5: spider in hiding. Perhaps human suffering itself is a form

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Speaker 5: of energy. And I am a conduit. I was there

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Speaker 5: when the bomb fell. I am there now. With every scream,

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Speaker 5: I inhabit the body of another victim, another soul whose

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Speaker 5: blackened skull is still perhaps hidden in the debris. In

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Speaker 5: this moment, I am a baker. There are plains overhead.

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Speaker 5: Do you hear them? There were always so many. We

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Speaker 5: tuned out their ceaseless droning. What else could we do?

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Speaker 5: Even in war? You have to live. I am at work.

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Speaker 5: When the world ends, my body slams to the floor.

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Speaker 5: The shop becomes upturned and throws itself apart, And yet

191
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Speaker 5: I hear no sound. The end of the world seems

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Speaker 5: so quiet. Glass and dust rains sideways through burning air.

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Speaker 5: The customer that had just left the front door of

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Speaker 5: my shop becomes a silhouette against the wall. I do

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Speaker 5: not yet know that this is the quietest it will

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Speaker 5: ever be in my life. Again, then the first sound

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Speaker 5: I see people running, the fires, the collapsing homes, that

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Speaker 5: they remain silent at first. Anyway, it's not that the

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Speaker 5: ringing in my ears is fading, but that suffering becomes louder.

200
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Speaker 5: But I am not him.

201
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Speaker 4: I am me.

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Speaker 5: I did not stumble out of my front door with

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Speaker 5: blood pouring from my ears. No, I only witness arm

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Speaker 5: my captain, bodies and parts of bodies caked with ash

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Speaker 5: and blood, people aflame and begging for death. I find

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Speaker 5: myself in a trance, sleep walking, almost following a familiar path,

207
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Speaker 5: and I realize I am headed for home. But I

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Speaker 5: will never arrive. I can't find the path, how can I?

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Speaker 5: The world is a burning snow globe. The only semblance

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Speaker 5: it holds to the place I knew before is in

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Speaker 5: the skeletons of buildings still burning. But I am not them.

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Speaker 5: I am not still wandering in a day. When I

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Speaker 5: notice black paint, begin disdain the horrors that surround me. No,

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Speaker 5: not paint rain. Yes, a black rain is washing overall.

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Speaker 5: A thought occurs to me. This is a uniquely human torture.

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Speaker 5: No vengeful God would have dared drenk this up. It

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Speaker 5: is not I who looks upward to see where the

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Speaker 5: rain could come from, and that blackened sky is not

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Speaker 5: the last thing I see. That radioactive mixture of debris,

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Speaker 5: moisture and human ash falls not into my eyes and

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Speaker 5: takes not my sight. It does not burn, and I

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Speaker 5: do not scream until consciousness fads. I do not die.

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Speaker 5: And yet this will happen to them after two hellish

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Speaker 5: weeks in a military hospital, as they poke and prod

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Speaker 5: what remains of them, but not me. I won't become

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Speaker 5: a festering mass of idiot cells, never properly dividing, oozinging

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Speaker 5: to themselves, all the while not me. I can only

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Speaker 5: imagine I was there when the bomb fell. This ride,

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Speaker 5: I wish I could say that it's comforting. It reminds

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Speaker 5: me much of my time with the project, A silent

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Speaker 5: driver escorting me to an unknown location, and truly only

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Speaker 5: myself for company. What progress humanity could make if we

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Speaker 5: weren't so engaged in eating our own. It may be

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Speaker 5: that I have become emboldened by your silence. No doubt

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Speaker 5: you've ferried your share of self loathing riders to their destination,

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Speaker 5: though perhaps none quite so guilty. Perhaps it would benefit

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Speaker 5: humanity as a collective that I be condemned to the

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Speaker 5: fires of hades. Perhaps my suffering may be able to

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Speaker 5: sway the physical world in some real, tangible way from

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Speaker 5: past the veil, some beneficial way. I know now that

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Speaker 5: organic and inorganic matter, life and death are ridiculous nonsense

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Speaker 5: definitions given by our prescriptivist mindset. Yet again, what can

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Speaker 5: be done with this knowledge? Tell me, sir? Could it be?

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Speaker 5: Could it be that the altruism of a species dictated

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Speaker 5: by eternal reward and punishment is at least in some

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Speaker 5: way correct? Could my suffering grace thus yet unborn to

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Speaker 5: an even greater happiness?

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Speaker 6: Our country is one steeped in fear.

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Speaker 5: America down to its roots grow stronger through fear. We

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Speaker 5: are powerful and reactionary bunch, and if there are no

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Speaker 5: witches to find, we will always make our own. We

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Speaker 5: are built on such malignant ideals, and it's absolutely what

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Speaker 5: has strengthened us. I spent my life in pursuit of

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Speaker 5: understanding and discovery, but I have discovered first and foremost

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Speaker 5: is this. Whatever knowledge you gain, you give to the

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Speaker 5: best of humanity, and you simultaneously give to the worst

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Speaker 5: of us. What exponential power we grant evil and so

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Speaker 5: so quickly the more we collectively discover the farther behind

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Speaker 5: each individual is in the whole scheme of things. So

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Speaker 5: we put our minds together like ants to solve some

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Speaker 5: massive problem. And by God, do we solve these problems

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Speaker 5: we've created, we will be the end of ourselves, I've

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Speaker 5: no doubt. And when we do, when our molecules coast

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Speaker 5: on the trade winds and pool under the currents around

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Speaker 5: the Sargasso Sea, we all of us will know the

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Speaker 5: pain beneath it. All victims upon victims will try to

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Speaker 5: find comfort, safety, refuge, and retribution. Radioactive elements that used

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Speaker 5: to make up our our loved ones will smash into ourselves,

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Speaker 5: tearing us asunder. Even more, This is beyond neurance, beyond

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Speaker 5: chemical signals in the brain, electrical impulses. Agony is the

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Speaker 5: one unifying function of the universe. I know there isn't

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Speaker 5: an escape nor an end. Do you know how many people,

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Speaker 5: discovering their loved ones strewn about the street try to

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Speaker 5: collect the pieces more than you would expect. I have

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Speaker 5: not been that mother collecting slippery pieces of her proudest creation.

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Speaker 5: I have not been those pieces. Please, dear driver, take

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Speaker 5: me to hell punishment can be worse than what I

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Speaker 5: feel now. This may be my hubris speaking, but could

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Speaker 5: unceasing pain be any less of a punishment than what

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Speaker 5: humanity puts the smallest and the weakest of us through

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Speaker 5: the old gods know that it's the respite that hurts

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Speaker 5: the most. Sissyphus must rue the walk down the mountain.

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Speaker 5: There's a joy in suffering, there's a fear in safety.

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Speaker 5: When Prometheus passes out from the pain every night, how

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Speaker 5: he must dread that temporary calm empathy, it seems, is

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Speaker 5: not some frightened bird in our hands. It does not

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Speaker 5: escape us, but erodes, bit by bit with each choice

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Speaker 5: we make against it. It becomes a burden, an obstacle

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Speaker 5: in our path towards that unobtainable idea of a more

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Speaker 5: complete understanding. We run toward this idea, never moving, yet trampling,

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Speaker 5: all the while those we imagined to be against us.

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Speaker 5: I should be made to suffer like them. I should

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Speaker 5: be torn apart, particle by particle for eternity like them.

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Speaker 5: If destruction is the ultimate destination of our species, if

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Speaker 5: the human race is doomed to transfer our energy into tragedies,

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Speaker 5: so be it. Let me scream from the depths of hell.

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Speaker 5: Let my DNA melt, Let me grieve in an endless howl.

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Speaker 5: Perhaps my voice, made manifest in the guilty consciousness of

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Speaker 5: my co conspirators, would help to keep a finger from

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Speaker 5: a trigger or a bombay closed. Had me tells chorus,

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Speaker 5: I deserve nothing more. Ah, we seem to be stopping.

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Speaker 5: I hope my words have swayed you. What is this, ferryman?

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Speaker 2: This is your stop, Robert.

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Speaker 5: This cannot be right.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

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Speaker 5: This was my desk, my chair, and I recognize this place.

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Speaker 5: This is where we the first tests explain well.

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Speaker 2: This, Robert, is where you are meant to wait for what?

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Speaker 2: For the end?

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Speaker 5: What end?

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Speaker 2: For the end of the damage done by your invention.

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Speaker 2: You will sit, observe and wait, wait for the last

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Speaker 2: fallout of the last bomb to dissipate, for the background

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Speaker 2: radiation levels to decay, until all nuclear contamination, of every

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Speaker 2: nuclear test, every detonation is gone, and for the world

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Speaker 2: to heal around it. You sat at this desk and

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Speaker 2: did the work to create it, and now you will

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Speaker 2: sit until your work is undone. By time you will

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Speaker 2: not get the catharsis you crave.

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Speaker 5: Until then, what am I to do until that time.

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Speaker 5: It could be centuries. Yeah, and when the waiting is done,

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Speaker 5: it's not my decision to make so the purgatory of

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Speaker 5: my own guilt before the flames, so be it.

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Speaker 2: The destroyer of worlds has moved on. He brought a

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Speaker 2: great understanding to mankind. But this understanding came with a

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Speaker 2: terrible costs and blood and despair. So many worked on

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Speaker 2: this Adam bomb. Blame has often spread thin in these circumstances.

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Speaker 2: It is rare to see someone take the weight of

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Speaker 2: it so squarely on his shoulders. The technology that he

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Speaker 2: left behind will continue to haunt mankind for generations to come.

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Speaker 2: More and more of the bombs will be constructed and

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Speaker 2: stockpiled and used to threaten and control.

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Speaker 4: And then.

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Speaker 2: One day, yeah, well you see this madman Willa come

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Speaker 2: along and wow, But that's a sale for another day.

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Speaker 7: The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Ferryman. This episode

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Speaker 7: features Bill Rogers as Robert Oppenheimer. Written by Stephen Williams,

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Speaker 7: with additional writing by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakoski. Our

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Speaker 7: executive producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams,

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Speaker 7: First assistant director, script's supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.

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Speaker 7: Music by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting

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Speaker 7: by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and sound

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Speaker 7: designed by Dan Bush, Dialogue editing and sound mixing by

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Speaker 7: Juan Campos. Additional sound editing by Racket Sound. Our supervising

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Speaker 7: producer is Josh Thane. Created by Dan Bush and Nicholas Takowski.

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Speaker 7: Produced by Dan Bush. The Passage is a production of

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Speaker 7: iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures.