14 characters: Announcer, Computer, Mateo, Zainab, Aniket, Judy, Zhang, Korolev, Sanders, Exmayor, Alien One, Alien Two, Jenkins, Pat Singh
Click on a character's name to get their lines highlighted.
Mateo (19 lines, 231 words, 7.61%) - [Richard N] Mateo Juma has a wry sense of humor. [complete]
Zainab (17 lines, 209 words, 6.88%) - [Roo Ryder] Zainab Juma. [complete]
Exmayor (35 lines, 809 words, 26.64%) - [Roger Arnold] Former mayor now 92. [complete]
Sanders (29 lines, 562 words, 18.51%) - [Erin Suminsby] Julianna Sanders. [complete]
Aniket (7 lines, 129 words, 4.25%) - [Genesis Greenwood] Peters kid, aged 40ish. [complete]
Judy (12 lines, 140 words, 4.61%) - [Grace Trombley] Peters kid, aged 40ish. [complete]
Jenkins (2 lines, 66 words, 2.17%) - [Christopher Wertman] Somebody from Mathilde. [complete]
Pat Singh (3 lines, 139 words, 4.58%) - [MercilessBat] Somebody from Mathilde. [complete]
Korolev (11 lines, 249 words, 8.2%) - [SkyBearial] Just some guy from 253 Mathilde. [complete]
Zhang (10 lines, 193 words, 6.35%) - [Ella Rhee] Just someone from 253 Mathilde. [complete]
Computer (4 lines, 42 words, 1.38%) - [bot] The voice of the ship computer. [complete]
Alien One (1 line, 4 words, 0.13%) - [Amanda Battle] An alien. [complete]
Alien Two (7 lines, 202 words, 6.65%) - [bot] An alien who knows English. [complete]
Announcer (5 lines, 62 words, 2.04%) - [Erin Suminsby] Reads opening, closing and credits. [complete]
Script format: Margined | Marginless (for phone viewing)
Listen along as you read:
1 Announcer: Previously on 253 Mathilde...
2 SOUND: will insert clips of important things to remember at beginning of each episode
3 Announcer: And now...
4 SOUND: sleeping bags and sleep breathing sounds, tossing and turning
5 SOUND: ship shakes, occasional muffled grizzly growls through scene, then alarm noise
6 Computer: Alert, alert, aggressive creature with potential to damage hull!
7 Mateo: [groggy] Wha-?
8 Zainab: [groggy] Computer, what's attacking us?!
9 SOUND: ship shakes again
10 Computer: Creature is approximately 2.7 meters tall, estimated weight 370 kilograms, covered in brown fur.
11 SOUND: ship shakes again
12 Mateo: Show me a visual!
13 SOUND: displaying effect
14 Mateo: Wow what a monster!
15 Zainab: Oh, that's a bear!
16 Computer: Conjecture best matches known data for species Ursus arctos horribilis, coloquially known as the grizzly bear.
17 Zainab: Why didn't you just say so before, computer?
18 Computer: Species thought extinct in California.
19 SOUND: ship shakes again
20 Zainab: We'll have to teach you not to trust hundred and sixty four thousand year old data.
21 Mateo: We'd better do something before it turns us on our side and does some serious damage!
22 Zainab: Are you volunteering to step outside and negotiate?
23 Mateo: Maybe if I can get to the roof I can get a safe shot at it?
24 Zainab: The ship is only 3 meters tall, I don't think you'll be out of its reach.
25 SOUND: ship shakes again
26 Mateo: Well, I'll be harder to get than if I go out the front door and we don't have a back door, so let's open the roof access hatch...
27 SOUND: they press button which opens roof access hatch, and growls become more distinct but grizzly backs off slightly in confusion
28 Mateo: I don't want to go all the way out if I can help it, just enough to get a clear shot... bring that chair over so I can stand on it.
29 SOUND: she brings it over, he stands
30 Zainab: Not high enough, your head is barely reaching.
31 Mateo: I'll have to pull myself up there, then you can throw me my weapon.
32 Zainab: No, wait!
33 Mateo: I'm open to alternatives.
34 Zainab: You stay where you are, and lift me up. I think you can lift me but I can't lift you.
35 Mateo: Okay I'll try, if you want to come back down just give me a quick scream.
36 SOUND: lifts her, she fires weapon
37 Zainab: Got him!
38 SOUND: they collapse along with chair
39 Mateo: Just in time. You okay?
40 Zainab: Yeah, probably some bruises I'll feel later.
41 Mateo: Well, that was an interesting way to wake up. What else is on today's agenda?
42 Zainab: Might as well find out the rest of the fate of the human race.
43 Mateo: Ah yes, there was that little item. Shall I resume playing the videos now, or after breakfast?
44 SOUND: opening theme
45 Announcer: Quiet Please dot org presents Two Fifty Three Mathilde. After leaving the solar system in the 22nd century, the asteroid 253 Mathilde has circled the galaxy. Now two explorers have arrived at their final destination: the planet Earth, where 164,000 years have passed.
46 Announcer: Episode 28 - Earth Abides
47 SOUND: cooking sounds, followed by table sitting and dining sounds later in the scene
48 Aniket: Judy, can you check the berries for me?
49 SOUND: she checks
50 Judy: They're ready. How 'bout the venison?
51 Aniket: Just finished, so I think we're ready to serve. Hope the other team makes it back soon, they're late.
52 SOUND: front door of hotel opens in distance and other team strides in
53 Zhang: We're back!
54 Aniket: [calling out] Just in time for dinner!
55 Korolev: [excited] What a day it's been. We've got big news for you!
56 Sanders: We've got some pretty huge news ourselves. But you can go first. You guys took the AeroGlides down to Sacramento, right?
57 Korolev: That's right, but we couldn't make it downtown like we planned.
58 Sanders: Why not?
59 Korolev: An alien spaceship!
60 Exmayor: What?
61 Korolev: [excited] We actually saw it landing! Big saucer-shaped craft, hundred meters maybe. We held our position on a ridge in El Dorado Hills where we had a good view, got out our scopes to watch. It set down in the old city cemetery at Broadway and Riverside. And then it opened up and they started pouring out!
62 Exmayor: They're invading a dead planet?
63 Korolev: Looked like settlers to me. There were a few who were armed and took the lead, scouting for them as they spread out downtown, but most appeared to be family units.
64 Zhang: We saw them split up and go into houses, but only the houses with the more modern sealants that are probably still in good shape without any wildlife intrusion after 15 years. Looks like they're moving in.
65 Korolev: There'd definitely been some prep work from a previous landing, because a lot of the older houses had been demolished. Betting they removed the bodies and got the plumbing working and did maintenance on the solar arrays and batteries for the part of town they're taking, though that's not a real big area.
66 Sanders: How many of them are there?
67 Korolev: Our best estimate is a couple thousand.
68 Exmayor: But if it's happening in Sacramento, it could be happening everywhere else. Could be millions of them already all around the world.
69 Sanders: [sarcastic] That's a cheerful thought.
70 Zhang: What should we do?
71 Sanders: We should fight.
72 Zhang: Are we certain they're hostile?
73 Sanders: It'd be quite the unbelievable coincidence for them to arrive and start colonizing just after another alien species wiped us out.
74 Zhang: Wait, how do you know humanity didn't destroy itself, or something natural?
75 Sanders: That's our news, we ran into a survivor who told us the story, it was an engineered alien virus delivered from space.
76 Korolev: Okay then, I'm for giving them a fight, but how do the eight of us take down a whole invasion fleet?
77 Sanders: You said they're mostly families, settlers, only a few armed?
78 Korolev: Right. So?
79 Sanders: Then we hit them where they're soft. Quick strikes, target one of those homes they're occupying, kill everybody inside, repeat again another day. Bleed them until they decide this planet isn't worth the price.
80 Exmayor: [a bit shocked, disapprovingly] Cold-blooded terrorism?!
81 Sanders: Or we could try to take hostages sometimes when we can, maybe that'd help negotiate their exit. But their settlers are just as guilty as their foot soldiers.
82 Exmayor: [disgusted] Should've expected this from you, you tried terrorism during your little insurrection on Mathilde all those years ago and now that you're back on Earth the first thing you want to do is more terrorism.
83 Sanders: Oh, so you think we should just surrender the planet to the people who murdered everybody?! Or do you want to take them in a fair fight, the eight of us improvising spears and lining up in the open to throw them at a million of them with advanced energy weapons and spaceships?!
84 Exmayor: I think we should talk with them.
85 Sanders: [mocking] Now that's *smart*! Hey mister world destroying alien conqueror, welcome to our planet, here's a gift basket, wanted to let you know you missed a spot when you fumigated and there's a few of us still left to exterminate!
86 Exmayor: I just want to *try*. Beats immediately sinking to their level.
87 Sanders: [angry] They've just murdered ten billion people, what in the world makes you think they'll give us even a second of their time before they kill us?!
88 Exmayor: We have nothing to lose but our lives. The planet is already lost and your terrorist plans can't change that.
89 Sanders: [aggressively] I kinda *like* being alive, and I suspect the others feel the same.
90 Exmayor: I'm 92, my future is short no matter what I do. So I'm willing to risk it. I'll go alone, tomorrow morning. And I'll transmit so you can listen in for as long as I last.
91 SOUND: music transition
92 SOUND: aeroglide movement, wind mainly i guess
93 Exmayor: There's a bunch of them gathering in Southside Park. I think if I approach a crowd I'll seem less threatening than if I go up to an individual, and they'll be less inclined to preemptively shoot me.
94 Judy: [sfx: processed] Be careful, don't approach too fast.
95 Exmayor: I think they've spotted me... yeah, a bunch of them are looking my way now.
96 Sanders: [sfx: processed] Well, you've now officially lived longer than I expected.
97 Exmayor: [chuckling] Oh, this is too good.
98 Judy: What?
99
Exmayor:
I just noticed the crowd is gathered around an old sculpture of an alien space van next to a lake. The real aliens admiring the fake aliens.
Okay, I'm slowing for final approach, no sign of hostility so far.
100 SOUND: aeroglide slows and stops, exmayor gets off
101 Judy: Do you see any weapons?
102 SOUND: exmayor walks on grass, growing alien crowd buzz to side
103 Exmayor: Not yet. They just seem curious about me.
104 Alien One: Napaykuy, Pachamamayuq. Imaynatan yanapaykuman?
105 Exmayor: I don't suppose any of you guys speak English? That'd be really convenient right now.
106
Alien Two:
[sfx: approaching] Saqiykuway, pasaykuway!
Greetings, human. Several of us have learned your language, to facilitate communication with any remnant natives.
107 Exmayor: [perplexed] So you studied our languages and cultures, then you tried to wipe us out, then you wanted to be able to talk with us?
108 Alien Two: We feel no ill will toward you. It was necessary to remove your population before we could safely settle here, but we don't wish to hurt your remnant survivors unless you cause trouble.
109 Exmayor: [perplexed] You don't want to hurt us?
110 Alien Two: Of course not. We're a peaceful people. We want to live in harmony with the planets we settle.
111 Exmayor: [taken aback] And you don't feel your systematic genocide of ten billion people contradicts that at all?!
112 Alien Two: We designed the virus to eliminate suffering. Your people died in their sleep with no pain. Compassionate painless euthanasia is a humane method of population control.
113 Judy: [sfx: processed] Ask them if they'll give us a vaccine for the virus.
114 Alien Two: I can year you. No, we will not.
115 Judy: Why not?
116 Alien Two: Because then your population could grow again, defeating the purpose and potentially necessitating unpleasant violence. The last thing we want is to have to shoot anyone, that would be morally troubling.
117 Exmayor: Why would that trouble you when genocide doesn't?
118 Alien Two: Again, the virus relieved suffering and prevented a bloody conflict between us. It's a simple concept, not very different from your human ethical systems -- the choice which results in the least suffering is the most ethical choice. Now is there anything we can help you with? If you'd like food or supplies we'll see what we can spare to make your lives easier, we're a compassionate people.
119 SOUND: music link
120 SOUND: cary house
121 Sanders: That was bizarre. I'm still shocked you made it back alive.
122 Exmayor: Well Julianna, do you still want to cut their childrens' throats while they sleep?
123 Sanders: More than ever. If their morality is so twisted that they think genocide is a favor, I'm not going to feel any guilt about killing them.
124 Korolev: Gotta say I'm with her on this one. Everything we heard just showed there's no way to reason with them, violence is the only language that's going to get through.
125 Judy: You guys'll just get yourselves killed. And get the rest of us killed too.
126 Exmayor: Maybe they'd just move us to a preserve or a zoo.
127 Aniket: I'll try to learn some tricks so I can be the most popular attraction.
128 Zhang: You know, I don't think they're actually that different from us.
129 Exmayor: How's that, Zhang?
130 Zhang: Think about it. They don't want to get their hands dirty personally murdering anybody, but they'll sit back and rationalize and support distant deaths they don't feel personally involved in and believe will make them safer. Is it any different from people all through the ages who've wanted their country to wipe out an enemy country so they can feel safer?
131 Jenkins: Or countries whose responses to terrorist attacks were overwhelmingly disproportionate, inflicting a hundred times more civilian deaths on wherever the terrorists lived.
132 Sanders: [disagreeing] Except we never attacked them, they attacked *us* unprovoked.
133 Zhang: The doctrine of preemptive defense. They knew their settlement plan would make us fight them, so they had to wipe us out before we hurt their colonists.
134 Pat Singh: This whole scenario kind of reminds me of the European settlement of the Americas, and the American settlement of the west. Introduce a wave of disease, sit back while it decimates the native population, then ship in your settlers once there's hardly anybody left to resist.
135 Sanders: The huge difference is, a few questionable smallpox blankets and war massacres aside, that wasn't a coordinated policy to kill every indigenous American.
136 Pat Singh: Wasn't it? They passed laws to deprive natives of their land, made no attempt to help them survive and kept moving them to reservations knowing many would die from it. The trail of tears, wounded knee.
137 Zhang: If the Americans had the technology for a genetically engineered virus to empty the west of natives without affecting their own people, I bet some of them would've wanted to use it.
138 Sanders: [frustrated] I can't believe so many of you are apologists for an enemy so monstrous that they've wiped out at least 99% of the human race!
139 Judy: We're just trying to make the best of the hand we've been dealt. Your insurrection plans don't seem very grounded in reality.
140 Sanders: Even if they wiped out 99.9% of humanity, that'd still leave ten million people out there! Let's organize them to fight back!
141 Exmayor: You heard what Dusty told us. If they form groups, they die.
142 Aniket: I don't suppose we could come up with a cure for the virus...
143 Exmayor: The eight of us with virtually no equipment, achieving what the entire resources of humanity at its height couldn't do? I wouldn't even call that a pipe dream, it's an absurdity.
144 Sanders: So what would *you* have us do? Just crawl meekly into our graves?
145 Exmayor: Well, we've been recording all these events. One little thing we can do is try to leave a record for the future. A warning.
146 Sanders: The alien colonists are the only future this planet has, and they don't need this record, they KNOW what they did.
147 Exmayor: You're thinking too short term. This too shall pass someday, no species lasts forever.
148 Sanders: So you're thinking thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years from now? You expect some other aliens to come along then with a new wave of colonists?
149 Exmayor: What about 253 Mathilde? If they kept accelerating, they could end up doing a complete circuit of the galaxy, and maybe sending explorers to Earth the same way we did at Tau Ceti.
150 Aniket: [moderately excited] And it might only take them 30 years with the time dilation!
151 Judy: [excited] We could be leaving a message for people who knew us, people we knew!
152 Sanders: But how much time will have passed here on Earth by the time they're back?
153 Exmayor: Well... the Earth is about 26,000 light years from the galactic center. What's the formula for circumference, two pi R?
154 Judy: Something like a hundred and sixty thousand light years.
155 Exmayor: So about that many years. What do we have that could store a message that long?
156 Sanders: Data cubes are rated to a hundred thousand years but will last a lot longer with error correcting redundancy.
157 Exmayor: Perfect. Now we just need a way to make them discover it, without it being found by our colonist friends first.
158 Judy: Some kind of simple homing beacon, time delayed to not start transmitting for the next hundred and sixty thousand years.
159 Exmayor: I think we've got ourselves a project here, challenging one to be sure but let's start designing!
160 SOUND: transmission interruption sound
161 SOUND: ourdoor scene
162 Exmayor: This will be the final recording, before we transfer to the data cube and bury it. I'm thinking we'll embed it in the foundation of the bell tower. Just feels right to use a classic landmark so many people have enjoyed on their way through this town before, and it'll provide good protection from animals and the elements. Anyway, I want to give everyone a chance to say some final words to the future.
163 Jenkins: Hi future, it's Jenkins. I'm the guy who was standing or sitting in the background during a couple of the recordings but never got to say much, so you have no idea who I am and don't care what I have to say. Singh?
164 Pat Singh: You haven't heard much from me before either, but I'm not quite so content to leave it that way. I'm Pat Singh, I worked in botany section on 253 Mathilde before being captured in 2220 and brought here. My job now is to keep our group fed by reviving agriculture on planet Earth, so that should keep me busy.
165 Korolev: I'm Dmitri Korolev, from astronomy section. Chief Lawrence, if you see this someday, I offer my congratulations on completing an orbit of the galaxy.
166 Zhang: Pass, pass... Aniket?
167 Aniket: [emotional] Dads, if you ever hear this somehow -- I mean, if either of you are alive by the time 253 Mathilde can hear me. I love you both, dads. The chance that you'll someday learn what happened to us after we were taken away, that's what's going to give me the strength to get through the rest of my life.
168 Judy: Not just our dads, but everybody else too. The rest of our families, our friends. We wish you could all experience this beautiful planet, even after the end of humanity.
169 Sanders: I want the future to know that I didn't give up. No matter how hopeless the situation looks, I'm going to keep working on plans to drive out these colonists and take back our planet. If there's no aliens here when you arrive, maybe it's because of me.
170 Exmayor: [sfx: somewhat distant] [derisively] If only you'd felt that way about the last invasion, maybe we'd still be on Mathilde.
171 Sanders: [annoyed] That was different, Mathide was never truly ours, Earth is!
172 Exmayor: [feeling grand and pompous] And for myself, I just want to say... in a way, we're the aliens on Earth now. We're but brief guests who will soon depart for the undiscovered country. This world is theirs, for now. And as absurd as this is to say about creatures who've committed the ultimate genocide against my kind, I can't really hold any ill will toward them.
173 Sanders: [sfx: from over shoulder] I can.
174
Exmayor:
I hope someday they'll realize how wrongly they behaved, that there's no such thing as a humane genocide. Meanwhile, I wish them well and hope they take good care of this planet. At least the wildlife is thriving.
I hope it really is somebody from 253 Mathilde who finds our message. If so, I've missed you guys. Renata, I trust you're well and that you understand why I felt I had to do what I did, and maybe watching this in your old age now you're finding out that my life still had a few eventful twists and turns left in it. Tell my grandkids and great-grandkids all about me, if I have any. Whoever finds this, goodbye, and best of luck with whatever it is the Earth has become in your distant time.
175 SOUND: playback ends
176 Mateo: Wow.
177 Zainab: It's strange...
178 Mateo: What?
179 Zainab: Everything we've just seen, it feels like it just happened. And here we are on the very spot. But there's not the slightest trace left.
180 Mateo: There were the chunks of concrete that must've been the base of the bell tower, where we found the data cube.
181 Zainab: Still. Such a tiny thing, the only remnant we've found of humanity. And nothing of the aliens.
182 Mateo: [concerned] Say, they mentioned the virus had an asymptomatic zoo-tropic reservoir, do you think we could still be in danger?
183 Zainab: It's hard to say anything for certain about an engineered virus, but I don't think it could've avoided mutation over the eons, probably into something that targets animals better but doesn't target humans since there were none left to target.
184 Mateo: That's not as reassuring as I'd like.
185 SOUND: they get up and open hatch and start walking outside
186 Zainab: Tough luck dear, it's a wild and primitive world where anything may kill us at any time.
187 Mateo: A gorgeous world, though. Breathtaking. And it's ours to rediscover together.
188 SOUND: their footsteps fade into distance
189 SOUND: end theme
190 Announcer: You've been listening to Two Fifty-Three Mathilde, episode twenty eight: Earth Abides.