253 Mathilde
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253 Mathilde: Future Imperfect

By Paul Knierim

© 2023

Estimated run time: 25 minutes


Cast of Characters

9 characters: Announcer, Zainab, Mateo, Computer, Exmayor, Judy, Aniket, Sanders, Dusty

Click on a character's name to get their lines highlighted.

Mateo (35 lines, 366 words, 11.53%) - [Richard N] Mateo Juma has a wry sense of humor. [complete]

Zainab (35 lines, 383 words, 12.07%) - [Roo Ryder] Zainab Juma. [complete]

Exmayor (49 lines, 1131 words, 35.63%) - [Roger Arnold] The former mayor is now 92 years old. He's back on Earth and ready to finish his life there. [complete]

Sanders (32 lines, 436 words, 13.74%) - [Erin Suminsby] Julianna Sanders, now in her 50s. She's achieved her lifelong dream of returning to Earth... but the circumstances make it bittersweet. Has a bit of friction with the exmayor due to their past conflict. [complete]

Aniket (12 lines, 97 words, 3.06%) - [Genesis Greenwood] Peters kid, aged 40ish. [complete]

Judy (23 lines, 238 words, 7.5%) - [Grace Trombley] Peters kid, aged 40ish. [complete]

Dusty (16 lines, 408 words, 12.85%) - [JD Cantu] Should have a grizzled old prospector vibe. Been living alone for 15 years after the apocalypse. [complete]

Computer (8 lines, 53 words, 1.67%) - [bot] Ship's computer. [complete]

Announcer (5 lines, 62 words, 1.95%) - [Erin Suminsby] Reads opening, closing and credits. [complete]

Highlight Sound

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: ship interior, instrument fiddling

  5 Zainab: [awe at seeing Earth from orbit] What a beautiful planet.

  6 Mateo: Lots of geostationary satellites showing up on radar and infrared, but none seem to be active. No sign of any satellites in low Earth orbit. Still no response to hails?

  7 Zainab: Radio silence. But if they have no live satellites, we might have to pass within line of sight.

  8 Mateo: Well, we just passed the day/night terminator, and you can see for yourself nobody down there has electricity.

  9 Zainab: There could be some tiny holdout of civilization, even with the rest of Earth primitive or abandoned.

  10 Mateo: [skeptical] Guess we can give it a few orbits to make sure.

  11 SOUND: bored chair swivel

  12 Zainab: You know, Mateo... it's kinda absurd that we've circled the galaxy and now we're orbiting the Earth trying to determine if the human race still exists...

  13 Mateo: ...and yet we're bored.

  14 Zainab: Yeah, that.

  15 Mateo: If we were normal, well-adjusted people we'd be throwing a wild party right now.

  16 Zainab: We'd be jumping for joy.

  17 Mateo: That doesn't sound safe in zero-G, we'd end up ramming our heads into the ceiling.

  18 Zainab: Better not, then.

  19 Mateo: It'd be a shame to come hundreds of thousands of light years only to die of concussions while partying in Earth orbit.

  20 Zainab: [in jest] Might be a fitting epithet for our species.

  21 SOUND: more chair squeak boredom

  22 Mateo: So... how 'bout a game of chess?

  23 Zainab: I've really got to get you into modern board games... let's try Miner's Folly?

  24 Mateo: Okay.

  25 SOUND: beeping alert

  26 Zainab: [excited] Hey, we're picking up a signal!

  27 SOUND: control fiddling

  28 Mateo: [excited] Can you play the message?

  29 Zainab: Uh... dear, this *is* the message.

  30 Mateo: The message is beep?

  31 Zainab: Exactly.

  32 Mateo: Has the Earth been taken over by a race of extremely boring machines?

  33 Zainab: Computer, can you trace where this signal is coming from?

  34 Computer: Signal originates one to three meters below the surface at approximately latitude 38.73 degrees longitude minus 121.80 degrees.

  35 Mateo: Below the surface?

  36 Computer: Affirmative.

  37 Zainab: Computer, where do those coordinates place it on the last known political map of Earth?

  38 Computer: Coordinates are within the California Republic, city of Placerville.

  39 Mateo: Placerville? Never heard of it, was it a big city?

  40 Computer: Last known population 12,372.

  41 Mateo: Huh. What's Earth's only remaining sign of civilization doing *there*?

  42 Computer: Insufficient data.

  43 Zainab: [excited] Let's land this thing and find out!

  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 27 - Future Imperfect

  47 SOUND: ship hatch opens, they step out into forest

  48 Mateo: What do you think, Zainab? Is it everything you imagined?

  49 Zainab: Hillier than I'd imagined. And so many pine trees, I knew there could be a lot of trees but I thought they'd be more varied...

  50 Mateo: Can't expect the kind of variety we had in 253 Mathilde's arboretum. These pines are probably just the kind of tree that thrives in the local climate.

  51 Zainab: Speaking of climate, it's also chillier than I expected.

  52 Mateo: Northern hemisphere winter and we're in the mid latitudes, get your jacket out of your pack.

  53 SOUND: she takes jacket out of backpack and puts it on.

  54 Mateo: Doesn't seem to be any sign of people. Except... wait, the markings on that tree, could that...

  55 SOUND: sakura walks over

  56 Zainab: Hmm, I think a bear did this.

  57 Mateo: What's a bear?

  58 Zainab: A large, dangerous mammal. I saw a holo about them once. They claw tree trunks like this to mark their territory.

  59 Mateo: [alarmed] Draw your weapon and keep an eye out.

  60 SOUND: weapons drawn

  61 Zainab: I'll put the sensor on audio mode so I don't have to keep my eyes on it.

  62 SOUND: sensor beeping begins, widely spaced at first and growing closer together

  63 Zainab: It's somewhere near the bottom of this hill, I think.

  64 Mateo: I wasn't prepared for these hills.

  65 Zainab: Nothing like them on Mathilde, that's for sure.

  66 Mateo: The whole planet better not be this steep.

  67 Zainab: Wait 'till we go back up, that'll be a lot harder. I'm doing fine, maybe you're just getting old.

  68 Mateo: Hey, I'm only a year older than you.

  69 Zainab: Chronologically, but Doctor Singh says I have the body of a 25 year old.

  70 Mateo: [joking] So you decided to flee here so the woman you stole it from can't take it back?

  71 SOUND: beeps crest at close together

  72 Zainab: The signal seems to be coming from under this little mound here. Have you got the excavator?

  73 SOUND: pulls out metal shovel-like device

  74 Mateo: Right here.

  75 Zainab: It's one point five meters down. Set it to take off 1.4 to be safe.

  76 Mateo: Okay.

  77 SOUND: pushing buttons, then excavator sound and dirt flying off.

  78 Zainab: This thing is pretty small. Set it on mode C and bring up a six liter volume. Don't forget to hold it over the spot and disengage safeties.

  79 Mateo: I was awake during the training, dear.

  80 SOUND: new mode of operation with less dirt, and sound of something being raised.

  81 Zainab: Huh, looks like a chunk of concrete.

  82 Mateo: We'll have to trust the smart mode to take that off and see what's inside.

  83 Zainab: I hate smart mode, makes me feel redundant.

  84 SOUND: an activation tap and beep, then smart mode uncovers the object

  85 Mateo: Wow, isn't that--

  86 Zainab: A data cube! Attached to this little transmitter!

  87 Mateo: I wonder if it could still be readable!

  88 Zainab: Let's get it back to the ship and find out.

  89 SOUND: linking music

  90 Mateo: [groaning from exhaustion] We're never going down that hill again. I barely made it back!

  91 Zainab: Computer, is this data cube readable?

  92 Computer: Affirmative, data format indicates high redundancy sufficient to compensate for missing bytes.

  93 Zainab: Please summarize the nature of the data.

  94 Computer: Data is a series of time-indexed video recordings.

  95 Mateo: Can you play them for us, in order?

  96 Computer: Commencing playback...

  97 SOUND: playback sound

  98 SOUND: hotel background, aniket preparing a dinner probably with a portable gas appliance

  99 Exmayor: [awkwardly] Hello there... uh, I have no idea who I'm talking to.

  100 Judy: The future.

  101 Exmayor: Hello there, the future. Actually it's kinda hard to believe in a future, when I'm standing on the planet Earth with no signs of human life anywhere.

  102 Judy: There's always a future.

  103 Exmayor: Easy to say that when you're young, harder for *me* at 92 years old.

  104 Judy: But this message is for someone who'll come long after us. Maybe curious aliens.

  105 Aniket: Or the few of us might repopulate the planet and our descendants will want to hear us tell how it all happened.

  106 Sanders: Feeling a bit ambitious there, aren't you Aniket?

  107 Judy: Just imagine you're speaking to somebody who knows nothing about us.

  108 Exmayor: Well. Hello you unknown aliens of the future who don't understand a word of English. Welcome to Earth, birthplace and tomb of the human race.

  109 Sanders: Maybe you should explain how we ended up here and that we don't know what happened here yet. Hello there by the way, I'm Julianna Sanders, you've already heard Judy and Aniket Peters in the background.

  110 Exmayor: My name is Horace Mutombo. Very briefly, we used to live on an interstellar asteroid called 253 Mathilde which was launched into the stars by humanity more than a century ago, an asteroid where I used to be the mayor.

  111 Sanders: And he never lets us forget that, and to this day he still thinks he's in charge.

  112 Exmayor: Our asteroid was attacked by aliens who saw our relativistic speeds as a danger to them. Before 253 Mathilde escaped their grasp the aliens managed to transfer some of us over to their own asteroid ship and took us back to Earth.

  113 Sanders: When they saw our civilization was dead they offered to keep us with them, and many did stay with them, but a few of us insisted we'd rather live out our lives on Earth. For some of us it's been a life-long dream.

  114 Exmayor: And others of us just don't have enough life left to waste any more of it wandering between stars. So where was I?

  115 Sanders: You should probably explain where we are and why we're in this town, I'd love to know myself...

  116 Exmayor: We're in a little town called Placerville, in California. I used to have a pen pal -- back when Earth was only a few light months away from us on Mathilde. Back when I was young, if you can even imagine me being young. She lived here and told me all about this town. I thought it'd be good for us to stay somewhere I know, so I asked that we be dropped off here.

Our base of operations right now is the Cary House Hotel, we're recording from the lobby. Very historically-preserved place as you can see, at least if you have any concept of our history. I love these stained glass windows. Centuries ago this hotel hosted the likes of Mark Twain, Elvis, President Grant... and now it's *our* home. Comfortable enough. Thankfully no dead bodies, which I suppose is a clue -- the end can't have come too suddenly, they had time to close things down.

People used to say this place was haunted. I really wish we could find a ghost right now and ask it what happened.

  117 Aniket: [calling out from across room] Dinner's ready!

  118 Exmayor: Okay, I'll resume this tomorrow.

  119 SOUND: recording transition sound

  120 SOUND: group walking on sidewalk with outdoor bird etc noises

  121 Exmayor: We're walking on Main Street now, westward. We're going to cut across to the north soon and make about a 3 kilometer loop, because frankly that's about as far as I can go at my age but I'd rather get the exercise than use an AeroGlide... and it takes a long time to recharge those things on solar, anyway.

  122 Aniket: The other half of our group is doing a much wider recon on AeroGlides... Jenkins, Singh, Korolev and Zhang.

  123 Sanders: [perplexed] What's this... a Drive Thru Shoe Repair business? What century are we in?

  124 Exmayor: She used to joke about that place, it's been here forever and nobody ever knew how it stayed in business.

  125 Sanders: This pen pal... she wasn't just *any* pen pal, was she?

  126 Exmayor: [wistful] If we hadn't been trillions of kilometers apart, I might've asked her to marry me. I used to daydream about what our life would've been like in this town, that's how I know it so well.

  127 Sanders: You of all people, a returnist in your youth?

  128 Exmayor: No, I knew it was impossible -- even when I was 20 years old it would've taken us centuries to get back here.

  129 Aniket: [calculating] But that would've only been... 50ish years since Mathilde left the asteroid belt?

  130 Exmayor: It would've taken another 50 to cancel our forward velocity, then another 50 to build up the same velocity in reverse, but then we'd have to slow down again to not shoot past Earth, so something on the order of 130 years. But in my dreams I could be landing in Placerville in seconds.

  131 Sanders: And now here you are, doing the impossible.

  132 Judy: These houses are interesting, they look so old and quaint.

  133 Exmayor: They're called Victorians, because they were built during the reign of Queen Victoria in the 19th century. This side of the transit tunnel -- used to be an above ground highway that divided the town -- this side has a lot of them.

  134 Judy: [confused] But... California was never part of Queen Victoria's empire, was it?

  135 Exmayor: [with a shrug] I'm just telling you what my pen pal told me.

  136 Sanders: Hold up!

  137 SOUND: they stop

  138 Sanders: What's that over there?

  139 Exmayor: Looks like a cemetery. In this part of town... must be Union Cemetery. One of the first, it's been here almost 400 years.

  140 Sanders: Do you know if it was still active? I mean, would there be recent burials?

  141 Exmayor: Uh, I think you've reached the limit of how detailed my second hand knowledge is. Why do you ask?

  142 Sanders: It could tell us if they had time to bury their dead, and the tombstones could tell us when it happened... when the world ended, I mean.

  143 Exmayor: Well, I think I need to rest a while, so why don't you go find out while I take a seat on this bench? Here, take the recorder. I'll listen in from here on my sub-dermal and catch up with you in a bit.

  144 SOUND: tape transition sound

  145 Sanders: It wasn't looking good for a while with all the 19th century graves, but we found the new section at the bottom of the hill. And we're in luck. There was a huge rush on funerals in the second half of the year 2226 -- that's, I think, about 15 years ago Earth time near as I can figure with all our time dilation. There are a couple of graves from 2227, and one as late as 2229, nothing after that.

  146 Judy: So it seems most of the population died over the course of six months but there were stragglers for at least years.

  147 Aniket: Does that suggest a likely cause to you, Judy?

  148 Judy: It's consistent with contagious disease. The spread would've slowed after it decimated the population and contact between people became rare.

  149 Sanders: Do you suppose some people could've lasted even longer in more isolated places, just not the type of person who'd come into a town to bury someone in a public cemetery?

  150 Judy: It's likely. Some of them could still be out there somewhere, maybe in the forest.

  151 SOUND: exmayor's footsteps approach

  152 Exmayor: You know, I think we've all been carefully avoiding the best way to learn about what happened.

  153 Sanders: And what's that?

  154 Exmayor: Going into the houses.

  155 SOUND: silence

  156 Sanders: It does feel... wrong, I guess. Somehow.

  157 Aniket: Like stepping on a grave.

  158 Sanders: How 'bout your lover's house, you must know where she lived?

  159 Exmayor: I know where she lived about 60 years ago. It's on Clay Street, our loop will take us by there.

  160 Sanders: Not by coincidence, I suspect. Could she still have been there when the end came?

  161 Exmayor: People on Earth don't usually stay in the same house their whole lives. And she'd have been... [mentally calculating] as ancient as I am now, by the end. Which is funny actually because I used to be older than her. But anyway, let's go find out.

  162 SOUND: tape transition sound

  163 SOUND: door open, climbing over rubble, weak wood steps

  164 Exmayor: Sure is a mess in here.

  165 Sanders: Looters?

  166 Exmayor: I don't know.

  167 Aniket: Spiders have been busy.

  168 Judy: What sort of clues should we be looking for?

  169 Exmayor: A diary would be a pretty convenient way to lay it all out for us. Let's check the bedroom.

  170 SOUND: another door squeaks open

  171 Sanders: [alarmed/disgusted] In the bed...

  172 Exmayor: [seeing skeleton] I see it.

  173 Aniket: At least we got here after the smell is gone.

  174 Sanders: Is it her?

  175 Exmayor: I don't think so. From the height and the pelvis and what's left of the clothing, I think this was a man.

  176 Judy: Decor looks more like a man's bedroom than a woman's to me.

  177 SOUND: bear coming down hall to investigate them

  178 Aniket: [alarmed] What's what?

  179 Sanders: [alarmed] Somebody's coming down the hall!

  180 Aniket: [alarmed] Or some *thing*...

  181 Exmayor: [calm] Let's back up, toward the far wall.

  182 SOUND: bear enters and roars

  183 Sanders: [scared] What... what is it?

  184 Exmayor: It's a bear. Must be using this house like a den.

  185 Sanders: [scared] How do we get past it?

  186 Exmayor: Aniket, a little help?

  187 SOUND: picks up chair, throws it through window

  188 Exmayor: Okay, everybody out the window now, calm as you can. The bear's probably just blocking us from getting near her cubs.

  189 SOUND: recording transition

  190 SOUND: rain and thunder

  191 Exmayor: Well, we're all still here with all our limbs. But as you can hear the weather has taken a sudden turn for the worse, so if it's not one thing it's another. We're heading back to the Cary House Hotel as quick as we can, but I'm not as fast as I used to be. We could go into a house for shelter...

  192 Judy: No way, not going through that again.

  193 Exmayor: A lot of those wood houses aren't keeping the rain out anymore anyway. Maybe we can try a business with a brick structure like the hotel.

  194 Judy: It's just been wooden houses, nothing brick in sight.

  195 Exmayor: We're following the El Dorado Trail -- it's a hundred and fifty kilometer recreational trail from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe -- along the side of Hangtown Creek right now. We're going to cross a bridge over the creek shortly and come out on Main Street where there'll be plenty of businesses.

  196 Sanders: You really do know this town like the back of your hand.

  197 Exmayor: I knew every inch of our base on 253 Mathilde, I kinda figured it was expected to know everything about a town.

  198 Judy: Rain's getting worse. I don't know people on Earth have been dealing with this forever, water just pouring out of the sky!

  199 Exmayor: That building up ahead there, with the big bricks.

  200 Judy: [straining to read at distance] J. Pearson Placerville Soda Works?

  201 Exmayor: Yes, we can wait out the storm in there.

  202 SOUND: they sprint across and open door and walk onto creaky wood floor and shake off rain.

  203 Sanders: Pretty well-preserved.

  204 Exmayor: What does the extinction of the human race matter to a building that's been standing for 360 years?

  205 Judy: [sfx: distance] Hey, there's something back here!

  206 Exmayor: You mean the mineshaft?

  207 Judy: Yeah I guess it's a mine, but it looks like somebody lives here!

  208 SOUND: they start to move back to her

  209 Sanders: [casual aside] Why is there a mine in a building?

  210 Exmayor: The built the building around it.

  211 Judy: [sfx: voice now closer] See guys, all these cans and clothes!

  212 Exmayor: And ammunition.

  213 Sanders: Could be years old though.

  214 Judy: [sfx: further away again] [holding nose in disgust] The smell back here seems recent.

  215 SOUND: front door opens in other distance, we hear rain for a second until it closes again, footsteps

  216 Dusty: [barking order] Hands in the air, y'all! Backs against that wall!

  217 SOUND: shotgun cocking, people shifting to obey

  218 Exmayor: Sorry, we didn't know anyone lived here. Or anywhere.

  219 Dusty: Where you people from? Haven't seen a *group* in years, awful dangerous.

  220 Exmayor: We're from 253 Mathilde.

  221 Dusty: [hysterical laughter]

  222 Sanders: No, really. Mathilde was invaded by some aliens who captured us and took us back to Earth.

  223 Dusty: [amused] Well you'd best get back on your flying saucer and find youselves another planet.

  224 Exmayor: Too late, they've gone. What happened here?

  225 SOUND: Dusty relaxes, sets down gun

  226 Dusty: Well, take a seat y'all, there's plenty. My name's Dusty Malone, sorry if my manners are a little rusty.

  227 SOUND: they all pull up chairs and settle in

  228 Sanders: From the cemetery we've figured most people died in 2226...

  229 Dusty: That's right. Didn't know how serious it was at first. When people started dyin', we thought we just had ourselves another pandemic to deal with, they been happenin' erry fiftyish years. But then they figured out the incubation period was crazy long and variable -- you could catch this thing and feel fine fer three, four months, even nine months sometimes. Then ya go ta bed one night feelin' fine, and ya don't never wake up.

  230 Judy: We found a skeleton in a bed.

  231 Dusty: That's where most of 'em are. Did ya touch it?

  232 Judy: Of course not!

  233 Dusty: Anything else in the house ya touched?

  234 Aniket: Some doors.

  235 Exmayor: And a chair.

  236 Dusty: Well yer prolly not infected, think it usually took direct contact or long exposure, but who tha hell knows. Persistent little bugger, goes dormant without a host but can come back ta life long after you'd think it couldn't.

  237 Judy: What's the fatality rate?

  238 Dusty: Hundred percent. By the time we realized that, almost everybody'd caught it and it was just a matter of waitin' for 'em all ta die off. Few recluses like me escaped, I didn't come inta town much those days.

  239 Aniket: Hasn't anyone tried to rebuild civilization?

  240 Dusty: Oh they tried, they tried. Turned out some animals are disease carriers even though they don't die of it, erry once in a while an animal'd infect a person, and if yer living in a group then boom yer all dead a few months later.

  241 Exmayor: Did anyone ever figure out how the disease started?

  242 Dusty: Traced it to some meteor that exploded over Tokyo. Tha big brains felt tha disease was designed by extraterrestrials as an attack on Earth, but nobody really cared much by that point.

  243 Sanders: [shocked] Who would want to attack Earth?

  244 Dusty: Them Centaurians, those pretend Centaurians who wouldn't tell us where they really came from, they told us it served us right for sending our transmissions willy-nilly into deep space all those years.

  245 Exmayor: Are the Centaurians still around, the ones who stayed on Earth?

  246 Dusty: Tha disease was targeted to people, them Centaurians were immune, not even carriers. I think they went ta live at our Mars colony, which lucked out because this all hit in between transfer windows.

  247 Exmayor: So there's still a human civilization out there on Mars?

  248 Dusty: Far as I know. But I wouldn't know.

  249 Judy: Either way, at least 253 Mathilde is still out there. Our dads and the rest of them, somewhere beyond Tau Ceti.

  250 SOUND: starting fire in fireplace

  251 Dusty: Well yer welcome ta stay an' warm yerselves up a little while, cuz I'm already exposed. But once ya step out tha door I don't wanna see you folk again, too dangerous.

  252 Zainab: Computer, pause playback.

  253 SOUND: playback pauses

  254 Mateo: Why'd you do that? It was just getting interesting!

  255 Zainab: It's time for dinner.

  256 Mateo: [kidding] Even when learning the ultimate fate of humanity, you always lead with your stomach.

  257 SOUND: end theme

  258 Announcer: You've been listening to Two Fifty-Three Mathilde, episode twenty seven: Future Imperfect.

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