ANNOUNCER
Rusty Quill Presents: The Magnus Protocol.
Episode Thirty-Eight – Circling Back.
[Music]
[Ringtone: a phone recording starting up]
[Sound of a door being pushed open]
CELIA
(calling) Hel-lo?
ALICE
(distant) In here! It’s open.
CELIA
(heading inside) Yeah, I can see that.
(louder) Decided to get a head start, did you?
ALICE
I wanted to make sure I checked the place out before the landlord tossed everything.
CELIA
Well, if he wasn’t going to before, I’m sure he will after he sees what you did to the door.
ALICE
(sighs) It’s fine. Colin was always moaning about him as a rent-hiking, deposit-robbing arsehole.
CELIA
And you’re sure no-one noticed you breaking in?
ALICE
Pretty sure. But hey! More reason for you to help me bag this stuff up quickly.
CELIA
(looking around) Uh, I doubt a few bags are going to be enough to carry all this…
[Alice is already bagging the stuff – paper rustling – as she replies]
ALICE
Nah, forget the computers. Colin was paranoid enough that there’s no way we’re getting anything past his security. Besides, he… didn’t exactly trust technology by the end.
CELIA
Hence all the paper?
ALICE
(sucks in a breath through her teeth) Yup.
[Alice continues bagging stuff]
CELIA
Where do we even start?
ALICE
(as she works) Notebooks first, then any loose sheets that looks like they might be to do with portals, dimensions, stuff like that.
CELIA
(exhales) Alice…
ALICE
(lower) Don’t start.
CELIA
I just don’t think that whatever is going on with Freddie has anything to do with what happened to Sam!
ALICE
(tight) Freddie is evil. It killed Colin. Hilltop is evil. It took Sam. They’re connected.
CELIA
Not necessarily! You can’t just assume that everything bad is connected to the portal!
ALICE
Watch me.
[She stuffs one more ream of paper in, then sighs.]
Look, I know I’m jumping to conclusions, all right? But until we can decode all this gibberish – (paper rustles) – it’s all we have to go on! And it’s the only way I can make any of this make sense, so you can either get with the program or…
…
(slightly broken) I’ve already lost two friends to this thing. I don’t want to lose another.
[Beat.]
[The silence stretches.]
CELIA
(picking up a sheet of paper; voice carefully neutral) Lot of alchemical stuff in this one. Formulas, symbols, equations…
ALICE
(loosening) Anything you recognize?
CELIA
Mm… Symbols for lead, zinc, sulphur. I think this one is phosphorus? Don’t really see what they could mean here, though.
[Beat.]
ALICE
We’ll figure it out.
CELIA
(doubtful but willing) Of – course we will.
[O.I.A.R. microphone spins up]
[More paper rustling noises]
[In the distance, the office door opens; footsteps approach]
GWEN
I assume this is why your casework has stalled?
ALICE
(ignoring) Hm?
GWEN
Your cases? Your job? According to the system you haven’t even opened one tonight.
ALICE
(absently) Piss off.
GWEN
Excuse me?
ALICE
(brighter) Sorry, you’re right. Piss off, boss.
[She settles back in her chair and keeps reading. Beat.]
GWEN
(restrained) I assume these are Colin’s… documents.
ALICE
(idly) Mmhm.
[She flips a page.]
GWEN
And… Have you found anything?
ALICE
Well… it looks like Freddie was originally made in Berlin, back in the late 80s, maybe early 90s. There’s a lot of references to someone called “Friedrich,” who I think might have been the original programmer.
GWEN
Is that… useful?
ALICE
Colin certainly thought so. He was trying to find out more from a contact over there, some guy called “Heinrich Unheimlich.”
GWEN
(half a disbelieving laugh) I’m sorry, “Heinrich Unheimlich”?
ALICE
Yeah. (swiveling her chair) What?
GWEN
Alice, do you speak any German?
ALICE
No, not as such. Why?
GWEN
“Unheimlich.” It means… creepy. Weird. I don’t think it’s a real name.
ALICE
(swiveling back, sounding tired) Well, it’s what Colin called him, so…
GWEN
I see.
Well. Keep me updated, I guess.
ALICE
(already back to reading) Mhm.
[Gwen stands there for a moment, then sighs and leaves, closing office door]
[Alice continues poring over the notebooks]
[Suddenly: a beep]
CHESTER
Dear Diary –
ALICE
Goddammit, what now?
CHESTER
– Mummy and Daddy still aren’t back from their stupid trip.
ALICE
(exasperated) Really?
CHESTER
Friday, 13th March, 1992
Dear Diary,
Berlin is rubbish. There’s NOTHING here but old sad buildings and old sad people. My feet hurt from all the walking and standing around in boring train stations waiting for boring trains to take us to boring walks and I’m BORED.
Saturday, 14th March, 1992
Dear Diary,
Okay, so maybe Berlin isn’t THAT bad, actually. Today Mum took me to the Musical Instrument Museum near the park, the Tiergarten, which I think means “Animal Garden.” Mum told me it used to be a hunting ground for the important people in the city. I kept looking for animals when we were in there, but I think they’re all gone, and that made me sad. Mum promised to take me to the zoo later.
The Musical Instrument Museum, the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, is so cool! There’s so many old instruments and they look so weird. We weren’t allowed to play any of them which doesn’t make sense, but I can’t play any instruments anyway, so, I guess it’s not so bad!
Right as we were about to leave, someone came up to Mum holding a box. They had really big eyes that looked like a cat, and they kept touching the box, like it was going to run away or something.
They started talking to Mum, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I really, really want to speak German like Mum. I keep asking her to teach me but she doesn’t want to. She thinks I’ll get bored like when I asked her to teach me to play guitar, which made my fingers hurt. But this is different! Speaking German won’t make my fingers hurt, although I didn’t think playing guitar would hurt my fingers either. It doesn’t look like it hurts.
I like watching Mum speaking German, all those cool sounds? It’s so cool, it’s like a superpower. People are nicer to us, we get free stuff all the time. Maybe this was what this person was doing, giving us free stuff because my mum speaks German.
They were talking super quickly, but Mr Cat Eyes was smiling. Mum looked a bit weirded out but then also started smiling. Cat Eyes looked at me, and I felt… weird. They kept talking in German, and I looked at Mum, but I could still feel Mr Cat Eyes looking at me with his – big – cat eyes. He moved the box towards Mum, and she shook her head. I think Mr Cat Eyes wanted Mum to take the box.
Mr Cat Eyes said something and opened the box.
It was a small toy carousel. It looked old. I think it was made of wood. It had a green and white big top, with white and pink pigs instead of horses, which I thought was funny. Mum looked at it, and she looked all weird, like when she sees something really nice in a shop window, only this time it was different. It was like she was almost a different person for a second.
She spoke to me, telling me how pretty it was. Mum said that she thought it was an old toy, maybe from East Berlin. I guess maybe it’s because East Berlin was also old?
She nodded at Mr Cat Eyes, took the box from him, and Mr Cat Eyes walked away.
Mum gave the box to me and said it was a present “from the nice German man.” I called out “Danke!” (pronounced dayn-kuh) But he’d already gone. Mum said I said it wrong, but I think I said it okay.
As we were walking past the Brandenburg Gate, which is smaller than in the pictures, I thought I saw an animal in the bushes, but – it was Mr Cat Eyes. He was watching me, hidden in the big green bushes of the Tiergarten.
Mum took me to a street market afterwards and we ate chips, which were really good.
Monday, 16th March, 1992
Dear Diary,
We are back home from Berlin. It feels really, really good to be back home, in my own room, in my own bed, and I can see all my friends again.
Mum put the pig carousel Mr Cat Eyes gave us in Berlin on the table in the kitchen. Mum thought it was pretty, but she also said it was a strange thing to give to someone. It didn’t make any sound or light up or anything. The pigs don’t even spin around!
Then, we put it on the windowsill in my room. Mum said I should be careful with it and not to play with it. What’s the point of a toy you can’t play with?
The pigs look different. When I looked at them in Berlin they were pink and white, but – now they’re different colours. They’re red and black, like they’ve been in a fire. That’s weird, right? Is it because we went on a plane? Do planes make pigs change colours? Is it because they’re German pigs and we’re no not in Germany any more?
I tried asking Mum, but she just looked at me and said I needed to eat less sugar. So now I’m not allowed anything I like.
Tuesday, 17th March, 1992
Dear Diary,
Something weird happened last night. I heard a noise which woke me up. It sounded like an old music box. I looked up and saw that the carousel had lit up, and it was spinning. As it span, the pigs began oinking, getting louder and louder. They didn’t sound like normal pigs though, like when we went to visit that farm. It was sad and angry. It wasn’t fun to listen to. Maybe they were oinking in German.
I sat up and watched it, wondering if Mum could hear it. I got up, walked over to the windowsill and picked it up, but as soon as I picked it up the noises stopped and all the lights went out, so I put it back down on the windowsill and tip-toed back to bed.
I asked Mum in the morning if she had heard anything. She said she hadn’t. Probably because she was snoring.
The carousel didn’t make any noise during the day. I picked it up, shook it, looked it all over and I couldn’t find any lights or anything that made a noise!
Mum told me to stop playing with it and leave it alone. She says it’s delicate. I asked Mum if we could move it to her room, and she said she needed to move some of the other old boring dusty Aunt Ick stuff out of her room first. Whatever that means.
Wednesday, 18th March, 1992
Dear Diary,
It happened again last night. The carousel lit up while I was asleep and started playing music and the pigs started oinking. I tried to just ignore it, but it was too loud! I can’t believe Mum can’t hear it.
I went over to the carousel. The pigs’ mouths had changed, they were more open than before and they had teeth now. Do pigs have teeth? I don’t remember the pigs at the farm having teeth.
The pigs’ teeth were a bright white with red dripping down them. I looked closer and saw the centre of the carousel had little pictures of really sad people. It was scary. The pigs kept oinking and spinning with their red and white teeth, and the sad people in the carousel looked at me.
I had an idea and went over to my bookshelf to find one of Mum’s old phrase books. I couldn’t find anything that meant “is anyone there?” The closest I could find was “who are you?” – “Wie heißen Sie?” as best I could. And then I asked about where it came from: “Kommst du aus Deutschland?” But maybe I was saying it wrong because nothing seemed to happen for a while.
But then it changed.
The carousel kept spinning and the music kept playing, but the pigs stopped oinking. They started saying something in German; it sounded like a nursery rhyme.
I asked “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” the way Mum taught me in case I ever got lost in Berlin. But I don’t think it heard me so instead I went and got my notebook and rainbow pen, and wrote down what it was singing:
(said in sing-song rhyme)
“Heinrich Unheimlich, wirst du mit mir spielen?
Heinrich Unheimlich, bist du in den dielen?
Heinrich Unheimlich, oh, bist du in sicht?
Heinrich Unheimlich, iss meine Eltern nicht.”1
The carousel started shaking, and the frills at the top started to twist. Then the centre of the carousel started turning red, like it was filling from the bottom, and the sad faces looked scared with their hands reaching for the top. Dark red stuff started spilling out of the pigs’ mouths onto the windowsill and dripping down onto the floor.
I picked it up before it made too much mess. And then it stopped.
In the morning, the pigs were back to normal, and the sad people were back.
I went to Mum to tell her what had happened but she was speaking German on the phone. She asked me to wait until she was done, but I kept saying it was urgent. Finally she sighed and put the phone down and I told her what had happened.
She didn’t believe me and said I was dreaming. I told her about the voices but Mum said it couldn’t have been German, because I don’t speak German! So I said I would show her what I wrote down.
I dragged Mum into my room and showed her the mess, and she was so. Cross. She said I had to tell her what I’d done to it but I kept telling her that I hadn’t done anything and it had just happened! She picked it up and looked it over to see if it was broken or sticky but it wasn’t.
I got my notebook, I opened it to the right page, and then gave it to Mum.
She sat down on my bed and started reading. She was very quiet for a long time. Then she looked at me and I didn’t really know what to do, so I just stood there watching her. I’d never seen Mum not know what to say. She always knew what to say.
She asked if I wanted to get rid of the carousel. I nodded. She said she would take it to where she sells all the old dusty stuff and I thought that sounded like a good idea. Then she asked if I wanted German lessons. I said yes, but only if she came with me. She said that was fair.
I also asked if I could get piano lessons, but she didn’t seem to like that idea so much.
Mum helped me clean up the mess and now it’s all shiny and clean and smells of flowers. She put the carousel back in the box and went out to sell it. She said she wouldn’t be long and I could call her on the phone if I got scared.
She’s been gone a long time.
I got hungry so I made myself a ham sandwich but I think I did it wrong, because it tasted wrong.
I hope Mum comes back soon.
[Beep.]
[Alice leans back in her chair.]
ALICE
(quiet) Right.
[The CCTV microphone beeps as a recording starts]
ALICE
– so I wanted to have a chat in here, away from any nosy PCs.
CELIA
You’re saying Freddie responded to the name Heinrich Unheimlich?
ALICE
Mm-hm. Which tells me it is definitely something I want to investigate.
CELIA
…And definitely something to discuss a bit more… privately.
ALICE
Exactly.
GWEN
You have Colin’s notes spread all over your workstation.
ALICE
Webcam’s taped, but I forgot about the mics since we never used them.
CELIA
So do we just rip them out?
ALICE
Not unless you want to be reformatted like Colin…
GWEN
Allegedly. After Colin attacked the system.
ALICE
(huffs) Whatever. Look. The point is, I need to go to Berlin.
CELIA
Uh…
GWEN
(simultaneous) What? Why?
ALICE
Heinrich is Colin’s contact. They were scheduled to meet in person.
CELIA
When?
ALICE
Five days from now. I reckon Colin got impatient and went after Freddie too soon.
GWEN
That does sound like Colin.
CELIA
And this “Heinrich” has agreed to meet with you instead?
ALICE
Not yet.
GWEN
(arch) You haven’t even checked.
ALICE
Look, if there are any contact details for him in the Library of Paranoidria there, I haven’t found them yet!
CELIA
This is a long shot.
ALICE
(sighs) Celiaaa…
GWEN
I agree with Alice.
ALICE
(annoyed) Of course you– (surprised) You do? You do. Right. (clears throat) Yes.
GWEN
I certainly think it’s worth a look.
But there’s something else, isn’t there? (heels clacking – stepping forward?) You’re keeping something back, I can tell.
ALICE
Oh. Well, I think, uh…
I think “Heinrich Unheimlich” might be… an External?
[Celia sighs]
GWEN
(smug) And there it is.
CELIA
(haggard) What sort?
ALICE
I don’t know, the spooky German sort? It sounds like he mostly scares children. And, if automatic translations of sketchy creepypasta are to be believed, he… maybe eats parents?
CELIA
Maybe?
ALICE
I mean, it wasn’t entirely clear? But since I’m not a child or a parent, (unconvincingly) I figured it might be chill!
[Beat.]
GWEN
No. Too dangerous.
ALICE
Oh come on – you meet with Externals all the time!
GWEN
Meaning I know the risks.
Besides, those are properly vetted Externals who have signed an agreement with the British Government to participate –
ALICE
Don’t be monster racist.
[Gwen huffs, sharp]
ALICE
(voice cracking) Please, Gwen, this is a good lead.2
GWEN
…
Fine.
ALICE
(genuinely grateful) Thank you.
GWEN
But I’m arranging some security.
ALICE
That’s fair.
CELIA
This feels risky.
ALICE
I’m not the one staying here with the Man-Eating Snoop-Bot 5000.
GWEN
(louder, stepping toward her again) For the last time, Freddie didn’t eat –
ALICE
I was talking about you.
GWEN
…
I’m capping your expenses.
ALICE
Dammit.
[Landline recording starts]
[A moment of silence, except for Gwen breathing quietly]
[Then Gwen exhales with force and immediately starts dialing a number]
[Phone rings, once, twice –]
RECEPTIONIST
(on phone) Starkwall Services Group, how can I direct your call?
GWEN
Yes, hello. This is Gwendolyn Bouchard at the Office of Incident Assessment and Response. I’d like to speak to Mr… Brett Lantz, please?
RECEPTIONIST
(on phone) Of course, Ms Bouchard. May I ask what this is regarding?
GWEN
Tell him…
Tell him we’re ready to give you a trial run.
[Music]
ANNOUNCER
The Magnus Protocol is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International License. The series is created by Jonathan Sims and Alexander J Newall, and directed by Alexander J Newall.
This episode was written by Jonathan Sims and Amber Devereux, and edited with additional materials by Alexander J Newall, with vocal edits by Lowri Ann Davies, soundscaping by Tessa Vroom, and mastering by Catherine Rinella with music by Sam Jones.
It featured Billie Hindle as Alice Dyer, Anusia Battersby as Gwen Bouchard, Lowri Ann Davies as Celia Ripley, with additional voices from Jonathan Sims.
The Magnus Protocol is produced by April Sumner, with executive producers Alexander J Newall, Dani McDonough, Linn Ci, and Samantha F.G. Hamilton, and Associate Producers Jordan L. Hawk, Taylor Michaels, Nicole Perlman, Cetius d’Raven, and Megan Nice.
To subscribe, view associated materials, or join our Patreon, visit rustyquill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us @therustyquill, visit us on facebook or email us at mail@rustyquill.com.