[Intro Theme]
ANNOUNCER
Rusty Quill Presents: The Magnus Protocol.
Episode Fifty-One – Legacy Issues.
[Music]
[Phone recording starts]
[Phone ringing]
[It rings and rings and rings]
[CELIA makes a noise of impatience]
[GEORGIE answers]
GEORGIE
(over the phone) Hi Celia. Let me guess, work emergency?
CELIA
I… Yeah.
…Sorry.
GEORGIE
Yeah, I had a feeling we’d have one this evening.
CELIA
What? How?
GEORGIE
Not sure. Either I’ve got a touch of ESP, or you’re getting predictable. Maybe both. Probably both.
CELIA
Well warn me next time so I can at least dress for it.
GEORGIE
(over noises of her getting ready) Dress for what? No, forget I asked. Has Jack been fed?
CELIA
Yeah, he was sleeping when I… had to leave. He just needs someone to keep an eye on him.
GEORGIE
Got it. He’ll have both of mine in about fifteen minutes.
[A curious cow approaches Celia, nudging her slightly]
[Cow breath intensifies]
CELIA
Perfect, thanks G– (to cow) Oi, get off!
GEORGIE
Celia? What’s happening? Are you okay?
CELIA
Yeah, I’m fine, Just… give me a second…
(muttered to cow, pushing it away) Bugger off!
[The cow moos reproachfully]
GEORGIE
Was that… Do I hear mooing?
CELIA
Uhhh…
GEORGIE
Like a cow?
CELIA
Yeah….
[Silence]
Georgie, I’m sorry I can’t really –
GEORGIE
Can’t really explain because it’s super secret work stuff. Uh-huh. Seriously, Celia, I don’t care if it gets me on another watchlist, one of these days you have got to tell me what the hell these “work emergencies” actually are.
CELIA
And you’d just sit quietly on that info and not immediately podcast it out to the world?
GEORGIE
Not the whole world… just fifty or so dedicated listeners…
CELIA
(small laugh) I’ll think about it.
GEORGIE
Fine. Anyway, I’d better be going. Have fun with your cows, I guess?
CELIA
Eurgh. Thanks again Georgie.
GEORGIE
I know, I’m wonderful. I’ll text you when he wakes up.
[GEORGIE hangs up]
[Beat]
[Celia puts her phone in a pocket]
[The cow returns, nudging Celia and mooing softly]
[Celia sighs.]
CELIA
(to cow) Don’t suppose you could give me a lift to London?
[Landline recording starts]
[Landline ringing]
[It rings and rings and rings]
[GWEN makes a noise of impatience]
[Someone answers]
GWEN
Hi, yes, please tell me I’m through to the Cabinet Office because I’ve been bounced around the entire civil service by this point…
[Silence as she listens to the response]
Right, okay. This is Gwendolyn Bouchard from the Office of Incident Assessment and Response– Yeah, hi, now I’m looking for some documentation but no one seems to have any idea where it is.
[Pause]
Great, I’m looking for everything you have on the O.I.A.R., personnel records, operations reports, budgets, software notation… whatever you have.
[Pause]
No, I realise that, but I’ve recently been appointed as head of the department–
[Pause]
Yeah thanks, but the problem is my predecessor neglected her records and I’ve been trying to get things in order for the minister but–
[Pause]
Yeah, Trevor Herbert, anyway the problem is there’s no records from before 2021 here. Nothing. Now I don’t know if it’s a system issue or a management problem or whatever, but I need help finding copies of those records and apparently nobody has any idea where they’re kept.
[Pause]
No, Mr. Herbert is not… uh… has been unable to assist in this particular matter. But he’s given my enquiries his full blessing!
[Pause]
(slightly crazed) Okay. So if you’re not responsible for maintaining those archives, then who is?
[Pause]
(crazed calm) Yes, but I can’t put in a formal request to the department head, because I am the department head, and I am telling me– you that those records aren’t here.
[Pause]
(through gritted teeth) I know they should be here. That’s why I’m trying to FIND THEM!
[Pause]
Yes, fine, whatever–
[Pause]
–Goodbye!
[She slams the phone down]
[After a moment she picks it up then slams it down again]
[And again. And again.]
[Beat.]
[GWEN sits alone panting slightly]
[There’s a beep as a case comes through]
[GWEN takes a deep breath then clicks through to it.]
GWEN
(snapping) Go on then. I’m listening.
[She clicks to start the case.]
AUGUSTUS
From the work diary of Robert Boyle, November 29th 1652.
W_ is dead. An inquisitive gentleman and a friend, not deserving of the judgement laid upon him. I must act and not succumb to the faintness that may overtake me should I remember his face when I found him.
Too much enamored with the alchemy, he would give no heed to my growing proofs of its insufficiency to know the works of God and continue his own experiments beyond what any might countenance. Yet in this he found some matter that goes beyond what might be believed.
He summoned me to his laboratory, knowing that while no true skeptic, I had little patience remaining for alchemy as a method to understand our Lord’s design. Thus would I make, as he said, the finest eyes to behold his achievement. He told me once it was his calling. That he was drawn to alchemical discovery as a priest were drawn to the church. I did not believe him. I did not understand him. I still do not, although I have seen it.
W_’s goal, he said, was beyond mere Chrysopoeia. The mutation of base metals was nothing to him, he was to transform the very substance of his self, of his spirit. I believed he was speaking of prayer and devotion, perhaps inviting me to nothing more rare than a strange session of worship. I was a fool.
He greeted me most cordially, and we ate together most happily. He tore into his meat with a violence that spoke of such hunger that I found my own venison hard to stomach. This should perhaps have spoken to me of the profound imbalance of his spirit. The dreadful need that he wished to fill with something dark and ungodly. It inspired in me a small, wordless fear, and upon seeing this there came a grim satisfaction upon his face.
W_ explained his previous experiments. He told me every particular of what he was about to attempt. He pointed, one after another, at every alteration he had made to the chair in which he was to sit. He spent much time on the designs he had burned into the leather straps and the methods by which he had measured, placed and sharpened the points that jutted out from its back and into his. He laughed when I expressed alarm at the blood that was pooling around his feet. He spoke to me in words of ridicule and blasphemy.
Should I have stopped him? Yes, although I do not know how such a thing might have been done. Before it was clear that I should undertake to arrest his experiment, the means to do so were beyond my reach and his awful change had begun.
I will not commit to ink the particulars of what I saw. To write them is to give them form they should not have for form is what they desire most of all.
Yet I cannot write nothing. In years to come I will read these words and if they do not contain W_’s end then I shall not believe my memories.
I say then this:
The experiment was most physical in its nature. It did not mutate the inanimate, but it did mutate his flesh. It was in all things alchemical, flawed and thus impossible, yet it was successful. And I may give assurance to the memory: the piercing cry of agony you hear in your dreams is true to the sound he produced as he changed.
It is impossible. For years I have labored beside the alchemists and found many of their methods astray in their understanding of the world. Oft I have showed their experiments as failures or misapprehensions of natural laws. Yet what I saw was no illusion, no mummery, no deceit. I have even, after some trepidation, attempted it myself with some success, though I ceased long before the transmutation that took my friend’s life in so unholy a manner.
There has been a great change. Where once I had found these alchemies were mostly adornments on the chemical process, ambitions without formative merit, something now comes to fill the absence. It is not, cannot be of God’s light or His creation, but is instead some dark quintessence. Not Prima Materia as the alchemists would have it, but Mutare Materia, that fouls what it touches in manners too terrible to set down in detail.
It makes me so very afraid. Afraid of what has been created and what I saw become of my misguided friend, yes. But afraid more of a world in which such experiments abound, where it is known the force of dark quintessence may move to give you what you wish in its awful transmutations. There remain but few ardent alchemists and my Invisible College has been working to bring them into our more noble work of new philosophy. It is my hope that we may yet restrain this mutare materia from doing true injury to our Lord’s creation.
I must write to H-. His work as an intelligencer may prove vital to our cause. If we are to have any hope of arresting this quintessence of dread and darkness then we must be quick, secret and clear of purpose. Perhaps H-’s work within the court might give us the sanction we require.
The key, I believe, is balance. It is in the imbalance of alchemy and its absence of truths that the mutare materia enters. Then it twists the weft and warp of goodly creation to produce the impossible and thereby distort the spirit to leave only lingering things of terror and despair. Balance is essential in all things. Balance and ignorance.
The worst of it is that for all the evil he took into his body, W_ did not die. Is not dead. I hear his voice still. I smell the putrescence of the substance he became as it wafts through my window on the Winter wind. It makes me so very afraid, and I know that is why he calls to me so. Should my entreaties to H_ prove successful, our first and holiest duty will be to find and destroy whatever horror is left of my friend before he may spread his corruption unchecked.
May God help us all and guide our hands.
[GWEN exhales, considering what she’s just heard]
GWEN
All right. Uh, thank you, I guess? Maybe something a bit more recent next time?
[No answer]
[GWEN sighs]
[She goes over and pulls the blinds open]
[She sighs again, then picks up the phone and dials]
[Phone ringing]
[It rings and rings and rings]
[Celia’s voicemail cuts in:]
CELIA
Hey, this is Celia’s phone. Leave a message and –
[Gwen hangs up and dials another number]
[Phone ringing]
[It rings and rings and rings]
GWEN
Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare send me to voicemail, you-
ALICE
(over the phone) What do you want, Gwen?
GWEN
What do I want? Some respect from my subordinates, for a start, but right now I’ll settle for you explaining why it’s half an hour into the workday and I’m looking at an empty office!
ALICE
Celia late again?
GWEN
We’re not talking about Celia right now. We’re talking about you. Unless you happen to know where she keeps disappearing to?
ALICE
I dunno. You should ask that tiny fragile human that needs constant care and attention that she hangs out with, maybe he knows?
GWEN
(exasperated) And what’s your excuse?
ALICE
I’ve been going through a list of names I found on Sam’s computer, people he and Celia talked to about Magnus stuff. Thought it might be worth trying to have a chat with them myself, but I’ve been trying to get an appointment to see this deputy head and they’re not having any of it –
GWEN
Alice, I need you to come into work. Now.
ALICE
And I need one single, solitary lead on what’s going on that isn’t another complete waste of time. So I guess we’re both shit out of luck. Unless you found out anything more about Schweitzer?
[Silence]
Of course you didn’t. I swear to god the only thing stopping me jumping in after Sam or taking an axe to the servers like Colin is because both options are equally better than having to deal with you right now and I just can’t choose.
GWEN
Look, are you coming into work or not Alice? Because we’re really behind on the caseload and –
ALICE
Of course we’re behind! We’re always behind, because there’s only two of us!
GWEN
(thoughtful) You’re right…
ALICE
I know! I’ve been saying it for weeks! So if you want to catch up so badly then maybe you should get off your managerial arse and actually help for a change!
GWEN
Hmmmm…
ALICE
…Gwen? Hello?
GWEN
(rallying) Look Alice, do I need to mark you absent for tonight, or–?
ALICE
For Christ’s sake, I’m literally outside!
GWEN
(snapping) What? Then why didn’t you–
[Beat]
(recentering) Right. Good. Hurry up.
[She hangs up]
[Phone recording starts]
ALICE
(imitating Gwen) “Oh Alice, we’re so behind on all the cases that matter so much to everyone after I completely screwed us” – Jesus Christ.
[She takes a deep breath and collects herself]
[She makes a new call]
[Phone ringing]
[It rings and rings and rings]
[LUKE’s voicemail cuts in:]
LUKE
Hey, leave me a message. Or don’t. Whatever.
[Beep]
ALICE
Hey, dickhead. You know who. Found a review of your last gig and, I mean, I’ve sure you’ve already seen it, but it said you weren’t nearly as shit as they expected so yeah, kudos. Anyway, call me back when you’re not busy mortgaging your future for fame and fortune and reassure your sister you haven’t been murdered by grumpy sound techs or something. I, uh… I miss… you. Sort of. Ya dickhead.
[She spots something]
ALICE
Oh, gotta go. Call me back! Ciao.
[She hangs up]
ALICE
(calling) Teddy!
[He pretends not to hear her as she jogs over]
ALICE
Oi, Teddy, you dozy prick!
TEDDY
Oh, er… hi Alice. Sorry, I didn’t see you.
ALICE
Where’ve you been, man? Have you been getting my messages?
TEDDY
Yeah, sorry, I’m just a bit behind at the moment. New job and all that.
[Beat]
[Teddy doesn’t want to be here]
ALICE
(gentler) Teddy, are you alright?
TEDDY
Hm? Of course, yeah. I’m good. How’re you?
ALICE
Yeah, I’m fine. Listen, Teddy, mate, don’t take this the wrong way or anything –
TEDDY
Here we go…
ALICE
– but you look like shit.
TEDDY
Charming as ever.
ALICE
No, I’m serious, is everything okay?
TEDDY
(short) I’m fine.
ALICE
Try again.
TEDDY
I’m just not sleeping well, all right? New job. Stress. Don’t worry about it.
ALICE
I’m allowed to worry about my friends, Teddy.
TEDDY
Mm. Sure.
[Beat]
ALICE
(stepping forward) So… What’s in the bag? Hang on, is that a minidisc player?
TEDDY
(snapping and yanking the bag away) Don’t touch that!
ALICE
Jesus, Teddy, okay….
TEDDY
(slightly fearful) I-It’s for work. They’re very particular. They don’t like – I’ll text you later, Alice.
[Teddy hurries off, bags rattling]
[Beat]
ALICE
What the hell was that?
…
Christ, I need to talk to someone normal.
[Door opens nearby]
GWEN
(calling) Alice, what does the phrase “literally outside” mean to you? Because I heard it ten minutes ago and yet you’re still not at your desk.
ALICE
(sighing) Not exactly what I had in mind…
[ALICE trudges off towards the inevitable]
[Music]
ANNOUNCER
The Magnus Protocol is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share- alike 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 edited with additional materials by Alexander J Newall, with vocal edits by Nico Vettese, soundscaping by Meg McKellar, and mastering by Catherine Rinella with music by Sam Jones.
It featured Billie Hindle as Alice Dyer, Lowri Ann Davies as Celia Ripley, Anusia Battersby as Gwendolyn Bouchard, Sasha Sienna as Georgie Barker, Kazeem Tosin Amore as Teddy Vaughn, with additional voices from Tim Fearon.
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, explore exclusive extras, and enjoy early access ad-free episodes, visit members.rustyquill.com or join our Patreon. Rate and review us online, follow us on social media and email us at mail@rustyquill.com.
Thanks for listening.