Writer, Editor, and Director: Finley Cole
Voices: Finley Cole (Vikki Other), Vera Dawn (Lizzy Dowell)
VIKKI
Salutations, my darling listeners! It’s me - the one known far and wide as Vikki Other, voice of the lost, leading you to finding inner peace, outer torment, and perfectly adequate limbo. Appreciate the air inside your lungs. Appreciate the air you’ve not yet taken. Appreciate the feeling of your skins shell, separating the two. You are not lost.
You are listening.
From my timeline to yours… this is Radio Other.
[INTRO]
Today, I’m sponsoring my show on behalf of sound waves. You may not be able to see them, but they sure as heck are there. Just like the figure who’s currently standing in the corner of your room, watching you, only there until you look close enough. However, unlike him, we know what sound waves do. You don’t know what he does.
I know, but I’m not gonna tell you. It’d ruin the surprise too soon. Oooh, but I want to tell you so bad! Nope. No way, Vikki. We won’t spoil the imperceptible figure in the corner game again. Last time you did that, the government kept you in a locked room and questioned you for two weeks.
It’ll let you know though - it’s a really good surprise.
[VIKKI LAUGHS]
So, sound waves. What do they do? What do they look like?
I found out recently that Billie can see sound waves. And to anyone wondering, they’re amazing. They just wiggle! It’s like sound, but it wiggles! I could watch those wobbly wiggly squiggly jiggly acoustic energy propagations for hours.
And today, I’m going to watch some very very special sound waves. As some of you know, once a year the Uncanny Valley radio station, Uncanny Unplugged, releases its list of the top twenty songs to hit the charts this year.
Well, yesterday happened to be the day that those results went up. And while this is usually a talk show, I always love to support the arts, and participate in the cultural crisis of man! And what better way to do that than to take the product of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, and volumes of pressure, and mock it mercilessly?
So, I have my laptop, the list of songs, and a unnecessarily large roster of adjectives to use. So let’s go!
I’ve always been a bit of a musician myself, so I’ll take the liberty of playing a song of my own at the end, if that’s alright. I know I don’t have voice for it, and I certainly am not a lyricist, but I think I should be able to take the liberty of permitting at least SOME torture for all my entertainment. After all, what is beauty without pain?
I’m even half decent at piano. Lizzy plays violin, actually, and in eighth grade, I tried to make them perform in the talent show with me as a band. We got matching t-shirts that everyone but me refused to wear, got a slot in the registry, and even managed to have two productive practice sessions out of the thirteen I hosted! Unfortunately, the kid before us was an aspiring hypnotist, and also… successful. By the time our act came up, the entire gym had risen from their seats, and were chanting monotone praises of him, arms stretched out towards him.
Lizzy, George, Ellie and I were backstage at the time, so we weren’t affected, but it effectively cancelled our performance. Eventually, Lizzy managed to pick the lock on the door leading out of the auditorium and to the track, and we walked to the Maisy Days Diner and got milkshakes, cursing the name of Anthony Burton all the way.
Those were good days.
But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the now. The right here. We’re talking about music!
Now, I’ve got this little spinning wheel of death that lands on random numbers when I operate it! I’m going to give it a spin, and let it pick our fate.
Let’s give this a go!
[WHEEL SPINNING]
And… 16! Howdy boy now that’s a lovely number. That’s actually the same amount of ghosts that haunt the Cecil Hotel, one of the many cursed establishments up in Picher.
Hopefully no one died while listening to this song.
[TRACK PLAYS]
Now that’s certainly an interesting one! Do I think it qualifies for its coveted spot, the grand 16th place?
No. No it did not. There is no understanding in the music. It is empty. It is hollow. It is the act of breathing without the gentle sigh of living. It is a heart that beats for the rhythm of purpose, not the purpose of lasting. What has been composed here is not sacred. It is a tree with gashes carved through its eyes. It does not see the truth.
Why would you make this?
Listeners, I have a task for you.
Right now, I want you to find a knife. Then I want you to head outside, and find a tree. One with eyes. Find the tree's biggest eyes, and stab them. Stab them until they are mangled bark and bloody sap. Then, with the hilt, carve the words “The truth is not seen, what is sacred is not lasting” into the mid trunk.
Hopefully, this will deliver the message to the music station that we are displeased with their decisions regarding the music charts.
I also encourage vicious subtweeting. In the past, I would’ve disregarded this method as anticlimactic and tedious, but I’m sure you’ve seen the recent developments in the state of Catalonia, which has been recently in a strenuous civil war on Twitter. Last week, the war finally ended, a string of tweets posted with drafts of the new constitution, an official beheading ceremony of the king done in emojis, and a new government being elected via aggressive twitter polls. Truly an astounding use of the new world of media.
So, moving on. Once again- it is time to spin. To twist the fingers of fate.
What number comes next?
Who knows!
Well, the wheel probably knows.
It knows way too much.
[WHEEL SPINNING]
Five! That’s an honest to dawn, finger lickin beheld by the eye of providence five.
Which correlates to a certain track five on my list. Which I will play now.
And you will listen, darling listeners! It is your job.
[TRACK PLAYS]
Now THAT might just be my favourite so far. It really manages to blend the genres of indie pop, and subliminal human agony. It reminds me of the course I took in Sophomore year. It was about audio editing, AV production, that sorta thing. We were given a list of sounds we had to recreate for the exam, and then given the equipment to record with. I think I did an excellent job with the “Flesh tearing from bone, symbolic of the agony of cultural shock brought along with transition from childhood to adulthood” prompt.
I got an A in that class. It was how I knew that my destiny was to continue into radio. Other than, of course, the fact I was born holding a vintage microphone in my left hand.
That also was poetically prophetic.
For as accomplished I am as a false prophet, my life is really quite full of poetically prophetic things.
I wonder what it means?
Perhaps it's symbolic of the cultural shock brought along with the transition from living to dead.
That’s what the teacher said my submission conveyed more accurately, anyway. She was one of my favourite teachers. I just always felt she truly understood what radio meant to me. I love Liz, Ellie and George more than life… I mean… right, I do. But I never felt they got what this held for me. To them, it was a hobby, a pastime. Not a purpose.
To me, this is my purpose.
So, spinny time. What number shall be picked from the pile, thrust to the pyre, and to my prying eyes, my unending scrutiny? Well, golly gee let’s see!
[WHEEL SPINNING]
And - drumroll please-
Number nine! Oh, nine is such a good number. It’s the square of 3, which is the most holy number. As value is not qualifiable, only quantifiable, it is impossible to say whether the best things truly come in threes. However, many spectacular things do fit that bill. The servants of the apocalypse - the beast, the prophet, and the antichrist. The beginning, the middle, and the end.
Birth, death, and the space where we slide ourselves through the years in between. Ketchup, mayonnaise, and pigs blood - the three holy condiments.
A triad. A truth. A trinity.
And also the square root of nine.
Which is the track number we’re talking about.
So, erm- here we are, darling listeners!
[TRACK PLAYS]
Ah, now she has got to be one of my favourite artists. Sadly, as a way of promoting her upcoming album, [BLEEP] has vanished without a trace, presumably changing her name and fleeing to foreign borders. So I can’t legally speak of her anymore, or I might risk psychological attacks from the music industry's invisible intelligence agency.
The “Vanish without a trace” method has actually become an increasingly popular advertising scheme in the music scene, and I like it. Much less flashy than the whole “Fake your own death via paid performance art assassins” thing from a couple years back.
So that’s all the songs I have the attention span for. I know I promised to go through all 20, but really- who has the time for that?
Other than the Timekeepers, who literally control time itself. But that’s a totally different pay grade than radio host.
Anyway, onto the real reason I brought us here - my own musical adventures!
Now, I couldn’t get a piano in here, which is really a shame. However, I did manage to find some old tape recordings of my first attempts at musical acclaim! So, I’ve set up my player here, and I’m hoping we can get a good taste of my musical expertise through it.
So… enjoy, darling listeners.
[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS ON]
Younger Vikki: Okay, okay… show time!
H-hi! I mean, hello! This is Vikki Other. Which is me.
I’m using a tape recorder right now, which I actually haven’t used before. Lizzy’s grandma let me borrow her old player and some empty cartridges she has. I think those are the right terms. I kinda like the feel of these things actually. They’ve got that whole little background hissss sound, that’s sorta kinda comforting?
Anyway, sorry, I’m like totally rambling.
Recently, I found an old white grand piano in the forest. It was in a clearing, the plants under it dead and decayed. Black vines wrapped around the legs, anchoring it down. It was really pretty, and I walked over to take a closer look. When I sat down, I noticed that across the inner fallboard, the words “Cupio Dissolvi” were scratched deep, black not with ink but with rot.
I pressed one of the keys, just to see, and it worked. I could see the inside of the piano, and I watched as the little hammer hit the string, and then the string vibrated all the way down.
That’s when I heard this voice. Well, maybe not a voice? It was more like a melody, but I understood what words it meant. Like a conversation from another room, but also like music.
So I listened, and I was like, what’s up with that. And it didn’t say anything. So I tried pressing a key again, and it was back!
It started asking me to play it’s tune, and I was all like “Hey man, I can’t play piano. I don’t even know the first thing about it!”
So the voice started teaching me!
It did this cool thing where it carved those rotten, stained words into the music stand, in a loopy, shaky font. It told me what all the note names were, and what order to play them in.
I did that for a while, and since my parents put up new traps in the house to keep me out, I ended up staying the whole night. At least, it felt like the whole night. Time doesn’t really work super well here?
Either way, eventually I had learned basically how to play the piano. At that point, it started carving a score into the stand. I hadn’t gotten that far, but somehow I could read it anyway. Which, like, super weird but also SUPER awesomesauce!!
I started playing it, and it was like, this super creepy tune. But also really beautiful. Finally, the song ended, and I saw the black roots start to crawl up the sides of the piano, wrapping themselves around it. I stood up, because they were getting kinda close to catching me, and stepped away.
The roots wrapped around the whole frame, and began to pull it down into the earth, the white wood blackening and decaying as it sank. Finally, all that remained was a small box that had fallen off the top that I hadn’t noticed before. I picked it up, opened it, and found a small silver key. Well, on one end it was a key. On the other end, it was split off and shaped like a tuning fork.
I took it to the gang, and showed it to them, and they were super weirded out. George says he doesn’t believe me, because he’s got the whole stoic sceptic thing going that he’s super bad at. Lizzy thinks its concerning, but she thinks everything is dangerous. She always says I’m going to get hurt, which is dumb, since I’m like, pretty sure that I could fight god and win.
Mrs. Meredith, the art teacher, lent me some of the non-barbed wire from the crafts cabinet, so I’ve made it into a little necklace. I think it fits my vibe of “constantly overwhelmed by intense imagery”.
Anyway, so I’ve started playing the pianos at our school, and I’ve come up with some funky little melodies and stuff. Well, this one is actually one that I’m not sure if I made up or not- it sorta came to me in a dream? I had a really bad cold the other week and one of Ellie’s moms practices unethical nursing on top of her job, which is unethical science, so she gave me something to help.
It got rid of the cold, but I also was plagued with visions for the next 48 hours, so I think it might need some refining. I mean, she did say it was one of the ones that was supposed to NOT actively harm the patients.
So, yeah.
Here’s what I wrote!
[VIKKI SINGS A COVER OF WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS - THE BEATLES]
—-
YOUNG LIZZY
Hey! V-vikki!
YOUNG VIKKI
Oh! Lizzy!
YOUNG LIZZY
I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise you were doing stuff- I just- Ellie’s softball game starts in a half hour and I told her that we’d be there- it’s fine if you’re busy but I just wanted to-
YOUNG VIKKI
Don’t worry, Liz! Of course I’m gonna be there. Anything for a friend. We’re a team, remember? Count on one…
YOUNG LIZZY
Count on all.
YOUNG VIKKI
Yep!
Just gimme one second. I think my shoes got taken by your couch.
L, sighing: Again? Ugh. I thought those guys Nona called last week were supposed to have fixed that!
YOUNG VIKKI
Y’know what they say, Lizby. You can defang a couch, but you can’t take away it’s hidden tentacles.
YOUNG LIZZY
I think that’s something you made up just to fit this situation, because that’s really specific.
YOUNG VIKKI
Okay, you got me there. So, um…
Could you help me with the shoes?
YOUNG LIZZY
Yeah. Of course.
YOUNG VIKKI
Great- Oh! Sorry, lemme just turn this-
[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS OFF]
VIKKI
…
Well that’s certainly interesting. Not… not exactly what I was expecting, but expectation is simply the foggy veil we cast around ourselves to create the image of memory, of hope. Things of which we have forgotten.
So, from my timeline to yours…
This is Radio Other.