Randi and Shane plot next steps after realizing they may be in danger.
Cast
Randi Halle Millien
Shane Mark Millien
SFX and Music Contributors
SFX
Q Tone [Query]
Tone 4.wav by patchen of freesound.org
Q Tone [Response]
Tone 3.wav by patchen of freesound.org
Music
Mara’s Letter Theme:
FallOut - 93cave Type Pad - Prod 93CAVE by 093cave of looperman.com
Photographer: Joshua A. Bickel @joshuabickel
Created by Mark and Halle Millien
Cover Art by Halle Millien
Written, Directed and Produced by Mark Millien
Thanks to Joshua A. Bickel of the Dispatch for providing such a striking image of our times at great risk to himself.
Glossary
pod: like an airbnb but suited to standards of sterility that make it considered safe for travelers to trust.
undefended: has replaced the term unarmed in the vernacular.
zeen: digital articles on the Q.
zombie: a slang term for M.I.C.s, who are basically commando medics (more detailed description in a previous glossary).
Mara’s Letter:
There isn’t much in the way of hope these days. There are people in Michigan and Ohio today storming governor’s offices, demanding that their governments reopen. In Ohio, the pictures and interviews don’t seem real. They can’t be. Some guy going on about not being able to buy lawn fertilizer? A woman whining about not going to the hair salon? Michigan has the fourth most cases in the states, and the third highest death rate. 1,921 dead. That’s 57% of all the people that have died in China. Allegedly. And just as efforts to slow this thing down seem to be working, these people want to rush headlong into an unknown that could decimate them. They’re out here screaming for the freedom to die so that they can go back to the jobs that don’t pay them enough. For the freedom to kill others by carrying this contagion asymptomatically to their fathers and mothers, grandparents and the ailing. People keep dying and it doesn’t seem to matter. When children started getting slaughtered in schools routinely, we saw that they cared more about these freedoms than they did their own sons and daughters. I told myself then it was because they couldn’t imagine it happening to them. But as the bullets flew in classrooms all over the country and shooting drills became standard in daycare centers, that rationalization began to evaporate. It was only a couple of years ago that I learned it was against the law for the government to sponsor a study on statistical domestic gun deaths. The law was decades old. I understood then that none of this was an accident. That death wasn’t an antidote to greed. In some cases it was an accelerant. The Senate Intelligence Chairman sold more than a million dollars in stock after receiving briefings about the virus’ impact and then told the public that the country was more prepared than any other to deal with the threat. He made money off of every single person who died alone in a room full of masks and plastic. And yet, I am still surprised. It may be because I grew up pampered. We were poor growing up, but racism had ebbed into the subtlety of sledgehammers instead of the bloodlust tied to nooses. Redlining had refined itself into gerrymandering. But the police remained. Brutal and efficient. When you read this, I can think of only one thing that will carry my hopes with you in words tight enough to hold onto you. The world will not love you my sons, cops least of all. Trust them with nothing. Only money will set you free, and even then, it is a poor man’s freedom.
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