Roderick’s second letter has equally devastating results.
Cast
Randi Halle Millien
Shane Mark Millien
Roderick Brian Ashton Smith
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
Hospital Sounds
MICU beeps_MaryWashingtonHospital_Oct2011.aif by jgeralyn of freesound.org
Music
Roderick’s Letter Theme
One and Only Choir from Apple Loops in Garageband
Created by Mark and Halle Millien
Cover Art by Halle Millien
Written, Directed and Produced by Mark Millien
Thank you to everyone that has supported us during this difficult time. Thank you to the protesters risking their bodies and health. Thank you to the medical professionals who are healing bodies or granting them peace. Thank you to CBR. Thanks dad. Love you Mitch.
Glossary
cleanse: a MIC raid into orange slums meant to display vigilance against outbreaks but considered extrajudicial and illegal for years, but they have been tied up in the courts.
comm-chain: a pirated network on the Q that allows multiple users to share the same node band, used mostly by the poor to gain Q access. Legal chained networks are expensive.
tracer barbs: a tactical grenade that discharges hooked razor shrapnel embedded with micro locator buoys. They can be painful and difficult to remove often burrowing beneath the skin.
Roderick’s Letter:
I’m in the hospital. I’m sick. My first symptoms started four days ago. Over the weekend. Memorial Day weekend. I told you…I told you I’d be home. Flight 1984 out of Laguardia. I was in seat 33C, my reservation number was WUBVSP. Number, it’s all letters, I didn’t realize that til just now. We got diverted to Houston. They didn’t tell us why at the time. I was listening to a podcast so I didn’t hear him at first, the flight attendant. Coughing. Struggling for breath. It was like I’d been transported back into the triage tents. I didn’t even realize I’d unclipped my belt. I just wanted to help him. I held him while people screamed, backed away, or prayed. He didn’t make it off the plane. They quarantined the entire flight while tests came back. My throat wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t right, so I chalked it up to psychosomatic influences. I wasn’t worried. I just wanted to be sure that I could look your mother in the eye and tell her that everything was fine. That I’d kept my promise. I’m tested pretty regularly, so…I wasn’t worried. I didn’t panic. I just waited in a dingy motel a measly 222 miles away from you. I had been so ready to leave New York and all of its vast empty and here I was, at the finish line, til someone pulled us off the track. I was scrolling through pictures of you two when, when I got the call. I asked a lot of questions. I know all the protocols by rote but I still had so many questions. God. Uh, so, that was, Saturday. Saturday. They are going to keep me for a few more days. I haven’t improved. In fact, things have gotten a little worse. I’m in bed right now laying next to a ventilator draped in plastic. There are suction tubes and monitors and, you can probably hear the beeping, the oxygen tanks. Constant wheezing of machines. The staff knows they can’t lie to me or stall me with jargon but they try out of habit and apologize when they see me see them. Even behind masks, I can read their faces. I’m recording this on my phone. I’m not supposed to have it but…I can see why they take it from you. Germs and anxiety bound like mortar and cement encased in plastic and glass. A man named George Floyd died today. Wait, that’s not right, he died Monday, he was murdered on Monday. But the video became viral on Tuesday and the headlines caught up today, Wednesday. His name, the man the cops killed, his name was George Floyd. By the time you hear this his name will be lost like all the rest, sunken treasure buried under tons and tons of cold indifferent waves. There were four cops and a crowd of onlookers. One of the cops, THE cop, had George Floyd on the ground handcuffed and leaned into his neck with his knee, casually, for nine minutes. That’s wrong. It wasn’t casual. It was defiant. The people pleaded with him. George Floyd said he couldn’t breathe. Over and over again. Before he died, he called out for his mother. He told everyone there that he was going to die. HIs mother is dead. I, I didn’t know that before, I just read that. Fuck. And this cop, with his hands in his pockets, a smirk on his face, he dared anyone to do anything. Dared anyone to care. He knew that there would be no real consequences. He was sharing his impunity with the world and he knew they wouldn’t give a shit. They all eat from the same trough and its brimming with our meat and bones. Most white people aren’t even aware that they see us as no more than animals but can’t explain why seeing us slaughtered doesn’t move them the way a mutilated dog might on the highway between where they’re going and where they’ve been. No one will remember my name. I will live on in you, my children, but I will die more as a statistic than a man. I told you before that I regretted coming here. That’s not true, I just wish I did. I helped people here, people who really needed it, who would’ve died if it hadn’t been for me. Maybe one of their names will live on and I can share a scrap of their immortality. It’s enough that they will go home to their families. I didn’t intend to sacrifice mine for theirs. The flight attendant, his name was George Adiacco. He grew up in New York all his life. Used to be a police captain. Retired and decided to practice his comedy routine on domestic flights during landings and takeoffs. He was loved. I just wouldn’t have been worthy of you if I had done nothing. But now, I wish so much that nothing was exactly what I’d done.
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