February 5, 2025 • 30 mins
Still reeling from the loss of her son Madison, Tilda tries to heal, regroup and formulate a plan.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and welcome to stuff
Will Never Told You prediction of iHeartRadio. And we are
back with our first edition of Sminty Fiction of twenty
twenty five. That's exciting. We are in the third part
(00:29):
of the Terminus trilogy, so you can start here if
you want. I'm not going to tell you what to do,
but you'll probably be very confused. So I also really
appreciate the people who've been writing in about it. Who
some of you are doing kind of like the listening
once per month. Some of you are binging like per
(00:51):
like per book. I love that. I think that's great.
But yes, this is something we do generally once a
month that it has more soundscape. Being Christina makes them amazing,
So thank you always to Christina. And they are really
fun to do. That being said, they're kind of dark,
(01:11):
and I get it if it's not your thing. I'm
somebody for some reason seems to like apocalyptic things when
everything feels terrible.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
But I think this is going to be a psychological
study on you soon.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Oh my goodness, Why does she keep playing the Last
of Us too? Even though she cries miserably every time?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Why she thinks about it for days on end and
still cries about it.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And then she's sometimes here's some kind of guitar note
and just starts crying because it reminds her of the
last of Us.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And then our friend says that going, she's fine. She
really loves she loves a song I do.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Anyway, I'm very excited about that. I'm sure that's no
surprise to anyone. But yeah, they're kind of dark. So
content warning for disease. Uh, it's pretty apocalyptic scenario, kidnapping, injury,
and painkillers. There's nothing too graphic in this chapter, but
(02:09):
just to put it out there that is present. And
the way that we do these, because I kind of
had to remind myself of the format, is we give
the quick recap, go into the fiction. At the end,
we have a very brief discussion. This is something I
wrote for National Novel Writing Month, so I like revisiting
(02:29):
them because it tells me where my head was at
the time, especially as not a mother. I'm very fascinated
that I wrote this trilogy, but I remember where I
was when I wrote this one in term I wrote
this in a car. This is like the shortest one
of the three, but I do like where it goes,
(02:52):
so hopefully you all will too if you need a recap,
which I totally understand. This story takes place in a
world where there is a virus that has pretty much
estimated the human population. It is basically, once you have sex,
if you didn't, if the person question didn't get pregnant,
(03:14):
you're not gonna get pregnant. And so government institutions and
this religious organization called arm ARM has taken over the
United States pretty much, and they control when you can
have tried to have kids, They control who you're partnered with,
They control if a kid is born, where they go.
(03:35):
Our main character, Tilda, had a baby illegally named Madison,
and escaped with him because she didn't want to be
parted from him, and then they were on the run
from the government for many years before they ran into
resistance and learned that there was a vaccine, but arm
(03:58):
ARM had basically created the virus and then destroyed the
vaccine because they wanted to have power and believed people
were guilty. So Tilda ventures into Washington, d C. Where
there is one vaccine remaining, and learns that the leaders
of arm are the grandparents of person Madison. She then
(04:19):
broadcasts all of these truths through their state broadcast system
and runs and they've been on the run for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And then.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Some group in a tank came and kidnapped Madison and
Tilda was grievously, grievously injured in it. And she has
lost Madison. She doesn't know what to do now. She
doesn't know where he is. She doesn't know who she
is without him, because her whole life has been defined
by him. So that's where we are. She's in a
(04:53):
dark place, she's really injured. She doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
This does sound familiar?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It does? I swear I wrote this footboo. Anyway, let
us get into the fiction. When Tilda woke, the room
(05:26):
was light, much lighter than she was used to upon waking.
For a long time, she didn't move, swathed in a
cocoon of warmth and temporary reprieve from pain, Lurking at
the edges of her consciousness waiting to pounce. Birds chirped loudly,
dragging her back from sleep. Every time she almost drifted
back into it again. Eventually, she blinked awake, laying there
(05:49):
for another stretch of time, gathering the strength to face
leaving her blanket, getting up standing, facing another day without Madison,
she sat up the comforter, sliding from her top half
and exposing her to the frisk, stinging of cool air.
Her muscles pulled practically every part of her sore. Tilda
(06:11):
started cataloging her body's aches and demands. Her lips were chapped,
her face pulsing, her throat dry, Her wrist, knee, and
ankle felt like they were on fire, but all of
that was diminished by the sharp throb of her ribs,
not to mention the stiffness plaguing her entire body. She
(06:33):
reached for her bag and once again pulled out her
water and a granola bar, though the thought of eating
did not appeal to her, and the bottle of painkillers,
taking out three and putting the bottle back, swishing them
down with some water. Judging by the light it was
almost noon. She'd slept quite a long time. She needed
(06:54):
to get going, but still eating too quickly would be
a mistake, so she munched on her granola, taking a
sip of water in between each bite. The food tasted
bland in her mouth. For a moment, she studied her foot.
The swelling had gone down, but it was still noticeably
larger than its twin, but there was no way around it.
(07:18):
Tilda pulled out her right shoe, sighing heavily when saying,
she wiggled and wedged her two large foot into the shoe,
tying the laces as tight as her ankle would allow.
Once finished, she removed the blanket, not allowing herself to linger.
Now that she'd wasted half the light of the day
and stood like a toddler still getting used to being
(07:40):
upright on their own. Her legs were numb, waking them
up problematic with the sprained ankle, so she just careened
to the door, the flow of blood waking up her legs.
Tilda stepped out into the light, squinting at the brightness,
wishing she had time to search these houses for supplies,
(08:00):
even be a working car, But experience had taught her
not to count on such a stroke of luck, and
if the house she'd crashed in last night was any
indication the residents of this town had taken all of
their useful belongings when they had left their homes, she
retraced her steps back onto the highway. The pain more
bearable than the day before, and reflecting in her marshly
(08:22):
increased pace. The downside of this was that it freed
up space in her brain to concoct horrible scenarios of
Madison's fate, to worry about her lack of plans or resources,
the possibility that she'd never find him. How long, she wondered,
would it take for her to give up finding him?
Could she? Ever? In contrast to her thoughts, the day
(08:47):
was a bright one. It took a surprisingly long time
for her to reach the outskirts of Shawsville, as indicated
by the sign thanks for visiting. The town center itself
was tiny, but the boundary of the town extended far
after any signs that living did. All against the backdrop
of mountains in the distance, The road unrolled before her,
(09:07):
following the trend of flight of a straightaway, only serving
to up the feeling of exposure. At this point, With
her son snatched from her arms, her fear felt largely diminished.
What else could they take? They'd taken the only thing
that truly mattered her life was of little consequence without him. No,
(09:28):
the fear she felt now was for Madison of what
was happening to him and the wife that awaited him
is she never found him. It amazed her how much
less afraid she felt without him by her side, indicating
to her that most of the fear she felt stemmed
from her fear of not being able to keep him safe.
(09:50):
Tilda hoped he knew she was looking for him, that
she would never give up finding him. There was no
sovization as far as she could see, which made her
prospects of finding a place to shelter tonight much less
any sign of the people who took Madison. The benefit
of this was that she had to assume, given that
(10:11):
no roads branched off the main highway, that this was
the only path her child's captors could have taken. She
kept an eye on the side of the road, looking
for any signs of the tank, but finding none. Belatedly,
she remembered her handgun. They must have taken it. Tilda
had hazy memories of firing a bullet and a man falling,
(10:33):
and wondered if she could add another casualty to her
growing list. To distract herself from the dark thoughts and
confounding pain at Tilda attempted to come up with some
type of plan of what she would do given that
she found what she imagined to be a stronghold. Option one,
(10:54):
she figured was to sneak into this group, find her son,
and sneak out. This was the best one she could
think of in her current situation, but it depended on
a lot of luck. Tilda knew to not exist. She'd
have to observe her targets for several days at least
to get an idea of their schedule, their layout, the
location of Madisone, and how many people between him and her,
(11:17):
And that was just getting in. She imagined that they'd
realize fairly quickly he was missing, and they'd be easily trackable.
She'd have to have an escape plan in place. Option two,
even less palatable, was that she found some way to
stage an attack and over distraction. The only way this
could work was if she happened to find some weapons
(11:40):
and whatever she'd need for this distraction. The men and
women that had assaulted her left the little room for
her to entertain this as a possible reality. They'd been
heavily armed and much stronger than her, not to mention
the simple fact that they outnumbered her. Option three, and
in her mind, the best option, was a combination of
(12:02):
these two a distraction plus hopefully a weapon and stealth.
All of this was underscored by the belief that she had,
in actuality no chance of success. But those types of
thoughts were not conducive to her general health, and carrying
on it was unthinkable, so instead she kept going making
(12:25):
plans she knew would never come to fruition. She'd use
phrases like these to try and jumpstart in an intelligent
string of thoughts if I were smart eyed, if I
were a resourceful eyed, but nothing would come to fill
in the blanks, so she was left feeling unintelligent and
not so resourceful. As the sun lowered in the sky,
(12:49):
her environment remained so unchanged. Tilda glance behind her to
make sure that she had in fact put some distance
between her and Shawsville, that she wasn't stuck in some
sort of time loop, or that maybe she'd actually collapsed
miles back and she was hallucinating this right now. But no,
despite appearances, she had put a significant distance between her
(13:11):
and Shawsville, the road was just so flats and her
surroundings so similar it looked as if she'd gotten nowhere. Still,
she could see nothing in front of her as far
as she could make out. It had been a long time,
years since she'd been alone with herself, for so long
(13:32):
since her thoughts had been untethered from the little person
next to her, and his knees, his questions, his barry.
Being there, it made her realize how much her skin
crawled at the thought of herself without him, of having
to justify her existence without him, to whom she didn't know.
It made her realize how little she knew about herself,
(13:55):
about who and what she was, not that she hadn't
had plenty tea of chances for introspection these seven years
traveling on a near silent road with Madison, because she
certainly had, but it had always been linked to Madison.
He'd always been there as a safety net when her
thoughts started to turn darker even difficult. Now she had
(14:20):
no distraction. It was only her and her thoughts and
the way that they itched under her skin. Old memories
of her parents dredged themselves up, even of friends she
had had that she hadn't given a second thought to
once she'd given birth to Madison. Tilda wondered if her
(14:41):
life had been different if she'd never had Madison. Where
she'd be now. Would she be safe with her family?
Would she have had a kid and through the proper channels,
gotten custody of him or her? The sensation of being
incomplete hung over her like an apparition. What kind of
(15:06):
person was she? She'd never had a chance to really
grow into a whole human being, and Madison had usurped
that space before she had the opportunity to build it
out herself, and now it was empty, a gaping hole.
She was a mindless robot. She was nothing but what
(15:27):
this world had molded her into, an empty shell given
purpose by the child. She'd been without reason and against
all odds, granted. Tears were streaming down her face long
before she realized it. She didn't bother to wipe them away.
The hawk flew overhead, and she watched it glide smoothly
(15:49):
into the blue sky ahead of her. Madison was immune,
she thought, suddenly, Madison was immune to HSB five, and
that meant he had a chance at a family. Tilda's
steps quickened even as the road was bleakly unchanging around her,
(16:09):
and as far as her eyes could make out, as
the sun was setting, Tilda was looking alongside the road
for a place to camp for the night. She could
just barely make out the skyline of a small city
still several miles off in the distance, but she had
zero chance of making it there before nightfall. It had
been a while since she'd been forced to sleep outdoors,
(16:31):
and doing so while recovering from injuries in the winter
caused dread to infurl in her stomach. She knew with
bitter familiarity how low the temperatures dropped at night. Nothing
for it, she thought, grimly, searching at the very least
for cps of trees or bushes that could provide her
some cover. Strokes of vivid pinks and oranges painted the sky,
(16:57):
the light of soft and dewy gold, the clouds tufts
of purple. Annoyed at herself for wasting so much to
light by sleeping in, Tilda hobbled off to the left
side of the road, past some stripped cars and towards
a small gripping of trees near a slowly spinning air turbine,
which now looked ghostly shadowed by the setting sun. The
(17:19):
ground crunched beneath her shoes, the browning grass crisped with
frosts and frozen underneath already cold fingers curled around her
feet with every step, crawling further and further up her
calf as Tilda encroached on the patch of ground she'd
be sleeping on this chilly night. She missed music, she thought,
(17:41):
in that odd stream of consciousness way. Music made situations
like this more bearable. A good song could even turn
this around into something, if not positive, not entirely negative either.
Tilda glanced up at the wind turbine. It creaked as
the blades rotated slowly. Sometimes when she saw things like this,
(18:04):
even though she'd never known this planet before HSB five,
she'd never known anything else or what things used to
be like, til it got the strangest sense she was
on another planet, that Earth was spinning along somewhere, obliviously
fine and unaware that there was this entire planet somewhere
(18:25):
masquerading as Earth, while the dying population of this imposter
planet were none the wiser. How would they ever know?
It was one of the odder things she called herself
thinking from time to time. She supposed it was comforting
in the sense that somewhere humanity was still taking living
(18:46):
lives that were more comfortable and safe, but for this theory.
If it could be called that to be true, it
would involve space travel, an even bigger cover up than
the one she's already uncovered, and the existence of two
habitable earth like planets. No, it didn't hold up to scrutiny.
(19:08):
Tilda set her pack down at the gray, twisted trunk
of the tree, farthest from the road she traveled a
good distance from the highway. The sun had set. Her
breath flogged the air in front of her, and she
knelt on. Clipping her sleeping bag and rolling it out,
she climbed in, propping herself up against the tree. She
(19:28):
pulled out her flashlight and switched it on, casting its
light on her vicinity, the spotlight roving slowly over dying
grass and reddish dirt, the sound of her breathing loud
in the night. With fumbling fingers, she located her nearly
empty water bottle, the pink killers and muscle relaxans, and
some beef jerkey. After she downed the pills and opened
(19:52):
the loudly crinkling plastic wrap of her dinner, she switched
off the light, wary of drawing unwanted attention to herself,
not only from any humans passing, but coyotes or wolves.
She took her time chewing, putting off the moment when
she'd have to lay down because she knew she'd lie
awake for hours, listening and fear. The silence around her
(20:15):
felt heavy, like it wanted to swallow her whole. Biting
off another piece of jerky, she looked up at the
sky tonight, in inky blue, clear and dotted with bright stars.
She took them in as she ate, tracing any constellation
still faintly contained in her memory and creating new ones. Inevitably,
(20:39):
her thoughts returned to Madison. He would have story after
story for her, detailing the conquests and journeys of the
shapes he saw. He'd ask her what she saw and
listen attentively as she came up with the tale far
less imaginative than his. Tilda recalled the men, saying we
(20:59):
found them, which most likely meant that they did recognize
her in Madison as the pair the Resistance was looking for, unless,
of course, she allowed with a shudder, it was the
same group Jake and Ellis had hailed from looking for revenge.
She found it hard to believe they would have owned
a tank, and she consoled herself with that, but that
(21:22):
meant they knew what Madison was worth, so they'd kidnapped
him for the reward or for ransom, or did they
know somehow that he had been vaccinated and planned to
use his blood to try and mass produce the vaccine
and effectively robbed the resistance of its newly won power.
Tilda didn't know, and the not knowing was a breeding
(21:44):
ground for the infectious fear rooted to her very existence.
It was a different shade of fear than she was
used to, the dull but constant roar that underpinned every
day with Madison by her side. This fear had cress
and troughs, sharp and unpredictable, enjoining her to curl in
a ball and sob give up, fade away from this
(22:08):
life into what one could only hope would be a
better one. This fear was cruel. It reduced her to
a creature relying on survival instincts, desperate for something to
hold at bay the terror screaming for her annihilation, threatening
(22:29):
to consume her soul. Tilda started to sing softly, warbly
in the night, a song she remembered her parents playing
in the living room when they would slow dance together,
her father dipping his wife, her mother's eyes closed in
the intimacy of the moment, twirling and crashing clumsily into
each other with much laughter. Their eyes lit up with it.
(22:54):
At first, her voice was tentative and afraid, dropping out
on every other note lost in the night, but as
she continued, it grew more sure, more confident. She imagined
her parents spinning around each other in the living room,
and her watching, and Madison sitting next to her, a
warm body in this cold night, and she gathered strength
(23:16):
to stave off the hungry, hungry fear. The song ended,
but the spell it cast did not. The air around
her lighter and fortified. Somehow, all of her problems still
waited stalking in the dark, but for now she was untouchable.
Tilda slid down into her sleeping bag, taking care of
(23:39):
her tender side, knee, and ankle until she was completely ensconced,
bringing her pack in with her and sipping the closure
up over her head and leaving only a small opening
for air. She settled the lumpy pack under her head
as a makeshift pillow, The ground unforgiving and uneven under
her body, but soon enough she was something close to
(23:59):
a warm. The sleeping bag was rated for subsure temperatures,
she recalled. Her eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Every so
often a sound wouldcall some to shoot open and send
a jolt of adrenaline pumping through her, and it would
take her several minutes of focus listening to calm her
racing heart. Soon enough, when the night settled around her,
(24:22):
Tilda fell asleep. A beam of light pulled her from
her slumber after only a few hours. It took her
tired brains several seconds to put together that it was
still pitch black outside and that the light she was
seeing was coming from a slow moving vehicle shining through
her sleeping bag. Not one, but several lights, she realized.
(24:44):
Muffled engine sounds reached her years. Tilda held her breath
and remained still, willing them to pass, to not notice her.
The cavalcades slowed as they passed, and Tilda could make
out faintful voices. Don't stop, don't stop, she begged her
(25:06):
pleas for once granted, the cars continued past on the highway,
heading in the same direction as she herself. Still not
daring to move, she wondered if they were part of
the group that had attacked her earlier, and if they
were looking for her, or if they were perhaps a
part of the now defunct arm or the Resistance. Working
(25:27):
cars were hard to come by these days, much less
a handful of them, so whoever was operating them most
likely would have the backing of an organization with access
to resources. Another wave of hopelessness crashed over her. Now
she had potentially another sect of people to avoid. She
(25:49):
lay awake, still un listening for several hours before she
dozed off into an uneasy sleep. That brings us to
(26:22):
the end of this entry of our fiction. We are
getting close. We're coming in on the end. I promise
it's not always going to be as a gram as this,
That's all I'll say. It's not always going to be
this bad. It is funny to me, how often when
I'm reading these for Christina, like I am really focused
(26:43):
on the food you could find. It's always a Granola
Bard water bottle.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I mean, with our apocalypse episode, I think about that often,
about where we're going to find food and water.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, me too, And we jokingly, semi jokingly at least
when we have snow in Atlanta, it is like that.
It's like everybody's clearing everything out.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
I called my partner the last time I went to
the grocery store, or not the last time, like right
after the snow a few days like several days later,
like it had been a minute, and I went in
and things were empty, and I was concerned to the
point that I was like, should we be worried?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Is this the moment? Is this happening? Turns out the
truck couldn't get here, but.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Still, well, Also, I know you've had to deal with this.
Atlanta has had a lot of water main breaks lately. Yeah,
And one time I just happened to be at the
store when one of them was ongoing. I didn't know
it it happened yet, but I saw everybody like getting water,
and I was just like, I better get some. I
(27:50):
don't know why.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Something they're doing it, so I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Hey, that's I'm not gonna lie the eggs when eggs
work inticipated, I'm like, I might need to get into
a large pack because usually I go for the twelve.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Maybe I need the twenty four. Where's that one?
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I had groceries delivered recently, and I had eggs on
there and he took a picture and he was like,
there are no wings. It made me laugh. I can
definitely tell I wrote this when I broke my ankle,
because there's a lot of descriptions of ankle injury and
pain there, and also my general struggles with sleep or
(28:32):
a pair of Throughout there is a hawk throwback from
the very first chapter, the Seeing of the Hawk, and
it was a good I was reading it. I was like,
why did I mention this hawk? And I was like, oh, yeah,
because that's how it started. And then I am very
curious about why I wrote this, what I was thinking
about identity in motherhood. My mom actually read the first
(28:58):
terminus and she brought it up with me and she
was like, I'm kind of it scares me how much
a lot of what you wrote about and that is
sort of coming true.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
And I was like, yeah, yeah, well, but that's what
we all tell ourselves anyway, That's what.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
We tell ourselves. That's what we're telling ourselves.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah. Oh well, hopefully in this very unfine world, maybe
this brought some kind of enjoyment or distraction for you
as always, Yes, super producer, Christina, thank you for putting
the work into the ease and if you have any
(29:45):
suggestions our theories, if you have suggestions for something we
can do in the public domain that would be fun,
that would be that'd be great. We love experimenting. Or
if you have any theories about what's going to happen here,
or I just love hearing from people about it. You
can contact us in many ways. You can email us
at Hello at stuff Whenever Told You dot com, or
(30:05):
stuff via mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
find us on Blue Sky at mom Stuff podcast, or
on Instagram and TikTok and stuff one Never Told You
for us on YouTube. We have tea public store, and
we have a book get wherever you get your books.
Thanks as always to our superproducer Christina, executive producer Maya,
and your conturtor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you
for listening Stuff Never Told You this prediction of iHeartRadio.
(30:26):
For more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can check
out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or where you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and welcome to stuff
Will Never Told You prediction of iHeartRadio. And we are
back with our first edition of Sminty Fiction of twenty
twenty five. That's exciting. We are in the third part
(00:29):
of the Terminus trilogy, so you can start here if
you want. I'm not going to tell you what to do,
but you'll probably be very confused. So I also really
appreciate the people who've been writing in about it. Who
some of you are doing kind of like the listening
once per month. Some of you are binging like per
(00:51):
like per book. I love that. I think that's great.
But yes, this is something we do generally once a
month that it has more soundscape. Being Christina makes them amazing,
So thank you always to Christina. And they are really
fun to do. That being said, they're kind of dark,
(01:11):
and I get it if it's not your thing. I'm
somebody for some reason seems to like apocalyptic things when
everything feels terrible.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
But I think this is going to be a psychological
study on you soon.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Oh my goodness, Why does she keep playing the Last
of Us too? Even though she cries miserably every time?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Why she thinks about it for days on end and
still cries about it.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And then she's sometimes here's some kind of guitar note
and just starts crying because it reminds her of the
last of Us.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And then our friend says that going, she's fine. She
really loves she loves a song I do.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Anyway, I'm very excited about that. I'm sure that's no
surprise to anyone. But yeah, they're kind of dark. So
content warning for disease. Uh, it's pretty apocalyptic scenario, kidnapping, injury,
and painkillers. There's nothing too graphic in this chapter, but
(02:09):
just to put it out there that is present. And
the way that we do these, because I kind of
had to remind myself of the format, is we give
the quick recap, go into the fiction. At the end,
we have a very brief discussion. This is something I
wrote for National Novel Writing Month, so I like revisiting
(02:29):
them because it tells me where my head was at
the time, especially as not a mother. I'm very fascinated
that I wrote this trilogy, but I remember where I
was when I wrote this one in term I wrote
this in a car. This is like the shortest one
of the three, but I do like where it goes,
(02:52):
so hopefully you all will too if you need a recap,
which I totally understand. This story takes place in a
world where there is a virus that has pretty much
estimated the human population. It is basically, once you have sex,
if you didn't, if the person question didn't get pregnant,
(03:14):
you're not gonna get pregnant. And so government institutions and
this religious organization called arm ARM has taken over the
United States pretty much, and they control when you can
have tried to have kids, They control who you're partnered with,
They control if a kid is born, where they go.
(03:35):
Our main character, Tilda, had a baby illegally named Madison,
and escaped with him because she didn't want to be
parted from him, and then they were on the run
from the government for many years before they ran into
resistance and learned that there was a vaccine, but arm
(03:58):
ARM had basically created the virus and then destroyed the
vaccine because they wanted to have power and believed people
were guilty. So Tilda ventures into Washington, d C. Where
there is one vaccine remaining, and learns that the leaders
of arm are the grandparents of person Madison. She then
(04:19):
broadcasts all of these truths through their state broadcast system
and runs and they've been on the run for a
long time.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And then.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Some group in a tank came and kidnapped Madison and
Tilda was grievously, grievously injured in it. And she has
lost Madison. She doesn't know what to do now. She
doesn't know where he is. She doesn't know who she
is without him, because her whole life has been defined
by him. So that's where we are. She's in a
(04:53):
dark place, she's really injured. She doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
This does sound familiar?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It does? I swear I wrote this footboo. Anyway, let
us get into the fiction. When Tilda woke, the room
(05:26):
was light, much lighter than she was used to upon waking.
For a long time, she didn't move, swathed in a
cocoon of warmth and temporary reprieve from pain, Lurking at
the edges of her consciousness waiting to pounce. Birds chirped loudly,
dragging her back from sleep. Every time she almost drifted
back into it again. Eventually, she blinked awake, laying there
(05:49):
for another stretch of time, gathering the strength to face
leaving her blanket, getting up standing, facing another day without Madison,
she sat up the comforter, sliding from her top half
and exposing her to the frisk, stinging of cool air.
Her muscles pulled practically every part of her sore. Tilda
(06:11):
started cataloging her body's aches and demands. Her lips were chapped,
her face pulsing, her throat dry, Her wrist, knee, and
ankle felt like they were on fire, but all of
that was diminished by the sharp throb of her ribs,
not to mention the stiffness plaguing her entire body. She
(06:33):
reached for her bag and once again pulled out her
water and a granola bar, though the thought of eating
did not appeal to her, and the bottle of painkillers,
taking out three and putting the bottle back, swishing them
down with some water. Judging by the light it was
almost noon. She'd slept quite a long time. She needed
(06:54):
to get going, but still eating too quickly would be
a mistake, so she munched on her granola, taking a
sip of water in between each bite. The food tasted
bland in her mouth. For a moment, she studied her foot.
The swelling had gone down, but it was still noticeably
larger than its twin, but there was no way around it.
(07:18):
Tilda pulled out her right shoe, sighing heavily when saying,
she wiggled and wedged her two large foot into the shoe,
tying the laces as tight as her ankle would allow.
Once finished, she removed the blanket, not allowing herself to linger.
Now that she'd wasted half the light of the day
and stood like a toddler still getting used to being
(07:40):
upright on their own. Her legs were numb, waking them
up problematic with the sprained ankle, so she just careened
to the door, the flow of blood waking up her legs.
Tilda stepped out into the light, squinting at the brightness,
wishing she had time to search these houses for supplies,
(08:00):
even be a working car, But experience had taught her
not to count on such a stroke of luck, and
if the house she'd crashed in last night was any
indication the residents of this town had taken all of
their useful belongings when they had left their homes, she
retraced her steps back onto the highway. The pain more
bearable than the day before, and reflecting in her marshly
(08:22):
increased pace. The downside of this was that it freed
up space in her brain to concoct horrible scenarios of
Madison's fate, to worry about her lack of plans or resources,
the possibility that she'd never find him. How long, she wondered,
would it take for her to give up finding him?
Could she? Ever? In contrast to her thoughts, the day
(08:47):
was a bright one. It took a surprisingly long time
for her to reach the outskirts of Shawsville, as indicated
by the sign thanks for visiting. The town center itself
was tiny, but the boundary of the town extended far
after any signs that living did. All against the backdrop
of mountains in the distance, The road unrolled before her,
(09:07):
following the trend of flight of a straightaway, only serving
to up the feeling of exposure. At this point, With
her son snatched from her arms, her fear felt largely diminished.
What else could they take? They'd taken the only thing
that truly mattered her life was of little consequence without him. No,
(09:28):
the fear she felt now was for Madison of what
was happening to him and the wife that awaited him
is she never found him. It amazed her how much
less afraid she felt without him by her side, indicating
to her that most of the fear she felt stemmed
from her fear of not being able to keep him safe.
(09:50):
Tilda hoped he knew she was looking for him, that
she would never give up finding him. There was no
sovization as far as she could see, which made her
prospects of finding a place to shelter tonight much less
any sign of the people who took Madison. The benefit
of this was that she had to assume, given that
(10:11):
no roads branched off the main highway, that this was
the only path her child's captors could have taken. She
kept an eye on the side of the road, looking
for any signs of the tank, but finding none. Belatedly,
she remembered her handgun. They must have taken it. Tilda
had hazy memories of firing a bullet and a man falling,
(10:33):
and wondered if she could add another casualty to her
growing list. To distract herself from the dark thoughts and
confounding pain at Tilda attempted to come up with some
type of plan of what she would do given that
she found what she imagined to be a stronghold. Option one,
(10:54):
she figured was to sneak into this group, find her son,
and sneak out. This was the best one she could
think of in her current situation, but it depended on
a lot of luck. Tilda knew to not exist. She'd
have to observe her targets for several days at least
to get an idea of their schedule, their layout, the
location of Madisone, and how many people between him and her,
(11:17):
And that was just getting in. She imagined that they'd
realize fairly quickly he was missing, and they'd be easily trackable.
She'd have to have an escape plan in place. Option two,
even less palatable, was that she found some way to
stage an attack and over distraction. The only way this
could work was if she happened to find some weapons
(11:40):
and whatever she'd need for this distraction. The men and
women that had assaulted her left the little room for
her to entertain this as a possible reality. They'd been
heavily armed and much stronger than her, not to mention
the simple fact that they outnumbered her. Option three, and
in her mind, the best option, was a combination of
(12:02):
these two a distraction plus hopefully a weapon and stealth.
All of this was underscored by the belief that she had,
in actuality no chance of success. But those types of
thoughts were not conducive to her general health, and carrying
on it was unthinkable, so instead she kept going making
(12:25):
plans she knew would never come to fruition. She'd use
phrases like these to try and jumpstart in an intelligent
string of thoughts if I were smart eyed, if I
were a resourceful eyed, but nothing would come to fill
in the blanks, so she was left feeling unintelligent and
not so resourceful. As the sun lowered in the sky,
(12:49):
her environment remained so unchanged. Tilda glance behind her to
make sure that she had in fact put some distance
between her and Shawsville, that she wasn't stuck in some
sort of time loop, or that maybe she'd actually collapsed
miles back and she was hallucinating this right now. But no,
despite appearances, she had put a significant distance between her
(13:11):
and Shawsville, the road was just so flats and her
surroundings so similar it looked as if she'd gotten nowhere. Still,
she could see nothing in front of her as far
as she could make out. It had been a long time,
years since she'd been alone with herself, for so long
(13:32):
since her thoughts had been untethered from the little person
next to her, and his knees, his questions, his barry.
Being there, it made her realize how much her skin
crawled at the thought of herself without him, of having
to justify her existence without him, to whom she didn't know.
It made her realize how little she knew about herself,
(13:55):
about who and what she was, not that she hadn't
had plenty tea of chances for introspection these seven years
traveling on a near silent road with Madison, because she
certainly had, but it had always been linked to Madison.
He'd always been there as a safety net when her
thoughts started to turn darker even difficult. Now she had
(14:20):
no distraction. It was only her and her thoughts and
the way that they itched under her skin. Old memories
of her parents dredged themselves up, even of friends she
had had that she hadn't given a second thought to
once she'd given birth to Madison. Tilda wondered if her
(14:41):
life had been different if she'd never had Madison. Where
she'd be now. Would she be safe with her family?
Would she have had a kid and through the proper channels,
gotten custody of him or her? The sensation of being
incomplete hung over her like an apparition. What kind of
(15:06):
person was she? She'd never had a chance to really
grow into a whole human being, and Madison had usurped
that space before she had the opportunity to build it
out herself, and now it was empty, a gaping hole.
She was a mindless robot. She was nothing but what
(15:27):
this world had molded her into, an empty shell given
purpose by the child. She'd been without reason and against
all odds, granted. Tears were streaming down her face long
before she realized it. She didn't bother to wipe them away.
The hawk flew overhead, and she watched it glide smoothly
(15:49):
into the blue sky ahead of her. Madison was immune,
she thought, suddenly, Madison was immune to HSB five, and
that meant he had a chance at a family. Tilda's
steps quickened even as the road was bleakly unchanging around her,
(16:09):
and as far as her eyes could make out, as
the sun was setting, Tilda was looking alongside the road
for a place to camp for the night. She could
just barely make out the skyline of a small city
still several miles off in the distance, but she had
zero chance of making it there before nightfall. It had
been a while since she'd been forced to sleep outdoors,
(16:31):
and doing so while recovering from injuries in the winter
caused dread to infurl in her stomach. She knew with
bitter familiarity how low the temperatures dropped at night. Nothing
for it, she thought, grimly, searching at the very least
for cps of trees or bushes that could provide her
some cover. Strokes of vivid pinks and oranges painted the sky,
(16:57):
the light of soft and dewy gold, the clouds tufts
of purple. Annoyed at herself for wasting so much to
light by sleeping in, Tilda hobbled off to the left
side of the road, past some stripped cars and towards
a small gripping of trees near a slowly spinning air turbine,
which now looked ghostly shadowed by the setting sun. The
(17:19):
ground crunched beneath her shoes, the browning grass crisped with
frosts and frozen underneath already cold fingers curled around her
feet with every step, crawling further and further up her
calf as Tilda encroached on the patch of ground she'd
be sleeping on this chilly night. She missed music, she thought,
(17:41):
in that odd stream of consciousness way. Music made situations
like this more bearable. A good song could even turn
this around into something, if not positive, not entirely negative either.
Tilda glanced up at the wind turbine. It creaked as
the blades rotated slowly. Sometimes when she saw things like this,
(18:04):
even though she'd never known this planet before HSB five,
she'd never known anything else or what things used to
be like, til it got the strangest sense she was
on another planet, that Earth was spinning along somewhere, obliviously
fine and unaware that there was this entire planet somewhere
(18:25):
masquerading as Earth, while the dying population of this imposter
planet were none the wiser. How would they ever know?
It was one of the odder things she called herself
thinking from time to time. She supposed it was comforting
in the sense that somewhere humanity was still taking living
(18:46):
lives that were more comfortable and safe, but for this theory.
If it could be called that to be true, it
would involve space travel, an even bigger cover up than
the one she's already uncovered, and the existence of two
habitable earth like planets. No, it didn't hold up to scrutiny.
(19:08):
Tilda set her pack down at the gray, twisted trunk
of the tree, farthest from the road she traveled a
good distance from the highway. The sun had set. Her
breath flogged the air in front of her, and she
knelt on. Clipping her sleeping bag and rolling it out,
she climbed in, propping herself up against the tree. She
(19:28):
pulled out her flashlight and switched it on, casting its
light on her vicinity, the spotlight roving slowly over dying
grass and reddish dirt, the sound of her breathing loud
in the night. With fumbling fingers, she located her nearly
empty water bottle, the pink killers and muscle relaxans, and
some beef jerkey. After she downed the pills and opened
(19:52):
the loudly crinkling plastic wrap of her dinner, she switched
off the light, wary of drawing unwanted attention to herself,
not only from any humans passing, but coyotes or wolves.
She took her time chewing, putting off the moment when
she'd have to lay down because she knew she'd lie
awake for hours, listening and fear. The silence around her
(20:15):
felt heavy, like it wanted to swallow her whole. Biting
off another piece of jerky, she looked up at the
sky tonight, in inky blue, clear and dotted with bright stars.
She took them in as she ate, tracing any constellation
still faintly contained in her memory and creating new ones. Inevitably,
(20:39):
her thoughts returned to Madison. He would have story after
story for her, detailing the conquests and journeys of the
shapes he saw. He'd ask her what she saw and
listen attentively as she came up with the tale far
less imaginative than his. Tilda recalled the men, saying we
(20:59):
found them, which most likely meant that they did recognize
her in Madison as the pair the Resistance was looking for, unless,
of course, she allowed with a shudder, it was the
same group Jake and Ellis had hailed from looking for revenge.
She found it hard to believe they would have owned
a tank, and she consoled herself with that, but that
(21:22):
meant they knew what Madison was worth, so they'd kidnapped
him for the reward or for ransom, or did they
know somehow that he had been vaccinated and planned to
use his blood to try and mass produce the vaccine
and effectively robbed the resistance of its newly won power.
Tilda didn't know, and the not knowing was a breeding
(21:44):
ground for the infectious fear rooted to her very existence.
It was a different shade of fear than she was
used to, the dull but constant roar that underpinned every
day with Madison by her side. This fear had cress
and troughs, sharp and unpredictable, enjoining her to curl in
a ball and sob give up, fade away from this
(22:08):
life into what one could only hope would be a
better one. This fear was cruel. It reduced her to
a creature relying on survival instincts, desperate for something to
hold at bay the terror screaming for her annihilation, threatening
(22:29):
to consume her soul. Tilda started to sing softly, warbly
in the night, a song she remembered her parents playing
in the living room when they would slow dance together,
her father dipping his wife, her mother's eyes closed in
the intimacy of the moment, twirling and crashing clumsily into
each other with much laughter. Their eyes lit up with it.
(22:54):
At first, her voice was tentative and afraid, dropping out
on every other note lost in the night, but as
she continued, it grew more sure, more confident. She imagined
her parents spinning around each other in the living room,
and her watching, and Madison sitting next to her, a
warm body in this cold night, and she gathered strength
(23:16):
to stave off the hungry, hungry fear. The song ended,
but the spell it cast did not. The air around
her lighter and fortified. Somehow, all of her problems still
waited stalking in the dark, but for now she was untouchable.
Tilda slid down into her sleeping bag, taking care of
(23:39):
her tender side, knee, and ankle until she was completely ensconced,
bringing her pack in with her and sipping the closure
up over her head and leaving only a small opening
for air. She settled the lumpy pack under her head
as a makeshift pillow, The ground unforgiving and uneven under
her body, but soon enough she was something close to
(23:59):
a warm. The sleeping bag was rated for subsure temperatures,
she recalled. Her eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Every so
often a sound wouldcall some to shoot open and send
a jolt of adrenaline pumping through her, and it would
take her several minutes of focus listening to calm her
racing heart. Soon enough, when the night settled around her,
(24:22):
Tilda fell asleep. A beam of light pulled her from
her slumber after only a few hours. It took her
tired brains several seconds to put together that it was
still pitch black outside and that the light she was
seeing was coming from a slow moving vehicle shining through
her sleeping bag. Not one, but several lights, she realized.
(24:44):
Muffled engine sounds reached her years. Tilda held her breath
and remained still, willing them to pass, to not notice her.
The cavalcades slowed as they passed, and Tilda could make
out faintful voices. Don't stop, don't stop, she begged her
(25:06):
pleas for once granted, the cars continued past on the highway,
heading in the same direction as she herself. Still not
daring to move, she wondered if they were part of
the group that had attacked her earlier, and if they
were looking for her, or if they were perhaps a
part of the now defunct arm or the Resistance. Working
(25:27):
cars were hard to come by these days, much less
a handful of them, so whoever was operating them most
likely would have the backing of an organization with access
to resources. Another wave of hopelessness crashed over her. Now
she had potentially another sect of people to avoid. She
(25:49):
lay awake, still un listening for several hours before she
dozed off into an uneasy sleep. That brings us to
(26:22):
the end of this entry of our fiction. We are
getting close. We're coming in on the end. I promise
it's not always going to be as a gram as this,
That's all I'll say. It's not always going to be
this bad. It is funny to me, how often when
I'm reading these for Christina, like I am really focused
(26:43):
on the food you could find. It's always a Granola
Bard water bottle.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I mean, with our apocalypse episode, I think about that often,
about where we're going to find food and water.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, me too, And we jokingly, semi jokingly at least
when we have snow in Atlanta, it is like that.
It's like everybody's clearing everything out.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
I called my partner the last time I went to
the grocery store, or not the last time, like right
after the snow a few days like several days later,
like it had been a minute, and I went in
and things were empty, and I was concerned to the
point that I was like, should we be worried?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Is this the moment? Is this happening? Turns out the
truck couldn't get here, but.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Still, well, Also, I know you've had to deal with this.
Atlanta has had a lot of water main breaks lately. Yeah,
And one time I just happened to be at the
store when one of them was ongoing. I didn't know
it it happened yet, but I saw everybody like getting water,
and I was just like, I better get some. I
(27:50):
don't know why.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Something they're doing it, so I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Hey, that's I'm not gonna lie the eggs when eggs
work inticipated, I'm like, I might need to get into
a large pack because usually I go for the twelve.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Maybe I need the twenty four. Where's that one?
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I had groceries delivered recently, and I had eggs on
there and he took a picture and he was like,
there are no wings. It made me laugh. I can
definitely tell I wrote this when I broke my ankle,
because there's a lot of descriptions of ankle injury and
pain there, and also my general struggles with sleep or
(28:32):
a pair of Throughout there is a hawk throwback from
the very first chapter, the Seeing of the Hawk, and
it was a good I was reading it. I was like,
why did I mention this hawk? And I was like, oh, yeah,
because that's how it started. And then I am very
curious about why I wrote this, what I was thinking
about identity in motherhood. My mom actually read the first
(28:58):
terminus and she brought it up with me and she
was like, I'm kind of it scares me how much
a lot of what you wrote about and that is
sort of coming true.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
And I was like, yeah, yeah, well, but that's what
we all tell ourselves anyway, That's what.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
We tell ourselves. That's what we're telling ourselves.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah. Oh well, hopefully in this very unfine world, maybe
this brought some kind of enjoyment or distraction for you
as always, Yes, super producer, Christina, thank you for putting
the work into the ease and if you have any
(29:45):
suggestions our theories, if you have suggestions for something we
can do in the public domain that would be fun,
that would be that'd be great. We love experimenting. Or
if you have any theories about what's going to happen here,
or I just love hearing from people about it. You
can contact us in many ways. You can email us
at Hello at stuff Whenever Told You dot com, or
(30:05):
stuff via mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
find us on Blue Sky at mom Stuff podcast, or
on Instagram and TikTok and stuff one Never Told You
for us on YouTube. We have tea public store, and
we have a book get wherever you get your books.
Thanks as always to our superproducer Christina, executive producer Maya,
and your conturtor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you
for listening Stuff Never Told You this prediction of iHeartRadio.
(30:26):
For more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can check
out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or where you
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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