November 5, 2025 • 29 mins
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs. Each episode is a cerebral journey into the mind’s deepest questions. Explore a world of immersive, ad-free audio experiences from nature sounds to timeless stories at https://www.adfreesounds.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:35):
My This is Michael Hanson. The mind web story for
(00:55):
this half hour is the End of the World.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Rag By Jack called him in the second.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's a story that comes from Fantastic magazine of December
nineteen seventy seven, a game for children. The monster lives
in paneled walls, bars, baseball stadiums, and public houses of
all descriptions across the country. He is imaginary tentacles, taking
(01:23):
things away from people. He is imaginary teith, devouring things
that should be allowed to live. We who are still alive,
know his sting, have felt his bite. He dwells in
the chambers of our hearts like a black disease. This
is his story, our story, a true story, a fable
(01:46):
for children of all ages. It's a story of how
the world ended and why nobody cared. The band was
playing a slow song in three quarter time. Nobody in
the room knew what it meant. The television announcer had
not been specific. I was reading the newspaper account of
a large black dog. I missed the girl. On a
(02:10):
normal evening, she would be fixing us a cup of coffee.
But she was gone, had been gone for months, So
I suppose it was normal that she was not fixing
a cup of coffee at the time. Still it didn't
feel normal. I wanted a cup of coffee. I wanted
her near me. I believe the word normal had lost
its meaning by that time, but that didn't bring her
(02:33):
back or fix my coffee.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
The dog was huge.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I believe it was six thirty. I don't remember the
day or even the month. I am unsure of the year.
I could tell the time because the second edition of
the News had just started at this late date. What
difference could it possibly make to pin down the day
the time things happen. It's over now are pasted one
(03:01):
times just like another. Once it's passed, everything is history,
especially what's happening now. I drink my water and I
eat my tasteless tubers. To put things in some sort
of perspective, it was about six thirty when I first
noticed the monster. I wanted coffee, I wanted the girl.
(03:25):
I wanted all the things that had, at one time
or another been taken from my life. I suddenly felt
like an empty file cabinet. Someone had taken everything out,
piece by piece, folder by folder. Everything was gone, and
I felt empty, hollow. And that was when I first
realized the monster had taken it all. That was when
(03:46):
I read about the large black dog with the sad eyes.
Of all the people who come and go in this house,
there are only two.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I can really talk to.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
There's Bill, but he was playing his guitar in the
kitchen that night. And there's Doris, but she was quietly
selling something. I guess that's about all. There have been others, but.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
They're all gone now.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Many other people come and go, and I no longer
feel I can talk to them. I've learned that they
only hurt me, so when they come, I sit in
the dock corners and interact as little as possible about
The only one I could tell about the monster was Bill,
but he was busy, and as I found.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Out later, he already knew all about it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I have theories. Like all theories, they're based on certain
assumptions which may or may not be true, but I
also have certain facts to go by. I miss football
games they're no longer on TV. There are other things
I miss at odd times. I miss Margarine I'd already
missed Butter. I miss quiet rides and sunsets. I miss,
(04:52):
oddly enough quiz shows, though I never watched many of them.
They have joined the great mass of things that are gone.
Things I was.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Only marchtionally aware of, but.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Things that are no longer. There doesn't anyone care but
me and occasionally Bill. There's nothing on television now but
news twenty four hours a day. Even with seven stations,
it's not enough to carry all the news at least
what passes four news these days, so the papers are
delivered five times a day. The newspapers carry too much news.
(05:26):
I've written several letters to the editor concerning that fact.
They are all printed. They often spell my name wrong.
It's not the quantity of news, you understand. It's only
that all the news is bad. It concerns tragic things
that happen to ordinary people. There is never any news
of national affairs.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Or the government.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I can't remember if there is still a government. There's
only news of ordinary people that are much too much
like myself for me to feel comfortable. The things that
hurt them hurt me. There are often close times between
myself and the things that disturbed them, and this in
turn disturbs me. I never feel comfortable reading the news,
(06:08):
and I read it all day long. The newspapers used
to carry a lot of this human interest. I believe
they call it in their own ironic way. I still
remember the way things used to be, though everything is
changed and no one seems to care but me. I
remember that in between the personal tragedies there was often
(06:28):
the news of seemingly larger importance. I guess people learned
as I'd always suspected that these events of seemingly larger
importance were trivial to most people. It seldom affected their lives.
The really important things were personal. The loss of love, death,
the close people, the loss of a job, the changing
(06:50):
of things that were These were the really important events
in people's lives. And it didn't take long for the
networks and the people who run those large presses to
reach the same conclude these are all things the monster
has brought to pass.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
There are others.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I believe that someone in the house was divorced and
had a small girl child who visited him at her
regular intervals. Occasionally I saw a smaller face walking around,
and at those times, the television was often tuned to
cartoon shows and situation comedies. I generally didn't watch them
because they had so little to do with real life,
(07:29):
but sometimes. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, I'd find myself watching
small animated creatures hurt each other in the CAFOD screen.
It was a lot like looking into a mirror sometimes
on dark nights. I even miss the Vietnam War. It
wasn't much of a war, but for a while it
was only when we had It also had a lot
(07:51):
to do with the monster. Oh, I don't actually miss
the war. It was messy, but what I miss are
the good things that went with it. We marched for peace,
we held demonstrations, we said a lot of words. We
were thrown in jail for honorable causes. We felt good,
but the food was bad. I remember being in jail once,
(08:12):
but it was a long time ago. I can't seem
to recall whether or not it had anything to do
with the war. It could have been a false arrest.
I've paid a lot of debts to society in one
way or another, most of them for other people. But
all the noble causes and noble words just fed the monster.
He grew stronger. The war ran down like a broken clock.
(08:37):
The troops that were still alive came home, and most
of us thought that it was a very good thing. Indeed,
how little we knew. The nation had grown tired of
the war, weary of trying to handle every other nation's troubles.
Things started to get the fuse shortly after that. Who
cared about Cambodia? Where actually was tire? And why wasn't
(09:01):
it still colts? I am was Guam one of ours
or one of theirs? It was confusing. None of this
really mattered we who saved our national conscience by importing
war orphans by the thousands and housing them in deserted
beer halls that they sleep on the pool tables. I forget,
(09:22):
like Beatle music or Paris fashions. They were absorbed into
the fabric of American life. They're much older now and
nobody thinks about them. I also quit thinking much about
South America. Various countries in Eastern and Western Europe drifted
away from me. It was a whole lot easier not
(09:43):
to think about these countries. They disappeared from the news
and the thoughts of most people. I'm sure they don't
think much of us either. We have records and a
few books. We never play the records and seldom look
at any part of the books except their spines. The
records are old. We haven't bought any new ones and
years haven't felt like buying any in years. I seriously
(10:06):
doubt that they're still being manufactured. The books, they're only
half there. Back in the old days, back before all
the branching effects, Bill and I thought we could help
people reach out and touch them when they needed something.
That we would tear pages from the books and send
them to friends who lived in other cities and were
having problems. It never helped any of them. It never
(10:29):
helped us. The monster was already too strong. The books
remain on our shelves, half eaten, reminders of someone else's
wisdom and feelings. They're useless. We never look at anything
with their spines. I wrote some of the books. I
never look at them either. The monster has bitten me
(10:50):
too deeply. All the people I ever loved have moved
away from me. I said, in reading newspaper accounts of
tragic things that happened to people.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
It takes a lot of my time. I missed the girl.
I wonder about the dog. The bars today have changed.
They're always depressing. Nobody talks to anyone. Even the bartenders
are wrapped in silence, said old ladies that quietly hunched
over glass warm beer. I went to one three years ago,
(11:23):
last December. It was my birthday and I really wanted
to do something different. I went by myself and talked
to no one. The bar had three doors inside marked men, ladies,
and keep out. There was a broken wagon wheel out front,
and the floor was littered with dead flies. I drank
two beers and walked home. I haven't been out of
the house since. I believe that was where I saw
(11:47):
the dog. It was foggy, and as I walked home,
I noticed a man coming out of the fog towards me.
He was on the other side of the road and
was pushing an empty wheelbarrow. He stopped in front of
a faded billboard to pat a large black dog. It
could have been the same dog, maybe not. All I
can remember was the dog's sad eyes. The man was old.
He could have been my brother. Maybe he was. I
(12:08):
haven't seen my brother in years. He looked like that
now the wheelbarrow was empty. The dog's eyes had seen
too many things. I used to sit on sea walls
and old logs and sunny places with my red portable
typewriter and write stories and books. It said things that
were important to me. It's no longer possible to communicate
(12:31):
that way. It was hard even back then. It couldn't
say things that people didn't want to hear. It's impossible now.
They don't want to hear anything at all. Everyone has
a tight cocoon of artificial invulnerability wrapped around them. The
monster as seen that. I remember topless bars. I never
(12:53):
went to one. I remember credit cards, especially credit cards,
small pieces of plastic that had something to do with
money and a lot to do with debts and lifestyles.
I remember one night, it might have been the night
of the Orphans, when I had just returned from the
long trip. I had driven hours and miles to the
fire into the sea for no other reason than they have.
Painful things happened to me. I charged the gas on
(13:16):
the credit card of a major oil company, and I
charged the motel room on the same card. I charged
all the painful things away on a small broken piece
of plastic. I figured Bayford later. I eventually did, but
that's another story. As I was watching the news on
television that night, all drained, weary, said, depressed, and hurt,
(13:42):
the president of that same major company came on the
news and said cheerful things about recent profits in the
oil industry. He made a lot of money off my pain.
He smiled a lot. The monstered Doug hungry claws into
my flesh that night. He had been working over time.
(14:03):
Telephone bills were important once too. They were important about
the same time and in the same way as credit
cards were important. They both had a lot to do
with money and pain. When things would get bad for me,
I never had any money, and there were all these
people in faraway cities that I needed to talk to.
There were people in other cities who felt it necessary
to call me, and they usually said things that either
(14:26):
hurt me or made me sad. The phone company charged
me a flat rate. They made a lot of money
off the things that hurt me. There is some dispute
as to whether the actual physical presence of the monster
began in Florida or Kentucky, but I won't get into that.
It's a fact of questionable importance. It is a life form,
(14:47):
perhaps a death form. It is alien, It is everywhere.
Now everything else is unimportant. I missed my daughter. It
may surprise you to know that I was married once.
It was a long time well. I was married in
the county courthouse in Rockville, Maryland, and divorced in another
county courthouse and clear Water, Florida. A lot of things
(15:08):
happened between those two visits to county courthouses. Ten years past.
People don't get married anymore. My daughter lived with me
for a while. She grew up under the shadow that
covers the land like oily rantsid peanut butter. When she
was grown, at least partially so, she left and she's
trying to find other things in other places. I know
(15:30):
she won't find them, and it depresses me. The things
she'll find will corrupt and destroy her. She was such
a nice person too. I was sorry to see her go.
Watergate was the next outward sign of the monster. I
don't imagine you're old enough to remember anything about Watergate.
It was the name of an apartment complex in the
(15:51):
city up the road called Washington. Some important people did
some very bad things there and were caught at it.
Even after everybody knew that these people had done bad things,
they continued to disavow their actions. They plotted ways to
deny their guilt. They fooled no one but themselves. They
didn't even fool themselves very long. It was on television
every day. The papers were full of news. It affected
(16:14):
people in high places. It saturated people with immense problems
of a national nature. The news about it was long
and drawn out. It lasted several years. We grew very
tired of it. Like trying to worry about wars and
hot countries. It became too much of a burden. Some
papers pointed Watergate news in special, detachable sections so it
(16:35):
could be easily ignored. The front pages of these papers
were full of local events and contained nothing of national
or universal importance. It was the first of many steps
for the noble newspaper industry, that vigilant watchdog of our
personal freedom. Our front yards littered with abandoned automobiles one's
(16:56):
mind the red convertible. Nobody drives anywhere these days. I
doubt that gasoline is still being produced. The cars were
left here by misguided people who, at one time or
another wandered by this house with the hopes of escaping
the monster. It was a futile gesture, but they tried anyway.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
The cars cover the yard.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Like rusting broken dreams. One car a flashy roadster belonged
to the performer in a local underwater attraction. She was
a mermaid and sometimes played other parts. It has a
broken transmission. The girl broke.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Down shortly afterwards. Neither has been fixed.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
The house is situated on the edge of a pine grove,
and several vehicles of larger dimensions rest just on the
other side of the trees. There are three vans outfitted
as campers and a rusting school bus. At one time
people lived inside them, but I believe they've long since
moved on.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
I'm not completely sure that I haven't.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Checked in years. Most of the cars were abandoned during
the Great Migration. Unemployment had risen to over eighty percent
by that time, and many discouraged people hit the road
in search of other things. They found other things, but
they were seldom any improvement. I considered them refugees, victims
(18:14):
of the then undefined monster. They lived in rough camps,
drifted south in the winter north in the summer. Many
were lost along the way. Many were hurt by unsympathetic people.
They tried to be happy and only fooled themselves with
temporary things. I was powerless to help them. Like sand
(18:34):
in a gigantic sieve. Many of these people drifted southward
to settle Key West, Galveston, San Diego, were primarias for
the new refugees. They slept in cars and beaches and
forests and deserted buildings. There were too many of them.
There was no work, there was no money. There was
only the monster. And the monster eventually provided its own
(18:56):
form of destructive welfare.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
It fed the.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Refuge and that was the worst thing that could have
happened to them. It feeds us now too. It feeds everyone,
and in turn, it feeds off of us. It takes
things away from us, things like hope, initiative, and love,
and also the baseball trading cards, bubble gun and Grand
Prix races. But these were all secondary effects, shadows, so
(19:22):
to speak, of the real monster. During the early stages
the Great Migration, I traveled to one of these camps
in order to find a friend who had cast her
a lot with these people, and I cared about her.
I had questions to ask her. I also had questions
only I could answer. It was a foolish thing that
the camps held no answers at all. The girl was
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lost in shadows. I was so drunk and depressed that
I seemed to fit in with the rest of the refugees.
I believe they thought I lived there for some obscure reason.
One of them asked me if I had any poetry
for a wedding that was to take place anything. I
happened to have a collection of Carl Sandberg poems with me.
I'd brought them to show the girl. I found an
(20:06):
appropriate poem and tore it out, gave it to them.
They invited me to the wedding at the edge of
the sea at sundown. I took my beer in a flower.
All the men wore ties. They didn't wear shirts, but
they all wore ties. Everyone was drinking beer. I wondered
where they got so many ties. The groom arrived in
a red van. He was wearing a pair of cut
(20:27):
off jeans and an engineer's hat. He was drinking schlitz.
I put my flour in his hair. They read the poem,
stumbling on the words and missing the inflections. I don't
believe they were used to reading. They romped in the water.
The minister was drinking Budweiser and smoking a joint. Everybody laughed.
It was a shand the bride was drinking a local beer.
(20:48):
After the wedding, the entire party adjourned to the restrooms.
They had consumed a lot of beer, and someone started
playing an electric guitar inside the men's room. Everybody danced
in a fit of depression. I wore all the pages
out of the poetry book and left it for other weddings, divorces,
and funerals. I'm sure they made good.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Use of it.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I turned my back on the refugee camp.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I never went back. I never saw the girl.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Again, and all I can remember is the tears in
my eyes. Later, I had occasion to go to a
divorce in the town down the road. The lawyers sat
around and talked about hurricanes and fishing. The man was
represented by a paper bag propped up at went end
of the long polished table. Someone had drawn a smile
(21:32):
on the paper bag. It seemed appropriate. No one asked
the bag any questions. No I was asked how long
I had known it. I answered as best I could. Afterwards,
we all went to a baseball game. The home team lost,
but they didn't make any errors. The paper bag and
four hot dogs and looked distracted from the third inny.
None all the little rituals of life, marriages, barmits, was, divorces, chris,
(22:00):
I mean, ceremonies and such. They all dissolved in the
parodies of themselves. They became meaningless. They are no longer performed,
even in the most civilized places. Eventually all formal organizations
and social services disintegrated. They didn't take long once it started.
(22:21):
Social organizations cracked under the strain. There were too many
people to take care of. The system wasn't built to
handle such a burden. Checks were lost to the mail,
food was diverted to the wrong people. By this time,
nearly the entire country was on some form of public assistance.
Strictly speaking, there wasn't any public left. It was only
(22:43):
a matter of time. About this time, we had a
fire in the woods near our house. I called a
fire department and they wouldn't do anything. They said they
couldn't put out the fire unless it involved a house
or a place of business. I called a forestry service.
They were aware of the fire, but couldn't do anything
without state approval. The state hadn't approved any firefighting action
(23:05):
in years. They seldom even answered their phone. I should
have guessed a heavy rain eventually put the fire out,
but not before it destroyed several hundred acres. A few
months previous to the fire, I had noticed that birds'
nests were disappearing. They were huge osprey nests, many over
ten feet wide. They had been there for years, they
(23:28):
had survived hurricanes. Overnight they were gone. The local forest
ranger shrugged. The Autubon society was unconcerned. The ospreys are
gone now. They never came back. The only birds I
ever see are vultures circling the sky or roosting the
crooks of dead trees. I've forgotten how to do a
(23:51):
great many things. I'm not alone. Many of the things
I used to do seemed so trivial now I stopped them,
and soon I forgot how to do them at all.
Some of them were things I enjoyed. I used to
know how to play the guitar. I was a fair
basketball player, even had two years of semi pro ball
in a small southern town. It's all gone now. Bill
(24:16):
assures me he has forgotten out of paint. We both
feel vaguely sad about that. He was a good painter,
who were somewhat relieved to see that It is apparently
a universal effect. During the last stages of the Great Migration,
a lot of the physical problems were solved by the
first concrete manifestation of the monster. Food and water were provided.
(24:41):
It's still being provided every morning. The delivery of the
first paper of the day's accompanied by a jug of
water and a few small tubers. They looked like potatoes,
but they don't have to be cooked to eat. They're
tasteless but filling. We are never hungry in cold climates,
Heat provided along with the food. I've heard of people
(25:02):
up north freezing to death because they forgot or did
not care to turn on the heat. I'm not surprised
there are people down here who just stop eating.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Food and water pile up on.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Their doorsteps next to their papers. They die, The monster
doesn't notice, and the food and water just keep stacking up.
I believe the monster has lost the ability to tell
the living from the dead. I have that problem myself
these days. There were twelve suicides on television this week,
(25:34):
not reported suicides, but on the air suicides of reporters.
I don't know why they bother. After the novelty the
first one, they aren't very interesting anymore. Yet I can't
really blame them. There are a lot of suicides these days,
and I guess if you're a television annuncer, it's the
natural place to do. It still does interrupt the programming.
(25:54):
There are continual replacements. People are always going on television
to talk of their harrowing experiences. Everyone has had a
lot of bad things happen to them. We enjoy hearing
people talk of these experiences. They are seldom trivial, almost
always emotionally crippling. They concern tragedies of a private and
(26:18):
personal nature. We participate vicariously and are glad these things
are happening to someone else. We seldom realize that similar
things are happening to us. I often wonder how the
television stations and newspapers keep functioning. Everything else has broken
down in the last few years, including most of the
(26:40):
people I know. Nothing gets fixed. Nobody wants to fix things,
or perhaps, like water pumps, they've forgotten how we adjust.
We live without many of the things we liked in
order to keep a stable existence. It is somewhat uncomfortable,
but functional in its own way. We have all withdrawn.
(27:04):
It is, I hope, the final stage of the monster
we no longer interact with other people. We hold our
hurts and fears tightly to our chests and push everything
and everybody else away. It is universal. Everyone does this.
We did it on a national level, and now we
(27:25):
do this on an individual level. Many things have been lost,
but we still survive. I grow old. Everyone grows old.
There are no children. Even if there were children, no
one would love them. We are too involved with our
(27:46):
own problems. There are only the children's tales, the monsters games.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
He has built a jail without walls.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
He is killed a world.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
There are no tears left fall. There is no one
left to care.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
You've heard the end of the World Wag a story
by Jack Holdeman. The Second a story which appeared in
Fantastic Magazine December nineteen seventy seven. This is Michael Hansen
technical production for this program by Kenya Herold and Tom Martinson.
Mind Webbs is a production of WHA Radio and Madison,
(28:51):
a service of the University of Wisconsin Extension.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Shock of
Speaker 1 (29:24):
U
My This is Michael Hanson. The mind web story for
(00:55):
this half hour is the End of the World.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Rag By Jack called him in the second.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's a story that comes from Fantastic magazine of December
nineteen seventy seven, a game for children. The monster lives
in paneled walls, bars, baseball stadiums, and public houses of
all descriptions across the country. He is imaginary tentacles, taking
(01:23):
things away from people. He is imaginary teith, devouring things
that should be allowed to live. We who are still alive,
know his sting, have felt his bite. He dwells in
the chambers of our hearts like a black disease. This
is his story, our story, a true story, a fable
(01:46):
for children of all ages. It's a story of how
the world ended and why nobody cared. The band was
playing a slow song in three quarter time. Nobody in
the room knew what it meant. The television announcer had
not been specific. I was reading the newspaper account of
a large black dog. I missed the girl. On a
(02:10):
normal evening, she would be fixing us a cup of coffee.
But she was gone, had been gone for months, So
I suppose it was normal that she was not fixing
a cup of coffee at the time. Still it didn't
feel normal. I wanted a cup of coffee. I wanted
her near me. I believe the word normal had lost
its meaning by that time, but that didn't bring her
(02:33):
back or fix my coffee.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
The dog was huge.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I believe it was six thirty. I don't remember the
day or even the month. I am unsure of the year.
I could tell the time because the second edition of
the News had just started at this late date. What
difference could it possibly make to pin down the day
the time things happen. It's over now are pasted one
(03:01):
times just like another. Once it's passed, everything is history,
especially what's happening now. I drink my water and I
eat my tasteless tubers. To put things in some sort
of perspective, it was about six thirty when I first
noticed the monster. I wanted coffee, I wanted the girl.
(03:25):
I wanted all the things that had, at one time
or another been taken from my life. I suddenly felt
like an empty file cabinet. Someone had taken everything out,
piece by piece, folder by folder. Everything was gone, and
I felt empty, hollow. And that was when I first
realized the monster had taken it all. That was when
(03:46):
I read about the large black dog with the sad eyes.
Of all the people who come and go in this house,
there are only two.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I can really talk to.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
There's Bill, but he was playing his guitar in the
kitchen that night. And there's Doris, but she was quietly
selling something. I guess that's about all. There have been others, but.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
They're all gone now.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Many other people come and go, and I no longer
feel I can talk to them. I've learned that they
only hurt me, so when they come, I sit in
the dock corners and interact as little as possible about
The only one I could tell about the monster was Bill,
but he was busy, and as I found.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Out later, he already knew all about it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I have theories. Like all theories, they're based on certain
assumptions which may or may not be true, but I
also have certain facts to go by. I miss football
games they're no longer on TV. There are other things
I miss at odd times. I miss Margarine I'd already
missed Butter. I miss quiet rides and sunsets. I miss,
(04:52):
oddly enough quiz shows, though I never watched many of them.
They have joined the great mass of things that are gone.
Things I was.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Only marchtionally aware of, but.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Things that are no longer. There doesn't anyone care but
me and occasionally Bill. There's nothing on television now but
news twenty four hours a day. Even with seven stations,
it's not enough to carry all the news at least
what passes four news these days, so the papers are
delivered five times a day. The newspapers carry too much news.
(05:26):
I've written several letters to the editor concerning that fact.
They are all printed. They often spell my name wrong.
It's not the quantity of news, you understand. It's only
that all the news is bad. It concerns tragic things
that happen to ordinary people. There is never any news
of national affairs.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Or the government.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I can't remember if there is still a government. There's
only news of ordinary people that are much too much
like myself for me to feel comfortable. The things that
hurt them hurt me. There are often close times between
myself and the things that disturbed them, and this in
turn disturbs me. I never feel comfortable reading the news,
(06:08):
and I read it all day long. The newspapers used
to carry a lot of this human interest. I believe
they call it in their own ironic way. I still
remember the way things used to be, though everything is
changed and no one seems to care but me. I
remember that in between the personal tragedies there was often
(06:28):
the news of seemingly larger importance. I guess people learned
as I'd always suspected that these events of seemingly larger
importance were trivial to most people. It seldom affected their lives.
The really important things were personal. The loss of love, death,
the close people, the loss of a job, the changing
(06:50):
of things that were These were the really important events
in people's lives. And it didn't take long for the
networks and the people who run those large presses to
reach the same conclude these are all things the monster
has brought to pass.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
There are others.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I believe that someone in the house was divorced and
had a small girl child who visited him at her
regular intervals. Occasionally I saw a smaller face walking around,
and at those times, the television was often tuned to
cartoon shows and situation comedies. I generally didn't watch them
because they had so little to do with real life,
(07:29):
but sometimes. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, I'd find myself watching
small animated creatures hurt each other in the CAFOD screen.
It was a lot like looking into a mirror sometimes
on dark nights. I even miss the Vietnam War. It
wasn't much of a war, but for a while it
was only when we had It also had a lot
(07:51):
to do with the monster. Oh, I don't actually miss
the war. It was messy, but what I miss are
the good things that went with it. We marched for peace,
we held demonstrations, we said a lot of words. We
were thrown in jail for honorable causes. We felt good,
but the food was bad. I remember being in jail once,
(08:12):
but it was a long time ago. I can't seem
to recall whether or not it had anything to do
with the war. It could have been a false arrest.
I've paid a lot of debts to society in one
way or another, most of them for other people. But
all the noble causes and noble words just fed the monster.
He grew stronger. The war ran down like a broken clock.
(08:37):
The troops that were still alive came home, and most
of us thought that it was a very good thing. Indeed,
how little we knew. The nation had grown tired of
the war, weary of trying to handle every other nation's troubles.
Things started to get the fuse shortly after that. Who
cared about Cambodia? Where actually was tire? And why wasn't
(09:01):
it still colts? I am was Guam one of ours
or one of theirs? It was confusing. None of this
really mattered we who saved our national conscience by importing
war orphans by the thousands and housing them in deserted
beer halls that they sleep on the pool tables. I forget,
(09:22):
like Beatle music or Paris fashions. They were absorbed into
the fabric of American life. They're much older now and
nobody thinks about them. I also quit thinking much about
South America. Various countries in Eastern and Western Europe drifted
away from me. It was a whole lot easier not
(09:43):
to think about these countries. They disappeared from the news
and the thoughts of most people. I'm sure they don't
think much of us either. We have records and a
few books. We never play the records and seldom look
at any part of the books except their spines. The
records are old. We haven't bought any new ones and
years haven't felt like buying any in years. I seriously
(10:06):
doubt that they're still being manufactured. The books, they're only
half there. Back in the old days, back before all
the branching effects, Bill and I thought we could help
people reach out and touch them when they needed something.
That we would tear pages from the books and send
them to friends who lived in other cities and were
having problems. It never helped any of them. It never
(10:29):
helped us. The monster was already too strong. The books
remain on our shelves, half eaten, reminders of someone else's
wisdom and feelings. They're useless. We never look at anything
with their spines. I wrote some of the books. I
never look at them either. The monster has bitten me
(10:50):
too deeply. All the people I ever loved have moved
away from me. I said, in reading newspaper accounts of
tragic things that happened to people.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
It takes a lot of my time. I missed the girl.
I wonder about the dog. The bars today have changed.
They're always depressing. Nobody talks to anyone. Even the bartenders
are wrapped in silence, said old ladies that quietly hunched
over glass warm beer. I went to one three years ago,
(11:23):
last December. It was my birthday and I really wanted
to do something different. I went by myself and talked
to no one. The bar had three doors inside marked men, ladies,
and keep out. There was a broken wagon wheel out front,
and the floor was littered with dead flies. I drank
two beers and walked home. I haven't been out of
the house since. I believe that was where I saw
(11:47):
the dog. It was foggy, and as I walked home,
I noticed a man coming out of the fog towards me.
He was on the other side of the road and
was pushing an empty wheelbarrow. He stopped in front of
a faded billboard to pat a large black dog. It
could have been the same dog, maybe not. All I
can remember was the dog's sad eyes. The man was old.
He could have been my brother. Maybe he was. I
(12:08):
haven't seen my brother in years. He looked like that
now the wheelbarrow was empty. The dog's eyes had seen
too many things. I used to sit on sea walls
and old logs and sunny places with my red portable
typewriter and write stories and books. It said things that
were important to me. It's no longer possible to communicate
(12:31):
that way. It was hard even back then. It couldn't
say things that people didn't want to hear. It's impossible now.
They don't want to hear anything at all. Everyone has
a tight cocoon of artificial invulnerability wrapped around them. The
monster as seen that. I remember topless bars. I never
(12:53):
went to one. I remember credit cards, especially credit cards,
small pieces of plastic that had something to do with
money and a lot to do with debts and lifestyles.
I remember one night, it might have been the night
of the Orphans, when I had just returned from the
long trip. I had driven hours and miles to the
fire into the sea for no other reason than they have.
Painful things happened to me. I charged the gas on
(13:16):
the credit card of a major oil company, and I
charged the motel room on the same card. I charged
all the painful things away on a small broken piece
of plastic. I figured Bayford later. I eventually did, but
that's another story. As I was watching the news on
television that night, all drained, weary, said, depressed, and hurt,
(13:42):
the president of that same major company came on the
news and said cheerful things about recent profits in the
oil industry. He made a lot of money off my pain.
He smiled a lot. The monstered Doug hungry claws into
my flesh that night. He had been working over time.
(14:03):
Telephone bills were important once too. They were important about
the same time and in the same way as credit
cards were important. They both had a lot to do
with money and pain. When things would get bad for me,
I never had any money, and there were all these
people in faraway cities that I needed to talk to.
There were people in other cities who felt it necessary
to call me, and they usually said things that either
(14:26):
hurt me or made me sad. The phone company charged
me a flat rate. They made a lot of money
off the things that hurt me. There is some dispute
as to whether the actual physical presence of the monster
began in Florida or Kentucky, but I won't get into that.
It's a fact of questionable importance. It is a life form,
(14:47):
perhaps a death form. It is alien, It is everywhere.
Now everything else is unimportant. I missed my daughter. It
may surprise you to know that I was married once.
It was a long time well. I was married in
the county courthouse in Rockville, Maryland, and divorced in another
county courthouse and clear Water, Florida. A lot of things
(15:08):
happened between those two visits to county courthouses. Ten years past.
People don't get married anymore. My daughter lived with me
for a while. She grew up under the shadow that
covers the land like oily rantsid peanut butter. When she
was grown, at least partially so, she left and she's
trying to find other things in other places. I know
(15:30):
she won't find them, and it depresses me. The things
she'll find will corrupt and destroy her. She was such
a nice person too. I was sorry to see her go.
Watergate was the next outward sign of the monster. I
don't imagine you're old enough to remember anything about Watergate.
It was the name of an apartment complex in the
(15:51):
city up the road called Washington. Some important people did
some very bad things there and were caught at it.
Even after everybody knew that these people had done bad things,
they continued to disavow their actions. They plotted ways to
deny their guilt. They fooled no one but themselves. They
didn't even fool themselves very long. It was on television
every day. The papers were full of news. It affected
(16:14):
people in high places. It saturated people with immense problems
of a national nature. The news about it was long
and drawn out. It lasted several years. We grew very
tired of it. Like trying to worry about wars and
hot countries. It became too much of a burden. Some
papers pointed Watergate news in special, detachable sections so it
(16:35):
could be easily ignored. The front pages of these papers
were full of local events and contained nothing of national
or universal importance. It was the first of many steps
for the noble newspaper industry, that vigilant watchdog of our
personal freedom. Our front yards littered with abandoned automobiles one's
(16:56):
mind the red convertible. Nobody drives anywhere these days. I
doubt that gasoline is still being produced. The cars were
left here by misguided people who, at one time or
another wandered by this house with the hopes of escaping
the monster. It was a futile gesture, but they tried anyway.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
The cars cover the yard.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Like rusting broken dreams. One car a flashy roadster belonged
to the performer in a local underwater attraction. She was
a mermaid and sometimes played other parts. It has a
broken transmission. The girl broke.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Down shortly afterwards. Neither has been fixed.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
The house is situated on the edge of a pine grove,
and several vehicles of larger dimensions rest just on the
other side of the trees. There are three vans outfitted
as campers and a rusting school bus. At one time
people lived inside them, but I believe they've long since
moved on.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
I'm not completely sure that I haven't.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Checked in years. Most of the cars were abandoned during
the Great Migration. Unemployment had risen to over eighty percent
by that time, and many discouraged people hit the road
in search of other things. They found other things, but
they were seldom any improvement. I considered them refugees, victims
(18:14):
of the then undefined monster. They lived in rough camps,
drifted south in the winter north in the summer. Many
were lost along the way. Many were hurt by unsympathetic people.
They tried to be happy and only fooled themselves with
temporary things. I was powerless to help them. Like sand
(18:34):
in a gigantic sieve. Many of these people drifted southward
to settle Key West, Galveston, San Diego, were primarias for
the new refugees. They slept in cars and beaches and
forests and deserted buildings. There were too many of them.
There was no work, there was no money. There was
only the monster. And the monster eventually provided its own
(18:56):
form of destructive welfare.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
It fed the.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Refuge and that was the worst thing that could have
happened to them. It feeds us now too. It feeds everyone,
and in turn, it feeds off of us. It takes
things away from us, things like hope, initiative, and love,
and also the baseball trading cards, bubble gun and Grand
Prix races. But these were all secondary effects, shadows, so
(19:22):
to speak, of the real monster. During the early stages
the Great Migration, I traveled to one of these camps
in order to find a friend who had cast her
a lot with these people, and I cared about her.
I had questions to ask her. I also had questions
only I could answer. It was a foolish thing that
the camps held no answers at all. The girl was
(19:44):
lost in shadows. I was so drunk and depressed that
I seemed to fit in with the rest of the refugees.
I believe they thought I lived there for some obscure reason.
One of them asked me if I had any poetry
for a wedding that was to take place anything. I
happened to have a collection of Carl Sandberg poems with me.
I'd brought them to show the girl. I found an
(20:06):
appropriate poem and tore it out, gave it to them.
They invited me to the wedding at the edge of
the sea at sundown. I took my beer in a flower.
All the men wore ties. They didn't wear shirts, but
they all wore ties. Everyone was drinking beer. I wondered
where they got so many ties. The groom arrived in
a red van. He was wearing a pair of cut
(20:27):
off jeans and an engineer's hat. He was drinking schlitz.
I put my flour in his hair. They read the poem,
stumbling on the words and missing the inflections. I don't
believe they were used to reading. They romped in the water.
The minister was drinking Budweiser and smoking a joint. Everybody laughed.
It was a shand the bride was drinking a local beer.
(20:48):
After the wedding, the entire party adjourned to the restrooms.
They had consumed a lot of beer, and someone started
playing an electric guitar inside the men's room. Everybody danced
in a fit of depression. I wore all the pages
out of the poetry book and left it for other weddings, divorces,
and funerals. I'm sure they made good.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Use of it.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I turned my back on the refugee camp.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I never went back. I never saw the girl.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Again, and all I can remember is the tears in
my eyes. Later, I had occasion to go to a
divorce in the town down the road. The lawyers sat
around and talked about hurricanes and fishing. The man was
represented by a paper bag propped up at went end
of the long polished table. Someone had drawn a smile
(21:32):
on the paper bag. It seemed appropriate. No one asked
the bag any questions. No I was asked how long
I had known it. I answered as best I could. Afterwards,
we all went to a baseball game. The home team lost,
but they didn't make any errors. The paper bag and
four hot dogs and looked distracted from the third inny.
None all the little rituals of life, marriages, barmits, was, divorces, chris,
(22:00):
I mean, ceremonies and such. They all dissolved in the
parodies of themselves. They became meaningless. They are no longer performed,
even in the most civilized places. Eventually all formal organizations
and social services disintegrated. They didn't take long once it started.
(22:21):
Social organizations cracked under the strain. There were too many
people to take care of. The system wasn't built to
handle such a burden. Checks were lost to the mail,
food was diverted to the wrong people. By this time,
nearly the entire country was on some form of public assistance.
Strictly speaking, there wasn't any public left. It was only
(22:43):
a matter of time. About this time, we had a
fire in the woods near our house. I called a
fire department and they wouldn't do anything. They said they
couldn't put out the fire unless it involved a house
or a place of business. I called a forestry service.
They were aware of the fire, but couldn't do anything
without state approval. The state hadn't approved any firefighting action
(23:05):
in years. They seldom even answered their phone. I should
have guessed a heavy rain eventually put the fire out,
but not before it destroyed several hundred acres. A few
months previous to the fire, I had noticed that birds'
nests were disappearing. They were huge osprey nests, many over
ten feet wide. They had been there for years, they
(23:28):
had survived hurricanes. Overnight they were gone. The local forest
ranger shrugged. The Autubon society was unconcerned. The ospreys are
gone now. They never came back. The only birds I
ever see are vultures circling the sky or roosting the
crooks of dead trees. I've forgotten how to do a
(23:51):
great many things. I'm not alone. Many of the things
I used to do seemed so trivial now I stopped them,
and soon I forgot how to do them at all.
Some of them were things I enjoyed. I used to
know how to play the guitar. I was a fair
basketball player, even had two years of semi pro ball
in a small southern town. It's all gone now. Bill
(24:16):
assures me he has forgotten out of paint. We both
feel vaguely sad about that. He was a good painter,
who were somewhat relieved to see that It is apparently
a universal effect. During the last stages of the Great Migration,
a lot of the physical problems were solved by the
first concrete manifestation of the monster. Food and water were provided.
(24:41):
It's still being provided every morning. The delivery of the
first paper of the day's accompanied by a jug of
water and a few small tubers. They looked like potatoes,
but they don't have to be cooked to eat. They're
tasteless but filling. We are never hungry in cold climates,
Heat provided along with the food. I've heard of people
(25:02):
up north freezing to death because they forgot or did
not care to turn on the heat. I'm not surprised
there are people down here who just stop eating.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Food and water pile up on.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Their doorsteps next to their papers. They die, The monster
doesn't notice, and the food and water just keep stacking up.
I believe the monster has lost the ability to tell
the living from the dead. I have that problem myself
these days. There were twelve suicides on television this week,
(25:34):
not reported suicides, but on the air suicides of reporters.
I don't know why they bother. After the novelty the
first one, they aren't very interesting anymore. Yet I can't
really blame them. There are a lot of suicides these days,
and I guess if you're a television annuncer, it's the
natural place to do. It still does interrupt the programming.
(25:54):
There are continual replacements. People are always going on television
to talk of their harrowing experiences. Everyone has had a
lot of bad things happen to them. We enjoy hearing
people talk of these experiences. They are seldom trivial, almost
always emotionally crippling. They concern tragedies of a private and
(26:18):
personal nature. We participate vicariously and are glad these things
are happening to someone else. We seldom realize that similar
things are happening to us. I often wonder how the
television stations and newspapers keep functioning. Everything else has broken
down in the last few years, including most of the
(26:40):
people I know. Nothing gets fixed. Nobody wants to fix things,
or perhaps, like water pumps, they've forgotten how we adjust.
We live without many of the things we liked in
order to keep a stable existence. It is somewhat uncomfortable,
but functional in its own way. We have all withdrawn.
(27:04):
It is, I hope, the final stage of the monster
we no longer interact with other people. We hold our
hurts and fears tightly to our chests and push everything
and everybody else away. It is universal. Everyone does this.
We did it on a national level, and now we
(27:25):
do this on an individual level. Many things have been lost,
but we still survive. I grow old. Everyone grows old.
There are no children. Even if there were children, no
one would love them. We are too involved with our
(27:46):
own problems. There are only the children's tales, the monsters games.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
He has built a jail without walls.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
He is killed a world.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
There are no tears left fall. There is no one
left to care.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
You've heard the end of the World Wag a story
by Jack Holdeman. The Second a story which appeared in
Fantastic Magazine December nineteen seventy seven. This is Michael Hansen
technical production for this program by Kenya Herold and Tom Martinson.
Mind Webbs is a production of WHA Radio and Madison,
(28:51):
a service of the University of Wisconsin Extension.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Shock of
Speaker 1 (29:24):
U
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