Episode Transcript
Records of the Unknown, Operation Latency, contains horror elements that may be disturbing to some listeners.
Listener discretion is advised.
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November 19, 3 o'clock p.m.
The three of you, Dr. Steele, Corporal Adams, and Dr. Johan Henson, stare at the raging inferno, there's a storm picking up all around you, lightning is crashing, rain is starting to pick up, but that fire still spreads over, strongly passing over this unknown fungus, unharmed at all, and Johan, with tears in his eyes, is just looking on at where he believes all the time.
Johan Henson, at the same time, is watching for survivors.
As you two are beginning to approach the fire, the rain is starting to come in and it's making the fire a little more sporadic, so there's more areas for you two to walk through.
And you guys are getting closer, you see a couple of bodies spread about as if they were running, but they look charred.
And as you continue forward you see the vehicle engulfed in flames. It does not look like it's in a very good state.
Doctor, can I have you roll an alertness check?
OK.
29 under 40.
In the fire up ahead, the other side of the building where the corporal can't necessarily see from where he's at,
you see a figure rummaging?
It's hard to see with the fire, it's kind of stronger over there so it affects your eyes.
Is this figure wearing any sort of suit?
Yeah, by its figure it doesn't look like it's even wearing anything.
It's sort of hunched over.
I will try to silently approach it, readying myself.
As you're beginning to get closer and coming around the building and you're starting to get a good view of it,
its head kind of pops up, its head is kind of bulbous, and it starts standing up and it's only a couple of feet tall.
And it just kind of starts looking over at you, and you can see it more clearly, just this thin, short, big-eyed, gray little creature.
The long spindly fingers, kind of still clutching onto a head, and it sort of just looks at you.
How far away can I close a distance quickly on it?
It's probably about 50 feet away, with some fire in between you.
And as it looks at you, it sort of starts to point at you.
I will take cover.
And the fire just kind of flares up in between you two as you get down.
As you kind of peek back out at it, it's just sort of walking away, dragging a body with it.
Will you roll a Sanity Check?
Yeah, sure, that would be a great time.
That's an 80 over 61.
You lose two Sanity Points.
I have passed a breaking point.
After getting up, seeing the thing point towards him, and glancing back out as it's dragging a body away.
Fire all around him.
He's staying there, eyes locked on the thing, staring, unblinking, watching it for far too long.
Kind of stiff as a board.
As it's walking out of your view, you begin to hear a growing whistle, like a bomb dropping down.
And then as it would explode, you just feel a hand on your shoulder.
And Johan's like, "Doctor, are you okay? Are you doing alright?"
Did you see that?
Yes, I saw it.
He looks very shaken, like he saw it.
He saw it, too.
Saw what? I didn't see anything.
We need to keep looking.
Oh, my friends, I think they are dead.
I will try to go out to where the alien was exiting the building, looking for tracks.
Is it once again like there's no tracks here?
Just drag marks, but no footprints.
Corporal, you're kind of watching them.
You saw the doctor freeze up and kind of the two of them talking at each other kind of loudly.
And then they both have walked around the building out of sight of you.
I'm going to keep doing my job.
I'm going to stay on the ridge, keeping an eye out for anybody approaching, or any snipers or anything.
I will look back to Johan, get the corporal, and I will then not run anymore.
I'm going to try to follow the drag mark slowly towards the treeline.
Okay, I'll go get him.
Hurry.
Okay.
And Johan runs out and looks over at the corporal and just starts waving his arms.
When I see that, I'll make my way down the ridge as quickly as possible.
So you realize you're following this drag mark through the trees.
You hear a slight humming noise as you peer over a hill, some trees.
You come across the ridge and the first thing you lock eyes on is that thing, the little creature dragging this body.
It gets underneath.
You can see it kind of enters those areas of the snow where it's dented in.
But above it, you can see very clearly just this mirrored, this large sphere that's got like a mirrored surface on it.
And it's just hovering there making noise.
As the gray gets underneath it with the body and then looks back at you, the bottom of this sphere opens up and the thing and the body just kind of floats up into it.
As it then just begins floating up into the sky into the clouds.
I would like to take out the pistol that I have and take one shot at this thing.
Roll firearms.
That is an 89 over 20.
You shoot.
You don't even know where your bullet went.
You don't even know if it hit a just whatever.
It's somewhere, but it went up.
Corporal, you just hear a gunshot go off.
Doctor, I know.
Double time.
It just went up and away.
I wasn't going towards any certain direction.
It is just going up until it got into the clouds and you couldn't see it anymore.
In the snowy depression, does it look like it's any different than we've seen before you walking here?
It's warmer than before than generally, but it's about the same.
It's fresher, I guess.
I want to take out the walkie.
I'm just going to make sure what settings it's on, and I want to try to just tune it to see if it picks up anything that's out of the ordinary.
They're not static.
As you're changing the channel, you get to a channel that's just this ear piercing screeching noise.
But there's something you can kind of make out, and you're able to tune it a little bit more.
And you just hear, experiment failed.
Subject loose.
And then just like this weird garbled noise, almost like a language.
But it's nothing you understand.
And then the tip of your radio begins to slowly glow, and then it like explodes.
Barfalo, you're able to see him there as you just hear a loud, like, bang.
Doctor, I heard a gunshot.
Yeah, I tried shooting at the craft, the flying orb.
What?
Well, I got a good sight of what's causing those.
I point back to that clearing that has the snow depression.
It was one of the grays, not the ooze.
Gray men.
Yes, short, bulbous head, long fingers.
He took somebody.
I'm not sure who, Johan might be able to help answer, who's missing.
But took him from the burning building, and that's where the drag marks from.
And he got taken up into a silver orb that just hovered away.
I took a shot at the thing, and maybe you can do something to it.
Make a mark, I hope. I don't know.
And I show you the walkie that has exploded on itself.
What happened to that?
I thought maybe I could get into some sort of frequency they had,
tune a channel that those things were on.
I got something. I heard what Bellamy reported.
Loose experiment failed, and then some sort of garbled language I didn't understand.
But that's when this suddenly started to get very warm and blew up.
I don't know if we'd even be able to repair this, but we at least know we can possibly listen in.
It's hard to say.
Do you think this might be related to the Majestic Twelve?
Do you think they retaliated?
It would be an awful fast turnaround, but it's possible.
We know they're working with those things the Colonel told us.
I don't trust the Colonel's intuition.
I feel like if there's a group here that's as advanced as this,
I feel like they wouldn't just bend the knee to a planned design organization like that.
No. Those people at Majestic Twelve are dealing with forces that they can't possibly hope to control or understand.
We'll certainly try. Let's go back to Johan. Maybe we can figure out who's missing.
We need to figure out what to do next.
Doctor, as you're walking away, you hear just a little bit more from that radio.
Edward R. Murrow.
And it starts static-ing out.
London after dark.
It kind of static some more.
Do I hear this too?
You do not.
I stopped and tried to take a mental note of where it was at.
Listen to the skies. The bombs come quick.
What you're just hearing is a lot of things that sound familiar to you.
Andy mentions London, and then at the end it's just so garbled.
This. This is London.
Good night and good luck.
And you recognize this.
A radio broadcast from the Blitz that you listened to to help make it through in London during World War I.
Actually, I shouldn't have that. It doesn't make sense.
You said you stopped and corporals continued on until they realized that you weren't moving, he'll turn around.
And I'm fiddling with the radio.
Sorry. Bad memories. It's nothing. This thing actually doesn't work anymore.
I want to put it in a pocket.
Johan comes running up, very tired, out of breath.
Alright.
Hello. I don't think there's anything we can get from here. I think we need to just keep moving.
Are you able to identify?
It looks like everyone but Thomas was here. I didn't see his body, but everyone else was accounted for.
Unless you had a guess, I think Thomas was taken.
Taken? By who? By the majestic?
No, by the gray. It took a body away, which is why we have a drag mark here.
Right, right. Yes. So what do we do now? We go back to town?
We can't stay here.
I would like to know, Johan, if you're freelance, who hired you to come looking for the majestic 12?
Yes.
Do you know who?
I know who. It was Timothy who hired me. He hired me to come and help monitor the situations, yeah.
Was he working independently or was...
He didn't really say. He seems to be independent.
He said he had bad experiences in the past with the government.
But you were just hired for this job. You haven't worked very long with him.
No. He just wanted some more radiologist assistance, so they reached out to me.
Of course, I was looking for a place to go. It's not very easy for people like me in this state right now.
Do you know of anyone else from town that's closer to us?
Is a Harbourfield farm near here or...
Is a Harbourfield farm beyond the way, yes.
Do you know where the Russian lives?
As far as I'm aware, she lives in town, in a Harbourshire shop.
That's hard to say where you think we should go, Corporal Adams.
If we stay out in the elements for too long, we're going to be in trouble.
We need to move towards town, but if the Harbourfield farm is closer, we might want to head there first.
Try to get some warmth on the way.
Yeah, split the trip up a little bit.
Okay.
Unless you have another car somewhere, but I'm guessing you don't.
No, no, that sounds good to me. Yes, no car, nothing, just walking.
To the farm then?
Yes, I think I can take a stab, walk through these woods a lot.
Lead the way.
Okay. Very clearly shaken from all of this. He's marching forward.
I take it the Botanist lab isn't far from here then?
It's more east than we are going.
No need to stop, but it kind of helps clear up why you may have been there that night.
Well, there was a little more to it than just being around, but it doesn't really matter anymore.
Why were you there that night, Johan?
Because I knew that you were going over there and I wanted someone to watch in case of anything happening majestic-wise, and something did happen majestic-wise, and so I was there to help.
They also wanted me to get some stuff from the greenhouse, but that wasn't very accessible, you see.
But they were trying to keep watch on things and when you came into town, they were very interested in you, but sadly he never got a chance to meet you.
Yeah, certainly would have been very interested to know what his mission here was.
Yeah, all they know is he was against majestic. Perhaps there's more to it than that, but yeah. Sorry, I cannot be of more help.
I felt enough today, Johan, having gotten us out of there. I certainly did not trust their intentions, at least not since things went south.
Yeah.
Without Trenton there, I'm not sure what command would have done with us.
I'm not very sure something would have happened if you went there, but you know, things happen.
Sometimes, it passes, you guys are trekking along, the storm is not letting up very much, it's cold, you guys are starting to feel wet, and coming out of a tree line you see a farm that doesn't look like it's super well taken care of, everything's kind of overgrown at this point.
That is the Haverfield farm. We can go inside and rest.
Is anybody living there?
I don't think so. I haven't seen anyone live there since... what happened to Haverfield.
I didn't know of any other family he had here since his death, he'd been the last one for the namesake of it.
I don't know if anyone else is curious of anything else that's found its way to stay here.
Stay alert.
Yes, exactly.
Oh, this could be dangerous.
At this point, it's safe to assume that everything is dangerous.
Oh, okay.
Just keep your eyes peeled.
He pulls out his Geiger counter.
You guys begin to head into its...
take point, I'll go in first to wherever it is that we end up entering in.
Checking corners, looking for danger.
I'm just trying to keep senses open.
If there's any sort of depressions here, like the UFO's been here, or if there's anything out about the barn, or if it's just going to the house,
they could have a vehicle truck of their own.
We can check. Let's go look.
I'll go look in the barn.
Inside the barn, there's what looks like two generators, one's like mid-dismantling, and the other looks like it put together.
There's a couple of tool benches full of like electrical tools, as if this was like a little workshop.
I wonder if Callahan is anywhere nearby.
He lives in town.
However, from here, you do see there is a generator up against the house.
That one probably we could turn on, or we could try to anyway.
Let's get inside and warmed up.
I'll try to start the generator before I go in.
It takes a little bit of work, but it starts.
And you see like as soon as it starts, some lights turn on inside.
And you hear a little like some rustling and some glass break inside.
Yeah, I should have should have gone in before we turn on the generator.
Whoops. I'm all right with that.
I will shoulder my gun and move in and try to find the source of that noise.
You step inside the house, can hear like hear start to kick on.
The lights are have a strong hum to them.
Inside you see, it looks like a coffee pot knocked over and broken.
Fresh coffee spilled. Yes.
I'm going to move in, checking corners, looking for I'm assuming there's somebody here.
So I'm going to I'm going looking.
You're walking through this floor.
You know, it looks like it was a fairly nice house.
It's been a while. So it's dusty.
Some parts. Some parts aren't very dusty.
There's a lot of picture frames you can see Tommy Haverfield,
you would assume kind of what probably used to look like with a woman.
The two of them, a lot of the pictures and portraits, whatnot.
But you don't really see anyone on this floor.
You do see that there is a door that leads down to a basement.
Somebody's here. And if we start hanging out without checking, we're going to get.
Yeah, it's not going to be a good situation. I'm trying to think if there was any sort.
Is there a cellar door that we saw outside?
If they might be connected? Yeah.
I go look. I want to go look for that.
Make sure if anything tries to escape through that to cut him off.
Dr. Steele will head back outside with his pistol drawn.
I will go down to the basement.
I will click on my flashlight as alert as I can
about anything changing creep down the basement stairs.
You creep down the basement stairs as you're getting closer, you can see the floor.
The ground is almost entirely composed of that fungus.
And then as you're getting lower, you can see some of the walling is covered in this stuff.
As you step down on it, it's kind of squishy, but soft.
And you look around in the middle of the room is just this large mass of this fungus.
And you hear muffled yelling on the other side of it.
I will move to try and see what's on the other side.
CIA, come out with your hands up!
As you're starting to come around this mass that, as you're getting closer, it looks like it's pulsating,
you hear what sounds like a couple of quick footsteps behind you.
I'm going to whirl. And there's nothing there.
Turn back around to where I heard the yelling.
You turn, you walk, and you see, kind of, like, tape over her mouth and tied up is the mother of the child who just recently died.
And you see, with an exploded chest, the body of Alan Haley.
Oh no!
And you feel, like, some, like, little bit of wood or gravel chips hit the top of your head.
As you hear some more, like, tick-tick-tick-tick, like, crawling.
As you look up, you see this long figure, maybe, like, eight foot long.
It looks almost like a humanoid shape, but almost made out of that same material that that little blob was made out of.
And one of its hands tightens as its whole body begins to just lower and stand next to you.
Its fingers are all elongated and it's kind of hunched over.
It's trying to speak at you.
Like, it's kind of starts forming a mouth and tries to do something that forms a way.
And it reaches out towards you.
And then we cut to black.
[Music]
Thank you for listening to the Records of the Unknown Operation Latency.
Records of the Unknown is an Atomic Broadcasting Production.
Delta Green is copyright of Arc Dreams Publishing.
Operation Latency is not published or endorsed by Arc Dreams Publishing and is an original module created and run by Samuel Sarver.
Our players are Nolan as Dr. Silvester Steele and Harold as Corporal Alexander Adams.
Music in the show is from Monument Studios as well as various artists.
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Don't forget to like, comment, and tell a friend. And as always, have an Atomic Time!
[Music]
Don't make me go into the basement and say I don't want to go.
That's not making you do anything.
(laughing)
[BLANK_AUDIO]
