LYS Podcast Episode 13

-Intro-

'''AMANDA MORRISON VOICEOVER (AM V/O): When we left you last episode, we just discovered Weylen Taylor in a group photograph hanging on the wall in a Flynn initiative board or conference room. This was interesting for a couple of reasons. First; the fact that Weylen Taylor appeared to be involved or at least had been involved at some point in the Flynn initiative, and second; the fact that Weylen Taylor had a scar in his chin that appeared to indicate that the photograph in that board or conference room had been taken some time after Weylen Taylor's disappearance from the University. You're listening to the Leap Year Society. I'm Amanda Morrison. Stay with us.

-End of intro-

MS: Nobody at the Flynn Initiative has been willing to speak with us officially on the record.

AM: There has to be somebody.

MS: Yeah, you'd think so but they're all either ignoring our calls or refusing us directly.

AM: So we've got nothing.

MS: Well, I was able to get back in touch with both Marc and Sheila and each of them indicated that they believe they recognized Dr. Weylen Taylor from their time at the Flynn Initiative, but they told me that they didn't remember anything else.

AM: We're going to keep pulling at this thread.

MS: Oh yeah we are.

AM V/O: So, while we continue to pull at that thread we're going to move over to another one: the search for X; the mysterious person or entity Lane Kelly believed had inhabited or somehow stepped into his test subject, the woman he called Venus, the woman whose real name, or at least as real as she's been willing to get with, us is Iris Love. Lane Kelly's diary had more than a few references to both Venus and X; he appeared to be doing his best to track X, monitoring stories in the news and popular culture, looking for mentions of certain phrases like “possession”, “sleepwalking incident”, “Fregoli Delusion”, “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome” and a bunch of other key words and phrases, but Lane Kelly wasn't limiting his searches to the Internet. He'd apparently also been spending time searching the deep web; the dark world of drugs, guns, assassins and whatever else you wanted to fine anonymously, or at least mostly anonymously. He'd written down a number of .onion sites, which were deep web URLs browsable using Tor, the infamous highly encrypted anonymous dark net or deep web browser. One of the deep webs URLs he'd written down had been underlined in red. There was a black X followed by a question mark next to it. I really didn't like logging into the dark net, hated Tor. It always made me feel kind of creepy. I made Mitch stay with me the whole time.

AM: You do it.

MS: I am pressing enter.

AM: What is that section there?

MS: I don't know…looks like some kind of WikiLeaks style document.

AM: Open one of the files.

MS: It looks like there's only one that isn't grayed out.

AM: What does that mean?

MS: Only one active download link.

AM: Well, that makes it easier.

AM V/O: The file Mitch downloaded and then opened appeared to be some kind of research document. It wasn't named, just a number: 2 3 1 0 0 0 2 1. It looked important; it had a US government State Department Seal. If this document was a fake, it was perfect. The document itself had been ferociously redacted. There wasn't much there outside of a photograph that took up a quarter of the page and a few sentences here and there between the redacted black. This was obviously some kind of file on the woman in the photograph. She appeared to be in her 30s at the time the photograph was taken. She was elegant looking with sharp features almost bird-like. She looked an awful lot like somebody we'd heard described on his podcast in the past; the woman who allegedly met Dr. Weylen in that bar we'd seen him sitting at on that security camera footage. The bartender who saw the woman Weylen Taylor met with described her as having sharp bird-like features, tall with dark brown hair, symmetrically gray at the temples. We were looking at a photograph of a woman matching that description exactly. We sent it to Colin.

COLIN ORRY (CO): Whoa, that's crazy!

AM: Yeah, it's pretty wild.

CO: You think it's the same woman?

AM: I don't want to jump to conclusions, but it sure feels like a possibility. Did you manage to find her?

CO: Reverse image search didn't turn anything up. We're working on facial recognition, but unless you know anybody in the NSA, we’re probably not going to be able to find her that way.

AM: What about the text that was surrounded by the redacted black?

CO: That was a different story

AM V/O: I'd ask Colin to look into the woman in the photograph and the text that had remained after somebody had liberally taken a black felt marker to redact the majority of it. There was one phrase that gave us something; just a handful of words and letters in the center of the document surrounded by so many thick black lines. Those words and letters read as follows: “Monitor SCR Allen Kyle.” I didn't figure it out right away. Colin recognized it almost immediately.

CO: The reason whoever redacted the documents get this section is probably because there's indirect information.

AM: What do you mean?

CO: It's a kind of extra security measure; a loose code.

AM: What code?

CO: A very basic switch. Ok, the name Allen Kyle is an anagram for Lane Kelly.

AM: Of course it is.

CO: And-

AM: And SCR is silver cord Road.

CO: Bingo.

AM: Wait, so Lane Kelly found a document with his own name on it and the photograph of this mystery woman. Do you think he believed this mystery woman was X?

CO: Well, it makes sense. He probably knows he himself isn't X, right?

AM: Right.

AM V/O: So, Lane Kelly's research gave us a photograph of a woman who matched the description of a woman who'd met Weylen Taylor in a bar years after Taylor's mysterious disappearance. Since we were already using a Tor browser, Mitch and I did some more digging on the Deep Web.

MS: Where do you want to go now?

AM: As few places as possible, thank you very much.

MS: Hmm, what you don't like the dark net?

AM: Not in the least, you?

MS: I mean, I think ours is a more interesting world because of it, but yeah I'd rather not spend the ton of time here.

AM: What are you looking for?

MS: I am checking a bulletin board.

AM: For what?

MS: It's a group that meets every week to discuss that video and the teenagers who disappeared.

AM: Who are these people in the chat?

MS: No idea, they just use aliases and generic avatars.

AM: Is everything on the Deep Web anonymous?

MS: Yeah, pretty much. Oh hey, this person is new.

AM: Who?

MS: They call themselves TruthWarrior69.

AM: Wow, that's quite a handle.

MS: Look at this!

AM: Wow. Wait, is that real?

MS: I mean, it sure looks like it.

AM V/O: Mitch turned her laptop around to reveal a photograph. It was the teenage geocacher and her friend getting interviewed around a table in what appeared to be a government bunker somewhere. They didn't look like they were being held against their will or anything. There were sodas on the table and there were adults present of both genders, but still, that picture it had a real deep conspiracy vibe about it.

AM: What are they saying about that picture?

MS: The original poster is offline, they just uploaded the photo. Oh man, the rest of the participants are going crazy, but it's all speculation-Area 51 kind of stuff. They say those kids aren't missing in the normal sense; they're missing in the “government agency took them sense.” You know, like some kind of real-life stranger things situation, and the Online Crusaders believe that they have to save them or you know at least chat about saving them online.

AM: Can you print out everything they're saying? Actually, we should print out everything we can find on that bulletin board.

MS: I’m on it.

AM V/O: We're going to continue to look into those teenagers disappearances, but right now I'm going to play something that Colin found in the internet archives, a kind of cross between a public domain digital record site and a Wayback Machine. It's a recording. A Flynn Initiative participant is being interviewed. It appears to be some kind of internal audio document. Colin believes it wasn't supposed to end up archived, that it must have been included in a bunch of other files during a transfer backup process of some kind. An alphabetical storage mix-up the other files in this particular archive our geological readings and recordings by a man named Flynn Innerschmidt they have nothing whatsoever to do with the Flynn Initiative we're going to play the recording of that Flynn initiative interview for you now.

-Interview recording-

WOMAN (W): What were you thinking during the first phase of the Process?

MAN (M): I don't remember.

W: Do you remember the medication being administered?

M: I remember it feeling cool cold around the location of the IV and then and then I woke up.

W: The last time, you mentioned you'd experienced lost time.

M: Yes.

W: Did that happen again?

M: You know it did.

W: Please could you confirm it for the record.

M: Once again, I experienced lost time.

W: Thank you.

M: Ok, can we be finished please? I don't feel very well.

W: Just a few more questions.

M: I am tired.

W: It won't take long. Last time, you mentioned that you'd experienced a displacement.

M: I did not!

W: Well?

M: I told you, there's somewhere else. A broken place, a rift that I'd been pulled into a space, that I felt like I was being ripped apart and drowning.

W: Right and did you experience this rift again? Please answer the question.

M: I'm not going back to that place.

W: The last time, you described it as kind of a “page between pages.” You said that things calmed down in “that place” once you calm down, do you remember?

M: I told you I am NOT going back.

W: I understand, but if you could just-

M: We're finished here.

-End of interview-

AM V/O: That's where the recording ends. A few days later, we found something else something referencing a familiar term. We found it by accessing a link in lane Kelly's diary, a link that led to an audio file. It's another interview. We're going to play that interview for you now.

-Recording-

WOMAN 1 (W1): Yeah, they called it a coma, but I think it was more than that or different.

WOMAN 2 (W2): How do you mean?

W1: Well, you know I suffer from encephalitis lethargica?

W2: Yes.

W1: Which means I experience slipping into a number of comas.

W2: Right.

W1: And with this one, this is like-like…being half into and then-

W2: And then what?

W1: And then taken over.

AM V/O: That sounds terrifying and familiar. Weylen Taylor Lane Kelly and Patient 81 have all mentioned similar experiences or conducted seemingly related experiments. Which brings us to another story about somebody obsessed with breaking through to what she called the “other side” or the void.” It was something sent to us by an anonymous listener. It was nothing more than a name: Clarissa Day. Colin, Mitch and I looked into it. Colin found something.

AM: What were you able to dig up about Clarissa Day?

CO: Like a lot of people connected to whatever this is, she was or is a research scientist.

AM: Makes sense.

CO: Well, we believe that while she was working at Boston University in the early 90s, she was in possession of an artifact.

AM: Now that sounds familiar.

CO: It's going sound even more so soon.

AM: Ok.

CO: somebody at the University believed that whatever Dr. Day had in her possession was capable of peering into something they were calling the “void” or the “rift.”

AM: This was happening in a science department?

CO: It was a privately funded study

AM: Who was funding it?

CO: Guess.

AM: The Flynn Initiative?

CO: Nope, but it's going to sound familiar.

AM: I give up.

CO: The Bolchester Alliance.

AM: Of course.

CO: Right?

AM: Do we know for certain that this Dr. Day was actually in possession of an artifact?

CO: We have documents. No photos or videos, although I am working on that.

AM: Can I see them? The documents?

CO: Of course, of course. I was just scanning sending them now.

AM: Can you sum them up?

CO: Sure. Well, Dr. Day was gifted something by a close friend of her grandmother's, the woman who had raised Dr. Day, a woman who had just died.

AM: Her grandmother had just died?

CO: No, the grandmother’s friend.

AM: Right. Ok, and this thing that was gifted, it was the artifact from those videos we saw?

CO: Well no, it wasn't that artifact based on the description, but it could certainly be categorized as an artifact and it did appear to be similar very similar.

AM: How similar?

CO: It glowed blue and caused panic when it was operated.

AM: Wow.

CO: Yeah.

AM: How do we know this?

CO: I'll read you this section: “when the device was first activated, there was a static field generated and hair stood on end. People ran in panic and the window began to glow softly with a blue light similar to the primary. He was right; we're going to need a bigger boat. “

AM: What does that mean?

CO: It's a jaws reference.

AM: I get the reference I just don't know what it means…a bigger lab?

CO: Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

AM: What do you think she means by the term “the primary?”

CO: I have no idea.

AM: What did the artifact look like?

CO: Unlike the item in the geocache or video and the film from CERN, this artifact isn't a dodecahedron.

AM: No?

CO: No, there's a sketch in the documents I sent today. It appears to be cylindrical; a long brass tube, but it does feature a section in the middle that you could look through.

AM: The part that would glow blue?

CO: Yeah.

AM: Anything else?

CO: Yeah, one of the documents warns that exposure to the artifact when it's engaged could be catastrophically dangerous and that more testing is required before use can be authorized.

AM: Authorized by whom?

CO: It doesn't say

AM: Of course.

CO: But it sounds like this wasn't the only artifact and that, unlike whatever was on the geocaching video, this device doesn't appear to be all that old.

AM: No?

CO: No. There's a date in catalog number so it looks like the device was manufactured sometime in the 1920s.

AM: That's interesting.

CO: But there's more.

AM: What?

CO: Dr. Day’s grandmother's friend, the older woman who died?

AM: What about her?

CO: Her name was Rosina Schulz.

AM: Does that name mean anything?

CO: No, but her maiden name does.

AM: What's her maiden name?

CO: Rosina Majorana.

AM: Why does that last name sound familiar?

CO: Because Rosina Majorana was Ettore Majorana’s sister.

AM: Ettore Majorana!

CO: The Italian theoretical physicist who was deep into all this weird physics and metaphysical stuff.

AM: Who disappeared under very suspicious circumstances in 1939 and reappeared in 1959.

CO: That’s him.

AM: Were you able to dig up anything else on Dr. Clarissa Day?

CO: Nothing really. She left Boston after a few years, the trail ends pretty abruptly. No social media, no publication, scientific or otherwise.

AM: This is getting deeper.

CO: Yeah it is.

AM V/O: Finding Ettore Majorana’s sister by way of her married name inspired an idea. While Mitch and I were looking into Dr. Clarissa Day, we dug a little deeper and found out that Dr. Day had also been married and, later in life, had taken her husband's name. So, although we were unable to find anything on a Clarissa Day who'd worked at Boston University once upon a time, there was something on a Dr. Reyes raised a few years after Dr. Clarissa day left Boston, a Dr. Clarissa Reyes was working somewhere else with somebody whose name you'll recognize. Six months before she'd committed suicide under very suspicious circumstances, a woman named Clarissa Reyes began working with Dr. Weylen Taylor.