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Episode: If Memory Serves: A Juno Steel Mystery (Episode 1)
Author: Harley Takagi Kaner and Kevin Vibert
Duration: 00:46:56
Episode Shownotes
A young Juno Steel, new to being a private eye and intensely depressed after explosively losing his job at the HCPD, is deep under the spell of a street drug that allows him to relive his past. Encouraged by his trusty secretary, he takes on a strange case.Part 1, Ch.
1-4.You can find a transcript for this episode here.If you'd like access to the rest of the audiobook episodes as they come out, plus all our existing bonus commentaries, production scripts, blooper reels, and more, you can find everything at The Penumbra Podcast: SPECIAL EDITION. We can't keep our production running without your support, so anything helps!Narrated by:Joshua Ilon as Juno SteelKate Jones as RitaHarley Takagi Kaner as Sasha WireRegine Vital as Captain HijikataKat Buckingham as Zahra ShaleWritten by Kevin Vibert and Harley Takagi KanerOriginal music by Ryan VibertTrigger warnings:- Self-harm and suicide- Death- War- Abuse of power- Medical abuse- Drug use/abuse- Physical injury and harm- "Body horror"- Dismemberment- Gaslighting and manipulationFor early and ad-free episodes, production scripts, commentary tracks, blooper reels, livestreams with the creators, and much more, you can find The Penumbra Podcast: SPECIAL EDITION at: https://thepenumbrapodcast.supercast.com (In old episodes, you will often hear us mention Patreon, which was our old platform and is no longer live. Please feel free to ignore!)Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Full Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker_06
We are so excited to share with you the first full episode of If Memory Serves, A Juno Steel Mystery. As a reminder, this is the only episode that will be posted to the public feed.
00:00:12 Speaker_06
All subsequent episodes will be released on The Penumbra Podcast Special Edition over at thepenumbrapodcast.supercast.com.
00:00:20 Speaker_06
If you are able to support us, we hope you do, as your pledges will enable us to continue production on the audiobook and also fund our next fully cast and sound-designed audio drama, Thirst. We can't do it without you. Enjoy the episode!
00:00:36 Speaker_03
Hello, everybody. Thank you so, so, so much for supporting us as we produce this early release of the audiobook for If Memory Serves, A Juno Steele Mystery. This is a new kind of story for Juno Steele in a new format.
00:00:50 Speaker_03
We're so excited to bring it to you. You can find trigger warnings in the transcript in the episode description, but I wanted to highlight one trigger warning in particular before we dive into the story.
00:01:00 Speaker_03
If memory serves deals extensively with self-harm and suicide, if either of these are significant triggers for you, then the early access experience of this audiobook may not be the best choice for you.
00:01:11 Speaker_03
You might want to wait until some other people field it, people that you trust, whose opinions you trust, who can tell you what to expect. We have worked really hard to handle these themes and experiences in thought-provoking but considerate ways.
00:01:25 Speaker_03
But just because we're attempting to be tactful does not mean that our characters universally are at all times, so you might want to tread carefully. All that said, brand new adventure for Juno, we hope you'll love it.
00:01:35 Speaker_03
This is a different Juno Steel who's going through a lot, so enjoy. If Memory Serves, a Juno Steel Mystery was written by Kevin Vibert and Harley Takagi-Kainer.
00:02:28 Speaker_05
Looking inside the Hyperion City branch of PostAway Limited, you might think that everybody who worked there had just up and vanished.
00:02:36 Speaker_05
In the office, there still stand cubicles, their desks and chairs now covered in dust, the monitors flashing on every year or two to perform scheduled self-maintenance before dozing off again.
00:02:49 Speaker_05
Every third cubicle or so you find a mug with the faded image of a cartoon villain from Chainmail Warrior Andromeda, a dead roach floating lazily on the pond scum remains of coffee inside. there are still files, moldering in the cabinets.
00:03:04 Speaker_05
A forgotten hologrammer projects a never-ending slideshow of smiling children into the dust on an abandoned desk.
00:03:10 Speaker_05
An ancient box of sweet-thang doughnuts sits open in the kitchenette, its contents nibbled by small and highly radioactive mandibles, but still preserved, as fresh as the day they were bought nearly six years ago. miracles of modern science.
00:03:26 Speaker_05
Speaking of which, saying that the building is abandoned isn't the same thing as saying it's lifeless. Depending on your definition of life, that is. Even in that second floor office, you can feel the things moving beneath you.
00:03:41 Speaker_05
The floor pulses like a heartbeat, like you're standing on the chest of something huge. Which, in a way, you are. Take the elevator to the ground floor and you'll find an abandoned reception area.
00:03:54 Speaker_05
A customer or two will periodically wander towards the desk, read the sign that says, out for lunch back in two hours, huff about customer service these days, and then drop their package down the chute next to the desk that leads to the basement.
00:04:08 Speaker_05
Is the package stamped properly? Were all the fees paid? Have all the forms been attached? The customer doesn't know. But it's not like they're going to wait two hours to find out. Let the post office sort it out, they think. So it does.
00:04:24 Speaker_05
If you follow that chute down into the basement, down to where the building's heartbeat booms, you'll see it's not just a heart. It's a city. Or an ecosystem. Or a sprawling organism. Because they're all really the same thing at different scales.
00:04:42 Speaker_05
It looks like this. Thousands of machines. Monitors. Automated comms call devices, repair bots, and repair bots for the repair bots, skitter and slide across that sprawling basement.
00:04:56 Speaker_05
They do their work busily, sorting letters, putting boxes into self-driving trucks, self-driving mail to homes, repairing and fueling and supporting one another. None of them truly think, obviously.
00:05:09 Speaker_05
History's full of crackpots saying the first real AI is right around the corner, but it turns out consciousness is kind of complicated. But they get close. They act. They adapt.
00:05:21 Speaker_05
They fulfill their tasks and find more efficient ways to fulfill their tasks. And they have no idea that they're doing any of it. Almost nobody else had any idea they were doing it either. The building only had one employee.
00:05:37 Speaker_05
One single person who still punched in every morning and punched out every afternoon. Ronald Bass, the experimental bomb checker. Life had been vicious to Ronald Bass. You could tell just by looking at him.
00:05:53 Speaker_05
He was well-groomed, sure, always clean-shaven, usually smiling. But the fact remained that he was a young man with no physical scars or cybernetic limbs, yet he always wore the four-ringed badge of a solar veteran on his chest.
00:06:09 Speaker_05
And you don't get out of the solar military by asking nicely. Once you're enlisted, they own you for life, or until you turn 50, whichever comes first.
00:06:19 Speaker_05
Theoretically, your contract can be nullified when the Galactic Civil War ends, but humanity's been waiting for that day 200 years, and nobody really thinks it's coming anytime soon.
00:06:31 Speaker_05
The only other way you could be relieved of duty is if you were determined by committee to be no longer mentally fit for combat.
00:06:40 Speaker_05
So you could look at Ronald, see that physically he was A-plus soldier material, and that meant whatever he'd been through had really been hell. I never found all the details, but then neither did he.
00:06:55 Speaker_05
His short-term and long-term memory were in pieces. And that was on top of his persistent screaming back pain, his night terrors, his day terrors. His name wasn't even Ronald Bass, but nobody knew what it really was.
00:07:10 Speaker_05
although they could narrow it down to a list of 30.
00:07:14 Speaker_05
He was the only surviving member of Infantry Unit 2790B, a unit hit by a chemical attack, the details of which were an unsolved military mystery that ended in the entire unit's dog tags in a pile on one side of a Hahnemannian field, and the unit's bodies, plus Ronald's, on the other.
00:07:33 Speaker_05
Nobody could identify him. When he was returned to Hyperion City, nobody claimed him. So the Solar Military gave him a name at random and supported him on pension.
00:07:43 Speaker_05
Until the day they discovered he'd started taking experimental high-strength opioids for the constant, crippling pain their pension couldn't afford to treat. Then they cut him off. So, he started working at PostAway.
00:07:59 Speaker_05
For years, he was the only human being down there. The only human resident of a completely clockwork city. Must have been lonely.
00:08:09 Speaker_05
But hell, above ground, where people looked at his badge guiltily, where all eyes avoided his, as if in his pupils they might see a piece of the nightmare that had cracked his mind and sent him home. That must have been lonely too.
00:08:24 Speaker_05
I've got nothing but sympathy for Ronald, is what I'm trying to say. Despite the fact that he was about to make the next few months of my life a living hell. I didn't know a damn thing about him when all this started though.
00:08:36 Speaker_05
That's the one hard thing about solving people's problems, actually. People. They don't sit still.
00:08:43 Speaker_05
While you're distracted by the woman right in front of you breaking your nose into a million pieces, you should really be worried about the person across town playing gas whale songs to a group of anxious war vets and teaching them how to breathe.
00:08:55 Speaker_05
For me, this whole mess started with a single incredibly stupid mistake.
00:09:00 Speaker_04
I checked my mail. Two.
00:09:07 Speaker_05
When you're as unpopular as I am, checking your mail is a dangerous proposition. Opening big, bright pink boxes that have clearly been tampered with borders on death wish. I did it anyway. To be fair, I did take the necessary precautions first. Rita!
00:09:25 Speaker_05
I called through the door. I'm gonna need you to step out of the office for a few minutes. We argued about that for a little bit. Why do I gotta leave? To get something. To get what? I'm not sure, but you'll know when you see it.
00:09:35 Speaker_05
Until eventually, I heard the door slam. And I knew I was free to blow myself to pieces in private. But the box didn't explode. Because this isn't a ghost story.
00:09:47 Speaker_05
Except in all the ways that any story about the loose ends people leave behind is a ghost story. When I decided what I was seeing inside the box didn't make any sense, I looked in it again. Then I closed it, opened it, looked again.
00:10:02 Speaker_05
And when that didn't do anything, I decided it was probably time to read the letter that had come with the box. The one that said, read this first in big letters across the envelope. I don't like being told what to do.
00:10:16 Speaker_05
Juno, my cover's been blown and I don't have time to catch you up on everything. I know you don't like being told what to do, but I need you to follow these directions exactly, just like when we were kids. Shut up, think, act.
00:10:29 Speaker_05
The sharp angled handwriting was enough to make my stomach do flips. Those last four words signed the rest of my guts up for gymnastics too.
00:10:37 Speaker_05
I gave the package a once over for any other heart attacks, but there was nothing on that box besides a shipping label from a place called Post Away Limited, and a whole lot of really intense pink.
00:10:50 Speaker_05
Then I called through the door again to make sure Rita was gone, and when I was sure, I took two ice blue tablets out of my filing cabinet.
00:10:56 Speaker_05
I felt bad hiding my Nemezine in there, because Rita had bought me that filing cabinet, along with this office and this entire second chance at life, and I knew she didn't like when I took the pills.
00:11:08 Speaker_05
She'd been my secretary back in my cop days and dragged me to this PI gig like I was a stray kitten she'd rescued from a storm drain. And the one time she caught me tripping down memory lane, she said,
00:11:17 Speaker_09
Come on, Mr. Steele, that Mem-Nem-Nem-Nessene stuff is dangerous. It's for sad old people who ain't got nothing to live for. You're sad young people, Buzz. We got a business to build, cases to solve.
00:11:30 Speaker_09
You got plenty to live for, so you can't just stay stuck in the past all the time.
00:11:34 Speaker_05
I should probably mention that she was crying when she said all that. A lot. And I did promise her I'd never take the nemesine again. So... But, come on.
00:11:46 Speaker_05
If you'd lost as much as I had in one week, if you'd went from the youngest police captain in the history of Mars to washed-up-nobody-with-big-debts-in-a-bigger-pile-of-wedding-invitations-to-shred, then you'd need a little help, too.
00:11:59 Speaker_05
So, I took the nemesine, picked up the letter again, and enjoyed some light reading while I waited for the pass to catch up with me. The contents of this box are vital.
00:12:10 Speaker_05
They took me months of undercover work, completely off the books, but I know I've found something really big here. That's why you're getting this box. You cannot bring it to the HCPD. There are definitely cops in on this.
00:12:22 Speaker_05
The people behind it have connections everywhere. I don't know how far, but as soon as I started, I could tell that this went deep. I followed one route, thinking I was investigating a tree. Now I'm here and I can tell it's a forest. This is huge.
00:12:36 Speaker_05
So this stays in your apartment until I come pick it up. Understood? There's only one box, and it's in your hands now. Do not give it to anyone, unless they know my name, and my sister's name, and know to say both.
00:12:51 Speaker_05
The contents of this package are dangerous. Keeping them safe is the most important thing I've asked you to do, Juno. Don't let it out of your sight. Shut up, think, then act. I'll see you soon. Sasha Wire. Don't let it out of your sight, I read out loud.
00:13:11 Speaker_05
I looked back inside the box.
00:13:14 Speaker_04
It was empty. I looked up from the letter to see my office folding in on itself.
00:13:24 Speaker_05
My crusty carpet and cigarette-colored window dripped away like wet paint, and underneath them lay a different office, brighter and whiter than mine.
00:13:33 Speaker_05
The view outside twisted green smoke into green bushes, and hovering benches and kids in trainee uniforms far below. The air traded the stink of dead rats for the stink of flowers,
00:13:46 Speaker_05
And once my office had been completely replaced by the Hyperion City Police Academy's meeting room, the huge filing cabinet beside me pinched inward, frayed its top into black tin fringes, painted itself in skin and heat and breath, and finally opened its eyes.
00:14:03 Speaker_06
I can't believe I let you talk me into this, Sasha Weier said.
00:14:06 Speaker_05
I had never gotten the knack for controlling which memory the Nemezine brings me back to. The present always leaves its thumbprint on what part of the past I get to see.
00:14:15 Speaker_05
Usually that paid off pretty well, because usually I was thinking about the happier life I'd demolished a few months ago. But this memory, this one, I didn't want right now.
00:14:26 Speaker_06
What did you think this would accomplish, exactly?
00:14:28 Speaker_05
Sasha said.
00:14:28 Speaker_06
Sneaking into the flight control tower for target practice? You idiot.
00:14:32 Speaker_05
Come on, you make it sound like I was shooting at a bunch of cop cruisers mid-flight, I said. But I only shot at one. And that was to see how good the range on my blaster was.
00:14:41 Speaker_05
And sure, the ricochet went a little wild, and that bird probably didn't like it. She tried to slump back into her seat, but Sasha never was the champion slumper I am. She was too poised and too pointy.
00:14:53 Speaker_05
The best she could manage was to cross her arms and let her oiled crow hair curtain her eyes. Everything with Sasha always felt like a performance, because for the most part, it was.
00:15:05 Speaker_05
She'd grown up with just as much nothing as I had, in the same dirt-poor man-eating district I did. But she always felt like if she acted like a rich kid who knew everything, she might go into a cocoon and become a rich kid who knew everything.
00:15:20 Speaker_06
You idiot, she said again.
00:15:22 Speaker_05
My past self sighed. Look, you agreed to it, I said.
00:15:27 Speaker_06
Me idiot too, then.
00:15:28 Speaker_05
And it was for a good reason. I think, I said, my voice squeaking with teenage righteousness. We are the best choices for that stakeout job and we know it. The fact that we don't have our badges yet is like a technicality, right?
00:15:43 Speaker_05
Nobody can plant a shot like me.
00:15:45 Speaker_06
Huck is going to kill us, Sasha said. Diamond might even kill us. She was always the sweet, innocent one, and now I have to watch her kill us. Wonderful.
00:15:54 Speaker_05
And nobody knows more about every detail of this city than you do, I said. What are we going to do? Just let some old should-be retirees sleep through a drug bust?
00:16:03 Speaker_06
I hear this new thing they're hawking is huge and... We broke the law on a campus for police officers.
00:16:11 Speaker_05
Yeah, well, I bet they've never seen a job proposal like that before. I said. Sasha turned on me then, and her eyes tore right into my gut.
00:16:19 Speaker_05
Her glare had talons, and she could use them to rip you to pieces or drag you, kicking and screaming, into the sky with her. I'd have been a half-picked carcass on the ground without her. So when she spoke, I listened.
00:16:34 Speaker_06
Shut up, think, then act.
00:16:36 Speaker_05
She said, like she'd said a thousand other times. Like she'd said since the first time my mother threw me out on my ear, and all I wanted to do was storm back and break her goddamn nose.
00:16:47 Speaker_06
We can't be dismissed from this program, all right? This is our last chance, both of us. We can't keep acting like kids goofing around on the street with Mick anymore, and I'm not going to let us mess this up, all right? I'm not.
00:17:00 Speaker_05
Right, I said.
00:17:02 Speaker_06
So we need a plan, something to smooth this over.
00:17:05 Speaker_05
She said. Her eyes clicked back and forth like she could see the plan in front of her, could connect its pieces with her pupils.
00:17:14 Speaker_06
Then she said, if it's one of our instructors, I'll do the talking. If it's someone from the firing range, I don't know. Talk to them about what gun is the sexiest until I come up with something better.
00:17:22 Speaker_05
Is that really what you think we talk about? Her eyes snapped to a stop.
00:17:27 Speaker_06
But if it's Captain Hijikata, that's it. We're finished. Finished with what?
00:17:33 Speaker_05
Then Captain Hijikata came in the door. All long, loose limbs and short, tight hair. And I knew this nemesine trip was going to be a bad one. There's really no coming back from a trip where you have to see the woman who made you ruin your life.
00:17:49 Speaker_05
No, that's not fair. She didn't make me do anything. I walked into that evidence locker myself. Loss just goes down smoother when you have someone to blame it on.
00:18:02 Speaker_05
I tried not to look at Hijikata, but I remembered her so well that it didn't make a difference. The gold and silver hair, the easy hand gestures, the wide-legged posture that owned whatever room she stood in. She was so easy to trust back then.
00:18:18 Speaker_05
So reassuring.
00:18:19 Speaker_00
Oh. Steel.
00:18:21 Speaker_05
She said.
00:18:22 Speaker_00
Right, I forgot we called you in here. That stunt you pulled in the control tower. Don't do it again, all right?
00:18:30 Speaker_05
Yes, Captain.
00:18:31 Speaker_00
And Diamond said to call her when you get the chance. Don't leave my little girl waiting.
00:18:36 Speaker_05
Hijikata smiled at me. And it was the kind of smile that made you really aware that human beings have way too many teeth. Back when I relied on her, that smile had been reassuring.
00:18:47 Speaker_05
Like no matter what threat came your way, she could laugh it off and you'd be safe. Then Hijikata looked at Sasha over her shoulder and said, Wire, mind coming with me for a minute?
00:18:59 Speaker_00
Someone wants to see you.
00:19:01 Speaker_05
Sasha nodded, like she'd always known this would happen. Because Sasha Wire never showed any sign of being unprepared for any reason.
00:19:11 Speaker_05
It always gave me the impression that she was immortal, eternal, that the day before the apocalypse happened, she'd show up at my door with a canteen and some fake IDs, and we'd be gone before the first explosion started.
00:19:23 Speaker_05
It didn't shake out that way, though, because here's the other reason receiving a package from Sasha that day turned my blood to slush. This memory was the last time I ever saw her alive. Sasha Wire had been dead for four years.
00:19:42 Speaker_06
Yes, Captain," she said.
00:19:44 Speaker_05
And while she walked away, I was screaming at myself to stop everything and asked her who that person was, if this meeting was what sealed her fate, if there was anything I could have done to stop this from happening.
00:19:55 Speaker_05
But memories and nemeses don't work that way. So I just watched as she turned to me for one last time and said, Oh, wow, Mr. Steele, you ain't ever going to believe what I found.
00:20:06 Speaker_06
I did it just like you said, and I found her. And oh, my God, boss, are you dead?
00:20:12 Speaker_04
Three. The nemesine wasn't usually that coherent.
00:20:19 Speaker_05
Usually it was much more like what came next. A halfway place between the past and present, each shedding shadows of itself like a snake with a skin condition. A real mess is what I'm saying.
00:20:30 Speaker_06
Boss? What's the matter?
00:20:32 Speaker_05
Sasha said, until her hard face sloughed to the floor in applesauce chunks and Rita's soft one looked out at me.
00:20:39 Speaker_09
You look like... Oh no.
00:20:41 Speaker_05
She rushed over to me, her short legs stumbling across patches of shining academy and dust-crusted office floor. I could smell all 18 species of junk food on her breath, she looked into my eye so closely.
00:20:53 Speaker_10
Oh, boss, what did you do? It's the nemesine again, ain't it? I told you that stuff's dangerous, and besides, you promised!
00:20:59 Speaker_05
Only thing dangerous here is the headache you're giving me, I mumbled. I'll sleep it off. I'll be fine.
00:21:05 Speaker_08
You can't sleep it off, Mr. Steele!
00:21:07 Speaker_05
Rita said.
00:21:07 Speaker_08
I found her! I found the person you told me to go looking for!
00:21:11 Speaker_05
The nemesine threw a hammer through my wall, and for a second I saw Sasha Wire in my waiting room, adjusting her uniform, then doing her homework before school, then pulling me out of a gutter with that sharp, disappointed look in her eyes.
00:21:24 Speaker_10
A client!
00:21:25 Speaker_05
Rita said.
00:21:26 Speaker_10
I found a client who was looking for you, boss. She has a daughter. Or had a daughter, because now she's dead. Or is that still has a daughter? I'm not sure how that works, but that's not the point. It's the way she died.
00:21:35 Speaker_05
What Rita said next didn't make any sense, so I chose to believe it was another hallucination. I fumbled my hands across my face and my shirt like they could smooth out the stains and sleeplessness if they just worked quick enough.
00:21:48 Speaker_05
And then I asked her to repeat herself. Rita looked me up and down, quickly but carefully. She adjusted my collar and buttoned my shirt and then slapped me a few times to scare the grave out of my cheeks. And also, probably because I deserved it.
00:22:04 Speaker_10
And then she said, it's death's crossin' boss. Her daughter died just like all those other people years ago, just like your friend Sasha, uh, killed herself.
00:22:14 Speaker_05
The flickering image of a street corner at night, empty, with mothy light spilling in from lampposts just off camera. A moment passes. Then into that light steps a woman. Tall, dark hair, dark look in her eyes. Her arm hangs, slack.
00:22:31 Speaker_05
The gun looks heavy in her hand, like it might drag her to the ground and keep going straight through. She traces an arc until a blaster's barrel presses against her temple.
00:22:41 Speaker_05
Her lips move, slowly, so I can almost read the words, something, something, me. Not useful. Is a suicide ever about anyone else? And if there's more than that, I'll never see it. A truck passes by, casts her in shadow for just a moment.
00:22:57 Speaker_05
And in that moment, she pulls the trigger. A flash of violet light, a burning circle on her head, singed and crackling.
00:23:07 Speaker_05
And Sybil Shale, or Sasha Wire, or any of the other 32 poor suckers who died exactly this way, on exactly this street corner, drifts, slow as snowfall, to the ground.
00:23:23 Speaker_07
Would you like to watch it again?
00:23:25 Speaker_05
The client said. I gave myself a minute and looked out the window. A jagged skyline of high scrapers and apartment complexes and stacked-up restaurants carved the horizon in two.
00:23:37 Speaker_05
Above, the dome shimmered and shivered against the Martian sandstorm, which wasn't reassuring, but, hell, it looked pretty.
00:23:48 Speaker_05
At night, when the smoke spilling out of the plastics refinery parted, you could sometimes convince yourself you saw Earth in the distance, clean and sweet as a blueberry and cream. You couldn't actually see Earth, of course.
00:24:02 Speaker_05
With all the smog in this district, you're lucky if you can see the sun. But the Earth Tours billboard floating over Uptown is still nice, for what it is.
00:24:09 Speaker_05
And sometimes, when the fantasy looks good enough, you can teach yourself to forget the real thing. So, which one was this? Reality or fantasy? I couldn't believe I was asking myself that question again.
00:24:23 Speaker_05
And about nearly the exact same goddamn video as last time. If you didn't count the traffic, the weather, the time of day, this could have been a shot-for-shot remake for Sasha's suicide footage. I think I'll pass, Miss Shale, I said.
00:24:39 Speaker_05
Never been big on reruns. Her expression didn't change an inch, and I knew what that meant. When you work on homicides as much as I did in my comp days, you figure out there are only a couple different ways people react when family dies.
00:24:54 Speaker_05
You get the whalers, you get the there must be some mistake-ers, and you get the brawlers. I was always good with them. But Zara Shale wasn't any of those. She was a preparer. Zara hadn't shown up with tears or brass knuckles.
00:25:11 Speaker_05
She'd come to my office with a binder. A big one, tabbed and bookmarked a thousand times. Endless notes on the case. All the detectives that had touched it.
00:25:21 Speaker_05
A full map of Hyperion City with X's drawn at all the stores where Sybil Shale could have bought the laser pistol that did her in. Zara was ready for a war. Meanwhile, I was ready for a few shots of tequila and a 14 hour nap.
00:25:35 Speaker_05
The nemesian was wearing thin and living in two moments at the same time really takes it out of you. So you're trying to tell me your daughter didn't kill herself.
00:25:45 Speaker_07
I said, I am.
00:25:47 Speaker_05
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you and I just watched a video of your daughter- Shooting herself in the head, yes. Mrs. Shale said, when I couldn't.
00:25:58 Speaker_07
I know what this looks like. I've been told by the police. I've been told by my attorney. I was told in court by the judge themself that any lawyer who agreed to take my case was conning me and that they hope to see him in the defendant's seat shortly.
00:26:11 Speaker_07
I know what this looks like. And I know that it is not that.
00:26:18 Speaker_05
She paused and looked me over like I was the last deli slice from the back of the fridge, wondering if those green spots were mold or peppercorns, wondering if they could be cut off or ignored.
00:26:27 Speaker_07
I'm hoping you're the same, not what you appear to be, because at the moment you don't seem like much.
00:26:35 Speaker_05
She hadn't snapped, but she'd nipped anyway. I was getting somewhere. That where you got the hard copy of this footage from? I asked. Your attorney? Maybe while he wasn't looking? Zara stared into me, the cold, rough-cut lines in her face still.
00:26:53 Speaker_05
It's more secure with me, she said, voice cool and steady as stone.
00:26:58 Speaker_07
If you read the news, you'd know that the DA's office was broken into just last week.
00:27:01 Speaker_05
Had to hand it to her. She took a felony accusation well. To prevent evidence tampering, each side of an investigation is given a hard copy of any security division footage related to a crime. The hard copy is protected because it's secure.
00:27:16 Speaker_05
Unlinked to HCPD servers, can't be duplicated or modified, can't be destroyed unless you really, really want to. And nobody but the lawyers was ever supposed to have them.
00:27:27 Speaker_05
I wasn't sure what Zara Shale had pulled to get this, but it made me like her more. Stout with thick forearms and calloused hands, she looked tough mom, not tough crook. She was ready to do anything for Sybil, even if she died two months ago.
00:27:44 Speaker_05
ready to do anything except put up with my questions anyway.
00:27:49 Speaker_07
She opened that massive binder of hers again and said, The HCPD has told me uniformly that they do not believe me and you have a very public history of disagreeing with them.
00:27:58 Speaker_07
A lot of people, a lot of neighbors and friends, all scraped together to afford you, Mr. Steele. I will not be leaving this room until you've taken my case.
00:28:08 Speaker_05
She didn't look at me when she spoke, just at the pages of her binder, where the past five years of my life had been taxidermied for her examination. The dregs of nemeses still in me sent sparks through those pictures too.
00:28:21 Speaker_05
Captain Hijikata clapping my back as I took my detective's badge. Me waving and smiling like an idiot with diamond on my arm. The howls and curses and threats of every cop in the goddamn city wishing I was dead. Okay, okay.
00:28:35 Speaker_05
I said too loudly, trying to drown out all those past voices. So you're saying your daughter Sybil didn't kill herself, despite what some would call overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So what's your reasoning?
00:28:48 Speaker_05
Got something in that magic binder of yours?
00:28:50 Speaker_07
Sybil would never kill herself. And if she wouldn't, that must mean she didn't. That is my reasoning.
00:28:56 Speaker_05
I let my career flash before my eyes, which didn't take long, then asked Sarah if she had any evidence. It was the first thing I'd said all morning that she didn't have a quick response to.
00:29:06 Speaker_05
For just a second, her hand tightened into a knot on the desk, her knuckles quivering. Then it was over.
00:29:14 Speaker_07
She had too much to live for, Zara said. She was a musician. A good one. She'd had some success a few months, no, a year ago. And it hadn't really taken off since then, but it was going to. She was very special. I thought so.
00:29:35 Speaker_05
She paused, looked at me, and added, I know what that sounds like. I rubbed my face. I felt thirsty and nauseous and guilty. The more I talked to this woman, the more of her time and money I'd be stealing. Tell me about the night it happened, then.
00:29:52 Speaker_05
Maybe there's something there. She flipped through her binder again. Pink tab, blue tab, green, yellow, red. The tips of her fingers trembled.
00:30:00 Speaker_07
Sybil left the house around eight in the evening on foot, Zara said. She didn't have a car. There's periodic footage of her on the street for the next half hour, but not enough to draw a path from.
00:30:11 Speaker_07
When she got like that, she'd always wander even around the house if she had to, pacing wherever she thought she'd be left alone.
00:30:18 Speaker_05
So your daughter with a history of depression went for a long walk in the middle of the night and then shot herself is what you're saying. And you know what it sounds like, I said too harshly.
00:30:28 Speaker_07
She left the house at eight o'clock. She was caught on security camera until eight thirty and not again until the gunshot outside DeMilo's at midnight. She did not own a gun. I am sure of that.
00:30:41 Speaker_07
And yet there she was, at midnight, holding a gun at the corner of Le Guin and Hammett. Death's Crossing.
00:30:47 Speaker_05
We had just watched footage of that street corner, and the name of it still sent a shudder through me. If I hadn't just spent the last 20 minutes trying to wring an emotion out of her, I might have thought I saw a smile on Zara Shale's face.
00:31:00 Speaker_05
I let the thought roll over me. They were cold now, but I'd spent months on those cases. All those bodies lying on that one street corner. 32 bodies, including Sasha Weier. And Sybil Shale made it 33. The old theories bubbled up in me then.
00:31:18 Speaker_05
The minutiae in every one of those security feeds that I watched over and over and over again, looking for something to break the pattern, looking for an answer, looking for anything that would tell me Sasha hadn't killed herself.
00:31:33 Speaker_05
Or maybe in a corner of a hope I never dared to look at, something that would tell me that Sasha wasn't dead.
00:31:40 Speaker_07
You're a good detective, Zara said. I just saw it in your eyes.
00:31:43 Speaker_05
Just an eyelash. Things have been driving me nuts for an hour, I said. She waited. Zara Shale could wait like a champ. I sighed. Look, Ms. Shale, the HCPD already looked into this.
00:32:00 Speaker_05
The odds that all the coincidences you're hoping for all line up are so slim that not even my bookie would let me take them. And my bookie is a shark, ma'am, I swear. You get close enough, you can see gills.
00:32:12 Speaker_07
But?
00:32:13 Speaker_05
I ran a hand down my face, felt the stubble scrape my palm. I'll take your lousy case. Is that what you want? Am I supposed to RSVP or something?
00:32:24 Speaker_07
Not at all, Detective Steele, Miss Shale said.
00:32:27 Speaker_05
She pulled the hard copy from my monitor and slid it across the desk to me.
00:32:31 Speaker_07
You're just supposed to clear my daughter's name.
00:32:33 Speaker_05
Listen, I said I'd look into it, but you're not paying for results. You're paying for my time, got it? Because there's no chance in hell this turns up anything, you got me? None.
00:32:43 Speaker_05
24 hours later, I'd be sitting in the same chair while one cop cracked my ribs like crap legs and his partner shouted, The hard copy, Steele. Where did you put the hard copy? No chance at all, Mrs. Shale said.
00:32:57 Speaker_07
Understood. I appreciate you taking the time from your busy schedule.
00:33:03 Speaker_05
You really don't let up, do you?" I said, but she was already out the door, and despite myself, I was smiling. I let the quiet hang in the office for a minute. Then I clicked the hard copy into my monitor and watched it again.
00:33:18 Speaker_05
Sybil stepped out into the flickering light. She muttered to herself, raised the gun to her head. Shadow. Bang. Fall. Dead. I rewound and watched it again. And again.
00:33:33 Speaker_04
just like old times. Four. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to stop watching that hard copy.
00:33:44 Speaker_05
Getting caught in the loop of it, seeing Sasha superimposed over Sybil, then another 32 faces over her, it was easy to forget I'd ever stopped investigating Death's Crossing.
00:33:54 Speaker_05
Easy to forget I'd ever lost my life in the H.C.P.D., that I'd ever fallen as low as this make-believe cop gig. Then Rita and I went to check out that street corner, and the present definitively announced itself.
00:34:06 Speaker_05
Back when the Death Crossing suicides were in full swing, Le Guin Street and Hammett Drive were just long strips of rat-trap apartment complexes interrupted by convenience stores that only stocked cigarettes, booze, and D-Health inspector ratings.
00:34:20 Speaker_05
No reason to come here, unless you wanted a good view of the freak show street corner and a conversation with concerned parents worried about how they were supposed to raise their kids in a place like Hyperion City.
00:34:33 Speaker_05
But four years of quiet had passed between Sasha's death and Sybil's, and in the meantime, profit had devoured Le Guin and Hammett.
00:34:41 Speaker_05
The apartment complexes and convenience stores were history, and the entire neighborhood of big dreams and hard lives had been replaced by big deals and hard cash to Milo's of Venus, a department store the size of a city block that promised the best deals anywhere outside the sun.
00:34:57 Speaker_05
And if anyone had found out otherwise, they hadn't made the trip back. Demilo's looked like your classic 24th century castle. A perfect cube of clear plastic windows with two robot puppet soldiers duking it out on the roof.
00:35:10 Speaker_05
Even on a street with a suicide curse, I thought it was the creepiest thing going. Wow, Rita said, eyeing the flashing ads through those endless windows. She had enough stars in her eyes to restock half the galaxy. Maybe we'll go in later.
00:35:24 Speaker_05
You can buy me something nice, I said.
00:35:26 Speaker_10
Really, boss? Because I was just thinking that your birthday's coming up. It's only ten months away, which means it's just about time for a birthday appetizer present, and... I let Rita go on for a while.
00:35:35 Speaker_05
Fighting her when she got on a roll was like fighting the tide. You were going to lose, and it would just come back later anyway. In the meantime, I took inventory of the corner.
00:35:43 Speaker_05
And even though nothing about the place had changed, it all looked different. Harder, somehow. Less ghost story, more everyday tragedy.
00:35:54 Speaker_05
Besides all the deaths, the only remarkable thing about the corner of Le Guin and Hammett was that it didn't look like anybody owned it. And in this town, there's barely a place or person that nobody owns.
00:36:05 Speaker_05
Across the street from DeMilo's stood an old storefront that looked like it had been abandoned for decades. The windows boarded up, the awning reduced to a few metal edges in the lens of an old hologram projector.
00:36:16 Speaker_05
The striped pole out front, sun bleached where the red should be and rusted over where the white should be. There was a sign there, too, one that had always driven me nuts because I could never dig up what the place had actually been called.
00:36:30 Speaker_05
The sign just said, ANKT. Time had eaten up the rest of it by way of rust and radiation and teeth.
00:36:38 Speaker_10
Hungry sewer bunnies in this part of the city, Rita said.
00:36:41 Speaker_05
With DeMilo's open across the street, I'll bet they aren't hungry anymore. Plenty of trash to root through, plenty of people to mug, I said. Snaps some pictures of the street corner.
00:36:51 Speaker_05
Even if we're just going to turn around and tell Shale she's out of luck, I want to look like we did something here.
00:36:56 Speaker_10
Gotcha, boss, Rita said.
00:36:58 Speaker_05
The camera of her comms perched on the right lens of her glasses flashed and chirped like a nosy bird as she took the corner in. Downstorm drains and underneath the sign and in the storefront's painted windows.
00:37:09 Speaker_10
Now ain't this an exciting field trip? A real cursed street corner!
00:37:12 Speaker_10
All the streams say that people have been, you know what-ing here for hundreds of years now, ever since Hyperion City was founded, or maybe even... The curse is an urban legend, I said.
00:37:20 Speaker_05
There's no record that there had ever been a single suicide here before seven years ago, which is around when the rumors started.
00:37:27 Speaker_10
Ow! Is that the curse? Was it a spooky killer ghost rumor?
00:37:30 Speaker_05
There's no curse. The shrinks on the HCPD payroll called it a community thing. The first couple of deaths determined the pattern, with a few adjustments here and there, and everyone after that followed it exactly.
00:37:43 Speaker_05
The shrinks said that people who feel alone and want to end it all might naturally gather at a place where they won't be alone in the end. I stopped. My mouth felt like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag. People make traditions out of anything, I guess.
00:37:59 Speaker_05
If it's true. Rita perked up from underneath the anked sign. So quickly, her calm spun on her glasses and took three quick pictures of her huge, excited eyes.
00:38:10 Speaker_10
What do you mean, if? Do you think it could be something else, boss? A ghost? A terrible magic spell? Six ghosts all casting terrible magic?
00:38:19 Speaker_05
I meant because it's true, not if, I said. Because we're just helping this lady deal with the fact that her daughter killed herself, and we're not going to find a curse or whatever. I didn't know if the words were for Rita or me. Hope was a bad idea.
00:38:35 Speaker_05
I felt like a sucker for falling into it all over again, when it nearly killed me the first time. Moron.
00:38:43 Speaker_10
But what if it isn't? And what if I find the first clue?
00:38:45 Speaker_05
Rita shouted. Then a distant look thudded into her eyes, and softly, she said,
00:38:51 Speaker_10
I can't wait to find the first clue, Mr. Steele. Gosh, you don't think someone else already found it, do you?
00:38:56 Speaker_10
Spotted it out those windows and hid it somewhere in all those soaps and uraniums and extra-large tote bags and hydraulic presses and... It took me a second to realize what Rita was suggesting.
00:39:04 Speaker_05
The other cops in the H.C.P.D. had thought Rita was an airhead, but she was almost definitely a genius. Her mind just moved like one of those cross-galactic spaceships, so fast you usually couldn't see it.
00:39:18 Speaker_05
When she'd been assigned to me and my partner back in my cop days, she'd nearly driven me up the wall, too.
00:39:24 Speaker_05
Between gumming up my keyboard with salmon-filled pretzel chunks and telling me the full synopsis of 15 seasons of stream shows in three days, I almost fired her right there. It was my partner who told me we were Rita's last shot.
00:39:36 Speaker_05
that despite excellent marks in typing and coding and bomb defusing, she'd been bounced around as secretary to every other detective in the district. And if we let her go, that was it.
00:39:47 Speaker_05
So I decided to grit my teeth and wait it out, because the well of shows she'd watched had to run dry eventually. Didn't it?
00:39:55 Speaker_10
And paper towels and books and, oh, Mr. Steele, but that reminds me of Deep in Deepest Space. Did you ever see that one? It's all about this curse book, but they make it into a movie, and later I think they make it into a spaceship.
00:40:03 Speaker_10
I forget how that worked, but anyway.
00:40:05 Speaker_05
It had been four years. If anything, the well had only gotten wetter. Anyway, I didn't buy that someone would hide important evidence in DeMilos, but something Rita said clicked with me.
00:40:20 Speaker_05
Through all the window walls of DeMilos, I could see the people lining up at the cash registers, bulky packages in their carts, looking tired and a little travel-worn from a day of trudging through miles of maze-like aisles.
00:40:34 Speaker_05
Lost shoppers looked out those windows longingly, homesick for a world outside they could barely remember. A few of them made eye contact with me.
00:40:42 Speaker_10
Or we could buy toothbrushes and sweaters with dogs on them, and... Hey, Rita, I said. Yeah, boss?
00:40:47 Speaker_05
Any idea how late DeMilo's stays open?
00:40:50 Speaker_10
Uh, I think they close around midnight, but then they open at 12 a.m. Which, hey, actually, that last part's a joke, ain't it?
00:40:56 Speaker_10
Franny told me that one, so I should probably tell her I laughed at it, even though it's been two or maybe three weeks since she said it.
00:41:01 Speaker_05
So they were open when Sybil Shale shot herself, I said. 25 registers. An average of four or five people in line at each. Over a hundred people looking towards this spot. If anything fishy happened, one of them must have seen it.
00:41:15 Speaker_10
They might have, Mr. Steele, but- They must have, I said.
00:41:18 Speaker_05
Come on. Let's go and ask a few questions. There's gotta be someone. The questioning didn't go so well at first. It didn't go so well at second or third either.
00:41:32 Speaker_10
Uh, Mr. Steele?
00:41:34 Speaker_05
Rita said when we were back on the street. Her eyes were wet and bloodshot, still recovering from the trillion-watt onslaught from Demilus of Venus.
00:41:42 Speaker_10
You okay, boss?
00:41:43 Speaker_05
Of course I'm okay, I said. See this face? This is my okay face. I'm so okay you can hear my teeth laughing.
00:41:50 Speaker_10
I think they're creaking, boss. You grinded them pretty hard.
00:41:53 Speaker_05
All right, so I wasn't in great shape either. Navigating that labyrinth of singing ads and flashing bargains had been exhausting and ultimately pointless. Nobody had seen Sybil Shale kill herself.
00:42:06 Speaker_05
Not a single lousy person in that entire lousy store had been looking out of the lousy window when a human being ended her life.
00:42:14 Speaker_05
A few employees heard the gunshot and some saw the body once it was over, but nobody was there for Sybil in the moment itself. I tried to express all that to Rita.
00:42:25 Speaker_05
Only problem was I felt so goddamn mad about it that all I could let out was a few grunts, a decent snarl, and the word USELESS. Rita made sense of all that, though. Like I said, we'd been working together for a while.
00:42:38 Speaker_10
Mr. Steele, I know you're frustrated, but... I mean, it's not like it's their fault that they didn't see!
00:42:43 Speaker_05
Of course it's their fault, I said. And from the look on Rita, features curled in like her tongue had just gone sour, I knew I'd bitten too hard. She only died a month ago. Some of these people should have seen her, I added, sour. They should have.
00:43:00 Speaker_05
I tried to shake the anger off, but I couldn't even figure out what was making me so mad.
00:43:05 Speaker_05
Just the thought of Sybil Shale out there alone while not a single human being in DeMilos could be bothered to look up from their chewing gum and watch her punch out of her final shift.
00:43:14 Speaker_05
In the end, only that security camera watched her, hanging from a street sign and looking down with its cold plastic eye, recording every second for some bored security office cops to glance at, call it solved, and shove it underneath all their other case files.
00:43:30 Speaker_05
Only the security camera, I thought. And then it hit me. I unclenched my hand. The knuckles ached. I'd nodded them up so hard. Hey, Rita, I said. What are the odds that someone tampered with that security camera up there?
00:43:47 Speaker_05
You know, did something to mess up the footage?
00:43:50 Speaker_10
I don't think so, boss. The encryption on those cameras is really tight. Besides that, they transmit their feeds to the security office instantly. So if anybody even touched it, all kinds of alarms would just blow up all over the old office.
00:44:00 Speaker_10
So the odds are real low?
00:44:03 Speaker_05
Rita said. From the look in her eyes, a little scared and a lot curious, she knew exactly where I was heading. So, not zero, then.
00:44:14 Speaker_10
Oh no, Mr. Steele, don't you dare even think!
00:44:17 Speaker_05
I'm darin', I'm thinkin', I said. Hold my coat.
00:44:37 Speaker_03
If Memory Serves has been read by Joshua Elon, voice of Juno Steele, as well as the following actors. We would like to give a big thank you to our biggest supporters. Orphan Peddler. Ted, I can't believe how bad you got us.
00:44:59 Speaker_03
My penumbra hyperfixation is back at 100% power. The Corn Eye and the Lonely Ghost. Zeez here. Jonathan the Wilkus Wilks. Juno Steele in the Costco hot dog. Hi, my name is DJ and I love this podcast. Ari Berry, an intrepid lilac.
00:45:16 Speaker_03
Andy Bell, the Werner's wishing well to Juno's journey. KCO, Bettina Trevino, Fozzie, Aleem Muktadir, the emerald ate this podcast. Ha ha.
00:45:28 Speaker_03
Tony the Owlbear, Noray, Kira, Jack M. Cohen, Paladin of Gawain, good boy of the Citadel, Adrian Cadena, thank you Penumbra team for your amazing work, Braylin, hello Quintessence, it's been a while,
00:45:43 Speaker_03
Hannah and Leah's adventures engender shenanigans. The Lady Guinevere and the Surprise Name Drop. Cid. Jammy. Osipete. Diana Cause. SCP Chloe. Desert Willow is back, baby. Rachel Howard. Jun Gashoku. Skyfire Forever. The Lady Has Claimed Another One Jay Hall.
00:46:04 Speaker_03
James Evelyn. Thank you, Juno Steele. Liv Allen. Alice the Time Lord. In Memory of Spiral Opal. Eden the Gay Bookworm. Michael David Smith. Nicole Cundiff and I'll Miss You, Mr. Steele. Kiki's Podcast Patronage Service. Caroline Seidman. Radia Salna.
00:46:23 Speaker_03
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00:46:36 Speaker_06
Thanks for listening. Again, if you'd like access to the rest of the book, plus our huge back catalog of bonus content, you can find everything at thepenumbrapodcast.supercast.com.
00:46:48 Speaker_06
Your support doesn't just mean a lot to us, it's also the only way we can afford to keep creating stories that we hope you will love. Thank you so much.
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00:47:09 Speaker_01
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