88: Which One Are You?

SUMMARY

What if it isn’t simple?

[WARNING: This episode contains a description of violence. Listener discretion is advised.]

TRANSCRIPT

WOE.BEGONE Episode 88: Which one are you?

[BEGIN Episode 88.]

Original transcript edited by Theo and reviewed by Jenah

INTRO: Hey, guys. Quick plugs. I’m streaming more often than usual on my Twitch over at twitch.tv/woebegonepod. In honor of spooky season, I am playing two of the spookiest Nancy Drew adventure games. If you’re listening to this on release day, you can watch me finish Nancy Drew: Shadow at [the] Water’s Edge. And I’ll start Ghost of Thornton Hall later this week. That’s twitch.tv/woebegonepod. If you’d like to support the show, you can do so on Patreon at patreon.com/woe_begone, where you can get early access to ad-free episodes, instrumentals, soundtrack albums, Q&As, director’s commentaries, postcards, Movies with Michael, and more. There is a Halloween Movies with Michael coming up that $10 patrons won’t want to miss. And this week is the last week to sign up at the $15 level for the November postcard. Each postcard is handwritten and unique, and when put together, all of the postcards tell a larger story. It is so much fun reading the Discord and seeing how different people’s postcards bounce off of each other. Special thanks to my 10 newest patrons: [REDACTED] for supporting the show. Enjoy.

MIKEY [narrating]: I shouldn’t have offered to help Chance rescue his dead friend. That wasn’t me making the clear-headed decision to do the morally upstanding thing. I saw a hurt that I recognized, and extended my sympathy without thinking about the ramifications. Not the worst impulse that I’ve ever had, but also not one free from its own complications.

As soon as I told him I would help him, I could see all of the possibilities spread out before me in all directions. And most of those directions were ones that would turn out badly. I had signed up for an undertaking. There was no taking back the words after I had said them. Chance understandably latched on immediately to the idea of rescuing Cole. It had been a topic of discussion when bringing him on to work at Base, but I knew that no one at Base took it seriously. Discussions about it were never added on to meetings. It was a carrot to dangle in front of Chance in order to garner his cooperation. And it didn’t have to be deliberate and cynical. Base had a continuously full plate, and was constantly putting out fires. I guess the mixed metaphor here is one of a hungry fireman?

But Chance knew he wasn’t high on the ladder at Base, and so he never spoke up about it. Still, it’s not like Chance forgot. He was in the middle of his own search when I returned to O.V.E.R. Time had passed, and Chance still hadn’t found closure. I think that the possibility of quote-unquote “corrections,” as we call them, has a malignant effect on achieving closure. I don’t think that closure is real under normal human circumstances. The idea of closing off a segment of your life through acceptance and finality implies a narrative-ness to life that just isn’t real, but that begs to be real through the human reliance on story. There is no closure, there is movement down a path towards a facsimile of closure.

Time travel complicates this. It changes the amount of directions that you can walk on the path toward the same result. Walking east gets you to the same destination as walking west, and maybe the terrain is easier. You can fix the inciting incident, and closure never comes into the equation. That being said, I know better than anyone that the terrain is not always as welcoming as it seems. My life is an endless loop of error corrections. The uphills and downhills average out. And it’s easy enough for me to say this, Matt’s alive. I no longer have to entertain a reality where he isn’t. But I knew that I was offering Chance a predicament instead of a cure. I was essentially extending an invitation for Chance to become Mike Walters. And his willingness to go along with this was evidence of how much Cole had clouded his vision.

In the hours and days following my offer to Chance inside of the red flag cabin, I tried to rescind it in the form of excuses. “Cole had been disappeared by O.V.E.R.,” I said. “The mission would be dangerous.” We were acting without Base’s approval, and we might have to go it entirely alone. I had gotten a signoff from the Latvia Mikes, but they were going through some stuff right now. They hadn’t originally been keen on it, and things were changing over there, though I didn’t tell him how. Our secrecy would make it such that if something were to happen, nobody would be able to figure out what happened or how to correct it. I was dragging Chance in too deep, away from Shadow, no less. I was allowing his natural impulses to save a loved one plunge him into the same depth that I was in. It was a bad idea, and I was wrong to suggest it.

Chance rebuffed these excuses effortlessly, unwilling to take “no” for an answer. He was aware of what he was doing. He knew what was at stake, that was the reason why he was doing it. The risks paled in comparison to the reward. He was both able and willing. He had already been putting the work in, that’s why he was in the red flag cabin. I had recognized his pain and suggested a solution that we had the power to enact between the two of us, and I was right to suggest it. He sounded like… me… when he made these arguments, and it made me feel uneasy. But it was convincing.

The subject of Cole quickly replaced the mundane friendship-building conversation about music and movies and ephemera that we had been having in the days leading up to the meeting in the red flag cabin. It became everything. If it wasn’t what we were talking about, then it was the very next thing. I could feel myself being pinned down further and further into a commitment. Half-hearted attempts to back out were in vain. I tried to casually avoid him, but couldn’t help running into him on my day-to-day route. I couldn’t hide from him. My empathy wouldn’t let me hide from him. The thought of disappointing him began to gnaw at me. So, I gave in. I decided to meet with him, to make actual plans, to rescue Cole.

And this is WOE.BEGONE.

[Opening theme plays.]

MIKEY [narrating]: It was midnight on a work night when Chance showed up to my cabin with coffee for both of us. I let him, horrified of what coffee would do to me at such a late hour, but grateful that I had something to help me through this nocturnal meeting. I led him to the kitchen table, our staging area, and we took out seats.

“Sorry about the late hour,” Chance said. “It was the earliest that I could slip away without Shadow noticing.”

“Likewise,” I said. “I only got back from Edgar’s cabin about an hour ago. That’s just part of doing business in secret. It’s just us; we have to find time to be alone.”

“What about the Latvia Mikes? I thought that you were bringing them in on this?” Chance asked.

“I convinced them to participate, but I think that we should loop them in closer to when it’s time,” I said. “They’re going through a rough patch right now.”

[Sigh.] “With that cowboy in control of the whole operation, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t fallen apart completely,” Chance said. I held my tongue, deciding not to defend Michael, and wondering why I had such a strong impulse to do so in the first place.

“I guess we’ll start with some questions to get us both on the same page?” I said. “So starting with the most obvious one: Chance, do you still want to do this? Have you thought about what’s at stake and what kind of work we’ll need to do?”

“Of course I do, and of course I have,” Chance said. “Not to give a job interview answer, but I am smart and self-directed. I am capable of carrying out complicated instructions on the fly and dealing with contingencies. I have not rushed into this. I know what O.V.E.R. does and what they are capable of. I know the power they wield, the power we have, and in what type of conflict those powers will be in in order to get Cole back. I do not take this lightly. I have been thinking about it since the day that Cole died, convincing myself that it was the right thing to do, and that I could do it. Your involvement is merely a helpful intersection.”

“That’s a good answer,” I said. I took a sip of my coffee and studied Chance’s face. There was no nervousness, only determination. “You said that you understand what everyone’s capable of. You’ve done work for O.V.E.R., Base, and the Hunters, so I don’t doubt it. So you must understand that we are comically underpowered in this equation, right? That there might be someone stronger to ally with? I hate to even invoke them, but have you considered playing WOE.BEGONE instead? For all of the trouble they cause, their power is more reliable for this function than ours.”

“I know from working with the Hunters what the end result of WOE.BEGONE is,” Chance replied. “The middle Hunter played WOE.BEGONE all the way through the fourth challenge, so the Hunters have a thorough documentation of everything that happens. Hunter ended up back where he started with regards to his ‘prize.’ I hate the way they call it that. Cole isn’t a prize.”

“I wasn’t seriously suggesting it, I was just curious about your thoughts,” I said. I had wondered what Chance thought about WOE.BEGONE ever since he brought WOE.BEGONE up in the final negotiation with the Hunters. This was a convenient time to gauge his reaction. I had never heard of O.V.E.R. or what they were capable of when I played WOE.BEGONE, so it made sense to me at the time. “Did the Hunters get anything useful out of that experiment?”

“Not something useful for getting Cole back,” Chance said.

“We’ll strike that off then. It’s just me and you,” I said. “Let’s try to figure out what that looks like. What are you picturing when you’re visualizing us rescuing him?”

“It’s hazy,” Chance said. “I’ve never done a field mission in the way that Base uses that term? So my plans are imagined based on things that have been told to me. I talked to Cole that afternoon about six hours before he went missing. The file on him that I stole lists a building inside of Tier Two as his last known location, probably where he was disappeared from, or they could’ve killed him there. So we could show up and tell him that he’s about to walk into a trap, and get him to change his plans, get out of O.V.E.R.? Keep him from seeing whatever he saw in there that got him killed.”

“Alright, we’ve got idea number one on the board,” I said. “Let’s call that the ‘simple correction.’ We show up, we exchange information, and that exchange of information is enough to fix the problem. Me and the Mikes do corrections like that one all the time, but normally those are reserved for small things? Like getting someone to move their car to change the route of a get-away gone wrong. That’s a true story, by the way. But what if it isn’t simple? What if O.V.E.R. had already been planning to kill him?”

“Then we go even further back in time,” he said.

“You’re assuming that we can figure out how far back in time to go,” I replied. “We don’t want to end up like Michael and have to keep going back in time over and over again until we actually make it far enough back to make a difference. And, keep in mind, the further back we go, the more unpredictable the propagation of the changes becomes. So that’s plan number two; let’s call that one the ‘moving target correction.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re relishing knowing more about something than I do?” Chance asked.

“Hey, man, I don’t get this opportunity very often,” I said.

“Okay, so plan three, uh… How about like how you and the Latvia Mikes are?” Chance asked.

“What about how we are?” I asked.

“Well, there’s three of you in the same time period,” he replied. “You can use the technology to make more of a person, right?”

“Yeah, you can, but who are we making more iterations of in this plan?” I asked.

“Cole,” Chance said. “We can make another iteration of Cole right before he got taken by O.V.E.R., and then we can send that iteration to somewhere safe. Doesn’t matter where.”

“We could do that, but… that only saves one iteration of Cole, right? That’s what you’re suggesting. O.V.E.R. still kills and captures the other one?”

“Yeah, you get it,” Chance replied. “It works out. We save Cole, O.V.E.R., still has a Cole that they can kill, so they don’t even know he’s missing, and then there’s only one Cole left in the timeline. So he might be able to get back to a normal life; it works out for everyone.”

“For everyone except the Cole who dies…” I said.

“Well, part of Cole dies, if you want to split hairs like that,” Chance said. “But it’s not like the Cole that’s left will remember that. He’ll be split off before that, and we’ll get him somewhere safe that’s hard to track down. Didn’t Edgar say something about, like, a randomized safe zone idea that he had?”

I could see a spark in Chance’s eyes that was intensifying the more he built out his theory of how to save Cole. He had struck gold. It was all coming together for him. And it was dawning on me that we were speaking fairly different languages.

“Cole would still die,” I reiterated.

“Hmm… No,” Chance said. “That’s not the same thing. They wouldn’t be connected, right? O.V.E.R. killing their Cole wouldn’t kill our Cole because we cut him off from the timeline.”

“Right, but–”

“So there’s no problem,” Chance said. “It’s not like he’s a carbon copy. He’s the same person.”

[Huffs.] “Chance. If I died, and Michael and Mike were still alive, would you be sad about that?” I asked.

“I think on some instinctual level, I’d have to be,” Chance said. “But that’s not the same thing as you dying. Logically, I know that. There would be plenty of Mike Walterses around, more than I know about, surely. I don’t even think it’s possible to kill you? The Hunters seem quite frustrated about that. Yeah, no matter what anyone does, you’ll still be here. [Pauses.] You’ve got a… look… on your face. Did I say the wrong thing?”

“No, it’s-it’s fine, uh, I know a lot of people think about it that way,” I said. “I find it hard to wrap my head around it. But this is your mission, Chance. If that’s the way that you see it, and you’re comfortable iterating Cole and sentencing the other one to death, then… I’ll help.”

“You look… deflated. I said something wrong, didn’t I?” he said.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “We can agree to disagree; I do it with everyone else. I am in the minority opinion here.”

“Good, because it’s starting to feel real to me, Mike. It feels like we could actually do this. I hope this isn’t… naive, but I think that we can workshop this into something useful,” Chance said. A smile was barely concealed on his face. “How about this: I’ve had too much coffee; I need to run to the restroom. In the meantime, you grab a pen and pad, and we’ll meet back here. We’ll start sketching out ideas and timeline for this whole iteration-correction idea. We’ll write out some plans, some contingencies, whatever comes up; no bad ideas. And we’ll see how it all looks on paper. Sound good?”

“Let’s do it,” I said.

Chance stood up from the kitchen table and made his way down the hallway toward the cabin’s bathroom. I rummaged through my desk looking for a pen and pad. I knew that I had some official O.V.E.R. stationary and an O.V.E.R. pen somewhere; it was just a matter of finding it. I was planning on taking notes with my laptop, but a pen and pad seemed like the superior option. A physical medium means no digital footprint. We could burn the whole thing at the end of the night if we so chose. And I thought that might be a good idea.

It was just as I had discovered some post-it notes that were going to have to suffice for this meeting that I heard a door open at the end of the hallway.

“Oh, this isn’t the bathroom? Your cabin’s different–” I heard Chance begin. Then there was a horrible pause.

“Mike? What the fuck is going on here?” Chance asked. I looked up, knowing full well what Chance was talking about. Chance had opened the door to my bedroom. His cabin was like Edgar’s cabin, which meant that the room layout was mirrored relative to mine. The bathroom was across the hall.

I groaned loudly, more out of frustration than fear, the sound of a thousand cats being let out of a thousand bags. “Yeah, just, uh, shut the door and pretend like you didn’t see that?” I called down the hallway.

“Like hell I will,” Chance said. He had already entered my bedroom. “Which one are you!? Come here!” He bellowed as if he were scolding a misbehaving dog.

“Do you mean me or him? Are you really doing this?” I asked. Chance didn’t respond.

I heard more things being knocked over in my bedroom, the sound of the window opening, a loud thud, then the sound of the window shutting hard.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Chance growled, muffled through the walls. I was still in the kitchen.

[Groans.] “You really hurt me, Chance. [Breathes heavily.] I don’t think I can put weight on my ankle,” a voice said.

“Good. Get your ass to the kitchen. Mike needs to explain what’s going on,” Chance said.

“It’s not too late to ignore him, and we could get back to deciding how to bring your friend back to life,” I called out.

“Answers first. Now,” Chance replied. “Go on. Into the kitchen!”

O.V.E.R. Mike hobbled slowly toward the kitchen, Chance following behind him.

“You couldn’t have hidden in a closet when you saw the bedroom door opening?” I asked.

“I wasn’t paying attention, I had my headphones in. I didn’t want to overhear the midnight society’s plan to rescue Claude or whatever his name is. And I tried to escape out the window, but he dragged me back inside, and he really hurt me, Mike! My ankle might be broken.” O.V.E.R. Mike grimaced as he sat down in a kitchen chair.

“That works for me, makes it harder for you to run away,” I said.

Chance was studying him intently. “This isn’t one of the Latvia Mikes. Both of them are older than you. This is… O.V.E.R. Mike? The one that was doing work with Mustardseed?“

“Guilty as charged, asshole,” O.V.E.R. Mike replied.

“I don’t have a dog in this fight,” Chance said, “but I know that this isn’t what Base told you to do. We had a big all-hands meeting after the Mustardseed fiasco. And the big points of that meeting were that one, Mustardseed was with the Flinchites now; two, Michael had escaped, and that you are the one that broke him out; and three, that you and Edgar were moving back to O.V.E.R., and that you were getting rid of this one. Killing him or consolidating him or something.”

“If you haven’t noticed, I have been experimenting with doing things without Base’s permission,” I said.

“So, they don’t even know that you haven’t done anything with him,” Chance asked.

“Well, I can’t consolidate him; I don’t want to become him. I don’t want to risk what that would change in me, and I don’t want his memories. H-He was with Mustardseed. And he doesn’t want to be consolidated either. But I’m not Michael, I can’t just kill him, he’s a Mike, he didn’t do anything wrong. And I can’t let him go because, again, he’s a Mike, and something could go very wrong if I do that. So he’s stuck here with me. For now. It isn’t a permanent solution.”

“You’re… fostering a… Mike Walters…” Chance said.

“Only until I can find him a forever home,” I replied.

“So, he’s relying on your mercy. We can use him; he has to do whatever you say,” Chance said.

“I mean… yeah. I have failsafes set up so that if he does something to jeopardize anything that I’m working on, things revert back, and I’ll know that he’s why it happened,” I replied. “We’re not operating on the honor system.”

“No honor among Mikes,” O.V.E.R. Mike added.

“Then we’ll make him do some grunt work,” Chance said. “We can put him in the field, have him scout or stand guard or something? Or maybe one person stays in the cabin, and one goes out in the field, and one gets into the security building?”

“We are going to have to be extremely careful,” I said. “I don’t want anyone to learn that he’s here. Not even Cole. As it is, I don’t let him go outside. I do all of the patrolwork, and he stays in here.”

“Yeah, if anything, I’ll cooperate so that I can walk around outside,” O.V.E.R. Mike said.

“And you understand that if you attempt to sabotage this or use this as a way to escape, that I will… have to… kill you…” I asked.

“I’ll do it if he doesn’t,” Chance said. “This mission is of the utmost importance to me.”

“Fine! Fine, I get it, you’ll kill me. This isn’t my first time-travel murder rodeo,” O.V.E.R. Mike said. “I’ll do whatever you say as long as I don’t have to put weight on my ankle for a while. Just point me in a direction and tell me to go.”

“Alright, that’s what I’m here to do, to figure out that direction,” Chance said.

“Okay, well, if there aren’t any more diversions, then we can get down to it,” I said. As soon as I said the word “diversions,” there was a knock on the cabin door.

“No-one knows that either of you are here, and I wasn’t expecting company,” I said.

[Muffled voice.] “Hello? Uh, bearer of bad news here?” [Normal voice.] A voice called from the other side of the door. [Muffled voice.] “I’m looking for the, uh… the worst hidden and the most deadly… plan? Meeting? I think I’ve got the right place.”

[Normal voice.] “Is that…?”

“Yes,” Chance said. “Open the door, Mike.”

“Should I go hide?” O.V.E.R. Mike asked.

“No, this is a correction; they know about you. Goddamnit,” I said. I stood up, walked over to the door, sighed, and…  opened the door.

“Hey, Mike. Sorry it’s been so long, and that this is how I finally see ya again, but… This plan don’t go so well for our buddy Chance here,” Hunter said.

[Closing theme plays.]

AFTER-CREDITS (MIKEY): Cole isn’t a prize. Coal is what you get in your stocking when you’re naughty.

[END Episode 88.]