159: Sheepdog/Big Bad Wolf

SUMMARY

There are probably more horses that are missin’ than there are horses what people knows where they are.

TRANSCRIPT

Original transcript edited by Theo and reviewed by Jenah

[BEGIN Episode 159.]

INTRO: Hey, guys, quick plugs. I’m still streaming on Twitch over at twitch.tv/woebegonepod, where every Sunday afternoon I write that week’s episode soundtrack, and then we hang out and play a video game. Usually, we play a video game for a couple hours, but sometimes stream crashes, and Ableton crashes, and there’s a tornado warning, and then I get stream back up, and Ableton crashes, and then there’s a tornado warning. But if mu house is still here on Sunday, then we’re going to continue playing the new Nancy Drew game, and hopefully we will make progress this week. So if you’d like to come see that, check us out twitch.tv/woebegonepod. And if you’d like to support the show, you can do so on Patreon over at patreon.com/woe_begone, where you can get early access to ad-free episodes, instrumentals, soundtrack albums, Q&As, director’s commentaries, Movies with Michael, postcards, and more. I am working on getting the May postcards out, and the designs for May and June are some of my favorites so far. Each postcard has a message written from one of the characters, and is part of a larger story about something that is happening at Base. And I ship internationally. I don’t know if everyone knows that. So that’s patreon.com/woe_begone. Special thanks to my 10 newest patrons: [REDACTED] for supporting the show. Enjoy.

[Warning: This episode contains descriptions of arson, gun violence, and death. Listener discretion is advised.]

MICHAEL [narrating]: Uh, hello. Uh, check. Uh… H-Howdy, um… If’n you’re listenin’ to this, then I prolly ain’t around the house no more, so… first, I wanna thank y’all for your hospitality, even if none of y’all wanted to do the Movies with Michael podcast with me. I, uh… weren’t in a good place when I showed up. I had nowhere else to go, and y’all took me in, and I’ll be forever in your gratitude. Bonnie, Skinner, Flash, Robert, Marigold, Python (you old sonuvabitch), Skuzz, Naomi, Britches, Sax, all of y’all. I owe y’all everything, and I will make it up to you one day. But for now, it’s time for me to hit the old, dusty trail. I hope y’all understand. Oh, and, uh, I fed Wesker on the way out. You ain’t gotta worry about him.

I owe y’all an explanation, and this is as close to an explanation as you’re gonna get. Don’t worry, I’m gonna tell y’all the juicy stuff. But I don’t want you searchin’ after me. I’m about to get myself involved with some dangerous people. More dangerous than me. I know y’all think I’m bad news, but this is somethin’ different. And they’re especially dangerous if ya don’t understand ’em. But I do. And I am choosin’ the path of danger in order to save my comrades what need savin’. Do not come after me. This place y’all built is safe and beautiful. I don’t want the big bad wolf to show up there lookin’ for me. Because he will blow your house down.

Let’s start at the beginning. I know I been cagey about my past. Where I come from ain’t normal. I’m sure y’all knew that. Couldn’t quite hide that, but I did try to keep ya out of it. I was happy to be the fella in the group with the– the dark, mysterious past, you know? The– The cowboy that keeps to himself what he seen and did. That’s my lot in life. But since I’m headin’ out, I reckon y’all deserve an explanation. One y’all were entitled to a long dang time ago, cause I know that’s what friends are for, but I didn’t feel like talkin’. Hell, I still don’t feel like talkin’, but if this is the last you’re ever gonna hear from me, then you need to hear it. Y’all can prolly tell I’m stallin’ a little bit here, ’cause if I don’t choose my words carefully, and you ain’t gonna believe me.

Alright, y’all. Don’t laugh, but… I’m… a time traveler. [Laugh track starts.] I know, I know. It’s ridiculous. I know. [Laugh track stops.] Scuzz, you won your bet, or whatever. But, uh, I ain’t from the 1830s like you been sayin’. I’m just a regular ol’ cowboy from ’round here. If anything, I’m from the future. When I was a… idiot kid, uh, only 30 years old, I got involved in some time travel stuff beyond my control, and I’ve been trapped inside it ever since. That’s how I ended up like this. That’s why I got all them scars. I mean, y’all seen ’em. I walk around the house with my shirt off, so y’all know what I’m talkin’ about. Those scars on my back really are from a bear, no matter what that asshole Python tells ya. You know I’m pickin’ Python.

I first learned about time travel when I fucked around and found out playin’ this online murder game called WOE.BEGONE. From there, they sent me to work at Oldbrush Valley Energy and Resources, which ya prolly heard conspiracy theories about. None of ’em are true. After a while, me and my buddies that worked there split off on our own, formin’ our own organization that we just called the Base. But Base didn’t have it easy. It’s hard out there bein’ a mom and pop time travel shop. Bigger fish wanted to eat us up, and eventually they did. We got captured by a bigger organization. Ain’t no rest for the wicked.

We wound up in this place in Latvia called the Compound. If, uh, ya don’t know where Latvia is, don’t worry about it. But our Base got in a pickle, and that Compound helped us out. And in exchange for that help, we ended up stuck there bein’ their little guinea pigs. It weren’t no way to live, but it was how we survived. And I know you’re wonderin’ how this winds up with me endin’ up here and havin’ to skedaddle, but I’m gettin’ there, I promise. There’s a lot you gotta understand first.

The Compound wanted to keep us cooped up in some geodesic Dome they built for us for the rest of our lives. They had captured the three Mikes, so there were three versions of me from different points in time (we call ’em iterations) and then a buncha our friends what was helpin’ us run Base. The youngest iteration, this fella named Mikey, got the bright idea to use time travel to make three more iterations of us, and leave ’em there in the Dome while the first three made their escape. You don’t gotta understand how it works. Just know that instead of three of us, there were suddenly six of us, and I was starin’ back at another Michael. And they was tellin’ me that that Michael was gonna get to escape, and I was stuck in the dang Dome. Mikey kept sayin’, [Imitates Mikey’s voice.] “Oh, no, no. We’re gonna come back for you, and we’re gonna consolidate, and everything is going to be fine.” [Normal voice.] That’s how he talks, if’n you can believe it. But I had just been separated in time from that Michael what was leavin’ us. And I knew he had no interest in ever comin’ back for us. He weren’t gonna reunite with me. He’d kill me just as soon as look at me. So I didn’t get my hopes up.

More time passed in the Dome. Mikey regaled us with the stories of a place he went down in Texas where some friends of ours had been watchin’ from afar and makin’ sure things turned out for us. Seemed like an idyllic place for a cowboy like me. But I didn’t think much of it. I had resigned myself to livin’ there in the Dome for the rest of my days. I weren’t the real Michael, ya see. The real Michael was gonna kill me. So what was the point o’ anythin’? So I lived my life in the Dome, figured out how to turn that dang cold weather off, found a mess o’ blowtorches in the supply closet. Small little adventures like that. It’s how I figured I’d spend the rest of my days.

But then, us Mikes got picked up and dropped this weird Shadow Dome that was malfunctionin’, and suddenly we had to escape. It was necessary to save our hides. Base had become a pawn in a game between two different organizations. And o’ course it was the Mikes that suffered. Not Ty Betteridge, not Lieutenant; don’t worry about who them folks are. The three of us put our heads together, and we did figure out how to escape the Shadow Dome, but at the very last second, I was attacked from behind by yet another iteration of Michael. One from the organization that the Compound was fightin’ at the time. It all happened in the dark, and he took my place. He ran up ahead with the others, and left me behind to die. I reckon that they thought that he was me. I never did learn what happened to ’em.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the good sense to die. They sent another Mike to finish me off, some hippie name of MDawg. But he didn’t have the stomach to do what needed to be done. I convinced him to let me go, and got ‘im to drop me off here, which is how I ended up ringin’ your doorbell covered head-to-toe in my own blood. And y’all know the rest of the story. Y’all took me in, and I became one o’ the family. I appreciate everything y’all done for me, but now it’s time to take my leave. My folks need me, and, besides, I don’t wanna wear out my welcome.

I wanted to retire from that life. I thought that I would stay here until the time came, tendin’ to Wesker and doin’ chores and bein’ a sheepdog around the house, makin’ sure everything’s in order. But I shoulda known better. Maybe I did know better, and I was just foolin’ myself. It was inevitable that the call o’ the wild would draw me back out into the wildness. Which is why I gotta go. I gotta see a man about a horse.

[Opening theme plays.]

MICHAEL [narrating]: I’m sure some o’ y’all saw on the TV that a gigantic horse name o’ Bluster went missin’ somewhere down in Texas. Hell, it’s international news at this point. Cain’t get online without seein’ somethin’ about that dang horse. I saw some folks suggestin’ renamin’ that county to Bluster’s Grove. It ain’t a good place for a grove, but it is a good name. But I wouldn’t blame ya if ya paid it no mind. Horses go missin’ in this country every single day. There are prolly more horses missin’ than there are horses what people know where they are.

But I recognized that dang horse from my phone. And I remembered all those stories that Mikey told me about what was happenin’ down in Texas. And when I watched those videos of that horse, I recognized that deerskin jacket hangin’ up in the closet behind him in one of his videos. That horse, Bluster, was livin’ down there with the other Mikes in Texas. The Mikes weren’t in the videos (thank god; they’d be terrible for engagement) but I saw their knick-knacks everywhere. A Zippo with the O.V.E.R. logo on it, a duplicate version of the cowboy hat I’m always wearin’, and my dang guitar, which I guess they found somehow because I don’t know where it is. Those were my folks down there with the missin’ horse. And if Bluster gone missin’, that was bad news.

Here’s what I was able to gather from the news reports: Bluster the gigantic horse was missin’. He didn’t belong to the iterations that was livin’ down there. Bluster came and went as he pleased. He was best known by the townsfolks for his appearances at a place called the Outpost Tavern Bar and Grill, a little hole-in-the-wall bar with music and poker. I didn’t see no sign o’ Mikes in any o’ the reportin’. Some folks online were tryin’ to find the house from the background of the videos, but, so far, no one had been successful. Wherever it was, it wasn’t on Google Maps. No one recognized it. So if I wanted to know what happened, I was gonna have to go on my own. That’s when I borrowed Flash’s motorcycle, and took a solo trip down to Bluster’s Grove lookin’ for answers.

On the drive into Bluster’s Grove, you can tell that the townsfolks are of two minds about what happened to him. There are memorials along the highway, mournin’ the death of such a perfect horse and community member. People left flowers, letters, and pictures. Once ya get into the town proper, though, there are missin’ posters on every signpost. Several community groups have offered rewards to anyone who knows Bluster’s whereabouts or how he might be located. They haven’t given up hope. They know in their hearts that Bluster’s still alive.

I personally was of two minds. I know when someone goes missin’ for more than a few days and don’t got the temperment for runnin’ off, there’s a strong likelihood they’re dead. Call me pessimistic, but most people don’t up and leave like that. Bluster seemed to be beloved and appreciated in Bluster’s Grove. He wouldn’t just leave. Plus, he’s a famous horse, so he wouldn’t be able to leave and not get spotted unless he changed his name and hair color and all that, which is much more difficult for a horse than a person. You ever tried to put colored contacts on a horse? I have, and it ain’t easy. So I reckoned he was dead. On the other hand, death ain’t that big a deal. You know how I used to joke with Bonnie that I’ve died hundreds o’ times before, and it ain’t that bad? Well, I weren’t jokin’. I mean, sometimes it were that bad, but time travel means it ain’t the end o’ the world. So even if Bluster were dead, there might be somethin’ I could do about it.

I knew that Bluster was a much beloved patron at the Outpost Tavern Bar and Grill. His first viral video was him chuggin’ a beer in that very establishment. There’s a plaque on the stool where he made history. So, I thought that I’d start there. Those folks would be among the last to have seen him. Maybe they had some idea where he was goin’. Maybe a witness noticed the direction he trotted off in last time he was seen. And maybe someone saw somethin’ that they didn’t even know was important but that I would be able to use as a clue. The Outpost is a cowboy bar, so I had no reservations about goin’ in and whettin’ my whistle while I gently prodded the townsfolks about Bluster.

I was not prepared for the reception that I received upon enterin’ the Outpost Tavern Bar and Grill. It was a lazy workday afternoon, but there were a few folks in booths. I could feel them shootin’ daggers at me, for reasons I did not understand. Before I could even belly up to the bar, I felt someone firmly grab me by the arm and pull me away from the main room. Confused, I let them drag me into an empty back room and slam the door shut behind us.

[Raises pitch.] “Hey, Tex? What the fuck!” [Resumes normal pitch. For the rest of the episode, Michael pitches his voice higher when narrating as this character.] a familiar voice shouted at me. I finally got a good look at the fella that pulled me in here. He looked exactly like an old friend o’ mine, one that had worked at Base with me and the other Mikes. This weren’t a coincidence. This was the spittin’ image of my buddy.

“Chris!? What the hell are you doin’ here?” I exclaimed. I thought Base mighta beat me here in their own investigation.

“What? Who the hell is Chris?” the man asked. “Tex, what is going on? You know that you can’t be here.”

“Why can’t I be here, exactly?” I asked.

“Because half of the town thinks that you murdered Bluster, you idiot. You’re liable to get yourself killed comin’ in here. Now, I don’t think you’re guilty, but you know how riled up everyone is. You’d be strung up in the town square before anybody stopped to have a trial.” He looked exasperated, like someone who is annoyed at a friend’s terrible mistake.

“They think I murdered Bluster?” I asked.

“Of course they do! No one’s seen him. Where the hell is he, Tex? Where the hell have you been?” The man paused for a moment, examining my features. “Crap, you’re… n-not Tex. What the hell is going on here?” He produced a revolver from his jacket.

“Easy now, easy,” I said, producin’ a revolver of my own. “I don’t want no trouble. Seems like we’re both lookin’ for Tex and Bluster. What’s your name, friend?”

“It’s… Chance,” he said.

“What? N-No, it’s not.” I scoffed. Chance looked confused. I got the distinct feelin’ that I was gettin’ fucked with. Ya see, he looked just like my buddy Chris. Problem was, us iterations already knew a fella named Chris when we met Chris, so we called him and his partner Chance and Shadow, like the dogs from Homeward Bound. And here this guy was, lookin’ exactly like Chris and callin’ himself Chance. “There ain’t no way you’re not an iteration of Chris from Base,” I said. “What are you doin’ out here?”

“You’ve clearly got the wrong guy. I don’t know what a ‘iteration’ or ‘Base’ or any of that is,” Chance said. I studied his face. He seemed to be tellin’ the truth. Chris ain’t one for mind games or pullin’ gambits or none o’ that fun stuff I do. He wouldn’t be able to hide his intentions from me. Chance truly didn’t know Chris or what I was talkin’ about.

“Look here, Chance. I’m Tex’s twin or his brother or whatever helps you understand it,” I explained. “I saw Bluster on the news, and I came down here tryin’ to figure out what’s going on. Last place he was spotted was at the Outpost. I thought maybe someone here saw somethin’.”

“No one here knows anything,” Chance said. “None of us have seen anyone from that posse since Bluster disappeared. They did a search party, but no one found anything.”

“Do you know where Tex lives?” I asked. “Has anyone checked out his house?”

“[Sighs.] I know where he lives, but I’m sworn to secrecy, because he told me one night when he was drunk, and then he said that I couldn’t tell anyone,” Chance said, “As far as I know, nobody else knows.”

“Can you tell me how to get there?” I asked. “I know the sorts o’ situations that Tex gets involved in. Some of it’s shady, but he did not murder that horse. There might be clues at his house as to what happened to ’em. I’ve got some specialized knowledge might could help. Please. I’m just tryin’ to find my brother.”

“Oh, I ain’t givin’ ya directions,” Chance said, slippin’ in and out of a Southern accent. “I’m not gonna let you snoop around there alone. For all I know, it could be a crime scene. I don’t know you. You might wanna tamper with evidence. But if you think you could figure out Bluster is… [Sighs.] Fine. I can take you there, but you’ll have to stick close to me, and obey orders. Got it?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. [Sighs.] “That’s fine. Just get me there, Chance. Pronto. We’re burnin’ daylight.”

Chance got in his pickup truck, and I followed him on my motorcycle back to the outskirts o’ town where I’d driven in from. It was a fairly long drive, and I wondered by the end if he was actually escortin’ me back outta town. But, eventually, far out in the country, we pulled off the highway, down some backroads, and wound up in a gravel driveway.

The smell o’ burnt wood irritated my nostrils. A fire had burned out all the buildings on the property. There were two burnt-out husks o’ buildings, one large and one small. Chance exited his truck, and I joined his side.

“I… I didn’t know that it burnt down,” Chance said. His lips were quiverin’.

“It’s gonna be okay, pard. There’s no point in panickin’,” I said, putting my hand on Chance’s shoulder. He seemed to appreciate the comfort. “Now, we gotta check the rubble for bodies. Can you help me with that?” Chance nodded, but I could tell he was scared.

We walked cautiously into the main house. The door had burnt off the hinges. “Careful, Chance,” I warned ‘im. “This place is liable to fall down. Don’t lean on nothin’.” I checked out the livin’ room first, lookin’ for any clues. And, perhaps more importantly, lookin’ for any signs of a time travel device. We got these little hand-held buggers called Calculators can send ya anywhere ya wanna go. If Tex had a Calculator, then it was long gone.

Chance was ahead o’ me in the entrance to the bedroom. I heard him gasp, and rushed inside. The room was charred to a crisp, but the scene was still clear as day. Tex was lyin’ in his bed. Bluster was collapsed on the ground at the entrance of the adjoinin’ room. Both of them had fatal gunshot wounds, visible even through the burnt flesh. The gunshot wounds woulda killed ’em almost instantaneously, likely before the fire even started.

“Bluster…” I heard Chance squeak to himself. Bluster had been found, but the news weren’t good.

“…And Tex,” I grumbled. “Poor Tex.”

“What happened?” Chance asked.

“Well, I ain’t figured that out yet,” I said. “We gotta keep searchin’.”

It took a minute to coax Chance out of the room, but eventually we continued the search. It felt like all the important stuff was missin’. Whoever did this weren’t just out to kill Tex and Bluster. They wanted valuables, likely time-travel-related valuables. The rest o’ the house turned up nothin’. No files, no Calculator, no nothin’.

We checked the other buildin’ when we were done with the main house. It was a small shed. I weren’t expectin’ to find anything. Just a little feed shed. We pried open the metal door, which had deformed from the heat. To my surprise, we saw a scene much like the one in the bedroom.

There was a corpse on the ground, facedown in the straw. I could see bracelets on his arm and a necklace around his neck. I gently pushed him over to see his face.

“MDawg…” I muttered. I shook my head. Why MDawg? MDawg didn’t have a dog in this fight. Whoever did killed MDawg did it outta malice. I could feel my face getting red. MDawg had huge ligature marks around his neck. Someone had strangled him.

“O-Okay, that’s MDawg; uh, who is he?” Chance asked, gesturin’ to the opposite wall of the shed. There was another corpse in shackles. Another iteration of me. Another Mike. But it weren’t Tex or MDawg or Mike or Mikey or Lieutenant or Emdubya. It weren’t a Mike I recognized.

“I don’t know who that is,” I said. “He’s one of us, but… I ain’t ever met this man before.” I looked closer at the body. There was no evident fatal mark on ‘im. He mighta been burned alive.

“Okay, s-so who– who did this? Why would somebody do this to Bluster?” Chance was distraught. I imagine this was the first time he’s ever seen a dead body.

“I don’t know that yet, but I’m gonna find out,” I said.

“We need to call the sheriff,” Chance said, pullin’ out his cellphone.

“The hell we do,” I replied. “Don’t call the cops. No one knows this place has been found yet. If you call the cops, they’ll go to the press, and everyone will know. As long as this place is our secret, then time is on our side.” Chance put the phone down.

The sight of Tex’s burned down house was harrowing. Not because there were dead bodies inside. Like I said, death ain’t that scary to me. My line o’ work means I see it a lot, and it ain’t the worst thing that can happen to a fella. What scared me was that none o’ this got corrected. Why wouldn’t Base correct such a terrible tragedy? And surely they wouldn’t let these folks stay dead. Base are a sentimental bunch. They’d bring ’em back even if they don’t got no more to offer. They wouldn’t take an attack sittin’ down. So if there hadn’t been a correction, there must be a reason for that. And the potential reasons got my hackles up.

I had one thing that Base didn’t, though. There was only one fella involved in all this who knew I existed, and from the looks of it, he’d been strangled to death in the shed. The killer could stop Base if he had time travel. He could travel before Base expected ‘im, and catch ’em with their pants down. But he couldn’t do that to me. I was unknown. And I was the only one who could get to the bottom of this.

“Do you wanna save Bluster, Chance?” I asked.

“I– I don’t understand,” Chance said.

“Oh, you’re going to, bud. Believe you me. You’re in for one hell of a ride.”

[Closing theme plays.]

BLOOPER (DYLAN): Okay, I definitely need an alive Mike that talks normal, because I can’t do that every week.

[END Episode 159.]