BREAKER WHISKEY is an ongoing, daily microfiction podcast exploring one woman’s journey to find additional survivors in an America made empty by an unknown event in the late 1960s. In 1968, two women find themselves in rural Pennsylvania during what turns out to be some kind of apocalyptic event. By the time they discover that everyone else is gone, it’s too late to figure out what happened. Despite not liking each other at all, the women work together to survive, until six years later one of them sets out on her own, driving around the country to find other survivors. This is her, calling out to anyone who might listen. BREAKER WHISKEY is made by Lauren Shippen and recorded on a 1976 Midland CB Radio. Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey.
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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen.
If you'd like to send Whiskey a message, click here.
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[TRANSCRIPT]
Breaker, breaker. This is Whiskey calling out to our dog attack victim.
Um, I hope you're okay. I'm sorry that happened. I'm glad that you're already on the journey to heal. And I do wish you a lot of luck. I want to say, I think it's amazing that that was your reaction. To want to turn around and pet the head the bit you. I
've always loved dogs, but at the end of the day, they are just animals that live in our homes. And you're right, what good is a world without them? But...sure, we domesticated dogs over millennia, but they still have sharp teeth. They still have an instinct that I'm not sure it can be entirely bred out. And I'm sorry that you were a victim of that.
I would love a dog to curl up with. To take care of. And to understand myself a little bit more, because sometimes I feel a little bit like that. Like there's something in me that can't be bred out, can't be trained out. That when cornered, I'm just a thing with sharp teeth.
[click, static]
Harry would be the first to tell you that I bite. She's not talking to me at the moment, and for good reason. Um...that snarling, rabid snap of teeth that has always perched just beneath my soft palate came out the other day, and...well, she was in range.
[click, static]
It was after...well, I was having another one of those dark days. Thinking about Don, just swallowed in grief and guilt. And she wasn't- she wasn't being a pill about it or anything, but she wasn't exactly being comforting and...not that I expect that from her. She's never been great at that. But I think I just needed her to mostly leave me alone if she wasn't going to be comforting. And she wouldn't. And I snapped.
I just...I told her it was her fault. It was her fault that I left and found him in the first place. It was her fault that I wasn't there when it happened. And it was her fault that we're in this situation to begin with. Even though I know- I know that it's technically literally the fault of my actions. But still she set us on the path. And that's-
[click, static]
I'm worried that we're never going to stop having this argument. And that's...you know, in the very foundation of our relationship is having the same argument over and over again, but we've gotten better at it. You know, we've gotten better at fighting with each other. We can hurt more precisely now. Cut deeper with fewer slashes and it's...I wasn't nice about it and she's right to not be talking to me because she lost him, too and we both took actions to protect one another that led us to where we are now, so there's no point in placing blame for Don's death at anyone else's feet other than Junior's.
It's his fault. He's the one who did it. But we can't confront him. We can't jail him. We certainly can't kill him. And so we're left with only each other to sling arrows at.
[click, static]
And I'm tired of it. I'm tired of. Lashing out when I feel cornered. I'm tired of caring about the blame. I'm tired of wanting to try and fix what can't be fixed. But I don't know how to stop any of it. I don't know how to train myself out of those animalistic impulses to tear out someone's throat. And part of me wonders if I did it, if I succeeded and was able to change that part of me so fundamentally, would there be enough of me in what was left? Is a dog still a dog if you remove all of its teeth?
Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen.
If you'd like to send Whiskey a message, click here.
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[TRANSCRIPT]
Another message from another person out there in the black. You said:
I thought it was so sad that you only saw one dog on you journey. What good is a world without dogs? Then last weekend I was shocked and heartbroken by being attacked by a large dog that the owner had said was friendly and loved everyone (owner is shocked and heartbroken, too). So now I'm on a journey to heal, trust, and learn more about that which I thought I loved...just like Whiskey. It'll be a somewhat lonely journey, like hers, and filled with ALL of the emotions. I'm hoping it ends with belly rubs, chewed furniture legs, piddle accidents, full vacuum tanks, five am wake-ups, and an unshakable bond. Wish me luck.
Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.
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[TRANSCRIPT]
[click, static]
It took me the better part of a day but I think I’ve done it. I think I’ve written out your whole message. It…I honestly have no idea what it says. I was so focused on the individual letters, barely any words formed from it as I went.
I…I should go get Harry. But she’s sleeping and…I think she needs the rest. After—we’re still working through things and I think—no, I know—we will be for a very long time. As we waited for your message to finish transmitting, we talked a lot. We maybe got a little…distracted from time to time, but she put it all out on the table, everything she’d been thinking and feeling that she didn’t tell me. Things she didn’t even write in her notebook. And I told her things…we aired grievances and shared the times when we thought we might get close to something, back in New York. She talked about how she felt about Pete and listened to me when I talked about him and…and she was really kind when I couldn’t parse the good from the bad, when I didn’t want to just write him off as a violent criminal. I mean, I don’t…well, there are a lot of things I need to work through and it doesn’t all have to do with Harry.
Well. I could fill you in on all of it, on every detail, but…these broadcasts have been mine, separate from Harry, as much as anything in my life can be separate from Harry, and there are some things with her that are separate from the world. At least for now.
I know I said I might stop transmitting now that we’re safe and I think…I think I am going to take a break. Disappear for a little while like you’re so fond of doing. I’m—well, I think I’m happy and I’m not totally sure what to do with that feeling. Especially since it’s laced with…well, Junior is still out there, we’re still trapped here and even though I know what it’s like to kiss her, to— I don’t think I’ve forgiven Harry yet, not fully. She knows that, she…she’s understanding of it. Genuinely. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try to get there. Especially since I know I haven’t been the paragon of healthy communication and perfect relationship behavior so there are things that I need to…that I need her forgiveness on and, well, I think she wants to try to get there too.
170 - One Hundred Seventy
Episode 170
Friday, March 15, 2024 • Duration 01:09
[TRANSCRIPT]
[click, static]
Well, welcome back to the fucking party, Birdie. Once again, telling me that a place isn’t safe.
Do you really think that I’m going to trust you? Do you really think I’m going to listen to whatever you have to say? Where the fuck have you been? I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been talking to someone else—also through morse code, so maybe you know them but they…well, they have been at least a little more helpful than you.
And now you’re telling me that it’s not safe back home? Why would I believe you? I went to Denver and there was nothing there. Just ghosts in photographs and phantom concerts. And if you are telling the truth, and it’s not safe? Well, then, I have to go back, don’t I. I have to make sure that Harry’s okay.
Anyway. I’m only about forty miles from the house so…Harry, if you can hear me…put the kettle on, bring out that one bottle of whiskey you’ve been hiding for three years. We’ve got a lot to talk about.
Okay, so, I’ve been marinating on all of it, the book, the messages from Fox, what Birdie told me all those months ago. And something is starting to crystallize.
Eternity’s whole purpose was to make the smallest possible change in order to preserve the one future they wanted. Nöys and her people could also time travel but they allowed for multiple futures. And her forcing Harlan to choose between killing her and saving Eternity fundamentally changes the future and destroys this patriarchal system of reality control and…well, I guess in that sense, Nöys is the hero of the book. She allows for there to be freedom in the way that reality unfolds. So, maybe Asimov was trying to say something positive with that even if a lot of the ways Harlan thinks and speaks about women is…
…not the point. The point is…Nöys is a stone. So is Harlan. They’re these individual people who create these ripples that radiate outwards and affect everything.
I…it really is an inventive story. Maybe not entirely my cup of tea, but I don’t think I could have come up with it. I might be living it and I wouldn’t have thought of that kind of intricate world. Even now, I’m not totally sure I understand it. At least not as it pertains to me.
Harlan betrays his job because of his love for Nöys. Birdie said they betrayed their job. That they hurt people. Fox seems to know things about this place, this time…whatever it is, that you wouldn’t know unless you were…
Look, Fox, if you’re trying to tell me that Eternity is real and that you’re somehow moving the pieces on the chessboard of reality and that’s why I’m stuck here…I don’t know if I buy that. I have a hard time with omnipotence.
But…my life is what it is and maybe a little science fiction is not out of order. Maybe…maybe the choice I made did create some kind of hidden century, maybe it did…end the future. But I—I don’t know if I can handle that if it’s true.
[click, static]
(sigh) God, I’m tired.
168 - One Hundred Sixty Eight
Episode 168
Wednesday, March 13, 2024 • Duration 04:23
[TRANSCRIPT]
[click, static]
Okay, so I’ve been reading this fucking book, The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov and I finally finished it …
Listen, it’s not really my thing. Not that sci-fi isn’t my thing, but I’m not sure this kind of sci-fi is up my alley. And why are male writers so weird about women so often?
That’s not the point. The point is…I assume you’re trying to tell me something with this. That you’re trying to say that this somehow holds the answers.
I’m going to assume also that it doesn’t hold all the answers. That it’s more of a…nudge in the right direction. A shorthand for you to use to try and easily explain complicated shit to me.
You know, you’d think Birdie would’ve been able to figure something out like this, right? Presumably they’ve also read books.
Anyway. The End of Eternity. It’s about time travel. Or, well, not time travel, but—actually, there is literal time travel, in these things called kettles but it’s not time travel the way we think about time travel, you know, it’s—
Let me start over. There’s this guy, Andrew Harlan, he’s the main character, and he works for this god-like organization called “Eternity” that basically…alters reality to make humans suffer less. But they can only go back in time so far because the technology to go upwhen and downwhen—that’s what they call going up and down the…timeline, I guess, which I think is sort of cute actually—so, yeah, they can only go back in time so far because that technology was only invented in the 27th century, and they can only go so far forward because after a certain point, the world is just…empty. And they don’t really know why.
So, yeah. There’s that. And Harlan brings Nöys—that’s this woman that he falls in love with when he’s in a certain time and that time is supposed to be altered, so she’s going to disappear—or, the version he knows of her is going to disappear, she’s going to change because of the way that Eternity is going to alter reality and he’s you know, falling in love with her and he doesn’t want her to change so he brings her on a kettle to one of those empty centuries to hide her from Eternity and keep her safe, keep her trapped in amber.
167 - One Hundred Sixty Seven
Episode 167
Tuesday, March 12, 2024 • Duration 02:00
[TRANSCRIPT]
[click, static]
Alright, I’ve mapped out a route back home—back to Pennsylvania and I think it’ll take me…four days? At most? It’s pretty snowy up here, I wish I were taking the southern route, so I don’t want to push it too much. A few days is not going to make a world of difference, but me spinning out on black ice and wrapping the car around a tree will.
[click, static]
I don’t know…I don’t know what I’m going to say to her to be honest. Because as far as I know, the last eight months for her have been business as usual. And probably particularly uneventful in the last few months. There’s never anything to fucking do in winter. She will have stashed up enough produce for the winter, just like Leann did, and it’ll be too much for her to eat, just like it was for Leann. So used to growing food for two people, and now needing to feed only one. But god, I hope she didn’t just subsist on veggies and bread. Or maybe that’s enough, maybe she’ll be fine eating like that.
Maybe she went scavenging for canned food. Maybe she finally taught herself how to butcher the chickens. Well, I guess she knows how, I told her how, I showed her how, she just never wanted to.
Always my job to get my hands dirty I guess.
[click, static]
I wonder how close to Pennsylvania I’ll have to get before she starts being able to hear my transmissions. Before I start being able to hear hers. The fact that she reached me, once, all the way in Wyoming…well, that had to have just been skip. Unless she’s figured out something I haven’t, which isn’t impossible, but…
I guess it won’t really matter. I don’t need to tell her that I’m coming, I don’t need to check if she’s still there. She’s still there.
I feel…hungover. It feels like my brain has been spinning nonstop and reading this fucking book—
My thoughts can’t land on any one idea, I’m taking in too much information and spitting too many theories out that it’s all becoming mush and I’m not sure anything I’ve said on here has made sense in weeks and I—I don’t want to be doing this fucking alone anymore!
[click, static]
There. I said it. I don’t want to be doing this alone. It’s—it’s too much. Even if I’m the one responsible for all of it, if I’m the one who has to carry the burden of the horrible truth that I discover at the end of all this…I don’t want to hunt for that truth by myself anymore.
I—I could go searching for other people that I think might still be here. Based on the ripple I caused. But that’s…it feels potentially extremely fruitless. And I know that Harry is here. I don’t know if she’ll be happy to see me, if she’ll even be at our house anymore, but I…
Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.
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[TRANSCRIPT]
[click, static]
“F not here” — I assume by F, you mean Francis. And not that I’m going to take your word for it, but it’s…it’s interesting. That you should say that. That you should know that.
I think maybe I’m starting to understand. Well, maybe not understand, but I…I’m beginning to form a theory. Maybe.
So, there’s a pond. The pond is quiet, maybe has some ripples in it from what’s swimming underneath the surface, or the wind, the rain—the normal stuff that a pond experiences. And all those things create some kind of…chain reaction. But again, it’s the usual things—a frog dies, a tadpole grows legs, algae blooms, whatever.
But if you throw a huge boulder into that pond, everything goes fucking bananas. It kills a duck or displaces so much water that fish drown on dry land and then…
You have an empty pond? You have a series of smaller ponds? The water evaporates? I don’t know where to go from there. But if Harry, Leann, and I are all fish that got thrown into another pond by the water splashing around the boulder then…
[click, static]
(frustrated sigh) I’m not sure that that’s anything.
I wish there was…I don’t know, a book I could read, a scientific journal, something. I’m going to go into the next library I find and see what I can dredge up. Because this all feels vastly beyond my comprehension.
I—it occurred to me…well, am I a terrible person for thinking of my art fence before thinking of Martha? It’s not that I didn’t care about her—sure, we were never committed, but I cared.
164 - One Hundred Sixty Four
Episode 164
Thursday, March 7, 2024 • Duration 03:54
[TRANSCRIPT]
[click, static]
I didn’t—I guess I’m not totally numb to everything. I didn’t mean to…go on like that yesterday. I—(sigh) if anyone is listening, maybe just ignore everything I’ve said this week. It’s not—I didn’t mean anything by it. Let’s just—let’s move on.
[click, static]
It’s only been, what, a handful of weeks since I left Los Angeles? But I find myself needing to lay out the same stuff that I tried to understand when I was there—what I know, what I don’t know, and what questions I have.
I guess I have a little more information now, though god only knows what I’m supposed to do with it. I’m trying to wrap my head around how I could cause such a ripple but…
(laughs) There is something so…
I got out. I fought and clawed my way out of imprisonment, I got Harry out too, and we were free. I’m not saying that we didn’t deserve to be held responsible for our crimes but…
Actually, fuck that. What we did—stealing art, jewelry, antiques—who cares? I mean, sure, the people who owned the stuff cared, but they were wealthy enough to buy more. But because those people were powerful, we got—
Well, joke’s on us, huh? It’s clear that we’re getting our due anyway. From the frying pan into the fire. The grand irony of the universe. Like a cartoon, dodging the anvil falling from the sky only to go careening off a cliff.
All of that. The choices I made. What I did. It was supposed to get me out, but it just…it never stops. The waters never calm and I’m—I’m going to drown.
If this really is—I mean, if Leann was the farthest edge of the pond, to continue to beat this metaphor into the ground, then Harry would be the water right where the stone hit, right? It makes sense, I dragged her right along with me, just like she dragged me along unknowingly with her choices. But it clearly didn’t stop there. So who’s between Harry and Leann?
Who’s lives did I touch? Who was I intertwined with enough to truly affect their life?
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All that said—well, I don’t know what I’m going to find in your message and I hope it’s not goodbye forever, but maybe this is a goodbye for now. I want only good things for you Birdie. I hope you get a little peace of mind. A little closure. I’m discovering eve the tiniest glimpse of it really does wonders.
Okay. Here we go.
“Dear Whiskey,
I am sorry that we couldn’t meet. You find yourself in a watch tower of my own creation. I wasn’t positive it would still be functioning in this timeline—you never do know when an earthquake or a storm is going to cause something to come toppling down—but I’m relieved to find that it is. I do wish I could have been there myself, but we can only enter timelines through great pains and effort and I have already interfered far more than we are meant to. Though I suppose my hand was forced when I ceased to be the only one communicating with you.
The person you know as Fox is, as you guessed, a purist. They want all people in all places to be instead in one place, following one path. They do not believe that anyone should be free to make their own choices and live with the consequences. They would prefer to guide your hand into another choice you cannot take back, all in service of what they deem to be correct. They know what they are; they even told you directly. Though they are not the figment of an author’s imagination, they are as close to Eternity as one can get. Though in this case, they are not the norm, but a rebel.
And I cannot claim there is nothing to re—rebel against. It is not a perfect system. It is hard, to watch people suffer in the worlds of their own creation, with no obvious recourse. Sometimes these timelines correct themselves, merging with each other or disappearing entirely. But even we, the keepers and observers of these strands, cannot fully comprehend the intricacies of why certain shifts are created.
As you know, you are not the first person for whom I have tried to bring comfort in a lonely universe. Not all alternate worlds are as empty as yours, but some are even emptier. And yours, was of course, becoming more empty all the time, though that may not be a bad thing for every person involved.
Fox told you you’re too late because the timeline has shifted once again. I’ll explain that in a moment but first I need to talk about the shift that preceded it, that caused an angry man to seek vengeance. A few months ago, Fred Billings’ mother—“
Fred. That’s his name. Fred. Wow, I, uh—anyway—
“Fred Billings’ mother, who was her—who was here, vanished from this place and merged with her correct timeline. Both Fred and his father perished in a car accident on New Year’s Eve 1974, and the widow Billings’ life was forever changed. Fred woke up here one day to find that his mother—who he had lived with in some degree of contentment for the last six years—had vanished. Meanwhile, she was waking up in the place she was from, with no memory of this world.
That’s what would have happened if you had killed Junior. Or, at least, that is what Fox and I both suspected. That it would have aligned enough with the timeline of your origin and you would’ve been sent back. But you should know, if that were to happen, all of this would seem like a strange dream. Your memories of the last seven years would be filled with the experience of that other you. The events you’ve experienced here would not inform your life. I have not brought you here to keep you from making that decision for yourself, but because I thought you deserved to have all the information relevant to what Fox was asking you to do. They forced my hand when they told you to kill Fred—I could not let you do that without knowing the full consequences.
However, it is a moot point. As I said, something in the timeline has shifted again. You have merged—you have merged with another offshoot, your circumstances have once again changed. I wish I could give you the information that would help you navigate this new world—I wish I knew if this meant more potential allies or if this meant that you were closer to getting back home than you were before. But we cannot see all. Fox has their ways of seeing more than most, but I suspect even they are uncertain of what this shift has brought.
I do know that yours and Harry’s fates are irreversibly intertwined. I cannot think of a decision on any timeline that would separate you as you are now. In that sense, I take comfort in knowing you will never be truly alone.
On that subject, I have a final gift for you. I know you are going to cease transmitting soon. And I understand that, I do. But before you go silent, look at the radio system in front of you—“
…okay…
“Turn it on and tune to the very last frequency. Then switch on the delta tune to the positive and access the off-frequency just beyond that final channel.
Through some error that I know my superiors would like to correct, your transmissions have been reaching out—have been reaching outside of your world. In the same way that visions of the world you came from have bled into where you are now—” The polaroids I’m guessing— “your words have reached beyond their usual bounds. It is why they were able to reach your friends from across the country and after a year of listening to you, I have yet to figure out why this is happening at all.
Perhaps now that you are no longer alone, you don’t need this particular comfort. But you have spent all this time calling into the dark, hoping someone was listening, hoping someone would call back. Hoping that someone out there would find you.
You were found a long time ago. You were never really lost or alone. Many of them were alone, before they heard your voice. But the moment you called out, there were voices calling back, even if you couldn’t hear them.
Your friend, Birdie”
What…I don’t…I don’t understand—
Okay, tune to the last frequency…let’s see
[turning to the frequency]
“You were found a long time ago”…Who found—
[gets to the last frequency and then—
a cacophony of different voices, all the messages that Whiskey has not been receiving, from infinite timelines]
Which…well, listen, I have a lot of thoughts about that, but I’m not here to get into what Asimov is saying about women or being in love or any of that. I’m here to try to understand what the hell you want me to get out of this.
I haven’t time traveled. I’m not in some kind of far, distant future after humanity has ceased to exist, because everything’s the same, just minus all the people. If I’m living in the Hidden Centuries, why do they look the same and how did I get here?
At the end of the book…well, it turns out that Nöys isn’t exactly who she said she was, surprise surprise, and she and Harlan have this stand-off. She’s from a version of time that also had time travel, but not Eternity, so they had lots of different futures instead of just the one that Eternity would always be making by altering reality. That’s Eternity’s big thing—that’s what people like Harlan would do. They would go to different times and do different things so that Eternity could perfectly shape the history and the future of the world in the way they thought it should be shaped. But Nöys…her time didn’t do that—they came about the technology a different way and saw things differently. And she tries to convince Harlan that that’s the better way to do things and I guess he does get convinced because all of a sudden, something in reality changes and the kettles disappear, so it turns out that Eternity never happened—oh, they have this stand-off in the 30s—the 1930s—somehow, so it’s before Eternity is invented and Harlan choosing not to kill Nöys in the 1930s prevents the future from ever happening and so Eternity isn’t created. I think. And the book closes with “the end of eternity, the beginning of infinity” which is a nice sounding phrase, but I’m not sure it means anything.
I’m not sure any of this means anything. Trying to explain it out loud, I feel like a total crackpot. What, exactly, am I supposed to be gleaning from all of this? [click, static]
I think I’ve just been hoping that I wasn’t important in her life to really have an impact. She was this bright, uncomplicated spot in a pretty messy life and I hope…I hope she stayed that way. I hope we were both a refuge for each other, an escape from our real worlds. And that, because of that, the mistakes of my real world didn’t shake hers.
Is it sad that the first thought I had was about my landlord? That’s a pretty direct effect, right? I disappear, I stop paying my rent and things snowball from there. But then I thought, well, I was going to prison anyway, so it’s not like I was going to keep paying rent either way.
[click, static]
Is that…is that the difference? I—I did something, caused a ripple, and it…
[click, static]
(shaking it off) But where’s Pete? Don? Francis? We all got caught for the same thing—well, not Francis—but I…
Well, shit, I didn’t go up to Provincetown, did I? I never really thought there was a chance he was there.
Is that—is that where I should head to? See if Francis was hit by the ripple? I mean, he would be old, but that doesn’t mean…
God, I don’t want to find his body. I—I’m not sure I could take it.
