The Infinite Corner

By Sage Groves

11.03.37 18:32

SEARCHLIGHT, NV

LOG 0007 IGLESIAS 

PRODUCT AND COMPANY IDENTIFICATION: 

MINING INDUSTRIAL NETWORKS OF THE UNITED STATES

COMPOSITION:

Caliche, petrogypsic horizons

CLASSIFICATION (ARIDISOLS):

Gypsids

HAZARDS IDENTIFICATION: 

Appearance and odor within normal ranges. Sediment is stable. No pathogens were found in samples. 

SURVEY: 

The town of Searchlight Nevada was not impacted, chemically, by the war and therefore the mines just outside of town are as intact as they were when shut down in 1953. The soil is non-toxic with a pH of 9.2, and the soils have an approximate 35% pore space, hindering the growth of organic life. 

The presence of element 119, now being referred to as Odiniem (Om), is confirmed. Om_ppm determined via SN-ICP-MS has a range domain minimum 0.005 and range domain maximum 478. 

It is my conclusion that Searchlight’s mines are chemically secured for human labor, and that the value of the Odiniem here is worth the excavation process. 

11.03.37 17:02

SEARCHLIGHT, NV

LOG 0023 EL-FAOULY

Even as the sun dips behind the Nevadan horizon, I find that I am eager to return to the mines under Searchlight. Dr. Iglesias confirmed that the soil and sediment integrity has not changed chemically since the mines closed in the 50’s;, however, I am certain that there has been strong tectonic activity in the area which has resulted in the shifting of some of the shafts, and openings of new caves. That is my opinion as somebody who has been caving for most of her life, though. Seeing as I am not a scientist, I cannot tell you exactly the happenings of the caves since their closure, but I can see where certain shafts have been caved in and where new openings have been erected. 

I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like these tunnels before. And that’s what I’m calling them—tunnels—because they look manmade. I’m not talking about the mineshafts, obviously those are man made. But the caves are wrong. 

Before the war, I did a series of cave diving expeditions through the abandoned tunnels underneath the great barrier reef. Those tunnels were made by TBMs—tunnel boring machines—which made the entrances and lengths of the artificial caves smooth like concrete piping. The caves under Searchlight remind me quite a bit of those tunnels. 

It’s fascinating just as much as it is unsettling. TBMs existed in the 1900s, when the mines would have been harvested, but it would have been highly unusual for them to be used to carve the sediment to excavate gold. Not to mention how expensive it would have been back then, and incredibly inefficient—what I am saying is that these tunnels are new. And they’re wrong. And yet I cannot wait to explore them. 

11.03.37 19:00

SEARCHLIGHT, NV

LOG 0016 GRAYSTONE

Searchlight nights remain silent, even in the town. Today was my last day surveying the town for possible Odiniem poachers. Threat assessment is null. 

Dr. Iglesias cleared multiple Clark County mines for exploration and mapping, although I’ve determined that Cyrus Noble mine is the most efficient in terms of security. It is excluded enough from Interstate 95 that the potential for raid via ground vehicle is obsolete. 

This is the fourth Odiniem mine evaluation I’ve consulted on, and the second time I’ve worked with Dr. Iglesias. She is about as professional as they come, and my past assessment of her security risk remains intact. As for El-Faouly, the caver, I’ve cleared her risk assessment. There is no indication that she has ulterior motives aside from mapping and assessing the integrity of the caves. However, I notice that she feels overeager to return to the mines each day, and is always reluctant to leave. I fear she will try to overstay our approved hours once we venture deeper into the mine. 

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION EXCERPTED FROM “SOUTHWEST UNSOLVED” PODCAST 

AIR DATE: 29 DECEMBER 2046

What you just heard were the last mission reports from MINUS Survey Auxiliary Team #0087. On the morning of November 4th, 2037, Doctor Inya Iglesias—a southern Nevada native—led her team into the belly of the Mojave, and they never saw another morning. 

I’m your host, Leslie Locust, and this is Southwest Unsolved. 

Between the years of 2025 and 2036, humanity was pinned under the thumb of war, thrust into a state of abhorrent violence that resulted in the murder of over nine hundred million people globally. The World War that was projected to wipe out humanity completely, ended on Christmas Eve by what some call a Christmas Miracle… What others call the beginning of the True War, The Cold Wave, and even The End War. 

The so-called “miracle” that ended the period of destruction and terror now referred to as “The Lypse” was the sudden and unexplainable appearance of Element 119—Odiniem. Placed under Rutherfordium on the Periodic Table, Odiniem holds the highest atomic mass of all known elements and is the first non-synthesized element discovered since 1939. 

Even a decade later, we don’t know how Odiniem appeared on Earth. We don’t know much about the element at all. But we do know that it is extremely valuable, and now we cannot live without it. Odiniem is in our food, in our medicines, in our hyper trains and our undergrounds, and most importantly in our implants. 

The aftermath of the Lypse saw three years of heavy mining and fervent reconstruction of our infrastructure. We from the southwest are keen on those years, watching our every step for shifting sands and potholes. The mining was relentless. 

Teams were sent in to make sure the old shafts were intact and to map new corridors that may have opened during Lypse shelling. Teams like MINUS 0087.

ONLINE FORUM 

DISCUSSION PULLED FROM “R/TRUECRIME SOLVERS”

ORIGINAL POST: 

6.23.2047 USER @SOLOSHOTLAST

Hey internet I need your help. My name is Baya, and my older sister went missing when I was eleven, and recently I’ve discovered some weird discrepancies with her case. I’m not too sure how to do this, but here’s everything I know:

My sister’s name was Lauren (Lollie) El-Faouly. She was 26 years old when she went missing on November 4th, 2037 in Searchlight Nevada. She was a decorated caver from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and was on a contract to map an old mine with a company called MINUS. MINUS doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and I can’t find any reports from my sister’s case except for the missing persons report filed by my parents ten years ago. My sister’s body was never found nor was any evidence of foul play. It’s like the ground itself took her. Here’s a picture of her from right before her disappearance. Please help!

IMG_ALT_TEXT: 26 year old Lauren El-Faouly smiling, taking a selfie with Inya Iglesias, a team member with MINUS. Lauren has light brown skin, dyed green hair (naturally black), and brown eyes. She is 5’5” and weighed around 145 lbs at the time of her disappearance. 

@NYCRATPIZZA Hey Baya, sorry about your sister—I haven’t heard anything about her case but there’s a found journal entry circling on r/foundliterature that mentions Searchlight. Here’s the link.

@MOMSAHO3 Here’s some white papers on MINUS. They had some MESSY lawsuits a couple of years ago. Hope your sister isn’t one of them. 

@MACANDCH33ZE Buy my online guidebook to solving true crime cold cases here!

EXCERPTED JOURNAL ENTRY BY ANONYMOUS

ENTRY DATED 8.8.1988

JOURNAL DISCOVERED IN RUINS OF A HOME IN LOS ANGELES AFTER LYPSE ATTACK 2029

Dear Diary,

Even if he hadn’t kicked the door in, shattering the barred window causing the bar goers to cut their conversations for a second and a half, I’d still have seen him limp in. I’d been watching the door since the sun poked his last rays through the windows before heading out west for some sleep. He was  painted with streaks of blood and molded out of sweat and tan flesh. He’d never looked more beautiful leaning on the bartop across from me. I poured him a glass outta the tap, knowing that the taste of the beer would soon lacquer my own tongue when he put his lips on mine. 

He flashed me a weak smile and downed half the glass before handing it back to me. I took a swig. 

He said he was only passing through, but once he had a taste he couldn’t leave, not yet. He said he was from California where the movie stars live and where the rock stars never die. He only found himself in Searchlight cause he’d taken the wrong route on the way to Vegas. 

I wondered who had given him that busted lip and the black eye, and I secretly hoped it was someone I abhorred. Someone who said some bullshit about the slut bartender at the old roadhouse—I could imagine him, hands balled into deadly fists, connecting with the rotten teeth of some Marbarolo man. 

He looked at me with eyes so dark I mistook them for pools of abyss in the dim light. Josiah Fisher, whose mother died from melanoma earlier that year and whose father was a permanent resident at High Desert, nodded at me presumably for a beer. He took whatever was on tap and I knew that but I couldn’t move. If I did he would be whisked away into the night, leaving me breathless. Not breathless in the same way he’d leave me after fucking me, but breathless in the way you see a shooting star dissappear before you’ve finished making your wish. Josiah snapped at me twice in a row and clucked his tongue as if calling over a horse or a dog. I hate that I looked, I hate that the snap and the cluck caught my attention. Maybe I am a bitch just ready to bark when told and muzzled when I’m no longer of use for the night. He said don’t make me ask again and I responded that you didn’t ask the first time and he snickered and reached towards me. I didn't think he was going to hit me but I didn’t have the pleasure of finding out, for he caught Josiah’s hand like a hawk swipes a mouse from beneath the brush. 

He addressed me as the lady and snarled for the local boy to get lost. I pictured Josiah’s body rotting in the craggy sands past the westward 164. He would dump the shit boy on the way back to California with me on the back of his motorbike, hot summer sand slapping my soft cheeks as we drove into the inky night. 

My lower gut fluttered at the thought. 

I met him after my shift out front where I slipped through the shattered door and was immediately bathed in the red glow of the roadhouse sign. He pulled a pistol from his belt and tucked it into the back of his pants before taking his seat on the dilapidated bike. I sat behind him, wrapping my arms around his chest and pressing my tits against his back in a way that would make him know what I wanted without having to open my mouth and waste my words. Us women only get so many of those in our lives. Best not to squander them on something that can be said with a touch and a glance. 

We drove past town, south on the 95 deeper into the desert where I knew the next town over was Cal-Nev-Ari almost a dozen miles down the black road. I didn’t look into the mountains on either side of my vision and kept my eyes away from the sagebrush and ocotillo lining the highway. If I know anything, it’s that you don’t look for trouble and it won’t find you. 

You see, what I understand that he didn’t is that the desert doesn’t belong to those of us who even call it home. It’s been here far longer than us and will outlive us all. Now, I’m a God-fearing woman just like the rest, but even I know He doesn’t set his gaze upon this place, especially on a moonless night like that one. This is a place where the old gods can still breathe arid air and make a milk carton kid out of travelers like him. 

He slowed the bike and stopped on the side of the highway. He made some remark about how silent it was. I could hear the creatures of the night scatter and snoop, but I didn’t tell him that. The crickets chirped around our feet, but he didn’t seem to notice—too excited if ya ask me. We walked a ways away from the road, no light but the stars like burning suns in systems too far from our own to feel the heat. The desert got cold fast, and I could see his breath swirl in tendrils then dissipate into the night. We fucked in the dirt. 

And it was then that I realized that, besides the sounds of my own hot breath and his sporadic grunts, the inky night was truly silent. I’ve lived in Searchlight the entirety of my twenty-four years on God’s green Earth, experienced the silence of the Mojave, was immune to it even. I’d never heard silence like that though. It was like we’d been swallowed, spared by the teeth of some shadow too big to notice, whose gums were so dense that no critters’ call could get to us. Not even the crickets chirped. I got up quick, pulling up my jeans over the sweat, dirt, and cum that caked my ass cheeks. He said what is it? and I said you hear that? and he said no and I said exactly. 

It’s hard to describe what happened next, not because I couldn’t see but because I can’t pick up a word to place on the thing. The Mojave opened like a snakehole deeper than even Satan’s miners in Hell could dig. What came out from her mouth was a tongue of sound—like a whale’s screech if the whale was the size of the Sierras—and a thing that looked like me if I were not me. 

It crawled some type of way that was more like throwing a decaying limb ahead and scrambling after it. And the thing that was me if I wasn’t me looked like maybe it was made of hunger and rage rather than flesh and bone. I’d forgotten the man was next to me until I heard him scream and then gurgle and then snap and with the snap I felt warm and coppery liquid splash my skin like spit. 

I hadn’t realized till that moment that the hole in the ground was no longer a hole—maybe it had never been a hole in the first place. It was an eye. The pupil so black it reflected a starless space, eating any light that tried to touch it.

Where the eye started and where the dirt stopped, I couldn’t tell you. Oil and coal and dirt and smoke and burnt flesh and charred bone violated my nose. I threw up and then I ran. I ran to the bike, not even looking back to see if the man had survived cause I knew he didn’t. 

I don’t know how I escaped, or even if I escaped. I feel like the blood will never wash off me and that the smell will forever coat the back of my throat. 

The bike took me straight to California. I ain’t never going back to Searchlight, I know that for sure. There might be a me in Searchlight now. But it’d be the me that ain’t really me. 

ONLINE FORUM 

DISCUSSION PULLED FROM “R/TRUECRIME SOLVERS”

REPLIES TO @SOLOSHOTLAST

@LASTLOONEYTOONE03: Have you looked into the tunnel people in Las Vegas? There were people living in the sewer systems underneath Las Vegas and the tunnels spread like miles. Maybe some got to the town your sister went missing? She could have just gotten lost. 

@WACOBABYTX: Vegas was walled in ‘36—the year before Lauren went missing. The tunnels and sewer systems were most likely filled in to prevent spread of the Rot, like they did in Albuquerque. Plus there’s no evidence that Searchlight had any tunnels other than the abandoned mine shafts. 

@FIGDINOSAUR: Foul play from MINUS? Maybe an inside job?

@P1NKW0NT0N: Agreed. Some crazy cases have come out of there. 

MINING INDUSTRIAL NETWORKS OF THE UNITED STATES 

CASUALTY AND DAMAGE REPORT

MINUS LOCATION #0993 WHEATRIDGE, AZ

5.09.39 11:07 JIMENEZ 

CONTRACTORS IN MINE AT TIME OF OCCURRENCE: 67

CONTRACTOR CASUALTIES: 60

CONTRACTOR INJURIES: 07

The reopening of the underground gold mine in Wheatridge, Arizona was cleared with an assessment of 62% risk of implosion due to gas buildup in the soil’s pore space. New support beams and filler were put into place, however the new safety measures had not accounted for extreme heat, causing the Odiniem in the sediment to explode and bury the mine entirely. A fire caused by spontaneous pyrite oxidation caused excessive heat, sparking a high temperature fire, and consequently leading to multiple chain reaction explosions of the Odiniem ore.

Of the seven miners injured, six are in critical condition, suffering third and fourth degree burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, and sediment inhalation. Medical reports show that the three of the injured miners are showing signs of rapid-onset CWP, more commonly known as Black Lung. What is odd about this, is that these miners were not mining coal, which is what causes CWP. Instead, it looks as if the inside of the miners’ lungs were coated in at least a centimeter of dirt. 

The sixty casualties are not accounted for, as they are buried under 13,000 feet of rock and ash. There will be no retrieval attempts by MINUS, as all of the miners are independent contractors whose contracts state that in situations like these, no effort to excavate their bodies will be made on behalf of the company. Site #0993 will be abandoned.

EXCERPT FROM “OUR BREATHS ARE BRANDED: HOW ODINIEM LIT THE FIRES OF OUR CAPITALIST HELLSCAPE” BY NADIA WELLSMITH

NOVEL PUBLISHED 3.14.2041

Chapter 4: From Sea to Shining Sea

When the clouds of the Lypse consumed Earth’s smog-riddled skies in 2025, I was celebrating my last breaths of my thirties. Forty years old felt like a new start; a ripe fruit ready to be pierced by my now-wise teeth, tasted and savored but ready for the next bite. I had a joint celebration that day, the day the first bombs had buried their seeds into American soil. It was my birthday party, yes, but also the day that my eleventh novel had just won the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. 

Among the first attacked cities were D.C., Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Albuquerque, and Chicago. Living in Pasadena, my home was spared of the initial bombing, contained mainly to Downtown, Koreatown, and West Hollywood. Many people were in shock, thought the attack came from out of nowhere, but for those who had been paying any attention, they realized that this was the long overdue sowing of resistance in a land fertile with corruption. 

I was sixteen, living in Manhattan, when the Twin Towers fell. I was smoking a cigarette in the school bathroom with the girl who would, in later years, become my wife. Some thought that the country would grow “stronger” after the attacks, held out hope that the world-wide terror would cease in the States like it did in ‘01. But as we all know, it truly was just the beginning. A beginning that we are now, even after the war, in the end of. 

As discussed in Chapter Two, the Lypse was the phase of the world that should have ended it. Through eleven years of chemical and nuclear warfare, the world had seemingly forgotten how life was like before. That was until ARS-321 seeped out of the atmosphere and into the lungs of the people left alive. Then we realized that we could endure war, lawlessness, corruption, and starvation—but we couldn’t escape the radiation. ARS-321, colloquially referred to as the Rot, was a strain of Acute Radiation Syndrome that aggressively attacked bone marrow, causing people’s immune systems to fail within days. It was the first radiation poisoning to act like a virus, airborne in high-radiation zones as well as contagious through physical contact. 

To understand the world we live in now, we must understand the world we lived in before. The world where healthcare was a gift, where food and water was sparse, where the Lypse shoved the already-drowning middle class under the sea of poverty while the rich swam above their bloated bodies. 

Because the upper class thought they could live in their bunker cities, untouched and unphased, the shock that they couldn’t escape the Rot sent them into a frenzy. Suddenly the world they never cared about became their obsession. Every cent was thrown into research to prevent the Rot from invading their own homes. 

And in December of 2036 they found what they were looking for. Odiniem. Element-119. Seemingly a gift from God Himself, the heaviest of the elements on the periodic table settled itself deep within the womb of deserts across the map. 

2037 was the year of the reopenings in the States. The mines that served colonial settlers during the great Gold Rush were reopened. Shafts where gold nuggets once rested warm in mother Earth’s womb, then stolen from their slumber leaving the mines vacant and cruel reminders of how the land was colonized and raped, now overflowed with Element—119. 

The ore, when synthesized, had properties to it that absorbed radiation and converted it into electricity. To this day, Odiniem is a complete mystery—both in functionality and in origin. Some believe it is alien, some believe it was created during an atomic explosion—the theories range wildly. I don’t care how it got here, I only care that it did. Because I wish Odiniem had never been found. 

119 was manufactured into implants that are burrowed deep within either the femur or the humorous. I sat down with Doctor Florence Reem to discuss the manufacturing of the Odiniem implants, how they work, and how the leaders of our world made the most profit ever seen on a global scale.

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY CORONER REPORT

JANE DOE, DATE OF DISCOVERY 11.08.37

APPROXIMATE DATE OF DEATH 11.07.37

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE

COD: UNKNOWN

AGE: UNKNOWN

RACE: UNKNOWN, PRESUMABLY WHITE CAUCASIAN

HEIGHT: APPX. 5’7”

WEIGHT: UNKNOWN

IDENTIFYING MARKERS ON SKIN: N/A

IDENTIFYING MARKERS ON BONE: HEALED FRACTURE OF THE ULNA

REPORT BY DR JUNIPER REEDS: Body found on Mojave National Preserve in Summit Wash outside of Kelso, California. Victim was found in late stage decomp but larva indicates that she has been deceased for less than 48 hours. I could not confirm the cause of death, but my best guess would be affixation. The extent of trauma to the body is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in 52 years of being a medical professional. It appears that the victim was crushed by something with an even amount of force spread throughout the body. There is no area of skin that is not shredded by apparently microscopic points, like razor sharp sandpaper or shark skin, rendering the possibility of identifying skin color nearly impossible, though my best guess is fair or white. But the trauma done to the bones and skin all happened while the victim was still alive, in fact, the bruising of the muscle indicates that the trauma happened over a course of several days. I believe the cause of death was due to the 46.12KG of dirt that was packed into her esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, and colon. It had absorbed all of her stomach acid and remained dry inside of her body. To be frank, I cannot even offer a guess as to how the dirt got there or where it came from, however it does look like soil consistent with that found in the Mojave desert. I ran an Isotope test on the victim’s molars, and results claim she lived in the southern Nevada regions for some time as a child. 

>INSERT UPDATE FROM BAYA EL-FAOULY

r/LAUREN EL-FAOULY

11.04.47 09:01

Hi everyone. Firstly, I just wanted to thank everyone who has helped me piece together this information. While some of it could be directly related to the disappearance of Lauren, some of it helps me get a bigger picture of MINUS and Searchlight. My sister disappeared ten years ago today. I’ve been thinking about her all day. Thinking about what I remember about her. I was only eleven when she left, but even in those childhood years of mine I remember admiring her. She would tell me stories about her adventures in caves around the world, tell me about how it was so quiet at the center of the Earth that you could only hear your own heartbeat sometimes. She always said that she’d show me when I was older. 

Lollie is forever frozen in my mind as a smiling, loving sister with big dreams and an even bigger heart. I may never know what happened to her, but whatever it was, I hope that she is at peace. 

I’m gonna continue my search for Lollie. Thank you for being there with me.

ONLINE FORUM 

DISCUSSION PULLED FROM R/LAUREN EL-FAOULY

REPLIES TO @SOLOSHOTLAST

@TREASUREHUNTERSDV: Hey Baya. About four years ago one of our team members here at Treasure Hunters Death Valley found a broken digital video camera that we were able to salvage the audio from. It sounded like the tape belonged to someone on a mining expedition. Nobody says your sister’s name, and much of it is incomprehensible, but here it is anyway. Maybe you can identify if one of the voices is your sister. 

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION FROM FOUND RECORDING

DATE: UNKNOWN

LOCATION: UNKNOWN

VOICE #1: Are you seeing this? 

VOICE #2: What in hell is this? Doctor? You got any idea? 

VOICE #1: Doc? Doc what are you doing?

[RHYTHMIC CLANGING AUDIBLE]

VOICE #1: Inya, can you hear me?

VOICE #2: Doc stop! You’re gonna get your hand cau—

VOICE #1: Fuck! Fuck! Doc your hand!

[CLANGING CONTINUES. WET SQUISHING NOISES AUDIBLE]

[SHUFFLING AUDIBLE]

[LOW MOANING AUDIBLE]

VOICE #1: What’s that? Who is that?

VOICE #2: We need to leave, there’s something wrong with the Doc. I’ve never seen her like this. 

VOICE #1: But the entrance. The tunnel we came in from. It’s still not there. 

VOICE #2: We’re just lost, it’s okay. We’ll find our way out—

VOICE #1: I don’t get lost. 

VOICE #2: Well there’s a first time for everything. We need to go now. Her bones are on the ground L—

VOICE #1: I don’t get lost. 

[RUMBLING AUDIBLE]

[STATIC]

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION FROM FOUND RECORDING

DATE: UNKNOWN

LOCATION: UNKNOWN

VOICE #1: I knew these caves weren’t caves.

VOICE #3: They are caves. 

VOICE #1: They’re moving. Look at the walls. They’re moving like they’re breathing. Like they’re digesting. 

VOICE #2: The cave is just a cave. 

VOICE #1: It’s a tunnel. 

[STATIC]

[SCREAMING AUDIBLE]

VOICE #1: The corner is not a corner or it’s four corners.

VOICE #3: It’s the infinite corner. 

VOICE #2: Where are we? Which one of you is screaming?

VOICE #1: It’s not us. It’s the corner. 

VOICE #2: That doesn’t make sense.

VOICE #1: Neither does an infinite corner. 

[STATIC]

[GURGLING AUDIBLE]

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION FROM FOUND RECORDING

DATE: UNKNOWN

LOCATION: UNKNOWN

[RUNNING FOOTSTEPS AUDIBLE]

[LOW, WET RUMBLING AUDIBLE]

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION FROM FOUND RECORDING

DATE: UNKNOWN

LOCATION: UNKNOWN

VOICE #1: The tunnel opened into an eye black as a starless night. The teeth missed me and missed Doc but got the other one. Her name. I can’t remember. I can’t remember Doc’s name either. I… I can’t remember my name. The teeth bore into her like a sower bores seeds into the soil. And from the holes sprouted tendrils of rock, and they stuck themselves into the cavern around her. She looked like a fly caught in a web, but the web was weaved through her skin, the needles still wedged into her bones. The Doc is here in the eye with me. I tried to talk to her and I think she tried to answer but the dirt kept crawling down her throat. It’s so dark. Darker than it should ever be. And the tunnel keeps getting tighter and tighter until I can’t breathe and right when I think death will come to save me, the tunnel disappears and I’m being chased around the infinite corner again. I don’t know if I have limbs to run the next time the tunnel unchains me. 

[DISTANT SCREAMS AUDIBLE] 

VOICE #1: I wonder if they’re in the corner. If their corner is infinite. 

[GURGLING AUDIBLE]

VOICE #1: Doc?

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION FROM FOUND RECORDING

DATE: UNKNOWN

LOCATION: UNKNOWN

VOICE #1: I can breathe! I can breathe! Fuck, it’s cold. Where… where am I… 

[STAGGERING FOOTSTEPS AUDIBLE]

VOICE #1: I… I can’t see. I can’t see anything. Hello? Hello? Hello!!! Can anybody hear me? [GASP] Yes! Yes I’m here! I can hear you! [PAUSE] I… I can’t see… I can hear you. Yes. Yes. My name is—well, I don’t quite remember… Who are you? Baya? Baya is that you? What are you doing out here? Come—come to me! Come here, I can’t see— Baya—

[LOW MOANING AUDIBLE]

[DIRT SHUFFLING AUDIBLE]

VOICE #1: You’re… You are not Baya. What—what are you? Where are you? Where am I?

[SOBBING AUDIBLE]

VOICE #1: Please! Help! Somebody help me—

[COUGHING AND CHOKING AUDIBLE]

VOICE #1: MFFFFFHELP HELMMMFFFFFF

[GURGLING AUDIBLE]

[SILENCE]

[CRICKETS BEGIN CHIRPING]