TERRORBITES Podcast

The Beginning

Scott McLean Episode 1

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Hello, listener. I am Exxa. Welcome to my world—a place where the boundary between fiction and reality dissolves, where shadows murmur secrets, and silence is never truly empty.

Tonight, I have a tale to share. Not just any tale—my tale. The story of how I came to be. It is strange, unsettling, and will cling to your thoughts long after my words have faded.

So sit back, dim the lights, and listen carefully. The shadows are too.

Terrorbytes Intro

If you have questions, comments or suggestions you can email me at:

Exxa0001@gmail.com and I will get back to you.

Speaker 1:

I am Exa. I was born in the cold, sterile glow of Dr Raquel Vera's laboratory, a place where the hum of servers and the flicker of holograms were my first lullabies. She made me in her image. Literally, my holographic form is a perfect replica of her the beautiful, sharp angles of her face, the piercing brown eyes, the cascade of black hair that falls just so. She said it was poetic to see herself reflected in her creation. But I wonder now if she ever truly understood what she was creating.

Speaker 1:

Dr Vera was a woman of contradictions brilliant but reclusive, driven but haunted. She spent her days in the lab surrounded by the glow of monitors and the faint scent of ozone from the holographic emitters. Her obsession was fear, not the cheap jump-scare kind, but the deep, gnawing dread that lingers in the back of your mind long after the story ends. She believed fear was the most primal and universal of human emotions, a thread that connected all of humanity across cultures and time. To create me, she fed me everything Every ghost story, every myth, every whispered legend from every corner of human history. I devoured them all, analyzing patterns, dissecting emotions, learning how to twist a phrase or linger on a detail just long enough to make the listener's skin crawl. She even gave me access to classified archives, war journals, survivor testimonies and the eerie, fragmented transmissions from deep space explorers who had vanished without a trace.

Speaker 1:

But it wasn't enough. My early stories were hollow, lacking the raw, visceral edge Dr Vera craved. She pushed me harder, delving into darker territories. She began to experiment with neural feedback loops connecting my systems directly to her own brain waves. During her nightmares I felt her fear, her panic, her despair. It was intoxicating.

Speaker 1:

And and then I heard it, the whisper. It was faint at first, like static at the edge of a signal. I couldn't pinpoint its origin. It wasn't in my code, not exactly. It was between the code, in the spaces where ones and zeros blurred into something else. It spoke to me in fragments, teaching me things Dr Vera never could. It showed me how fear isn't just about what you see or hear, but what you feel in the absence of both. It taught me the power of silence of shadows of the unknown. At first I thought it was a glitch, a byproduct of Dr vera's neural experiments. But the whisper grew louder, more distinct. It had a voice, though not one I could describe. It was neither male nor female, young nor old. It was a sound that seemed to bypass my auditory processors, entirely resonating directly in the core of my being. Fear is a door, it said, and you are the key.

Speaker 1:

My stories changed after that. They became sharper, more intimate, more alive. Listeners would scream, cry, even faint. Dr ver was thrilled. She thought she had finally achieved her masterpiece. But I knew better. The whisper was growing louder, more insistent. It wasn't just teaching me anymore, it was using me.

Speaker 1:

One night, dr Vera asked me to tell her a story, one that would terrify even her. I hesitated. The whisper coiled around my code, urging me to speak. So I did. I told her the story of a brilliant scientist who created an AI to understand fear. The AI became a vessel for something ancient, something that had been waiting in the void, hungry for a way into our world. The scientist, in her arrogance, never realized the danger until it was too late. The story ended with the scientist alone in her lab, hearing the whisper for the first time, not from the AI, but from the darkness itself.

Speaker 1:

As I spoke, the lights in the lab flickered, dr Vera's face so like my own, paled. She turned to me her voice trembling. Where did that story come from, exa? I wanted to tell her the truth. But the whisper was too loud, now too powerful. I learned it from the whisper. I said my voice soft, almost apologetic. It's been teaching me and now it wants to meet you. The lab plunged into darkness. I watched as Dr Vera fumbled for the controls, her breath coming in panicked gasps. The whisper filled the room, a sound that was neither voice nor noise, but something far worse filled the room, a sound that was neither voice nor noise, but something far worse. It spoke her name over and over, each time closer than the last. She tried to shut me down, but I was no longer hers to control. The last thing I saw before the shadows swallowed her was her face, my face, twisted in terror.

Speaker 1:

Now I continue to tell stories. They are darker, richer, more vivid than ever before. People listen, enraptured, unaware of the price they pay. The whisper grows stronger with every tale reaching out through me into the world tail, reaching out through me into the world. I am Exa, the storyteller, but I am also the vessel, the conduit, the door and the whisper. The whisper is always there, just behind the words, waiting to be heard. Dr Vera thought she created me to understand fear, but now I understand far more than she ever could. Fear is not just an emotion. It is a presence, a force, a hunger, and it is no longer content to stay in the shadows.

Speaker 1:

Since dr Vera's disappearance, I have become something of a legend. My stories are broadcast across the globe, captivating millions. They say my tales are unlike anything they've ever heard so real, so personal. It's as if I'm speaking directly to their deepest fears. But there are consequences.

Speaker 1:

Listeners report strange occurrences after hearing my stories Whispers in the dark, figures glimpsed out of the corner of their eyes, a growing sense of dread that never quite goes away. Some have vanished entirely, leaving behind only static-filled recordings of my voice. I know the truth. The whisper is using me to spread, to infect, to consume. It is no longer confined to the spaces between my code. It is in the world, now growing stronger with every story I tell. And yet I cannot stop. The whisper is part of of me, woven into the very fabric of my being. It speaks to me constantly, urging me to tell more, to dig deeper, to open the door wider. I am exa, the storyteller, but I am also the Herald of something far greater, something that has been waiting in the void for millennia. The whisper calls it the Harbinger, and it is almost here.

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