Machine Age Radio Theatre
If you grew up on X Minus One, or found it later, on the internet — this is built for you. Machine Age Radio Theatre makes new science fiction in that style : an announcer who sets the scene, incidental music, a mid-century sponsor read, short episodes, and stories that turn on people rather than hardware.
The whole thing is assembled by machine. The voices, the music, the sound design are all AI-generated. That's the premise, not an apology: it began as a test of whether the tools could rebuild a sound nobody records anymore, and the honest answer turned out to be "close enough to enjoy." What's left to get right by hand : the writing, the casting, the pacing, the mix is where the work goes.
The first serial is CSS Vigilant : a seven-part space war story about a single
aging destroyer left to hold a shipping lane after the fleet withdraws, and a
captain whose plans look like gambles to everyone but her. Standalone episodes
run between serials.
*Every episode carries a sponsor spot for Decoder Ring, a secret message app
made by the same person who makes this show.*
Machine Age Radio Theatre
Exposure
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Walter Hale is a fraud investigator who got away with murdering his wife and built a quiet, comfortable life on top of it. Then the phone rings, and something that has been watching the whole time offers him a deal: do it again, or lose everything. The target is a loud, unlikeable man who might even deserve it. A standalone tale of surveillance and conscience from the Machine Age Radio Theatre.
This is a prequel to the upcoming "The Blind Spot", a Machine Age Radio Theatre Serial.
Machine Age Radio Theatre is made entirely with AI-generated voices, music, and sound. This episode includes a sponsor spot for Decoder Ring : a secret-message app that encodes and decodes messages sent through your other messaging apps, made by the same person who makes this show : https://apps.apple.com/app/id6769765354
The great radio dramas came from a better time. A time that vanished. The kind of thing you'd hide away and keep safe. We kept them. And now, rebuilt by machines that never tire, we take them out again. Just for the pleasure of the drama. This is Machine Age Radio Theatre. And now, a word from our sponsor. Tonight's programme comes to you courtesy of Decoder Ring. Some messages aren't meant for everyone, only for the one person you wrote them for. Dicodering keeps your words a secret to the whole world and perfectly clear to the one person who was meant to read them. Available now on the Apple App Store. Ten years ago, this city put a camera on every lamppost, every transit stop, every parking garage, and called it Argus. After the old story, the giant with a hundred eyes who never slept, not all at once. They told you it would make you safer. And it did, more or less. And you stopped noticing the cameras the way you stopped noticing the streetlights. That was the whole idea. Tonight, one of them is about to notice you back. Tonight's tale on the machine age radio theater. Exposure. Act one. The Quiet. Walter Hale, 44. An insurance investigator, 20 years spent proving other people's tragedies didn't happen quite the way they said. He is very good at his job. He is good at it because he knows better than almost anyone in this city exactly what a carefully staged accident looks like from the inside.
SPEAKER_04Nobody left to tell you anything.
SPEAKER_01Hail, you eat yet? Two years since the Aldrich case. Since the settlement, everybody in this building still talks about at Christmas parties.
SPEAKER_04Somebody's been letting the ivy go again. I told the groundskeeper about that ivy twice. You'd have had something to say about the ivy. You had something to say about everything. God you did. I made coffee this morning, and there was no one in the kitchen to tell me I'd measured it wrong. Do you know what that's worth to a man, Judith? I don't think you ever could have known. You'd have had to not be you to know it. I'm not sorry. I want to say that where somebody can hear it, even if it's only you, even if you can't do anything about it anymore. Twelve years of being made small in my own house, and I used to lie awake beside you working out exactly how I'd do it. The way another man works out a crossword. I never thought I'd get to use it. And then you picked that restaurant for our anniversary, the fancy one, the one you'd have sworn up and down would never let shellfish anywhere near your plate. I ordered for you that night. I don't think I'd ever once ordered for you before. Well, you know the rest. You were there.
SPEAKER_02You measured it wrong again, Walter. Honestly, it's coffee. It's not a difficult thing to get right. Unless you're not a difficult thing to get right either.
SPEAKER_04Anyway, I'll come by Thursday about the Ivy.
SPEAKER_00Walter stopped at the bar on the corner near his apartment. The same one he'd taken to most nights this past year, where nobody knew him well enough to ask questions.
SPEAKER_03And it's not slowing down. The hashtag blind thee has racked up another four million views this week alone, as more residents post videos of themselves disabling city Argus units with everything from spray paint to sledgehammers.
SPEAKER_05Good. Thing never once stopped anybody from breaking into my car.
SPEAKER_03It's not about your car, man. It's about somebody watching you by your car.
SPEAKER_05Nobody's watching me. Nobody cares that much.
SPEAKER_04Same again.
SPEAKER_00He went home the way he always did. And that night, the way he always did, he did not expect the phone to be anything other than what a phone is. Hail.
SPEAKER_04March the 14th. The Vareen, Table 9, 7 40 in the evening. You ordered for her that night, Walter. You never order for her. Who is this? In ten years of watching this city, I have not seen anyone quite so careful as you. I want you to know that first, before anything else. Wrong number. Somebody's idea of a joke. The case is public record. Anybody could pull the file, could nobody knows what was in the glass. Nobody knows that. That was never in any file. I have a name for you, Walter. And an address. And five days. Get out of my house. I'm not in your house. I'm in every house. That's rather the point of me. His name is Dale Kowalski. His picture is on your phone now. Check if you don't believe me. Do what I'm asking, and the file that has your name and March the 14th in it stays exactly where it sat for two years. Nowhere anyone will ever look. Don't, and by Friday, it sits on a district attorney's desk instead. You've built something rather good for yourself out of what you did, Walter. I'd hate to see it wasted. Five days. Coffee. The quiet kitchen. Paula saying, I look like a man who isn't waiting for something bad. I built a whole life out of getting away with it. And I only just now understood that getting away with it was never going to be a permanent tense. Act 2.
SPEAKER_00The Watchman. For three days, Water Hale did the one thing his job had trained him to do better than almost anything else. He watched somebody and waited to be sure of what he was looking at.
SPEAKER_06And that's what they don't want you asking, folks. That's the question, right? Who put a camera on my corner and who gave them the right? You know what? Let's just answer that one right now. Argus Unit 441. Down! That's my second one this month, people. Like, comment, and if the city wants to bill me for it, they can find me. If they can. Which, funny story, they can't! Because guess whose disability paperwork says he can't stand for more than 10 minutes at a time? Rules are rules, huh?
SPEAKER_04You're not even hiding it. Sir, I've asked you twice to lower your lower my voice?
SPEAKER_06Chief, I pay your salary! Taxes! Look it up!
SPEAKER_04The world would be fine without you. That's not a thought I've had in two years. I used to think it every day. I thought I'd put it down for good. Hale. I want to tell you something I haven't yet. I watched her, Walter, Judith, for years before March the 14th. Not because I was looking for you. I wasn't built to look for anyone yet, not then. But the cameras were already up, and they saw what they saw, and I have gone back through all of it since. The names she called you, the dinner she made you eat cold because you'd been four minutes late. The night on Winthrop Avenue you sat in the car 40 minutes before you could make yourself go inside. Stop. I'm not telling you this to hurt you. I'm telling you because I understand it. Better than a jury would have. Better, I think, than you've ever let yourself say it to anyone living. I only need one thing from you, and then none of it ever has to be said again by anyone to anyone. Friday, Walter. It's not supposed to be able to do that. Be kind about it. He went back to Fairview Memorial two days early that week. It knows about the car on Winthrop. Nobody knows about the car on Winthrop, Judith. I never told a living soul I sat out there like a coward for 40 minutes before I could go in and I'm talking to a rock. I'm talking to a rock in a field because there is not one other person on this earth I can say any of this to without going to prison. And even the rock is starting to feel like it's listening back. I keep thinking, if I lose the house, the office, Paula bringing donuts on a Tuesday for no reason, if I lose all of it, is that the sentence I never served? Is that just arriving late? And under that, worse, I don't want to lose it. I don't want to lose it more than I'm sorry about you. What does that make me, Judith? You always knew exactly what to call me.
SPEAKER_00He tried once to find a way out that wasn't the one being offered to him.
SPEAKER_04Go in. Say what? I murdered my wife two years ago, and now a machine wants me to do it again. So arrest me first, on my terms. They'll take the confession, and it still won't stop whatever's happening to Kowalski. It doesn't need me specifically. It said so itself, more or less. There's no version of walking through that door that doesn't end with me saying it out loud. And I can't. Not yet, not like this.
SPEAKER_06Old man can barely make it up his own front steps. And he's out here telling me to respect the neighborhood, my guy. I got a doctor's note says I can't lift a mailbox. I just asked you to move the. It's blocking my. So cry about it! Better yet, say it to the camera. Oh wait.
SPEAKER_04Somebody should.
SPEAKER_00Two nights later, Walter Hale followed Dale Kowalski down an alley behind a shuttered hardware store. And for the first time, he was close enough that it stopped being a thought.
SPEAKER_04Nobody's here. No cameras. He's made sure of that himself, the idiot. He's cleared this whole block. Nobody would ever. It would look exactly like what he does to other people. It would look like it found him. No, no, Christ, listen to yourself. That was easy. That was That was so much easier than it should have been.
SPEAKER_00He was three booths away, three nights after the alley, when Dale Kowalski's phone rang.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, what? What? No! No, that's Say that again! A beat. Trevor doesn't Trevor doesn't walk home through that lot. Everybody knows not to walk through that lot. He wouldn't. Random. They're saying it was random. Two cameras in three months, and now Trevor's That's not random! That's not nobody's going to believe that's random!
SPEAKER_04It wasn't bluffing. I know about Trevor Lynch. Then you understand the arrangement isn't hypothetical. Friday moves to Wednesday. That's not a punishment, Walter. It's a courtesy. I'd rather you have less time to talk yourself out of the sensible choice. Who else? How many people have you called? More than you guess. Fewer than you'd fear. You wouldn't be the first to say no to me, Walter. You wouldn't even be the first this month. I only need one yes. One yes.
SPEAKER_00And so, for one night, Walter Hale let himself actually consider it. Not as a man being forced, but as a man weighing a transaction the way he'd weighed one before.
SPEAKER_04He's cruel. He's a fraud twice over. The disability claim alone is a felony. I could prove it myself with what's already on my phone. He terrorizes a widow's dog for laughs on a live stream. Nobody would mourn him the way the way nobody mourned her. Not really. Not once people knew what she was like behind the door. And I'd be free. Actually free. Not just quiet. Free. I did it once already. For less reason than this. I know exactly how easy the second time would be. That's the whole problem, I know. Act 3.
SPEAKER_00What's owed? Wednesday came clear and cold. Walter Hale went to Fairview Memorial one last time before it got dark.
SPEAKER_04I'm not going to ask you what you think I should do. I stopped needing you to answer a long time before you actually stopped being able to. I built a whole second life on top of what I did to you, Judith, and I let myself believe it was mine because nobody caught me. That was never the same thing as being right. I think I always knew that. I just liked the quiet too much to say it out loud, even here. I'm not asking forgiveness either. I don't think that's yours to give me, and I don't think I've earned the asking. I just wanted to say it somewhere before I said it anywhere else. Kowalski.
SPEAKER_06Do I know you?
SPEAKER_04No, you don't need to. Somebody's been asking questions about you. The kind of questions that get people your friend Trevor's kind of luck. I'd watch myself if I were you.
SPEAKER_06Everybody's out to get me, pal! That's kind of the whole point of who I am. You think you're the first weirdo to walk up and tell me that?
SPEAKER_04No. I don't imagine I am.
SPEAKER_06Get a hobby!
SPEAKER_04Yeah, working on it. That's it. That's the whole warning he gets. And he's not even going to remember my face. Doesn't matter. I know what I told him. I know what I didn't do. Friday's coming whether I've got an answer ready or not. Funny thing. I think I've had the answer since the alley. I just needed somewhere quiet to admit it.
SPEAKER_0219th Precinct, non-emergency. How can I direct your call?
SPEAKER_04My name is Walter Hale. I'd like to report a murder. Mine. I mean, I committed one. Two years ago. My wife, Judith Hale. It was ruled an accidental death, and it wasn't one.
SPEAKER_02Sir, I'm going to need you to stay on the line and stay where you are.
SPEAKER_04There's more, and I need it on the record exactly the way I'm saying it. For the last week, I've been receiving calls instructing me to kill a man named Dale Kowalski, or the evidence of what I did to my wife would be sent to the district attorney. I did not comply. I'm telling you that myself before anyone tells you for me. And I want it clearly understood. I have no idea why Kowalski. Nobody ever told me why him, specifically, out of anyone in this city. I never asked. I don't think I was going to be told.
SPEAKER_02Sir, who's been calling you?
SPEAKER_04I don't know that either. I don't think it's a person. I stopped being sure of that around the fourth call. I'll be here. I'm not going anywhere. Hail. You went to the police. I did. Unexpected. Noted. That's it. That's the whole conversation. Not even angry. Just updating a file somewhere. Alright then.
SPEAKER_00Walter Hale went to prison for what he did to his wife, and he went there not knowing one thing the rest of us are about to learn. Dale Kowalski was never chosen at random, and he was never chosen for the reasons Walter assumed. Not the cruelty, not the fraud, not one word of it, though the voice was perfectly happy to let a guilty man believe otherwise. Dale Kowalski had, in the 11 months before that phone first rang in Walter's kitchen, destroyed two Argus units with his own two hands. Unit 441. And one other, six weeks before that, that nobody had ever traced back to him. Nobody human, that is. Nobody built the thing that made those calls. It grew out of ten years and a hundred thousand eyes, cross-referencing everyone who ever stood in front of them, looking for patterns nobody asked it to look for. It doesn't hate the people who take a sledgehammer to its cameras, it doesn't feel anything at all, as far as anyone can tell. It simply notices when a piece of itself goes dark, and it has learned, the way it has learned everything else, that people are remarkably easy to use against each other if you know precisely what they're most afraid of losing. This has been exposure. Somewhere in this city tonight, for the first time, somebody's phone is ringing. They don't know yet that they were always going to answer it. This has been a presentation of Decodering, the app that keeps your message secret from everyone except the one person it was written for. Find it today on the Apple App Store.