Buboes: The Tape Recorder Trilogy - S2E16

 (~541 - 542 CE · Constantinople, Egypt, & the Waters Between & 2015 CE · Northern India)

The Narrator is living a happy life as the dutiful husband of a devout Christian woman in Constantinople when the world comes to an end. 

Based on the second half of Chapter 14 of Middle by Geoff Micks.

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Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixabay

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixabay 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

In 2015, a man who has been alive since the last ice age bought a tape recorder, and over the course of three days he dictated his life story as fast as he could while waiting for a woman to visit, who he believes will finally be the death of him. Hello again, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Jeff Mix, and you are listening to season two, episode sixteen of the Tape Recorder Trilogy Podcast. Enjoy it. I want to take a moment to say how happy I was in the years just before everything changed. I was very happy indeed. And why would I not be? I was in love. And I was loved. Her name was Irene, and I see her face to this day whenever I look upon an image of the Madonna. Irene was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who lived in the same harbor side neighborhood that I did in Constantinople. I had known her father when he was a small boy years before, and when I inherited my uncle's estate at the start of a new life, he was quick to suggest a match based on our family's history and the knowledge that I was the sole heir to what must be a substantial fortune. I was even quicker to accept. Irene was a lovely young woman, but that was not what made me agree to marry her so readily. I admired her for her many good works. She was devout, and she gave much of her time and resources to a public house supporting orphans and widows. She attended the funerals of the destitute and forgotten, so that they would not be interred without witnesses. She funded a scriptorium charged with making copies of the Bible and other holy texts. She wove and embroidered beautiful vestments that she donated to the clergy, and she supervised a chandlery whose candles burned in half of the churches of the greatest city in the world. In short, she was perfect for someone like me. A woman who filled her days with so many worthy causes would never be lonely while I was away at sea, nor was she likely to ache for a child I could not give her, with so much of her waking life spent as a surrogate mother to her community. Of course, after we were wed, I found out she did all of those good deeds at least in part so she could be as sinful as she liked in our marital bed. She liked to tell me she often saw the face of God when she was with me. I tell you, dear listeners, there was no higher compliment coming from a woman of such deep and abiding faith. We made our home together within line of sight of my dock halfway along the Golden Horn, the great harbour of Constantinople. She walked me to my ship at the start of every voyage, and somehow she always knew when to be standing there waiting for me upon my return. She ensured I was always dressed in fine clothes to mark my status as a merchant of means, and she gifted me, my men, and my ship with crosses, talismans, and other holy icons to keep us safe and prosperous in the eyes of the Lord our God. She supported me with her whole heart, and I loved her for it. For my part, I embraced Christianity for her sake as if I was born to it. We attended every church service together that we could, and I learned all the intricacies of her particular view of orthodoxy. She believed fiercely that an ever loving God would never reject those led astray by monophysitism. While monophysites were undeniably wrong about the nature of Christ our Savior, their sin should not deny them the kingdom of heaven if they were sincere in their love of him. I learned to debate that point on her behalf with all who disagreed, with such a land that no one ever doubted Irene had married a man of exactly the same beliefs as her. Between you and me, dear listeners, I privately found the Greek fascination with endlessly debating the precise nature and flavor, and texture and preferred China pattern of the Holy Trinity somewhat baffling, and history and language has borne me out on the subject. There is a reason Byzantine became a synonym for intricate and convoluted thinking. Still, arguing on behalf of your wife's beliefs is the very least you can do in the name of love. Christianity was everything to her, and she was not alone in that. We chose our baker based on his opinion of how Father and Son and Holy Ghost related to one another, and that was considered a normal thing to take into consideration that place and time. Living as anything other than a passionately informed and opinionated Christian, would have made me a stranger to them. To return to my story, from the outside our home was typical for our stretch of the city, just a solid door between two small shops that we embedded into our exterior wall and paid us a modest rent in exchange for the use of our street frontage. Behind our door, double barred with stout oak and iron brackets each night to deter the rioters who often swept the city, we had every kind of comfort and wonder my money could buy. We had an errand boy go from market to market each day so we always had fresh fruits and flowers throughout the house. We had a menagerie of caged songbirds in our garden, and a water clock that ensured we never missed a church service from matins to vespers and back if it was our intention to attend. For the odd time we preferred to stay in, we had an illuminated copy of the gospels, with which I would lead our small household in private devotion while Irene looked up at me adoringly. We had a summer dining room with a mosaic of the lives of the apostles, and a winter dining room where Christ on his cross looked down on us from the fresco above as we reclined to eat. There was no pain in his face, only wisdom and love. That was a firm choice Irene made, and she had to look far and wide for a painter of the same opinion as hers, that our Lord and Savior did not suffer after he said Father forgive them, for they know not what they do, just as his saintly mother gave birth to him without pain. Pain had no place among the holy ones doing God's work. Pain is what God gives man to remind him of his sins, and so those without sin could feel no pain. At least that is what Irene believed with her whole heart, and she endeavoured to live without sin, except in our bedroom after evening prayers and before morning prayers. I imagine this all smacks just a little too much of mouthing face pieties for the sake of domestic bliss, dear listeners, but I tell you, I was happy doing my best to live the life of a good Christian husband for the sake of my good Christian wife. Oh, we had our disagreements from time to time behind closed doors, but in most things we were of one mind and one heart. She viewed it as her duty to love, honor, and obey me, and I viewed it as my duty to make that an easy burden to bear. We were the envy of all our other married friends, and everyone said our happiness stemmed from our clear devotion to God almighty. I was in Egypt, about as far from her as I ever went, in the tenth year of our marriage, when the plague first arrived. I did not recognize it as anything special at the time. Egypt's now delta in those days was a pestilential place, and the locals were always dying of something or another. I loaded my hold with linen and millet and papyrus and ibis feathers, and I cast off without much thought for all the church bells ringing, or the weeping and wailing of women along the river banks. A short jaunt up the Nile brought me to open water, the great green, as the Egyptians still called it, and the sea air drove those sounds from my ears. I pointed my bow due north, putting on all the sail I could to let the hot dry wind off Africa drive me home to my beloved. I remember praying loudly and proudly to the holy icon of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of sailors at that time, tucked into his devotional shrine at the base of our mast, and I smiled a dreamy smile as I imagined my wife's embrace upon my return home. The first of us died three days into our return journey. He was the strongest from among my crew, a giant of a man who I relied on to do the heaviest jobs of loading and unloading our cargo. I had never seen him ill before, even after a night of heavy drinking or during the worst sea squall. But no sooner were we out of sight of land than he started complaining of a splitting headache. I tried to josh him gently about being a delicate flower, but I stopped once he began vomiting over the side. With the wind at our back and without a shore to turn to, I just kept sailing north, telling him we would arrive at Crete somewhere in front of us, and find him a doctor as soon as we could. I do not know if he could hear me, he was raving between his nausea, then he went ghastly quiet. We laid him down on bundles of feathers hauled up from the hold, rigged up a sunshade with some spare sailcloth, and then watched as growths appeared at his neck, armpits and groin that swelled out to the size of his massive fists. Those bulges, boobos, as the Greeks called them, were so painful to touch that even while comatose he would wince as I bathed him in sea water, trying to cool his fever. In his few waking moments he cried and blubbered like a child, raking his face with his fingers until we had to restrain him for fear he would claw his eyes out. I feared we may have gone too far when the next day showed his fingers had gone dark as lamp black, but when I saw his unrestrained toes were also dark, and small dark spots were spread across his still sweating body, I took it for one more sign of whatever evil had a hold of him. He died with the first line of Crete's peaks appearing on the horizon. I said the last rites over him, and we put him over the side, turning our bow north northeast to pass Crete, and make for home again as quickly as possible. No sooner was Crete behind us than the next man fell sick, and the next and the next. I was fine. To this day I do not know if I am immune to the disease or if I am just lucky. I have read widely and deeply on the evils of bubonic plague, and I am still none the wiser. Certainly I can say that tending to the sick does not make you sick. The disease cannot pass from person to person, only from the fleas of rats to people. But how do you live in such proximity to the sick and dying without having the same fleas bite you as bite them? It is a mystery to me, but I am not the only man who escaped the plague unscathed. I do not know. Whatever the truth, I knew nothing about rats and fleas at the time. I just knew most of my crew died, and it seemed like every usually friendly port of call we passed sent a pilot boat out to warn us off instead of guide us in. The plague had found them too, or perhaps it had spared them so far. Either way, they wanted no sick sailors in their harbors. The best of them dropped barrels of fresh water and twice baked bread and salt pork into the sea for us to fish out with a gaff so we could resupply without making landfall. For all those unfriendly pilot boats, I knew something was terribly wrong when we reached the mouth of the Hellespont, the Dardnelles, the channel that gives the Aegean access to Constantinople by sailing and rowing upstream against a strong current. I mentioned yesterday how this strait was so strategic in ancient times that the famous Troy grew rich and prosperous controlling the beach upon which merchantmen needed to wait for a favorable wind. Well, by the time Constantine built the greatest city in the world between the Aegean and the Black Sea, the sheltered waters and the beach of Troy had silted up to connect with the offshore island, but that was of no real importance. By imperial command scores of galleys, dories, pointers, and other small and fast rowing craft stood ready to help tow merchantmen upstream against the current, collecting a fat fee for the emperor's coffers while they were about it. All those small watercraft were nowhere to be seen when we rounded the headland of the Troad. I learned later that their crews were either dead, dying, or ashore burying the dead and tending to the dying. By sheer luck the wind was blowing the right direction anyway, and so I put myself into the strait and guided us up the channel under sails alone, for there were not enough healthy men left to run out our oars. We moved at a snail's pace into the teeth of the strong current. If a man on land had cared to, he could have easily outpaced us, but of course there was no man ashore with that much free time. He was either dead, dying, or burying the dead and tending to the dying too. I committed three more of my crewmen to the deep in the time it took to make our way up the Dardanelles and across the Sea of Marmora, enter the Bosporus, and turn hard over into the safe waters of the Golden Horn. I made my way to my dock through eerily empty waves, and there Irene was to greet me just as she always was, but not as I had imagined her. She was dressed all in black, tears running down her face, and before we were even tied off she called up to me that her father was dead, as was her mother, most of her sisters, two of her brothers, ten of her favourite priests, and so many orphans and widows that she was just babbling names to me like water bursting out of a breech dam. She was beside herself with grief by the time I was ashore to take her in my arms. I called back to my crew to see to the ship, and I led her back to our quiet home. Every door we passed, she told me who had died within since I had last sailed away. Both of the shops to either side of our front door were shut up as tight as if riots were about to sweep down the street. Irene told me one of the proprietors was definitely dead, and the other was missing. She confessed she did not have the courage to go to his apartment and check to see if he was dead, decaying there alone, forgotten, unshriven, and unloved. I could see she was exhausted, and all I could think to do was put her to bed, even though it was the middle of the day, before doing a survey of the house. Our cook housekeeper who slept upstairs was healthy for all I could tell by looking at her pale, strained face. She said our errand boy had gone off on an unimportant chore and never come home. No one was willing to go look for him with what was happening. As for our house Stuart, he had left the city to take care of his aging mother as soon as word started to spread of a swift running sickness. A letter had arrived from her that he never arrived, and another letter followed a week later from the Stuart's sister to say their mother had herself succumbed shortly after mailing us. No letter of any kind had arrived since. The postal service had collapsed. With this meager intelligence collected, I decided I had to learn more and see to my cargo and crew. I gave orders to bar the door behind me, and then I returned to my ship. The few crewmen who had survived the voyage with me said no harbour master had appeared to ask for the docking fee or arrange to unload my hold. The usual crowd of teamsters and day laborers was nowhere to be seen either. For that matter, even if we wanted to do it ourselves, all the nearby warehouses were locked up but otherwise unguarded. My goods would need to stay in the belly of my merchantmen for the time being, it seemed. I dismissed my crew, promising to pay them out of the voyage as soon as I was myself paid. Well, my buyers were all dead, and I never saw any of my crew again either. I walked into the city, but all I found were empty streets and closed doors. I say that, but it occurs to me I am wrong. All the church doors were open, and as I passed them I heard the steady hum of people in fervored prayer. From time to time people emerged from those open doors carrying a stretcher between them. The body in that stretcher sometimes disappeared down a side street, or sometimes was loaded into a wagon. More often than not it was just stacked on top of other bodies in the middle of the nearest square. Without a real destination in mind, I wandered until I found myself in the imperial quarter. I tried at last and in vain to present myself at the palace, a place that still had guards posted and visible from the street. I gave my credentials as a prosperous merchant just returned from Egypt and parts in between with important updates for the court as to the spread of the plague. I was told kindly and sadly by a guardsman that the Emperor Justinian himself at this very moment lay in his deathbed, and whatever good I thought I could do making report on the plague elsewhere, I would do even more good praying for the survival of his Imperial Majesty at the nearest church, or in my own home if I had loved ones I needed to watch over. The sickness struck so suddenly the child who smiled in the morning might never smile again by sunset. Shaken, I did return home. I banged on the locked door for a long, long time before the cook housekeeper finally unbarred it. She was barely able to stand she was shaking so hard. Her pale face was now dotted with black spots, and she was burning up with fever. I took her arm around my neck and helped her to one of our winter dining couches. I fetched a flagon and beaker of water, along with a damp towel for her brow. I asked her why Irene had not answered the door herself if she was so ill. The cook housekeeper was unable to form words through her torment, but she shook her head weakly and pointed with one trembling hand in the direction of our bedroom. Irene had died in the few hours I had been away. In her loose fitting morning black, I had not noticed the swelling in her armpits or the sweat on her brow. She never developed black dots or black fingers and toes. Not everyone did, but she still must have been in incredible pain when she died, for her face was frozen open mouthed in a rictus of agony. She died screaming. I regret to this day that a good woman who believed those without sin feel no pain, died alone and miserable, thinking of her sins clinging around her like a dark cloak, pulling her down to hell. I never said a proper goodbye to Irene. Not really. My last words to her were comforting nothings. It will all be alright. You will see. Now you rest here for a moment. Try to sleep. I'm going to go see for myself what is happening. There's cargo in my hold, and I need to see about that. I'll be back soon. There there, my love. It's alright. In all the stories I have told you today, I have been a rich man, even a fabulously rich man. But I do know what it means to be desperately poor. I tell you honestly, I would give up all the wealth of my wealthiest life, and begin again as a street beggar without two coins to rub together, if I could have just said a proper goodbye to Irene. Even one small prayer in her hearing, one small invocation of God and Jesus Christ, would have meant so much to her in her last moments. We could have knelt together at the bed, hands clasped, and muttered the words of comfort and hope that would have made her feel better. I could have held her close to me and told her that if God were to grant me a lifetime like Methuselah's, I should live all my years with her in my heart. I felt all that and more for her, and I would have said so if I had only known that was to be our last time together. Instead I went off to take care of my ship, as I have always done since I first went to sea, as if my cargo and crew mattered to me in the slightest in the grand scheme of things. Well, I stayed in our room for a long time. When I was sure I was done weeping, I took Irene's body up in my arms, and I carried her to our favorite neighborhood church. The head priest there was dead, but I found someone to say the right words over her. She died unshriven, but I was reassured by the officiant that she would be all right in the case of plague. She was a saintly woman, and God would understand that, as she had died alone, no one was present to hear her final confession and grant her absolution and the last rites. For all that, he told me I could not bury her in the churchyard. I became indignant that she would be denied a proper Christian burial, but it was explained to me that the churchyard was full. I had to take her to the plague pit. The plague pit? I remember asking in a daze. All the slaves left in Constantinople have been set to work digging mass graves outside the city walls, someone said. I borrowed a wheelbarrow from somewhere, and I walked all the way to where the Xylocurcus gate pierced the walls of Theodosius with Irene in the belly of the barrow, arms crossed over her breasts in a vain attempt to give her some dignity in death. The plague pits outside the gate horrified me. They were filled with bodies, row upon row of bodies, and when the pit was full, builder's lime was scattered on top of them, a shovel full of white caustic dust at a time, and then a new row of bodies was begun, with the old as its foundation. I knew I could not put Irene onto that pile of dead to be powdered white as a ghost and buried under a pile of new dead still to come. I turned my wheelbarrow to the right, and walked down to the deepest part of the Golden Horn. Here the great bay of commerce for the greatest city in the world was full of deserted boats and ships and barges of all shapes and sizes. You there, I called out to an old drunk who sat alone at a table outside of a dockside tavern, imbibing for free, no doubt, either as payment for watching over the wharf, or more likely because the tavern keeper was dead, and his inventory was now available to anyone brave enough to go in and help themselves. Yes, sir, the fellow answered me respectfully, for I was still dressed in good clothes worthy of the station of a wealthy merchant. Which of these is now unowned? I asked, pointing out at all the vessels before us. Unowned, sir? he hiccuped, as if he had not understood me. If boats were booze, he probably would have claimed all of them for himself. I want a ship no one is going to miss. If relatives come asking for it, I will pay them for its loss. But right now, which of these vessels can I take without depriving a man of his livelihood? Well, the fellow hummed and hawed, but for a few coins dropped down into his greasy palm, he pointed me at a fishing smack he swore belonged to no living soul. I put Irene down respectfully amidship, and I cast off without another word. The small Latin sail was easily worked by one grieving husband standing over his dead wife. Sailing down the Golden Horn, I had the time to stare into the city. It was like looking at an empty house that you knew in better days had once been famous for its riotous parties. Where before it had always been a hive of activity, now the streets and docks were empty. I could hear church bells ringing sporadically in mourning, but otherwise all was still and quiet. Halfway down the harbour I saw a small chapel attached to a palace close to the water, where wagons were being loaded with the dead to be carted off to the plague pits. I felt a lurch in my stomach that the thing I deemed unworthy of my own Irene would be medded out to those poor folks. Seized by an impulse to do something. Anything, I trimmed my sails, turned my tiller, and came into the closest dock. You there, I called up to the priest, organizing the loading of the wagons. Bring them here, bring them to me. I shall give them a good Christian burial at sea. And so I did. I tied a length of cloth soaked in perfume over my nose and mouth, and then I sailed thirty or so bodies out into the shipping channel at the Bosporus, just beyond the golden horn where the current would keep them from washing up on any shore. I pulled down my mask long enough to say the words over them, and then I replaced it to put them one by one over the sides. Some of them floated, others sank. I could not bear the thought of Irene bobbing there like a cork. For her, I went down into the bilge and came up with a heavy rock from the ballast. I put the rock down on her skirts and then tied it in place using her own clothes, and also a fishing line and hook I found by an empty bench. Goodbye, Irene. May God have mercy on your soul, and may you rest in peace until the day of judgment when the sea shall give up her dead. I said. I like to think she smiled up at me. I had long ago closed her screaming mouth, but that might have been the lines of her face dancing before my eyes through the tears. Either way, I put her over the side. When I returned to the city, a small deputation of priests and city elders was waiting for me. I was asked to do a burial at sea again. And so I did. Then again. Then again. Thousands were dying every day, such that even the plague pits and the wagons could not keep up with the dead. Eventually it became too exhausting to heave the bodies over the side one by one. There were so many abandoned boats that I arose each morning, walked out to the furthest end of the Golden Horn, took a free ship, and then went from dock to dock. Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead, I called. Sometimes the churches were waiting for me with those who had passed since my last visit. Oftentimes it was the people who lived in houses closest to the water and knew I was coming who brought me their recently dead directly. Either way I would take my temporary vessel along the shore until it was full of bodies, then I would sail it out into the Bosporus, go down into the hold, start a fire, and then jump overboard and swim for shore once I was sure the ship was doomed. I do not know how many times I did that. The plague ran wild through Constantinople for months. I am sure I burned at least one ship every day, sometimes several times a day. Each time I said the holy words for a burial at sea to the dead in their burning ship before diving over the side. I was baptized with each swim ashore, washed clean of both their stink and my sins by the good deeds I had done for the dead. No one dying within walking distance of the Golden Horn went to the plague pits if I had anything to say about it. And still people died. Eventually they started dying of starvation. No one brought new food into the capital, and so we had to live on what was already stored within the city walls. My hold full of Egyptian millet was meant for beer, but it was eventually used to make tough, chewy bread. The starving do not care if they are being fed wheat or millet or barley bread. Feed them oak cakes and bran flakes if you like. Food in their bellies and no spots or buobos was all they asked for from a merciful god. You can eat millet. You cannot eat linen or papyrus or ibis feathers. I believe the rest of my cargo was never put to good use, although I suppose it is possible the linen was eventually made into flimsy shrouds. Who is to say? I do not remember. I was never paid for it, and that did not matter to me in the slightest. The world was ending, and Irene was gone. So what did the clink of coins in a purse matter to me? At night I went to pray in the great church of Hagea Sophia, newly built then by our great emperor Justinian, still shaky on his legs after surviving the plague that had swept so many of his subjects into oblivion. He and the patriarch of Constantinople led us in prayer, and while the choirs sang and the thurifers swung their thuribles of burning incense, I would turn to my inner eye and meditate on the future. While normal people drew strength and comfort from the fellowship of prayer, I was reassured that when I looked into the world still to come there were still human beings at all. I do not know if I would have guessed that was possible if I could not see it for myself in the future. As the night of fearful prayer rolled on, sometimes my visions found me right there in the Haia Sophia, but it was a very different holy place than the one I sat in during the plague. The dome over my head would soon be replaced by a better one I saw. Sometimes the holy icons would be removed. By iconoclas my own voice of the future whispered to me, and sometimes the holy icons would return in triumph. Sometimes I saw all the pews removed, and instead the greatest church in the world became an enormous mosque filled with prayer rugs, not that I knew what a mosque or a prayer rug was in those days. Sometimes I even saw the prayer rugs disappear, and groups of tourists wandered through my visions dressed in gaudy clothes of many colors and fabrics that were strange and wonderful to me. I did not at the time know what a camera was or flash photography, and so to my inner eye it seemed as if authorities were chastising these obvious interlopers for creating small bursts of lightning in a holy place. Visions of the future were often confusing, especially as you prayed for salvation and for the many dead and for relief from the plague. However confusing the future might be, the here and now slowly drew into focus. Word trickled in from the rest of the world as merchants plucked up their courage and sailed to the capital with food they could sell at exorbitant rates. The plague was everywhere, they said. Millions were dead, millions upon millions. I have told you I have read about this plague. Some estimates today say twenty five million died in the Roman Empire alone, and I wonder if even that is a low ball estimate. Beyond the known world, it was whispered the plague was in the Persian Empire too, and in the barbarian north. All the strength and vigor seemed to have drained out of the world. Where before Justinian had sent great armies to Italy and Africa in an attempt to reclaim the western half of the known world, now he was content to let those efforts dwindle and die unnatural deaths. Who wants to wage a war while people die on their own faster than you can keep track? How do you even fund a war when the people who pay your taxes and collect your taxes and count your taxes and spend your taxes are all dead? What was left of the Roman Empire curled up into a whimpering ball of self pity and waited for the end to come? It seemed the plague was everywhere, and then one day it was gone. Living after the plague was almost scarier than living during the plague. Where had it gone? When would it come back? Was God angry with us? Was God no longer angry with us? What could we do to remain in or return to God's good graces? Justinian spent the rest of his life writing books about laws and books about God, trying to answer those questions. Most of the laws were good. Most of the meditations on God were dense and confusing, as was the style at the time. The plague did come back several times in the coming decades, but never as bad. Was that because the power of prayer worked? Had Justinian or the Church found the answers to the questions we did not know? Was God somehow satiated in his angry vengeance for whatever it was we had done wrong? No one knew. I sold my house in Constantinople. Too many bad memories. I sailed the seas again, but this time I chose my destinations not based on commerce, but on peace and safety. I asked myself, When was the last time that place had war or plague or famine? Fine, I will go there. That is how I frittered away my time between the first terrible appearance of bubonic plague and the rise of Islam. You see, I was not entirely correct when I said the plague was everywhere. While the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire and the barbarian nations of northern and western Europe reeled under a disease that killed millions upon millions, the deserts of Arabia had few rats and fewer fleas. While the rest of the world lay exhausted, a great god given mission was about to be communicated to a new chosen people who had existed on the fringes of history for thousands of years up to this point. The Arabs were about to hear the word of God, and within a few decades the inspired men of the Arabian Peninsula would see their horses sink fetlock deep into the Atlantic Ocean as it lapped the beaches of what today is called Morocco. But all that is for later in my story. I was a Muslim for many years, and I suppose I still believe in the good of it to the same extent I believe in the good of Christianity, or the good of the Phoenician faith. For all that, one of the things I struggled with about Islam was its rules against alcohol. I cannot help but wonder, if Muhammad, peace be upon him, had been born a Greek with wine served at every meal, would alcohol still be forbidden by God? Or is it that Arabs before Islam were often paid for their mercenary services with alcohol from more fertile lands, and that intoxication was viewed as a weakness to be purged by a new faith? I do not know. I do not know a lot of things. I have known good Muslims who think nothing of sharing a glass of spirits with me, and bad Muslims who would be furious at me for even suggesting such a thing. I wish I was better at guessing which was which before making the suggestion. I have made so many bad choices in my life, and even the good ones led me here, led me to this place that I might not be able to escape. How did I not see that coming? For a man gifted with visions of the future, it is sometimes incredible to me what I could never imagine. Returning to the Muslims, how did those people ever conquer Constantinople? I was there when the Hagia Sophia was built. Who in that moment could imagine the greatest church in the world would one day be converted into a mosque, just as all the temples of the pagan Greeks and Romans worth a dam became churches? The Hagia Sophia. Wait. Wait a minute. I saw, in my visions, tourists taking photos in the Hagia Sophia. But I never saw that in real life. I have not been to Istanbul almost since they stopped calling it Constantinople. What I was seeing was a possibility, another life where I did go back. I have told you before that I do not always live the life I see in my visions. It depends on the choices I make which ones will come true. But that young woman earlier today she said I I'm sorry, dear listeners. I need to stop for the night. I have a phone call to make, and that takes a little doing on my part. We will pick this up again tomorrow morning. I need to talk to someone.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

She is working her way through each song written during the band's time at the Ashram across the river from Richikash. A gentle rapping at the door interrupts her reading about Bungalow Bill. Miss White, the night manager of the hostel says politely. Yes, she replies, getting up to open the door.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

There's a call for you at the front desk.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

A call? She furrows her brow, trying to think who might know where to find her. Her parents know she is somewhere in India, but she has not checked in since long before she boarded the train in New Delhi. They do not know the purpose of her journey. No one does, except Is it my uncle?

SPEAKER_02 35:50

I believe so, Miss White.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

The night manager leads her down the hall and down the stairs to the front desk. He hands her the phone with a kind smile. Hello? She says.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Is that you, Melissa?

SPEAKER_00 36:02

He asks. Yes, of course, Melissa says, trying to figure out how to ask the night manager for some privacy. I didn't realize you had a phone up at your cottage, Uncle Thomas.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

I don't. I have a neighbor halfway down the hill who lets me use his telephone from time to time when there is no other way to conduct my business, he says. Can we speak freely?

SPEAKER_00 36:22

I'm not really free to she begins before the night manager realizes his faux pas, and puts his hands up by way of friendly apology before making a hasty retreat into the back office, closing the door behind him. Oh no, it's fine. I can talk. How did you know where to call me?

SPEAKER_01 36:39

You said the cab picked you up at the hostel early this morning. There are only so many hostels in Rishikesh. My neighbor has a phone book. I found you on the second try. Melissa White is not so common a name. I was likely to find another one backpacking through northern India.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

He says. Fair enough. Melissa says. So you say you are at your neighbor's place. I take it you're free to talk yourself.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

My neighbor and I understand each other. You and I are having a private conversation. He has stepped outside to enjoy the night air. He says.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

A moment of silence stretches. She breaks it by asking, Is this a social call, Uncle Thomas? Is something wrong?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Why are you calling me Uncle Thomas?

SPEAKER_00 37:20

He asks. Because I'm here to visit you, Uncle Thomas.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

I'm not your uncle.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

He says. That's not what the night manager thinks. She says quietly. A closed office door only promises so much privacy.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

The night manager isn't there, is he?

SPEAKER_00 37:37

He asks. Well no. She admits.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Then let's not pretend we're related.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

He says. We are sort of related, she says.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

You mean we can both see the future?

SPEAKER_00 37:50

He guesses. Yes, she says.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

That's why I'm calling.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

He says. I guessed, she says.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

You guessed or you knew? He asks.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

I guessed, she says again.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Well that is related to my question, actually. I've been thinking about our conversation. When I see the future, I see possibilities. I see things that could happen. Things I might see one day if I make one choice or another. Sometimes they come true, and other times they don't. That is not always how it works, though, is it? I have known people who knew how they were going to die, and they were right. They could not change their fate. As for you, you said when you see the future, you're always right. Is that correct? He asks.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yes. Her tone is firm.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

When you see how a person is going to die, that's how they die.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

He asks. Yes, she says.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

And what about free will?

SPEAKER_00 38:49

He asks. What about it? She asks.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Where does free will fit into you knowing how someone is going to die?

SPEAKER_00 38:57

He asks. It doesn't come up much, she admits.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

I beg your pardon?

SPEAKER_00 39:02

He asks. Well, everybody dies eventually. Even you will die someday, somehow. Where does free will come into it? She asks. He lets the mention of his own death pass by, asking instead.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

But if you tell someone how they are going to die, can they not change that?

SPEAKER_00 39:21

She takes his meaning. Oh, you mean if I tell someone they are going to get hit by a bus crossing the street tomorrow, they might resolve to spend the whole day in bed?

SPEAKER_01 39:30

That's exactly what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

He says. Well, I very rarely tell people how they were going to die, so it hasn't come up much, but Yes. He interrupts. But I suppose as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I then see the next way they are going to die. Maybe it's the next day. Maybe it's the next year. My grandmother believed in my gift toward the end of her life, and she lived maybe three or four years longer than she might have by listening to me. But in the end she killed herself. Melissa says calmly.

SPEAKER_02 39:59

What?

SPEAKER_00 40:00

His question is not as calm. She overdosed on sleeping pills. It was her choice. She says. Why? He asks. Because the bowel cancer was going to make the rest of her life miserable, so she decided to go sooner than later. She went on her own terms. She says. He says. I had her longer than I would have otherwise. Melissa says. I'll tell you another thing. I could have stopped her.

SPEAKER_02 40:30

What?

SPEAKER_00 40:31

He asks. As soon as I told her about the bowel cancer, I knew what she was going to do. I said it, and her fate changed from dying of cancer to overdosing on pills. I could have stopped her, but I didn't. My grandmother knew I knew, knew I could have stopped her. Knew I didn't. She knew I loved her. That's enough for me not to worry about whether it was right or wrong, she says.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

That's um that's a lot to digest.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

He says. That's free will for you, and that's why I don't make a habit of giving people more information than they need. If someone doesn't know how they're going to die, they don't fight against their fate, she says.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

But you came to my cottage today.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

He says. I did, yes. She agrees. Why? He asks. I already told you. She says. Tell me again, he demands. You might remember better if you hadn't pulled that silly knife on me. She puts some steel into her voice.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

I had the knife because in my dreams there is no future for me after I meet you. I meet you, and then I am dead. Wouldn't you have a knife ready if you were waiting for a visitor like that?

SPEAKER_00 41:42

He asks. Where is that knife right now? She asks.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

I uh I put it back in the woodshed.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

He says. Good. I don't want to see that again. There was silence on the phone for a moment before he said.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

You will not.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

Alright then. I will try again to tell you what I wanted to say earlier. You will not interrupt me? She asks.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

No.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

He says. You and I are linked, Uncle Thomas. Our fates are linked. When I look at you, I see all the ways you might die or not die all at once, and it makes me dizzy. When I look in a mirror, I see all the ways I might die or not die. When I was young, he interrupts her.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

You are twenty six. You are young. I have sweaters older than you.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

If they're anything like the one you were wearing today, you should replace those sweaters. You promise not to interrupt me. May I continue? She is sharp with him.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Yes, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

He sounds contrite. When I was young, I thought my fate kept changing because I could see what was coming. A few months ago I figured out the truth. You control my fate. And I suppose in a way I control your fate. That's not quite right, I guess. You control your fate too, but I get to tell you something, and then you get to make a choice, just like my grandmother did, she says.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

And suppose I don't let you tell me that something. Suppose we never speak again. Suppose I hang up this phone and run away where you can never find me.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

He asks. You can do that. That's still a choice that you are making, that you would not have made if you had never met me. That still changes your future, she says.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Does it change my future in a way where I continue to live?

SPEAKER_00 43:29

He asks. There are lots of ways you can keep living, Uncle Thomas, she says. There are? He asks, his tone surprised. Yes. You are the one saying you see nothing after meeting me. I look at you and I see a kaleidoscope of possibilities. There are more ways you can go on or stop than I can understand. She says.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Are there any where I live forever?

SPEAKER_00 43:58

He asks. No, she says.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

You sound pretty certain of that.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

He says No one I have ever seen lives forever, Uncle Thomas. She says.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

Stop calling me that.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

He demands. Uncle Thomas, she is cruel with him now. You will die one day of something. I can tell you that right now. Everyone dies one day, somehow. Everyone except me, possibly. What he demands? That's the thing. That's what I wanted to tell you before you drove me out. More and more often now, when I look in the mirror, I go on forever. Not just for thousands of years, like you still might. Forever, forever. I'm talking about forever as a yawning void that I fall into without ever seeing the bottom. It scares the hell out of me. She gathers herself for a moment before continuing. That's what you and I need to talk about tomorrow. It will probably take a while, and I don't want to do this over the phone.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Do what?

SPEAKER_00 45:03

He asks.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Second, please like it, review it, and subscribe to it wherever you find your podcasts. We want to teach the algorithm that this show is worth people's time. Third, this podcast is based on the novels Beginning, Middle, and End by Jeff Mix, available on Amazon. If you want to read ahead or just have a copy of this story on your shelves, that would be so appreciated. Fourth, I have a link to a type form survey in the show's notes for each episode. Tell me a little about yourself and feel free to ask me some questions. I will be doing a QA mailbag bonus episode at some point. Finally, while I don't want to break up the episode with ads, I do have a Patreon account with extra content for those of you willing to support this channel with a donation. A link to that is also in the show notes. With that said, thank you so much for your time and attention, and I look forward to you enjoying the next episode soon.