In 1938, the soon to be famous future filmmaker Orson Welles narrated a radio drama for The Mercury Theater on the Air titled: The War of the Worlds. Based on the novel of the same name by science fiction author H. G. Wells, the radio drama was performed live and began with a little monologue and introduction by Welles that made it clear to those who began listening from the beginning that the following program was a radio drama, and nothing more.
But if you happened to tune in to CBS after listening to the news or some other transmission, or simply turned on your radio too late on that night in 1938 you would have been met with a frightening possibility. A musical program would be interrupted by a news bulletin claiming that scientists had made some strange observations on the surface of mars. Then the music would continue.
Another bulletin would interrupt the music. A strange cylindrical object has landed on a farm! Cut to music once again.
The bulletin returns. A reporter is at the scene, admiring the metallic object. He is relaying his observations to the radio audience when he shouts and screams about a fiery beam before his transmission is cut off amid cries from onlookers.
Then, more bulletins, back to back. The martians are attacking! The military can’t stop them! They’re attacking everywhere! Go, run, hide, it’s too late! Danger, death, destruction! Total annihilation!
A somber bulletin from New York. Martian death machines have released poisonous gas all over the city. From a Manhattan rooftop, the reporter describes people trying to run away before dropping like flies and then the poison gas comes closer and closer until the reporter coughs and coughs and he cuts off. A single voice over an old ham radio asks if there is anyone there. Anyone at all. He is met with deafening radio silence.
And then they cut to commercial.
For over thirty minutes, anybody tuning into the transmission who hadn’t heard the introductory monologue or hadn’t read Wells, would be frightened out of their minds hearing about the attack of the martians.
The entire incident became a bit of a cultural moment. It found its way into the British band Queen’s song Radio Gaga and also became a bit of a moment for the transition from radio to television because of the ability to tell stories in new and interesting ways.
But in my mind, the most important part of the whole story was not the frightened people or the brilliance of Welles. No, the most important part was the commercial that pulled people out of the story and forced them back to reality. Welles ended the show by saying it had been the equivalent of wearing a sheet over his head, hiding in the bushes, and scaring strangers with a loud ‘boo!’ Continuing that analogy, the commercial break was the moment when the strangers realize that the thing they were scared of was just some kid with a sheet over his head. There was nothing to be afraid of.
Just like the ‘fountain’ that was actually a urinal, art like this forces people to stop and think about the art itself. Any sculpture is just an object. A painting might just be oil on canvas. And a story might just be a story, and we can enjoy it only from a distance. Many great storytellers have done this before. Akira Kurosawa, the famous Japanese director, made the characters from Rashomon face the screen when pleading their case before the magistrate. The audience was the magistrate and it was their job to figure out the murder mystery. Shakespeare makes Prospero come out on stage at the end of The Tempest so he can plead from the audience for their forgiveness, as if he was asking for forgiveness from some sort of deity.
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And when I was throw into the Future and dragged back to the Present, back and back and back again, I ended up becoming an audience, an observer, a disembodied voice just like you. Yes, you, dear reader. I became like you.
I watched as the Immortals burned the world in their rage at me, the Simurgh swallowing Kelser in flames as it chased my ethereal image, the Evil Eye piercing through Kol’s heart as it flew after my scrunched up heart.
The Immortals couldn’t follow me as I blinked to the future. The future where the world was a barren wasteland, all life having long since been eradicated by meteors or volcanoes or war or perhaps some great misdeed of the Immortals. The Immortals could not follow me here and I wondered if they existed in this time. But then I realized, it was not possible for them to exist in this time since they were all bound by time, they did not transcend it. Even though the Simurgh controlled the Past and the Evil Eye used to control the Future, they lived in reality in the Present. The Present was their present even if they moved to the past or future, and it was the same for me.
I remembered watching a documentary that hypothesized time was like a massive cake. The present was just a slice in the cake, and if you went left, you went to the past, and if you sliced right, you cut into the future. The past and future may only be the past and future because we experience them as such, but if a being experienced time the other way, our past would become their future and their future would become their past. Time could well be an experience only for those who are confined by it, and any observer who stood outside of time might well look down at it as if they were able to see all of it at once. Kinda like a three dimensional object looking down at a flat two dimensional sheet and being able to see all of it at once.
I was thinking these thoughts as I flew back and forth between the Present and the Future because I remembered what Madness had said. He wanted me to get other domains too. Some that were unclaimed, others that belonged to the Immortals. And the one I wanted the most was the domain of the Past, which was controlled by the Simurgh. But how would I do that? I knew how.
I traveled back into the Present as I began to gain some control over the domains. The Present was the moment in which I first took over both the pages. The Simurgh and Evil Eye were still fighting Madness, although Madness was definitely losing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was sacrificing a lot of his own power to hold those two off like this. For a moment, I wondered why he was still holding them back if I had already gotten hold of both pages.
Then, I saw the sprawling figure of Princess Norn Izlandi, with her rainbow scythe fallen by her side. My eyes widened. Could it really be this easy? I walked over to the unconscious princess, put my hand on her head, and used the skill that the Simurgh had given me, to turn the youngest demon princess into a page.
Words started falling out of my mouth again. The Simurgh let out a deafening roar. Norn turned back into her demon form and I phased back into the Future.
This was gonna take some practice.