The Magnus Archives - Rusty Fears 6 - The Telescope Game by Ian Martinez-Hay

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

'Telescope Game' is written by Ian Martinez-Hay and performed by Trice Forgotten and The Magnus Protocol’s Shahan Hamza.Once all six short horror stories have been released, there will be a public poll for listeners to vote for their favourite. The overall winner will get the opportunity to write a case that will be featured in The Magnus Protocol, so be sure to listen to every story and keep an eye out for the voting form in a few weeks’ time. Content Notes-Disappearance of a childDirected by April Sumner and Nico VetteseProduced by April Sumner and Nico VetteseEdited, Music and SFX by Nico VetteseAdditional SFX by Meg McKellarMusic by Nico VetteseMastering by Meg McKellarJoin our community:WEBSITE: rustyquill.comFACEBOOK: facebook.com/therustyquillX: @therustyquillEMAIL: [e-mail] The Magnus Protocol is a derivative product of the Magnus Archives, created by Rusty Quill Ltd. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share alike 4.0 International Licence.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone, it's Lori, voice of Celia in The Magnus Protocol. Today, I'm very pleased to announce that the crowdfund campaign for The Magnus Protocol Mysteries board game has officially launched. Designed by the team behind The Resistance and Coup, The Magnus Protocol Mysteries puts you in the role of an OIAR employee, piecing together clues and information about supernatural cases. Perfect for fans of escape rooms, puzzles and mystery games. Each game box is filled with all the evidence you need to uncover the truth, including documents, photographs, news reports and even audio recordings featuring some familiar voices from the Magnus Protocol.

For more information and to donate, just go to www.rustyquill.com forward slash protocolgame. Thanks for your support. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What comes to mind when you hear the word gratitude? Maybe it's a daily practice, or maybe it feels hard to be grateful right now. Don't forget to give yourself some thanks by investing in your wellbeing. BetterHelp is the largest online therapy provider in the world, connecting you to qualified professionals via phone, video, or message chat.

Let the gratitude flow. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com Hi everyone, it's Billy, the voice of Alice in the Magnus Protocol here. Today I'm here to advertise The Other Stories, one of a range of new podcasts recently launched on the RQ network from the brilliant creative team at the story studio Hawk and Cleaver. The Other Stories is an award-winning weekly audio fiction podcast featuring incredible stories across multiple genres including horror, thrillers and sci-fi. With over 600 episodes and a range of mini series or individual stories, they have stories for everyone. Search for The Other Stories wherever you listen to your podcasts

or go to theothersstories.net or rustyquill.com for more information. Have fun and see you later. The Telescope Game by Ian Martinez Hay Mark and his daughter, Andy, played the telescope game together on their back balcony, peering up through the ancient telescope Mark had bought second-hand at a pawn shop down the street. It perched, overhanging their fifth-floor apartment railing, a broad squat tube with huge bronze knobs. At first, Andy's small hands could barely fit around the knobs and she would make a sweeping motion with her arms to ask Mark to coax

the image into focus. The telescope game was simple. Andy would point the telescope at the latest celestial body she was enamored with, then after peering through the filmy lens long enough to get it focused, she would declare that they had locked on, Captain! Mark would make a hum as they were teleported together to the planet's surface. Then Andy would describe exactly what they were seeing and feeling on the planet. On Venus, the roiling clouds hung overhead as acid rain pelted their suits. On Mars, the steppe was light and the thin atmosphere barely carried the sound of their voices.

And on Jupiter, they flew through the clouds of the endless storm, tossed and tumbled by the centennial winds. Andy and Mark would act out collecting samples, exploring craters on moons, and, if they were pushing the telescope to its limits, initiating first contact with aliens on faraway stars. Andy became obsessed with astronomy at a young age. After her class at a module about the solar system, she came home starry-eyed, declaring that she wanted to be an astronaut. She had passed through other obsessions at this point. Dinosaurs when she wanted to be a paleontologist, horses when she wanted to be an equestrian. Mark still wasn't sure where she'd learned the word equestrian, but her obsession with astronomy was different Instead of petering out after a few weeks of scattered interest her passion only grew as time passed

Mark bought Andy books about the solar system then each of the planets and eventually textbooks about the structure of the universe Months after her class moved on from the stars, Andy could only imagine one present for her birthday. That was when Mark bought her the telescope. Andy's fascination with the stars deepened into a love for learning, driven by her desire to see the cosmos for herself. When she was just nine, she could quote facts about Einstein's general relativity theory and the speed of light Her obsession gave her a zest for her homework that Mark had never had as a child She told him that she would have to get very good grades to become an astronaut

Mark worried for Andy At first his worries were expressed through a concern that her obsession could alienate his daughter from her classmates, who were beginning to develop the social dynamics that would exclude someone so obsessed with a specific topic. And this happened as Andy turned 11. Mark would sometimes try to suggest indulging in more age-appropriate interests to improve his situation. But Andy brushed off these suggestions, yelling, No, telescope game! Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm soccer and started making connections through her team, which allayed Mark's fears about her social development. As Andy grew older, her discussions of space grew less abstract and more realistic about the path that she would take. Being an astronaut was a rare and difficult thing, but she thought

starting at an early age gave her a leg up in achieving that lofty goal. This change only pushed Mark's mind to further reaching concerns. He worried about the discrimination she would face as a woman in a science field. He worried that she would get discouraged as her dreams seemed further away, as high school and then college and then training would bring their own particular challenges that could beat her down. He believed in and supported her, he thought, but he still worried that the system would find her lacking in some way, that she would be locked out of her dreams. Then where would she be?

The Telescope Game invited Mark into other, more visceral fears that formed stew with the abstract ones. Although the lens of Andi's excitement obscured it, the landscapes and situations she described during the Telescope Game were always rich with dangers. To be an astronaut was to enter the most inhospitable place that a human could go, with only a flimsy suit between themselves and certain death. The wondrous vistas she described in the game were filled with dangers that he could not imagine that his daughter, who he had held so fragile in his hands when she was born, could survive.

These worries preyed upon Mark's mind after the telescope was packed away in its old leather case, and he lay in bed with moonlight streaming in under his curtains. Sometimes, he wished that they lived somewhere less rural so that stargazing wasn't quite so easy, and maybe Andy's interests would turn somewhere safer. But the ideation was strangled by the wave of guilt he felt as he realized the implications of that longing. He wanted his daughter to feel confident and supported in whatever she decided to do with her life. It was wrong for him to want to dissuade her from being an astronaut because it scared her dear old dad. In fifth grade, Mark took Andy to Arizona to tour the desert where NASA simulated moonwalks. Beyond the plaque that commemorated the first moon landing stretch endless miles of black volcanic rock.

As Mark and Andy hiked together, he involuntarily had a vision of all the air being sucked away from the surface, and their bodies slowly falling to the ground in one-sixth gravity. He unconsciously held his breath as he replayed the vision in his head, until he was broken out of his trance by Andy tripping on the craggy rocks as she bounded up ahead. Where they stood had been trod by countless astronauts, some of who had died trying to get to the moon. Others had gone all the way there, left footprints in the lunar dust and returned safely to the soil. Mark tried to focus on these survivors as he sucked in the dry desert air.

Now 12 years old, Andi's hands were large enough to grasp and turn the knobs of the telescope on her own, but she still expressed childish joy in playing the telescope game. Mark's worries had fermented into a stew of tepid disapproval and guilty support. That summer, she wanted to spend seven weeks away at a junior astronaut camp. Her latest planetary obsession was Neptune and its moon, Titania. Mark arrived home late one cold February evening. Over dinner, Andy told Mark that she someday wanted to be a part of a manned mission to Titania.

Mark tentatively questioned if they would have the technology in her lifetime, a common argument he employed. He did not express his horror that Andy would want to go to an icy rock almost two billion miles away from the Earth. Andy responded, with familiar frustration, that it was possible, and the technological gap between Mars and other planets would be easier to cross than the current gap between the Moon and Mars that manned missions currently faced. Mark decided not to press the issue into a fight tonight. He

smiled awkwardly and said that maybe she would be the first person to walk on Titania's surface. Then Andy went on to tell him how the thin carbon dioxide atmosphere of Titania wouldn't even carry sound and that there was liquid water deep under the moon's crust and that maybe there were tiny microbes living up on Titania right now, whose ancestors she could study in her spaceship laboratory. She wished she could be there right now to see it all. As Mark was washing the dishes after dinner, he secretly hoped the talk of Neptune was over

for tonight. He didn't know if he was up to wrestling with the contradictions in his fears after a long day of work. When Andy came in and set the old leather case that held the telescope on the kitchen table, he struggled to suppress a groan. He briefly wished he could be somewhere else. Come on, Dad, she said. Just a few minutes. Neptune is visible early tonight. Mark begrudgingly unpacked the telescope as Andy went back to her room to collect her notes on Neptune. His mind briefly wandered to a job in the city he had seen online a few days ago as he gingerly unwrapped the tube. Guilt shot through his gut

like an electric shock. He took the telescope outside. Since he was tired, Mark hoped he could sit back while Andy did the heavy lifting of aiming and adjusting the telescope and acting out the telescope game. He set up the worn bronze tripod and screwed in the knobs that attached the huge telescope to it. The telescope hung heavy, just over the lip of the railing. Mark peered down through the lens to make sure it didn't need cleaning and saw through a stretch of road, a few blocks from his apartment. Then, with a hum in his ear, he was suddenly standing in that stretch of road.

He jumped onto the sidewalk and shook his head, disoriented. He looked back at his apartment. He didn't know how it was true, but the telescope had teleported him like they had pretended it could do all those years. A yawning pit of dread opened in his stomach, and his legs involuntarily began a desperate sprint back towards his apartment building. He was yelling for Andy, though he didn't know if she could hear. As he approached, his eyes flew up to their balcony, and he saw that the telescope still lay limp, pointed to the ground. Andy was nowhere in sight. He burst into the lobby, and the desk attendant watched as he first dashed to the elevators,

then backtracked to the stairs. He took them three at a time, his heart beating erratically. He didn't know if he had ever moved so fast in his entire life. He got to his apartment door but realized he didn't have the key. He started pounding at the door, yelling for Andy to stop, to not go to the telescope, to not look to the sky. There was no response. He busted down the door with a kick, desperation driving him with a whip and tore through the living room,

eyes scanning for Andy until he got a view of the balcony. The ancient telescope sat upright, not leaned on the railing, but pointing to the starry void above. distributed by Rusty Quill, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0 International Licence. To subscribe, view associated materials, or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online? Tweet us at The Rusty Quill, visit us on Facebook, or email us via mail at RustyQuill.com. Thanks for listening. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What comes to mind when you hear the word gratitude? Maybe it's a daily practice, or maybe it feels hard to be grateful right now. Don't forget to give yourself some thanks

by investing in your wellbeing. BetterHelp is the largest online therapy provider in the world, connecting you to qualified professionals via phone, video or message chat. Let the gratitude flow. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. Hi everyone, it's Billy, the voice of Alice in the Magnus Protocol here. Today I'm here

to advertise The Other Stories, one of a range of new podcasts recently launched on the RQ network from the brilliant creative team at the story studio Hawk and Cleaver. The Other Stories is an award-winning weekly audio fiction podcast featuring incredible stories across multiple genres, including horror, thrillers and sci-fi. With over 600 episodes and a range of mini-series or individual stories, they have stories for everyone. Search for The Other Stories wherever you listen to your podcasts, or go to theotherstories.net or rustyquill.com for more information. Have fun and see you later.