Mercury

Mercury: A Broadcast of Hope tells the story of a small group of resident and a growing number of recurring characters living in a small radio station during the zombie apocalypse. Their mission is to communicate with fellow survivors via a daily broadcast (distributed here via podcast, but the story will retain the conceit that it is an actual terrestrial broadcast) that brings them thoughts, musings, stories, practical survival tips, and other messages that are intended to keep up the general morale and enable listeners to survive whatever hardships they may be encountering. Including zombies.

Setting

The Surrounding Geography

Closeup of the geography and campus surrounding the broadcast tower

Expanded view showing the position of Gipstein Lighthouse

The characters are living in a small college radio station adjacent to the marine science building at a coastal university. Within sight of the station is Gipstein Lighthouse.

Gipstein Lighthouse is approximately 1 mile off the coast and has its own set of residents. They are an extended family that consists of a few elderly people and a few small children. The healthy adults in the group chose the lighthouse for the increased security, but they must still come ashore periodically to recover supplies. One responsibility they have taken on is keeping the lighthouse running to alert other survivors that people are living there.

The precise geography is not strictly relevant to the story. For episode-writing purposes it can be assumed that it is a coastal area that experiences all four standard seasons - cold, snow, and ice in winter, extreme heat in summer, moderation in spring and autumn.

The Building

The station is divided into two sections - the broadcast room and a lounge area. The broadcast room consists of a small sound-resistant recording booth, big enough for as many as four people if they're friendly, and a control area outside the booth. The booth does have a door that can shut, but for most broadcasts it will be left open as there is no need to close it. There isn't much room for anything else in the broadcast room. There is also a door that goes from the broadcast room to the lounge that can be shut, but, again, will be left open most of the time. The lounge area has a sofa and a few chairs, but not much other furniture. There is one small window, not big enough for a human to fit through, that illuminates the room during the day. At night the residents sometimes use candles, but mostly just go to sleep at sundown to conserve supplies.

The broadcast setup is in a small separate building with the tower antenna and is surrounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The original intent was to keep people from interfering with the broadcast equipment, but now it keeps zombies at bay. Daily, the characters will walk the inside perimeter and dispatch any zombies that have gathered nearby through the fence. Once the coast is clear, the residents will clean the bodies out and throw them into the nearby ocean to prevent them from piling up. If there are too many zombies to clear, the residents can retreat to a small outboard boat and either keep watch from a short distance off the coast or can retreat as far as the lighthouse temporarily.

The residents do have a laptop computer, but mostly leave it powered down to conserve electricity. There is no WiFi, but there is a hardline internet cable available. The off-site internet router, however, has no power and therefore the computer cannot connect. Each character has a cell phone, but there is no service.

The Marine Science Building is approximately 25 yards away from the broadcast antenna and requires an unprotected walk to access. The building is useless for shelter, as it has no outside barrier and the exterior of the building was made of a substantial number of glass panes, some of which are broken, leaving the building very insecure. The remainder of the University buildings are in a similar state of disrepair. The University is a commuter campus with no dorms and the nearest residential homes are a good distance away. Some of the buildings show signs of looting, but the marine science building appears to have been left largely untouched.

Music on site

While WEHG is a college radio station, the primary format was talk, therefore there is not much music on site. The equipment necessary to interface with the broadcast tower was disassembled and parts were used to repair the broadcast equipment, so no music will be part of the broadcast. Furthermore, to conserve power the characters will not listen to much music off-air either. That said the characters do have access to a small handful of CDs that include the overplayed classics - Ravel's Bolero, Pachelbel's Canon in D, and a few other orchestral works.

Characters

Due to the small size of the station, there is a limit to the number of permanent resident characters. That limit is set at five, but to begin the series will have only three so as to allow for easy expansion. Once the limit of five is met no new resident characters may be introduced without finding a way to remove another resident character within the rules outlined below.

The most challenging part of a writing collaboration this large will be character continuity and consistency. Whenever a significant event happens to a character or is described as part of their past, it must be entered here for other writers to reference to avoid inconsistency.

Resident Characters

Max O'Brien

David Benedict

Max O’Brien (portrayed by David Benedict) is the middle-aged program manager at WEHG 870AM. He’s been on the job at the station for the last 3 years following a career change from basic web design. He’d hoped to be able to someday write code for the big boys, but he just couldn’t keep up with the changes in technology as web design advanced. He simply didn’t have the passion for it to keep re-learning new techniques to accomplish the same old goals, so he’d convinced the station to take him on as an unpaid intern for a year so he could learn new skills.

Today, as program manager, he coordinates which shows get aired at what times. He works closely with the advertising manager to keep the bills paid and the lights on by relaying listener statistics that potential clients will want to see.

He is unmarried and has no kids.

He also has a curiosity and a wild imagination. When the zombie outbreak became serious enough that law enforcement and the military could no longer ignore it or sweep it under the rug, he became interested in the root cause of the disaster. Who was patient zero? Was the condition viral? What other explanations might be available? He’s done quite a bit of research, some of it coming from some pretty crackpot sources, and, while he has no actual answers, he loves to speculate and is quick to come up with a new conspiracy theory. Some days it’s all that keeps him going.

He has above-average knowledge of web design and can make his way through modern code, although he’s no expert. He has an eye towards efficiency and resource management. He gets frustrated easily.

Dr. Rosalind Clark

Diana Lancaster

Dr. Rosalind Clark (portrayed by Diana Lancaster) is practical and a realist. Wants to find out the how and why of the infection. Divorced, no children. Early 40s. She graduated from a small liberal arts college in the midwest, majoring in Biology and Pre-Med. She applied to attend Northwestern, but did not attend due to a lack of funding, eventually getting her Masters and PhD in Marine Biology/Ecology at UNC. She is introverted, introspective, thoughtful, and serious. With the sciences dominated by men, she felt as though she had to work three times as hard to be taken seriously and often neglected her personal and social life in favor of excelling at academics, which she did. She married at 30, shortly after accepting her professorship at the University, but the marriage fizzled after just a couple of years.

Agnes Drew

Nicole Isaac

Agnes Drew (portrayed by Nicole Isaac) is emotional and heavily dependent on the other characters. Whimsical and an eternal optimist.

When she was young, her little brother couldn't pronounce the "G" in her name, so he called her "Anus". It became a long-running joke in the family, much to Agnes's chagrin. She loves animals and wants to keep one at the station, but the others have concerns about whether they can be infected by whatever is causing the zombie outbreak. She sees the whole zombie experience as part of her internship, but refuses to acknowledge the horror of the situation. She even refuses to call them 'zombies', preferring instead to refer to them as "They" or "Them". She is majoring in Comparative Literature. She has a typical Millennial mentality and is having a hard time adjusting to the lack of internet and cell phone service.

Personality: Young, hopeful, naïve, head in the clouds. Still believes that someone will find a cure and mankind will build itself back again Foil to “rational science” of Dr. Clark. and “wild paranoia” of Max. She has Walt Whitman’s “song of myself” under her pillow, picture of family as bookmark. She has a tape recorder with last message of her boyfriend, Sam. Keeps a journal.

Recurring Characters

In development. Ideas for recurring characters include:

Wade Hogue Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia. Hair: Brown Eyes:Green Pre-Fall Employment: Apprentice Blacksmith (Still a Thing.) During the quick and bloody fall, Wade refused to stay sheltered and witnessed a group of Police and National Guard abandoning a group of trapped survivors... Wade recovered a weapon and led the majority of the group to safety in one of the developing fort towns in the North Georgia mountains.

Now, Wade is a part time scavenger (he prefers the term Resource Procurement) and Scout/guide. often stopping by the Station to bring supplies and news, Wade is also working to establish a series of way stations along various paths that hold the least chance of an encounter with the Infected.

Wade is little concerned with the “Why?” of it all. Things have slid pretty far and he sees little reason to dwell on it. It could be said that he did not find his purpose until the world went to pot. with so much ugliness in world, he's determined to help even if only a little. Wade views the Infected mostly as victims but has no problem with putting one down when the situation demands. He does however bear great malice toward those who prey on their fellow man.

Wade's mother died right about the time things started getting really bad. He has his suspicions as he was never allowed to view the body.

Skills: Field Survival, Firearms Training, Blacksmith Other: Loves Dogs

Jennifer Long Information gatherer. Has family living in the lighthouse, but can't bring them to shore because there isn't enough room at the station for them all to live there and they value the increased security of being offshore. She is in her early 30s and has two children, a 13-year-old boy named Josh and a 4-year-old daughter named Frances. Also at the lighthouse with her is her grandmother, Phyllis, who is in her early 70s. She brings some practical supplies, but mostly brings news of zombie movements through scouting missions and a high vantage on the lighthouse using a pair of binoculars she grabbed as they evacuated their home.

Survival Techniques for Characters

• Fishing
• Supplies brought by others
• The fresh water situation should be more or less taken for granted. Collection of rainwater, gathering of bottled water from nearby abandoned stores, distillation of ocean water, and other sources are all available and episodes instructing listeners how to do these things are entirely appropriate. What there shouldn't be are episodes where the focus is the crisis of not having any water. The theme here is hope and survival, so introducing peril into an episode for dramatic effect should be avoided.
• ETC

Writers Bible

World Rules

1. You must be bitten to be infected. Just dying isn’t sufficient. Exploration of the causes of the zombie apocalypse are welcomed. Biting is the primary method of transfer, but it is bloodborne and therefore bleeding on an open wound will also effect a transfer.
2. Zombies are effectively hydrophobic - they will not enter the water and cannot function under it. If a zombie is immersed in water then it effectively enters torpor but will reanimate when removed from the water. Zombies that are in the water for an extended period of time will suffer physical effects and the body may disintegrate.
3. The station is secure. We cannot be besieged or overrun by zombies for the following reasons:
   1. Because the zombies are hydrophobic and our station is on the coast, we have an effectively unbreakable barrier at our backs.
   2. The small boat would allow us to escape if necessary. Zombies who came in large numbers would quickly lose interest once their prey was no longer present.
   3. The station and the broadcast antenna have the usual chain link fence and barbed wire. These barriers would be sufficient to hold zombies at bay until the survivors could either pick them off through the fence or make an escape in the boat.
4. The lighthouse is not a practical place to live. Its resources are not better than the station, having to come to shore every time you wanted to get supplies is a pain, the surf can be rough during storms, and being able to broadcast to other survivors in the area is important.
5. We are well into the apocalypse. The station has been offline for some weeks, if not months, and repairs have had to be done to get back on the air.
6. The station is only big enough for 5 people to live there permanently. There is enough room for people to stay the night if necessary, but scarcity of supplies, physical space for actual residence, and the risk of attracting too many zombies preclude more than 5 people living there.
7. We have a small boat available. It has a small outboard motor. A 12’-16’ boat that can’t hold more than a few people.
8. Zombies were part of regular pop culture before the outbreak.
9. The survivors have some supplies, but need to replenish through scouting runs or have supplies brought to them. They can go fishing off the coast if necessary.
10. Incubation period for a bite is 18-24 hours.
11. Zombies do not freeze in winter, although they should. The characters will explore why this is.

Timeline

1. There were isolated outbreaks in towns and then a ramp up to cities over the course of several weeks or months.
2. Government covered it up until they couldn’t anymore. They knew it was zombies, but didn't have a definitive cause.
3. To prevent panic (due to zombies being a part of pop culture), they covered up the symptoms and called it antibiotic resistant bacteria.
4. The cover-up was coordinated by a select group of people within the CDC and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. It was highly departmentalized and there is an excellent chance that even the President didn't know the exact nature of what was going on.
5. The local authorities would issue a series of lockdowns on the authority of the CDC, instructing people that a patient was at large and that people should stay indoors until the patient could be contained and isolated. There would be more and more of these until we get to our present situation.

Series Rules and Structure

Writing Guidelines

1. The overall theme of the show is hope and keeping up morale. If a writer wishes to use despair to help emphasize a point, they may do so, but the series cannot degenerate into a hopeless morass.
2. No characters will die “on camera”.
3. Each episode should be between 5 and 7 minutes long. Longer episodes are acceptable if necessary, but should be kept to a minimum because of the increased need for editing.
4. When writing episodes, there should not be flashbacks. Characters can reminisce, but we cannot see the scene play out with additional characters.
5. Humor is encouraged. The characters are in a serious situation, so this isn't a comedy show, but with an overall theme of hope, some humor is entirely appropriate.
6. All material must be originally written by the submitting author or must be in the public domain. If you are submitting anything that you didn't write yourself, you must include attribution in the text of the submission.
7. Terminology: The preferred term for this series is the generic "zombie" unless otherwise noted (see Agnes Drew's character description). Other terms may be used to help prevent the word from becoming endlessly repetitive and meaningless, but this isn't an exercise in how to use a thesaurus. Recurring or one-time characters may have their own preferred term if desired, but writers can and should fall back to "zombie" in most cases.
8. A backlog of episodes in the can and more written is essential to maintain the daily release schedule. That said, if a current event demands a commentary (within the context of the zombie apocalypse), then a special episode may be written, recorded, and inserted into the feed as needed. To preserve the numbering system (below) we may do supplemental episodes on specific days, rather than re-recording the intro for any episodes already in the can.
9. Each episode shall establish the episode number by stating “this is # days since we went back on the air” or some variation thereof. The actual number will be set during the recording process. Each episode shall conclude with the tagline "Take care of each other."
10. Periodically there will be plot points and rule changes introduced into the world. For that reason, writers are encouraged to embrace the uncertainty and leave everything in the realm of speculation except where characters are concerned. Characters should obviously know themselves, but they are reacting to the uncertain world around them.
11. Whenever a new character trait is described by a writer, that trait will become canon in the series and should be entered into the Writer's Bible here so that future writers will not contradict it.
12. Writers should actively avoid making the zombies the central part of episodes unless it is unavoidable. Theme is far more important than plot and this series is about hope and survival. The zombies can be thought of as a metaphor for any conflict or burden that anyone might experience.
13. The writers should feel confident that the actors and producers will not make substantive changes to their episodes, although it may occasionally be the need to add additional information in the intro or outro to keep the plot moving and/or introduce new concepts that may lead into the next episode.

Recording Guidelines

1. Episodes should be recorded “as-live”. Our setting is essentially a recording booth, so there’s no need for additional SFX to be added after the fact. Actors should feel free to move about the booth, open the booth door, etc. If the script calls for typing or other sounds, those objects should be brought in for the recording.
2. There will be no “pickups” or “drop ins”. All characters must be present for the recording of the episode they appear in. If a mistake is made, either cover for it or, if covering isn’t possible, back up and retake the line immediately.

Origin of the name

The name Mercury came to the creators after a few meetings. Originally the series was to be focused on the lighthouse and how its beacon would shine light and hope on survivors, just as it signaled hope and salvation for ships lost at sea. All those names were taken, however, and to avoid confusion the series creators looked elsewhere, eventually settling on Mercury.

There are many reasons why Mercury is a fitting name for this podcast, presented here in summary:

• Mercury was the messenger of the gods in Roman mythology. In addition to this obvious tie-in to a radio broadcast, Mercury was also the patron god of travelers and luck and guided souls to the underworld.
• Mercury the element is sometimes known as quicksilver due to its liquid nature at room temperature. It is metaphorical for the ephemeral nature of life, but it also has a practical tie-in to the series because the Fresnel lenses of old lighthouses used to float and rotate in a bath of mercury which acted like a bearing.
• Mercury the planet has a unique orbit and rotation in the solar system, corresponding to our unique publication schedule. There are few daily podcasts and there are even fewer fictional daily podcasts.
• Perhaps most importantly, Mercury Theatre on the Air. This is the program that ran the infamous "War of the Worlds" broadcast. While the stories of that broadcast's ability to incite panic may be apocryphal, it is still part of the lore and stands in contrast to Mercury: A Broadcast of Hope's mission to bring a purposefully positive message.
• Mercury is referenced in a number of literary works in all of the above incarnations, including poetry (which Mercury was also the patron god of), that can be explored.

Episode Ideas and Prompts

• “It’s been about three and a half months since we last heard from the authorities.”
• Getting the generator working, getting the transmitter working.
• Illness concerns.
• Interview format with a “zombie expert” - totally normal, like nothing’s wrong
• Episodes about how to get fresh water - boiling, distilling, reverse osmosis, rainwater, etc.
• Pets
• An episode about how we have to rescue someone and then ask them to leave because we have no room
• Agnes keeps a diary and reads entries from early days before broadcasting. She updates it periodically and we can see her attitude changing.
• Agnes wants to bring in a cat and doesn't understand why the others won't let her keep it. Too much maintenance. She hid it for weeks.
• Max's conspiracy theory du jour is that the zombie outbreak isn't biological at all, but is instead the product of a physics experiment. His hypothesis is that the Large Hadron Collider emitted some mysterious new particle that caused lots of people to enter a state of quantum uncertainty, just like Schrodinger's Cat. The zombies, therefore, are both alive and dead, which explains why they appear dead, but keep wandering around.

Distribution

Distribution will be as a part of Atlanta Radio Theatre Company's podcasting infrastructure. The podcast will be updated daily, but to preserve the conceit of a terrestrial broadcast, archives will not be kept as a matter of course. Early episodes will be left online ("on a broadcast loop") for a week or two, but eventually fuel concerns will force them to make that duration shorter and shorter until, finally, episodes will only be available on the day they are released and will be replaced by the new episode the next day.

The exception will be for Patreon subscribers who will have access to the entire back catalog.