Mike disrupts a dinner party with his wife and friends by making a strange announcement. Has he woken from an unusually compelling dream — or has something more incredible taken place?
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The Mutual Audio Network
Spoken Signal Podcast: Half-Life(070124)
Mike disrupts a dinner party with his wife and friends by making a strange announcement. Has he woken from an unusually compelling dream — or has something more incredible taken place? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Duration:
- 17m
- Broadcast on:
- 01 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
[MUSIC PLAYING] This episode is brought to you by Experian. Are you paying for subscriptions you don't use, but can't find the time or energy to cancel them? Experian could cancel unwanted subscriptions for you, saving you an average of $270 per year, and plenty of time. Download the Experian app. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions are eligible. Savings are not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. Monday, Matt and A, your weekly series of live plays, classic drama and comedy, and a variety of audio drama from the mutual audio network. The following audio drama is rated PG-13, suggesting that all children under the age of 13 should listen accompanied with an adult. Spoken signal audio drama presents Half Life by Robert Arnold. [MUSIC PLAYING] Come on in. You can put your coats on the couch. It smells fantastic in here. Thanks. A slow cooker has been going for hours, so the house has smelled like that all day. It's been driving us crazy. What's the recipe? It's a kind of spicy chicken dish. Just something I found in one of my cookbooks. Is it Indian? Indonesian, actually. Oh, I don't think I've ever had Indonesian. I've had it, but I've definitely never made it. Where's Mike? He went upstairs to take an app. I imagine the doorbell woke him up. But if not, I'll go retrieve him in a minute. No, no, wait. Let me. Absolutely not. You know how this jerk woke me up the other day? He comes charging into the bedroom, banging two pots together, shouting fire, fire. And when I freaked out and asked him where the fire was, he said, in my heart for you. [LAUGHS] Lame. I got a keeper on her toes. I could have killed you. I'm just glad you didn't panic and jump out the window or something. Either way, one of us almost ended up dead. Aw, come on. You know when you married me that-- Ah, there he is. Sleeping beauty wakes. Tim? Catherine? Is it really? Did you get some sleep, sweetheart? Joan? Joanie? Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Whoa. Mike, honey, what is it? What's wrong? Maybe we should just go? We will if this keeps up much longer. But Joan said it would help if we-- Hey, you guys can come in. He asked for you. Is he OK? He seems fine, but he's not making a whole lot of sense. Come on. Catherine, Tim, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you-- it was just such a shock. What did Joan not tell you we were coming over for dinner? Honestly, even if she hadn't invited us, we would have shown up anyway. You could smell that slow cooker down the block. No, no, no, no, it's not that. It's just-- Well, tell them. What? It's just-- it's been so long since I've seen either of you. Well, that's funny, Mike, because I'm pretty sure the four of us took in a movie together last week. Remember the one about the depressed gangster that was so long and so terrible? Oh, I thought it was OK. What year is it? What year is it? Catherine, I'm serious. What year? It's 2021. So I'm-- I'm 40? Yeah, old man. You're 40. We celebrated a few weeks ago with a distillery tour. Remember? Seller Crawl Quaranta? I do. I do remember that. It was just such a long time ago. Mike, did you have a stroke or something? No, no, listen to me. I know how it sounds, but it's the truth. Catherine, Tim, I died. I'm sorry? I mean it. I died. He seemed pretty healthy for a dead man. But I wasn't healthy, not for a long time. Go ahead. Tell them what you told me. Look, you two are our friends, right? You have to believe me. When I went to sleep just before this, the last thing I remember-- What? I was 80 years old. What the hell are you talking about? I know. I know it sounds insane, but I am telling the truth. I was an old man. An old man lying in a hospital bed. You had a dream. That's what I told him. No, you don't understand. I lived it. I lived an entire life every minute of it. You're saying. I'm saying that before I walked down those stairs, I hadn't seen the two of you in probably 30 years. That's ridiculous. Sweetheart, you had a dream. No, I'm telling you. It wasn't just some dream. I lived it. We both did. You and me, Joni. We lived it. We slept. We woke up. We went to work. We traveled. We cooked. We lived out our lives together until-- Until you get old and sick and-- And I close my eyes in a hospital bed and I woke up here. You're messing with us. If you are, it is not funny. I'm not messing with you. I am completely serious. God, I can't believe how good I feel. How young. Four. Life begins at 40 and all that. Seeing the three of you again in this house. It's also overwhelming. Mike, we've been together all day. You take a nap for 30 minutes and you wake up and suddenly it's this? I know. I know how it must sound. But I'm telling you the truth. Please. Believe me. How can I possibly believe you? Are you listening to yourself? So who's president? What? When you died. If you were AD, that would have been, what, 2061? Who's the president in 2061? Tim, don't be an idiot. No. I want to know who it is. A man named Gerald Eckhart. Never heard of him. You wouldn't have. He's probably a teenager right now. Okay. Let's talk World Series. This is what's important to you? Forty years of World Series winners, honey, we could earn some serious cash with that information. In fact, Mike, you, you know what, you better wipe this down while it's still. What happens to me? What do you mean? You said we lived out our lives together until. Until what? Does something happen? I don't, I don't want to talk about that. Well, that doesn't sound good. So what? I die first. I leave you alone for a couple of years. No, it was much worse than, I don't want to talk about it. Mike, it was a dream. It didn't happen and it's not going to happen. It did. I promise you it did. I just wish there was some way to convince you. Okay. Well, what about us? You said you hadn't seen us in 30 years. So what? We're only friends for another decade? Oh God, it was me, wasn't it? Did I ruin it? What did I do? I'm betting on some kind of jet ski shenanigans. I'm guessing unlicensed Zoom with tragic consequences. No, no, it was nothing like that. You two just moved away for Catherine's job. We lost touch after. Ooh, new job, where do we go? I'm sorry guys, I don't remember. Hurtful. Mike, you don't remember because it wasn't real. It didn't happen. Sweetheart, please. Is this really how you want to spend your evening? No, no, what I want is for us to try again. Whatever's happened here, Joni, why ever it's happened, it's incredible. It's like a second chance, an opportunity to do it all over, but do it right this time. Fix the dumb mistakes, avoid the pitfalls, keep the proper perspective and make it perfect. Nothing's ever perfect, Mike. Okay, okay, I've got another one. The stock market, let's talk investments. Who's the next Amazon or Bitcoin? What's the matter? Don't you remember that either? I'm not going to tell you any more of that stuff. What stuff? Stuff that could make us rich? Yes, because we weren't rich, understand? I just want to relive the life I had just better, not completely different. I don't want to mess anything up. Oh, come on, Mike. You can make us all rich and at the same time prove to us that you're not crazy. I call that a twofer. I'm sorry. Did we have this conversation? What do you mean? I mean the first time. In your memory, when you were an 80-year-old man lying in a hospital bed, did you remember a conversation between the four of us, 40 years earlier, about dying in your bed and waking up here? No, none of this happened before. And what does that tell us exactly? Well, anyway, it tells us you haven't gotten stuck in some kind of time loop. Oh, here she comes. Here comes the sci-fi nerd. I just mean this time when you hit 80, you'll still remember this conversation, right? Surely. So it's not like you've been looping back lifetime after lifetime. This must have been the only time. Or maybe it's just the first. Oh, geez, I'm sorry, Joan, but we were just riffing. Will you guys give us a minute? Of course. We'll be hanging out downstairs. I'll guard that slow cooker. No one but me will sample from it. I swear. Idiot. Try and stop me. Joanie, I'm sorry. It didn't mean to upset you. Well, you have. Listen to me, please. I can't tell you what it's like to be here, to see you again. You saw me all day. I guess I did in your day, not mine, not for years. God, why didn't I pay more attention? How do I let so much get by me? How did I ever lose you? How did you? You won't tell me. It wouldn't make a difference. Why? Isn't it something we can avoid? Mike, if you want me to believe all this nonsense, if you really want the rest of your life to be better this time around, I do. Truly, that is all I want. Then you have to tell me. You have to tell me what happens. All right. Yes, yes, I will. Well, what is it? I can't. What? Joanie, I can't remember. You're not serious. It was fading away. All of it. It's fading away like a dream. Mike, it was a dream. No, no. It was a life, a whole life. I can't just lose it. I can't. I need to write it down, just record it something. No, you don't. It doesn't mean anything. It meant everything. Oh, God. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Mike, look at me. Here's what you do. You come downstairs. You have drinks and dinner with me and our friends. You stay up too late and drink just a little too much. You fall asleep with the record player on. And if for some reason you really were given another chance at the next 40 years, then you take it and you live the hell out of it. With me. Okay? Now, come on, dinner is waiting, our guests are waiting, we've got a whole night ahead of us, and hundreds more after that. Yeah, you're right. I can't wait. Half-Life was written by Robert Arnold. And featured the voices of John Manus as Mike, Ashley Trevathan as Joan, Renee Davis Braim as Catherine, and Chris Jowers as Tim. Original artwork by Derek Dent. Original thanks to Karen Stron, produced and directed by Robert Arnold. To learn more about spoken signal audio drama, hear our other productions and get in touch, visit us at SpokenSignal.com. The Mutual Audio Network, listening and imagining together. (chime)