I Listened to a Podcast From an Alternate Universe

A few weeks back, I was looking for a new podcast to listen to. I was caught up on all my other ones, and I liked having something to listen to while walking around my neighborhood or driving to work. I ended up coming across one called ????????? It wasn’t too popular, but it had a decent amount of episodes, releasing weekly since 2019. The podcast’s description was garbled text, ending in ASCII art of an eye. It was weird as hell, but that only made me more interested. I’ve always liked the weird indie fiction podcasts, and this one seemed to fit that bill. I downloaded some episodes and started listening.
The best way I can describe this podcast is Welcome to Night Vale mixed with My Brother, My Brother, and Me with slightly more of a horror focus. Three hosts – Byron, Morgan, and Elroy – would discuss current events and pop culture but with an absurdist twist: the events they were discussing seemed like they came from an alternate universe.
For instance, in earlier episodes made around 2019, they’d talk politics. However, in the podcast, they wouldn’t discuss things like Trump or the election. Their world didn’t have a president. Instead, they had a leader called “The All-Seeing One,” described as a tall, inky being with a head of hundreds of eyes and immense power. After saying their leader’s title, they’d follow it up with a “Long may he reign!” I figured it was a bit combining the Glow Cloud (all hail) from Night Vale with political commentary about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.
The show would also do ads, but they seemed like parodies of the kind of ads you’d hear in podcasts. Rather than an ad for Casper Mattresses, this podcast would give you ads for Crypt Beds, “beds so comfortable you could die in them!” That tagline would be followed up by a disclaimer that Crypt Beds is not legally liable if someone did die in one of their beds.
Honestly, I found the entire thing funny as hell. It seemed like an absurdist satire/horror fiction podcast, and I adored that kind of thing. What’s surprising is that I couldn’t find anyone else talking about it. This absolutely seemed like something that’d have a small, but devoted, fanbase. Admittedly, part of it might be because it was hard to look up. The listed title was just nine question marks in a row, and whenever the hosts said the title it cut to static. That’s why I’ve been referring to it as just “this podcast.”
Anyway, I thought it over and realized the lack of a visible fanbase wasn’t too weird. The big audio drama podcast boom had passed, and these days the most you’d see is the odd Tumblr blog talking about Night Vale or The Penumbra Podcast or something.
As I kept listening to the series, I got more attached to the three characters. Byron was the straight man of the group, bouncing off Morgan and Elroy. He was also a giant sweetheart who constantly talked about how much he loved his wife and two daughters. Morgan was the type to make bad puns, causing Byron and Elroy to groan. Admittedly, some of those puns didn’t make sense to me, but I figured that was because they were referencing alternate universe things. Elroy was the funniest of the three, always cracking jokes and poking fun at Morgan. Over the course of the first year of the series, Morgan and Elroy would end up in relationships. It was always nice hearing Morgan gush about his boyfriend or Elroy telling funny stories about awkward dates with his girlfriend.
The show would alternate between jokes and cute stories to Byron saying things like, “The All-Seeing One (long may he reign!) erased the minds of a group of subversives today. I wish I could feel bad for them, but they were fools for challenging the power of The All-Seeing One (long may he reign!). The mindless husks were sentenced to eternal torture in the Dodecahedron. Anyway, let’s talk about that new Marvel movie, Joker.” (In case you were wondering, their version of Joker is very similar to ours, except Joker is named Joseph Kerr.)
As I binged through the podcast and got to the episodes made in 2020, I was curious to see how they’d address COVID. Most every piece of media did in some way, after all. I wasn’t sure if the disease (or something like it) would play a big part in the narrative, or if there’d be an offhand reference, or if the story wouldn’t address it. As it would turn out, COVID wasn’t mentioned at all, not even in some out of character intro to the podcast.
Instead, the 2020 story would introduce the Heavensent, angelic figures who came to Earth to free the world from The All-Seeing One. The Heavensent were defeated over the course of the year and sentenced to a gruesome fate. Their wings and limbs were eaten by rabid wolves and whatever was left of them was sent to the Dodecahedron to be eternally tortured. As the series would go on, the main characters would sometimes get calls from the Heavensent, which consisted of screaming.
The show would still discuss then-recent movies, but in a way that raised a lot of questions. Due to COVID, a lot of films got delayed. For instance, Black Widow was supposed to release in May of 2020, but got pushed back a year due to COVID. However, in this podcast, Black Widow released in-universe in May of 2020, with the episode discussing it releasing around the same time. The weird thing was that the way they described the film was almost beat for beat what we got, with some minor weird differences, like a Joker cameo. As I listened, I wonder how they got it right. A good guess? Leaks? Whatever they did, it still seemed weird.
2021’s story would be more character focused, as the relationship between Elroy and his girlfriend, Monica, would blossom. Wedding plans were consistently discussed, until, near the end of the 2021 story, it was revealed that Monica was a subversive. Elroy would start the episode after that revelation with, “She’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Byron asked.
“Monica. She… she was a subversive. Her mind was erased. She’s… she’s…” Elroy said, drifting off and crying. He sobbed for a full minute while no one else said a word.
Then, Morgan laughed. “What are you talking about, Elroy?”
“Wuh-what?” Elroy asked.
“Who’s Monica? You never had a girlfriend.”
“That’s right,” Byron added. “You never had a girlfriend.”
“But…” Elroy stammered.
“You never had a girlfriend. There was never a Monica,” Byron and Morgan said in unison.
“I… I never had a girlfriend,” Elroy said.
There was a pause. Then, Elroy said, “Wait, why was I crying?”
“Beats me!” Morgan said.
All three of them laughed, and Monica was never mentioned again. Elroy always seemed a bit off going forward though.
Jesus, that was a gut-punch of an episode, I thought. I still loved it, and decided to introduce this podcast to my friend, Dale. Dale moved away a year back, so we’ve been keeping in touch through Discord. I told him about this podcast, and said he should listen to it. He responded that he couldn’t find anything on it. I sent him a link to it, and he said, “Dude, this is just an error page.” He even sent a screenshot to prove he wasn’t kidding.
Weird. I said I’d try and find some other way to get it to him. In the meantime, I kept binging it.
2022 began a storyline where The All-Seeing One attempted to go to and conquer a new universe. To do that, he needed more power. This led to an arc in which various scientists try to give The All-Seeing One that power. None of their methods work, dooming the scientists to horrific fates. This story arc actually continued into 2023, with the revelation that to give The All-Seeing One enough power, everyone in the world needed to sacrifice something or someone close to them.
Byron gave up his daughters, Morgan gave up his boyfriend, and Elroy said, “I’ve nothing to give up. Inside me is only emptiness. What is there to give but myself?”
The All-Seeing One would end up taking those people and cross over into a new universe while Byron and Morgan acted like none of them ever existed. According to them, the podcast always had two hosts, Byron never had kids, and Morgan was always single.
The final, most recent episode, started off differently. Byron said, “It… it’s gone. That monster… that nightmare… it left. We’re free. We’re free.” He’d keep repeating those last two words until he broke down crying. “It took Elroy. We lost our friend to that… that thing. I gave it my daughters,” he sobbed. “It ripped my heart out and I let it.”
“You couldn’t help it,” Morgan said. “It made us. We had no choice. You know what it’d do if we didn’t.”
Byron still sobbed. He cried for five straight minutes. It didn’t sound like acting. It sounded genuine. It was haunting.
“I can still see it,” Byron said. “In my head. That inky body. That head of eyes, always watching, always staring into my goddamned soul. I go to bed, and I see it in my nightmares. It tells me that it will be back, that we’ll never be free.”
“We are free,” Morgan said. “It’s gone. I don’t think it’s ever coming back. I don’t think it could. I just worry about the poor bastards in whatever universe it ended up in.”
And with that, ????????? ended. That last episode came out a couple of weeks ago, and as far as I can tell that was it.
The thing is, ever since that episode, I’ve been having these weird nightmares. I see this thing. It’s tall, skinny, with a black body that was constantly dripping a dark, inky liquid. Its head, though, its head was its strangest part. Every inch of its head was covered in eyeballs. There were hundreds of them, and I could feel every single one of them staring at me.
Last week, while I was walking around my neighborhood, I thought I saw it out of the corner of my eye. A couple of days ago, while I was driving to work, I could’ve sworn I saw it in my rearview mirror for a brief second, sitting in the back seat of my car. Yesterday, while I was shaving, I knew I saw it in the mirror for just a moment, standing behind me.
Today, I tried finding that podcast again. It wasn’t on my podcatcher, and I found no trace of it anywhere. I asked Dale about it, and he said he had no idea what I was talking about. I checked our Discord conversation, and saw that none of the messages I sent him about it were saved. It’s like we never talked about it, like none of it was real.
Did I imagine this? There was no way. I couldn’t imagine anything that vivid for weeks on end. Yet how else could no one but me know about it? How come I could find nothing about it online? How come I’m the only one who can see that… that thing?
I started typing this up, just trying to get my thoughts down. Writing’s always been a way for me to calm myself. So far, it’s working. In the black and white of a Word doc, everything seems so logical. Maybe this podcast really was a dream, or a hallucination, or stress, or
Wait.
As I type these words, I catch a glimpse of myself in my laptop’s screen. Behind me, I see it. That inky black body. Those hundreds of eyes, staring into me. It’s not going away like the other times. It wants me to know it’s there.
I turn around. It’s standing behind me, real as can be, looming over me like a shadowy titan. Its eyes bore into me, staring into my entire being and reading my soul like a book. The only sound I can hear other than the furious pounding of my heart is the subtle drip drip drip of its inky body. 
It's here. 
It's real. 
It came to our universe through me, through that podcast.
It came to conquer.
It can’t be stopped.
It won’t be stopped.
The All-Seeing One is here.
Long may he reign.
Category:Dorkpool
Category:Computers and Internet
Category:Beings