LYS Podcast Episode 8

***-Intro-***

**AMANDA MORRISON’S NARRATION/VOICE OVER (AM V/O):** Last time, we left you with a bit of a
cliff-hanger. Although we were unable to find the name of Patient 80, we did
find the list of two people we believe may have visited them in the hospital.
We’ll get back to Patient 80 in a moment, but right now Colin has some news.

**COLIN ORRY (CO):** I found something I think you’re going to find very interesting.

**AM:** What is it?

**CO:** Ok, well right
around the time Dr. Weylen Taylor disappeared from his locked bedroom…

**AM:** Yes?

**CO:** He was looking into
connections between a group of people.

**AM:** What group of
people?

**CO:** A handful of other
scientists, an artist, a poet, a novelist, a mathematician and some others.

**AM:** And…what do they
have to do with what we’re looking into?

**CO:** They’re not only all
directly connected to Dr. Taylor, but they all had contact with something else.

**AM:** What?

**CO:** The Bolchester
Alliance!

**AM V/O**: You’re listening to The Leap Year Society. I’m Amanda Morrison. Stay
with us.

***-End of Intro-***

**AM:** Ok so, how are these
people and Weylen Taylor connected to the Bolchester Alliance?

**CO:** Taylor placed a
number of ads and queries looking for a very specific type of person.

**AM:** What kind of person?

**CO:** He was looking for
people with extremely high IQ’s; artists, scientists and the like.

**AM:** Back in Episode 3,
Lizzie Max told us she believed Taylor was looking for ‘young people of
significant interest’.

**CO:** These criteria seem
to fit his MO.

**AM:** That Taylor was
looking for specific things in his patients or subjects.

**CO:** Yep, and it looks
like he may have been filtering some of his results, at least in this batch of experiments,
through another matrix.

**AM:** What do you mean?

**CO:** I mean the only
people who made this list all had referenced contact with another group.

**AM:** The Bolchester
Alliance.

**CO:** Exactamundo.

**AM V/O**: I’m going to jump in here to let you know that we’re not going to be
naming those people who may or may not have taken part in Dr. Taylor’s
experiments. This is because we’ve been unable to contact them or another
secondary source to confirm any of their connections to Dr. Taylor. So first of
all, how are these people connected to Dr. Taylor?

**CO:** Ok, I so I’ve found
a list of participants in what Taylor referred to as a ‘preliminary test
screening’ and, kind of by accident, I cross referenced that list with another
I was looking into at the time.

**AM:** What do you mean
‘kind of by accident’?

**CO:** I mean I had one
list on my laptop and the other printed out on my desk. That’s when I noticed a
few of the same names.

**AM:** What was the other
list?

**CO:** A list of names I’d
been compiling that might be connected to the Bolchester Alliance and/or The
Leap Year Society.

**AM V/O**: So, maybe Dr. Taylor wasn’t just interested in possession and
sleep-pattern research. Maybe he was looking for something else…but what? What
did the Bolchester Alliance have to do with Weylen Taylor’s sleep experiments?
Well, I thought the best way to find that out would be simply to ask them
directly. It turns out; asking them directly wasn’t so easy to do. Their
website was cryptic and finding a physical location to visit or call was
impossible. But we did have another method of access: we had Mitch.

**MITCH SORENSEN (MS):** You want me to set up a meeting?

**AM:** Yep!

**MS:** That hasn’t been how
things have worked so far.

**AM:** Well, maybe it’s
possible to change things up?

**MS:** Maybe?

**AM:** You don’t sound
convinced.

**MS:** It’s not that, I
just don’t want to rock the boat, you know?

**AM:** I get it. It feels
like we’re moving closer to uncovering something…significant and pretty
strange.

**MS:** Yeah. Yeah.

**AM:** Well, how do you
think we should proceed?

**MS:** Well, what’s the
main goal here?

**AM:** To find out if the
Bolchester Alliance is connected to Dr. Weylen Taylor and if so, how?

**MS:** Ok. Ok. I’ll text
the number I have and ask for a meeting.

**AM:** Thanks.

**MS:** No problem.

**AM V/O**: While we’re waiting for Mitch to set up a meeting with the Bolchester
Alliance, we’re going to go back to where we ended last episode: Patient 80.
Last time, we heard from one of two visitors listed as having possibly visited
Patient 80 in the hospital. The voice you heard at the end of our last episode
belongs to a man named Michael Sail. We found his number and called him at his
home in Joshua Tree.

**MICHAEL SAIL (MSa):** Of course I know the patient’s name. I’m the person who checked him
into the hospital.

**AM:** Would you be willing
to share his name with us here on the podcast?

**MSa**: His name is Jan
Hoke.

**AM:** What else can you
tell us?

**MSa**: I found him
wandering the streets in December of 2012. He wasn’t lucid but I could tell
that he wasn’t homeless. He was wearing expensive clothes and jewellery. So I
brought him to the hospital. They told me at admission that he was going to
walk out and there would be nothing they could do. They gave me the address of
another kind of institution so I took him there.

**AM:** Can you remember
anything strange about him? Did he mention something called ‘The Bolchester
Alliance’?

**MSa**: Everything was
strange about him, but I don’t remember him mentioning any organization or
anything like that. He just wouldn’t stop talking.

**AM:** What do you mean
‘everything was strange’? What was he talking about?

**MSa**: I mean, he would
slip into other languages at random and he’d stare off into space intently for
a few seconds every now and then.

**AM:** What other
languages?

**MSa**: I have no idea.
German, French, Russian, it was really random. Or at least it sounded random to me.

**AM:** Did you go back to
check on him after you dropped him off?

**MSa:** Yeah, of course.

**AM:** And what was he like
the next time you saw him?

**MSa:** There wasn’t a next
time.

**AM:** What do you mean?

**MSa:** I wasn’t allowed to
see him. After I dropped him off the second time, I never saw or heard from Jan
Hoke again. The next time I heard his name was when you called me.

**AM V/O**: So, we had a name but not much else. I called Colin to see if he might
be able to help.

**CO:** Nothing on Jan Hoke.

**AM:** Nothing?

**CO:** Nope. I’m going to
try a few other places but I’m not optimistic.

**AM:** Thanks for trying.

**CO:** No problem. I’ll let
you know if I come up with anything new.

**AM:** You’re the best.

**CO:** Yes I am. Thanks.

**AM V/O**: So, with Mitch looking into the Bolchester Alliance and Colin looking
further into Jan Hoke, I decided to go back to the recordings we received from
that anonymous source. The audio files titled ‘Patient 80’.

***- Recording -***

**WEYLEN TAYLOR (WT):** Would you be willing to talk about your visitor?

**PATIENT** **80:** Which one?

**WT:** The one who came to
see you today.

**80:** What would you like
to know, Dr. Taylor?

**WT:** What did you talk
about?

**80:** She didn’t tell you?

**WT:** She’s only willing
to speak with you, I’m afraid.

**80:** Are you?

**WT:** Am I what?

**80:** Afraid?

**WT:** No. Do you believe I
have a reason to be afraid?

**80:** Maybe.

**WT:** And why is that?

**80:** Because there’s
something in here with me.

**WT:** What do you mean? I
can’t see anything. It’s a small room, I can see it all, every corner. And all I can see is
you, I’m afraid.

**80:** Oh, you see…that’s
precisely the problem.

**WT:** What do you mean,
what’s the problem?

**80:** You’re looking in
the wrong place.

**WT:** What are you talking
about?

**80:** What am I talking
about?

**WT:** Yes.

**80:** It’s inside my head.

***-end of recording-***

**AM V/O**: We’ll get back to Patient 80 soon, but right now we’re going back to
Colin. He just left a message asking me to call him. He said he found
something.

**AM:** Your message sounded
urgent. What is it?

**CO:** It’s the video.

**AM:** You found it!

**CO:** I had it…for a
second.

**AM:** What happened?

**CO:** The server was taken
down.

**AM:** Did you see any of
the video’s content?

**CO:** Just a brief clip.

**AM:** The artifact?

**CO:** It appeared to be
some kind of strange material, possibly stone or metal. It was hard to tell.

**AM:** Anything else?

**CO:** There were three
people in the video; one of them was holding the object. It looked like it was
shaped like some kind dodecahedron.

**AM:** Um…what’s that?

**CO:** Have you seen
twelve-sided dice?

**AM:** Um…

**CO:** It’s a twelve-sided
solid geometric shape.

**AM:** Got it.

**CO:** Mmhmm.

**AM:** Just looked it up.
Anything else you can tell me about that video?

**CO:** It was just a second
or two.

**AM:** Where did you find
it?

**CO:** Reddit.

**AM:** And there’s nothing
there now?

**CO:** Nothing, but there
are a few of us trying to find it. I think if we can get enough of a hive-mind
working on it, we should be able to track it down. Maybe torrent bits of it and
bring them together.

**AM:** Keep me posted.

**CO:** Of course.

**AM V/O**: We’ve come a long way since our first episode. Back then, all Mitch
and I wanted to do was find out if something called ‘The Leap Year Society’
actually existed, and if so, were they somehow responsible for the fact that
our original pilot show had been pulled from the schedule by our new podcast
network. Which was then itself shuttered under strange circumstances. Well, I
have an update on that side of things. One of the producers of that show, the
woman who was going to be running the brand-new offshoot of that well-known
podcast network, agreed to speak with us on the record and do her best to
explain what she believed happened to the first version of this show. Her name
is Catherine Eastman. She’s a public radio producer. She’s the person who,
along with Mitch, convinced me that my degree in journalism wasn’t only
something I could use to pitch stories to outlets while I was working on a
book. Podcasting was taking off and Catherine and Mitch had been auditioning
both voices and ideas for a few months. I had just quit my job as a researcher and
occasional segment reporter for an NPR affiliate and was looking for something
new; when Mitch and I decided we’d try and take our passion for mysterious
secret societies mainstream. Catherine is tall and thin with thick black
glasses, curly red hair and an impeccable sense of style.

***-Interview-***

**AM:** Do you mind if Mitch
sits in with us for this?

**CATHERINE EASTMAN (CE):** No, not at all. Is she here?

**AM:** I’ll text her to
come in.

**CE:** This place is great,
you guys are doing it!

**AM:** Thanks!

**MS:** Hey it’s so good to
see you!

**CE:** You too! I was
telling Amanda this place is fantastic.

**MS:** Thank you, it’s like
a proper studio. Well, smaller.

**CE:** It’s great, I love
it. Can I work here?

**MS:** Anytime.

**CE:** I might hold you to
that.

**AM:** Ok, so why don’t we
just dive in and see what happens?

**CE:** Sure.

**AM:** What we’re looking
for is the reason behind the sudden shuttering of that subsidiary podcast
network and the cancellation of our show.

**CE:** Well, like we told
you at the time; it had nothing to do with the quality of the show; it was a
mandate from above. We just didn’t have the money we thought we were going to
have to handle all six of the new shows.

**MS:** Couldn’t you just
have cut the number of new shows?

**CE:** Well, not really.
Everything was predicated on a combination of public support and ad sales. We
needed the inventory to sell and we just weren’t seeing the right numbers.

**AM:** That’s it?

**CE:** Yeah. I mean, we did
lose support for the new offshoot when we lost our champion to the competition.

**AM:** Right, I remember
and his replacement wasn’t all that keen on expanding.

**CE:** Exactly.

**MS:** That was Nancy
Robins?

**CE:** Yes.

**AM V/O**: So, that was that. It was simply a case of budgetary concern meeting a
lack of faith in expansion. Or was it?

**MS:** This is for real?

**AM V/O** Something Catherine Eastman had said during our interview led me into
another research deep-dive into the Leap Year Society. It remained incredibly
hard to find anything related to the Leap Year Society online. Throughout this
entire podcast, I’ve been encountering blind alley after red herring after
blind alley. I was just about to give up altogether, when I found exactly what
I was looking for.

**MS:** Where did you find
this?

**AM:** I went back through
everything looking for a connection between Nancy Robins and the Leap Year
Society.

**MS:** For our listeners,
Nancy Robins is the woman who took over for our old boss at our previous employer,
the rather well-known podcast network.

**AM:** Right. I was
positive I’d seen her name mentioned in relation to the Leap Year Society in
some document somewhere.

**MS:** But, it turns out
that wasn’t the case.

**AM:** That’s right, I was
wrong. I hadn’t seen Nancy Robins name connected to the Leap Year Society at
all.

**MS:** But, you had seen
her name.

**AM:** Oh yes, but I’d seen
her name in connection with something else.

**MS:** And what was that
something else?

**AM:** That something else
was the Bolchester Alliance.

**AM V/O**: While Mitch and I were uncovering this information about Nancy Robins
and the Bolchester Alliance, Colin had uncovered something of his own.

**CO:** I found it!

**AM:** The video.

**CO:** Yeah.

**AM:** Did you email it to
me?

**CO:** Not exactly.

**AM:** What do you mean?
Did the torrent method work?

**CO:** No, it turns out the
torrents are encrypted and connected via a blockchain security routing system.

**AM:** Ok?

**CO:** So it means we’re
going to have to access it another way.

**AM:** You said you found
it. What does that mean?

**CO:** It means somebody is
showing it.

**AM:** Who?

**CO:** I have no idea, but
it looks like it’s being shown at an exclusive screening somewhere in San Francisco.

**AM:** Where?

**CO:** We won’t know until
an hour before.

**AM:** What do you mean by
‘we’?

**CO:** People with access
to a deep web proxy-locked website.

**AM:** And you have access?

**CO:** Not exactly
‘officially’, but I can see when others access the site.

**AM:** Is that legal? When
is the screening?

**CO:** One week from today.

**AM V/O**: You’ve been listening to the Leap Year Society. *(Rest of usual*
outro.)

**END**

NOTES

* We

 get confirmation that Patient 80 / Jan Hoke’s female visitor is a real
 person and is different to “The Passenger” referenced in previous episodes