The Transcript (Final Segment)

Broadcast: THE TRUTH FILES

Episode Title: The Mermaid Hypothesis

Air Date: June 28, 2020

COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF TELEVISION BROADCAST TELEVISION BROADCAST

HOST: We now return with the conclusion of tonight's program, The Mermaid Hypothesis: What really happened on that fateful summer night in Seabreeze Point? Zac Pierce, are you still with us over satellite?

ZP: I'm here.

HOST: And I'm told we have another guest joining us. Is she there?

ZP: Yeah, she's right here next to me. This is Ari Callahan.

HOST: Ari, thank you so much for agreeing to appear on the program tonight. For our viewers, Ari's face has been blurred at her request, and she has a keyboard in order to speak with us by text. Her words will appear in closed captioning at the top of the screen.

AC: No, it's OK. I want to do some of it out loud.

HOST: Your selective mutism has improved?

AC: Sometimes. I still have rough moments, but I've made a lot of progress in therapy this year.

HOST: That's wonderful news.

AC: I want to try to talk tonight. There are some things I need to say with my own voice.

HOST: Ari, can you tell us where you and Zac are right now?

ZP: No, she can't. We agreed before the broadcast that you wouldn't—

AC: It's OK, Zac. I can speak for myself.

HOST: Go ahead Ari.

AC: I can't say exactly. I'm at a private treatment facility. My family sent me here after my suicide attempt.

HOST: I see. Your family led us to believe that you had, in fact, drowned last summer.

AC: Yeah, that's the story they spread. They talk about me in the past tense and stuff. It's kind of creepy. They don't know I'm doing this show tonight either. They're going to freak when they find out.

HOST: They lied about your death? That seems extreme. Why would they do that?

AC: To protect me. So no one comes looking for me.

HOST: To protect you from what, Ari?

ZP: You know what. There's no telling what Torrent might do when he finds out that Ari's still alive.

AC: But Zac, that's why I'm speaking out. I can't hide forever. That's what Mae tried to do, and look how it ended. That's why I'm here. I'm getting this on the record. It's June 28, 2020, and I'm alive. My vocal chords are intact and fully functional. If anything happens to me going forward, the world will know where to lay the blame.

HOST: Can we talk about Mae, and how her life may have ended? Do you have memories of her from your early childhood, Ari?

AC: Yes. I remember very clearly what happened the night I was found. Mae—my mother... I remember she took me to that exact same spot on the shoreline where I always used to go, just south of Pier 18. She carried me out into the water. I managed to swim back to shore, and she must have washed out to sea.

HOST: Why do you think she did that, Ari?

AC: She was trying to keep me from my father. I distinctly remember what she said to me that night. She kept telling me I had to be silent, that he must never hear my voice.

HOST: Did she name Dominick Torrent specifically?

AC: No, she just said my abeoji. My father.

ZP: We know it's Torrent though. Mae told Torrent she was going to do it. We have the note. She said they would both end up at the bottom of the ocean... Both! She was talking about Ari!

HOST: Ari, do you support the claim we heard just now from Zac that Dominick Torrent is your biological father?

AC: I think so. I can't say for sure.

HOST: Have you considered a court-ordered paternity test?

ZP: Seriously, you should, Ari. He must owe a fortune in back child support!

AC: I don't want his money. I just want him to leave me alone.

ZP: But he can't get off scot free. He has to pay some price for what he did to you—for what he did to Mae!

HOST: This might be a good moment to mention to our viewers that we invited Mr. Torrent to appear one more time and defend himself in this final segment of our broadcast. He declined the opportunity, but I'm getting word from my producers that we received a brief written statement from SirenSong's legal counsel moments ago. I'll read it for you now: "SirenSong, Inc. and its leadership team deny any wrongdoing, legal or moral, in regards to the allegations described on your broadcast tonight. However, in order to put the matter to rest and avoid spurious personal gossip from damaging shareholder value, we would like to announce the decision by our founder, Dominick Torrent, to step down from his current role as Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Torrent wishes to retire from all operation duties and pursue his lifelong passion for world travel."

ZP: Translation? He's running away.

HOST: Or being forced out by his board. Since he took his company public, Mr. Torrent no longer retains full control over SirenSong's corporate decision-making. So you see, perhaps the IPO—the event your grandfather worked so hard to stop—ended up being Dominick Torrent's undoing in the end.

ZP: Wow. That should make the old man happy.

HOST: Does it make you happy, Zac?

ZP: Small price to pay if you ask me... but at least it's something.

HOST: And Ari? What about you?

AC: I don't care about all that Counter-Disruption stuff. I'm sorry, Zac. I just don't.

HOST: What do you care about, Ari? Is there anything else you hope to gain from speaking with us tonight?

AC: Closure, I guess. That's what my therapist calls it. Acknowledging my past and then putting it behind me.

HOST: Would you like to have any kind of relationship with your biological father?

AC: No. I'm not looking for anything from him. Like I said, I just want him to leave me and my voice alone.

HOST: Do you believe he has any further interest in your voice at this point?

AC: I don't know. Maybe not him, but whoever takes over SirenSong from him. They only got that one thirty-second clip from the video that circulated. I imagine they could do a lot if they had more.

HOST: But SirenSong is already fully optimized. It can already outperform all human voices.

ZP: Nothing's ever fully optimized. You know how it works with these tech companies. They're always coming out with new updates all the time.

HOST: But what could SirenSong possibly hope to improve at this point?

ZP: Well, there's the fact that it doesn't work on little kids.

HOST: What do you mean?

ZP: Ari's the one who pointed it out to me, actually. She noticed it when she used to work as a mermaid impersonator. A lot of little kids would come to see her, and she noticed they didn't react to the SirenSong music the same way their parents did.

AC: Right. Especially children who were born after SirenSong was invented.

ZP: My cousin Cy thinks it's because they were exposed to SirenSong in the womb when their brains were still developing. He's got some theory he's working on.

AC: Zac has his own theory, though.

HOST: What's that?

ZP: I don't know. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I like to think that SirenSong is just a trend. It's dominating now, but it won't last. Someday all those little kids will grow up and turn into teenagers. And then they'll go in search of the real thing.

HOST: The old music?

AC: Zac has been working on building a complete archive.

ZP: I'm collecting every song that was available for download on iTunes as of December 2016, the year before SirenSong was introduced.

AC: I'm helping him catalog everything. A lot of the old music videos got taken down after SirenSong acquired YouTube a few months ago.

ZP: But we already had them backed up. They're safe.

HOST: Ari, does this mean you've forgiven Zac for his role in leaking the recording last summer?

AC: I forgive him. Zac and I are good. We still text all the time, and he's come to visit me here a few times.

HOST: I don't think our viewers can see this from their angle, but the two of you appear to be holding hands beneath the table while you're talking to me tonight. Is it safe to say that your relationship goes beyond friendship?

ZP: Seriously? Ari, you don't have to answer that.

AC: It's fine, Zac. But I don't—I don't know.

ZP: We haven't really defined it yet. OK?

AC: Let's just say, we're talking... We're testing the waters.

HOST: An interesting choice of words.

ZP: [laughs] Can we please move on?

HOST: Zac told us you still text each other often. What do you two text about?

AC: Mostly music. I like learning about it from him.

ZP: She needed some new material to sing in the shower, now that she's over the whole Little Mermaid thing.

HOST: So you've accepted that your similarities to the fairytale were purely coincidental, Ari?

AC: I guess. I know there's no handsome prince who's going to swoop in and fix my life, if that's what you mean.

HOST: Have you completely let go of the idea that you yourself might be a mermaid?

AC: Yes and no.

ZP: What? Ari, I thought you were past all that!

AC: Fairytales have their purpose.

ZP: It's a delusion! You know that.

AC: It's possible to know something is a fantasy and choose to believe in it anyway. That's what fairytales are for.

HOST: What do you mean by that, Ari?

AC: Zac's got his own fairytale, if you ask me. His whole thing that music will make a comeback someday? That's probably delusional too, and he knows it, but it makes him feel better. It helps him cope.

ZP: That's not the same thing.

AC: Fairytales give people something to believe in when the reality is too painful to face.

HOST: And what fairytale do you believe in now, Ari?

AC: Not that I'm a real mermaid exactly, but maybe... [pause]

HOST: Take your time. You can use your keyboard if you need.

ZP: Maybe we should stop.

AC: No, I'm good. I want to say this.

HOST: Go ahead, Ari. We're listening.

AC: I know it probably isn't true, but I'm choosing to believe it anyway.

HOST: To believe that you are, in fact, a mermaid?

AC: No. But maybe... Maybe that fairytale wasn't even about me. Maybe it was always about my mother.

HOST: Mae Song Yee? You think she was a—

AC: She was a foundling, too, when she was little. She turned up in some fishing village by the sea. No one really knows where she came from.

ZP: Ari, no.

AC: What's the alternative, Zac? That both of my parents were monsters? That my father was so cruel and selfish, he drove my mother to kill herself. And my mother...my own mother was so obsessed with thwarting him that she purposely tried to drown me, a four-year-old child, with her own bare hands?

ZP: She was a victim. She was trying to—

AC: No. I'd rather believe in a fairytale. That's what stories are for. They give us someplace safe to go when the real world turns out to be an ugly place. So that's the story I'm going with, Zac. That's my version of the truth.

ZP: But it isn't true!

AC: You don't know that. There's no way to prove it one way or the other.

HOST: OK, you two. We only have a few moments left in tonight's program. Let's return once more to that night in Seabreeze Point, when Ariel Callahan was found as a young child, washed up on the beach. Please tell us, Ari, in your own words. What do you believe happened on that night?

AC: You've heard the facts. Mae Song Yee brought me there to commit murder-suicide. That's the simplest explanation, and the viewers can come to that conclusion if they like. But for myself, I choose to think there was more to the story. I choose to believe that my mother... That maybe my mother...

ZP: It's OK. Ari, don't...don't cry. Come here. Maybe you should use the keyboard for the rest.

HOST: You have the final word, Ari. Go ahead and use your keyboard. Put it in writing. Leave  us with the truth—whatever truth you want our viewers to believe.

[CLOSED CAPTIONING]
>> It's only a theory, a hypothesis like the title of this show. But it doesn't seem so far-fetched to think that maybe my mother was like me. Maybe she believed in fairytales. Maybe it was the only way for her to cope with the hand she'd been dealt.

>> So maybe Mae Song Yee believed she was a mermaid. Stuck on land. Living under a magic spell...

HOST: And that night when she carried you into the ocean?

[CLOSED CAPTIONING]
>> Maybe she wasn't really trying to kill me. Maybe she was trying to take me home.

{END OF BROADCAST}

Dear Readers:
I thought about adding an epilogue... but I honestly can't come up with a better ending than this! If you're a reader of my books, you know my endings are never quite as neat and tidy as a fairytale. That's not the way life works. I hope this one leaves you satisfied and makes you think.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider reading my published young adult novels, available for sale in bookstores everywhere in paperback or e-book!

Out now:
FOLLOW ME BACK
TELL ME NO LIES

Coming in December (available for preorder):
SCARED LITTLE RABBITS

You can find out more on my website:
www.avgeiger.com

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️❤️❤️

Much love,
Viv