The Audio Drama Directory

Flynn Martin woke to the smell of smoke and the taste of dirt. His cheek pressed against something cold and wet—leaves, he realized, as his eyes fluttered open. Dead leaves, brown and rotting, carpeting a forest floor he didn’t recognize. His head throbbed like someone had stuffed a bass drum inside his skull and was pounding out a rhythm only pain could hear. Where am I? He pushed himself up on shaking arms, and that’s when he heard it—a sound like thunder, but wrong somehow. Too sharp. Too close together. And underneath it, something worse: screaming. Flynn scrambled backward, his sneakers slipping on the damp ground. Through the trees, maybe two hundred yards away, he could see smoke rising in thick gray columns. Figures moved through the haze—running, falling, some of them not getting back up. That’s not thunder, his brain finally supplied, catching up to what his ears already knew. Those are gunshots. Another boom, louder than the rest, shook the ground beneath him. Flynn threw himself behind a massive oak tree, pressing his back against the rough bark, breathing so hard he thought his lungs might burst. Think, he commanded himself. Think, think, think. The last thing he remembered was Papa’s workshop. The converted barn behind his grandfather’s farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, cluttered with tools and wire and pieces of equipment Flynn couldn’t name. Clara had been there, holding a wrench, her dark braids swinging as she leaned over something mechanical. And Jude—where was Jude? Flynn squeezed his eyes shut, trying to grab hold of the memory, but it slipped away like water through his fingers. He risked a glance around the tree trunk. The battle—because that’s what it was, he understood now, an actual battle—seemed to be moving away from him, the sounds of combat drifting eastward. But the smoke still hung thick in the air, and somewhere in the distance, a horse screamed. I need to move. Flynn forced his legs to work, staying low as he crept through the underbrush in the opposite direction of the fighting. Branches scratched at his face and caught at his jacket—his favorite blue hoodie, now torn at the sleeve and covered in mud. He didn’t care. He just needed to get away, find somewhere safe, figure out what was happening. That’s when he saw the wreckage. It lay in a small clearing, scattered across the forest floor like the remains of some mechanical beast. Twisted copper pipes. Shattered glass that caught the weak sunlight filtering through the leaves. A control panel, cracked down the middle, still sparking weakly. Flynn’s heart stopped. He knew that control panel. He’d watched Papa build it over the past three months, carefully soldering each connection while explaining the theory behind temporal displacement in terms a twelve-year-old could almost understand. “The key is the caesium oscillator,” Papa had said, his wild white hair sticking up at odd angles as it always did when he was excited. “It creates a frequency that, when properly amplified, can theoretically punch a hole in the fabric of spacetime itself.” Flynn had nodded like he understood. He mostly didn’t. But he understood enough to know that what lay scattered before him now was the remains of Papa’s time machine. And that meant— “Clara,” Flynn whispered. Then louder: “CLARA! JUDE!” No answer. Just the distant pop-pop-pop of gunfire and the rustle of wind through branches. Flynn dropped to his knees beside the wreckage, searching frantically through the debris. Papa’s leather journal—ruined, the pages soaked with something that might have been rain or might have been worse. A pocket watch, its face shattered, hands frozen at 3:47. The brass housing of the caesium oscillator itself, dented but somehow still intact. But no Clara. No Jude. No Papa. They could be anywhere, Flynn realized, and the thought hit him like a physical blow. Anywhen*.* A twig snapped behind him. Flynn spun, grabbing the first thing his hand found—a length of copper pipe, bent but solid—and raised it like a weapon. The man who emerged from the trees was tall and thin, dressed in a blue uniform coat that hung loose on his bony frame. His face was gaunt, shadowed by a beard that looked like it hadn’t seen a razor in weeks, and his eyes were the pale gray of old ice. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, and a red-stained bandage wrapped around his left hand. “Easy there, son,” the man said, holding up his good hand, palm out. “I ain’t looking to harm you.” Flynn didn’t lower the pipe. “Who are you?” “Corporal Thomas Whitfield, 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry.” The man’s eyes swept over Flynn, taking in his strange clothes, his muddy sneakers, the copper pipe clutched in his white-knuckled grip. “Question is, who are you? And what in the name of the Almighty are you doing out here dressed like that?” Flynn’s mind raced. 20th Maine. Civil War. But which battle? Which day? “I’m…” He swallowed hard. “I’m lost. I was with my brother and sister, and there was an accident, and I don’t know where they are.” It wasn’t even a lie. Corporal Whitfield’s expression softened slightly. “Lot of that going around today. Civilians caught in the crossfire.” He glanced back toward the sounds of battle. “You best come with me. I’m heading to the field hospital at the Weikert farm. You can’t stay out here—Rebs could be anywhere.” “Rebs?” The word slipped out before Flynn could stop it. Whitfield stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “Confederates. Rebels. You hit your head or something, son?” Flynn touched his throbbing temple. “Actually, I think I did.” “That explains the confusion, then.” Whitfield stepped closer, close enough that Flynn could smell gunpowder and sweat and something darker, more metallic. “Come on. We’ll get you sorted at the farm. Maybe someone there has seen your brother and sister.” Flynn hesitated, looking back at the wreckage of the time machine. He couldn’t just leave it here—it was their only way home. But he couldn’t carry it all, and he couldn’t stay here alone, and he needed to find Clara and Jude more than he needed anything else in the world. He grabbed Papa’s journal—ruined or not, it might still help—and the brass housing of the caesium oscillator, stuffing both into his hoodie pocket. Then he turned back to Whitfield. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll come with you.” They walked in silence for a while, Whitfield setting a pace that Flynn struggled to match. The sounds of battle faded behind them, replaced by the ordinary noises of the forest: birdsong, insects, the whisper of wind through leaves. It almost felt peaceful, if Flynn could forget the smoke still staining the sky and the distant boom of cannon fire. “That thing you were holding,” Whitfield said suddenly. “The machine. Never seen anything like it.” Flynn’s hand went instinctively to his pocket, where the caesium oscillator made a heavy bulge. “It’s… complicated.” “I expect it is.” Whitfield’s pale eyes studied him sidelong. “Your clothes, too. That material—never seen its like. Where’d you say you were from?” “I didn’t.” “No,” Whitfield agreed. “You didn’t.” They emerged from the trees onto a rutted dirt road, and Flynn stopped dead. The farmhouse sat on a small rise, a simple two-story structure with white clapboard siding and a wrap-around porch. But it was what surrounded the farmhouse that stole Flynn’s breath: dozens of wounded men, lying on blankets in the yard, their moans carrying on the summer air. Surgeons in blood-soaked aprons moved between them, while women in long dresses brought water and bandages. “Welcome to hell,” Whitfield said quietly. “Or as close as mortal men can get.” Flynn couldn’t speak. In school, they’d learned about the Civil War, about casualty figures and battle maps and the names of generals. But no textbook had prepared him for this—the reality of it, the smell of blood and suffering, the sound of a young man crying out for his mother. “You alright, son?” Whitfield’s hand came down on his shoulder, steadying him. “You’ve gone pale.” “I’m fine,” Flynn lied. “I just… I’ve never seen…” “Pray you never do again.” Whitfield’s voice was soft, but there was steel underneath it. “Come on. Let’s find someone in charge.” They made their way through the yard, stepping carefully between wounded soldiers. Flynn tried not to look, but he couldn’t help it—these were boys, some of them not much older than Jude, their blue uniforms torn and stained, their faces twisted with pain. One of them grabbed Flynn’s ankle as he passed. “Water,” the soldier croaked. His face was gray, his lips cracked and bleeding. “Please. Water.” Flynn looked around frantically, spotted a bucket with a ladle sitting beside the porch, and ran to get it. He brought it back and knelt beside the soldier, carefully lifting the ladle to his lips. “Thank you,” the soldier whispered after he’d drunk. “Thank you, thank you.” “You’re welcome,” Flynn said, and his voice cracked on the words. “That was kind of you.” Flynn looked up. A woman stood over him, her dress covered by a bloody apron, her hair escaping from a bun at the back of her neck. Her face was tired but kind, and her eyes—dark brown, almost black—held a warmth that seemed impossible in the middle of so much suffering. “I’m Mrs. Weikert,” she said. “This is my family’s farm. And you are?” “Flynn. Flynn Martin.” “Well, Flynn Martin.” She glanced at Corporal Whitfield, then back at Flynn. “You’re not dressed for this century, I notice.” Flynn’s blood went cold. Mrs. Weikert smiled, and there was something knowing in it, something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Don’t worry, child. Your secret’s safe with me. After all—” She leaned closer, lowering her voice to barely a whisper. “—you’re not the only strange traveler to appear here today.” Flynn grabbed her arm, all pretense forgotten. “My brother and sister. A boy, fourteen, dark hair. And a girl around 12, with braids. Have you seen them? Are they here?” Mrs. Weikert’s smile faded. “I’ve seen the girl. She arrived two hours ago, just as confused as you. But the boy…” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. There’s been no sign of him.” “Where is she? Clara—where is she?” “In the barn, helping with the less severely wounded. But Flynn—” Mrs. Weikert caught his wrist as he started to turn away. “There’s something you should know. Your sister didn’t arrive alone. She was found with something. A document, old and partially burned.” “What kind of document?” Mrs. Weikert’s eyes searched his face. “A letter,” she said slowly. “Addressed to President Lincoln. Dated three days from now. Warning him of an assassination plotAt Ford’s Theater? Flynn asked.No, she said – here at Gettysburg, on July 4th, 1863.” Flynn felt the world tilt beneath his feet. “But that’s impossible,” he thought. “Lincoln wasn’t assassinated at Gettysburg. That never happened. And if the assassination never happened, then why does that letter exist? And who wrote it?” Mrs. Weikert turned and walked away, leaving Flynn standing in the middle of a Civil War field hospital, clutching a piece of impossible technology in his pocket, with his sister waiting in a barn and his brother lost somewhere in time. And a mystery that could change the course of American history itself. To be continued…