DOOR 14

(AMELIA THEME BUT MAKE IT CHRISTMAS!!!!)

ØYSTEIN

The Amelia Project Audio Advent Calendar. Door fourteen.

(CLICK)

INTERVIEWER

It's December 14th, and since it is exactly ten months after Valentine's day, I thought it was fitting to introduce you to... drumroll... the love of my life!

My beauty, my darling, my trusted companion, my best friend and most prized possession:

The answering machine!

Now this wonderful thing is a miracle of modern technology. As you can see it looks exactly like an old fashioned answering machine. Which is because it is! Old. It has very few buttons - which is exactly to my liking. If you ask me, anything with more than two buttons should be a shirt.

Yes… It has an easy to use manual, printed and laminated some time in the seventies. And it has good, old fashioned tapes on which the messages are recorded.

Look! The light is blinking! That means someone has left a message! Let's listen!

(message opens in a slight panic)

“Hello? Helloo? Oh, it’s a voice message, there's no point in shouting into the void...

Hi! I might have made a big mistake this morning, or I think it was this morning I- I don’t know, it's very blurry ..it involves a time machine and these gangsters and these dead pets ….next thing you know I've got these animal bones in my backyard that shouldn't have been there and weren't there this morning but like all I can tell you is now the gardas * are after me ….. and I need to get outta here and I haven't got much time and I just need to start a fresh and I want to go back to the way things were and normal, and not be wanted on a wanted list anymore and not be responsible able for a criminal master case”

(Inhale to try and catch breath)

“I need to start a new life, Amelia, can you help me?”

(MESSAGE CUTS OFF)

INTERVIEWER

Anyhow, this thing served us very well for many many years. Until one day, in the mid noughties - a confusing decade - when we got wind that Scotland Yard was on to us. All they had was the number to the answering machine, but a phone number can be traced. What to do?

Due to the inventiveness and forward thinking of a very clever someone - not me, it was Amelia - we quickly rerouted the old number to a disused brewery in Skegness, and got ourselves a new, remote answering machine service.

The new number was then connected to another number in the Cayman Islands, then sent through a switch board in Alaska, triple-wired against a mobile tower in Pyongyang, back-routed through a Mongolian satellite and finally rerouted back to our office right here in London!

This fiendishly clever scheme is then re-done every year to keep us undetectable. At the moment I believe our messages are run through a bitcoin-server in Norway. Hm.

All of this was Amelia's brilliant idea - and I am very proud to say, partially programmed by my very clever niece Lorraine!

Oh, that reminds me - I need to get Lorraine a Christmas present. I'm giving her a subscription for the new Alicia Cairn fashion magazine! It's full of pictures of what Alicia Cairn has worn in the last week.

Anyway, so that’s us, we are completely digital these days.

Then what about old Betty, you ask? Yes, I call her Betty, sometimes. Doesn't she look like a Betty? I think she looks like a Betty.

Well, I insisted we keep her. Because I don't know the difference between YouTube and a boob-tube.

Nono, I do, actually. A boob tube is a television and YouTube is what you call it when you are on television.

Yes, well, to cut a long story short, Amelia agreed to let incoming messages land on the old machine, so that I still know what I'm doing.

(HE PATS THE MACHINE AFFECTIONATELY)

I love you, Betty.

(CLICK)

(SPARKLING)

PIP

Hello, Pip here to jump in to tell you that the voicemail you heard in today’s door was in fact a genuine voicemail. That’s right, you can actually call The Amelia Project with a disappearance request. We select the best and occasionally play them on the show! Today’s voice mail was submitted by Ace, a podcaster themselves, and hoster of a furry trashpod. So, thanks Ace, and if you would like to submit a disappearance request, there are two ways of doing so. Either you can find our actual phone number that’s mentioned by our characters in seasons two or two and three, it’s in the UK, so international rates apply, or you can attach a voice clip to an email and send it to implodingfictions@gmail.com. We love hearing from you, and we do listen to every single message we receive, and who knows, maybe we’ll use it in a future episode or as part of one of our voicemail compilations. That’s it for now, have a mince pie, have some ginger bread, have some festive cocoa, whatever you like to do in advent and we’ll be back tomorrow with the next door for you to open.

END OF EPISODE.