Episode 6: There’s No Such Thing as a Hive Mind Charlie Brown

The Hookup is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Blumhouse Television and Amber twenty. Listener discretion is totally advised. February third, twenty twenty four, Ludlow Hills, California, seventeen hundred hours specific standard time. This is a report of Damian Basilhurst, student and resident at Crestwick University, ID number seven seven two nine six. In the likely event that I encounter an untimely demise, this log shall be a record of my

See.

In accordance with an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act, some formally classified military documents quietly went public a while back. This amendment, known as the Sunshine Act, declassified past to

It's still unclear to me how that would even be helpful.

Like is the idea that the enemy troops would all just be too busy fucking to fight back. It's ridiculous, I know, and the type of thing I'd just lap off if it weren't for the paupers in circulation that maybe turning.

The local gay guys straight.

This is dumb. Why am I even entertaining this. There's no way poppers can turn you straight, just like there's no way the gay bomb turned people gay. If I just think this through with calm, rationale and a level head my specialty, I'm sure there's another answer. I mean, take p and Peter, the latest in a string of men to go insane and try to make me in hell a hookup. Being the keen social media stocker I am, it didn't take me long to identify this handsome exchange

I'm fine. I slipped out the back when things started to get heavy.

F five four FuMB I'm gonna make Damian inhal these poppers till his stupid face goes none.

Yeah, that's a word for it. Are you in your dorm? Can I come see you?

Okay, but Damien, be careful.

I never am Matteo, I never am. Jesus, they ain't exactly the hang out in the quad and play hacky sackweather the brochure promised, which is fine by me. I so don't have the mental wherewithal to run into anyone.

I know, Hey, Damien crazy, we're having.

Stay alert. There are hostels everywhere.

Oh way, I love that for.

You, that voice.

Of course I'd run into him. I believe in fate about as much as the next guy who doesn't believe in fate, But it feels like divine punishment that the boy blocking the stairs to Mateo's dorm.

Right now is Wade?

Yeah, took my virginity and then I sort it out at him, Wade. I've spent the last year avoiding him and the apology I'd have to expel like a kidney stone. But now there he stands, chatting it up like the world's not ending. If this is a sign from the universe telling me to apologize, I'm ignoring it.

Wade looks so sure of himself.

His body language screams confidence in a way I could never.

Annoy.

You know, Doctor Wiley must have thought I was a petty lunatic when I told her this. But something about Wade's transition from agro closeted don't tell anyone we're fucking to ultra woke human pride parade really annoys me. Like, obviously, I'd never want anyone to feel insecure about their sexuality, but Wade made me feel exactly that for months. So to see him adjusting so well, Yes, Yes.

The campaign was a huge success.

We raised enough.

Money to airlift all two hundred gay orphans stranded on the sinking Ukrainian oil rig to safety.

It was amazing, like.

Yoh shit, he's turning this way. I panic and duck into the nearest building. Where am I? Huh, the science building? And I haven't been here since last year? But Santi, what's in here?

Another classroom?

Okay?

What about here?

Faculty office?

Ooh?

Okay?

And what about this.

One janitor's closet? Why are you so excited?

I don't know, It's just you spend so much time here. It's cool to finally see it for myself. And that sounded way more passive aggressive than I intended.

I know, that's actually what I wanted to talk about. I'm gonna be spending even more time here moving forward. Remember how I told you I was applying for that research.

Grant, Yes, the one that you said sounds like a sanitarium for criminally insane old people.

Oh, ashcroft inlet, Yeah, of course.

You won the grant, not yet, but I have been selected as a finalist.

Boy, Oh, I never doubted you for a second. Who are the other finalists? Do they need to take an unexpected tumble down the stairs? Then you would win by default?

Right, there's just one other kid, and I appreciate your offer, but most respectfully decline.

WHOA we have a cadaver lab.

Huh oh, yeah, I guess so.

And there are bodies in there, that's the idea.

Cool.

You know, a cadaver lab.

Would be a good place to dispose of a body. You could just leave the corpse in there. The next day people will come in and start chopping it up. Willy Nelly for science.

Should be a campus tour guide, right.

They won't let me though, ever since I did the whole.

You were joking?

Okay, sorry, sorry?

What were we?

Oh? The grant for real? Boy, I'm so happy for you. Sounds like you'll be pretty busy.

I will be, which is why I have.

A little gift for you, my student ID.

I ticket when you were high last night.

I wasn't high last night. Okay, I have a question. Riddle me this.

You know, like erosion, How like with enough time, a river will gradually wear a weight in dirt or whatever it's flowing through.

That's right, I'm familiar with the concept of erosion.

Okay, why doesn't that happen to us like when we peek? Yeah, and that's a valid question. I would have asked you that sober Wait, but why doesn't that happen to us?

Anyway? I got your ID voted for research lab access.

Look see now you can convision me anytime.

Boyo.

I don't know what to say except does this also give me access to the cadaver lab? Santi, I'd forgotten about that grant. The other kid probably won by default. At this point, I don't see wade outside anymore.

Perfect.

It's almost like the universe is telling me don't go to Mataos. It will be an emotionally devastating experience from which you'll never recover.

Sought off, universe, You're not the boss of me?

Nope, not a sign. Didn't see that.

Who is it?

It's your friendly neighborhood hook man.

Were you followed?

I mean, probably knowing my luck.

Come on, come in.

Poteo's room is a mess. And now that I got to go, look at Mateo? So is he? So?

How are you on the bed?

Whoa okay?

Uh?

Mateo?

Whoa okay okay? A pettier man than I would point out that it was once Matteo who chastised me for cutting to the sex too quickly. This is some unexpected but I'm down. Oh okay, no, no, nom out, get out, get out? Fuck what? It won't stay up.

It felt pretty fucking up. Oh oh yeah, I see?

Ah, whoa MATEO, It's okay, whiskey Dick is just part of the human experience, like fear, guilt, and shame. You don't get it, Damien, No, I really don't. So can we please just talk for a sec the non penetrative kind of talk.

Oh, yeah, you're right, I'm sorry, it's okay.

First, did anything bad happened to you last night at Peter's?

No, when things took a turn for the worst, I ran.

I'm so sorry. I was scared.

It's fine. Really, I did the same thing. I'm just glad you got out. Did you see what happened to Elias?

Oh shit, yeah.

I lost track of him after where wolf ended. No idea if he got out or Elias.

This is a loss an no bad blood to speak on. Nice to meet you, Damien.

He was kind of shrimpy and annoying. But the boy knew how to play a game of Werewolf, that's for sure.

I hope he's okay.

What about you? What did Big Top and Peter do to you in the bathroom?

Well, after they got all berserk, they tried to make me inhale. The hookup berserk, you know, red face, bulging veins glossed overlooking their eyes, and every time they moved I could hear their bones.

Just like Bellboy. Then that night he attacked us and made me inhale it can I say something?

Oh?

But you you go first?

No?

No, no, you go?

Oh.

I was just gonna say.

As you know, I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santy, but I don't know. It feels like the longer I'm searching for him, the more I keep finding myself unraveling this entirely unrelated mystery. Like, no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to the hookup.

What if it's not an unrelated mystery at all? What if Santy's disappearance in the hookup are connected.

I've considered that, but.

Go on, I'm missing something. I know I am how.

This all fits together. I could really use a throat fuck right about now.

Sorry, throat fuck.

You know the informant dude from the Watergate scandal. He'd meet Robert Redford in the parking garage and give him little like hints and clues and stuff when he was stuck deep throat it was that his name. Okay, well, like that's still pretty fucking weird. Who thought deep throat was a good code name? His commanding officer sergeant as Blast. And I'm sorry, but if someone who calls themselves deep throat wants to meet you in a secluded parking garage, information ain't when he's looking to.

Trade getting a lot of mileage out of the deep throat bit.

Huh shit, I'm sorry. This is that joking thing I do that you hate.

It's okay, I kind of missed it.

I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but I just now realized that when I look at Matteo, I don't see Santy anymore. I stare into his eyes and I can finally just see.

At Tayo. Anyway, the hook up, you think it's causing people to turn agro.

I think it's doing more than that. Can I say something crazy?

Always cool?

If I light incense?

Sure?

Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here?

How goes lower?

No?

I mean about the incense. You said that monks believed inhalance had the power to purify us, to change us.

Did I I'm pretty sure I was just trying to sound smart. Physicians in the Middle Ages also believe that illness and plague was caused by inhaling a type of evil toxic air called miasma.

Not sure how much stock we can put in.

It, But what if that's legit? I mean, maybe not the whole evil miasma air part. But what if something you inhale, like say paupers, could change you, like on a really fundamental level.

Do I seem fundamentally changed?

Weird answer? I mean, wouldn't the logical question be fundamentally changed? How Because huh, lest we forget, Mateo did and held the hookup, which means if my conversion theory is correct, then Mateo wouldn't be gay anymore, which is impossible obviously. But I sat back down on the bed and turned to face him, humoring his question. Does he seem fundamentally changed?

No, you still seem like Matteo.

I don't feel like Matteo. I haven't since the hookup.

At first, I thought my libido was just fucked up in response to the dramatic belboy experience.

But then I.

Started craving the hookup, waking up sweaty with nothing on my mind. But the certainty that I'll die if I don't get more. So when me and Peter DM me on metal and said he had a bottle of the hookup for the winner of the game night he was hosting, I was there. My mistake was assuming it would be settlers of Katan. And even though I said some uh uncouth things to you last night.

I know you were just trying to protect me.

I did a great job, clearly.

At first I thought that was the point of the hookup, to be addictive enough so people keep buying more.

But but this isn't duel selling I have. It isn't the hookup's true objective.

No, no, no, no no no.

That's crazy theory you alluded to earlier. That is the true objective of the hookup. So I'm gonna ask you one more time, Damien. Do I seem fundamentally changed to you?

I already said, Am I different?

Yes?

You know in spaceship movies when the astronauts come back aboard their ship and it makes that noise as gravity is released back into the airlock, That's what I felt like just now. Matteo and I have been beating around the bush this whole time and talking in Enema's. But now that we're addressing the elephant in the room, it suddenly feels so.

Real.

It happened gradually over the past week.

First it was just noticing the Roughs check out girl in a new way. Then it was widening my porn searches. From muscle twunk forgets money to pay dishwasher repair man pays him with sex, to Matriar can't afford to pay Busty off.

Pair pays her with sex.

Huh, why do all of your porn searches sound like entry level trafficking?

Yeah? I just caught that too.

Regardless, I thought at first it was just a later in life discovery of bisexuality.

But you're not into guys anymore.

He's not into me anymore.

I don't know who I am, Damien.

Ah fuck, fuck, this couldn't be any more my fault. If you had to come with me to Bell Boys that night, you wouldn't have taken the hookup, and you wouldn't even have come with me if I'd been honest about Santy and how.

You look like him.

Amian, will you shut your dump you off or your goddamn fucking sentence.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Look, I appreciate the apology, but there isn't time. Okay.

Look there's something else, another side effect of the hookup that I need to tell you about. About two days after inhalation, the blackouts started. I suddenly come to with no recollection of the past hour or afternoon, or even a full day.

That's right back in p and Peter's bathroom when he and Big Top snapped out of it.

For a minute.

Oh what just what is going on?

Who are you?

Why you're my boss?

They didn't remember anything, Damien.

I called you because the blackouts are getting longer and more frequent, and.

I can't explain how. But I know it's gonna take me over soon for good God.

But before I'm completely gone, I need to tell you something about the night Santi disappeared.

What about it?

I saw it?

You saw it?

No, that's not right.

I remembered it, but it's it wasn't my memory. I I think everyone who's under the hookup's influence is connected. It sounds crazy, but it's it's like my brain is linked up to something bigger.

Like a hive of mind.

What is that?

I mean pretty much what you just described a connected network of consciousnesses which comprise some sort of centralized collective entity. Sometimes each individual branch can alternate between independent and group thought, you know, maintaining some degree of free will. But in other cases, the individual exists solely for the purpose of carrying out the will of the collective, or to keep consistent with the name the Queen.

I knew you'd understand.

I read a lot of sci fi, which is what this is. Science fiction. There's no such thing as a hive mind, just like there's no such thing as a gay bomb or poppers that turn you straight.

But if bugs can share a common consciousness, how can you really say it's impossible for humans too.

Bugs don't share a hive mind.

It's a misnomer.

Hive dwelling insects communicate with like vibrations and pheromones and shit, look, I'm not trying to be a doubting Thomas here because we're kind of in for a penny at this point, But is it really plausible that your brain is hooked up to some.

Hooked up.

The hookup?

Oh shit, terrifying, But you gotta respect the wordplay. I okay, So you're experiencing the memories of other people who've taken the hookup.

I think I've only caught glimpses so far, and most of them are everyday occurrences running to catch a bus, trying to connect a Wi Fi, puking in an uver, and I witnessed them from the POV of the person whose memory it is, so a lot of them were passable.

As my own.

But last night I remembered something. I, or rather the person whose memory it is, was standing in the hallway of the Ludlow Lodge. It didn't look like it does now, which I can only assume means the memories from before the renovation. Okay, remember when you were telling me about the night Santy disappeared and you couldn't figure out how his body could get down from the sixth floor undetected.

Right, because the security cameras only really cover the stairways and elevator, which means.

The only way to get a body from the sixth floor to the first floor would.

Have been via the old dumb waiter, which was rusted shut. But that's just it. It looks rusted shut, but in reality I think it was just locked.

In my memory, I was watching another guy approach the dumbwaiter.

Another guy who it was dark.

And I really couldn't make him out, but it was someone I've never seen before. And he had keys.

Can you be keys? Come on?

I don't know where the season really perhapped.

Come on, you get a fucky keys.

The other guy unlocked the dumb waiter and pulled open the door and hoisted.

A body up into view.

A body.

Yeah, he crammed it into the hatch, sent the dumb waiter down and locked it back up again.

The police would be calling the cous we'll come back for the body tomorrow.

I get live, okay? And and was it?

What was the body?

I couldn't know if it was SANTHI, but.

I can't imagine that many people have met their demise via foul will play at the lobble Lodge.

So okay, Well, it sounds like the memory was probably Bell boys, right. I mean, he would have the dumbwaiter keys, and assuming your thesis is correct, he'd definitely be a part of the hookup.

I've mind, Damien, Are you I mean I just told you I saw a body?

Yeah?

No, I just I can't. I can't, I can't right now with that.

Okay, But Damien, it's happening.

Hey, no, no, it's definitely not happening. Come on, Matello, you can fight this.

I can't to Tayo.

Look at me, Mattello. I'm going to find a way to reverse this. Okay, I'll turn you back and it'll be fine, Okay, I promise, Mattella.

All right? Are you okay?

No? No, I'm fucking great.

What what are you afraid of?

It's me.

You're not material, not exclusively, no.

Part of something bigger, something with a purpose.

Do you know how good it feels to have purpose?

Damien, he's here, Arren, what the fuck?

An?

Don't you learn anything yet coming from you? It's always been a pet peeve of mine in movies when people make those super outlandish promises that everything will be okay, Like when the guy is about to leave the broken down van to go get help and he tells his girlfriend the hook a man won't get you.

I'll be back with help before you know it.

Like, what are you talking.

About, dude?

You cannot possibly make that promise. There's a literal fucking hoole candid killer out there.

I can almost.

Guarantee that you will all get.

Disin battled, But somehow, despite all this, I did it.

Just now.

I promised Mateo that I'd find a way to restore him, which was.

A crazy thing to say.

If recent events have taught us anything, it said, I have no idea what I'm doing. Every goal I set morphs into a new and perplexing catastrophe. And that's not even taking into account the fucking hive mind angle. But even with this sci fi shit now in play, I can say with complete certainty that I will save Matteo.

He was right.

It does feel nice to have purpose. I stop as I passed the science building again.

I wonder.

Classroom, faculty office, janitor's closet, cadabra lab, research lab. Here it goes, Thanks Boyo. It's ironic. I was so excited when Santi gave me access to this part of his life, but he disappeared before I had a chance to take advantage. I don't know what I expected, but this all seems pretty standard. Sterilized tables, equipment tucked neatly on the shelves, various collegiate academic trophies behind locked glass, and oh, what's this?

By side on labstools.

The plaque below reads twenty twenty three Ashcroft Inlet Research Grant Finalists. My eye is first drawn to the boy on the left, Santy. He half smiles through closed lips. This must have been right before that night, and I'd recognize the other boy too, The boy grinning softly under a messy head of wheat colored hair. The boy who was Santy's competitor for this supposedly life changing grand opportunity, The boy who stood to gain the most from Santy's disappearance.

Hey, this is Santy.

Text me or leave a message and I'll get you back.

By So, Matteo says he saw a body at the Ludlow Lodge. Granted he didn't see the face, and this was all via an alleged hive mind vision, So I'm trying not to spiral and assume it was you. I mean, you can't be dead, because then I'd be leaving voicemails for a dead person, and that would make me crazy. These messages are for you, Santy, and as long as I keep leaving them, I won't give a pope that you're still out there, and that.

Goodbye.

Not a sign, Not a sign. Written and directed by Noah Feinberg.

That's Me.

Sound design and score by Jeremiah Zimmerman, starring Noah Feinberg That's Me as Damian Ray Santiago as Santy and Matteo Nico Greatham as Wade, Augustus Prue as Elias, Scott Evans as Big Tough, Jeffrey Self as bell Boy, Tina Majorino as Doctor Wiley, Obi Abiley as PM, Peter Gabriel Ruiz

That's me,