Thursday Morning Rewind - July 10th, 2025
(SOUND of the signature "Thursday Morning Rewind" theme music, now with a more pronounced, slightly unsettling drone underneath, fades in and then under.)
ANNOUNCER (Voice smooth but now with a noticeable undercurrent of unease): Live from Nocturnis Local 6, it's Thursday Morning Rewind. With Beatrice Hemlock and Edgar Crowe.
(Camera focuses on Beatrice and Edgar at the news desk.)
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: Good morning, Nocturnis. It's Thursday, July 10th, 2025, and this is "Thursday Morning Rewind." Kicking off our program this morning, we turn our attention to the halls of power, where a piece of legislation dubbed the "Big Beautiful Bill" is dominating headlines and stirring up considerable debate.
(Beatrice gestures to a graphic appearing on the screen, showing a stylized, overly optimistic rendering of a new cityscape, quickly dissolving into stark, blocky blueprints.)
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: This monumental initiative, promising sweeping urban revitalization and unprecedented economic growth, is currently being relentlessly pushed through the city council. Our sources confirm that it's the monolithic corporations that hold significant sway in our city, throwing their immense weight and considerable resources behind this bill. They publicly champion it as a beacon of progress, a promise of a brighter tomorrow for all citizens of Nocturnis.
EDGAR CROWE (A dry, cynical laugh escapes him): "Brighter tomorrow," Beatrice? Funny, that’s what they always promise right before they pull the plug on half the district. Corporations pushing it? That's just the window dressing. You peel back the layers of any "public good" initiative in Nocturnis, and you almost always find the greasy fingerprints of the founding families—the Blackwoods, the Hedges, the unspoken architects of our concrete jungle—pulling the strings from their gilded penthouses.
(Edgar leans forward, his voice dropping conspiratorially, looking directly at the camera.)
EDGAR CROWE: This "Big Beautiful Bill," with its vague promises of new infrastructure and "reorganizing teams"... it's just another land grab, another thinly veiled excuse to displace the inconvenient, silence dissent, and carve up the city's future profits among themselves. They're not building a better city; they're building a bigger vault. And mark my words, they’ll find "wasteful spending" to cut, alright—usually anything that actually benefits the citizens who aren't on their payroll. It’s the same old puppet show, just with new marionettes.
[STATION BREAK] (SOUND of a grim, static-filled commercial break for an emergency supply depot, looking suspiciously well-stocked, begins to fade in and out.)
(SOUND of the signature "Thursday Morning Rewind" theme music, now with a more pronounced, slightly unsettling drone underneath, fades in and then under, leading back from the break.)
ANNOUNCER (Voice smooth but now with a noticeable undercurrent of unease): Live from Nocturnis Local 6, it's Thursday Morning Rewind. Beatrice Hemlock and Edgar Crowe welcome Professor Armitage to discuss the Crater Lake Dam and its deep roots in Nocturnis lore.
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(Camera returns to Beatrice and Edgar at the news desk. A third chair has been added, occupied by PROFESSOR ALISTAIR ARMITAGE, a scholarly but weary-looking man in tweed, surrounded by stacked, water-stained historical documents.)
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: Welcome back to "Thursday Morning Rewind," Nocturnis. We just discussed the future our city's power brokers are trying to buy with the "Big Beautiful Bill," but now we must confront the devastating present. Joining us this morning is Professor Alistair Armitage, esteemed historian and archivist, who has dedicated his life to uncovering Nocturnis's forgotten truths. Professor, thank you for being here under such grim circumstances.
PROFESSOR ARMITAGE (Voice raspy, eyes tired but sharp): Beatrice, Edgar, it's... necessary. The city needs to understand. The Crater Lake Dam isn't just a failed structure; it's a monument to ambition, built in the 1930s by the influential Hedges family. For decades, it promised progress, hydro-power, and crucially, clean water through the Hedges Water Works. It symbolized our mastery over nature, our endless growth.
EDGAR CROWE: (Scoffs softly) "Mastery." Funny word for something that just unleashed hell on the North End. Professor, for those of us who recall the first time this "monument" showed its cracks, how does this disaster compare to the breach on July 16th and 17th, 1987?
PROFESSOR ARMITAGE: (Nods solemnly) An excellent, and haunting, question, Edgar. The 1987 breach, on those very same dates – July 16th and 17th – was horrific enough. But this time... this is far more catastrophic. We had what meteorologists are calling a "thousand-year rain event" over the Crater Lake watershed. The aging, though supposedly reinforced, dam simply couldn't withstand the immense pressure. It was, as you said, an internal tsunami.
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: And the impact, Professor... the details coming from N24/7 are truly unfathomable. Homes in the North End and North Bank weren't just flooded; they were ripped from their foundations. We've heard reports of structures, with victims trapped inside, being swept 15 to 20 miles downstream before disintegrating.
PROFESSOR ARMITAGE: Precisely. The city's meticulously designed Emergency Broadcast System, a source of pride, was utterly overwhelmed. Power grids collapsed instantly, sirens were drowned out. It speaks to a level of destruction that few could have anticipated, drawing disturbing parallels to the raw, untamed power we've seen in recent real-world floods in places like Texas and New Mexico. The sheer volume of water, the peak summer heat and humidity compounding the misery... it's a perfect storm of human vulnerability and nature's fury.
EDGAR CROWE: And the grim toll, Professor. We're talking over 119 confirmed fatalities and 176 are still missing. Our Coast Guard Search and Rescue teams are working miracles, but even miracles have their limits. The water is still out there, hiding its secrets.
PROFESSOR ARMITAGE: Indeed, Edgar. The search is challenging due to the spread of the disaster zone and the very nature of the destruction. This isn't just a tragedy of infrastructure; it’s a profound loss of life and a stark reminder that even our most ambitious creations can turn against us. The question isn't just how we rebuild, but what this disaster truly reveals about the foundations—both literal and metaphorical—of Nocturnis.
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: Professor Armitage, thank you for that sobering, yet crucial, historical context. It seems Nocturnis's past is as murky and dangerous as the floodwaters themselves.
EDGAR CROWE: Indeed. And those murky waters have, as always, revealed more than just debris. They’ve highlighted significant cracks in our digital facade, too.
[STATION BREAK] (SOUND of a grim, static-filled commercial break for an emergency supply depot, looking suspiciously well-stocked, begins to fade in and out.)
(SOUND of the signature "Thursday Morning Rewind" theme music, now with a more pronounced, slightly unsettling drone underneath, fades in and then under, leading back from the break.)
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: Exactly. Joining us now at the desk to shed some light on the technological impact of this disaster, and perhaps a glimpse into the digital shadows of Nocturnis, is our new Channel 6 News tech expert, Anthony "Tek" Mocklin. Welcome, Tek.
(Camera widens to include ANTHONY "TEK" MOCKLIN, a younger, sharply dressed individual with an almost manic energy, surrounded by an array of blinking screens and holographic displays on his side of the desk. He nods briskly, eyes darting between the hosts and his tech.)
ANTHONY "TEK" MOCKLIN: Beatrice, Edgar, thanks for having me. The dam's collapse is, without question, the physical devastation we're all witnessing. But beneath the rising waters, another storm has been brewing for months, threatening to reshape the very fabric of Nocturnis: the tech layoffs.
(Tek taps a screen, and a complex web of corporate logos appears, some fading to gray, others pulsing faintly. Graphics highlight steep downturns in digital sector employment.)
ANTHONY "TEK" MOCKLIN: For too long, the gleaming towers of our city's tech giants, the ones promising a digitized utopia, have been quietly bleeding talent. Major corporations have been shedding thousands of highly skilled workers, citing AI and automation as the primary drivers. These aren't just numbers on a spreadsheet, folks; these are programmers, data architects, cybernetics engineers—people whose skills were once gold. Now? They're out on the street, desperate.
EDGAR CROWE: (Leans forward, a glint in his eye) And desperation, Tek, is a currency the underworld understands better than any legitimate market. I imagine the city's less-than-legal enterprises are having a field day with all this "displaced talent."
ANTHONY "TEK" MOCKLIN: You've hit the nail on the head, Edgar. It's creating a perfect storm for AI-driven crime. These advanced AI systems, once prohibitively expensive, are now cheap and readily available thanks to the mass market saturation and the sheer number of unemployed experts who know how to twist them. We're seeing them repurposed for everything: sophisticated data theft that leaves no trace, autonomous enforcers patrolling illicit territories for crime syndicates, even complex algorithmic trading scams.
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: So, the very technology designed to advance us is now being weaponized against the city. And what about the engineers themselves?
ANTHONY "TEK" MOCKLIN: They're building a new kind of black market. Former corporate engineers are now designing untraceable comms networks for whoever has the credits, or crafting custom cybernetics for the highest bidder – no questions asked about the source of the parts, or the purpose of the augmentations. It's a "Mad Max" wasteland for jobs, where once-valuable skills are devalued, creating an incredibly cheap and desperate labor force for the criminal elements.
EDGAR CROWE: So the city's glittering promise of innovation has birthed its own digital underbelly. It sounds like even the illicit job market is seeing wages plummet. A new kind of gig economy, where even a hit is paid by algorithm.
ANTHONY "TEK" MOCKLIN: Precisely. It's leading to a rise in desperate acts from individuals, but also, disturbingly, a subtle push for something akin to organized labor within the criminal world itself. Disgruntled ex-programmers are becoming cyber-gangsters, AI-controlled security systems are going rogue, and these underground tech bazaars are flourishing. The lines are blurring, Nocturnis, between the corporate towers and the shadowed alleys. And the flood? It's just a smokescreen for some of this to operate with even less scrutiny.
[STATION BREAK] (SOUND of a grim, static-filled commercial break for an emergency supply depot, looking suspiciously well-stocked, begins to fade in and out.)
(SOUND of the signature "Thursday Morning Rewind" theme music, now with a more pronounced, slightly unsettling drone underneath, fades in and then under, leading back from the break.)
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: Welcome back to "Thursday Morning Rewind," Nocturnis. We've seen the financial and digital undercurrents of our city’s disaster laid bare. But as the floodwaters begin their slow, grudging retreat, they reveal not just devastation, but a desperation so profound, it's driving families to unthinkable measures.
EDGAR CROWE: Indeed, Beatrice. With official channels overwhelmed, and the city's infrastructure gridlocked, the wealthy and the powerful are turning to alternative solutions. And those solutions are anything but clean.
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: We're receiving unconfirmed, but persistent, reports of private security operations escalating, particularly around certain… discreet facilities. It appears some of Nocturnis’s most influential families, fearing for loved ones trapped or held in places the official rescue efforts can't, or won't, reach, are hiring elite private extraction teams.
(The screen behind them shifts to a blurred, shaky security camera feed. It shows the exterior of a sleek, windowless building, almost like a fortress, partially submerged by floodwaters. A heavy-duty, customized transport vehicle, bearing a stylized tiger logo – perhaps from Tiger Transit, a firm known for its robust logistical operations in the energy sector – is seen maneuvering through the murky water towards it. The vehicle looks out of place, too tactical for civilian rescue.)
EDGAR CROWE: We're hearing whispers that these aren't just any "facilities," Beatrice. We're talking about places like The Zenith Institute for Reorientation – outwardly a private rehabilitation center, but long rumored to be a front for something far darker. A corporate "re-education" facility for... problematic individuals. A place where fortunes are spent to keep secrets buried, or minds molded.
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: And now, it seems, that secrecy has been violently breached. Sources close to the situation indicate that one such facility was targeted in a coordinated, brutal assault. The leading figure in this audacious operation? A former Peacekeeper – a name that once commanded respect, but now carries a heavy shadow: Kaelen 'Ghost' Thorne. A decorated operative, discharged with a checkered past, now a rogue element striking at the heart of the city's hidden infrastructure.
EDGAR CROWE: 'Ghost' Thorne. A man who always marched to his own drum, even when he wore the uniform. The question is, Beatrice, was this a desperate rescue mission, initiated by those desperate families hiring Tiger Transit to retrieve someone they truly valued? Or was this a high-stakes hit, perhaps a distraction from the broader chaos of the flood and the ongoing fallout from 'The Maestro' Rourke's arrest? Who was being held in a place like the Zenith Institute that was worth this level of extreme risk?
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: And what dark secrets does the Zenith Institute truly hold, Edgar? Secrets now potentially exposed by Thorne's actions, or perhaps by the flood itself. Was Thorne acting as a lone wolf, driven by some personal vendetta, or are there deeper, more dangerous factions at play within the remnants of our city's former protectors, challenging the very authority of corporate security?
(As Beatrice speaks, a new graphic appears on screen, overlaid with faint, almost subliminal images of cargo planes and indistinct military vehicles. It's subtle, hinting at global movements.)
EDGAR CROWE: And on that note, Beatrice, the ripples from our city's internal chaos are apparently extending far beyond Nocturnis's flooded borders. We're receiving unconfirmed reports that the very same private security forces, linked to operations like these, including elements of what's being called the Tiger Force Shadow Saga, have been dispatched internationally.
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: You're referring to the highly specialized units that have seemingly been sent to assist with US weapon shipments to volatile regions like Israel and Ukraine? It seems the desperation and expertise honed in our city's shadows are now being outsourced onto the global stage.
EDGAR CROWE: Precisely. It raises uncomfortable questions about who truly controls these forces, and what their real objectives are. Are they merely protecting assets, or are they involved in something far more intricate, leveraging the chaos of distant conflicts for their own, or their employers', gain? The lines between state-sponsored operations, private security, and the underworld are blurring with alarming speed. It suggests that even the global geopolitical stage is becoming a playground for Nocturnis's shadowy elite.
BEATRICE HEMLOCK: A chilling thought as we close out this edition of "Thursday Morning Rewind." Nocturnis, we've faced a week of unprecedented devastation, from the literal breaking of our city's foundations to the metaphorical cracks appearing in its political and technological structures. The flood has laid bare the moral ambiguities that define us, the desperation that drives us, and the pervasive dread that looms over every shadowed alley.
EDGAR CROWE: We'll continue to bring you the stories, the facts, and the uncomfortable truths as this city attempts to rise from the waters. Stay vigilant, Nocturnis.
(SOUND of the signature "Thursday Morning Rewind" theme music, now with a more pronounced, slightly unsettling drone underneath, swells and then slowly fades to black.)
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