Mayfield & Belov presents: Camp Here & There
Episode Seventeen: The Hallucination of the Hive

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[DING]

SYDNEY

Good morning, campers, and happy 8:60 AM! The sky is [Sniffs] a happy, honey yellow, with streaks of cinnamon brown… a delicious, glass-candy canopy that just makes you wanna [He slaps the table] Lickk… !

Phew. Today is a very special day, my friends. Today, June 24th, 2021, is Camp Here & There’s annual Lake Day! I was worried the wet festivities might get cancelled after a chunk of the goo from last week seeped into the lake, but it’s been successfully extracted and despised into nonexistence, so things are all on schedule. Our lake guards, Juno and Mila, spent all night setting up a wonderland of aquatic attractions for you all to enjoy — an inflatable obstacle course upon the lake’s surface; a watergun battle arena on the shore; a waterslide to nowhere; and a petting zoo of adorable lake-dwelling creatures, such as crocodiles… and cats! 

Of course, all that hard work left the two of them utterly pooped, which means your friends Juniper and Marisol will be filling in as substitute lake guards! They’re, uh, not technically certified, though, and for all Juniper’s claims that he “knows the ocean like he knows beans on the cob”, he is suspiciously unwilling to demonstrate any ability to swim. So… be extra careful out there, I think. At the very least, please stay away from the cats.

[Forcefully excited] Anyways, Lake Day! Awesome! Wow! Of course, personally, I hate getting wet — I don’t enjoy the way my skin curls and knots at the joints when submerged. But I think you’ll find that a certain assistant nurse of mine is quite fond of swimming, and emerges from his office pretty reliably on this specific day. So, despite my personal struggles with hydrophobia, this is really possibly my favorite day of the year. It takes me back to a simpler time when Jeddie and I were your age, and we’d head down to the community pool — he in his nerdy little Star Wars themed swim trunks, and me in full Victorian mourning dress. He would swim his laps and try to convince me to get in the water, while I would stand around in the sweltering sun and kick dirt into the pool out of random spite. Ahhhh… childhood. To think, back then, I thought my life couldn’t possibly get worse.

[LONG PAUSE]

We’ve got a great variety of water-based activities planned for you all, both the competitive and the leisurely sorts! No camper is required to spend the day like this, but I’d really like to encourage every one of you take advantage of this unique opportunity to beat the heat. Get out there! Get wet! Socialize with your friends and counselors, and with my reclusive assistant! And, ah, please do not make fun of him when he takes his shirt off like a few of you did last year. He might act like he doesn’t care, but he is a bit sensitive!

On a sidenote, here’s a message Rowan has asked me to deliver to you kids: stop peeing in the wormhole that mysteriously opened up in Cabin Magpie Moth the other day. I understand that it’s more convenient than the actual camp toilets — and we’re working on the goo leviathan, alright? — but at the end of the day, we really have no idea where that wormhole leads to. What if the President of America is on the other side of that wormhole? What if you’ve all been peeing on the President? As hilarious as that would objectively be, it would have major consequences for the continued operation of our camp, so please. If you really can’t navigate the sanitorium, there’s a normal, completely euclidian bathroom in the nurse’s office. [Sing-songy] Pee responsibly!

For breakfast today we have chocolate… onions. Our camp chef Matthew wishes to relay a statement on behalf of our trusty local grocer, HarmlessMart, which — oh, [Paper rustling] he’s handing it to me now, ah, yes, okay — it reads, as follows:

“If you or a loved one have recently purchased or consumed HarmlessMart 300th Anniversary oranges, you may be eligible for compensation. It’s recently come to our attention that some of our customers were under the impression that our recent line of HarmlessMart 300th Anniversary oranges are food. We’re here to set the record straight: feeding someone one of these oranges would legally be considered assault with a deadly weapon. They’re not meant to be ingested, or even really interacted with. So, if you suspect the oranges in your fridge may in fact be HarmlessMart oranges, we recommend you use thick gloves and pliers to deliver the fruit in question to your nearest medical waste disposal facility. We’d like to formally apologize for the confusion, as well as remind our customers that we firmly believe in our policy of complete honesty regarding what you’re putting in your baskets… which brings us to the matter of the strawberries.

If you or a loved one have recently purchased or consumed HarmlessMart strawberries, this information might affect you — ” 

MATTHEW

`̵̧̼͚̲̹̩͚̹̩͍̲̝͎̲̤̏̓̇͊͋͗́̃9̴̰̫̥̲̥̩̤͈̣̠̎̎͜͝7̷͚͛͑̅̑̃͊̃̇͂͊͂2̵̡͍̥̑̿̊̐̈́͆́̉̐̄̈͐̓́͑}̷̨̟͍̬̩͚̲̯͈̏̀2̸̛̛̤̬̤͚̄͒̽͆͌̚͘͝7̷̨̮̺̮̣̝̰̳͐̌̈̆[̷̹̻̺̓̀̉̽͗̏̿̈͜͝͝

SYDNEY

Ah? 

MATTHEW

1̵̫̜͚͉͈̝̰̮͍̅̅̔̋̈́̇͒͑!̸̢̛̞̩̟̥̰̙͓̋̌̽̉̈́̆͌̊͠͝ͅ!̸̹̹͓̼͈͎͎̙̮̗̻͇̪͊̿͜͜!̸̹͓̝̍͛̿̾̀̍̆̍͛̔̚ͅ!!

SYDNEY

Ah, alright. Matthew is telling me that’s as far as I have to read. Man, this statement goes on for miles!

Alright, kids, I’ve got to go now. Matthew claims that attempting to cook with HarmlessMart 300th anniversary oranges left him with a strange sense that there was… more empty space inside his body than before… so I’m gonna try and give him a little taste of my pre-med magic, see what I can do.  You kids who partook of the orange pie the other night, do me a favor and… press your fingers to your sides… make sure you meet resistance. If anyone’s organs have gone missing, I want to find out before your parents do!

Alright, my little hedgehogs, you all have a wonderful breakfast for me — and an even better Lake Day! See you in the water! 

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[DING]

SYDNEY

Best and brightest of afternoon to you, campers! 12:80 PM greets us with a richly gilded sky, swirled with streaks of glittering light like a fresh honeycomb. I’m sure you’re all just ravenous after that rousing morning of maritime merrymaking, so let’s get down to business here. It’s time for the lake-daily Lake Day report!

Sources filtering in and out of my office throughout the morning have informed me that the watergun battle arena has proven the most popular aspect of the Lake Day setup, with all of you kids doing what you do best — rapidly factionalizing; competing for authority using a combination of guerilla warfare and tactical diplomacy; and finally consolidating into military states characterized by strict hierarchical control and territorial aggression.

In fact, the water gun battleground itself has been unable to contain the conflict, which has grown to encompass the entire lake. For example, the kids from Cabin Grasshopper turned the inflatable obstacle course into their base of operations — seemingly a wise decision, as it has made their position difficult to reach and easy to defend. However, the kids from Cabin Silkworm had a secret weapon: the cats from the underwater petting zoo. As soon as those kitties and their claws were set loose upon the inflatable city, it was doomed.

Then, while they were preoccupied with celebrating their victory, the Cabin Silkworm kids were ambushed, rounded up, and sent one-by-one down the waterslide to nowhere by the kids from Cabin Dung Beetle! It just goes to show: the creation and maintenance of sovereign states amounts to a pathetic exercise in cyclical futility.

It’s good that you kids are learning this lesson young, so you don’t become warlords or patricians or something like that!

Now, all of that is good and fun, but in order to have joy we must also have despair, and some less-fun things have also happened today. For instance… [He sighs] I’m sure you’ve all noticed that Jedidiah has… not yet come out from his office. He has opted, for whatever reason, not to join us for Lake Day like I expected he would. I feel… stupid for being surprised. It’s just that he’s never missed Lake Day… I thought for sure I’d get to spend some time with him… 

Ahh. This is the kind of thing I got in trouble for talking about, I think! Don’t worry about that, kids.

In more context-appropriate news, Juno and Mila — who spent this morning napping peacefully on the lake’s far shore — turned up in my office this afternoon with a frankly gross number of caustic bee stings,  which I am now treating. The other side of the lake is bee country, evidently. And that’s not the only thing to avoid over there! Multiple campers and even counselors have reported seeing the Elephant Man lurking in the underbrush just beyond the far shore, peeking his head up and emanating his characteristic fervor.

Marisol and Salem have been advocating to cancel this afternoon’s kayak race so that we might spend that time dealing with these serious issues instead — yeah, I’ve been down that road, girls. Listen, I’m on your side, but I’ve learned the hard way… no matter how loudly you shout about what’s bothering you… nothing is ever going to change.

But don’t let me stop you! Haha.

Today’s lunch is ginger. You’re gonna bite the ginger straight off the root. See, Matthew is trying to get rid of all the ginger he’s got — he’s sick of the whispering. So, eat up!

Alright, kids. Mind yourself in the lake supply shed — that is to say, if you end up encountering yourself in there, try to leave without attracting your attention, okay? If you notice you, come up to you, try to talk to you… Jedidiah tells me that could make space crumple like an accordion. All three dimensions, flattened into one.

And — also — I didn’t think I would need to remind anyone of this, but please stop trying to know the unknowable object at the center of the lake! Trust me, we’ve tried everything you’re trying, and all it got us was a collective identity crisis. The more you squint at the unknowable object, trying to name the shape, the less you understand what shapes even are. I’m telling you, that thing is best left as it has always been: occupying whichever exact point in space it occupies, looking like whatever it looks like, perhaps moving around in some way or making some kind of noise, no one’s quite sure. So it has been, and so it will be; eternal in all directions in time.

Thank you! Have a good lunch!

[CLICK]

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[DING]

SYDNEY

[Very grim] You know, kids, I never felt like I ever learned as much in school as I did in my own backyard. I vividly recall one gold-flecked day in the hazy past which I spent, from sunrise to sunset, watching a pitched war between two colonies of ants. In the end, a neighbor’s dog ran through both of the anthills, completely annihilating them by random chance.

I watched something similar happen today, as the indiscriminate chaos of the Elephant Man ended your campaign for reform, or even just recognition, from Lucille. And to me, kids, that’s the real value of the experience you’re getting at Camp Here & There. Through work and through play, you’re coming to understand the world.

So that’s the bright side of today’s events. All of you can walk away from this afternoon with a newfound comprehension of the utter futility of it all.

Let me be clear; none of you have anything to be ashamed of. You tried something, you failed — it happens to all of us. Even the ants. But since you’re people, you can learn from this. You don’t have to be like me and the ants; you don’t have to spend your life fighting for something that will just get torn away from you by the random whims of fate. Take this opportunity to let go of the idea that your struggling will get you anywhere. That you even have anything to struggle for.

[Sighs] For those of you kids who opted out of Lake Day’s outdoor activities and spent the day learning the secrets of Greek Fire with Counselor Warren in the Creativity Cabin, here’s the four-one-three on how things went down. Marisol, Salem, and a few other concerned or impressionable counselors were advocating for the afternoon’s kayak race to be cancelled, on account of… inclement bees. Mila and Juno, who really should have learned their lesson after getting stung themselves, held strong against the protestors — their joint passion for kayaking outweighed their common sense, as per usual. Ultimately, the decision to cancel the race came down to Lucille, but when the issue was brought to her desk, she predictably brushed it off with her trademark move, the classic grunt-and-wave. Thus, without an official cancellation order, the race proceeded as scheduled.

But the increasingly frenzied buzzing noise emanating from the edge of the lake, and the darkening mustard color of the sticky-sweet sky, indicated that the danger was very much still present. Everyone saw the pulsing, leaky stings that Mila and Juno returned from the far shore with, and just because I treated them quickly does not mean they aren’t excruciatingly painful and potentially deadly. I assume that’s why it was not difficult for Marisol and Salem to convince you kids to join the cause.

Instead of being in position in your kayaks when the whistles blew, you were marching in a large circle around the singing crystals — that is, the man-sized outcropping of bright yellow gemstones in the center of the sports field which forces anyone in its nearby vicinity to loudly sing their thoughts instead of speaking them. Your melodic cries of protest turned the everyday show of activism into something like an angry festival. And most importantly, it amplified your words to such a degree that they could be heard from behind the three-foot thick, reinforced cedar walls of Lucille’s office. This, it seemed, was finally too much for our magnanimous camp director to ignore. She sent a parade of magical wooden mannequins out to the sports field, where they started smashing the crystals with 16 ounce hammers.

Meanwhile, Lake Guard Mila, who was — against my recommendation — patrolling the far shore of the lake in her solo canoe, reports to me that she had an intriguing encounter. There, amongst the trees that clustered on and in the lake’s edge, his wizard cloak a-billowing and his scrubs in desperate need of a scrub, was The Elephant Man. And I know we’re all acclimated to his presence, but it’s what exactly he was doing which interests me this time. Mila reports that she witnessed him fiddling with a beehive — shaking it around like a jar of coins; peering through the entry hole; and even sticking his fingers inside and presumably wiggling them around.

After a few moments, he noticed Mila sitting there — at which put he placed a single finger up against his trunk (the universal shushing motion) and gestured with the beehive back in the direction of camp.

Could it be a coincidence? It wasn’t long after that when a storm of very excited bees flew in from the shore and washed over camp like a droning tsunami.

I’m sure none of you need to relive the horrors. Suffice to say that the majority of you are still right here in the nurse’s office with me, listening to these announcements live in studio. [Chuckles] It hasn’t been so crowded in here since the gramophone incident… [Sighs] but it felt like much less work back then, since Jedidiah was helping me. Actually acting in his capacity as co-nurse… 

Hm.

Anyway. Let’s try to have fun tomorrow. Huh? Maybe tomorrow, not everything has to be a… federal concern. Right? Maybe we don’t need to learn any lessons, for once. Just a thought.

I love you all. I know that for most of you, this isn’t goodnight. Depending on the severity of your stings, some of you won’t be able to sleep until the morning comes around. But for those among you lucky enough to leave me, for today, to leave me and my lessons and my lonely little office behind — goodnight. Sleep well.

[Ruefully] And I’ll see you again tomorrow.

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[FAINT TICKING OF A CLOCK]

SYDNEY

Hi, ghost recorder… uh, do you think I was too… grim with the kids, today? [Sigh] I’m probably gonna hear it from Salem… I’m just too tired to keep up a peppy attitude. I feel like the bread at the bottom of the bag, squished out of shape by the twist-tie, with the crust on the back.

I can withstand any pain as long as it has meaning… Jedidiah doesn’t understand how much he’s taking away from me when he just refuses to explain his behavior. Does he not want to be friends with me anymore? Is he just depressed and anxious? If I understood it, I could handle it, no matter how much it hurt. But he decides to hit me with the double-whammy of hurt and confusion. I’m left to wonder if everything I’m doing might be the thing that’s pushing him away — constantly poring over all my decisions, just trying anything to be easy for him… I just have to bend, and bend, and in no particular direction, until eventually I snap.

And Lucille… don’t get me started. This past week — who am I kidding, these past three years — I’ve been concerned that she blatantly played favorites between Jedidiah and me. Today, something that was pulled to its limit finally snapped in my brain.

I saw how little she was doing to stop The Elephant Man from coming after the kids, and all at once I… gave up. I don’t know why I’ve spent so much time trying to get her to treat me like a person. But I’m done now, it’s better this way.

[Sighs]… Sometimes I feel like I’m getting to that point with Jedidiah… but he must love me, right? Or he wouldn’t act that way.

… Okay. Goodnight, ghost. Keep haunting this tape recorder. I’ll keep haunting this office… 

[DOOR OPENS]

JEDIDIAH

Sydney… hahhh. S-sydney… fuck. Are you alone? Can we talk?

SYDNEY

Uh… yeah.

[JEDIDIAH WALKS OVER]

JEDIDIAH

[Stuttering] That thing’s… not recording, right? I can’t… I don’t want, uh, Lucille hearing this.

SYDNEY

Oh, Lucille doesn’t listen to these at all.

JEDIDIAH

Ah, okay, yeah, but — maybe someone… else… does.

SYDNEY

Nobody — what? Hey, what do you know?

JEDIDIAH

I mean — you’ve noticed your tapes going missing, I’m sure?

SYDNEY

I — who do you think takes them? Do you know what’s going on?

JEDIDIAH

I don’t know, Sydney, I don’t have — that’s not the point, the point is, this needs to be private, and if you record it, it-it won’t be. It definitely won’t be.

SYDNEY

Okay? … 

[SYDNEY OPENS A DRAWER AND PLACES THE RECORDER INSIDE, NOT TURNING IT OFF]

[Muffled] It’s not recording… 

JEDIDIAH

[Muffled] It’s not recording?

SYDNEY

It’s not. What is up with you today, Jeddie? Gone all day with no explanation, made me treat all those kids by myself, and now you’re acting like a freak.

JEDIDIAH

[Sighs] I guess, I — [Exhale] I need to start by saying I’m… sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t acknowledge the Elephant Man as a genuine threat.

SYDNEY

… Are you joking?

JEDIDIAH

Why… would I be joking… 

SYDNEY

… Two weeks of abject denial, and the thing that finally convinces you is the stupid bee attack?

JEDIDIAH

No — Sydney, no. The bee thing was — a distraction.

SYDNEY

From what?

JEDIDIAH

While everyone was occupied with the situation on the lake, the Elephant Man snuck into this building.

SYDNEY

What?

JEDIDIAH

We’re lucky I thought to come and ch-check in here. I caught him about to try and kidnap —

SYDNEY

Oh my God…! 

JEDIDIAH

 — my journals.

SYDNEY

… Sorry?

JEDIDIAH

[Bordering hysterical] I don’t know how he knew where they were, or — or how he even knew they existed, but there he was, in my office, rifling through my drawers. I-I mean, he was this close to picking one up and reading from it.

SYDNEY

[Sarcastic] What a ghastly prospect.

JEDIDIAH

I know! And, I mean, God knows what he wants with them. Listen — Sydney, I promise you: from here on out, I will do everything in my power to keep him — away. You can count on that.

SYDNEY

Alright, well… since you’re all dedicated right now, why don’t you pester Lucille about this? She… only listens to you.

JEDIDIAH

Yeah! Yeah. You want me to — talk about — raising security around here or?

SYDNEY

Anything. Just get her to do anything.

JEDIDIAH

Alright. Yeah. Okay. I’ll try.

SYDNEY

Thanks.

JEDIDIAH

Sydney… I swear. I’m going to keep you… safe.

SYDNEY

[Unimpressed] I hope so. Thank you.

JEDIDIAH

See you — see you tonight.

[JEDIDIAH WALKS AWAY]

SYDNEY

Mhm.

[SYDNEY OPENS THE DRAWER]

Well. [Sigh] It’s something.

[CLICK]

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Today’s episode was written by Blue Mayfield and Nicholas Belov. The part of Sydney Sargent was played by Blue Mayfield. The part of Jedidiah Martin was played by Nicholas Belov. Camp Here & There is the sole intellectual property of its production company, Mayfield and Belov. All music composed by Will Wood, and produced by Jonathon Maisto. Sound editing by Emily Safko and Blue Mayfield. Special thanks to our patrons: Pinesicle and Moth.

For behind-the-scenes material, exclusive canonical content, interactive events, and early episode access, consider signing up for our patreon, at patreon.com/mayfieldandbelov. Our Discord server is a great place to meet like-minded fellows and discuss today’s episode. Find the link at mayfieldandbelov.com. Lastly, if you’d like to support us, the best thing you can do is to spread the word about the show.

Thank you for listening to Camp Here & There, and remember: Please… Please… 

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