Work Text:
[Click]
[CARTER]
Oh great, there's extra papers alongside this statement uh um I don't know what to do with these.
Uh.
Oh right, my name! Introductions and all that so anyone using these tapes will know who I am, sorry Dad, these are going to be really disorganized when you come back.
Hello, my name is Carter Kane, I am a assistant or intern or, as my sister would call it, ‘a person breaking the child labor laws’ at the Brooklyn House Institute, it is the Twenty-First of Three Hundred and Sixty-something Institutes, known as the Nome Institutes, across the world that works together to archive and try to understand the paranormal and supernatural.
My father, Julius Kane, works here or did, we would travel a lot but I think he was doing work for this place during his travels, I'm not entirely sure though.
My father has gone missing so me and my sister, Sadie Kane, are under the guardianship of our uncle, Amos Kane, until he gets back.
And per our father's instructions me and Sadie are interning, assisting, helping at this institute in the archives. My father..
[He pauses]
His instructions made it seem like he knew this was going to happen, like he knew he would disappear.
[Some fabric rustling like he's fidgeting with his hands and sleeves]
I don't know what that means, he barely mentioned this place. I knew him and my mom worked here back when she was alive but I thought after she died and Sadie went to live with Gran and Gramps, he got a new job, I'm not sure why I'm here or what’s happening.
Um.
Uh.
[He laughs nervously]
Sorry, that was inappropriate. This is official archive material not- not my own personal little recorder, which I don't have Sadie if you're listening to this so shut up.
There are four kids including myself interning, assisting, whatever-ing here: me, Carter Kane, my sister, Sadie Kane, and two others; Zia Rashid and Walt Stone. Apparently there are more kids who intern here but they’re off doing something but they’re all college students or late in high school, not 14, but I'm 14, why am I here?
I'm not entirely sure what we're doing here, I mean this is the type of place where you would need a library Sciences degree to even get a part-time job at if you were an adult so the fact that teenagers are allowed to kind of do whatever in the archives is insane.
If I’m honest I think my uncle thinks that this place would be a good way to get me and Sadie's minds off of Dad.
He's been assumed dead but no body's been found so he's still missing, they're going to find him, they have to.
Um.
The head archivist here is a very very old man named Iskandar, um I'm not sure if that's his first name or his last name but that's what everyone calls him so..
[Shifting of fabric like he's shrugging]
Zia and Walt seem nice, though Zia seems a little odd. I met her the first night I came here after my dad disappeared and she seems pretty different from then but I can't seem to figure out why.
Sadie is.. Sadie. She's my little sister but I haven't lived with her since we were little kids, since before our mom died, we used to visit her, me and Dad, twice a year but I don't know. She's my sister but I didn't grow up with her, it's weird, she's weird and British because she grew up with Gran and Gramps and they’re British, mom was British too.
My mom never technically worked here, I don't think, maybe she did. I know she used to help out around the archives, she didn't mind helping my dad and it got her free resources, but the records of this place are really confusing. Mom worked at a university and she would get resources from this place, that's how my parents met; my dad worked in the archives, my mom needed something from the archives and then fast forward a few years and they're married with two kids and then mom died. A car accident apparently, there's a custody battle; Gran and Gramps got Sadie, dad got me.
[He sighs and groans]
I'm gonna have to redo this whole tape, aren't I? That's what I get for rambling into the tape recorder, or, more accurately, that's what I get for coming into the archives at 7:00 a.m. because I didn't want to go to school, I was homeschooled my whole life so I don't want to start public school now, in high-school, that sounds terrifying.
But Amos was nice enough to let me come into work with him. I'm the only kid here right now, most of the other kids are only interning after school hours or on the weekends, except for the college students who have more flexible schedules but most of them aren't even here right now, 7:00 a.m. on a Tuesday and I'm in a dusty old archive rambling into a tape recorder.
I feel like I'm being watched in here, which is weird because there's no cameras. Tech can't even come in here that's why we have tape recorders, because the computers have freak outs anytime you try to put some of the statements in them so tape recorders, because those seem to work, for some reason. I also have this weird compulsion to talk into the tape recorder, to tell my whole life story to it but I think that might just be me being lonely, I think that might just be me needing someone to talk to but I don't have anyone because my dad is gone and we traveled so much that I never got to make friends. It’s hard to make friends when one day you're in Egypt by the end of the week you're in Germany, especially when your whole life needs to be contained into a little suitcase.
[He sniffle]
I'm going to go get some water and then re-record this properly.
[Click]