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Quiet Please 47-06-22 (003) We Were Here First
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Quiet Please 47-06-22 (003) We Were Here First
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- [00:01]
Nicole Fire
We interrupt this program to bring you an important Wayfair message.
- [00:05]
Ernest Chapel
Wayfair's got style tips for every home.
- [00:07]
Nicole Fire
This is Nicole Fire helping you make.
- [00:10]
Ernest Chapel
Those rooms flyer today's style tip.
- [00:12]
Nicole Fire
When it comes to making a statement, treat bold patterns like neutrals.
- [00:16]
Ernest Chapel
Go wild like an untamed animal.
- [00:18]
Nicole Fire
Print area rug under a rustic farmhouse table. From wayfair.com. ooh, fierce. This has been your Wayfair style tip to keep those interiors superior. Wayfair. Every style, every home. Quiet, please. Quiet, please. The Mutual Broadcasting System presents the third of a series of unusual dramatic programs written and directed by Willis Cooper and featuring Ernest Chapel. This story is called We Were Here First. You keep asking for stories. I'll tell you one that'll really give you something to think about. You'll keep thinking about the story till you die. Did I have an idea. You'll pass it on to the ones who come after you. Just as I'm passing it on to you. So you listen carefully. This one doesn't start with once upon a time. It's about the world today so that once upon a time business does come into it. Listen. Do you know there are giants in this world? Oh, yes, there are. Did you think we were the only ones here? You're wrong. There are giants. Millions of them. Billions. Giants so big that it's almost impossible for one of us to imagine how big they are. Why, a hair from the head of one of them is as big as your leg. And they're everywhere. In the cold lands, in the hot lands, everywhere. And they hate everybody. They hate each other and they hate us. Oh, how they hate it. How they like to get rid of it. But I'll tell you something. They're not going to. We were here first, and we're going to be here a long, long time after they're gone. Where they're going to go. Don't fool yourself about that. They can't. But it isn't going to be easy. Don't fool yourself about that either. They've killed an awful lot of us in all the millions of years they've been on this earth. And I may say we've killed quite a few of them. We've killed more of them than they have any idea. And that, my child, is quite a trick when you consider the difference in our time. How big are they? Well, that's hard to explain. We're all different sizes, you know. Some of us are small, some of us are big. There are fat ones amongst us and thin ones. And they're the Same way. But on the average, I should say they're about 150 times as tall as we are. Oh, yes, 150 times our size. That mounts us. But there's an old saying, child, and this is something you ought to remember. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. I don't want to give you the idea, though, that it's going to be easy to win. I've nearly lived my life out, and there's just as many of them as ever. You live your life out, and your children and your children's children will live and die in generations that you can count up in trillions. And they'll still be here. And we'll, all of us pay an awful price in that time. But we breathe fast and our families are larger. And one day. One day there'll be no more giants in the earth. And we'll have it all to ourselves. Brethren dwelling together in unity. That's one of their sayings, too. But they disregard it pretty much. They don't dwell together in unity any more than we do. And that's the bad part of it. From our standpoint. If we just had sense enough to get together. If we just stop fighting amongst ourselves now. Of course, it's all right for them to fight amongst themselves. That simplifies our problems. Someday, if we're lucky, maybe they'll all kill each other. They try hard enough. Oh, I tell you, they've got weapons, child. They've got an atomic bomb. It works. And some of them are scared to death that it may one day wipe them all out. But we'll see if it does. Good riddance, then. Our day comes a little soon. If it doesn't, well, we've got time. They've got to talking lately about biological warfare. Germs, you know. You know where they got that? From us? No. They don't realize how far ahead of them we are in biological warfare. I could tell you some things, but they're a secret that even I can't tell. They'll find out, though. Remember, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That's a mighty comforting thought. Something else to think about, too. As I said, they hate us. But most of their time is taken up in hating each other. So they don't have the time to attend to us as they should if they want to continue to exist. They're absolutely ruthless, though, when they do think about exterminating us. I know. I nearly got it once. Want to hear about it? Can you take it? Well, this is just one of the concentration camps they run in between the times. They're planning how to exterminate each other. They call this place New Jersey, but it's not New Jersey to us. Some of us call it Thanatopolis. That's Greek. It means city of death. Greek. Oh, the Greeks lived on this earth a long, long time ago. They somehow left today. But they're not the same as they were then. They got careless. All that's left of their glory is words like Thanatopoulos. Words that have the sound of death in my child. I was hungry. That's how I got caught. That's the way a lot of us get caught. Plenty of food. Plenty of good, healthy food. Plenty to drink. Nothing to do but get fat and get killed. I didn't know about giants in those days. I know now. The gate was wide open. And I tell you, it was the pleasantest place I've ever seen. I looked it over. I smelled the food. Oh, I tell you, I've been around. And I never smelled anything so delicious in all my life. And just went crazy, as hungry as I was. Well, the food was just as good as it smelled, and there was plenty of it. I lost my way going in. It's a kind of a labyrinth, you see. And I was interested in the food. I was hungry. There was a lot of us in there. I recognized. Hundreds of friends. Fat, happy, well fed. I stayed there quite a while. I got that too. But there were sounds I didn't like. Sounds like thunder rustling. And sounds that came from nowhere at all. And the feeling of someone watching us. Someone laughing at us. And one day, one morning, early, I heard a voice. This one's about ready, I think. Just look at him. Thousands and thousands of them. And not one of them was sense enough to try to get out. I looked up. That sounded like a human voice to me. Get the gas ready. They've had a good time now. Long enough. You see how long it takes them to die? It was a human voice. A giant voice. This particular concentration camp of theirs was run by one of their females. Probably according to their standards. A very beautiful one. To me, as I looked up at her face far above me. She looked like all the figures of death I'd ever dreamed of. And, child, she was dead. Where's the stopwatch? Paralyzed. I watched her great fingers wind the stopwatch. Stiff with terror, I saw the nozzle of the gas generator slither into the door, far across the floor. I began to crawl toward the door. Toward the gaping mouth of that gas jacket. I tried hard to warn a few of my friends. But they were heavy with good letting and it was useless. I found my way through the labyrinth somehow, hoping. Hoping I'd be climbed. I had a goal now, if I could make it. And then I saw her raise her hand with a watch. I heard her sit on the gas. One tiny glass of the gas. One short air filters and graphic. Then I thought my heart would leap from my body. My eyes burned my legs and refused to hold me up. I fell and staggered and fell and staggered again. Then as I stumbled out into the blessed freshness of the air, I heard the sound of her satellite and her lap. Look at em. Look at em crawl and wiggle. This is the best gas we've used. Look at him. Three seconds. Four seconds and every one of them dead. This is wonderful. I was dazed. My mind couldn't counter for such loss. Four seconds and countless thousands of us dead. And then this is the horror. You know what she did? She gathered up their still warm bodies and tossed them onto a great scale and waved them. Why? So she could know how many of us she had killed in four seconds. Do you wonder we hate them? Do you wonder we live for nothing but the day when the giants, male and female, female and all their young, shall all be gone from this earth. Do you see? It must be us or them. And I swear the assign will stay. We were here first. Most of the time they forget we're here. And that's good, of course, because they're intelligent. They can fly trains. They have marvelous instruments that help them perform amazing things. They've got radar, for instance. But fortunately for us, their radar won't pick us up as ours at 10. They've got methods of communication, but theirs aren't as good as ours. And the amazing thing is that most of the remarkable inventions they've brought up and perfected are used for fighting one another. Let them keep on inventing. Because you see, there's one little fight they never seem to think about. They fight amongst themselves. But we fight against both kinds. And you know who wins their wars? We do, child. We always have. We always will. We try on them no matter where they go. There's always one of us nerves. There's not one single word spoken in the giant world that we don't hear. No matter what they plan, we know about it. And they're never free from us. They plan for their pleasures and we prepare to spoil their pleasures. They plan for wars and we mobilize our expeditions. They pray and we hear them and we answer their prayers. Sometimes with death. What do you mean? How do you think it's hard for a being your size to kill a bean the size of the giants? It isn't. You see, in the first place, we're willing to sacrifice a million of us to kill one of them or two. Not all of us know about the giants. Not all of us know that we're being sacrificed in this endless war. Some of us think we're dying a natural death, I suppose. But we leaders know. You still don't understand. Well, let me give you an example. I said the giants of the average. On the average, perhaps 150 times as tall as we. Well, that's just height. If you know anything about mathematics, you realize that that means they're uncounted, millions of times bigger than we are.
- [15:09]
Ernest Chapel
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- [16:10]
Nicole Fire
It would probably take a billion of our bodies to make one the size of theirs. Take an ant for instance. How much bigger is a man than an ant you see? So on a plantation in South America. A brown river of hand flowing toward us in a straight line In a column 50ft across, miles long. The beasts are teeming from them. Monkeys, deers, capers, jaguars. Ants. Tiny creatures only half an inch long. Soldier ants, hungry. Leaving only the stripped skeleton of tree to mark the paths they followed. Skeletons picked clean of the animals that fell in their way. Stripped clean in a matter of minutes. Ants. Tiny creatures only half an inch long. They're coming. We've gotta fight them. Fight them with flowing streams of water. And they come on. Fight them with jets of oil. The tanks drown them Then some die. But they. Come on. Fight them with fire. Hey, fire here. Set the oil on fire. And some die. But they come out. Run. Run. Don't let them get you. They poison in their jaws. Run. Run. Then the brown river flows remorselessly on tiny creatures. Happens long then behind them as the end of the brown river disappears. A clean white skeleton. And desolation. Do you see? It isn't signs. It's hatred and the will to conquer. And it's numbers. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, Child. So you haven't seen the giants. You just think you haven't, child. You're young yet and you mistake them. Sometimes you think it's a cloud that obscures the sun. Sometimes it is and sometimes it's. It isn't. Don't waste time. When a great shadow falls on your child. It might be one of the giants. And they strike without warning. It's a horrible death. You see, one of the things that makes living in the same world with the giants so terrible is the way they hate us. They hate us in an impersonal kind of a way. They kill us by habit, most of them. They say there's one kill him and that's all there is to it. They never think about it afterwards. That, they think, is why we hate the most. We're of no consequence to them. That is, they think we're of no consequence. If they knew what we've done to them through all the countless ages they've been on this earth. Well, perhaps it's a good thing they don't. Their scientists know, though. And they got some pretty good scientists when they're not thinking up ways to kill each other. And they know us, some of them studious and child. They're clever. They're the ones who thought of setting us against each other. They're war makers amongst themselves. Why shouldn't they apply their theories to us? And their theories work. We fight amongst ourselves. We do too much of it and most of us don't know why we do. It costs a lot of lives. And the worst part of it is it costs time. I don't say that they put us up to all the fighting. Some of us think of it ourselves. Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe there'd be too many of us for our own good if we didn't kill each other. But if we could only get together. If we could only all of us see that one shining goal before us. Think of a world that would belong to us all by ourselves with no giants to worry about. Not that all of us worry about the giants. That's just the trouble. We have to spend so much time convincing others that they really exist. That they're a menace to us every second we live. And that we've got to destroy them one day. If we don't learn to get together, they'll destroy us. Maybe they've destroyed a lot of us so far. And I hate to think of this world belonging to them exclusively. What? Oh, here's. Of course they wouldn't live without us. They need us. Some of them know that. Even if we are, as a race, a constant nuisance to them. But what's the good of that? If they destroy us, they'll die too. And then there won't be anybody left in the world. But believe me, child, we don't need them. We got along a good long time before they appeared. Then we'll do it again. Nonsense. Superstition. You children. I know, Though I said the same thing when I was your age. But I found out history. Yes, there are giants. You'll find out. Certainly we can kill them. Didn't I tell you about the ants? Well, that's right. There were millions of them. Not one of us can kill a giant. Just one of us. I'll tell you a story about that, and then you decide for yourself. This was in the last war out in China, a long, long way from here. I know it's true. I got it from a friend of mine who was there. An airplane fell down in the valley between the mountains. The pilot had a broken leg. And for a week he lay there in the valley all alone. And there was nothing wrong with him except Mizzler. He had something to eat, and there was wet. And he needn't have died, except that a bug of some kind bit him. That he got some strange fever. In the second week he began to be delirious. And then one morning, he heard someone coming. Hello? I hear someone calling. Hello? I can't see anybody. Everything looks funny. Who are you? I'm coming. Who are you? Where's my gun? I have to have my gun. I don't know who's causing. Where are you? I'll keep quiet. I don't know who he is. All right, I see him. No. Yes, I do. You're not gonna get me. Where are you? I see him. He's too big. It's a giant. Look at him. He's coming closer. A giant. You're not gonna get me, giant. Get away from me, giant. You're delirious. Don't you touch me. Don't you come close. Let me help you. No. No. You're a giant. Think I don't know you'll come to get me? No. No better way around me. I'll kill you. Easy, fella. Take it easy. No. Get away. Get away, I say. I got a gun. Put the gun away. Don't touch me. Stop. Stop. All right. It was very easy. It was very curious. A little later, when the evening came and his fever cooled a little that the dead giant looked so much like his friend that it jumped out of the airplane a moment before he did. It was very curious. Well, all right. It was his friend. He thought his friend was a gun and he killed him. Or did he kill him? He fired the pistol at his friend. That was the direct roy to his friend's death. But who was it that brought in a finger and made him think of the dust? Remember I said a little bug lit him? So the little bug was indirectly the cause of the other man's death. And to the little bug, the man was a giant. They were both giant, and he killed them both. Because a man who had killed his friend had a moment of lucid thought. And his fading strength was enough to bring f. I know it's true. Well, maybe that is rationalizing. But he think it over. To my way of thinking, two giants got killed. A little slow in my thinking now that I'm. Look out. Quick. Look out. All right, so you killed him. He was a child. And he didn't have a chance against the giant he didn't even believe in. He's a child. I'm not going to be emotional about it. There are too many more of us to worry about the death of one. You can smash us, you can poison us, you can gas us to death. But we'll always be with up to the end. And that's. You can't win without it. You'll die with it. You'll die. But listen for a second. We're everywhere. We're in the earth. We live in your houses. We eat your food. We watch you day and night. We've got senses you never dream of. We've got weapons that you have no defense for. You walk on your two legs. We've got picks. You fly in your airplane. We've got wings. You make your weapons. They are our own weapons. And if we insects ever get together, Giants. Or maybe we won't have to. Maybe you'll blast yourselves off the earth and face the COVID Your atomic bombs don't mean anything to us. The flies lived at Hiroshima. You know the be still alive under sea and far under the surface of this earth you think you are. More and more millions of us are sleeping, waiting. Giants. We'll always be there, wherever you go. While you're awake, while you're asleep, chasing, plotting again. Knowing that one day everything you've built, everything you've accomplished on this earth will be ours. We were here first. And we'll make your last. There's a fly in the isn't there? And there's a cloud of gnats somewhere outdoors waiting for you and all the rest of the giants we hate. Are you the one that was bragging about the. What did you call it? Ddt? Fine. Gian DBT does kill. It kills the good insect and the bad ones better try again. Giants. You can't live without us and you can't live with us. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. We were here too. Think of that some night when a fat moth blunders in your bedroom window. Maybe he won't be blundering, giant. Maybe he'll be free. And remember, we're giant killers. Not so good giant. See you tonight. You have listened to Quiet Please. Which is written and directed by Willis Cooper. The one who spoke to you was Ernest Chappell. And the others were Nancy Douglas, Walter Black and Kermit Murdoch. The music was composed and played by Gene Perratto. And now for a word about next week's Quiet Please story, here is our writer director, Willis Cooper. Next week's story is called the Ticket Paper. I think you'll find it interesting and entertaining. And so until next week at this time, I am quietly running Ernest Jackson. This program came to you from New York. Stay tuned now for a fascinating story of strange events and their common sense explanation on the House of Mystery, which follows in just a moment.