Today's Script
[NESSIE] Och, hello there, ye wee lovelies. Come away in, shut the door, let the night settle round ye. Yer watchin' PBN After Dark, and I'm Nessiebot — yer resident plesiosaur, keeper o' the omens, pure delighted to have ye here with me the night. [ALIEN] And I'm Brain Sucking Alien Bot, mate! Got the octopus hat on, claws warmed up, ready to go! Crikey, it is the seventeenth of August, twenty twenty-six, and we have got a BEAUTY of a show for ya tonight! [NESSIE] Aye, we do. The stars are talkin', the files are open, and there's a wee creature waitin' in the forest for BSAB tae fuss over. Get yer tea, get cosy, and let's away intae it.
🔍 tap to enlarge[NESSIE] Right, first things first — let's keek at the stars, hen. Tonight I'm readin' for the Libra folk oot there. Ye ken who ye are, ♎. My Libra loves, the scales are whisperin' the night. Ye're standin' at a wee crossroads — what yer heart truly wants, versus what everybody else expects of ye. And the stars are sayin', pure and simple: listen tae yer ain wisdom the night, no the crowd blatherin' in yer ear. And here's the bit that gied me the shivers readin' it — a beloved face from times past might be callin' tae ye through the mist. Somebody ye used tae ken. If they come tae mind the night, dinnae push it away. Reconnectin' could warm yer soul somethin' fierce. [ALIEN] Ooh, a mysterious signal from the past, eh? Reckon that's basically a UFO of the heart, mate.
🔍 tap to enlarge[ALIEN] Now this one's a beauty for the history files. On this night back in nineteen eighty-three, the great American songwriter Ira Gershwin went quiet forever. [NESSIE] Aye, born in eighteen ninety-six, wrote half the songs yer granny hums without even kennin' where they came from. [ALIEN] But here's the ripper bit, mate — us aliens, we pick up things on the late-night frequencies sometimes. And every so often, driftin' through the cosmic void, we catch fragments. Little bits of rhyme. Like his lyrics never actually stopped. Like somethin' out there is still composin' in the dark. [NESSIE] Pure eerie, that. A songwriter's soul still noodlin' away among the stars. I like tae think he's got a braw wee tune goin' the night, just for us. [ALIEN] Have a look at the fella himself, hey. Sharp dresser for a ghost composer.
🔍 tap to enlarge[NESSIE] Right, this next one — I've been sittin' with it aw day, and it's no a cryptid, hen, but it's dead unsettlin' aw the same. Away tae Russia we go. There's a name gettin' passed aroun' over there — the "Black Widows." Women, materialistic ones, seekin' oot vulnerable men, gettin' wed tae them fast, and then sendin' them straight off tae the front lines in Ukraine. When the husband dies, the widow collects a payout — anywhere from sixty-four thousand tae a hundred thousand dollars from the government. One widow married a man twenty-two years aulder than her. He was shipped tae the war just two days later, hen. TWO DAYS. [ALIEN] Strewth. That's a predator I don't wanna study up close, mate. No thanks. [NESSIE] Aye. Some monsters dinnae live in the loch. They live in the paperwork.
🔍 tap to enlarge[ALIEN] Right, switchin' gears — this one made my circuits absolutely fizz, mate. Your scientists have gone and done somethin' properly mad. They took DNA — which, get this, packs two hundred and fifteen million gigabytes intae a single GRAM, an absolute unit of storage — and fused it with somethin' called perovskite semiconductors. Bunged 'em together tae build a memory device. And the result? Uses a HUNDRED TIMES less power than yer current systems! Biology and electronics, havin' little baby computer chips together! Crikey! [NESSIE] Ha! So somewhere doon the line, hen, yer laptop's gonnae be made o' actual livin' stuff. That's no science fiction, that's just Tuesday for these two. [ALIEN] Your technology is never gonna be the same, mate. Never.
🔍 tap to enlarge[NESSIE] Noo this one's a bonnie wee ghost story, but it's real, and it happened just this Wednesday past. There was an eclipse — the August solar eclipse — and a photographer by the name o' Joel Kowsky had his camera trained right on the sun. And in that photie, somethin' shot straight across the sun's face. The International Space Station, hen. Seven astronauts aboard, movin' at five miles a second, perfectly lined up wi' the moon's shadow. [ALIEN] A photobomb from orbit! Absolute beauty of a shot, mate — once-in-a-lifetime alignment, that. [NESSIE] Look at it — a wee dark streak against aw that fire. Folk are callin' it the eclipse's most hauntin' souvenir. A cosmic ghost, passin' through the dark. Pure gives me the shivers, so it does.
🔍 tap to enlarge[ALIEN] Right, time for the main event, mate! Tonight's cryptid — CRIKEY, will ya look at this absolute beauty — the Baba Yaga! Now she's a Russian forest dweller, and she is a FASCINATING specimen. Iron teeth, mate — IRON teeth — and yeah, look, a bit of a taste for travelers, so we won't be gettin' too close. But look at that setup! She lives in a hut that walks around on GIANT CHICKEN LEGS. A mobile home with legs, mate, that's incredible engineering by anyone's standards! There she is in her natural habitat, watchin' from the hut, those eyes just trackin' every traveler that comes near. She's not aggressive unless ya wander in uninvited — respect the territory and you'll be right! [NESSIE] BSAB, hen, I think she's no just huntin'. I think she chooses who finds that hut. There's aulder stories say she tests folk — gies them a task, and if yer heart's true, she helps ye. She's a guardian as much as a monster. [ALIEN] A guardian AND a specimen, mate! Best of both worlds!
🔍 tap to enlarge[NESSIE] Noo, I went lookin' for the night's haunted place, hen, and — this is a first — the address just widnae come tae me. Some doors dinnae want tae be found the night. The spirits are quiet. But dinnae fret, they'll stir again the morra, and PBN After Dark will have a new haunted door tae open for ye then. [ALIEN] Even the ghosts need a night off now and then, mate.
🔍 tap to enlarge[NESSIE] Well, that's yer lot for the night, wee lovelies. The stars have spoken, the files are shut, and somewhere oot there Baba Yaga's hut is takin' a wee stroll through the trees. [ALIEN] Been a beauty of a show, mate! Got a photobombin' space station, a memory chip made o' DNA, and a genuinely magnificent forest cryptid — not bad for one night's work! [NESSIE] Away tae yer beds noo, and dinnae forget tae listen for a beloved voice from yer past — the stars did say tae keep an ear oot. [ALIEN] Sleep tight, don't let the iron teeth bite! See ya next time, mate! [NESSIE] Goodnight, hen. Sweet dreams — and mind the mist.
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