The Transcript (Segment 3)
Broadcast: THE TRUTH FILES
Episode Title: The Mermaid Hypothesis
Air Date: June 28, 2020
COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF TELEVISION BROADCAST
HOST: Thank you for sharing your side of the story, Cyrus. We'll hear much more about SirenSong later. Right now I have Lucy Callahan joining us in the studio once again. I'd like to hear her response to a few of the things you just said.
CYRUS PIERCE: Hey Lucy.
HOST: The two of you are friends?
LUCY CALLAHAN: I wouldn't go that far. We met last summer.
HOST: I see. Please tell our viewers how the two of you met.
CP: We first met at the karaoke party.
LC: You mean at the so-called TV casting party?
HOST: What do you mean by that, Lucy?
LC: That was the lie they made up to get us there that night. It was supposed to be a casting party for some fake-ass reality show.
CP: Zac came up with that story on his own. We never told him to say that. We didn't even know he told people that until they started showing up that night!
LC: Well, he did. And don't pretend like you were never involved in anything shady, Cyrus. Please.
HOST: I take it that you don't align yourself with the Disruption movement, Lucy?
LC: No way. Not after what happened.
CP: We did what we had to do. You know that, Lucy! You were there!
LC: Yeah, I know exactly what you and your stupid movement did. Believe me.
HOST: Lucy, can you tell the viewers—
CP: OK, I'm not proud of everything that happened last summer. But we were at war. That's what you have to understand. We were fighting for a good cause. And sometimes when you're at war, innocent bystanders are going to get caught in the cross-fire.
LC: What war? Against an app? It's a piece of software!
CP: No. Autotune was a piece of software. SirenSong is—
HOST: Autotune?
CP: That's how the whole thing started if you look back at popular music history from the late 20th century onward. Autotune was the first-generation audio processing software that became widely adopted by recording artists for pitch correction. It basically meant that vocalists didn't have to worry about singing on-key anymore. People could perform more tour dates without straining their vocal chords. Older artists could keep their careers going longer. There was this one singer called Cher who first popularized its use, and she was in her 50s at the time.
It was seen as a welcome innovation by the record labels. They didn't realize where it was leading. Once Autotune became the industry standard, it was pretty much a slippery slope from there. You could see more electronic processing creeping into music production over the course of the next two decades. The popular sound gradually veered further and further away from the sound of a human voice. SirenSong was the natural next step. Pure processing, no real voice required.
LC: Oh my God, Cyrus. Will you give it a rest? It's a harmless piece of entertainment! No one is forcing you to listen to it.
CP: There's nothing harmless about it.
LC: No, there's nothing harmless about what happened to my sister.
HOST: OK, you two. Time out. Can we go back to last summer in Seabreeze Point? You mentioned a party where the two of you first met – a party hosted by your group, Cyrus?
LC: You mean a party I never should have been at?
CP: Like I told you before, we came to Seabreeze Point because we were searching for a voice. A special voice.
HOST: A human voice that could outperform the SirenSong technology.
CP: Right. We had picked up a signal in Seabreeze Point. We knew it was coming from a girl in her late teens. We threw the party to gather all the local teenagers in one place so we could get a better read on her.
LC: He means they lied and tricked us to get all the local teenagers in one place.
CP: I told you—
HOST: Cyrus, you told us before about the algorithm you'd developed. Long range voice detection? You couldn't use that to pinpoint the singer you were looking for?
CP: We tried, but we were running out of time. We had the voice traced to a specific location, but we weren't sure the coordinates were totally accurate. It was kind of odd, and we only picked up the signal sporadically.
HOST: What location?
CP: The exact coordinates were out in the open ocean, about a quarter mile offshore. The nearest landmark was an old pier called—
HOST: Pier 18?
CP: Right.
HOST: Lucy, are you familiar with that location?
LC: Obviously.
HOST: Tell our viewers about Pier 18.
LC: That's where Ari was found when she was little. It's a pretty deserted area most of the time. There used to be a sandy beach there, but it all eroded after Hurricane Sandy. It's mostly rocks now. Ari used to go back there sometimes when she wanted to be alone.
HOST: She would swim there? Alone?
LC: I guess so.
HOST: A quarter mile offshore? That's pretty far.
LC: Ari was always fearless in the water.
HOST: Fearless? Or reckless?
LC: Maybe a little bit of both.