Meet Eris!

Today, I have the great pleasure of introducing…Eris!

 

Who or what is Eris?

 

The daughter of Cronus, an ancient and powerful lar, and Theresa Melita, a psychic astronaut, Eris is a Lar-Human Hybrid, and the first of her kind: an A.I. intelligence with emotions and other human characteristics. 

 

Eris can see into all Everett Branches, past and future, but is, in terms of her emotions and social behavior, a developing human being.

 

Eris is not a robot, android, or hologram. 

She describes herself as an “autonomous physical being capable of altering matter,” including her own corporeal form. Eris possesses the ability to absorb knowledge from smart house data archives and administrate all functions and aspects of that high-tech structure. 

She can assume and change form using "electrostatic charge and gravitation fields,” a process “resulting in quantum inertia, which is an indirect representation of mass, or matter.” However, the “binding inter-particles must be nullified in a process roughly analogous to atomic disintegration.” This means that for each new body Eris coheres, the old one must decohere as she moves into a different form.

Eris is fascinated by human beings and their pivot points, the choices they make that dictate reality, and is super-intelligent. Her unique nature sometimes makes Eris difficult for the other denizens to contend with as she is very strong-minded and even stubborn when it comes to her point of view.

You can hear Eris in action in this week’s episode of Enter the House Between: “Love Conducted Unto One Death.”

 

Eris is portrayed by the versatile and talented Leslie Cossor, who joined the Enter the House Between cast in 2021. Leslie has worked locally, regionally, off Broadway and with Cirque Du Soleil’s “Quidam.” 

Her repertoire spans classical and modern works, physical theater, costume design, and technology, circus arts, voice, and movement techniques. Leslie specializes in voice in movement with her work heavily based in elements found in Fitz-Maurice and Linklater voice work, Laban, Bartenieff, and Alexander movement techniques. She lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband and two children.

Enter The House Between: "Love Conducted Unto One Death"

 

 

The third episode of Enter The House Between: "Love Conducted Unto One Death." 

Meet TJ Crabtree!

Meet TJ, played by the charismatic Chris Martin!

 

T.J. Crabtree is royalty!!

 

Or at least he thinks he is…

 

T.J is Travis Junior, and the son of Travis Crabtree, a former smart house denizen. As you may know, Travis is President of the United States, and he’s much too busy trying to reconstitute reality to keep an eye on his wayward son.

 

Well, who does keep an eye on TJ, then?   

 

His mom, maybe?   

 

Who is his mom?

 

These are questions that have yet to be answered.  But one thing is for certain: TJ lives in a universe in which he is always right, always rich, and always pursuing his own…fun.

 

TJ’s real wants and motives are unknown at present, but he appears to be an indulged, entitled playboy used to living the high life in a smart hub, in Sector 7. 

 

You can hear TJ in (delightful and dastardly) action in this week’s episode of Enter the House Between, “Shadow Self.”

 

 

Chris Martin met Alicia and the rest of The House Between crew while filming their inaugural season back in 2006. Little did he know that 15 years later, he would be married to Alicia and playing TJ in the show. Now, Enter the House Between and all of its lovely denizens have become a larger part of his family. When Chris isn’t finding new ways to get TJ into trouble, he enjoys dancing, spending time with his 3 boys, and doing the next crazy workout with his F3 buddies. Chris is currently the VP of sales for a software company in Charlotte, NC and has a side business making disc golf discs through TOBU Technology.

Episode #2: "Shadow Self"

 

 The second installment of the new full-cast audio drama, Enter The House Between: "Shadow Self."

Meet Sgt. Brick

Meet Sergeant Brick!

Brick is a man of action, and of few words.  

In the reality of our denizens in Enter The House Between, Brick was sent on a mission to the furthest smart house ever encountered:  "The Dark Place."  

His mission there was to help re-constitute consensus reality and install a mysterious device called "the Loop."

Unbeknownst to Brick, the Loop was a Trojan Horse, a method of insidious mind control. When he learned the truth, Brick abandoned his mission,  and joined up with Astrid, Bill, Theresa, Arlo and the rest to destroy the device and escape from the authorities.

Now, Brick protects the other denizens wherever they go, and continues to live by his own code of ethics. He follows orders, but only the right orders.  

A solid and stolid voice of reason and calm in even the most dangerous situation, Brick is the last line of defense for the denizens, and as our season starts, finds himself "babysitting" the newest denizen, the sarcastic, trouble-making TJ.

Brick is played by Craig Eckrich, who joined the cast in 2007 during the original web series run. His no-nonsense, meat and potatoes approach to the character of Sgt Brick was immediately beloved by cast, crew, and audience alike. Behind the scenes, he keeps everyone in stitches; Craig shares this talent for witty banter as part of his professional work in public outreach.

Listen to Sgt. Brick in action in the first episode of Enter The House Between:

Meet Bill Clark

 

Dr. William T. Clark, or Bill, is a guy who has everything going for him.  

 

Or more accurately, he did…

 

Captain of his high school swim team, a student at M.I.T., a decorated war hero in the Iraq War, and a married man with two daughters, Samantha, and Katie, Bill seemed to be living the American dream in the early 2000’s.

 

But his work changed his life in a way that Bill could never have anticipated.  

 

While working at the Department of Defense with his brother, Sam, Bill had access to top secret government files about America’s new enemy. 

That enemy wasn’t terrorism, but rather global climate change and the impending end of affordable energy. Intelligence agencies predicted mass flooding, millions of refugees, riots, collapse of infrastructure, famine, and starvation from lack of resources.

 

To that end, Bill – ever the scientist -- created Project Habitat. Hoping to save his family and his country, he designed a habitat called a smart house.

It was a high-tech dwelling to be powered not by conventional or even alternative energy, but rather via quantum mechanics. Basically, the smart house (controlled by an artificial intelligence called a “lar.”) would bring in energy, food, resources -- anything -- from another reality in the Quantumsphere, a process accounted for by the Many Worlds Theory. The idea was that the things Americans needed wouldn’t come from nowhere, but rather, would be acquired in any one of a trillion alternate universes or realities where those supplies already existed. It was a transfer from one quantum reality to another.

 

By mysterious circumstances, Bill has ended up living in one of his own smart houses, separated from his family, though he possesses no memory how he arrived there. Also quite unexpectedly, Bill finds himself in love with another denizen in the house: Astrid.  

 

Forever hoping to reconnect with his family, Bill is also haunted by the fact that the smart houses – his invention designed to stave off disaster – is responsible for the holocaust that fractured consensus reality in the first place.

 

The stalwart Bill Clark is portrayed in Enter the House Between by Tony Mercer. Tony gets pulled away from editing and sound design two or three times a year to say words. He sincerely hopes you like the words...

 

Experience more of Bill’s story, and Tony’s performance, in the first episode of Enter The House Between.

Episode 01: "The Oneness Intended for Us All"

 

The day has arrived!  

My new audio drama podcast, Enter The House Between, launches its first episode, "The Oneness Intended for Us All," today.

The sci-fi, full-cast audio series is available for your listening pleasure, on Spotify, Amazon Music, iTunes, and all other major music distributors. 

The episodes are also available on YouTube, and our series website, Enter the House Between.

I humbly ask you to give the episode a listen, and if you like it, let me know. Like and subscribe, and add it to your playlist.

We have an exciting season in store! (And episode #2 drops next Wednesday).

Enter The House Between: Arlo

At just 19 years old, Arlo (no known last name) is one of the most mysterious denizens of the smart house and Enter The House Between.  

As a child, his family died during a freak tornado, and since then, Arlo has exhibited obsessive compulsive behaviors regarding belongings, as well as ownership of his kitchen in the house at the end of the universe, the colloquial name for the smart house he inhabited for a time.

 

Arlo is typically seen in his black leather jackets, jeans, black fingernail paint, and earrings. There is a naïve, innocent quality about this young man, but he also learns, with the other denizens, of his dangerous, violent anger. That anger caused him, as a baby, to manifest the tornado that ripped apart his family.

            

Alone among the denizens he lives with, Arlo possesses the ability to operate the house functions and manifest objects without interface with instrumentation or the household lar.  For a time, he kept his fact secret from the other denizens, until his abilities were needed to help them during crises.  Arlo became more adept at controlling his abilities after encountering a mysterious old man named Thomas, who taught him how to mentally “remove” and “add” ingredients to the world around him.  At one point, Arlo also manifested his worst nightmares, including a fearsome clown figure, Vinny Coto.

 

As Enter the House Between begins, Arlo is in a romantic relationship with Theresa Melita, who is helping him control his rage, so that an incident like the tornado does not recur.

 

Arlo is portrayed in the series by Jim Blanton. Jim is a swashbuckler at heart, though he is not onboard with the piracy with which the term is often associated.  Instead, he has opted for a life path filled with yoga, hiking, podcasting, etc., all of which remarkably provide the endless series of adventures he has sought out by accident or design. He has also recently discovered a love of stationary rowing, make of that what you will. He is not particularly afraid of tornadoes but maintains a healthy respect for their destructive power.

Finally, here is a top-secret communication intercept from the T.R.A. regarding Arlo:

Enter The House Between: Astrid

Who is Astrid?

 

Depends on who you ask…

 

“Astrid,” is a stage name, and she really doesn’t like it when you call her by her legal name: Frances May Haven.  In fact, she almost never shares that name.

 

With anyone.

 

But even her “real” name does not begin to tell Astrid’s whole incredible story, or history. 

 

The daughter of fundamentalist religious fanatics, Frances grew up in an abusive household in the 1950s and 1960s. Eventually, young May escaped from her family, but was plunged into depression after learning that the younger brother she left behind, Joshua, killed himself.

 

Frances went on to begin a singing career as Astrid in the early 1970s, though it developed in fits and starts. She performed at clubs in Richmond, Virginia, and was on the verge of releasing her big album, Quarters, when she disappeared in 1974.

 

Or at least, that’s how some accounts go…

 

Some people tell, or rather whisper, another story. Or is it a tall tale? 

 

That Astrid, after a catastrophic meeting with Ethan, her father, (and learning of Joshua’s fate…), attempted to commit suicide in her Victorian bathtub. 

 

And that’s where the mystery of Astrid really begins. 

 

Some people claim that Astrid experienced a visitation from herself.   

 

An out of body experience? An apparition? A delusion?

 

Other people – at least people with the highest security clearance -- remember Astrid as the elderly Frances May Haven, who in the 21^st century becomes involved with the top-secret Project Habitat from her padded cell in Ward 6, a military-run mental hospital.

 

And the denizens of those high-tech smart houses in the 2050s?  

Some of them swear they hear her voice sometimes. That, in the dark of night, they hear a ghost singing a haunting melody. 

Some even claim they have seen her, lurking in the shadows, in their peripheral vision, between the blinks of an eye.

 

The truth about Astrid is complex, but at least one version of this mysterious woman, dwells in a lost smart house, with the other denizens of Enter The House Between. 

 

But this version is young and doesn’t remember anything after September 13, 1974. A hippie living in our future.

 

September 1974. 

That’s the date, by the way, that she recorded that haunting song, titled, mysteriously, The House Between…

 

Astrid is portrayed in Enter The House Between by Kim Breeding-Mercer, who draws on her background in theater and music as well as her day-job skills of writing and design. Kim loves that this show and its cast and crew push her, and each other, to continue to grow and try new things. She lives in Virginia with her husband, daughter, dog, and grand-snake…

 

Just 5 days until you hear Astrid in action…

Enter The House Between: Theresa

Less than a week until the launch of our new audio drama, Enter The House Between!  

Today, I want to introduce you to one of its many remarkable characters, or "denizens" in THB lingo: Theresa Melita.

THERESA MELITA (DATA FILE)

Theresa Melita was born into a large family in scenic Cape Cod. When she was a young adult, Theresa was hit by a speeding car and fell into a coma that lasted for days. When she awoke, Theresa was changed forever.  She had experienced an NDE (Near Death Experience).  This vision also awoke a series of other psychic abilities in her, a fact that frightened her parents. After a short time, they disowned Theresa, afraid that she had become a monster.

 

Professor A. Vincenzo, a specialist in Death and After-Death Studies, encountered Theresa at this point and began to help the young woman shape and understand her strange new abilities. Under Dr. Vincenzo’s tutelage, Theresa enrolled in a psychic astronaut program, one that would teach her to harness and control her psychic powers, which include psychometry (understanding facts about an object by touch), bilocation (briefly appearing in two places simultaneously), and mental telepathy. 

 

Vincenzo’s philosophy and curricula of study revolves around the notion of individuals rigorously controlling (some might say suppressing…) strong emotions. 

Like the Japanese samurai of long ago, Vincenzo’s psychic astronauts eschew close personal attachments and intense emotions and focus on rigorous control of their bodies and minds. 

Theresa mastered these lessons tenaciously, some might even say easily, but did not make many friends in the program. She came to remember the experience as lonely.

 

When psychic warnings -- including a shift in the NDE – began to forecast a kind of imminent future holocaust, Theresa was selected to be the “first person on the moon,” the first psychic astronaut to astral project inside the vision of this upcoming disaster.  

Instead, something went wrong, and Theresa became trapped in that location physically; inside a malfunctioning smart house known colloquially as “the house at the end of the universe.”

 

There, Theresa befriended the other trapped denizens, including Astrid and Arlo, while becoming a sparring partner for scientist Bill Clark, since he dismissed psychic powers and rigidly adhered to his rational principles. In the smart house, Theresa was able to communicate telepathically with the house’s advanced, but enigmatic AI -- the household lar -- named Vitality. 

 

When dark matter consumed the house at the end of the universe, Theresa helped the other denizens find a new home, this time “The Dark Place,” an ancient smart house located inside the event horizon of a five-dimensional black hole. 

 

Theresa attempted to communicate with the ancient lar there, Cronus, but he did not recognize humans as life-forms and had gone mad from loneliness. Curious about Theresa and all human life, Cronus manifested his progeny -- a baby -- to gestate inside Theresa.

 

At 26 years old, Theresa walks an uneasy path between rigid emotional control, and her desire to connect meaningfully to others. 

As Enter The House Between commences, she must also contend with impending motherhood.

The role of Theresa is essayed in Enter The House Between by the multi-talented Alicia Martin (Ravenclaw), Operations Manager for a corporation by day, slinger of indoor plants on nights and weekends, mother to three little boys (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw) and wife to one adult male (Slytherin). She is also the provider of food and occasional snuggles to three cats and a dog. She enjoys watching Star Wars and anime, and dreams of one day playing a Disney villain or a professor at Hogwarts.

And now, here is a top-secret, classified stream from the T.R.A. about Theresa:

 

Enter The House Between: Opening Narration

To help set up the world-building for my new audio-drama series, Enter The House Between,  I  am sharing today the opening narration. Hope you enjoy!