CRANK-FM

A late night broadcaster perched on a high balcony in the Shadow Precinct reports the truth no one else will touch: interdimensional conspiracies, alternate Earth incursions, underwater civilizations, psychic parasites, and the strange communities forming right under our noses. Drawn from "lightly processed transcripts" of the CRANK FM radio show, these stories blend cosmic horror, deadpan humor, and metaphysical world building into a serialized chronicle of a universe coming apart at the seams.

Episodes in this volume:
The end of the serial killer era
The serial killer as a cultural phenomenon is declared largely over with modern versions dismissed as LARPing, while the underlying impulse is argued to have shifted to more sophisticated spiritual and intellectual corruption.
Bad day at the gun range
A visit to normalize his relationship with his weapon after shooting robots goes wrong when the upgraded optic detects something in a fellow shooter, who pursues him to the parking lot with a rifle and is killed by energy rounds that appear to exorcise a possessing entity.
Psychic death will get you killed
The broadcaster develops the concept of psychic death as what happens when identity built on luxury beliefs divorced from cause and effect is challenged, using fiat money, button-pressing convenience, and climate change as the primary examples.
Emotional propaganda in action
A grocery substitution notification and an insurance commercial before a Jack Ryan movie prompt analysis of how fear and wish fulfillment are deployed as emotional control mechanisms in daily media consumption.
Do billionaires taste good
A group of settlers recruited from military podcast communities attempt to colonize a pristine alternate earth, devolve into cannibalism of friendly indigenous people over winter, and most die before the five year commitment ends.
Bad manners will get you killed every time
The indigo bunting spotted at a consulting location prompts analysis of the large scale incursion being tracked, framed as agent-driven waves rather than conventional invasion, with the double tap as the key tactical concept to understand.
We will not break
A security guard foot chase at 3am observed from the balcony leads to reflection on safety as a manufactured product and the torn curtain as a metaphor for the membrane between worlds, with Kane's motives increasingly suspected.
Destructive individuals never rest
A distortion indicators segment connecting the idea of professional manipulators having nothing productive to do with a convicted murderer threatening victims at sentencing, both having nothing else to do but plan harm.
A man eating catfish abomination
An intelligent fish that loves to eat human flesh. Unknown whether it is a local mutant or imported from another world
Interdimensional gun smuggler
Romulus Kane draws the Narrator into the case - they are taking guns across planetary lines and they go down fighting.