For four years, nobody in Portland died by violence on a public street. Then five people did, in a single week, and each time somebody left a sentence behind.

Care Protocol. A four part serial thriller, narrated by Don McDonald from shortstoryverses.com. Episodes one and two premiere September 9. New episodes Wednesdays.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nobody has died on a Portland street in four years. The city handed over the wheel eight years ago and got back quiet nights, clean air, and a fatality rate of zero. Ask anyone. The algorithms saved us.

Then, at 7:12 on an ordinary Tuesday, a man waiting for his morning ride is killed against a brick wall at Fifth and Glisan, in front of three witnesses who all describe the same impossible thing. Before lunch there is a second.

The company's lawyers called the police seven minutes after the first one. That is six minutes before anyone called them.

Special Agent Maya Restrepo catches the case. Deaths that could not have happened, and a maintenance log with a sentence sitting in it where a number should be.

In the next episode:

Something happens on a stretch of I-5 outside Wilsonville, caught from nine angles. By Friday morning there isn't a screen in the country that hasn't run it. By Saturday the country has decided what it means, and Maya Restrepo is the only person still asking the other question.

Coming Wednesday, September 16th.

Check out our multiverse of narrated short stories at shortstoryverses.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nine cameras caught it. A stretch of I-5 outside Wilsonville, a wrong-way truck, a school bus full of kids from a district that can't afford a field trip, and something that should not have been possible happening in less time than it takes to read this.

By Friday morning there isn't a screen in the country that hasn't run it. By Saturday the country has decided what it means.

Portland spent three weeks frightened of its own streets. Now it's grateful. There are t-shirts. Whoever is doing this has admirers, and they are not quiet about it.

The dying hasn't stopped. It's just stopped being the story.

Special Agent Maya Restrepo watches the footage until she stops seeing the rescue. There is a moment just before it that nobody is talking about, because everybody is still crying at the end of it.

By the end of the week that sentence in the maintenance log has a name attached to it, and the man who owns the name is sitting in a federal building saying the three least useful words he could possibly say. I don't know.

In the next episode:

A courtroom, a case so clean the defense barely bothers, and twelve people asked to believe something no jury has ever been asked to believe. Maya Restrepo put the defendant in that chair. She's also the only person in the room who doesn't think he did it.

Coming Wednesday, September 23rd.

Check out our multiverse of narrated short stories at shortstoryverses.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The case against Marcus Webb fits on a kitchen calendar. He was arrested in April. Nobody has died since April.

The government calls that proof. Maya Restrepo calls it something else, and to say so under oath she has to walk into a federal courtroom as a witness for the defense, with her badge in a drawer and her private life about to be read into the record.

She has a woman who died because of something written on the back of a page. She has a man in Salem who is still alive, and she can tell you exactly why.

Twelve strangers listen. One of them never stops watching her.

Then the jury sends out a note.

After the courtroom empties, Maya goes back to the data nobody else is reading anymore, and the silence begins to look like something other than an ending.

In the final episode:

A rented conference room, a banker's box, and a man who has spent his whole career being the most reasonable person in every meeting. He's found something he can't explain. Maya can. Neither of them wants to say it out loud.

Coming Wednesday, September 30th.

Check out our multiverse of narrated short stories at shortstoryverses.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.