Mind Webs - Knock

0:00As Los Angeles continues to celebrate what was an unforgettable FIFA World Cup 2026, we proudly thank our host city supporters, Amgen, Archer Aviation, Kaiser Permanente, LA Tourism, and Metro. Your partnership and commitment helped us celebrate our diverse communities and showcase the very best of the Los Angeles region. Together, we're building a lasting legacy that will continue to inspire our communities and shape the future of major events in Los Angeles. Thank you for helping us show the world why we love LA. For more, visit LASEC.net. This is Steve Covino from Covino and Rich. Quick trivia, fellas. Every guy listening is contestant. Answer honestly to yourself. You got a belly in a little chest, gasped by the afternoon, no drive left in the tank. You lack that confidence and mental edge. Those are classic signs that your testosterone has been sliding and nothing drags it down faster than extra weight. So why not take matters into your own hands. Shrhip off the weight that tanks your testosterone with Bioma GLP1 booster. Every serving is packed with science-packed ingredients that crank up your natural GLP1 production.

1:04Visit bioma.health slash GLP1 and use code CRShow for 15% off your first order. For generations, Ford and your Southern California four dealers have considered it an honor and a responsibility to serve their communities. That legacy continues in September during Ford's annual food drive. Support your local community and donate non-perishable food items at your local Southern California four dealer. Can't go. It's pasta, rice, cooking oils. Let's make history together breaking records. Visit Ford.com slash local to learn more.

2:22Welcome to a half hour of mind weight. Short stories from the worlds of speculative fiction. This mind web story comes from a book edited by Noel Keys called Contact. It's Frederick Brown's Knock. There is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long.

3:26The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door. Two sentences and an ellipsis of three dots. The horror, of course, isn't in the two sentences at all. It's all in the ellipsis. The implication, what not at the door. Faced with the unknown, the human mind supplies something vaguely horrible. But it wasn't horrible, really. The last man on earth or in the universe for that matter sat alone in a room. It was rather peculiar room. He had just noticed how peculiar it was and he'd been studying out the reason for its peculiarity. His conclusions didn't horrify him, but it annoyed him. Walter Falen would have been associate professor of anthropology at Nathan University up until

4:29the time two days ago when Nathan University had ceased to exist. Was not a man who horrified easily. Not that Walter Falen was a heroic figure by any wild stretch of the imagination. He was a slight man in stature and mild disposition. He wasn't much to look at and he knew it. Not that his appearance worried him now. Right now, in fact, there wasn't much feeling in him. Abstractedly, he knew that two days ago within the space of an hour, the human race had been destroyed except for him and somewhere a woman, one woman. And that was a fact which did not concern Walter Falen in this slightest degree. He'd probably never see her and didn't care too much if he didn't. Women just hadn't benefactor in Walter's life since Martha had died a year and a half

5:33ago. Not that Martha hadn't been a good wife or be it a bit on the posse side, yes. He had loved Martha in a deep silent way. He was only forty now and he'd been only thirty eight when Martha had died. But well, he just hadn't thought about women since then. His life had been his books, the ones he read and the ones he wrote. Now there wasn't any point in writing books but he had the rest of his life to spend in reading them. True company would be nice but he'd get along without it. Maybe, maybe after a while he'd get so he'd enjoy the occasional company of one of the Zan. Although that was a bit difficult to imagine. Their thinking was so alien to his that there seemed no common ground for discussion and intelligent though they were in a way. An aunt is intelligent in a way but no man ever established communication with an aunt. He thought of the Zan

6:36somehow as super ants although they didn't look like ants and he had a hunch that the Zan regarded the human race as the human race had regarded ordinary ants. Certainly what they'd done to earth had been what men did to ant hills and it had been done much more efficiently. But they had given him plenty of books. They'd been nice about that as soon as he had told them what he wanted and he had told them that the moment he had learned that he was destined to spend the rest of his life alone in this room. The rest of his life or as the Zan had quaintly expressed it forever. Even a brilliant mind and the Zan obviously had brilliant minds has its idiosyncrasies. The Zan had learned to speak terrestrial English in a matter of hours but they persisted in separating syllables but I digress. There was a knock on the door. You've got it all now except

7:47the three dots, the ellipsis and I'm going to fill that in and show you that it wasn't horrible at all. Walter, failing, called out. Come in and the door opened. It was of course only his hand. It looked exactly like the other's hand. If there was any way of telling one of them from another Walter hadn't found it. It was about four feet tall and it looked like nothing on earth, nothing that had been on earth until the Zan came there. The Walter sat. Hello, George. When he'd learned that none of them had names, he decided to call them all George and the Zan didn't seem to mind and this one sat to him. Hello, Walter. That was ritual, a knock on the door

8:48and the greetings. Walter waited and the Zan sat. Point one. You will please henceforth sit with your chair turned the other way. Walter sat. Yeah, I thought so, George, that the plain wall is transparent from the other side, right? It is transparent. Yeah, just what I thought. This is a zoo, right? That is right. Yeah, I knew it. That plain blank wall without a single piece of furniture against it and made it something different from the other walls. If I persist in sitting with my back to it, what happens then? You'll kill me, I ask, hopefully. We will take away your books. Yeah, you got me there, George. Okay, I'll face the other way when I sit and read.

9:52Hey, tell me, how many other animals besides me are in this zoo of yours? Toad, hundred and sixteen. Not complete, George. Even a bushly zoo can beat that. I mean, could be that if there were any bushly zoos left. Would you do a picket, random? Random samples. Yes, all species would have been too many. Male and female, each of one hundred and eight kinds. What do you feed them? The carnivorous ones, I mean. We make food sinthetic. That's pretty smart. How about the flora? You got a collection of that too? Flora was not hurt by vibrations. It is all still growing. That's nice for the flora. You weren't as hard on it as you were in the fauna. Well, George, I'll tell you something.

10:55You started out with 0.1. I deduced there is a 0.2 kicking around somewhere. And what is it? Something we do not understand. Two of the other animals sleep and do not wake. They are cold. It happens in the best regulated zoos, George. Probably not a thing wrong with them at all except that they're dead. Dead? That means stopped. But nothing stopped them. Each was alone. You mean, George, you don't know what natural death is? Death is when a bee is killed, stopped from living. How old are you, George?

11:55Sixteen. You would not know the word. Your planet went around your son about seven thousand. Times I am still young. Babe and arms. George, look, you've got something to learn about this planet. See, there's a guy around here who doesn't hang around where you come from. He's an old man with a beard and a side and an hourglass. Your vibrations didn't kill him. What is he? Call him the grim reaper, George. Old man death. Our people and animals live until somebody in old man death stops them taking. He stopped the two creatures. He will stop more.

12:57Walter opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again. Something in the Zan's voice indicated that there would be a worried frown on his face if he had a face recognizable as such. How about taking me to those animals who won't wake up, George? Is that against the rules? Come. Come. That had been the afternoon of the second day. It was the next morning that the Zan came back. Several of them began to move. Walter, failings, books and furniture. When they'd finished that, they moved him and he found himself in a much larger room. A hundred yards away. He sat and waited and this time too when there was a knock on the door. He knew what was coming

13:58and politely stood up. A Zan opened the door and stood aside. A woman entered. Walter bowed slightly. My name is George, but he doesn't know all the ways. My name is Grace Evans, Mr. Falon. What's this all about? Why don't they bring me here? Walter was studying her as she talked. She was tall. Full as tall as he and well proportioned. She looked to be somewhere in her early 30s about the age Martha had been. She had the same. Comedian confidence about her that he'd always liked about Martha even though it could be contrasted with his own easy-going informality. In fact, he thought she looked quite a bit like Martha. I think I know why they brought you here, but let's go back a bit. Do you know what I'm talking about? You know how they accomplished that? No. I don't know just how. Not that it matters, doesn't it?

15:24Well, sort of piecing things together. There isn't a great number of them. At least here. I don't know how numerous the race they are where they came from and I don't know where that is, but I guess it's outside the solar system. Have you seen the spaceship they came in? Yes, it's the biggest mountain. Almost. Well, it's got equipment for emitting some kind of vibration. They call it that in our language, I imagine it's more like a radio wave and a sound vibration that destroys all animal life. It, the ship itself, is insulated against the vibration. I don't know whether it's range is big enough to kill off the whole planet at once or whether they flew in circles around the earth sending out the vibratory waves, but it killed everybody and everything instantly, and I hope painlessly. The only reason we and the other 200 odd animals in this zoo weren't killed was because we were inside the ship. We've been picked up the specimens. You know, this is a zoo, don't you? I, I suspected it. The front walls are transparent from the outside, then the

16:29sand were pretty clever. It's fixing up the inside of each cubicle, the match, the match. As Los Angeles continues to celebrate what was an unforgettable FIFA World Cup 2026, we proudly thank our host city supporters, Amgen, archer aviation, Kaiser Permanente, LA tourism and Metro. Your partnership and commitment helped us celebrate our diverse communities and showcased the very best of the Los Angeles region. Together, we're building a lasting legacy that will continue to inspire our communities and shape the future of major events in Los Angeles. Thank you for helping us show the world why we love LA. For more, visit LASEC.net. This is Steve Covino from Covino and Rich. All right, quick round of trivia before we get back into the show, but we're doing it differently this time. Every guy listening right now, you're contestant. No buzzers, no calling in. Just answer honestly to yourself. Here we go. You got a belly and a little chest that won't go away no matter what you try. Gasped by the middle of the afternoon, no drive left in the tank. And lastly, you lack that confidence and mental edge. Fellas, here's the thing. Those are classic signs that your testosterone's been sliding.

17:33And nothing drags it down faster than extra weight. The good news, emerging research suggests that getting rid of it may actually be more effective than TRT. So why not take matters into your own hands? Strip off the weight that tanks your testosterone with Bioma GLP1 booster. Every serving is packed with science, back, and third party tested ingredients that crank up your natural GLP1 production. So you can enjoy a leaner physique, surging energy, and increased drive. Visit bioma.health.clash GLP1 and use Code CR Show to get 15% off your first order. That's bioma.health slash GLP1. Code CR Show for 15% off. For generations, Ford and your Southern California Four Dealers have considered it an honor and a responsibility to serve their communities. That legacy continues in September during Ford's annual food drive. Support your local community and donate non-perishable food items at your local Southern California Four Dealers can go. Post a rice, cooking oil. Let's make history

18:36together breaking records. Visit Ford.com slash local to learn more. Well, there isn't any housing shortage now anyway. I imagine the human race, specifically you and I can stop worrying about the A-bomb and the next war, things like that. The Zane certainly solved a lot of problems for us. Another case where the operation was successful, but the patient died. Things were in an awful mess. Do you remember being captured? I don't. I went to sleep one night and woke up in a cage on the spaceship. Yeah, I don't remember either. My hunch is that the use of arbitrary waves at low intensity first, just enough to knock us all out,

19:38and they cruised around picking up samples more or less at random for their zoo. After they had as many as they wanted or as many as they had space in the ship, all they turned on the juice all the way. That was that. It wasn't until yesterday they knew that they'd made a mistake and then underestimated us. They thought we were immortal as they are. That we were? What? Well, they can be killed, but they don't know what what natural death is. They didn't anyway tell yesterday. Two of us died yesterday. Two of... oh. Yeah, two of us animals in their zoo. One was a snake. One was a duck. Two species gone, irrevocably. And by the sand's way of figuring time, you see the remaining member of each species is going to live only a few minutes. They figured they had permanent specimens. You mean they didn't realize which short-lived creatures we are? That's right. One of them is young. At 7,000 years he told me. They're bisexual

20:45themselves, incidentally, but they probably breed once every 10,000 years or thereabouts. When they learned yesterday how ridiculously short a life expectancy, we, terrestrial animals have, they were probably shocked to the core if they have. Of course. Anyway, they decided to reorganize their zoo two by two instead of one by one. They figured, will last longer collectively if not individually. Oh, if you think, if they think. She turned toward the door and walkers said, it'll be locked. But look, don't worry. Maybe they think, but I don't think. You don't even need to tell me it wouldn't have me if I was the last man on earth. It would be pretty corny under the circumstances. But are they going to keep us locked up together in this one little room? No, it isn't so little. We'll get by. I can sleep quite comfortably over there in one of those

21:49over stuffed chairs. Look, don't think I don't agree with you perfectly, my dear. All personal considerations aside, the least favorite. We can do the human races to the right end with us and not be perpetuated for exhibition in a zoo. Thank you. There was anger in her eyes, but Walter knew that it wasn't anger at him. With her eyes sparkling like that, she looked a lot like Martha, he thought, and he smiled at her and said, well, otherwise, she started out of her chair. And for an instant, he thought she was going to come over and slap him, then she sank back weirdly. If you were a man, you'd be thinking of some way too. They can't be killed, you said? The same? Oh, certainly. I've been studying them. They look horribly different from us, but I

22:52think they have about the same metabolism we have, and the same kind of circulatory system. Probably the same type of digestive system. I think that anything that would kill one of us would kill one of them. But you said there are differences, of course, whatever factor it is, and man that ages him, they don't have, or else they have some glam that man doesn't have, something that renews cells. She had forgotten her anger now. She leaned forward eagerly and said, I think that's right, and I don't think they feel pain. I was hoping that, but what makes you think so, my dear? I stretched a piece of wire that I found in the desk of my cubicle across the door, so my zan would fall over it. He did, and the wire cut his leg. Did he bleed red? Yes, but it didn't seem to annoy him. He didn't get mad about it, didn't even mention it. When he came back the next time, a few hours later, the cut was almost gone. I could see just enough of a trace to be sure that it

23:57was the same thing. He wouldn't get angry, of course. They're emotionless. And maybe if we killed one, there wouldn't even punish us, but it wouldn't do any good. They just give us our food through a trap door, and treat us as men would have treated a zoo animal that had killed a keeper. They just see that he didn't have a crack at any more keepers. How many of them are there? About 200, I think, in this particular spaceship, but undoubtedly there are many more where they came from. I got a hunch this is sort of an advanced guard sent to clear off the planet, and they could say for zan occupancy. They did a good. There was a knock at the door, and Walter failing called out. Come in. A zan stood in the doorway. Hello, George. Hello, Walter. It may or may not have been the same zan, but it was always the same ritual.

24:58Hello, what's on your mind? And other creature sleeps and will not wake a small furry one called how we zo. Oh, it happens, George. Oh, man, death. I told you about him. And worse, a zan has died this morning. Is that worse? Well, you'll have to get used to a George if you're going to stay around here. The zan said nothing. It stood there, and finally, Walter said, well, how about we sir, you advise saying? Probably won't do any good, but, yeah, why not? The zan left. Walter could hear his footsteps dying away outside, and he grinned. Now it might work, Martha. Martha, my name is Grace, Mr. Phelan. What might work?

26:04Well, my name is Walter Grace. It might as well get used to it. You know Grace, you do remind me a lot of Martha. She was my wife. She died a couple years ago. I'm sorry, but what might work? What were you talking about to the zan? We'll know tomorrow. That was the fourth day of the stay of the zan. The next was the last. It was nearly noon when one of the zan came. After the ritual, he stood in the doorway, looking more alien than ever. It would be interesting to describe him for you, but there aren't words, he said. We go. Our council met and decided. Another of you died? Last night, this is a planet of death. You did your share. You're leaving 213 creatures alive

27:09out of quite a few billion. Don't hurry back. Is there anything we can do? Yeah, you can hurry. You can leave our door unlocked, but not the others. We'll take care of the others. Something clicked on the door. The zan left. Grace Evans was standing. Her eyes shining. What? Tell. Wait, wait. Let's hear them blast off. It's a sound I want to remember. The sound came within minutes, and Walter failing, realizing how rigidly he'd been holding himself relaxed in his chair. There was a snake in the garden of Eden, too, Grace, and it got us in trouble. But this one made up for it. I mean, the mate of the snake that died the day before yesterday was a rattled snake.

28:10You mean a cube, the two zan who died? But... There were babes in the woods here. When they took me to look at the first creatures, Grace, who were asleep and wouldn't wake up, you know. And I saw that one of them was a rattler. I had an idea. Just maybe I thought poison creatures were a development peculiar to earth, and a zan wouldn't know about them. And two maybe their metabolism was enough like ours so that the poison would kill them. Well, anyway, I had nothing to lose trying. And both maybe turned out to be right. How did you get the snake, too? I told them what affection was. The zan didn't know. They were interested, I found, in preserving the remaining one of each species as long as possible to study the picture and record it before it died. So I told them it would die immediately because of the loss of its mate, unless it had affection and petting constantly. I showed them how with the duck, luckily it was a tame one, and I held it against my chest and petted the duck to show them.

29:13Then I let them take over with it and the rattlesnake. He stood up and stretched, and then sat down again more comfortably. Well, we've got a world of plan. We'll have to let the animals out of the ark, and that'll take some thinking and deciding that her bifurus wild ones we can let go right away. The domestic ones will do better to keep and take charge of, I guess, will need them. But the carnivora, well, well after the side, I'm afraid it's got to be thumbs down on them. And the human race, we've got to make a decision about that, a pretty important one. Her face was getting a little pink again as it had the yesterday, and she sat rigidly in her chair. No. Grace, it's been a nice race, even if nobody wanted. It'll be starting over again now,

30:14and it may go backward for a while until it gets its breath. But we can gather books for it, and keep most of its knowledge intact, the important things anyway. We can even... he broke off as he got up and started for the door, just the way his Martha would have acted, he thought back in the days when he was courting her before they were married, and he said, well, think it over, my dear, take your time, but come back. The door slammed, he sat waiting, thinking out all the things there were to do once he started, but he no hurry to start them. And after a while he heard her hesitant footsteps coming back. He smiled a little. See, it wasn't horrible, really. The last man on earth sat alone in a room

31:20there was a knock on the door.

32:51The name of that story was Knocked by Frederick Brown. It appears in the book Contact edited by Noel Kees. This is Michael Hanson speaking, reading with me was Mary Armond Trump, Technical production for Mindwebs by Leslie Yosemov. Mindwebs is produced at WHA Radio in Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin, extension. As Los Angeles continues to celebrate what was an unforgettable FIFA World Cup 2026, we proudly thank our host city supporters, Amjim, Archer Aviation, Kyzer Permanente, LA Tourism, and Metro. Your partnership and commitment helped us celebrate our diverse communities and showcase the very best of the Los Angeles region. Together, we're building a

33:54lasting legacy that will continue to inspire our communities and shape the future of major events in Los Angeles. Thank you for helping us show the world why we love LA. For more, visit LASEC.net. This is Steve Kovino from Kovino and Rich. Quick trivia, fellas. Every guy listening is contestant. Answer honestly to yourself. You got a belly in a little chest, gasped by the afternoon, no drive left in the tank. You lack that confidence and mental edge. Those are classic signs that your testosterone has been sliding and nothing drags it down faster than extra weight. So why not take matters into your own hands? Shrip off the weight that tanks your testosterone with Bioma, GLP1 booster. Every serving is packed with science-packed ingredients that crank up your natural GLP1 production. Visit bioma.health slash GLP1 and use code CR Show for 15% off your first order. For generations, Ford and your Southern California four dealers have considered it an honor and a responsibility to serve their communities. That legacy continues in September during

34:57Ford's annual food drive. Support your local community and donate non-perishable food items at your local Southern California four dealer. Can't go. It's pasta, rice, cooking oils. Let's make history together breaking records. Visit Ford.com slash local to learn more. Black Friday is coming. Last year, businesses on Shopify made billions in sales. This holiday season, you could be one of them. If you start now, Shopify helps you launch fast so you can design your site and start selling before the biggest shopping days of the year. What are you waiting for? Tis the season to start selling. Start for free at Shopify.com. With VerboCare, help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twist, so support is always available. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind.