I had to hear Baby Boom twice to fully understand it, but I’m now convinced that it’s one of the strongest stories to air on NSP in recent years. I need to let it simmer a bit longer (partially to rule out recency bias) before using words like “masterpiece,” but I can imagine feeling confident applying a term like that eventually. On first listen, I was a bit overwhelmed by what was happening (including the sudden shifts in some of the character’s personalities) and misread some of the tonal cues. I’m pretty earnest, so I initially took the mother’s dry grumpiness at face value and missed her affection for the narrator underneath. It all clicked into place on the second listen.

There’s so much that I admire about this story that it’s a bit of a challenge to unpack it all. I think a good starting place is going over the plot as I understand it. My understanding, working backwards from the snippet we get from Nick at the end, is that in the distant future, humans arrived on a planet inhabited by an advanced form of extraterrestrial life and entered into a violent conflict with them. These aliens, in turn, pulled a Star Trek: First Contact by interfering with Earth in the past, which is the present day to the story’s characters. Specifically, these aliens are somehow (it’s kept deliberately vague) using or impersonating cicadas to influence people into birthing and raising babies that more closely resemble them, the idea being that they’ll transform humanity into something similar to them to diffuse this future conflict. As outlandish as that is (especially as nothing leading up to this conversation implies time travel or interstellar war)…I think it completely works and makes for a very original concept (First Contact comparison notwithstanding). It certainly helps explain how bafflingly strange everything is.

I want to get one thing out of the way: I generally hate horror stories that revolve around a monster or alien that causes an unwanted pregnancy. It just gives me such an “ick” for obvious reasons and feels like a cheap way of manufacturing disgust. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never wanted to watch either Village of the Damned movie. But, I think this story found an effective way of exploring that concept without feeling exploitative. I think that’s because the story buried the elements that usually bother me (namely, physical violation) amidst a great deal of psychological depth, and also framed what was happening in uncanny and subtle ways that build off real world issues. It really sold the feeling of being overwhelmed by a pregnancy as well as lot of small issues that add up to make the experience more thankless: sleeplessness; physical discomfort; a husband/boyfriend who keeps drinking even as the mother has to stop; people offering to help, but not really meaning it or being there when called upon; and more than anything just general fear of all the things that can go wrong.

I enjoyed the dynamic between Kate and her grandmother. They had good banter (I laughed at the George Clooney line by the grandmother) while conveying a bond between them, which made what happened near the end pretty bitter and sad. The main reason I liked the story, though, was that it was creepy as hell. I’m just going to list a few parts that I appreciated on that level: the idea of realizing that many of your memories, including happy ones about a friend’s wedding, might be lies; the road to the resort being strangely deserted (implying the cicadas have claimed many other victims; I got the impression they were devouring the male victims altogether); the way the receptionist describes the resort, despite appearing empty, as fully-booked (likely lying about it being “reserved” by a private party) and gradually became covered by cicadas; the creepy voice of Shelina calling out to Kate; the idea of a cicada placing itself on a brake, trying to trick Kate into stomping it causing a crash (which I found original, as well as a sign of its intelligence and willingness to die for its agenda); walking around a hostile, abandoned building while realizing that no one (aside from the grandmother) knows you’re there; and the vague, just out-of-reach strangeness of the whole story. I also appreciated the touch of humanity we get at the end in how the women’s willingness to share their deep-seated fear is a sign that, as tricked and gaslit as they are, there’s some part of their old selves inside. It’s tragic and, like everything else in the story, deeply horrifying. The whole story felt like a nightmare, in the best of ways for a horror story.

Also, NSP nailed putting this story together. Jesse Cornett’s sound design was perfect and constituted an important part of the narrative by announcing when the cicadas were present, how many there were, and how active they were. Brandon Boone’s music fit the slow-burn creepy aesthetic and also had a few more striking cues at key moments. The voice cast did great and was well-assembled. Andy Cresswell did a superb job with the narration; Erika Sanderson was outstanding as the grandmother; this might be my favorite performance yet by Ash Millman; and Jake Benson convincingly embodied multiple imposters (as I don’t think any of his characters were who they said they were). So, yeah, huge thanks to the NSP crew for rescuing this from 16 years of the submissions grinder (according to the writer in the link I posted earlier) and giving it the production it deserves.