One Missing Master Led to a Sale of Eighteen Voices

The caller's name was Mara Dent. She worked in rights review for Fernwake Speech Lab.

"Your name is on the source credits," she said. "We need one last confirmation before closing."

"Closing on what?"

"A voice library from Hollow Finch Editions."

I asked her to wait. I brought Asha into the call, with Mara's consent, and took out a fresh sheet of paper.

"Please tell me exactly what they're selling."

There was a pause. I could hear someone rolling a chair on her end.

"Eighteen voices. Raw sessions and rights for generated speech. The price is $180,000."

I pressed my palm flat against the desk.

"Our studio never granted those rights."

"Mr. Pike supplied a rights schedule."

"Please send it to our lawyer. We have a court order concerning this catalog."

Mara asked for Ruth's details. She said a $30,000 deposit sat with a closing agent, still in escrow. The remaining $150,000 would be due Friday if the rights review cleared.

I wrote both amounts down.

"Will you pause it?" I asked.

"I'll refer the dispute to our counsel now."

She ended the call without offering comfort. I was glad she had called before offering money.

Ruth contacted Fernwake's lawyer within the hour. Their counsel confirmed that closing would stop pending review and that all supplied files would be kept unchanged.

Then the pitch packet came through.

On its cover, Nolan described our narrators as a fully owned voice collection.

Inside, Celia had listed eighteen people by age range, pitch, accent, and mood.

Luis was Warm Regional Male, Mature.

I had recorded his essays about caring for his mother through a long winter. He had asked me to leave one shaky breath before a difficult sentence.

Celia had priced his grief as a useful sound.

"Read me my entry," Asha said.

"You're not on it."

"Good. I'm sure I'd be Difficult Female, Extra Charge."

I laughed once. Then I called Luis.

I told him what we knew, and what we had not yet proved. He listened without a word.

"Can they make me say things?" he asked.

"They claim that's what they're selling. We are stopping the sale. I need you to hear a sample with me."

Fernwake had supplied the demonstration clip it received from Nolan. With Luis's permission, we played it over a secure call.

It sounded like him giving directions to a lodge he had never visited.

"I never read that," he said.

His voice on the phone was smaller than the voice from my speakers.

I shut the clip off.

Our licenses allowed edited audiobook recordings. The performer rider barred voice cloning and use of raw sessions to make new speech. I had added that language years earlier after Luis asked what would happen to his outtakes.

Nolan had complained about the extra page.

"You're selling books," he had said. "Why bring machines into it?"

I had answered that a voice could travel farther than a book.

Now the rider was missing from the rights schedule he had sent Fernwake.

Asha and I checked our storage records. We did not treat every machine timestamp as proof of who had touched a file. We kept the logs for someone trained to examine them.

The index showed eighteen source folders exported to a portable drive under Nolan's account. Seventeen working masters remained. Luis's track-seven master had been moved, then deleted from the active drive.

The offline backup was safe.

I took its sealed case from the cabinet but did not connect it. Ruth arranged for a forensic examiner to make a verified working copy.

"You've wanted me to test that backup for months," I told Asha.

"I wanted a boring fire drill. Your husband has a flair for excess."

We sat with the missing file's old session sheet between us. At the top, I had written Twelve Seconds, as I always did.

I had kept that room tone so edits would belong together. Now the session notes and backup could help establish where the stolen source came from.

I called every performer on the list. Each got the same facts and Ruth's contact information. We offered private calls. Nobody had to hear their sample in a group.

By evening, fourteen had answered. The others received a message asking them to contact me about an urgent rights issue, without sensitive details in voicemail.

At 8:47, Nolan emailed me directly.

The subject was Final Chance.

"Sign the cleanup release by nine," he wrote. "Or the remaining source package goes out before your lawyer starts work. You can't call every buyer in the world."