Over and Out

Over and Out is a musical written by Sushi Soucy and Morgan Smith set at A New School that centers around Solar, a student under the Department of Unconfirmed Existence, and their discovery and subsequent friendship of a mysterious unknown girl.

Averno Bible Description
''Solar, a student at A New School, has never felt at home on planet Earth. They cling desperately to the hope of a world more mysterious than they can imagine- aliens, cryptids, and fairies around every corner. But when they climb to the roof one October night with a radio and a walkie talkie, it isn't aliens who answer- it's a girl.''

''The Department of Unconfirmed Existence: A chaotic land of Buzzfeed Unsolved marathons, Mountain Dew, Jersey Devil fan fiction, and circadian rhythms that would horrify med students. On the whole, the students of the DUE are a messy bunch- loud, unkempt, prone to sprinting into the night screaming about Mothman. They do it for the Vine, as it were. But Solar is different. They BELIEVE, in that fervent, fevered, sitting on your roof with a hand-radio kind of way. They believe in aliens, in cryptids, in conspiracies- probably in fairies too, but they wouldn’t admit that. Mostly, they believe that the world has to be more mysterious than we can see. That there must be something bigger. Something else. Every night, they go up on the roof with a shoddy radio and a walkie talkie and surf the frequencies, eating olives and doodling the constellations they see. It is their own quiet holy moment, always reaching into the night and praying to hear anything but silence.''

''And one night, they do. They hear a girl.''

''The two of them begin talking, their conversations only In the dead of night, except when they occasionally fall asleep and wake up to the blinding sunrise over the mountain. They talk about aliens and ghosts, the Forest, the school, everything except the one thing on both of their minds. Can they ever actually meet each other?''

Major Characters
Solar

Nova

Synopsis
Solar has always preferred the stars to people. As a child, they used to sneak out onto their roof at night and talk to aliens. How the aliens were supposed to hear them was unclear, but Solar supposed that if they were out there, they were probably good listeners. Now a freshman at A New School, Solar still goes out to the roof at night- sometimes hiding between the rainbow shadows cast by the Birdcage, other times perched against the foggy glass of the greenhouse. They sit in the starlight with a walkie talkie and try to contact the things beyond. When they’re sad, they eat olives straight from the jar, leaving an ever-growing collection they have dubbed “The Olive Jarden”.

One night, they make contact- not with an Alien, but with a girl, on another roof, hidden in the darkness of an Averno night. (1. No Choice)

After trying, unsuccessfully, to talk to the person they heard, Solar returns to their dorm in the DUE, only to be met with a party. They go hide in their dorm room with their roommate, Sam.

Across campus Nova, the girl on the other side of the airwaves, returns to her dorm room. It is entirely empty, except for jars of moss and acorns.

The next day, Nova goes to the cafeteria to get lunch. She runs into her roommate and her roommates friends. As usual, Nova doesn’t understand any of the jokes they make, and she walks away feeling like everyone else was born with a secret guide to the world- one she never got (2. Ketchup).

That night, Nova returns to the roof with a walkie talkie. She turns it on and tries to talk to someone- Penya- but they don’t respond. After a few minutes, however, someone else answers- Solar. After a confusing few minutes where Solar thinks Nova is an alien and Nova thinks Solar is the person named Penya, they eventually figure out that they are not, in fact, those people, and they begin talking. They agree to meet up again- via walkie talkie, that is.

And they do. Every night they go to the roof and talk about everything and nothing. Solar soon realizes that Nova seemingly knows nothing about…. Anything. She doesn’t know what Lord of the Rings or ET or even Google are. So they become “rooftop bookclub buddies” and read new books every week. They watch movies on Netflix and use codenames - Star and Lilo. They become best friends- and they never meet face to face. (3. Like I Do).

But as Solar finds home with Nova, they get further and further from their “real world”. As a member of the DUE, Solar belongs everywhere and nowhere. When they were kidnapped away into the tunnels and fluorescent glow of the commons their first week, they thought they had found their people- the cryptid-hunters and deep sea explorers and most of all, the dreamers. But soon they realized that with their fervent, almost childlike belief in the beyond, they were as far from their classmates as an alien. One night they return from the roof to find their classmates gearing up for a cryptid hunt, (4. Cryptid Hunt) but when they say that the cryptids might not want to be found, they are mocked mercilessly. They return to the roof and get angry for the first time in a long time (5. Stay a Child).

After they calm down a bit, Solar realizes that they don’t exactly have no one- there is one person who understands. Who sees the world like them. Solar goes up to the roof and asks Nova out- and she says yes (6. The Alien All Along).

Unfortunately, Nova realizes soon after that eventually, the two will have to meet in person. And she gets scared. Really scared. Because Nova has a secret. She wasn’t just sheltered growing up- she was in the forest. Literally. Nova is a wild one, one of the children saved by the Shadow Mothers and raised wild in the deep woods. When she reaches adulthood and is given the choice of whether to stay or go, Nova leaves the forest- and leaves her family behind. At A New School, she is the weirdo. People assume she grew up in one of those uber-religious homeschool families, or maybe in a bunker. It’s the only explanation for the fact that she can barely work the internet and doesn’t know who Shakespeare is. But with Solar, she isn’t all of that. She’s the version of herself she has made- and she doesn’t want Solar to stop seeing her that way (7. If You See Me). Solar tries to tell her that they will still see her, that they WANT to see her, but she doesn’t listen. Nova gets scared and breaks it off.

Nova goes up to the roof and tries once again to find the person named Penya. Her sister, who’s still in the forest. Once again, there is no answer. (8. Nova Phone Home). But just as she’s about to leave the roof, there’s a crackling on the walkie talkie. Then a voice. Penya.

“I can’t talk yet. But soon.” Nova holds the walkie talkie to her chest. Soon. Soon can be enough.

Across campus, Solar tries to get in contact with Nova. She doesn’t answer. Finally, they tell her that they’ll be waiting on the roof of the DDL. They promise that no matter what, if she wants to, they want to get to know her.

Solar climbs to the roof and sets up fairy lights. They even spruce up the Olive Jarden. They play bad 80’s music. And they wait.

At first, it seems like Nova will never come. She almost doesn’t. It begins to snow, and Solar sits shivering beneath an umbrella. But then Nova sees the fairy lights glowing through the haze of snow, and Nova  knows she has to go. (9. Supernova).

Before winter break, Nova and Solar share a plate of fries at Skyline Diner. The snow falls outside. They are happy. (10. No Choice [Reprise]).

Concept Album Cast
Sushi Soucy - Solar

Janeen Garcia - Nova

Trivia

 * Two songs from Over and Out were released before the release of the first concept album
 * Nova Phone Home, which was released on August 27th as part of the Come Home EP
 * Cryptid Hunt, which was released on October 10th as a single
 * Fun Fact about Cryptid Hunt, it was released 13 hours earlier than it was supposed to be!
 * Over and Out has been described as "the happiest musical in the Averno universe"
 * The first document with the concept of Over and Out was called "Saucy Babes"
 * Over and Out was released on January 15th, 2021. Listen to it here
 * The week following its release, Over and Out topped at #14 on Billboard's soundtracks chart.