Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Mother, mother may I, may I take to the sky?
May I, may I leave you here? Lord, you never? May I leave here alive?
You don't own me?
May I, may I, may I, may I, may I go home?
Hello, listeners, and welcome back to the bitter chill of an unfeeling universe. Goblets and gays have returned to the world of alien using free league Press's incredible alien rpg with our second season of mother. May I? My name is Ferris Iu she her pronouns. And I am honored to be back as your game, mother. This is episode six. Extraordinary potential for commerce. So now let's reacquaint ourselves with the intrepid remaining crew of the Medea.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Aubrey, and I will be playing Dr. Darcy Langley, and we both use she her pronouns.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: I am tick. I use he she they pronouns. And I am playing the ship's faithful cat, Cosmopolitan. Wow, those words didn't want to leave my mouth correctly.
[00:01:39] Speaker D: Hello, everybody. I'm aki. My pronouns are she her, and I will be playing Dr. Matilda Fernandez, who also uses she her pronouns.
[00:01:51] Speaker E: And my name is Alyssa. I use they them pronouns, and I will be playing mercy Fairweather, erstwhile comms officer, who uses she her pronouns.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Space offers extraordinary potential for commerce and adventure, for new innovations and new tests of will. Bill Frist in a single line of redacted text and a redacted file, stored only as a physical copy held by one Michael Bishop. This planet had a name, but it's not one you'd ever hear privately. He calls it his golden fleece and keeps close tabs on its going ons. This planet will change everything for him, for his company, for the future of the known galaxy.
The higher ups who know of this planet call it shirtwaste with a chuckle and a smile. Gallows humor, they say, to the very, very few who frown. Lighten up, they say.
The locals who work the Wayland Utani facilities here call it HFO, their own grim joke. But gallows humor rings differently when you're the one set to hang.
In a few hours, it will be given another name by one whose life it will change forever. A mechanos, a greek title bestowed just once upon an unexpected head. A name meaning helpless.
The delivery ship settles on the landing strip with a heavy thud. Quiet fills the cockpit as you all stare out at the thick flurries of snow crisscrossing the windshield. Three things occur to you all. One, the landing strip is outside, so the atmosphere must be breathable, at least for short periods of time. And the computer readings do confirm this. Two, there's no ground crew rushing out to greet you, but it is clearly flipping cold. Three, bad weather is going to make taking off again difficult.
What do you all do?
[00:04:04] Speaker B: We know that the ship is damaged, so it's kind of why we had to make the set down here. But definitely going to look around at everyone else and be like, okay, we've gotten out of there. We're here. We should probably try to find some sort of shelter, maybe figure out our options, and then go from there.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: You do see outside the view window, the slightly blurred by snow outline of a rather large building that has been constructed not too far from the landing strip.
[00:04:47] Speaker E: Before we go out into the unknown, can you do something about this?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Yes. You're injured.
[00:04:55] Speaker E: Mercy gestures with their body, which is very injured.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to do some medicine.
[00:05:01] Speaker D: All I'm going to say is I was 100% making sure mercy didn't bleed out. But also, I'm a doctor. I am not a doctor for humans or animals specifically.
And so, I don't know, we got, like, a sweater somewhere. Definitely not mine. I use that as, like, a makeshift tourniquet.
It is not tight enough. It's just there at this point to be dyed red and possibly passing out. I'm just making sure that you stay awake at this point. And I'm saying shit, like, a little higher, and that would have been dangerous for the both of us.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's really unfortunate, because I did roll a one on one of my stress die.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: On the bright side, it's not going to kill mercy.
And you keep it together, but you're keeping it together, but you did just a fly a ship and land a ship when you're not a pilot after having escaped from the place, that was technically keeping you hostage. I mean, technically speaking, if you want to really look at it, and that was also under attack of the lovely beings that you have been researching for two years now.
And so that has certainly caused perhaps some of the things that should be easy to do have just fled your.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Brain, like, looking at this and being like, okay, I can't work here. We need a good space. We need a clean space shuttle certainly is not clean. I would not want you to get infected. We need better supplies. So hopefully there's something in there and we can stabilize you and figure this.
[00:07:18] Speaker D: All out for the purpose of just keeping mercy okay, enough to walk on her own as we go find shelter. Is there, like, could I attempt, I don't know, perhaps like, a survival?
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll let you roll. Survival here. Justice. It won't restore any health to mercy, but it might at least make it easier for mercy to wander around. Mercy, where are you injured? Physically.
[00:07:52] Speaker E: So I definitely got got by the alien. I assume it's the sort of chest region like Chester tummy. I can't remember where exactly.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Grabbed, not stabbed. Right.
[00:08:06] Speaker E: Oh, that's true.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: I did get grabbed and pulled out of the way.
[00:08:09] Speaker D: Yeah, I was going to say scratched up on your back. Your tummy would make sense too.
No ones on stressed ice. One six, though.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Okay, then. Yeah. I think you know enough tools like staunch the bleeding, which I think even though you weren't trying very hard between your instincts and thinking about it a little bit now, I think the bleeding has mostly stopped, so it hurts to move around, but you're not in any immediate danger so long as there's no new danger. Just as you disembark, the ramp lowers down and you step out into a frozen tundra. It is cold. There is snow blowing around. The visibility is terrible. The building is not that far from you and you can barely see it because the snow is just blowing around so hard and it's so cold. Just. You're immediately starting to shiver a little bit as you were not dressed for this at all.
You have had perfectly regulated temperatures for two years, and suddenly you're at the mercy of weather. But on the other hand, fresh air. It's been a long time since you've had real fresh air.
But you see, coming towards you, there is a figure in a half Sita parka running towards you. Gets close and shouting through over the wind is like, sorry, we weren't expecting you hours ago. What the hell happened up there? What are you doing on this side of the facility? Hang on. Where's dick?
[00:09:45] Speaker B: I honestly don't know the answer to that question.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: I don't want to have this conversation out here. It's cold as balls. Let's move it.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: My lab coat around me and help Matilda get Mercy into out of the cold.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Who's carrying Cosmo?
[00:10:02] Speaker D: Me.
[00:10:03] Speaker C: I cannot walk in the snow.
[00:10:05] Speaker D: It's too do I. I did put you in not a crate like a carrier before, because I just instinctively put you back in the good old box to keep you.
I'm. I'm helping if Mercy's got her arms around us. Yeah. And then I'm carrying Cosmo not too gracefully in the crate, but he leads you all inside.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: He pulls this big, huge, heavy door open and steps inside first. And then ushers you all in there's this locker area directly inside as he pulls the door shut. And then he takes off, his heavy coat shaking snow out of gray streaked blonde hair. He's got a square jaw that's rough with several days of beard growth, pale skin that's a little pink from sunburn, except for around the eyes, like he usually wears goggles.
And he has, like, laugh lines. In the corner, he's wearing a very heavy pair of work coveralls that zip up the front. And he has a gun on his belt, but he does extend his hand out to each of you to shake and says, name is Jason. I handle takeoffs around here. Who the hell are all of you?
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Darcy Langley. I was a doctor on the station.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Oh, nice to meet you.
[00:11:38] Speaker D: That's Cosmo.
I'm Matilda. Dr. Matilda Fernandez.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Wait, you're like, the actual Dr. Matilda Fernandez? The actual, like, you wrote that dissertation back in, what was it, like, six or seven years ago?
[00:11:56] Speaker D: Yeah, that would be me.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
I love your work.
Wow. I have read your dissertation, like, at least three times.
Wow.
The theories you have had, the way your work interacts with what we know about alien species is mind blowing. Honestly, it changed my life a little bit. Changed everything I thought I understood about the world. Incredible. I can't believe you're here. Wow. Never thought I'd get a chance to meet you.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Not to interrupt or anything. Do you have medical facility? I do currently have somebody who needs medical attention, yeah, you look a little rough up.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: We can walk and talk. I'm great at that. What's your name? While we walk and talk.
[00:12:45] Speaker E: Mercy Fairweather. Cops.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Officer. Pleasure. Pleasure.
But he starts walking all down a hallway and says, well, welcome to HFO. That's what we call the planet here.
Hell froze over. Obviously, these are the main facilities here. I heard they're building a second one out, actually, a few clicks east. But you can imagine it's slow going in this weather. And yes, it's like this all the time, so I haven't gotten any transfer paperwork or anything, so you're going to have to just excuse the mess. Last I heard from up top, there was like a delay of some kind, but they are so bloody tight lipped up there, I never know what's going on. Did they even send a delivery down? Because I got to send a crew out if they did.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: They did not.
It was an accident.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Well, you might as well heat up while you can. Cafes got strogan up today, which ain't bad for cafeteria. For food, frankly.
And yeah, here we go. And the whole time he's been talking, you've wandered down a hallway. There's a ladder you passed that was labeled observation deck. And you come down into a somewhat busy recreation room. All the walls that you've seen so far have been lined with this rippled fiber cement, and floors are metal covered in carpeted rubber mats. The wreck room itself is occupied by seven other people in similar coveralls to Jason. One of them is applying salve to a small burn wound on their hand. Another pair are chatting, sipping beers. Someone's flicking darts at a dartboard. You see an older, heavily tattooed woman in the corner who eyes you all as you enter and then just gets up and leaves.
Jason, like, pauses here for a minute and goes, right. So this is a rec room. Hall across goes to the cafeteria. Engineering maintenance hall to the left leads to the employee living quarters, which are upstairs. Hall to the right, work center downstairs, that's med lab, factory floor, offices, everything else. That's everything.
I've got to get some things settled. Find Griffith. I'll take your friend here down to the meds lab. We'll figure out what to do with the rest of you all. So why don't you go get settled in? 104, 105, and 108 have been recently vacated, so take your pick of any of those. Look around all you like. Just stay out of the work facilities for the time being. Kind of dangerous to be in there without proper training and gear. We'll get you all sorted out by tomorrow. Take the day off while you have it. They don't believe in weekends on HFO.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Understand that feeling.
I'll go with the. Talk to your doctor here. My patient. I just want to make sure that.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Everything is that kind of doctor.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: I'm that kind of.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Hey, nice.
We probably could use a second one around here anyway. We have a lot of incidents. Yeah, feel free to explore around. I'll catch up with all of you later.
Have a good one.
Just don't let the cat wander around too much.
Safety. Safety thing. You know how it is. Anyway, bitch, your cat talks.
[00:16:08] Speaker D: Yeah, I'll just nod, I think.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: He crouches down to eye level with the cat carrier and looks in and then goes, my name's Jason. Nice to meet you. No, I can respect. Then he just gets up and gestures to mercy and Dr. Langley and leads you all to the right.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: I'll look back at Matilda and just being like, I'll make sure that mercy is all right, and then we can figure out what our next steps are.
[00:16:44] Speaker D: Well, I'll stay here, explore, put a leash on Cosmo.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Yeah. See if you can find out anything to do with where we are.
[00:16:55] Speaker D: Got it. And I look at Marcy and go, don't die.
[00:16:59] Speaker E: And she gives you a little sarcastic salute.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Jason leads the two of you down a hall, and there is a connecting tunnel. It's clear you're not sure what the material is made out of, if it's some kind of plastic or fiberglass or what it is, but it does let you look out at the wondrous expanse of white that seems to surround you all.
And he kind of says, sometimes the weather actually clears, and we do get some pretty spectacular views, but weather does not clear ever. So we kind of take a holiday when that actually happens anyway. And he leads you down into another area where there's a few little small rooms and then stairs on one side and an elevator set in the middle. But it's not like a fancy, enclosed modern elevator. It's like one of those cage elevators that you see in mines and stuff. And he pulls open the door and steps in and then lets you all come in and then pulls it shut and pushes. It's like, got one of those big remote button things that there's just two buttons on it. It either goes up or down. That's it hits the down button, and it just jerks to a start and starts descending down.
He just kind of leans against the wall and stares at you both, like, not hostile in any way. He's just kind of curious because you came out of nowhere.
[00:18:35] Speaker E: So how long have you been here, Jason?
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Well, ages, I guess. Not ages ages, but about two years or so.
And basically since the facility was started so slightly before that, I guess. I guess it's been a little longer than two years. In that case, what exactly.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Is this, a mining operation or something? We weren't really told much in the station. We're just told that there was something down here.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's more of a factory situation than mining, I would say.
I'll be honest.
It's a bit of a shock the first time you see it, but you get used to it. It becomes commonplace. I'm not going to freak you out on day one when you don't even have an assignment or a room yet, but, yeah, it's a little different.
But the facilities themselves are older, I think they're, what, 710 years old or something like that. I don't remember what they used to be. Some sort of machinery assembly, I think is what used to do out here. And then I was signed on about three years ago. To help overhaul this whole place. We did it at six months, which was a heck of a time. You can imagine. Then we all had to sign massive NDAs. Half the workers were shipped off elsewhere. Got a whole bunch of new folks in.
A lot of ex cons around here. But don't let that. They're good folks.
Hard to get a job when you just got out or have just been out for a while. Not a lot of people want to hire for reasons I never understood.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Totally understandable.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's what we do now. It's pretty limited in terms of comings and goings.
Sometimes messages are hard to get out. There's some sort of relay issue, I guess we put it in a complaint years ago, but, yeah, you know how it is. They're slow to fix that sort of thing.
[00:20:45] Speaker E: Oh, I'd be happy to look into that. If there's anything we can do on this end. Once I'm at mercy again, gestures to their sort of tattered torso.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Pounds. Officer. Yeah, you know what? That'd be great.
Definitely.
Say we got a medic, we got a comms officer now, and we got one of the best scientists probably in the known galaxy. So I think this facility is going to improve by leaps and bounds. Where have you all been hiding? Could have you a few ages ago.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: On the station above the planet.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Wow, nice.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Probably lapse into comfortable silence, maybe slightly uncomfortable silence as I'm just being like, okay, mercy, it's going to be fine.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: The lift comes to a stop, and he pulls the door open, leads you out into a small area that has a couple of different. Everything is behind doors, and they're all, like, doors that you need swipe cards to get into. And they're heavy duty doors. These are pretty intense. But he goes to the closest one, swipes his card, it opens. He steps in, ushers you all inside.
Med Bay is in here.
I was going to apologize that our usual doc is off duty at the moment, and I was going to go hunt him down, but I guess I don't have to.
But you're welcome to use anything in here. He might complain about it, but, like, screw him. Do what you got to do.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. We'll figure it out. And, yeah, immediately. Especially if I see a place where I could put mercy down and start working in a nice, less stress free environment.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
The situation is, as such that you don't need to roll to do this, mercy. You can just recover all of your health.
[00:22:57] Speaker D: Yay.
[00:22:59] Speaker E: As we're left alone here in this little med bay, is there anything small that I could borrow that could potentially be used as a weapon? Like some scissors or something?
[00:23:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Like a scalpel?
Yeah. You can definitely grab something small and sharp if you like.
[00:23:22] Speaker E: I would like.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Thank you.
I don't know why. I don't know what you're so worried about.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't like the term factory.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Pretty normal. They probably make cars. But you can add, like, a knife to your inventory and call that. Or, oh, wait, there's a surgical kit. You can add that sucker. It has damage to. Yeah. So you can either add a surgical kit or a blunt instrument, and then you can decide what small object you manage to squirrel away.
But Jason does step outside, obviously, so you can steal stuff, but he doesn't leave. He just gives you privacy to do whatever you got to do. But, yeah, we'll jump back to Cosmo and Matilda. What are you doing up top?
[00:24:11] Speaker D: I'll look for a place to sit and more importantly, another place to keep the little traveling crate for Cosmos so that way I can let them out.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And you were told that there were employee quarters that you could occupy. There are three rooms that you were told were empty, and you're told basically how to get to them, which is left and upstairs. So you can also go claim a room if you wanted to.
[00:24:38] Speaker D: Yeah, I'll go claim a room.
You know what? Give me 105.
Four is an unlucky number, and eight is divisible by four. So we're just going to go with five.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:24:52] Speaker C: Can I do the regular cat thing and give the room a little check, a little examination, make sure it's up to par?
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Absolutely.
You run around. It's got lots of interesting smells. It still smells a lot like the last person who was in here. They clearly haven't been gone long, but it's clean. There's some interesting bits of dust underneath the bed.
It looks like one of those typical alien space rooms with the bunks that are pushed into the wall and there's cubbies underneath and above you can open and. Yeah, it's interesting. It smells again. I mean, bad smells are not necessarily a thing to you. It's just interesting and uninteresting because cats, and they're mostly all very interesting smells. And to Matilda, it just smells clean, which is nice clean.
[00:25:48] Speaker C: But the last person who was here left very. How recently? Like, are we talking? Like a couple hours of smell? Like a day of smell.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: The smells have been degraded a little bit by the cleaning process, so it's hard to put that under anything super exact, but you would probably guess a few days.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: Okay. And are there any events? Uh, yes, but they're small.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: They're, like, chat sized. You could crawl through them if they were open, but they're not.
[00:26:14] Speaker C: Like, I must investigate the room thoroughly to make sure it is good. And then I will just sit on the bed. Yes.
[00:26:21] Speaker D: So you like it here.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Kazo just kind of pads around on the bed a little bit and just says yes.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: No.
[00:26:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:26:32] Speaker D: I give you some scritches just to make you feel a little bit nicer.
But do I notice the vent per se?
[00:26:45] Speaker A: If that is something you want to notice, yes, absolutely. There is a vent. It is like normal house vent. So it's probably about six inches tall and twelve inches wide at most.
[00:27:00] Speaker D: I think I'm just trying to take note of exits. So potential windows if there's another door that I can maybe leave through, if not, and also the vent. And when I see the vent, if I stick my fingers through and pull it, is it like something that will pop out like that, or is you got to unscrew it or something?
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Screwed in. Yeah. So it's screwed in. There's only the two doors. The door back into the hallway, and then the bathroom door, which you do have a private bathroom, which is nice.
And then there is a small window that looks out over a blizzard, but it looks like super. It's like space level windows. It would be difficult to break it.
[00:27:46] Speaker D: But I see the vent. I noticed that it's screwed in, and I think, okay, well, I'm going to need a screwdriver. I know that. I'm very aware that this is not for me, this is not an area of escape for me, but could be for Cosmo. And also, Cosmo could. In fact, I also believe in the fact that we could essentially stick a camera on Cosmo and have Cosmo navigate through vents.
So seeing that, put the leash on Cosmo and go. Want to go for a walk?
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:25] Speaker D: And we're going to walk. I make sure people know that this room is claimed for, though. I'm looking for Vesper next, whom I left, I abandoned in the main area, and Vesper is a little guy. I don't think Vesper would explore.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: They're peeking into one of the other rooms that we're told was unoccupied and says, this one's got two beds. So I guess this is a roommate situation, which could be really gay in other circumstances, but.
[00:29:04] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Raspberry.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: I'm just saying, other breast of the. Unless I get a crew assigned. You know what? Never mind.
[00:29:13] Speaker D: No, go take the other one. Or unless you want to be gay with.
You want to be gay with someone.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: I mean, they're all spoken for anyway. I'm going to go quit in a.
[00:29:31] Speaker D: Room and then check out 1 second. Beth, do you got a screwdriver on you?
[00:29:39] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. What you need it for? I mean here.
What you need it for?
[00:29:43] Speaker D: There's some vents in the rooms.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Big ones.
[00:29:48] Speaker D: Nah, cat sized. I was thinking.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Unscrew them.
[00:29:54] Speaker D: Stick a camera on the cat.
Let Cosmo wander monitor it for a little bit.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Do not have a camera?
[00:30:04] Speaker C: No.
[00:30:05] Speaker D: Think I get one?
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Okay.
[00:30:09] Speaker D: But I mean. Screwdriver. That's perfect.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Step one taken care of. Done. Check it off.
[00:30:16] Speaker D: What kind of camera would I need?
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Small. I don't know how small they make them, but small, I would guess.
And some way to strap it on.
Yeah.
So if you could get a suit, like a space Suit, right. They usually have cameras built into the helmets. I could disassemble that out of the helmet. You could strap it on the cat. Send the cat through the air ducts. That's the plan, right?
[00:30:45] Speaker D: Pretty much, yeah. Do I need to bring you the whole suit?
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Just the helmet.
All the hardware stored at the helmet.
[00:30:54] Speaker D: Got it.
I will find you later.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Perfect.
I will be in the cafeteria.
[00:31:04] Speaker D: Don't get too gay now.
I whistle too.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: No promises.
You're heading towards the locker rooms, you said?
[00:31:18] Speaker D: Yeah. Anything like locker rooms make sense? If not there, it would be, I guess, like a cargo bay area. Because the suits would in theory be on the side in an emergency. Just somewhere where I. Yeah, basically. Locker room first, cargo bay next landing. Dogs third for areas that I think have helmets.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:43] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: You start heading in that direction and you see like there is a young woman kind of standing off to the side with short buzzed hair and several piercings, who's just like watching you go by with venom in her eyes and she doesn't stop you or do anything. She just watches you go.
[00:32:17] Speaker D: Because I am cheeky as fuck. I give her a wink, the kind of wink that has a little sparkle sound effect and a goddamn glitter would appear. Yeah, it's gay. But also, if she was looking for a fight, I might be down for it.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: She just squints and gives you an even dirtier look and then just disappears. Not in the moment. Just walks away and gets out of sight. But yeah, you go to the locker area, you find a lot of snow suits in there and only one single spacesuit.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: That's kind of scary.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: I don't like that terrifying.
[00:33:16] Speaker D: Just one. The confidence.
[00:33:20] Speaker C: I don't think it's called.
[00:33:22] Speaker D: It's not confidence, but just nobody's questioning it so far as well, so that's just. These things are whack.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Well, they are on the planet and not in space, so presumably they just don't go to space very often.
[00:33:38] Speaker D: I know, but still, the budget, real.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Small for space suits.
[00:33:44] Speaker D: I take a helmet?
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Yeah, you take a helmet. And we will bounce back to you in a minute. Downstairs crew, do you do anything after the Med bay situation?
[00:33:59] Speaker B: Once I have mercy patched up, I'll definitely look over and be like, I don't think you just want to spend time here, so why don't you go try to find the others and figure out what's going on?
[00:34:11] Speaker E: Sounds good. But before we sort of head back up, mercy will ask Jason.
So who's in charge around here? Is it you, or is there someone we should talk to tomorrow for Chris?
[00:34:25] Speaker A: That'd be Chris.
You can call her Abby. She'll probably punch you. Abigail Gris is our facility manager. Though he's not my next stop, but my stop after that.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: Make sure to have that conversation.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. She'll figure out what to do with you all, get you placements, paperwork, all that jazz.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Darcy, internally, I have traded one job I didn't want for a different job I don't want.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Ready? Head back up. All of you.
All of you. There's two of you?
[00:35:07] Speaker B: Tell the doctor, your medic here, thanks for access to his space and supplies.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Yeah, no problem.
You'll probably be working with him.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Probably.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: Give him hell. He deserves it. Shall we?
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: All right.
Gives you back into the elevator, pulls the gate shut, holds a button or hits a button to go back up and you ascend.
I'm sure he probably makes small talk as he go, just generally like, what do you like to do? What do you think about this? What about this? He's a very friendly person and just seems genuinely interested in learning about you. But he doesn't pry deeply. If he senses you're hesitant, he asks a different question.
Clearly he hasn't met new people in a while, so he's like, awesome. I am an extrovert. These are new friends.
[00:36:08] Speaker E: I think mercy makes note of that and in a better mood feeling not having just gotten attacked by an alien. She would be, like, sort of trying to pump him subtly for information, but as it is, she's happy to just kind of nod along and go with it.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Sure.
Yeah. And you come back up and he reminds you how to get everywhere again and then says, if you need anything else, you can just call for me. Everyone knows me around here. I'm usually up in the observation deck. But we got the ship, so there's not a lot to keep an eye out for. So now I just kind of wander around and try to be useful. So anything you need. Ouch.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Once we get back to the main thing, I do imagine I'm going to look around, probably try to get a feeling for everyone else that's here, and then eventually seek out the rest of the group.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
You notice Vesper, like, walking towards where Jason told you the cafeteria was.
You see some of the people who, like the dart player, is still playing darts.
Like a young guy with dark hair.
Just kind of angrily throwing darts like this is clearly his way to get frustration out.
There's a couple other people scattered around. It's not like hundreds and hundreds of people, but it's clearly got at least 100 people who work here.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: And I will also drop off my things in probably the one other room.
I'll leave mercy to bunk with Esper, I guess.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: Yeah. You're five in 108, RC. I don't know.
Anyway, I keep forgetting what your first name is and just remembering the last.
Yeah. Is there anyone in particular you want to talk to or just are you interested in talking to people or are you just looking around at.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: I didn't really want to talk to anybody because hopefully I won't be here for very long.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Sure. Hopefully.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: That's my hope.
I'm very focused on what my mission is, my personal agenda. I'm very focused on that. I don't want to stick around. I escaped this. Going to escape this, too. And I'll figure out a way.
So, yeah, it definitely is.
After dropping off my things and everything. Go try to find Matilda.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Okay. Mercy, what are you doing? Yeah.
[00:38:58] Speaker E: Are there like, showers and clothes I can feel?
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Yes.
Well, yes, definitely the first one. That's easy. You'd probably have to ask around a bit to find laundry facilities and if they have spare uniforms or something. And they do. People live here full time. There are spare clothes and abundance. They're all branded Wayland, Utah.
But you have your choices of the Wayland, Utah tracksuit, the Wayland, Utah coveralls, the Wayland, Utah t Shirt and sweatpants combo, or the Wayland, Utah shorts and t shirt combo.
Yeah.
[00:39:41] Speaker E: I think that mercy cleans up and pulls on the Wayland Yutani tracksuit with a little bit of visible disdain. She has been living in at least business casual generally business business for most of her life with Wayne Yudani. So she does not love this, but will then sort of go to the cafeteria, just socialize a little bit before heading to meet up with everyone else.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: Yeah, no problem.
You meet up with Vesper, you probably pass Darcy, and in a little while, you see Matilda kind of peek in holding mean matilda, what do you do with the helmet? Do you go find Vesper right away or do you go take it somewhere else?
[00:40:30] Speaker D: One I have put Cosmo inside the helmet to make it look know. Oh, the cat. You know how it. I won't stubborn if it fits it know just all those kind of things. All the while I'm making sure Cosmo is not too grouch. If Cosmo gets, like, grouchy being in there because I have to walk casually back, I will be like, giving so many scritches, so many tummy rubs. This cat's going to walk out high with all the affection.
And we go back to our room so that way I can dump the helmet there.
And then I will go get Vesper and probably run into everybody else.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Yeah. As you're dropping off the helmet and start to leave, your door opens and you see Jason kind of standing there and he just kind of like knocks on the doorframe. He doesn't let himself in. He just kind of like makes himself known and says, you're my new neighbor. Can't say I mind. They're not much, but it's kind of nice to have a private place to unwind.
Way better than the last place I worked in them. They had us stacked bunks four high in this tiny closet and still made us pay rent for it.
[00:42:04] Speaker D: That does sound pretty shitty.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it was heck of a job.
This one somehow is an improvement.
One of those things where can't tell if it's a blessing or a curse.
[00:42:20] Speaker D: Most days that's how they get you make living slightly better.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: That's a fact.
Wayland's had my numbers since I was 13. But anyway, I thought you might be interested in a tour of the facilities.
Don't tell Greece, because she would have my head. But considering your work, I thought maybe you would find it at least as fascinating as I do.
Unless you're in the middle of mean. If you're to. I don't want to interject.
[00:43:01] Speaker D: Mean. I've got time. As long as you don't mind.
Kind of not the best smelling person in this room right now.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:43:13] Speaker D: Sorry. You've got me beat.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: You can take your time. I can come back later. I cannot come back at all. Whatever.
[00:43:20] Speaker D: How about you come back in like hour and a half?
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Yeah, you got it.
[00:43:26] Speaker D: That way I can grid myself of cat hair for at least five minutes.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Only last one. I had some experience now, but, yeah, you can walk in anytime. Next door 106 is where they put me.
Great.
[00:43:46] Speaker D: I'll see you then.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: All right.
He wanders off.
[00:43:51] Speaker C: Cheeky bitch.
[00:43:55] Speaker D: Cheeky bitch indeed.
Trying to put on one on your mum. How does that make you feel?
[00:44:03] Speaker C: No.
[00:44:07] Speaker D: You want to go see the others? You want to stay here?
Yes. To see everybody else?
[00:44:19] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:44:20] Speaker D: All right, let's go. And once again, I will walk out to the door. Yeah. Keep my eye on you this time. I don't have the leash, but I have the leash in my head. But I'm just like, trust in me.
[00:44:33] Speaker C: Which is all you need.
[00:44:34] Speaker D: Yeah. My trust.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: Okay.
You join the others in the cafeteria.
I mean, Vesper at least has gotten food. I don't know about anybody else.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: Yeah, there's probably like, I've at least gotten food to blend in and is probably eating some of it.
That kind of like crash when you're really stressed and there's a lot of adrenaline and then you're suddenly like, I need to eat something.
And as a doctor, I recognize this and just being like, okay, I actually need to eat something even if I don't want to.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Yeah. It's been long enough now without anyone having to make rolls or do anything super specific that you can reduce your stress by. One.
[00:45:24] Speaker D: Got some stuff.
Got some stroganauth.
Two things. One, I've got a camera the size of a cat and a cat and a vent that is also the size of a cat.
[00:45:46] Speaker E: If we want to try that sounds kind of unwieldy.
[00:45:53] Speaker D: Put a camera on the cat. Have the cat wander. Yeah. Vesper's got a screwdriver. And if Vespers is not getting plowed within the hour, I mean, we've got time.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: Look over at Vesper.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: Vesper's just like red face hitting their stroganoff.
I don't know what happened.
[00:46:18] Speaker D: That's another thing, you know that God, what's his name?
Jason.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:32] Speaker D: Offered me to a tour around this facilities. So I'm going to take it roughly within an hour and a half, report back.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: Good idea. We can figure out what's going on here and quite possibly what is our best way off this place.
[00:46:50] Speaker D: My thoughts exactly.
But besides that, I'm thinking using Cosmo to scope out the place would also be a pretty good.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: I mean, there's got to be stuff that they won't show us. So if Cosmo can figure that, mean that's more things that we know and more things we can prepare for.
[00:47:15] Speaker D: Exactly.
So originally, I was going to be like, oh, let me do it, and you all can chill in my room or whatever, but with the other shit going down, could you all do it instead? I got you all the equipment you could ever need.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: Yeah. As long as Vesper can at least walk us through it, I think we should be able to do this. No problem.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: I look upset.
[00:47:45] Speaker C: The cat does not look happy.
[00:47:48] Speaker E: You've been working on the same work as Matosa for the last year. Do you think they've let you come on the facility tour, too? I'd rather not fully split us.
[00:47:59] Speaker B: Mean, we can offer that as well. I also don't know how helpful I would be in rigging technology up.
So if Matilda is okay with mean.
[00:48:13] Speaker D: Yeah. Though I'm pretty sure it's going to get gay.
Sorry, Vesper. I beat you.
[00:48:19] Speaker A: Esper's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Yes. I'm going to finish up eating stroganoff and then go with Matilda to get a tour of this place.
[00:48:31] Speaker D: Since I said an hour and a half. I'm going to eat, I'm going to shower, I'm going to grab me some waylon Yutani merch. But I'm going to make sure that I wear my lab coat over it so that way everything fits. I mean, I wore, like, a jumpsuit plus the lab coat as my previous outfit and honest to God fucking good look.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: So I'm looking for the one wayland, Utah, tank top. If you really.
[00:48:59] Speaker D: I pull that out of nowhere, show it to mercy, and Mercy can add me to her rival.
[00:49:09] Speaker A: But, yeah, I think he gives you, like, a ten minute buffer after the time you said, just in case you're taking a while or had anything else you wanted to do or anything like that before. He just kind of shows up again and knocks on your door. He doesn't actually come in this time because he doesn't know if you're changing anything now that he knows the shower is on the menu. Yeah, he just kind of, like, knocks on the outside.
[00:49:37] Speaker D: Plus, also, I don't know where everyone else is going to go, but I have the helmet in this room and so I'm okay if you all wanted to play mission impossible three in my room because cosmos also claimed this place, so it would just make sense. Just like they're watching my cat, if y'all wanted to be there and do it, that's, like, totally fine with Matilda.
She'd just shower real quick, be like, awesome. Awesome. And then grab Darcy, leave.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: Yeah, and he definitely does a double pick when he sees Darcy.
Not necessarily in terms of like, oh, crap, I was going to flirt with you, and now I can't. But in terms of like, oh, crap, I'm breaking the rules here. And now there's more people who know that.
[00:50:31] Speaker D: Yeah.
So Darcy over here is my colleague.
Helped me quite a bit on my research, especially as of late. So I thought, oh, who better else to bring besides also safety in buddy system? You seem great. You seem real charming. But also budy system.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Hey, more the merrier. As long as you don't tell grizz, because I don't want a new job.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: Not saying a single word.
[00:51:11] Speaker D: I don't even know who the bitch is.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Yeah, same you will. You might like her. She's strong personality.
Anyway, yeah, you're welcome to come along, Dr. Langley, as much as you want.
You'd find out tomorrow anyway, so brace yourself if you're squeamish.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: I'm a doctor.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: I got over being squeamish a long time ago.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: I bet you have. You've already been familiar with our downstairs lift. The one Upstairs is the exact same. So now you've seen all of our lifts, and they are janky.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: Uplifting.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: Yes?
[00:52:03] Speaker D: Vanished.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: Banished.
[00:52:08] Speaker D: Oh, my God.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: Down from the employee corridors down to the little middle deck, and then you take the next lift down to the lowest deck, which is below the planet surface. It's, like, underground.
And it's also. Darcy, you would have noticed this when you were down here earlier. It's, like, way colder by, like, 15 degrees. Like, whoever works down here, I hope they have sweaters, because it's chilly. Not as cold as outside, but certainly cold. But that brings us. I'll bring open the map to downstairs. You're welcome.
And he walks you both down, re points at the med bay for Dr. Fernandez's purposes, and then comes down to a fork in the hallway and pages in and with his key card, and then says, all right, you want to start backwards or forwards?
Dealer's choice. Here.
[00:53:14] Speaker B: It's all you, Matilda.
[00:53:17] Speaker D: I mean, how often do you, dear, do these tours?
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Well, me, honestly, as often as I can. Just because I'm more of a people person than Greece's, so it's not my job. But I like helping soften the blow a little bit.
[00:53:42] Speaker D: Let's go backwards.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: All right.
Backwards it is. And so he turns to the left and leads you down a hallway, key cards into it, and you walk into a large warehouse type space that has got several rows of these large crates that look pretty similar to the ones that come into the station. And there's also big hanger doors here.
This is shipping. This is where everything, once it goes through the whole thing, shipping gets out of packaging, comes in here, and then we ship them out wherever they got to go.
Shipments are at this stage still pretty slow, as far as I understand it, and they don't let us in on sales numbers or anything like that, but I guess they're still working on branding or whatever, so not a ton of orders. Could also be some ethical concerns, I guess.
[00:54:52] Speaker D: Ethical?
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Well, I don't really know what people would use these for, but I can guess just based off of what whaling you, time makes the rest of the time. Probably some sort of bioweapon, right? It's got to be.
I see this is not the most interesting room because everything's in boxes. But you did start backward.
[00:55:23] Speaker D: I did. I thought, oh, let's be a little adventurous.
[00:55:29] Speaker A: I love going backwards.
[00:55:34] Speaker D: Lead on.
[00:55:35] Speaker A: All right, we're going to skip a little bit in the order here, just because this next space, it's a little out of the loop. It's just, as they get finished, they go into the loop. So it's like a separate production cycle. This is the gross one. So if you are squeamish, don't be. And he leads you down another hallway. And it's important to note that the facilities are not empty. It is not just the three of you wandering around down here. There were people in the shipping area labeling boxes. They have big labels they're putting on them, scanning them into systems.
They have big cranes that they move the boxes around with and stuff like that. You can see them grouping them together for particular shipments.
And so as we walk into the next room, there's going to be a bunch of people in here. And you come into a room, and he says, so this is the factory floor. Some people call it meat packing. You'll see why in a minute. And then he swipes his key card and opens the door, and you walk into what looks a lot like.
I don't know if you've ever seen any videos or pictures of, like, sausage processing plants very similar to that, but much larger scale in terms of big sausages.
And it takes a minute to realize exactly what all these people in here are making.
And then you finally see one near the end of the process, and you realize they're making massive.
Not massive, life sized human tortoises. Patch full of blood and flesh, and they even breathe. They don't have heads. They have little holes in the chest instead.
And Jason kind of, like, lets you all take it in and then says, how you doing? Need to step out?
[00:57:41] Speaker D: No, but.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: Know I'm starting to think maybe we shouldn't have gone backwards. That does kind of make it difficult to explain things.
This is a necessary level because the alternative was like living things, but then, actually, it was. Your research got sent down to us, and there was some decent trial and error, and now we have the synthetic torsos, but not synthetic in the sense of like an Android, but synthetic in the sense that we grow the meat and stuff synthetically. But it means if we ever get cut off, we're great on food for a long time. It'd be gross and cannibalistic, but also not. Because it's, anyway, not an ideal situation, but just. If you're thinking about worst case scenarios, that's one of them.
[00:58:44] Speaker B: Cersei is trying to keep a look of horror off her face as she realizes what all of this is.
[00:58:49] Speaker A: Yep. And then the last section is where they get injected with a particular cocktail of DNA. Kind of depends on if there's any specific requests by the buyer or whatnot. That's also definitely your research.
Used to be we would put the cocktail together ourselves. Now they have the little.
I don't know. They just sent some new AI system down. I don't really like it, but guess that one's doing the synthesizing, and we just make torsos now, which is way less interesting.
[00:59:29] Speaker D: What did you make before?
[00:59:32] Speaker A: Well, before we at least got to add a little sauce to it. But there was the early, early days we were using animals, which was gross and not ideal. Kind of wrecked havoc on people's mental state. Nobody wants to see a cow explode, or pig, for that matter. But we have, in the last few months or so, longer than that. It's probably been half a year at this point, been making torsos, which is so serial killer, frankly, but corporatized, which is fun, obviously. Not fun. Sorry. Not fun. You don't know me. That probably sounded so serious.
This place is messed up.
Welcome to Wayland, Newtoni, and welcome to hell.
[01:00:29] Speaker B: Kind of looks Matilda is like our research.
[01:00:35] Speaker D: That's my babies in there.
[01:00:38] Speaker A: You got a lot of them? A lot more than this.
This is just a shell.
We can move right along and see the rest. This is the scary part, though.
[01:00:52] Speaker B: Yes. Let's definitely move along.
[01:00:54] Speaker A: All right, next on the list is going to be packaging, which is technically the part that happens before shipping. But again, the meat packing zone, it's kind of its own corridor, but, yeah. So he leads you around the corner through another set of key cards. And this is a bunch of different individual rooms that kind of line a singular corridor.
And there's like, a whole lot of double door situations, like it's an aviary, and they're worried about birds escaping.
And he stops you outside one of the double doors as you watch somebody coming through in a hazmat suit and a lot of protective gear. And they're wheeling a cart or. No, they wouldn't be wheeling a cart. Sorry, wrong stage. They're moving a torso on a hook like one of those meat hooks, and they're just kind of, like, wheeling it along very gingerly, very carefully, and they bring it into a room where you see a box, and it looks like this is where they put torsos in boxes.
Now, you know, it wasn't shipping, though, the boxes you saw in shipping. And the boxes you see here are probably three times the size of a torso.
It's a high stress environment, and it's better not to add any unwarranted factors because sometimes they explode and then people die. So let's not have any deaths today. That's the goal. No death today. And we say that every day, but, yeah. So let's move on to death alley. And I think you're going to really find this part interesting.
We'll jump back to our little heist team. We're having a completely different movie right now.
So, mercy and Cosmo, what are you two doing with Vesper? Hanging out. Feels weird to ask Vesper what they're doing because.
[01:03:02] Speaker C: Yeah, I would like to remind the class that I hate mercy with all of my guts. So I am with Vesper right now.
[01:03:09] Speaker A: Well, you're all in the same room, I think.
[01:03:11] Speaker C: I am as far away from mercy as the room allows me to be. I'm on Vesper's lap, on the other side of Vesper, if required.
[01:03:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So Vesper is probably moved, like, off of them several times because they're trying to work. And also they need mercy's help with this because mercy does communications, and they're just an engineer and they can get the camera out and rigged, but in order to make sure it's properly communicating with a receiver so they can actually use the data. Got to be a little trickier. So they're pulling it out of the helmet, which is a pretty solitary, quiet process. Just occasionally, they're like, grumbling nonsense to.
Yeah. What you up to, mercy?
Yeah.
[01:04:06] Speaker E: Mercy is just helping however she can with this process.
[01:04:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
Why don't you give me comtech with a plus one as you and Vesper work together to break up this camera? You're fine.
[01:04:23] Speaker C: You're keeping it together.
[01:04:24] Speaker E: Keeping it together.
[01:04:25] Speaker D: I got two successes, though.
[01:04:26] Speaker E: So I get a stunt, right?
[01:04:28] Speaker A: No, because you got the stress.
[01:04:30] Speaker E: Because I got the stress. Okay, fine.
[01:04:32] Speaker A: It negates all successes, which sucks.
Yeah.
I think what happens is that you can't quite get the receiver queued up, but you can at least set the camera to record so you can't see it live, but you can see it whenever Cosmo gets back from her adventure.
[01:04:56] Speaker C: I'm convinced it's because I hate you and I won't let you do it.
[01:04:58] Speaker A: Properly once it's been assembled as best as the two of you can make it. Vesper, kind of like, looks at Cosmo, who has been a little pain the whole time, looks at you, mercy, and then goes, maybe I should try to hook it up.
Cosmo seems kind of temperamental today.
[01:05:24] Speaker E: Yeah, that seems like it would be for the best. I guess I'm just good for food, but not much.
[01:05:32] Speaker A: Even. I'm allergic to cats. Did you know that? That's a fun fact. I am allergic, and I've been stuck with a cat for four years.
It's a mild allergy or I would be dead. But that's why I always seem like I'm sniffling. It's because of the cat. And they get the camera hooked up on a little harness that's wrapped around.
I think the camera hangs down under the collar, so it's a little heavy down there, but otherwise your head would be in the way.
All right, kav, let's open this vent and, I don't know, go have fun, catch a mouse, do cat stuff, and get good data, and they open the vent and they kind of shoe you in.
[01:06:24] Speaker C: I will begin my exploration, I think.
[01:06:29] Speaker E: Before we zoom out onto Cosmo, like, running through the vents, I think we can hear, like, sitting back down on the bed and asking Vesper, so what was all of that about at dinner? Is there someone here you're interested in?
[01:06:42] Speaker A: Vesper? Just like, oh, gosh. I'm going to try to get this receiver to work.
We'll come back to those two. Cosmo, what are you doing in the vents? What are you looking for?
What are you doing? What are you up to.
[01:06:59] Speaker C: Well, I think in my cat knowledge level, we need information, and I'm not quite sure what that means in the grand scheme of things, because the concepts of escaping and that are very complicated. But I know everyone thinks xenomorphs are really cool, and I definitely know what they smell like.
Can I stiff out any xenomorph activity?
[01:07:23] Speaker A: That is maybe the strongest smell you have smelled yet.
This whole facility reeks of xenomorph to your sensitive kitty nose.
It's not, like, strong up here, as in, like, there's a xenomorph in the vent, but it's like all the people, all their places that they walk and they live. They bring the scent with them. They're covered in the scent. It's just everywhere.
[01:07:58] Speaker C: Well, if there's a source, that might be okay to check in the vent, because it's probably not going bad right now and might help by just exploring and seeing where people come and go to find the equivalent of an escape route.
[01:08:12] Speaker A: Yeah, you go trundling through the vents. There's a lot of things. Your little kitty eyes see through the vents as you peek into each room.
Some things are not meant to be seen. Some things are very normal.
Some rooms are empty, some of them aren't. Some are extra occupied.
And you kind of get a little tour of the living facilities. There are a lot of rooms here. There are a lot of people here.
Then you see that there's the main lift that goes down to the next level, which is the ground floor level.
And there's also a stairwell for emergencies.
And there is another stairwell area, but you're not sure where that leads. And the vent doesn't go into the stairwell. It just kind of goes past it. You can peek in the vent and be like, stairwell, and then you have to keep moving.
[01:09:10] Speaker C: I would like to peek and be like stairwell. I can't say stairwell, but I'd like to observe the mystery stairs. If I cannot go down them and.
[01:09:17] Speaker A: Keep going, these stairs are empty. The other stairwell has a couple of people that are going up and down, not because they either didn't want to wait for the lift or they don't like to use the lift.
And this one is empty.
Weird.
[01:09:34] Speaker C: My cat instinct wants to explore, but I physically cannot.
[01:09:39] Speaker A: You're stuck.
[01:09:40] Speaker C: I'm stuck in the vent.
[01:09:42] Speaker A: They should have sent a screwdriver with you.
[01:09:44] Speaker C: Yeah, if only I had a screwdriver and opposable thumbs, I would have solved the problem perfectly.
[01:09:50] Speaker A: Screwdrivers don't need thumbs. That's the easiest one.
[01:09:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:09:56] Speaker A: You at least have a flashlight on your collar. You need it because you're a cat, but you have one.
[01:10:02] Speaker C: All right. I should probably turn that on sometimes, actually. I don't know that people can't see in the dark.
I'll turn it on sometimes by accident, randomly. I'll make the footage salvageable.
[01:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah, for the footage. I didn't even think about that. That's so funny.
[01:10:20] Speaker C: Yeah, because they can't see shit, but I can. I feel like I might know that people can't see in the dark because I've seen you guys stumbling around and run into stuff and it's like, these guys are fools. They can't see anything when there's not enough light. How pathetic. Yeah.
[01:10:37] Speaker A: You do eventually come to a couple of points where the vents drop down. It's just a street drop down, presumably to the ground floor level, but that's going to be a whole floor to go.
[01:10:52] Speaker C: Is there any other roots or does.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: It just go straight down from the vents? It's go straight down.
[01:10:58] Speaker C: So cats always land on their feet, right?
[01:11:01] Speaker A: Yes, they do need room to turn, but I guess if you go in the right way, then that probably won't matter because you can't unturn from the right direction anyway.
[01:11:11] Speaker C: Will it take fall damage from jumping Ferris?
[01:11:13] Speaker A: No.
[01:11:15] Speaker C: Okay. Well, cats don't think things through. I'm not going to think about how I'm going to get back up. I'm just going to go down.
Okay.
[01:11:23] Speaker A: Yeah. You drop down.
There's a bit of a moment of like, because you can't quite twist to keep yourself adjusted. But the space is small enough that you kind of like, squeeze your way down. Like, you slide fast because you're covered a fur, but you can't twist because there's not enough room. But you're going to land feet first because you can't twist and you land pretty good. Cats are great shock observers, sir. That's literally no problem.
There's a heavy thud, though, in the vents and you hear somebody outside go, what the heck was that?
[01:12:01] Speaker C: I'm going to be very quiet as I proceed.
[01:12:04] Speaker A: All right? Yeah. You keep going along. You're now on the main level.
You've got a lot of smells for interesting food stuffs.
Lots more people smells. There's a lot more people down here than there were upstairs. And they're doing interesting things now.
And the xenomorph smell is a little bit stronger here because less people have showered.
But otherwise, are there any new smells.
[01:12:36] Speaker C: That I haven't smelled before.
[01:12:38] Speaker A: I mean, technically, yes. Tons and tons and tons of new smells because you haven't smelled any of these people before.
[01:12:46] Speaker C: Okay, that's fair.
I guess I'll keep recording and keep going. This is a long path, and I'm going to see how far I can take it.
[01:12:57] Speaker A: Yeah, so you keep going along.
There's not a lot of interesting things that you haven't already seen.
You can eavesdrop. I don't know if the cat would eavesdrop, but you could do that.
[01:13:13] Speaker C: I can kind of understand words, so I'd love to eavesdrop, actually, if there's any important looking rooms with just one or two people in it and a lot of papers.
[01:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah. You bypass one room. Not bypass. You go past the vent of one room and you hear some two people and they're having a conversation.
There is a woman in there in the standard coveralls, and then you see an older woman covered in tattoos who seems to be complaining about something. And the first woman says, look, greff, I know you're not satisfied with the way I run things around here, but you got to live with what you get here.
I have only so much power with the higher ups, so what I can get is the best I can get. That's just something we're all going to have to live with.
And the older woman goes, we shouldn't even be shipping this stuff.
It's frankly morally reprehensible. And the first woman goes, that's kind of bitch coming from you, frankly, because you've already proven you don't have much for morals.
And the older woman's like, if you want to deal with it, then deal with it. But if you're not going to do anything, then I'm going to start taking things into my own hands. And the first woman goes, gruff, just get the hell out of my office, would you?
And the older woman goes, this is going to come back and bite you if you don't nail this down now and you know it. And then she goes.
[01:15:05] Speaker C: They'Re fighting. I love when people fight.
Is there, like, any computer screens that are within my camera's view?
[01:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah, there's probably a computer there.
[01:15:20] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:15:22] Speaker A: It's hard to get a clear view of it because vents see the thing, but maybe mercy can work some magic on it to figure out what it says.
[01:15:35] Speaker C: How sealed is the great right now?
[01:15:39] Speaker A: About the same. That all the other ones are screwed into the wall. If only I had a screwdriver.
[01:15:48] Speaker C: Is there any further or more that I can investigate that hasn't been seen already?
[01:15:52] Speaker A: Not really. There's another vent that goes down, but you can see when you look down the vent that there is something blocking, like another vent cover that blocks the full passage down. So technically a dead end.
[01:16:08] Speaker C: I kind of want to go back for the screwdriver and just come back and loote around this room, but I got to get back up first.
[01:16:14] Speaker A: The alternate way of getting out is to just have someone let you out one way or another.
[01:16:20] Speaker C: Yeah, but I don't want them to know I can vent. That's kind of sus.
But what check is it to get mobility?
Are you fucking serious?
[01:16:31] Speaker A: Well, I guess you're pushing the roll.
[01:16:33] Speaker C: That increases your stress, right?
[01:16:35] Speaker A: It does. It increases it by one.
[01:16:37] Speaker D: I'm going to push.
[01:16:39] Speaker A: Hey, there we go. Two successes.
[01:16:43] Speaker C: That's an unfortunate amount of successes considering the amount of dice that I had.
[01:16:49] Speaker A: It happens.
So you get one stunt and you manage to crawl your way up, but you also get one stunt. So you can either give one to another pc in the same situation as you give a plus one modification to a later skill role relating to this one or impress someone.
[01:17:07] Speaker C: I think if I go back and steal the screwdriver, I might be able.
[01:17:10] Speaker A: To do something with it, be ungovernable.
[01:17:14] Speaker C: I'm going to head back. I'm going to enter the room as you guys are talking about whatever you're talking about and just hear a soft little yup. As I grab the screwdriver with my mouth.
[01:17:30] Speaker E: Cosmo, wait.
[01:17:31] Speaker A: No, come back to the vent.
Shoot. Do you think that's a good dot sign or do you think they just wanted to steal something?
[01:17:42] Speaker E: It could go either way, right? Do you think they're smart enough to try and use a screwdriver?
[01:17:49] Speaker A: I don't know. The things I've seen that cat.
[01:17:51] Speaker C: Do you hear from the vet? Yes.
[01:17:56] Speaker A: The things I've seen that cat do.
[01:18:01] Speaker C: Oh, gosh. So I have a plan, but I don't know if I have the role to pull it off.
[01:18:05] Speaker A: All right, we will find out and we're going to jump back to do I want to go to the gays or do I want to go to the gaze?
Mercy, were you doing anything while you were waiting for Cosmo?
[01:18:19] Speaker E: So the lover box is in here, right?
[01:18:22] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[01:18:24] Speaker E: Is there a way to hook up lover to this outpost or would that require being in a main server room or how would that work?
[01:18:36] Speaker A: You would probably have to be in another area.
[01:18:40] Speaker E: Okay, then. I think that once Cosmo has sort of come and gone, mercy will notice lover and say, well, I offered to look at their relays. Do you think that while I'm there, I should try and sort of kicks at where lover was contained?
[01:19:05] Speaker A: You want to take a questionable AI system and plug it into their facility?
[01:19:13] Speaker E: I mean, she's on our side, at least. It's more than I can say for anything that I know for anything else here, though.
[01:19:19] Speaker A: That's true. She's also a tad bit murdery.
Not that she's killed anyone that I know of, but she's very gung ho for murder, which is concerning in an AI, which shouldn't be gung ho for anything.
[01:19:32] Speaker E: No, you're right. I'll wait until the other two get back and we can see how much murder we might be wanting her to do.
[01:19:40] Speaker A: Yeah, could be an asset, though. But, I mean, also, the plan is to get out of.
I assume. I assume that's the plan, right?
[01:19:50] Speaker E: Get out, get home if she can. But based on what Jason was saying, I don't know how feasible that is.
[01:20:00] Speaker A: I know right now we just seem to have helped them do what they were already planning. Just accelerated that little option.
[01:20:07] Speaker E: I mean, hey, if lover murders a bunch of people, then maybe they'll need some new bodies to work, and we can steal that ship. And mercy is, like, half a joking, but I think it's clear that she would be willing to do this.
[01:20:24] Speaker A: You have truly the most adventurous ideas.
To think I once freaked out because there were two of you.
[01:20:42] Speaker E: God, we could use her right now.
[01:20:44] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you think the androids are doing?
[01:20:47] Speaker E: I mean, based on that interview, I think they might just be living our lives.
[01:20:54] Speaker A: I have mixed emotions about that.
On one hand, I mean, I'm glad my moms aren't on their own, but on the other hand, it's going to be real awkward when I come back and don't remember anything.
[01:21:06] Speaker E: Yeah, we might have to live over a bit. I can't imagine.
We know that the company doesn't let go of assets easily.
[01:21:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Why do we have to fight our doppelganger? Because I'm not going to win that fight.
[01:21:21] Speaker E: I mean, I worked with mine, and it turned out well at the time, but now I'm kind of regretting it.
[01:21:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe she's going to really like your life, not want to give it up.
[01:21:32] Speaker E: I mean, she can have it. I can start over. I'm fine with that.
I gave so many years of my life to this company, and I'm going to have nothing to show for it.
If we ever even do escape, at.
[01:21:53] Speaker A: Least we've done some pretty cutting edge research. As far as I understand it. That's not nothing.
[01:22:01] Speaker E: Yeah, but what are they even using it for?
[01:22:07] Speaker A: Yeah, hopefully that's what the other two are finding out.
I just hope the answer isn't terrible.
Back down below, we enter death Alley.
This one is also similar to the packaging side of the room, except for all of the spaces have glass windows between them or clear windows between them. What they're made out of, who knows? And you see that the torsos come through on their little track, on their little meat hooks, and they cycle in. And then in each room, there is a box that the torso enters. And then there is someone who opens up the box. And you watch as an egg blooms open and a xenomorph that you have come to call or come to know as the face hugger leaps out and wraps itself around the torso.
And then it shuffles along to the next room.
And Jason kind of stands at the entrance, where you can see down the whole hallway as there's, like, six or seven face huggers attaching to torsos all at the same time as they go along.
And he goes, yeah, so you can see why we don't do cows anymore, or pigs, or humans, for that matter, which definitely used to be.
They say it wasn't on purpose, but I think we all knew otherwise.
Thank you for your research, because that improved things down here immeasurably. And you can also see why we call it death Alley, because does not take much to be a new host instead of a torso.
[01:24:11] Speaker B: They have told me they were moving to human trials. If they have this.
[01:24:17] Speaker A: Well, good question.
I guess that could mean.
I don't really like what that could mean. As a matter of fact, I don't.
[01:24:32] Speaker B: Really like it either.
[01:24:35] Speaker D: I mean, it makes sense there's evolution involved here.
Why stick with something that works when there is something so much better?
Like, I would say 30%, like, generously 30% of all human population.
We can do better without. I can definitely see some unwanted unmissables being used as test subjects.
I hate it, but it makes sense.
[01:25:16] Speaker A: That's half the staff here anyway.
Want to see where it starts?
[01:25:22] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:25:24] Speaker C: All right.
[01:25:25] Speaker A: And he leaves you along and comes to another room, and he says there's a readout on the side of the room. And he kind of judges it for a minute and then goes, you know, we're not going to go in this one.
This is three rooms, though. But room one, this big one you see here, this is the. We call it the coupe and you can see through the window ovomorphs everywhere, eggs, so many of them.
And it's very cold in this room. And you can see two other rooms across the way.
The one there on the right is the hen house, and the one then on the left is implantation. So eggs coming out of the hen house that go in the coupe before we settle them in, we send them to implantation, get a neutralizer on them, bring them back out. When there's a torso ready, we ship them to the death alley. Passes through packaging, we pop a torso in a box and then send the shipping. And by the time it ships out, it's not usually a torso in there anymore.
[01:26:40] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:26:42] Speaker A: And every so often we send a sample of one side or the other up to you all. And I guess you worked magic up there because whatever you all do always comes down and does some fine work down here. Terrible, terrible work. But these are probably like nature's perfect predator.
[01:27:05] Speaker D: Absolutely.
Question for you.
[01:27:09] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:27:10] Speaker D: These torsos, are they ever eaten by us?
[01:27:20] Speaker A: By who?
[01:27:22] Speaker D: By them.
[01:27:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. We feed the little suckers that come out of them.
That's half the reason that they're so fleshy and bloody is because then they have something to feed on when they get out. And also because if they're not realistic enough, then they won't attach and they'll just go for whoever loaded it up. Which, well, probably explains why we have three empty rooms.
Not to freak you out about it or anything, but you see, I mean, if anyone's going to get, it's going to be you, right?
[01:27:54] Speaker D: Pretty much. Just wanted to double check that.
I've had theories that they've eaten as well, but.
[01:28:05] Speaker A: Yeah, we typically use torsos to feed the head, but sometimes diet has to get buried. I guess.
[01:28:19] Speaker D: Matilda will nod, kind of take these mental notes in her head because this is pretty cool for her.
[01:28:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And he looks like, into the egg room, and he studies the little readout again and goes, God, I wish I could show you the hen house. You would love it.
Legitimately. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. I cried. I am not ashamed to admit it. I cried hard.
She's beautiful. You'll see her one day. I just wish it could be now.
[01:28:57] Speaker B: Yes. One day. One day we will see her.
[01:29:01] Speaker D: Relax. You've got a queen in there.
[01:29:04] Speaker A: Yeah, we've got a queen.
[01:29:06] Speaker D: She's fully grown.
[01:29:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:29:09] Speaker D: That's amazing.
[01:29:12] Speaker A: She's incredible. You have no idea. Oh, man.
If Coop wasn't so Riley today, I would take you right in there. But not worth the risk, unfortunately.
But she's a beauty.
I probably sound like a weirdo with that, but I know this place has messed the hell up.
[01:29:35] Speaker D: But I mean, do you say people who, like zoologists, people are really into lions and shit? Do you call them crazy for being so into cats? Oversized cats?
[01:29:53] Speaker A: That is a very vindicating viewpoint.
These are just so much better than lions.
And the way they change depending on the dna you put in them.
We put something new in the host torso and oh, man, they come out completely different. There are times I want the box to break just to see what we got. I wish we had cameras in there, subway. I wish we could see them every time.
They're incredible.
Sometimes I'm a little jealous of the buyers. Not for what they're going to use them for, but just because they get to see the finished product we so seldom do.
Anyway, that's been the tour.
[01:30:39] Speaker D: Oh, that's it.
[01:30:40] Speaker A: That's it.
[01:30:41] Speaker B: Very informative.
[01:30:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the whole process in reverse.
I guess we can head back up. That's all she wrote, as it were.
Well, lead the way on down. And he leads you back to the lift and goes in first, lets you all come in after him and pushes the button and the lift starts to ascend. And then suddenly the entire facility shakes. The lights flickering on and off as a crash echoes through.
For some of you, it echoes through the halls. For some of you, it is echoing up and down the elevator shaft. And then an alarm blares and the lift stops.
And that's where we're going to end it. Fuck. I'm in the vent.
Thank you all for joining us. In the cold embrace of the company, there is no escape. I have been your game mother. And we have been goblets and gays. You can find us at goblets and gays all across the Internet, including twitch. Keep an eye on the vents. You never know what's lurking in them. Sometimes it's a cat. Say goodbye, crew. The Medea.
[01:31:59] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:32:06] Speaker A: You don't own me.
May I, may I, may I, may I, may I go home.
Close.
