Twilight Mirage 49: Bona Fide, Good Faith
Transcribed by Sarah @confusedbluesky
[MUSIC - “The Notion” starts]
AUSTIN: All these many centuries later, stepping out onto the observation deck still took her breath away. The bulk of the Restitution of All Things, flagship of the New Earth Hegemony’s central fleet and her temple aloft, was made of traditional materials. But in key places, like here on the observation deck, there was no metal or glass or plastic. There was only light. And with each step she took, the pulsing glow below bellowed back color. A silent fanfare accompanying her as she studied the delicate figure of her goal: the Twilight Mirage.
AUSTIN (continued): It would be only one more conquest—no, that’s not right, she told herself. Conquest was the term the imperial Hegemons of the old Earth Cult would have used. Not her. She was Our Profit, last of her kind, the final Hegemon. She had lived in her first life to enact great change, to put at ease an unstill marketplace, and to offer so many more access to the sacrament of exchange. In her first century alone, she convinced the world that a second chance could not be debated, and that salvation was universal for all who would work for it.
AUSTIN (continued): But it was not enough. Even after she taught the world that we all must be our own unmoved movers, even after the regulations and oversight committees, even after hunger reached an all time low, she could still see the flaws. The market did not provide for everyone, it could not. And so she found among the greatest minds of her time a solution: a second life, and then a third, and fourth, and soon, she and the Restitution of All Things, was on course to the Mirage, part of an achronological fleet, flanked on one side by a swift ship sent decades after she’d left, and on the other by one she’d christened a century before her own vessel launched. The system ahead, this Mirage, this Quire, finally, would grant her freedom, and legacy. A real utopia, a perfect world of opportunity, for all who believed.
[music ends]
AUSTIN: Welcome to Friends at the Table, an actual play podcast focused on critical world-building, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. Today we are continuing our game of Scum and Villainy by Stras Acimovic and John LeBoeuf-Little, a hack of Blades in the Dark by John Harper. My goals today as always are to convey the fictional world honestly, to bring the Twilight Mirage to life, to play to find out what happens, to make everything cool, weird, and touchable. I am your host Austin Walker, you can follow me on Twitter @austin_walker. Joining me, today, Alicia Acampora.
ALI: Um, hi, I’m Ali. You can find me @ali_west on Twitter.
AUSTIN: Jack de Quidt.
JACK: Hi. You can find me on Twitter @notquitereal and buy any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.
AUSTIN: And Art Martinez-Tebbel.
ART: Hey, you can find me on Twitter @atebbel, and you can hear three of us talk about Kanye West [Ali and Austin laugh a bit] @onesongpod on Twitter.
AUSTIN: You can find that also at onesongonly.com.
ART (overlapping): You can’t hear it, really, that’s not—yeah.
AUSTIN: Uh, you—you can embed—you can embed episodes in Twitter.
AUSTIN: It’s possible, I embedded the first one. I can show you later Ali.
ALI (overlapping with Austin, sounding impressed): Ohh.
ART: It sounds unpleasant to listen to a longer podcast like that.
AUSTIN (overlapping with Art some): Eh, you put it in a tab, Art. You just put it in a tab, Art.
[Jack laughs]
ALI: You can also do that with the website.
AUSTIN: Exactly.
ALI: Twitter moves too fast, like—
AUSTIN: No you just go to the web—you just go to the twitter page, you hit play and that’s it, like, “Oh hey this is nice.”
ALI (overlapping, doubtful): Mmmmmm. No it isn’t.
AUSTIN: Do you wanna hear a trick?
ART (overlapping): That’s a waste of a tab.
AUSTIN: Do you wanna hear a cool trick? Right click a tab and then hit “Duplicate” and it opens up another equal—the same tab. [Ali laughs a bit] And here’s the hot—this is a serious trick, ready? Let’s say you’re on a website where you’re like “I think I lost connection and if I try to hit, go forward—“ Well like, let’s say you filled in a bunch of information, and you gotta hit “Submit,” right? [Ali laughs faintly] And you know it’s gonna be like “Oh you lost connection. Fool.” Like you’re gonna lose all your shit. Why’d you waste all that time? If you duplicate it, it will b—open up a new tab, it will reconnect, and it will fill in all the same information you already had.
ALI: Ohhhh. Wow.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Duplicate’s out here saving lives.
ALI: Lifehack.
AUSTIN: Lifehacks. You can find out those and more lifehacks over at Friends at the Table on Patreon. You can go to friendsatthetable.cash to support this show. We don’t do any advertising, we don’t do—we don’t run any ads on the show, and it is because of your support that we’re able to keep doing this while also doing a bunch of other stuff. So thank you so much for supporting us if you already are, and if not, head over there and give us a support. Give us a support, give us a couple bucks. [kind of laughs] You know, one support, please. [Ali laughs] Alright, so let’s talk about where we are. What happened last episode, last recording?
ART: There was a lot of discussion about linear time.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Uh-huh.
ALI: Mhmm.
AUSTIN: Totally. Who was and wasn’t gonna be a murderer.
ALI (overlapping): We’re investi—yeah.
AUSTIN: Go ahead.
ALI: We’re investigating a murder that has not happened yet.
AUSTIN: Two.
ALI (overlapping): Oh.
AUSTIN: Two murders that have not happened yet.
ALI: Two murders. But they happen at the same—they’re the same scene. Right? No.
AUSTIN (overlapping): No. No.
ALI: Oh.
AUSTIN: Y’all have just completely ignored… [Ali laughs] This. Part of this.
JACK: Look, no, hang on—
ART (overlapping with Ali): That’s probably not right.
ALI (overlapping): Wait where’s our notes. Where’s our—[laughs]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Let’s go those notes up.
JACK: It’s—it’s not fair to roast us for our plan before we finish describing it to you.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Fair.
[Ali laughs]
JACK: That’s not how this usually goes.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Uh-huh.
JACK: Usually we describe it first, and then you roast us for it.
AUSTIN: That is normally what happens. Let’s find that—[Jack laughs a bit] here we go, let’s open up the axiom murder sheet.
JACK (overlapping): Oh yeah.
ALI (overlapping): Uh-huh.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Uh-huh.
JACK: Axiom murder sheet, we put that in the—in our group chat, and probably confused everyone.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Yes. Um… So two people are supposed to get killed by the axiom gun.
JACK: Here we are.
AUSTIN: What you’ve written down here is “the axiom gun.” Wind’s Poem, who is a researcher at Truance, which is a small experimental arts and technology company. Which is actually being like housed and partially funded by slash is paying rent to a larger megacorporation called Duality. And then the other person who’s gonna get killed is someone named Profit’s Cadence who is a leader inside of the Church of the Self. It has—it says here that Grand’s met them, that doesn’t mean Profit’s Cadence, it means that they’ve met—Grand’s—he’s met people from the Church of the Self.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: More broadly. Yeah. Um… So what else? Why are you doing this?
JACK: We’re doing this because… We have been asked by… Demani Dusk and Gray Gloaming.
AUSTIN: Mhmm.
JACK: To… do it, because… Crystal Palace has predicted these… murders, and then, kind of stopped making predictions.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right.
JACK: Past the day that they’re calling “Dark Day.” And for reasons that aren’t super clear—it might just be because Crystal Palace has like, told them this?—they believe that these murders are somehow linked to the oncoming Dark Day.
AUSTIN: So I don’t think—I don’t think that Crystal Palace told them because they’re not in communication with Crystal Palace, they’ve kind of hacked into Crystal Palace’s transmissions, to… Gray’s father, Keen Forester Gloaming. And have like—you know they’re getting like a chunk of the transmission back and forth. But then that stuff just stops on Dark Day. It just—it goes dark. Crystal Palace’s predictions go dark, is what I mean. And it—based on what they said to you last time, they are extrapolating that these two weird murders with a gun that shouldn’t exist seem to be tied to what’s happening here. Um… Or could be tied to it. Uh… What else? Anything else? What’s your plan been to try to interfere with… what Cr—what agents of the Rapid Evening call “guaranteed events”?
ALI: So we’re—we have work visas.
AUSTIN (amused): Uh-huh.
ALI: On behalf of the Morning’s… on behalf of his corporation. We were like allowed onto the planet because of that, and now we’re… Doing a fake solid milk scheme? [laughs]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Like you do.
ALI: To get in—uh-huh. To get into the like corporate office where Wind’s Poem… does her research?
AUSTIN: Right.
ALI: Before there is a… There’s an open house in a couple days but we’re trying to get there before—
AUSTIN: It is tomorrow.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: You are there the day before. We kind of left y’all off—you’ve come to the alacology—so the alacologies again are these kind of like big floating habitats for corporations and the people who work and live on them. You know, think about the arcologies of something like Shadowrun or other cyberpunk stories where it’s like—or like thinking about the domes back in COUNTER/Weight, where it was like “Oh, everyone who belongs to this one company lives in this one tiny dome.” You know like, some other people live in the big domes but this one is just this one company and everybody who works for it and support staff. Almost think of them like military bases but for companies, right, but for corporations. And… c—or like college campuses for corporations. And on Skein, they float around the entire planet, like they kind of are—almost like that like dandelion... bits, what are those called, the like the seeds from dandelions basically that like float on the air. But they’re massive metallic structures that do this? Um… Using the natural, like, wind of the planet. And so they’re some sort of weird special material. And some of them actually exist by floating around in the ocean, some of them float down rivers, or are in lakes, I’m—they’re all very much like… You know green capitalism, they’re all very much like, “Oh we’re doing our best not to leave an impact on the planet. But also we’re here developing secret weapons.” Or whatever. [laughs a bit] You know. So you were going to the one that is run by Duality. Which is this kind of big half—uh, half-dome, like upside-down half-dome is kind of what I’ve—how I’ve been thinking of it? I think I described it to y’all last time as Kami’s Lookout-like, if you’ve—if you’re familiar with Kami’s Lookout from Dragonball Z. If you’re not, do a lookout for Kami’s Lookout from Dragonball Z.
[Ali laughs]
JACK (overlapping): Doing it right now.
AUSTIN: K-A-M-I.
JACK: Oh!
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: Except bigger. It’s bigger than that one building. It’s like that shape, but then like, a bunch of buildings are on top. And in the middle is like a big weird, um—there’s a name for this thing that I looked up forever ago… Is it a k—a—not a Kinex ball. One of those weird things that’s like a ball that looks sort of like Kinex but you kind of touch it and pull on it and like reshape it.
JACK: Oh. Yeah. It like—it like expands outwards, right? [overlapping with Austin]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
JACK: You can like make it expand outwards?
AUSTIN: Yes, that’s exactly it. That’s—oh here it is, here it is, here it is. This one is called a… A “Hoberman mini sphere.” If you do a search for “Hoberman mini sphere”?
[Ali laughs softly]
AUSTIN: Hoberman sphere.
JACK (overlapping): Oh, yeah. Here we go.
AUSTIN: One of those things. Except like, imagine that but gigantic, and like, you can push and pull on it in a bunch of different directions, and it’s almost like Memorious, where you can make different like—you can make it look like different things. And there’s like a big one of those in the middle. And then like, the people live in… condos and stuff, or like, you know, apartments, inside of the str—the lower half of the structure. So there’s buildings built on top and then like—in the kind of like pit, in the hole of the big floating half-sphere is where the people who live and work here are. And I think that there is kind of a small, um… We’ve kind of seen y’all check in, and then—or we’ve gestured at you being checked in, we said you—you know, you landed. Did you take the World Without End here? Or did you take some sort of local transport?
JACK: To the…
AUSTIN: To the alacology.
JACK: Oh, do we have the World Without End at the moment?
AUSTIN: I think it was docked in Turncage. Because the other party did not have it, they took like, giant bug, like, mass transit to get to the deep jungles.
ART: Ah yes the jungle line on the subway.
AUSTIN (laughing slightly): Yeah. Uh-huh.
[Ali laughs]
JACK: I’m reluctant to take the World Without End.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: Not because it would be a threat to it, but because it might communicate something we don’t necessarily want to be communicating.
AUSTIN: Fair, fair. Okay.
ALI: Yeah, are there like shuttles?
AUSTIN: Yeah yeah yeah, totally, that’s exactly right.
ALI (overlapping): I feel like—yeah.
AU: So yeah you’ve taken a shuttle here. You’ve checked in, your bags are all packed in, you’re staying for like three days or something, you have you know some room rented. For like, the day bef—you get there the—you get there two nights before you sta—you’re going into the next day, the day before the—the open house, which is Dark Day. And then, you have another day booked afterwards just so you don’t have to like rush out, you know? You wanna have like a little breathing room, you can check things out a little bit. [Ali laughs a bit] And you’ve gone to kind of like a small structure that’s on the top of this thing that’s being rented out to a company called Truance. Which is the… Kind of arts and technology company, run by Wind’s Poem and Ocean’s Roar. Who are two scientists from the New Earth Hegemony. And they also are full-time workers at Duality. Like, this is their kind of passion project, spare-time thing. And last time that we—when we left off, y’all had walked in, you had rolled a five on your engagement roll and had realized that, just as you were prepared for shit to go down, so are they, and their entire place has been like, filled with security. Mostly Torch Units, that they are renting, from some sort of security, you know, company or whatever. So there are like—you know, in every room that we’re gonna talk about, or throughout this, know that there’s going to be a Torch Unit one bad roll away. [sort of laughs] Um… But where we left off was y’all in the kind of waiting room being greeted by an intern. I’m gonna describe this intern for you and I need to know know what your business casual looks are. Because that was the—where we actual—the real cliffhanger was what are you gonna look like in a place that demands that you be at least business casual. Um… The person in front of you is… A Skein person, they’re from Skein. They are a half-iguana person, they’re like an iguana boy. He’s an intern here. He says,
AUSTIN (as intern): Hi my name is Greel, Greel Kerney. G-R-E-E-L, K-E-R-N-E-Y. Just for your notes.
AUSTIN: He has on like, bright shiny silver slacks, with like—like silver and glittery slacks. With a white tucked-in dress shirt and a tie that matches his pants. He looks like he’s gonna go door-to-door and tell you about like glam Jesus. It’s not—it’s… He’s trying his best. He’s probably like, twenty. [slipping into the character voice] He double-majored in business and post-Miracle studies. So he’s very—he wants to grow up to become a project manager, and he’s here to make sure that you have a great day. [pause] Um, so what are y’all wearing?
[Ali laughs]
ART: I really don’t want to fuck this up, that’s my problem right now.
ALI: Oh…
AUSTIN (overlapping with Ali): Fair.
ART: Cause I’m being pulled in like a couple directions.
JACK (overlapping with Art): So it’s warm here, right?
AUSTIN: It is warm—it is climate-controlled inside. And I suspect that the entire alacology is climate-controlled, to be like a perfect spring day, every day forever. Unless it’s raining. In which case it’s like a perfect spring day but with rain.
ALI: I think Tender’s leaning super Hilary Banks?
AUSTIN: Mmmm. Fair.
ALI: [laughs] Like—
AUSTIN: Good.
ALI: With like the pill hat, and like her hair’s still like, full, but like—like one of those… Like a suit jacket but like really tight. [laughs]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Mhmm.
ALI: With like the lapels and like the big lining.
AUSTIN: Right.
ALI: Um…
AUSTIN: What color?
ALI: I—
AUSTIN: Cause color is gonna do a lot here, for that look.
ALI: I think like a powder pink?
AUSTIN: Oooh, okay. That’s a good look.
ALI (laughing): Yep.
AUSTIN: Great. Fourteen and Grand. I—remember what roles you had here, because the idea was to come—sell them on this fake idea of Calciuyummm, which was a solid milk bar that could also be an artistic building material, and—
JACK: Wait, wait wait wait. It could also be what?
AUSTIN: A building material. Remember he got it—
JACK: I’d forgotten that bit.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Morning’s Observation gave this whole pitch about how you could build a forest out of it, you could go to the Calciyummm forests.
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: It’s a whole thing. Cause they’re artists, right? He was saying like you can’t just come pitch them a food thing, they’re not a food company. Um… The… roles that y’all had decided on were, that Fourteen was going to be Morning’s’ lawyer, obviously. Grand was going to be his driver. So maybe dress appropriately. And… Tender you were going to be like his visionary of the future, [Ali giggles] you know like the corporate—the corporate future sage, you know what I mean?
ALI (faintly): Yes. Yesss.
AUSTIN: Yeah. So. Grand, Fourteen.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: Give me your looks.
ART: Okay. Grand is wearing khaki shorts. And a button-up—button-down shirt that is all around printed with… a portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci.
AUSTIN: Oh my god.
[pause, then Ali bursts out laughing]
JACK (uncertain): Mmmmmm.
ALI (laughing): Like the same portrait, or different—
ART: No it’s just a giant portrait of Leonardo—like it goes from like collar to like—belt, it probably goes below the beltline, it’s probably like his beard is at the beltline.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
[Ali laughs]
ART: And like, if it was untucked you could see his shoulders and whatnot.
AUSTIN: Where are his eyes?
[Ali continues laughing]
ART: I mean I’ll show you the—um, hold on, let me just give you the image I’m using.
AUSTIN: Yeah, great.
ALI (laughing): Can I ask you a question?
ART: Uh-huh?
ALI: Is this one of those Dragonball Z [laughing] Zilla shirts?
ART: Yeah, basically.
ALI (laughing): Okay.
ART: Um…
ALI: But with Leonardo Da Vinci.
AUSTIN: But with—right, but with Leonardo Da Vinci, who—maybe there’s—okay. Is it a Fate shirt?
ART: What?
[Ali in the background still barely containing laughter]
AUSTIN: Don’t worry about it. It’s an anime joke. Oh, wow. Fate Leonardo Da Vinci is serving looks, huh, Ali?
[Ali laughs]
JACK: Wait, where have you posted—
ALI (laughing a lot): Okay. We can’t—nope—I’m not doing this now—
AUSTIN: Holy shit.
JACK: Oh, I see.
ART: I don’t know why the image I got is from dyslexia.com, I really don’t.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I—well maybe—I bet you it’s probably—maybe—I wonder if Leonardo DaVinci had dyslexia, which would be—you know.
ART: Sure.
JACK: Ohh. I think he did.
AUSTIN: That sounds right.
JACK: I think he did.
ART: Alright. Well that explains it then. So it’s that picture of Leo—cause we’re artists.
AUSTIN: Right, I see.
ART: And I’m communicating that with my wardrobe.
AUSTIN: But—okay, so my question is, it’s all-around print—it’s like, so it’s full-bleed print, which means—it’s not framed or something, it’s the whole thing i—it is like as Ali said one of those Dragonball Z anime shirts.
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Is it like—are his… But it’s wrapped all the way around, so his beard is on your front and your back?
ART: Yeah. Uh-huh.
[Ali laughs]
JACK (overlapping with Austin): Okay.
AUSTIN: Does that mean like one of his eyes is like on—is it eyes on shoulders? Like what is going on? [kind of laughs]
ART: I think it’s—yeah I think it’s about eyes on shoulde—ah no cause that’s not high—it would be eyes—I mean honestly it’s probably eyes close to nipples.
AUSTIN (almost resigned): Yeah it’s eyes on nipples.
ART: Cause the—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yep.
ART: The hat has to be at the collar.
AUSTIN (resigning to this fate): The hat has to be at the collar…
[Ali laughs]
ART: It might be like—it might be a little bit below, if we’re being…
AUSTIN: I don’t need to know where Grand’s nipples are specifically.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Fourteen, how about you?
JACK: Hello.
[Austin kind of laughs]
JACK: Um. Summery, very summery. But light.
AUSTIN: Oh, I thought you were gonna be like “Summary, colon,” [Jack laughs] and then give me like a quick rundown, and then be like—like I wanted your précis form and then the long read, like the abstract and then—
JACK (overlapping some): Okay. Summary: summery.
AUSTIN: [laughs] That NPC hasn’t been introduced yet.
[Ali laughs]
JACK: Ankle-length, light fabric, kind of like, navy blue dark blue… tapered trousers. A sort of like… Black and white or blue and—like dark blue and white striped blouse. With like a sort of… Like a jacket over it? Or like a—maybe like a sweater of some type, maybe like a really—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oooh, yeah.
JACK: You know like, fancy knitwear?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah.
JACK: Fancy knitwear.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeahhh.
JACK: Sort of like—yeah, sort of like a cable stitch.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh, okay. Yeah yeah yeah.
JACK: Really fancy, and of a really light material so it’s not like over…
AUSTIN: Like a summer sweater, like a summer cardigan.
JACK: Yeah. And you can sort of see the cuffs, the stripey cuffs coming out underneath. Fourteen is wearing shiny black nail polish, and cat-eye sunglasses. And has their hair up, in like a neat bun. Instead of the usual messy bun. And they are—
ART: Wait, do you mean like, cat-eye the style, or like, it’s got holographic cat eyes on it?
[Austin and Ali laugh]
JACK: Oh my god. I think—[laughs a bit] I think—so, you can have the holographic cat eyes, but I feel… To be—in order to be tonally consistent with the image of a slick corporate lawyer that Fourteen is attempting to do, I should probably just go with the cat-eye sort of like, style.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right. Yeah. Fair.
ART: Sure.
JACK: Fourteen is clutching a—I guess like a tablet, or like an iPad, to their chest.
AUSTIN (cutting in): No iPads. No iPads, you gotta—remember? No iPads. Gotta be something else.
[Ali laughs]
JACK: But like it’s—so—[Ali laughs] I think—
AUSTIN: Is it just a notebook?
ART (overlapping with Jack): Stone tablet, [Austin laughs a bit] with a future chisel.
JACK: I think, what I was gonna say is the—the thing that they’re holding is being held in a way that someone officiously holds a clipboard?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Gotcha.
JACK: So it might be a clipboard.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: Just like a really nice clipboard.
AUSTIN: It can be like an e-ink clipboard, If you wanna go that way. But. We’re not just having iPads.
JACK (overlapping): Yeah, I—
AUSTIN: Not even here in the New Earth Hegemony.
JACK (overlapping): Oh, no no no. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Resist the urge.
JACK: No, it’s a—yeah, it’s a clipboard. But with sort of like origami-style folding panels on it?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oooh, okay.
JACK: That you can open to like pull pens out of, or you could open to like, have another writing surface to write on, or like a small screen you could show someone.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Mhmm. Mhhm.
JACK: It’s some real bullshit.
AUSTIN: It sounds like some real bullshit.
JACK: It’s fake, I think, I don’t think it’s a real—
AUSTIN (overlapping): [laughs] No but I like this idea—
JACK: I think this costs twenty dollars and it’ll break tomorrow.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I like the idea of like, yeah okay you can like twist this part that then makes it—it’s like—you know how on touchscreens you can like make things bigger by doing the expand thing? The expand like—
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: What if you could do that but for real?
JACK (overlapping): Oh yeah.
AUSTIN: Like you do that for a corner of it and that packet opens up and becomes the page, and then you close it, and like I don’t know what fucking weird Gift-3 technology this is, but that’s what it is.
JACK: And in this case it’s a knock-off of it.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Right. Exactly. Cause you needed it very quickly.
JACK (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: So Greel, the intern here, who has like or—
JACK (overlapping): Wait, did—
AUSTIN: Go ahead.
JACK: Did we hear what Tender was doing?
AUSTIN: Yep.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: Uhhh—
ART: Oh wait I’d like to amend my look somewhat?
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Uh-uh?
ART: It’s a long-sleeved shirt of course.
AUSTIN: Oh.
ART: I just wanted to make sure that that was clear.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ART: Cause I have to cover up my tattoos.
AUSTIN: Right.
ALI (overlapping with Art): Ohh.
ART: And, I am wearing sunglasses that have holographic dinosaur eyes on them.
[Ali laughs]
JACK: Oh my god.
AUSTIN: Which dinosaur?
ART: Um. Like the—the T-rex in Jurassic Park what with the—next to the jeep?
AUSTIN (overlapping): I gotcha. Yeah. I gotcha. Great.
JACK: Tender have you got sunglasses?
ALI: [laughs] I—so before you said it was gonna say, I’ve narrowed down my Hillary Banks look, by the way, since I have the opportunity to say it.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Okay. Welcome to Friends at the Table.
ALI: Which is this amazing like [laughing] silk suit jacket which is like pink in front and the collar and back of it and sleeves are like a green teal?
JACK (overlapping): Oh wow!
AUSTIN (overlapping): Mhmm.
ALI: Except for the cuffs? [laughs]
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ALI: It’s very good. I’ll tweet this later.
AUSTIN: Great.
ALI: [laughing] Um—[Austin laughs] But I imagine her having like a… Like a suit jacket pocket, as well, with like… [laughs] glasses that are like completely bejeweled with like fake diamonds, “diamonds” in quotations.
AUSTIN: Mhmm.
JACK: Incredible.
ALI: Yeah, that’s my look.
AUSTIN: So I think there was a scene this morning as y’all were prepping in the like hotel suite, where Morning’s Observation was… spray-dying his hair like blonde, and it was like a temporary 24-hour spray that will fade out naturally but he’s like so upset about it, and he’s using some sort of like similar tech that is like erasing some of his face tattoos? Not all of them? But like, it’s the ones he’s gotten since being here, that he’s getting rid of. So he looks like the Morning’s Observation straight out of the sleep detachment. And his—like, and his fair is like blonde and slicked-back and he has on lik, round gold-framed glasses, without any lenses. [Ali laughs] And he has on a catholic school boy’s uniform, he has on gray paints and like a navy blue blazer with like a blue-and-red-striped tie, and he has on like the… You know, the blazer has like the emblem of the school except it’s just—it’s an emblem—it’s like a shield shape, right? And it’s just like a big M and a big O. [Jack laughs] For Morning’s Observation. And then it has something in Latin, but I don’t know what. And I don’t think he knows what either. [Ali laughs] I’m gonna do what he would do, and type “Best Latin sayings” into Google. And it says, “bona fide.” And [laughing] it says “bona fide” up top and then in quotes it says “good faith.” And that’s his motto.
ALI: [laughs a lot] The thing about Morning’s Observation is like, images of Gerard Way didn’t exist for long enough that he could keep his hair? [laughs] Like...
AUSTIN: [overlapping] Oh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. God… [no longer overlapping] So I mean that is definitely—this is definitely—that it—he didn’t. That’s the thing is like, [sighs] the New Earth Hegemony sucks. [Ali laughs] The New Earth Hegemony, remember, is, like, 1990s. It didn’t make it through to emo. So…
ALI (overlapping): Oh. Okay. Yep, alright.
AUSTIN (overlapping): You know? That’s the thing.
ALI: Fair. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Um… Alright. So like, yeah, and so they’d see him and be like “Oh you’re grunge, that’s not business.” [laughs]
ART: “Didn’t Make It to Emo” is the title of my emo album.
[Austin and Ali laugh]
AUSTIN: Yeah. Great. Alright, so Greel—Greel Kerney, who is like, a mix of like green, yellow, and orange, he has like a big orange—you know iguanas have that under-thing? What is that called? The iguana neck situation?
JACK: Like a ruff?
AUSTIN: Is that what that’s called?
JACK (overlapping with Art): Like a frill?
ART: Oh, no, like a does have name. Oh…
AUSTIN: I got an article here about reading iguana body language. [pause] This is a Dummy’s book! This is “reading an iguana’s body language for dummy’s.” [Ali laughs] Get out of here! How am I supposed publish anything? Nothing—everything exists already.
[Ali laughs]
ART: Were you an iguana body language book?
AUSTIN (overlapping with Art): I was working on a [laughing] iguana body language—
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: J—not jowls. Not cheek scales.
JACK: No, no.
AUSTIN: How is this not the top thing?
ALI: Like, neck skin?
AUSTIN: Yeah, neck spines I guess? It’s that little bit underneath the neck.
JACK: The… what’s it called on a chicken, it’s like a wattle, right?
AUSTIN: Is that what it’s called?
[Ali laughs softly]
ART: No one’s ever heard that word before in their life.
ALI (overlapping with Austin): Oh hey—
AUSTIN: I guess that’s what it is.
ALI: “Dewlap” is what this… [laughs]
AUSTIN: No, you’re thinking of a caruncle, Jack.
JACK: I’m sorry? Sorry—
AUSTIN: “A wattle is a fleshy caruncle, [Ali laughs] hanging from various parts of the head or neck of several birds or mammals. Caruncle: a small fleshy…”
JACK: Yeah I think I’m probably thinking of the caruncle.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, a dewlap, I see what you’re talking about.
ALI (overlapping): You guys’ll love this chart. [laughs a bit]
AUSTIN: Oh, wow…
ART: Whereas Jack was thinking of a caruncle.
[everyone laughs a bit]
AUSTIN: “An iguana’s neck area is protected from attackers by a thickened fleshy ridge, by spines that are the longest by the body, by protective scales, tuberculate scales that look like small rivets. These rivets also add another level of [increasingly amused tone] physical texture and beauty to an already spectacular creature.” Thank you reptile hyphen parents dot com slash forms.
JACK: I really appreciate how they just tried to review an iguana.
[Austin and Ali laugh]
AUSTIN: Dear Yelp… [Jack laughs] This animal—uh, alright. So Greel is like,
AUSTIN (as Greel): Alright if you just, um, follow me—and again don’t mind the Torch Units. We have a very important project coming up and really just have to make sure we’re buttoned up on safety. We have a special room set up where you can… You’ll have, you know, some time to set up your presentation, and then, you know, the… My bosses will be in to see you, and you know, hear the presentation. Then we’ll break for lunch, and then we’ll get back together for a Q&A session. You know kind of like jam session but for the mind? And then we’ll um, we’ll go from there. And you know, we’ll figure out what next steps should be. Does that work out for you? Do you need anything—coffee, water?
ART: Does this person think we’ve never heard the word “Q&A session” before?
AUSTIN: [laughs a bit] Greel is doing the very best he can.
JACK (as Fourteen): No I think we’re good thank you. Just some water would be nice, but other than that…
AUSTIN (as Greel): Great, I’ll have—I’ll bring some into the room.
AUSTIN: And… You know, he leads you down a couple of corridors, and like down some stairs, into—the bulk of the structure is not this kind of—the top floor is a showroom—is the reception area, and then a showroom, where they can kind of like meet and show off stuff that they’ve been working on, with outsiders. But he leads you down a stairway. Not an elevator, just a stairway. Down kind of a thin, narrow stairwell, into a lower level, where there’s a bunch of different workshop rooms and stuff. There’s clearly one for… I mean, so there’s one that says, you know, “Poem,” and one that says “Roar.” Right? One for each of the two lead scientists here. There is one room that is for… Where the interns work on projects and that’s called like the Small Projects Division. And then there is, you know, a guest laboratory, and then there’s bathrooms, and like, you know, storage, and then there’s another stairwell that is locked, and it says “Production and Manufacturing.” It has like a door on it, but like a li—it has like the icon, the symbol of a stairwell going down, and that has like a keycard lock on it. Or like a bio—probably a bio-scan lock, actually. But he leads you into the guest lab, and there is just like… It’s kind of like an empty room, with a table and some chairs and like, a—one of the kind of gaseous 3D projectors that we’ve seen in previous episodes, set up. And is just like,
AUSTIN (as Greel): Uh—if you—I’ll bring in the water in a second, and uh, I’ll let the—my bosses know that you’re here. Be right back.
AUSTIN: And y’all are alone in this room. There is like two Torch Units in the hallway, that are like just doing a s—like, a very slow patrol. One is on one side of the long hallway, one is on the other, and then every like, seven minutes they switch, they walk from the—you know, back and forth and kind of peek into each room.
JACK (as Fourteen): Okay. Can we really quickly try and nail something down here? Tender, are we gonna tell… are we gonna tell them that they’re in danger?
ALI (as Tender): Umm…
AUSTIN (as Morning's): If you do that, don’t make it sound like a threat.
ALI (as Tender, overlapping with Jack/Fourteen): Yeah.
JACK (as Fourteen): No—yeah, no, no, this is why it’s important that we discuss this now. I just wanna—
ALI (as Tender): No? No, we’re here for [laughing] milk. So no! No.
JACK (as Fourteen): Okay.
ALI (as Tender): We still—we have to like keep our cover.
JACK (as Fourteen): Okay.
ALI (as Tender): Right?
JACK (as Fourteen): Okay.
ALI (as Tender): That’s how cover works.
JACK (as Fourteen): Okay.
ART (as Grand): That is how cover works. I’m here too.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Art/Grand): So—
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Wait, but then what—what—two que—
JACK (as Fourteen): So, but what are we… No, Morning, you go ahead.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): No, no, Fourteen, you’re my lawyer, you should speak for me.
[Ali laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): I just—I’m not your—okay. That’s also really important, we’re not here to sell milk. I mean [quieter] we are here to sell milk, but we’re not here to sell milk. What are we doing? Are we gonna try to find out about the gun? Or… So what we’re saying is we’re not just gonna say, “Watch out”?
ALI (as Tender, overlapping with Art/Grand): No!
ART (as Grand): No I don’t think that’d go over well at all.
ALI (as Tender): [laughs] Okay, we just had to get into the building so we can like, research what they’re doing.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping): Okay.
ALI (as Tender): So when we’re—when there are other people in the room, we’re all here to sell milk. When we’re alone like this, and we can talk, then we’re gonna do research, we’re gonna try to figure some stuff out, maybe we’ll meet this people. We’re not gonna just—
JACK (as Fourteen): We don’t tell them?
ALI (as Tender): No.
JACK (as Fourteen): Okay. Alright.
[timestamp - 0:32:40]
AUSTIN (overlapping with Art): The door opens—
ART (as Grand): No one takes it well if someone just like walks into your house and is just like “Be careful about your gun.”
AUSTIN: The door opens and is like,
AUSTIN (as Greel): I brought the water! Hey everybody, here you go. I got—
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Austin/Greel): Oh thanks, thank you so much.
[Ali laughing in background]
AUSTIN (as Greel): I got four glasses, and you know what else? I just—I know you said you don’t want anything else, but I brought some cookies just in case.
ALI (as Tender, overlapping): Oh wow.
AUSTIN (as Greel): I knew it was a whole milk project, so I thought that’d be a really great addition. Not to—I mean maybe you brought your own cookies, I don’t want to step on any toes, but—I can take them back, I can take them back, if you want me to take them back I can take them back.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping): No the cookies are great.
AUSTIN (as Greel): I got a whole spread. Chocolate chip, gingersnap, oatmeal raisin…
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping some): OhI Oh you’ve got a lot.
AUSTIN (as Greel): Yep. We’ve got at least four different kind. The fourth one’s a mystery cookie, that’s what—that’s why I like it. Alright. I’ll be out in the lobby, again I’m gonna let my bosses know and hopefully they’ll be in in another, uh, ten, fifteen minutes, does that work for you?
ART (as Grand): Sure.
JACK (as Fourteen): Yes.
AUSTIN (as Greel): Alright, I’ll schedule you down.
ART (as Grand): Do you know what the mystery cookie is?
AUSTIN (as Greel): No, and that’s why I like it.
[long pause, Ali laughing very quietly]
ART (as Grand): O—okay.
AUSTIN: Lizard blink, lizard blink. And then like turns and like walks out the door, shiny shimmery pants on.
ART (as Grand): What do you think the mystery cookie is?
JACK (as Fourteen): We can just try it, right? It wouldn’t be kosher—
ALI (as Tender, overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): You shouldn’t—no, listen, listen, I went through military training. They told me “Don’t eat anything you don’t know what it is when you’re on a mission.”
ALI (as Tender, uncertainly): Mmm.
ART (as Grand): Okay, but it’s a cookie.
JACK (as Fourteen): But it’s a c—you know, we’re milk salespeople here, Morning.
AUSTIN (as Morning’s, overlapping with Jack/Fourteen some): What if it has coconut in it?
[Ali laughs a bit]
JACK (as Fourteen): You don’t like coconut?
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Not much.
ART (as Grand): Yeah what if it does have coconut in it?
ALI (as Tender): It’s gonna be great then. [laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): Who here likes coconut?
ALI (as Tender): Everyone… should.
[Austin laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): So it’s Tender and me.
ART (as Grand): I also enjoy coconut from time to time.
[Ali laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with laughter): Okay. Alright.
AUSTIN (as Morning's, overlapping with laughter): Well then one of you motherfuckers can eat this mystery cookie, cause I’m gonna be over here eating this chocolate chip, that’s a known classic. Where—
ART: I think we'd know if—we’re looking at it, does it have coconut? Can we see coconut?
AUSTIN: You can’t. But it still could have coconut, this is the Twilight Mirage, coconut could be anywhere.
ALI (as Tender): [laughs] Morning’s, only the ginger one, it’ll invigorate your ideas. [laughs softly] See, I’m in character.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Yeah you’re doing the future prophet thing, [Ali laughs] I get you, I’ll put the chocolate chip down, I’ll take the gingersnap.
ALI (as Tender): I mean no, you can have it.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): No I’m taking the gingersnap. [Ali laughs faintly in background] [pause] It’s spicy.
JACK (as Fourteen): That’s—yeah, it’s invigorating.
AUSTIN (as Morning’s, doubtful): Mmm.
ART: What’s the mys—I’m gonna eat the mystery cookie.
AUSTIN: I don’t know, what’s the mystery cookie?
JACK: Should we do a fortune roll? [laughs]
AUSTIN: Yeah but like—I—can I get a list of cookies? [Ali laughs] List of 100 cookies.
JACK: Yeah no—no, Austin. No. List of 100 flavors, please.
AUSTIN: Oh, you’re right. You’re right just generally, and I’m gonna roll three times on this.
ALI (faintly, overlapping): Mhhm.
AUSTIN: And that’s gonna be it. That’s gonna be the thing. Um…
JACK: What if we somehow manage to roll badly on this?
AUSTIN: Here we go. Let’s just roll 3d100.
ALI: Grand will have to take a point of stress.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah. [Ali laughs] Alright so 71, 91, and 98. 71. Is… [Ali snorts] Uh, persimmon.
ALI (overlapping): Oooh.
JACK (overlapping): Okay. Alright, okay.
ART (overlapping): That’s a fantastic start.
AUSTIN: What was the next number?
JACK: 91.
AUSTIN (amused): Cranberry.
[Jack laughs a bit]
ALI: Okay.
JACK: And 98.
AUSTIN: Egg!
ALI: [laughs] Okay, it’s not egg-flavored, there’s an egg in the cookie.
AUSTIN (overlapping): It’s egg-flavored! It’s egg-flavored!
ALI (overlapping): No…
AUSTIN: No, like an egg bagel. Yes.
ALI (overlapping): Yeah okay.
ART: Probably pretty good.
AUSTIN: This sounds pretty good!
[Ali laughs]
JACK: [laughs] It’s great.
AUSTIN (laughing): I wanna try this cookie!
ART: I would like to apologize to the fan of ours who makes baked goods based on the show. We’re committing an act of violence against them.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN (overlapping with Art, laughing): Oh no! Poor Katie…
JACK (overlapping with Art): Oh, god.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Ohhh I’m so sorry Katie.
[Ali and Jack laugh]
ART: I’m willing to declare all of this non-canon.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Not me, that’s the damn thing right there.
[Ali continues laughing]
JACK: [sighs] Wow.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): So um… Are we making the milk? Did we—what are we doing when they come in here?
ALI (as Tender): Well we’re gonna talk about our ideas.
JACK (as Fourteen): Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): We’re gonna talk about—
JACK (as Fourteen): We didn’t need to pr—oh we might actually need to do a product.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): You don’t go into like a pitch meeting with nothing.
JACK: What’s the name of the… intern?
AUSTIN: Greel.
JACK: Could we maybe get Greel to bring us some milk?
ALI: [laughs] Did nobody bring their own milk?
AUSTIN: Do you wanna buzz Greel?
JACK: Well…
[Ali laughs]
JACK (overlapping with Ali): Greel possibly…
ALI: We can use a flashback. This is one of those moments, completely. [laughs]
AUSTIN: It is. You can take a flashback.
JACK: Oh yeah. Because—[laughs, Ali laughs] Or we just ask the intern for some milk from his own company.
ART: Everything we’ve asked him for has been weird.
ALI: [laughs] Water has been weird?
AUSTIN: The water is fine. But he did bring you water and cookies and that’s not a good fit.
ALI: He assumed we’d brought our own milk.
JACK (overlapping with Ali some): No. He knows we’re about to—yeah. [Ali laughs] Do you wanna do a flashback, or should be call?
ART: This doesn’t seem worth a flashback, right?
JACK: I’m gonna press—
ALI (laughing, ambiguously in-character as Tender): I just think we should have a pitch.
JACK (ambiguously in-character as Fourteen): Well we can get the milk and then work it—you know, the milk’s the most important bit.
ALI (overlapping, ambiguously in-character): Okay, fair.
JACK (ambiguously in-character): And we are about to get there. From the intern.
ALI (as Tender): Oh maybe that’s part of the pitch is that any milk will work. [laughing] It’s not only ours.
JACK (as Fourteen): Ohhhh! [Ali laughs] Tender!
AUSTIN (as Morning's): It’s a good part of the pitch. Are we—
JACK (as Fourteen): Alright I’m gonna buzz—oh god.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Okay go ahead.
ART (as Grand): So I’m gonna buy milk and then turn it [Ali laughing in background]—in my own—this is just extra—this seems like extra labor.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): No no no no no, it means like… Like, for instance, they don’t own—this is like a industry-scale thing.
JACK (as Fourteen): Mmm.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): They don’t own like a cow. But they can just go—as artists go get milk, from the store, or the internet. And then turn it into a bar. And then make your milk good out of it.
JACK (as Fourteen): Yeah.
ALI (as Tender, overlapping with Jack/Fourteen): Right.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): And put it on market.
ALI (as Tender): And customization options, if you want it 2%, if you want almond milk.
JACK (ambiguously as Fourteen, overlapping): We’re so fucking good at this.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Oh, exactly. Okay, wait—are we sure it’ll work it with almond milk?
ALI (as Tender): [laughs] We should ask for some milk and some almond milk.
JACK (as Fourteen): Yeah, it’s worth a shot.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Alright, hit the button and Greel back in.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Austin/Morning’s): Well—okay.
ALI (as Tender): It’ll totally work with almond milk.
JACK: Buzz buzz. Buzz.
ART (as Grand): How do you know?
ALI (as Tender, laughing): It’s just—
AUSTIN: Greel comes back in.
AUSTIN (as Greel): Uh hey, hey. Another seven minutes or so until they get here. Is there anything else you need?
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Austin/Greel): Yes.
AUSTIN (as Greel): I don’t see any setup yet, do you need more time?
JACK (as Fourteen): Actually. We need… some milk.
ALI (as Tender): How many different types of milk do you have in your office break room?
AUSTIN: His eyes like—he squints at you, and then his eyes—and then his eyebrows go all the way up but he keeps the squint.
[Ali and Jack laugh]
AUSTIN (as Greel): For…?
ALI (as Tender): We would like a cup of each.
JACK (as Fourteen): Just each. One of each.
AUSTIN (as Greel): One cup. Of each.
ALI (as Tender): Mhm.
JACK (as Fourteen): Of each. Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Greel): For your presentation, or for the cookies?
JACK (as Fourteen): Oh. [Ali laughs] Well, we’re thinking of rolling the cookies into the presentation, so it’s a little of column A, a little of column B.
AUSTIN (as Greel): You’re like coming up—you’re doing a little improv with the presentation?
ALI (as Tender): Mhmm.
AUSTIN: He like slips his hand back to his butt pocket and pulls out a little notepad, and like writes it down. Like he is an intern, he’s trying to learn how business works, and so he’s like…
JACK (overlapping with Austin, sympathetic tone): Ohh…
AUSTIN (as Greel): This is genius. Cause it’ll seem fresh! It’ll seem like… Most presentations are—they’re so—you know you come with your deck and you go “Oh here’s the market research,” but you guys… You’re taking what we give you, and you’re gonna give us back gold. That’s…
AUSTIN: “Give them back gold.” [Ali laughs] And he write—he puts like a sharp period on it.
AUSTIN (as Greel): I’ll be right back with your milk. I might even be able to find you fifth milk.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Ali/Tender): Wow. Thanks.
ALI (as Tender): Really appreciate it. That would be incredible.
AUSTIN: And he leaves. And then he comes back with a—
ART (overlapping): Hey—oh.
AUSTIN: Oh go ahead, go ahead, use this downtime in-between. Unless you’re gonna interrupt him as he’s leaving.
ART: No, no.
ART (as Grand): Hey, why aren’t we doing the real plan when he’s not here?
[Austin and Ali laugh loudly]
AUSTIN: I’m saying.
ALI (as Tender, laughing): Okay—
ART (as Grand): We’re not actually trying to sell this milk thing! [Ali continues laughing in background] I don’t care about it! And now I care about it. I care about the murders.
JACK (as Fourteen): Okay, but—no, cause we have seven minutes, there’s no way we can find this out in seven minutes.
ALI: Is—no, is there like a computer in the room? You know how just some offices have like a computer? Or like an ethernet like thing?
AUSTIN: Yeah, there’s like an internal network—there’s a network for the entire alacology, yeah.
ALI: Is there like… I’m trying to figure out if there’s like a thing in my items that would fit for this? Or if there’s like a flashback to say that I have it, to be like… If there isn’t like a computer to sit at, at least like a thing to plug into the ethernet thing to connect—
AUSTIN: You have a zero load communicator.
ALI (overlapping): Okay.
AUSTIN: I think that that thing is basically the thing that lets you do that sort of shit, right?
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: Like that’s the holdover from the—when the world was all virtual still, on the… Fleet. So you kind of get the like—hud in your eyes. Also wait don’t you have cyber-eyes?
ALI: I do but the thing that I wanna do is like, plug something into an ethernet port that connects to their wi-fi, internet whatever, and like can hack into their database, for…
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think—
ALI (overlapping): Okay.
AUSTIN: You can just—yeah I guess that’s the thing, you would need something—in this system you would need something that is like, some sort of tool, some sort of hacking tool. I say that mostly because other classes have—or actually no, there’s a hacking tool. “Hacking tools,” there you go.
ALI (overlapping): Yeah. [laughs]
AUSTIN: So yeah, you can spend one of your load for hacking tools, totally.
ALI (overlapping): Perfect. Okay.
AUSTIN: Also what is your load? Tender?
ALI: Uuuh, I guess normal…?
AUSTIN: Okay. I will say that normal here will look pretty heavy. In terms of getting attention? Do you know what I mean?
ALI (overlapping): Okay.
AUSTIN: I see Fourteen you’re also at normal. That’s fine, but like… And it’s not gonna come up in this sequence, but going forward it’s going to be noticeable that y’all are like, corporate people walking around in what would be normal for adventurers.
JACK (overlapping): Oh…
AUSTIN: You know?
JACK: I hadn’t changed mine.
AUSTIN: Oh, okay.
JACK: And I haven’t used anything in mine, so can I say I’m light?
AUSTIN: Yeah, totally, totally. That doesn’t like ever come up in play normally, but I think this is one of those situations where it makes perfect sense to come up.
JACK (overlapping): Mmm.
AUSTIN: Because… You know. Y’all are undercover. You’re deeply undercover.
ALI: Yeah. I’m also the visionary so I can just like…
AUSTIN: Totally. Totally. If you wanna spin it like that.
ALI: I’m just like “Yeah I need all of these crystals.” [Austin laughs] “These are my business crystals, excuse me.”
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. [laughs]
ALI: So I should be rolling a thing I guess. I… I’m good in study but I feel like the thing that this is is like making a program that’ll like, do this hacking for me while we’re doing this bullshit presentation.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it—I think like, study would be—study—you’ve already done the study. You did the study outside and that was the public information.
ALI (overlapping): Mhmm.
AUSTIN: Like, this… You’re not gonna be able to connect to their more—to their deeper information without hacking. You know what I mean? Or you can, but like again it’ll be very very periphery, limited result stuff.
ALI (overlapping): Okay Yeah.
AUSTIN: So this is a gather information roll… Um….
ALI (overlapping): Probably…
AUSTIN: I think this is risky, this is risky still. Risky standard, I think.
ALI: How many gambits do we have?
AUSTIN: Y’all all have one, left.
ALI: Does… [laughing] does anyone have a hack score?
AUSTIN: I don’t think so.
JACK (overlapping): Mmmm.
ART: That sounds like it’s for nerds.
[Ali continues laughing]
JACK: No I don’t have one.
ALI (laughing): Okay.
JACK: I’m a lawyer.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Great. So no one has one.
[Ali makes a weird frustrated lip trill]
AUSTIN: Morning’s will…
ALI: Morning’s—yeah.
AUSTIN: Morning’s does, but I think that what that will be is a plus on effect. He can’t do the roll for you.
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: You know?
ALI: Okay. That’s fine.
AUSTIN: Do you wanna—so you right now have zero hack.
ALI (very quiet): Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Right? Which is bad, because you roll two dice and keep the lower result.
ALI: Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: You can push yourself for one die.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: You can get an assist from somebody, who will take one stress, and you’ll get another die. They’ll have to tell me how they’re assisting. You can spend a gambit for a third die if you wanted. And I’ll offer you a devil’s bargain instead of the stress if that’s a thing you’re interested in. You either get the push from stress—you either get the +1 die from taking two stress, or you can accept a devil’s bargain, which will be two heat, which will push you up to the first wanted level.
ALI (laughing): Which might be worse than my stresses. Which sucks.
AUSTIN: It’s only the first wanted level, the first of four, so. Y’all are criminals, getting wanted is part of the gig. You know?
ALI (reluctantly): Yeah…
JACK: Mhmm.
AUSTIN: And what that does is it change the severity—the possible severity of the random event that you get during downtime.
ALI: Okay. And will like, affect the mission here too, or is it just like…
AUSTIN: It can affect the mission in some ways, but like it’s mostly about—I mean, you know, it means that when… the… Art’s… Grand’s nemesis, Grand’s rival, Temperance, shows back up, like, she’ll be able to say “Hey, you’re wanted.” You know?
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Which is a difference. For sure. But I—
ALI: I think I kicked her, so I’ll take—I’ll just take it, cause I’m probably wanted anyway.
AUSTIN (overlapping with Ali some): There you go. There you go. Now you’re living your life.
ALI: [laughs] Sorry.
AUSTIN: No, that’s fine.
ALI: But I still have to do the roll.
AUSTIN: You still have to—so but you take—so you’ll take one for that.
ALI: Mhmm.
AUSTIN: So that’s a devil’s bargain.
ALI: So this was risky…?
AUSTIN: Great. Because of Morning’s. Is anyone helping you? Beside’s Morning’s Observation. [pause] It sounds like no one’s helping. Alright.
ALI (laughing): Okay.
AUSTIN: 1d6. [pause] No no no no, just roll 1d6 straight out.
ALI: Okay. Whoa-okay, sorry. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Cause—or roll hack but add one bonus die from the thing.
ALI: Okay, sorry. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Alright, there’s a five. Alright.
ALI: Okay.
[timestamp - 0:46:30]
AUSTIN: Ali did not do it right the first time and would have gotten a one on that previous roll. [Ali laughs] Instead, you got a five. So, um… So that’s… Great effect, because of Morning, Morning increases it by one basically. Alright, so what do you want to know? What’s your question here, as you’re digging through their files?
ALI: Um… I mean, more information on… I’m looking at the gather information questions. Cause like, “What’s really going on here?” is a great one.
AUSTIN: Yeah! That’s totally a fine one, if you want.
ALI (overlapping, barely distinguishable through laughter): Okay.
AUSTIN: And with the level that you got on gather information, you’re gonna be able to ask—so it’s “Great: you get exceptional details, the information is complete, and follow-up questions may expand into a related area or reveal more than you ever hoped for.” The only downside to this I’ll say is cause you didn’t give a full result, a full success, I’m giving you one more point of heat. But, that’s not that big—that’s not—you know, you’re just marching closer to the second wanted level, we’ll see if you get there by the end of this session.
ALI (overlapping some): Okay, fair.
AUSTIN: So yeah, so, go ahead and ask me that general question, and then you can also get follow-up questions because you got great success.
ALI: Okay yeah I—just generally like, kind of what they’re working on, more information about Wind’s Poem, obviously, if like there’s any pings on that weapon…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Sure.
AUSTIN: Yeah, alright. So… So there are two leads here at Truance. Wind’s Poem and Ocean’s Roar. They’re cousins. They came here from the New Earth Hegemony, in like the second wave of colonists. Um… You get pictures of both of them—Ocean’s Roar is—they’re both of like Puerto Rican descent basically, Ocean’s Roar is, shaved head with like a big carefully-manicured beard and mustache situation, who is working on a project called the Compel Project. And Wind’s Poem, which I think you learned this before, is working on the Reframe System, which is what’s in your angler. She’s the one who like, is taking the lead on that actual research. She is… There’s a rapper from New York named Princess Nokia, I very much like have face-cast her as that, [Ali laughs quietly in background] as Wind’s Poem. Kind of, you know, Latina with curly voluminous black hair, if you look at the Brujas video of Princess Nokia, that’s the look right there. She also has on the same type of round gold frame glasses that Morning’s Observation is wearing, except hers [laughing] have lenses. And you can’t really see what she’s wearing in this photo, so whatever. Her system is—her project is the Reframe System, which she got funding from the government and from Duality to build, under the pretense that it was a military project. But it’s clear from looking at the research that she is mostly interested in like, stage performance. And like, making really cool light shows and virtual like physical spaces. Gallery shows… She wants to use the Reframe System to basically build like, really subversive Sleep No Mores. [Ali laughs] And like, live concert Sleep No Mores. She wants you to be like—she wants to definitely be the next Kanye West stage designer, you know? [Ali laughs softly] And that’s for her like what Reframe lets you do. As a reminder the Reframe System is what’s in Tender’s mech that let her built out that wild-ass, um—
ALI (overlapping): Roller-skating rink.
AUSTIN: Roller-skating rink, yeah, in the Gift-3 arc. The Reframe System does not do that for her. The Reframe System is not at that level. [Ali laughs] Right now she can do very very very small things with it, and that is it. And also it doesn’t seem like any of those things are guns, much to the chagrin of her [laughing] military and corporate advisors. But they have become increasingly interested in the Compel Project, which is what Ocean’s Roar is working on, and is, per the documents… At least based on the same technology, which is like reworking things inside of the Mirage. And the short pitch on the Compel Project is, that it is a point-and-click device, that makes something nothing. It uses the Mirage to rewrite small places in space until they’re empty. At a distance. So like, this is his circumventing of Quire’s rule on guns. There’s no projectile here, nothing is moving, it’s not firing anything. It’s using the Mirage itself, to trick… space into being empty. And creating micro-vacuums in targets. Very very small, but that does a lot of damage. And… That’s like the top-level things, so follow-up questions, what are your follow-up—and anybody here can ask follow-up questions, you got a great success.
ALI: Yeah, by all means.
[pause]
AUSTIN: It’s kind of splayed out here, and I imagine like if you’ve hooked into their ethernet cable you’re using like, this projector that kind of projects all this information all around you in kind of like this really soft mist that’s in the room.
JACK: These follow-up questions can they be broad follow-up questions or should they be from the list?
AUSTIN: Broad—tho—that list is suggestions, that list is not—this isn’t… Powered by the Apocalypse, so this is just like, ask me questions.
JACK (overlapping with Austin): Oh, okay.
ALI (overlapping Austin): Oh no no yeah, it’s not—yeah.
JACK: We heard about the rogue axiom.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: Has there been any sort of breadcrumb trail on their systems about something like that, any sort of corporate emails, or… [overlapping with Austin] traces?
AUSTIN: Yeah. So, it takes you a minute to find it, and it doesn’t use the word “axiom,” but. There was no Compel Project, it didn’t have the name Compel Project. We know that… You kind of can piece together pretty quickly, Ocean’s Roar has been jealous of Wind’s Poem since getting here. Back on Earth—or back of the kind of the—whatever colony, in the Solar—the Terra Solar System or whatever at the center of the universe, Ocean’s Roar was kind of the breakaway success in the family, but ever since getting here and working with the Mirage, Wind’s Poem has kind of taken off as the person who’s had great breakthroughs. And you know, her great breakthroughs are like diorama-size and not room-size. They’re not room-scale, they’re not “roller skating rink inside of a giant mech bay”-scale. But comparatively she’s figured out how to use the Mirage better than he has. And so it becomes pretty clear that he has the head for… He has like the worth ethic and the head for the sort of like, high-intensity research and development projects. But he just hasn’t been able to get his head around how the Mirage works. Until someone gave him a piece of something. The—there was shipment. What you find is like a series of communications between… Ocean’s Roar, and Profit’s Cadence. That gesture towards the… exchange of something. You know, you see… Ocean’s Roar saying like, “I can’t imagine what I could do with the whole thing.” Promising to deliver X number of units by… today. Actually probably by now, actually it’d probably be like yesterday or the day before and then a follow-up shipment by tomorrow. And you can kind of piece together that the Compel Project, as it is called, began the day after the first meeting—or not the first meeting but one of the meetings between Profit’s Cadence and Ocean’s Roar. And you can probably extrapolate that Compel could be the axiom in question. And it sounds as if the actual axiom is still in control—is still being controlled, or is still under the guard or whatever of Profit’s Cadence, but that Ocean’s Roar has part of it here.
[timestamp - 0:54:31]
ALI (intrigued tone): Mmm.
JACK: Hmm.
ALI (overlapping with Austin): Part of it…
AUSTIN: And you get the—you can see—so you don’t have the blueprints, the blueprints are stored downstairs. The blueprint is literally a… None of you—have any of you played EVE Online, ever? [pause] No? Fair. [Ali laughs softly] In EVE Online blueprints are really cool because they’re physical things, and you need a specific blueprint to produce something. You need to take a blueprint to a factory, and the factory can use the blueprint to produce a thing. It’s like a physical object, and that’s interesting because it could be destroyed, while you’re transporting it across the galaxy, right? And that’s the case here. The blueprint for the Compel Project is a single object that does not have a backup, that is by itself the one thing that is plugged into this… kind of, printer. This like—it’s basically a very fast 3D printer that’s downstairs. By the way, Grand, whatever—the stuff that they have here is so much more advanced than the stuff that you’ve ever used.
ART: It sounds very advanced.
AUSTIN: It’s—there’s like—I just want that image of you seeing video of them making stuff, and all of the technology, like you just see the list. There’s may—probably like a receipt list of all the technology they’ve brought in to do rapid quick-scale research development, you know, QA, prototyping, all that stuff. Like, materials testing. And all of it is stuff you wish you could have afforded ever, or like some of it didn’t exist until after the Miracle. I don’t know what you do with the information, I don’t know what—I’m curious what Grand’s feeling is about that.
ART: Um… I don’t—it’s hard to be jealous about things that you’ve told yourself you don’t want, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah. No. [laughs] I thought about it and was like [doubting] “Mmmmm.” I’ve been that person. I’ve been the person who’s like, “That’s my old life, fuck it,” and then also like, “But man…” But I think it’s fair for Grand to be the person who is like, “I’m not jealous.” Like sincerely.
ART: But it’s like—but it’s not like a lack, it’s like… It’s like nostalgia jealousy.
AUSTIN: Mmm. Mhmm. Yeah. That makes sense. Alright, I think—
ART (cutting in): Remembering what it felt like to be jealous.
AUSTIN: [laughs a bit] Right. Right, because it’s not that you had this stuff ever, but you do remember… being invested enough, to be jealous, about what other artists had access to. And that maybe is appealing.
ART (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Um… So any other questions here? You get two more questions here. That’s the big stuff for sure, so if you don’t have anything else that’s totally fine, but…
ART: Could we get like the—their schedules?
ALI: Yeah I was about to say the same thing.
AUSTIN: Sure. So—
ART: What their calendar looks like.
AUSTIN: They work—they normally work full-time days. The reason they’re not at the appointment yet is cause they’re both technically still on at Duality, right now. And are like rushing back for this appointment. [Jack laughs a bit] Because they have full-time jobs, right? And so they like took a half-day today, they’re taking a whole day off tomorrow for the open house. They’re normally—they work from 8:30 AM until 6:00 PM at Duality and then they spend from 6:30 until 10:00 here at Truance. And then they’re here all weekend. And then they both individually kind of try—clock out 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM on any given night. Even though they say they’re staying until 10:00. Anything else specifically? They like… They basically come in, go to their individual labs, meet up for lunch normally, at least a couple of times a week. Either in-house or they go to a nearby, you know, kind of… Food court, basically. Um… But like, they’re very heads-down, they’re both very much into their own research. They have some time every week to work with interns on their projects. Most of the intern projects seem like bullshit. And then they have like a bunch of guests scheduled for tomorrow. For the… open house.
ALI: Do we have like a list of people who are coming to the...
AUSTIN: Yeah. Totally.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: I’d say there are like, twelve people coming.
ALI (overlapping): Alright.
AUSTIN: And I’m debating whether or not—I’m gonna roll a fortune—I’m gonna roll some fortune die for y’all? To see if… Am I rolling for you or against you.
JACK: [laughs a bit] I ask that myself like always.
AUSTIN: I’m gonna roll one fortune die that way it’s kind of split down the middle here, as to— [doubtful] mmm.
ALI: I mean couldn’t we—
ART (overlapping with Ali): Can I start rolling against us? That seems like a good…
AUSTIN: [laughs] I think we all do that all the time. [Ali laughs] Ali, what were you gonna say?
ALI: I feel something that we’re doing is trying to see if there’s any Church of Self people coming and…?
AUSTIN: No Church of Self people coming.
ALI (overlapping): Okay.
AUSTIN: There are someone on this—there are people on this list who you would know.
ALI (overlapping): Okay.
AUSTIN: My question is whether or not they’re using pseudonyms [Ali laughs] that you wouldn’t know, or if you could crack their pseudonym. I think…. [sighs] What I want is for… What do I want here? How would you be able to crack—I think…
ALI: Just tell us. [laughs]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh, good roll.
ALI (laughing): Not the person but tell us the pseudonym.
[Jack laughs]
AUSTIN: No. So there’s one—there’s three people coming, who you could know.
ALI (overlapping): Okay.
AUSTIN: Art has a chance of knowing one of them. I think just give me gather information rolls here. Um… With study.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Roll your study. There’s no cost here, there’s no failure, except not recognizing it. Tender and Fourteen you each know—you each could know two of these people. And then Grand you could recognize—you could see through a third—one of the other ones.
JACK: Is this risky…?
AUSTIN: Nothing, it’s nothing.
ALI: Doesn’t matter.
AUSTIN: Doesn’t matter.
ART: Hi, I don’t have study.
AUSTIN: That’s fair, just hit the button.
ART (quietly): Oh…
ALI: I give up.
AUSTIN: Oh, so you—so only Fourteen knows. Um… [sighs]
ART: I don’t know that many people, I’m just gonna start thinking of people I know.
AUSTIN: Alright. That’s fine, that’s fine. [Ali and Jack laugh softly] Tender got a two, Fourteen got a five, and Grand got a three, cause—roll zero dice, take the lowest. Um… I’m now deciding which of these two you know. I think it makes more sense for you to recognize this name. Um… I think one of them—mmm, no then Ali would know it too, or then Tender would know it too. What’s a situation, Fourteen, that you and Chiron had together?
JACK: Hmmm… Did we…
AUSTIN: Like off-mic, off-camera, you know?
JACK: Oh. Okay. Um…
AUSTIN: Where y—where like—he would have slipped some information, that now he’s using as a fake name.
JACK: Yeah, it’s… I’m trying to think about when I’ve spent time with Chiron on-camera so I can say something, you know, relevant to that.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Mostly eating spaghetti, mostly hanging out at the—on the Beloved ship.
JACK (overlapping): Eating spaghetti. Hanging out.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: Yeah. It was—we played really bad board games with Waltz Tango Cache, right? That was him.
AUSTIN (overlapping with Jack): Yes. Yes.
ALI: Chiron was there too.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: Oh yeah?
AUSTIN: Yeah but that was—yeah it was Chiron, Waltz, and Morning’s Observation, were like, getting spaghetti and playing bad board games, yeah.
JACK: I think it’s… I think that it’s an arcade machine, that we played.
AUSTIN: Mmm.
JACK: In a… spaceport, while we were waiting for, you know, a shuttle or something.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Sounds good. Right. So it’s—
JACK: And it’s the name that they put in at the high score thing.
AUSTIN: Oh, good call, yes yes yes. Got you. Perfect. So yeah, you recognize that. It’s like, “Oh! Chiron’s gonna be here. Weird.”
JACK (vaguely as Fourteen): Huh. Okay. Hmm.
JACK: And I look at the other names and I’m like, and I recognize nobody else, cool and good.
AUSTIN: No, no… You’ll meet them soon enough.
JACK: Yep. [laughing] Okay.
AUSTIN: Any—on more question, for that earlier gather information roll? Feel like we got a lot there, but…
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Alright.
JACK: Part of me is like—oh, um—part of me is like… Is there any way we can see, via a blueprint or via a “Look what I saw on the factory floor” Instagram, like, locked instagram, of what this device looks like, what does the thing you hold in your hand look like.
AUSTIN: So, I described it last time, and basically said it looks like the plasma rifle from…
[Ali laughs]
JACK (overlapping with Austin): Oh, yeah! It’s the—from Halo.
AUSTIN: From Halo. Except, it’s—now that you see the real one, it’s like that, except at the very front it comes to a point. And that point is basically a laser pointer. Because like—
JACK: Oh, damn.
AUSTIN: You know what I mean?
JACK: God, I hate this gun.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Sorry it’s an energy rifle, not a plasma rifle, my bad.
ART (overlapping with Jack): God, Austin.
JACK: Okay. But it’s—so it’s the size of—
AUSTIN: Or… I think that’s right.
JACK: It’s like…
AUSTIN (faint): Is it? Or is it…
JACK: Like a foot and a half feet long, two feet long.
AUSTIN: Maybe it is a plasma rifle. It’s about a foot long, is what I would say. I like—I’d say it’s… Eh, it’s—yeah it’s like a foot and a half long, you’re right, you’re right, yeah.
JACK (overlapping): Okay.
AUSTIN: Plasma rifle was right, also, I was not right about that, thank you, Halo wiki.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: So like a grip in the middle with like two long—it’s like a horizontal top and a horizontal bottom, which are kind of the… where the machinery is, and the programming and stuff, and those kind of… Almost like a—kind of imagine an arrow on its side, like a bracket arrow, and then a brace between the two of them, that—where the grip is, where you’re holding it, kind of what I would say, think of it as.
JACK: This is the sort of gun that if you made it four hundred thousand times larger you’d be like, “Yes, a spaceship.”
AUSTIN: Yeah, 100%. [Ali laughs softly] Yes. Yes. And if you made it very small you’d say “That’s a bug.”
JACK (overlapping): You’ve got a bug there. That’s—[laughs]
AUSTIN (overlapping): “That has to be some sort of weird bug.”
JACK: That is what I call the perfect medium. [Austin laughing quietly] Make it very small, you’ve got a bug. [laughing] Make it very big, you’ve got a spaceship.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah.
[pause]
AUSTIN: So yeah, that’s—you definitely see it, there it is. You see test footage of it, like downstairs in the research—in the production lab. They’ve like—
JACK: It’s just like, terrifying, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s terrifying. [pause] And I wanna underscore this: has shipped units already to Profit’s Cadence.
JACK (overlapping): [tense inhale] Yeah. This thing is—
AUSTIN: Has a shipment out, has another shipment going out tomorrow.
JACK: Oh, god. Alright. Fourteen is now… [Ali laughs] Fourteen—ha ha.
AUSTIN: And according to the production rate, could be a lot of them. Because they have super like, advanced, small-scale production stuff downstairs. There isn’t one of these guns. There’s minimum dozens.
ALI: We—
JACK: Fuckin. [pause] Sorry, go on Ali.
ALI: Well we got to the bottom of—[laughing] we got to the bottom of it.
JACK: Fuckin hate the NEH.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JACK: Alright, who wants to sell some milk?
AUSTIN: Yeah Greel comes back with five different milks for you.
[Ali laughs]
JACK (amused): Ah!
AUSTIN: Is like,
AUSTIN (as Greel): [sniffs] Is there projection mist in the air? Were you guys testing the projectors out?
ALI (as Tender): I mean yeah we’re about to do this… This whole thing.
AUSTIN (as Greel): Good call.
AUSTIN: Takes out the notepad. “Test the projectors out.” Period.
JACK (as Fourteen): That one’s really important.
ALI (as Tender, overlapping): Yeah.
JACK (as Fourteen): Gotta make sure that—cause there’s nothing more embarrassing… You know you can do improv but you can only improv so far, right? You don’t want to improvise a projector.
AUSTIN (as Greel): Right. Of course, of course. Whole milk here, from cows. We got cow milk. Then when we have goat, also milk. Then—
JACK: The NEH—cause we’ve talked about how the Twilight Mirage is like, uses vegan produce, fairly consistently.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh yeah. Mhmm.
JACK: And the NEH just like, “This is from a cow.”
AUSTIN: This is from a cow. Cow milk. Like that’s the—that is what it is.
JACK (overlapping, laughing): God.
AUSTIN: They also—also gives you soy, and almond. And then… He says,
AUSTIN (as Greel): And then, here we go. A little mystery milk.
ALI (as Tender): Mystery…
JACK (as Fourteen): [quiet gasp] A mystery milk. Wow.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): I bet that one has coconut in it too.
JACK (as Fourteen, laughing): The other one didn’t have coconut.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): But it could have.
JACK (as Fourteen): Yeah that is true. Any… Greel, thanks so much. This has been—you’ve been so helpful. [pause] When does your internship end?
AUSTIN (as Greel): Um, couple more months, and then I’m going back home. You know.
JACK (as Fourteen): You coming into work tomorrow?
AUSTIN (as Greel): Yeah, of course, of course, of course. Seven days a week. You know, I kind of keep this place going, that’s what I always say anyway. When I call my mom, I say, “Hey, you know, they need me here.”
JACK (as Fourteen): [small laugh] Yeah.
ART (as Grand): Why did you laugh at that?
JACK (as Fourteen): I… I didn’t—it’s not funny, so much as—Grand. Don’t worry. It’s fine.
AUSTIN (as Greel): I’ll be back at the desk if you need anything. Uh…
AUSTIN: Checks his watch.
AUSTIN (as Greel): They should be here any—any minute. They’re just very busy, you know, they have very important projects, so… You know, uh… Management. Ha-ha.
JACK (as Fourteen): Yep.
AUSTIN: And then kind of—
JACK: As soon as he leaves, I’m like—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Slinks away. Yeah.
JACK (as Fourteen): We can’t tell him to leave. I thought you said that we weren’t warning anybody.
ART (as Grand): Who are you talking to?
ALI (as Tender, overlapping with Art/Grand): We aren’t. What are you talking about?
JACK (as Fourteen): W—he’s gonna be in, tomorrow. And we know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. So we could have just gotten someone, you know… out of the building. Was all I was thinking.
ART (as Grand): No, we have to think a little—we can—we can think a little bigger than that I think.
ALI (as Tender): Mhmm.
ART (as Grand): Also, sidebar, that kid’s gonna be terrible in business.
[Ali and Austin laugh]
JACK (as Fourteen): Oh, yeah, no, he’s gonna be the worst. He’s gonna be…
ART (as Grand): He hadn’t thought of test the proj—we had to teach him “test the projector”?
JACK (as Fourteen): I didn’t want to say anything, but it was…
ALI (as Tender): He’s maybe not had the on-the-ground training. It happens.
JACK (as Fourteen): And now he has. He’s had the on-the-ground training from four swindlers.
ALI (as Tender): Yeah.
JACK (as Fourteen): Which is, you know. I hope he makes it out.
ART (as Grand, overlapping with Austin/Morning’s): No one needed to teach me to test the projector.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): I’m not a swindler. Three swindlers.
[Jack and Ali laugh]
ALI (as Tender): Two swindlers.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): And a visionary.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Austin/Morning’s): Uh—okay.
[pause]
ALI (as Tender, quietly): Thank you.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): [deep breath] So, what do we do with this milk?
ART (as Grand): Turn it into a bar.
JACK (as Fourteen): No, oh… Wait, Tender—
AUSTIN (as Morning’s): Why’re you looking at me? Yeah, Tender!
ALI (as Tender): They’re not here. And we know that a ton of these guns are somewhere else. Do you wanna just ditch this meeting? [laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): Oh.
ART (as Grand): No cause then they’ll know—if we show up tomorrow after ditching the meeting they’ll know something’s up.
ALI (as Tender): Oh fair.
JACK (as Fourteen): Oh, that is true.
ALI (as Tender): We should delete this blueprint though. We should destroy it.
JACK (as Fourteen): We should destroy the gun blueprint?
ALI (as Tender): Yeah.
JACK (as Fourteen): I mean, this is…
ART (as Grand): We should steal the gun blueprint.
JACK (as Fourteen): No no no, no. No.
ALI (as Tender, overlapping with Jack/Fourteen): No.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): No, we should destroy this blueprint.
ALI (as Tender): Yeah.
JACK (as Fourteen): No. The only thing is when do we destroy it? Do we destroy it now, or we do destroy it once we’re done with the presentation and everything and can—
ALI (as Tender): As we see—okay, we can—when we’re done with the presentation.
JACK (as Fourteen): Cause what if an alarm goes off or something?
ART (as Grand): We’re not trying to sell this milk thing, right? Like none of you were thinking that next week you’re gonna be executives at Milk Bar Co., right?
JACK (as Fourteen): I wanna get a—
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Calciyummm. Get it right, three Ms.
JACK (as Fourteen): Calciyummm.
ART (as Grand): Well that’s the product name, that doesn’t have to be the name of the company.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Morning’s Observation Milk Company is the name of the company.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Art/Grand): I just—I wanna be able—
ART (as Grand): You’re gonna be mil—MOMCO?
[everyone laughs]
ALI (as Tender): Yes we are.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Yes we are.
[Ali laughs loudly]
JACK (as Fourteen): Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): There’s nothing wrong with a mom. [Ali continues laughing in background] That’s my motto. Actually my—I’ve already established that the motto is actually um…
AUSTIN: Looks down at his lapel.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Austin): “Bona fide”!
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Bona fide, good faith. Milk.
[pause]
[Ali takes a breath]
JACK (as Fourteen): I just wanna see these people face-to-face, is the thing.
ALI (as Tender): I mean, same. But yeah we’re gonna bullshit this presentation cause who cares. Hang out. Try to find the half of this axiom that’s here. And the blueprint, and destroy it, and then… Bingo bongo we’re done. [kind of laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): Then we can show up tomorrow and stop the attack.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Why don’t we just go get it right now, and then leave?
ART (as Grand): We can’t all go. Someone needs to be here to pitch this milk thing.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Well I need to be here for the milk thing. And my visionary should probably be here.
ALI (as Tender): Hey Grand you wanna go to the car? Wink.
AUSTIN (as Morning’s): And the driver should probably… not be here. Is what I’m saying.
ART (as Grand): Alright. Bye. [Ali laughs] I guess I will go do this by myself.
JACK (as Fourteen): Oh, well, hang on, let’s not get so hasty here. Are you sure you don’t wanna do a milk presentation?
ART (as Grand): I do. I—like, I really wanna do the milk presentation.
ALI (as Tender, sympathetic): Ohh, okay, you can stay here for that.
ART (as Grand): But it’s not good… cri—criminaling slash saving people, to like, do the—this is the prestige, someone’s gotta put the rabbit into the hat.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): What—what?
JACK (as Fourteen): It’s a magic metaphor I think but it kind of came out of left field.
ART (as Grand): It is a magic metaphor. It was wonderful.
ALI (as Tender): I’m catching everything you’re throwing. Morning’s, as your visionary, I am gonna do a lap around this facility to see if it’ll vibe with your mental energy.
JACK (as Fourteen): Oh!
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Who’s gonna make the milk bar? [kind of laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): Oh…
ALI (as Tender): We can do—okay—I’m gonna—you know what, we can spy after the meeting, it’s the first idea that had, we’re gonna start spying after the meeting.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping with Ali/Tender): Oh. No no no. No. [no longer overlapping] What did we tell Greel? We can just roll with it. So, hear me out. “Okay, welcome. Hello. Thanks for coming. Now watch as our visionary helps—you know, turn your office milk into great milk. And now, as a show of—that we mean business, our visionary’s gonna do a walk around the—“ What did you call it? Tender?
ALI (as Tender): Oh, the—
JACK (as Fourteen): Then you leave at that point. [Ali laughs] Cause then you get to shake hands and say hi. And then, you know. Morning can just, you know, vamp, until you get back, or until the alarm goes off.
ALI (as Tender): This is perfect.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Okay.
ALI (as Tender, overlapping with Austin): This is perfect.
ART (as Grand): I don’t think anyone doubts Morning’s’ ability to vamp.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): I’m the number one vamper.
ALI (as Tender): Oh yeah?
ART (as Grand): I’m saying.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Did you know, for instance, that “bona fide” means “good faith” in Latin?
ART (as Grand): You don’t need to vamp us, we need to go.
[Ali laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): No we don’t need to go—oh okay. So, you—
ALI (as Tender, overlapping with Jack/Fourteen): In like twenty minutes.
AUSTIN (also overlapping): The door opens.
[Ali laughs]
[timestamp - 1:12:48]
AUSTIN: And in come Wind’s Poem and Ocean’s Roar. Ocean’s Roar is like—is in tight-fitting jeans that he just changed into. Because part of the benefit of having your own company is you don’t need to be dressed business casual. So he has on like tight jeans and a kind of loose-fitting shirt with like a—loose-fitting silk, red shirt with really billowy arms, like billowy cuffs, his cuffs just billow out, it doesn’t make any sense. Wind’s Poem is wearing like, very high-waisted, um, denim paints, that have built-in suspenders to the degree that they almost look like overalls but they’re not. And then under that she has like a white drapey shirt. But that shirt also seems to like wrap out around her, and is also a lab coat. It doesn’t also make any sense. [Ali laughs] Her hair again is like curly and voluminous and down, and has like—it was green, it was like blue-green, but the blue-green is fading and it’s going back to its natural brown. And they are both clearly like just getting here from work and are like, [sighs]. Wind’s Poem is like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Thank you so much, for waiting. So excited to see you both—or all of you, all of you here. I’ve heard so many things about your project. Your interns—your interns, our interns, um… Sorry let me catch my breath, let’s start over. I’m Wind’s Poem. This is my cousin, and my co-researcher Ocean’s Roar. We’ve heard great things about your project, we have interns kind of dedicated to going through all of the submissions and figuring out ones that have any potential. And… Your team’s seems… very interesting, very in line with our values here at Truance. Um… How are you all doing today?
ART (as Grand, exaggerated tone): Oh, man! I forgot my inside sunglasses in the car. I’m gonna be right back, I can’t see shit right now.
ART: And I walk out of the room.
[pause, Ali laughing very faintly]
AUSTIN (as Poem): [muttering faintly] Inside sun—? [normal volume] Yeah okay.
AUSTIN: I think you say that and then Ocean’s Roar is like, snaps his fingers, and then takes out his pair of inside sunglasses and puts them on.
[Jack and Ali laugh softly]
ART (as Grand): Yeah see? That guy’s got it going on, I don’t look like an asshole. I’ll be right back.
AUSTIN (as Poem): So, um, who was th—who was that?
JACK (as Fourteen): That was my client’s driver.
AUSTIN (as Poem): I see.
JACK (as Fourteen): Greg… Uh… Rob, uh, Robin.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Greg Robin.
JACK (as Fourteen): Yes. Two first names.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Got you. Well, you must then be…
JACK (as Fourteen): My name is Rebecca Helps. I am my client’s lawyer.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Pleasure to meet you.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping): That’s—
AUSTIN: And Wind’s Poem shakes your hand.
JACK (as Fourteen): And this is my client, um… Well I’ll let you introduce yourself.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): My name’s Morning, Morning’s Observation.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping): Okay.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): And I’m here to change what you think about milk.
JACK (as Fourteen): We’re also joined—
AUSTIN: We get like—we get Wind’s Poem like—and Ocean’s Roar, like looking at each other, and Wind’s Poem’s eyebrows just go all the way up, like [Ali laughing] “Oh woooord. Oh he got—oh he confidant. Okay.”
JACK (as Fourteen): We’re also joined by my client’s, uh… resident visionary. [pause] If you’d like to introduce yourself?
ALI (vaguely as Tender, whispering): I didn’t think of a code name. [laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): This is—this is… Matilda, or Matild Lacesmouth.
ALI (as Tender): You can just call me Laces.
AUSTIN: What type of shoes do—are your shoes wearing lace—you don’t have laced shoes right now do you?
ALI: [laughs] I could. I think that I do, I think that I’m wearing… Like, heeled boots.
AUSTIN: Mhmm.
ALI: And the laces are… They change, when she says “You can call me Laces.” [laughs]
AUSTIN (overlapping with Ali): Oooh.
[Jack laughs]
AUSTIN: Damn.
ALI (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Wind’s—okay so, Poem is like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Oh I see why. [Ali laughing] Okay. Damn. I’ve been to a bunch of these meetings, I’ve never shown off like that! Nice to meet you all. We—just a little bit about us before we begin. My cousin and I came from Earth, and we know, like, I know there’s a mix of folks here, not everybody here is part of the Hegemony, there’s some people here on work visas. You know, I’ve been on a visa before, I think that’s great, I think that is—that shows a lot of initiative, and ingenuity, and energy. And… I just want to be clear, everyone here is on equal footing. It takes a lot of people to put together a project like this. But you know we—
AUSTIN: And then Ocean’s Roar says,
AUSTIN (as Roar): I think what my cousin is saying is, you know, let’s get to it. We all have things to do today so let’s just start. Show us the milk.
AUSTIN: And she’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): [sighs] Y—be happy to hear your presentation, while we wait for your driver to come back with his inside sunglasses.
[Ali laughs faintly]
AUSTIN: Grand, what are you doing?
ART: I’m trying to fi—I’m gonna go steal the gun.
AUSTIN: Okay. So you step outside, there are two Torch Units in this long hallway.
ART: Mhmm.
AUSTIN: And at the end there is a door that is locked, that is bio-locked, that is the stairwell down to the next floor. What do you do?
ART: That’s a great question.
[Ali laughs]
ART: But I just want everyone to remember that I did a great job of getting out of that room.
AUSTIN: Oh, incredible work.
[Ali continues laughing]
JACK: And so suddenly as well. So suddenly.
ART: I mean that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have a plan.
AUSTIN: Mmm. Mhmm.
ART: Um… I wanna like flashback to having something that I don’t think exists or is possible for me to have.
AUSTIN: Like?
ART: But I would like some sort of… Glove that mimics bio-locks.
AUSTIN: Huh.
ART: So that I could have gotten the biosignature when I shook hands with people at the—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Shook hands.
AUSTIN: Yeah. So, we can do this. The way this works is there is a move you can do that’s traditionally a downtime action, that—which means you can do it but as a—it has to be a flashback. Right? So you have to pay… I think it’s one stress, let me check really quick. Yes, you can flashback to a downtime activity by paying cred as normal. So you can spend one cred to do the following thing. Which “Acquire assets. Gain temporary use of an asset. Examples: a contractor like an expert or a gang, a ground vehicle or legal ship module, one special item or a set of common items for the whole crew. A service like transport or anything like that. Temporary use is one significant period of use that makes sense for the asset, typically the duration of one job. An asset may also be acquired for standby use in the future. You might hire a gang to guard your ship for example, and they’ll stick around until after the first serious battle, or until a week goes by and they lose interest.” So one cred to do this, to begin with.
ART: Alright. I had one cred so that’s…
AUSTIN: Oh that’s just gone now huh?
ART (overlapping): Yep. How do I—
AUSTIN: Okay. “To acquire the asset roll crew quality. The result indicates the quality of the asset you get using the crew’s quality as the base. A roll of one to three is one lower than your crew quality, a four to five is equal, a six is quality plus one, and a critical would be quality plus two. The GM may set a minimum quality level to acquire a particular asset, for example if you want to get a Legion 51 uniform and badge you need to acquire a Tier 3 asset, a lower result just won’t do.” Blah blah blah blah, if you wanted to get the same thing again, that’s fine, and then it’s a long-term project to keep it forever. So your crew quality is a two? It’s a one. Alright, so that means you roll one die by default for this, Art. You could spend another cred to get another die on this. Or—actually you could spend a—
ART: I believe we’ve covered that I’m out of cred.
AUSTIN: You could take one from the pool.
ALI: Yeah. Also you can take the gambit that I didn’t use.
AUSTIN: True. I actually—yeah, yes, you could totally do that, yes. In fact you can spend cred to just increase this. What I’m gonna say is you need to get a Tier 2 on this, which means you need to get a six, to get the thing that you’re looking for here. So it might be wise to spend a cred to advance the level of success here, afterwards. But you definitely should spend a gambit to get that second die.
ART: Alright, I’ll spend the gambit.
AUSTIN: So that means it’s a 2d6.
ART: Can I take stress to get another one?
AUSTIN: Yes. So 3d6.
ART (overlapping, quiet): Bump that to…
AUSTIN: So what you need here is—you need… Either two sixes or—no you either need a six or five but then spend a credit—a four or five and then spend a credit from the vault.
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: Hey! Two sixes!
JACK: Woah.
ART: Two sixes.
AUSTIN: That’s a crit, actually!
JACK: Oh, does that generate a gambit?
AUSTIN: No, it does more than that. We’ve never gotten a crit before. I actually don’t know if you can crit on this roll, let’s see. [Ali laughs sadly] I’m gonna let you crit on this roll somehow I just don’t know how off the top of my head, maybe you get to save some sort of... something. Because it’s not like an action roll, you only generate—you’re supposed to only generate gambits on action rolls is the thing.
ART: Well it says I may generate gambits if I spend a gambit.
AUSTIN: True, that is true about you.
ART: That’s like not what it means, I’m like deliberately misreading this [laughing] to get that interpretation but like…
AUSTIN (overlapping with Art): No. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Here we go, acquire assets. Link back around, here we go. On a critical it’s quality plus two. So what I think it is—it’s like—so it’s like a weird bio-glove is basically what you have?
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And they’re like driving gloves but they like, quickly take the biodata of whoever’s hand you shake?
ART: Yeah and they look exactly like the gloves that Ryan Gosling wore in the movie Drive.
AUSTIN: Got you, well those are fine driving gloves now.
ART: They sure are.
AUSTIN: And they’re fine bio—you—I’m gonna say you get to keep them.
ART (overlapping): Everything I have is fine.
AUSTIN: Okay. Well you get to keep them as driving gloves, they only have the use for this one mission for the bio-thing but you’re gonna be able to keep using them throughout this mission. So they’re not one-use in the sense that now throw them out, they will last you for this—the rest of this mission. And… Yeah they’re quality two, go ahead and take that—I’m gonna let y’all keep that gambit. Even though I think that that’s bending the rules here, on a critical I wanna lean in, I’m a fan of the players. Keep that critical, keep that gambit. So yeah. You have it. So do you just walk over and fucking hit the door?
ART: Yeah just, “Yo Torch Units what up I’m supposed to be here. Look the bio-lock says so.”
AUSTIN: And it’s like [imitates electronic beep] and then opens. And one of the Torch Units just like—Broccoli turns it’s head towards you and is like, [similar but lower beep], and then looks away like, “Alright I guess the door opened.” Very confused.
ART: That’s what I thought.
AUSTIN: And you head downstairs. It’s another narrow hallway and—but then it opens up—
ART: Oh I wish I was less dressed just any bit less conspicuously.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah, you look like a complete fucking goofball.
[Ali laughs]
ART: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
AUSTIN: You head downstairs, and you see it ends up being a pretty sizable production facility. You know I would say it’s like the size of like… I’m thinking of things that are universal in size. Cause as always Austin doesn’t really know like, feet. Um… Like a basketball court, like an outdoor basketball court.
ART: Okay, indoor and outdoor basketball courts are the same size.
AUSTIN: No because when I say indoor I’m gonna start projecting the size of an entire gym, and I just mean the court. Do you know what I mean?
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: So just the court.
ART: Alright.
AUSTIN: And there is a production facility—there is like a production machine that is currently printing out these guns. And there are two interns here who are sitting at desks, looking at computer screens, and have not quite yet noticed you come in, you’re able to like “Oh!” and like hide behind the wall of the stairwell down. And they are looking at… Documents on screens. And are caught up there, but like, you can see the machine in the back, but it’s like, in the back, printing these out, and then a little robot comes over, and grabs a pallet of them when it’s done and then slides it over to—slides them into a like… A transport case, at the far end of the room, closer to you, that has like a… It has like a big, kind of a shipping… container, but then also a shipping door, like a door like at a shipment facility that can kind of go up on, can kind of be lifted up like a garage door. And you know from doing this job for a long time that this is just going to open up and then connect to a shipping drone that will take it wherever it goes once the order is filled.
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: So. And it’s like… This is moving at a rate that’s like, oh it’s delivering dozens of these a day at least. Hundreds of these a day probably. It’s making a new one of these guns once every… You know, ten minutes or something. It’s receiving new… It’s receiving new material, like at a much more limited time, so it’s caught by—it’s limited by that, it’s capped by how much material can come in. And maybe you even see one of these robots receive from one of those same shipping doors, you know, a pile of materials that comes in from one of these other shipping drones. And like the door opens—it’s almost like a dumbwaiter but for, like, flying drones that show up—like big flying drones, I’m imagining them almost like the size of—you know like, a shipping container? You know like a big… Like a big shipping container.
ART (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: You know the things that lift those, on docks?
ART (overlapping): Oh, sure.
AUSTIN: Like a crane, like a—
ART: Like forklifts and cranes and junk, yeah.
AUSTIN: But specifically you know the kind that are shipping container cranes that are almost like… They hang down from the top and there’s like the kind of four—they like clip onto the four edges of a shipping container, you know?
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: If you look this up. It’s like that but it can fly under its own power. And so like those show up with one of those kind of shipping containers attached, and it opens up—like kind of a smaller version of that opens up, and then, you know, materials come out, or they put in the guns and take them off. And so like, these are being sent off as we speak.
ART: For anyone listening who might not be sports-inclined, a basketball court in the—an American basketball court is 94 feet by 50 feet.
AUSTIN: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. 100 by 50 was about what I was gonna guess at and I’m glad that that’s not complete…
ART: An international basketball court is slightly smaller.
AUSTIN: Mhmm. [pause] Okay. So, let’s hop back up to the milk pitch and then we’ll come back down. [pause] How’s it going? Up here?
[Ali laughs faintly]
[timestamp - 1:27:44]
AUSTIN (as Poem): So um… Calciyum, huh?
AUSTIN (as Morning's): With three Ms.
AUSTIN: Says Morning’s Observation.
JACK (as Fourteen): It’s very important, the three Ms. Branding, as I’m sure you are aware, is central to… the success of any product.
ALI (as Tender): Well we aspire to making milk more approachable, you understand.
JACK (as Fourteen, overlapping): Yeah!
ALI (as Tender): So.
JACK (as Fourteen): Physically.
ALI (as Tender): Friendly, inviting, interactive. All of these words should be spinning in your mind as go through this presentation.
AUSTIN (as Roar, overlapping some): It’s the interactivity that I don’t quite grip.
AUSTIN: Says Ocean’s Roar.
AUSTIN (as Roar): You touch the milk? Maybe a demonstration is in order.
ALI (as Tender): Oh by all means. Um… What—so, our driver [laughs] just left because he did not have his indoor sunglasses. What if he went into a Calciyummm facility and had that same problem?
ALI (laughing a lot): I would like to make some sort of a roll to create, like, sunglasses, please.
AUSTIN: I hate this.
[Ali and Art laugh]
AUSTIN: Which milk are you using?
ART (overlapping with Austin): Are these sunglasses for viewing milk? [Austin and Ali laugh] Or… for made out of milk?
JACK: It has to be the mystery milk, if only because I wanna roll three flavor dice again.
AUSTIN: [sighs] So—
ART: Is it gonna be three flavor dice or should it be two flavor dice and an animal?
[Ali and Jack laugh]
AUSTIN (overlapping with laughter): I hate this. I hate everything.
JACK: Two flavor dice and a…
ALI (overlapping with Jack): And a protein, and a protein.
AUSTIN: I think what I want you to do, is… You have an option here. I’m gonna say this is an attune roll to do it this one time. Or—
JACK: Attune with the milk.
AUSTIN: Or it’s Way Of The Depths and it holds for the rest of this sequence. Which is to say you wanna make glasses, you can make glasses. You wanna make a milk sword you can make a milk sword, [Ali laughs] you wanna make a milk tree you can make a milk tree, but that’s a Way Of The Depths roll. Do you know what I mean?
ALI: I always—I mean this is a whole…
AUSTIN: It’s a whole thing.
ALI: It’s a whole thing.
AUSTIN: So yeah let’s do the Way Of The Depths, push yourself, so two stress.
ALI (laughing): Okay, I feel like you tricked me.
AUSTIN: I—that’s how this move works, “You can push yourself to draw upon [Jack and Ali laugh] the residual emotion of an area to manipulate solid matter and create weapons, tools, structures, or shapes. Position and effect are determined by degree of residual emotional energy.” What’s the emotional energy of this place like?
ALI: Um… It’s weird because I think of how poisoned my mind is by… working retail? [laughs] Um. And I think it’s like—there’s obviously like a nervous energy, right?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm.
ALI: Where like, I don’t know that anyone who walks into this building feels relaxed.
AUSTIN: Like especially this room, which is like, the guest laboratory where people come to make pitches, there is probably a lot of nervous energy here. Are you like drawing that energy out of the room, or are you just kind of witnessing it?
ALI: I don’t think that it like removes it, right?
AUSTIN: Okay—yeah, I’m asking, yeah.
ALI: Yeah. No, I don’t think that it does.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: But yeah I—but also kind of like… The like, “Oh I’m gonna make it big” right? It’s like watching an episode of Shark Tank.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right.
ALI: And being like, “I hope they pull through.”
AUSTIN: Right.
ALI: Or, “This is gonna be my big break.” Anyway, I’m just attuning here?
AUSTIN: You—uhh, I think it’s attune or is it rig, cause you’re building something.
ALI (overlapping, faint): Sure...
AUSTIN: It does say “Although you may still need to make rig or scrap rolls using the tools or weapons.”
ALI: That’s to use—so if I wanted to put this—
AUSTIN (overlapping): You’re right, you’re right. Yes.
ALI: Yes. That’s to use them, yeah.
AUSTIN: You’re right. You’re right. So attune, attune.
ALI: [laughs] Kay. So it’s a risky…
AUSTIN: It’s a risky… It’s definitely risky, it’s risky standard, with +1—well, you’re pushing yourself, so you can either have +1 effect or +1 die. Up to you.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Which one are you taking?
ALI: Um… It was +1 effect or plus… one die?
AUSTIN (overlapping): One on the roll yeah. +1 die or +1 effect. I think plus—so either raise it from risky standard to risky great or keep it at risky standard but get a +1 on the roll.
ALI: I’m gonna take +1 cause I don’t wanna fail this.
AUSTIN: Fair. So 3d6. Is anyone helping?
JACK: Yes.
AUSTIN: How are you helping?
JACK: Um… I think I’m being supportive. I think… What this involves is drawing the attention of Wind’s Poem and Ocean’s Roar when things aren’t going so well.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Ah. Good.
JACK: And giving the attention when they are going well. Just you know like, good presentation things of just you know, saying like, “Now let’s look over here at this as we talk about this.”
AUSTIN (overlapping some): You’re like misdirection in stage magic, basically.
[Ali laughs]
JACK: Yeah, right, yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Alright, yeah I love it.
JACK: While Ali is frantically trying make some [laughing] sunglasses.
AUSTIN: Some sunglasses out of milk. 4d6, let’s do it. That’s another bonus die. Whoa, that was so bad for so long but there’s a six in there.
ALI (overlapping): Uh-huh. There is. [laughs]
AUSTIN: One, two, one, six, that’s another gambit, you earned a gambit back.
JACK: So I take one stress as a result of helping.
AUSTIN (overlapping): As a result of helping yeah.
JACK: This is kind of stressful.
AUSTIN: Hey, listen, that was that fourth die. [Ali laughs] That’s the die that was a success.
JACK: Yeah.
ALI (overlapping): Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: That worked out. Look at you. Um… So tell me how this goes?
ALI: Fantastically.
AUSTIN: What’s it—what do the milk glasses look like?
ART: Great answer, Ali.
[Ali and Jack laugh]
ALI: I mean this is a joke, this is a joke starting thing, right?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yes.
ALI: Where it’s like, oh, I made these glasses, and you can, you know—I think that’s actually the thing, is that like, she’s able to make them where it’s almost like—you know how chocolate can get… You have to heat it a certain way so it’ll get like…
JACK (overlapping): You mean like, tempered?
ALI: Yes. And it’s tempered like plastic sunglasses would be. And it’s like, oh it’s milk and you can take a bite out of it, and like, oh they’re sunglasses, and then it’s like, what if you needed a scarf and [laughing] you can make a milk scarf.
JACK: Oh my god.
[Ali says something else, indistinguishable through laughter]
JACK: I hate this product.
ALI (laughing): What if you wanted to make a thing you didn’t have to wear? Here’s a pencil.
AUSTIN: Ocean’s Roar is like, beside himself in like how banal this is. [Ali laughs] Wind’s Poem is kind of into it? And she’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Wait wait wait wait wait. Make a longer scarf.
ALI (as Tender): Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Because, you know Skein doesn’t get cold but if this gonna go well I could imagine selling this other places, I could imagine people on Thyrsus would maybe wear this, and they’d say like, oh hey you’re out on the snowy tundra or whatever—does it snow on the tundra? I always get confused. Um…
ALI (as Tender): Tundra’s snow, yes.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Okay well, you could be cold but then also have Calciyummm with you, that way on your way home from being out in the snow and doing whatever, you come in, you have—you start eating the Calciyummm on the way home. So to be warmer you get a longer scarf. We could just get more milk.
AUSTIN: And she like buzzes, hits a button on her collar and like, says,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Greel could you go out to the store and get… a few more gallons. Just, whatever they have.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: And Greel’s like,
AUSTIN (as Greel): Uh, yeah, oh—yeah, yeah of course. Of course.
AUSTIN: How—how long is this presentation?
ALI: Um…
ART: [laughs] I mean stretch, guys. I need time to—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah.
ALI: [laughs] I mean, until we get a signal from Grand, basically.
JACK (as Fourteen): I’d like to talk a little about the legal practices involved in the production and creation of milk-based products. This is the Gift-3—
AUSTIN (as Poem, cutting off Fourteen): Honey, honey, honey, honey, honey. It’s fine. You know? You sign the documents, it’ll be fine. I don’t need to worry about the milk production. We’re artists. You figure that out, I trust you, obviously, but. I’m… Observation… Matilda—Laces, Laces.
ALI (as Tender): Thank you, thank you.
AUSTIN (as Poem): You’re the people. You’re the minds. I wanna hear more, I wanna h—I need to—[takes a breath] How are you doing this?
[pause]
ALI (as Tender): That’s an excellent question. [laughs]
AUSTIN (as Morning's): No that’s a secret.
AUSTIN: Says Morning’s Observation.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): That’s closely held, this was why we brought our lawyer, obviously. Rebecca, who is… Who—right Rebecca? That’s a secret? It’s a—what do they call that?
JACK (as Fourteen): Yes.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Pat—a patent? Uh…
JACK (as Fourteen): Well our preferred term is secret.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Right. It’s a secret.
AUSTIN: She says,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Okay, okay. Well—
AUSTIN: What were you gonna say? Tender?
ALI: I was gonna say,
ALI (as Tender): We don’t talk about those things until papers get signed.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Okay, okay, I was just thinking… A little… like, you show me how you do it and then I come back and I can show you some stuff I’m working on, because it’s similar, kind of, and I’m curious if there’s an overlap, and we could—just as scientists, as artists, not as like, competitors all the time. You know?
ART: That’s honestly sweet.
[Ali laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): I don’t know why you think they brought a lawyer.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Because it’s… [pause] You know how Skein is. And…
ART: Why y’all being so mean?
AUSTIN (as Poem): And the Hegemony, and… You know how we are sometimes, I know. I know. Why do you think I came here? Cause I wanna get a little—trying to get a little freer, me and my cousin have ideas about stuff but back home, it’s like... You know, you have to go through a corporation who owns your shit. And like even this… We should talk. Later. Right, Ocean? Right Roar? Right—
AUSTIN: Actually she calls him “Roary,” 100%. She says,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Right Roary?
AUSTIN: And he’s like,
AUSTIN (as Roar): [sighs] Listen, I’m gonna go take care of some stuff. Y’all have fun with your milk. Alright?
AUSTIN: And she’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Alright. I’ll catch you up. Have fun at work.
AUSTIN: [laughs] And he’s like, you’re not supposed to tell them that! That I have another job! And he leaves. And he steps out the door, and you see him like… Shake his head as he’s leaving. [pause] Grand. What is your plan downstairs?
[timestamp - 1:37:38]
ART: I would like to find a way to break the delivery drone.
AUSTIN: Oh, interesting. Okay.
ART (overlapping): Which I—
AUSTIN: So you’re like waiting for it to arrive and like, fucking with it?
ART: Yeah I think I wanna just like—what if it just crashed? What if it blew up, you know? What if it—
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: What if it flew into the ocean?
AUSTIN: Sure. I mean you’re above the ocean now, so, yes. [pause] What—how are you doing it? And how are you doing it without being caught? From the two people in this big room?
[pause]
ART: Well. I [laughing a bit] think it’s obvious, dressed the way I am, that I’m a mechanic.
AUSTIN (amused): Uh-huh.
ART: Here to work… You know, someone called in. And uh…
AUSTIN (overlapping some): Oh so you’re—okay, you’re gonna get up and do this bit. You’re gonna tell them you’re supposed to be here.
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: Because I am supposed to be here.
AUSTIN: Let’s do that bit, let’s—
ART (overlapping): Alright.
AUSTIN: So you just walk around the corner basically?
ART: Yeah. I mean I just, I walk in like I’m supposed to—like I don’t even stop, I’m just like… You know?
AUSTIN (as intern): S—sir? Sir. Sir. Sir.
ART (as Grand): Yeah, mmhm?
AUSTIN: And one of the people gets up and it is a… It’s a woman with like shoulder-length red hair, and… Just like a lab coat on, and a very puffy purple sweater underneath. And a pair of black slacks. And she’s like,
AUSTIN (as intern): Sir, um, excuse me, sir, do you have clearance to be down here? Ummmmmm.
ART (as Grand, overlapping): Of course I do.
ART: Keeps walking.
AUSTIN (as intern): The—sir, what… [Ali laughing in background] Cody, what are we supposed to—
AUSTIN: And he’s li—Cody is like, [vague noncommittal sounds], is like, type type type type type, type type type.
ART (as Grand): I’m here to work on the—the drone’s got a problem flying in, they need someone to check on it before it flies back out, it’s very time-sensitive, I’m sorry I don’t mean to be rude.
AUSTIN (as unnamed intern): Do you have…
AUSTIN: Give me a roll.
ART: What am I rolling?
AUSTIN (uncertainly): That feels like sway to me? It’s not consort, you don’t know her.
ART (overlapping): Alright, I’m great at sway.
AUSTIN: Yeah, alright. So that’s risky standard. For sure. You have two gambits.
ART: This is probably worth one. [laughs] Guys?
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah, I’d say so.
ALI, JACK (overlapping with Austin): Mhmm.
ALI: It’s the one you made.
AUSTIN: Alright, you got a five. So she says, um… Let’s see. She says,
AUSTIN (as intern): Um, okay, but I’m gonna need to put down your name, and um… I just need a proof of visit, I need a receipt on this. Okay?
ART (as Grand): Oh sure, no problem.
AUSTIN (as intern): What’s the… Can I have your information?
ART: I almost said “Gig Kephart” and that doesn’t actually help me.
AUSTIN: Not this time, no. You do have the forged doc—
ART (laughing, overlapping with Austin): That’s just been my default.
AUSTIN: You do have those forged documents still.
ART: Yeah, I sure do. Here are my forged documents. I don’t say that of course. But,
AUSTIN (overlapping): Uh-huh.
ART (as Grand): Yeah here are my papers. As you can see my name is… Mac McHenry. [Austin laughs] And I am a drone repairman.
AUSTIN (as intern, quietly to herself): Okay, Mac McHenry, okay…
AUSTIN: You hand those over—
ART (as Grand): Call me Henry.
AUSTIN (as intern): Henry—Mac “Henry” McHenry.
ART (as Grand): No no—yeah, I guess, but don’t say it like that.
AUSTIN (as intern): Okay.
AUSTIN: You got a five, which is complication, so the complication is, your wanted level continues to go up, as this runs in the—where did you get these documents from?
ART: Um…. By swindling the real Mac McHenry?
AUSTIN: Ah, there it is, there it is. [laughs] Somewhere on some… You know, database somewhere, later when she puts these in, when she puts this name in, or maybe she already does it, and it comes back like, “Oh yeah hey yeah you’re legit. “ Like it says you’re legit. But somewhere Beatrice Temperance, you know, sees that Mac McHenry’s papers were used after they were supposed to be stolen and has the old registration number on it, or something. You know.
ART (overlapping): Sure.
AUSTIN: So, your heat goes up. Marching you quicker and quicker to that second wanted level on Skein.
ART: Luckily everyone has to deal with the results of this, I don’t have to…
AUSTIN (overlapping with Art): Yep. Uh-huh. Not just you.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Alright. So then, you just kind of like wait for the drone to show up, and it does, and it like delivers a new batch of materials. And you can see that this drone is owned by the Church of the Self, it has the diamond-shaped icon, that is… Kind of marks all of the drone—all the Church of the Self stuff. What do you do with it?
ART: Yeah I just—I make it so it’ll fly fine for let’s say five minutes, and then stop flying.
AUSTIN: Give me a—
ART: I think it’s really just like, messing with the fuel pump.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Okay so it’s like—
ART: Like, it has the fuel it has in it right now, and then it doesn’t have any more fuel.
AUSTIN: Mhmm. Give me—
ART: It’s going down.
AUSTIN: Give me a rig.
ART: Alright. What am I—
AUSTIN: Again, risky standard. Your two rig.
ART: I feel okay with two.
AUSTIN: Yeah? You don’t wanna push? You don’t wanna… spend a gambit, etcetera?
ART: I’ll take a stress.
AUSTIN: Okay. So two stress, two stress for one die.
ART: Okay. Oh I lost my thing, where’d my thing go?
AUSTIN: I don’t know.
ART: Dammit.
AUSTIN: Oh. Two, four, four. So a four. That’s a success, four or five is success it’s just a success that’s not a complete success. So… “You do it but there’s a consequence: you suffer harm, a complication occurs, you have reduced effect, you end up in a desperate position.” Um… Hmm. You do it, and a complication occurs. So you… You hit the thing and—are you just leaving immediately basically?
ART: Yeah, pretty much.
AUSTIN: Alright. So you fix it, it takes the next load of guns to carry back out to the church. You’re pretty sure it’s good to go, it’s gonna crash into the water, and you begin to, like, head up the stairs and out. And you close the door behind you. And you’re walking down the hallway. And then you see Ocean’s Roar open the door to his—come out of his room, with like his jacket and stuff, because he’s about to go back to work at Duality. And he sees you—like he doesn’t see you come through the door, but he does see you near the door. And he’s like,
AUSTIN (as Roar): Uhh, excuse me. You’re the driver, right?
ART (as Grand): Yeah, I got—I came back in, I got my—these are my inside sunglasses, and I can’t figure out what room we were in.
AUSTIN: Do you have a r—do you have inside sunglasses?
ART: These were always my inside sunglasses.
AUSTIN: But—hmm. [laughs] Okay. He’s like… I think this is probably another sway, to make sure you get this one over on him? Still risky, still risky standard.
ART: I’m not gonna take any gambits on—I’m not gonna do anything for this one, cause if he doesn’t buy it, I think I might just shoot him.
AUSTIN: Oh my god…
[pause]
ART: Guys, we’re criminals.
JACK: I’m not like opposed to that as a plan, sort of conceptually.
AUSTIN: Y’all are supposed to st—okay. 2d6.
ALI: We’re stopping people from getting shot.
AUSTIN: Yes.
JACK: But this guy’s a…
ART: We’re stopping other people from getting shot.
AUSTIN: My god. Okay, 2d6.
JACK: Please don’t shoot him.
AUSTIN: That’s a six!
ART: I won’t.
AUSTIN: And you get an extra gambit.
ART (overlapping): And I get a gambit.
AUSTIN: You get a gambit. He goes like,
AUSTIN (as Roar): I—you know, I get it, these alacologies are pretty confusing sometimes. It’s over here, it’s right over here. Head back in. Not gonna lie my cousin is pretty taken by your bullshit. Um—[sort of laughs]
ALI: Okay maybe shoot him.
AUSTIN (as Roar, not sounding at all genuine): Have fun, alright?
ART (as Grand): Hey man, I don’t—I just drive the car.
AUSTIN (as Roar): [laughs] Sorry, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right. That’s fair. Have a good one, boss, okay?
ART (as Grand): You too man.
AUSTIN: And he heads up the stairs. And is like still shaking his head. When you—any time he’s on screen he’s like shaking—he shakes his head, he runs a hand over his like, shaved head, his balded head, and is like, “Oh these people.” Like “Why did I come all the way out here for this?” You can probably actually read some tenseness into his like, shoulders and stuff right now. Like it’s not just he’s—in fact, I think inside the milk room… We get Poem saying like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Roary is normally not like this, there’s just been a lot on his mind lately. So… Just, cut him some slack. But anyway, I really love this—
AUSTIN: Also just like gallons of milk all over the place. [Jack laughs softly] There are—no, we cut back into the milk room, [snaps fingers] everyone is in like, milk—on—sitting on milk couches and like chaise lounges. [Ali laughs] And she’s just like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): He’s not normally like this.
[timestamp - 1:46:18]
ART: Grand walks back into the room and is like,
ART (as Grand): I want you to know I’m not sitting on any of this.
[Ali, Jack, and Austin laugh]
AUSTIN (as Poem): Anyway—
ALI: Tender’s just like,
ALI (as Tender): Well, you know, to make a product you have to make a destination and [laughing] this is our [indistinguishable through laughter].
AUSTIN (as Poem): Oh my god, she’s… To make a product you need a destination. That’s so good.
AUSTIN: She’s like—she takes—she takes [laughing] a notebook out of a pocket [Jack laughs a bit] and writes it down [Ali laughs] and puts—it’s like, “Oh that’s where he got it from, okay.”
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN (as Poem): To make a product you need to make a destination… I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying so hard to make destinations, it’s hard.
ALI (as Tender): It isn’t easy, that’s why… You know.
ART: Welcome to this destination: a cow’s nightmare.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: You don’t think a cow would be like, “Wowww! You did all this?”
[Ali laughs]
ART: I mean, if you Austin Walker walked into a room and it was like, all made out of breast milk, [Austin laughs] would you be like, [everyone laughs] “Cool.”
[laughter continues]
AUSTIN: Um… She’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Alright, how about this. I can’t… Make any deals right now. We have the open house tomorrow, we’re gonna see a lot more people. But… Can we… I can do… [pause] Y’all seem very smart about this, and I would love to have your input on another project that I’m working on, and maybe have some input, and some advice, and maybe like a consultancy fee? We have some room in the budget, for… You know. Like a freelance aid type situation, like not an intern, you wouldn’t be interns. But you know like a third party advisor? Situation?
ALI: I think Tender looks to Morning? [laughs a bit]
AUSTIN: Morning’s Observation is like,
AUSTIN (as Morning's): I love to consult.
[Ali laughs]
ALI (as Tender): Milk isn’t our only passion, so we’d love to hear you out.
AUSTIN: Morning’s Observation takes a notebook out. [laughs]
[Ali laughs loudly]
JACK (overlapping with Austin): Fourteen is just—
AUSTIN (as Morning's): “Milk’s not our only passion.” Okay.
JACK: Fourteen is just like, hollow-eyed at this point. Just—[laughs a bit].
AUSTIN: She’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Come with me. You can leave the—you can. Hm. How—how do you clean this up?
[pause]
ALI (as Tender, overlapping with Art/Grand): Oh that’s…
ART (as Grand): Oh. You won’t believe this.
[pause]
ART: I’m not talking anymore, that [laughing] was what I was saying.
[pause]
JACK: Hm. Hmm.
ALI: Is there a way to put the milk back in the cartons?
AUSTIN: Oh yeah. Yeah, you succeeded at that roll you can do whatever you want with this milk.
ALI: Yeah. The milk goes back into the cartons.
AUSTIN: What about like all the dirt on it? Are you able to like separate it?
ALI (laughing): I mean—I mean, I like—I think as like—I forget their name, but the assistant dude comes back it’s like,
AUSTIN (overlapping): Greel.
ALI (as Tender): Don’t put these back in the fridge.
AUSTIN (as Greel): Okay.
ALI (as Tender): Or maybe do—I don’t know if you have this whole milk town, you gotta reuse that milk, I don’t know.
AUSTIN (as Poem): We’ll put it—well let’s put it to the side, let’s put it in a separate milk fridge. I’ll put “Do not u—do not drink this milk, this is for furniture,” on it.
ALI (as Tender, overlapping): Thank you.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Do that for me Greel.
AUSTIN: And Greel is like,
AUSTIN (as Greel): Alright, yeah, okay. Thanks so much, I hope the meeting went well for everybody.
AUSTIN: And she’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Yeah, very well Greel, thank you so much. You can leave.
AUSTIN: [snorts] And Greel’s like,
AUSTIN (as Greel): So a second refrigerator?
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: And she’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Yes, you can leave now.
AUSTIN: And he leaves with—carry—like, arms filled with milk ca—like vari—from big two-gallon jugs to like, half-and-half cartons, [Ali laughs a bit] the little tiny ones, to a couple of creamers. And just like, holding it and just like carries it away. And she then is like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Alright, come with me to my office real quick. I just wanna show you this project I’m working on.
AUSTIN: And brings you to the office where she’s working on—the laboratory where she’s working on the Reframe System. [pause] And it is like—so it’s the same system that’s in Tender’s angler. Except it’s like, attached to some… Some kind of big projection devices? And there’s just like a little tiny like island table, like an island countertop. In the middle of… So it’s—I’m imagining like a—kind of a—almost like a production room, or like a… Like a production room in the studio sense, in the filming sense, where it’s like, there’s a bunch of computers setup, and screens and monitors, so kind of like a control room. And then like a… A big room that then, inside of that is like a glass—a room that’s surrounded by glass, sort of like the ones that we saw on Gift-3. Where then in the middle of that is a little countertop island thing. That has these various projector—like little, almost like antennas pointing at it from the corners. And she says like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): So my dream is... Like, right here is beautiful, obviously, right? And Earth is beautiful. But, where I’m from is… I mean. Most of y’all ain’t from Earth, right? I know Morning’s Observation is. But you know we have Earth and then we have other planets, and moons, and whatnot, and then we have colonies that kind of float up there. And I’m from one of those. And…
AUSTIN: In fact I know where she’s from, give me one second. I know that we named one of these at least once [Ali laughs softly] and so I can give her an actual home instead of just being like “I’m from one of those.” [laughs] Uh, she is from… Yeah, there it is. She’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): I’m from Luna 7, which is a colony that orbits the Moon—you know the Moon orbits the Earth and then Luna 7 is one of the seven that orbits the Moon. And… You know it’s cramped there, we don’t get the big beautiful… You know. Observation, where are you from?
AUSTIN: And he’s like,
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Uh, I’m from Seattle, so.
AUSTIN: And she’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Oh, you’re from Seattle?
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: And he’s like,
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Yeahh.
AUSTIN: Like… And she’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Oh fancy, okay. Well on Luna 7 we don’t have like, the seashore. And so my dream is like “What if we could give people the seashore?”
AUSTIN: And she hits a button. And like a dollhouse version of… Like a beach shows up on this countertop in the middle of her lab. And it’s so small. [kind of laughs] Like it is literally dollhouse-sized. Or it’s like—it’s like very twee diorama, it’s like Sim City, you know? It’s like Sim City 2013, with like the tilt shift happening? And like she leads you in and is like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): It’s real. Like, it’s—I just made this from the Mirage. And you know, it takes a lot of energy, and it’s tough to program it, but I feel like if you could just—if I could just get my hand—[sighs] If I could just get my head around the Mirage a little bit better, or like figure out how to get more energy for it, or something, I could do better. For people, you know. Like me. I’ve also—it’s… It kind of doesn’t make any sense because I feel like, what if by the time I get this technology home, like… You know, the way time works, maybe it’s already—they already have it, or they already have something better.
[Ali laughs a bit]
AUSTIN (as Poem): Did you put something in that milk? I feel like I’m in my feelings.
ALI (as Tender): I—no.
ALI: I don’t know what to do cause like, I was hoping to get like, business drunk [laughing] with this person after this and be like “Hey my name is fake, also what’s up with the Reframe System?”
AUSTIN: You could just—we could just cut to that if you want to go there. [Ali laughs] Or she could be like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): Forget it forget it forget it, let’s just—let me show you more.
AUSTIN: And then like, does that. Right? And like, is like, look, I can make a Lego set, look, I can make… a r—she can make big things, but big things like, a remote-controlled car. You know?
ALI (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Like she can make a to-scale remote-controlled car. She can make a to-scale, like… Hammer and screwdriver. In fact she’s like,
AUSTIN (as Poem): I could even make—
AUSTIN: And she’s like, [in the tone of pressing buttons or something] duh duh duh duh duh. And just like, a screwdriver shows up, like the drink?
ALI: [laughs] Can I—can we do a weird experiment? Cause like, I don’t even know… I don’t even know how like, Tender’s powers work fully.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Fair.
ALI: Right, like in a way to explain to her, but can I be like, you know, can I pull out one of my crystals and be like, “Try to use your thing with this and see what happens.”
AUSTIN: Oh. Yes. Totally.
ALI (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Totally. Totally.
ALI: That’s a more subtle way than being like, “Hi. I’m a police officer, you’re gonna die tomorrow.” [laughs]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right, right.
AUSTIN: [laughs] The greatest pickup line of all time.
JACK: No. Not a good—not a great idea.
[Ali laughs]
JACK (overlapping with Art): Not good.
ART: Does anyone else feel like they have a pretty good idea of what the—what’s gonna happen?
[Ali continues laughing]
AUSTIN: [laughs] Morning’s—so Morning’s Observation is also—Morning’s Observation is watching all this and is like, “What are we doing?” Also shoots you a look Grand while all this is going on. And then is like—I think Morning’s Observation is like… Pulls Fourteen over to you Grand and is like,
AUSTIN (as Morning’s, whispering): Did you do the thing?
AUSTIN: While y’all are setting up your weird crystal experiment.
ART (as Grand, also whispering): Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Did you destroy the blueprint? The blueprint?
ART (as Grand): No.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): That was the thing you were supposed to do!
JACK (as Fourteen, also whispering): That was the thing you were supposed to be doing!
ART (as Grand): No I—I destroyed all the guns.
JACK (as Fourteen): What did you do?
AUSTIN (as Morning's): You didn’t destroy—there’s guns already at the church!
[pause, Ali laughing faintly in background]
JACK (as Fourteen): It doesn’t matter if you destroy some guns.
AUSTIN (as Morning’s, overlapping): They’re gonna make more guns!
JACK (as Fourteen): They’re gonna make more guns.
[pause]
AUSTIN (as Poem): Are your friends okay?
ART (as Grand, no longer whispering): I’ll be right back.
JACK (as Fourteen): [still whispering] No, no, no! Shit, no, wait, wait. [normal volume] Yes, we’re fine. Sorry it’s… You know how it is after, you know—
AUSTIN (cutting in): Ali typed, “Be nice to him,” [Ali laughing] but with collapsed “benice” like one word B-E-N-I-C-E space “to him,” and I thought she was saying “Benice to him,” and I was like, “Who the fuck is Benice Tohim?” [Ali continues laughing] Benice Tohime? Is that like some actor I don’t know?
JACK (overlapping with Ali): Oh… Benice Tohime is so good.
ALI (barely distinguishable through laughter): I just think he did the thi—he did a good job.
AUSTIN: He did a very good job.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Grand, you’re talking about Grand?
ALI: [laughing] Yeah. Yes. And Art as well.
JACK (as Fourteen): Grand. Okay, look. I’ll… I can come with you. Let me—I can come with you.
ART (as Grand): Yeah. We can just get through the thing at the end of the hall.
JACK (as Fourteen): Oh, what? You can just do that? Sorry. [whispering] You can just do that?
AUSTIN (as Morning’s, whispering): You can just do that? Why didn’t we just do that from the beginning?
[Ali laughing faintly in background]
JACK (as Fourteen): Cause you wanted to pitch milk!
ART (as Grand): Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): And I did a good job!
[Ali laughs]
JACK (as Fourteen): You did. [normal volume] Um, uh… Laces.
ALI (as Tender): Mhmm?
JACK (as Fourteen): I’m sorry, something’s come up. Uh… Can we meet you here in…
ART (as Grand, overlapping): Ten minutes.
JACK: And I just like look at my—look pointedly at my watch.
JACK (as Fourteen): No—in, well… Yes. In ten minutes.
[Austin laughs a bit]
AUSTIN (as Poem): Are y’all okay? Do you need some—I can get Greel to help.
JACK (as Fourteen): It’s—I got a call from the office. And you know things are. It’s…
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Oh, there was—yeah, from HQ, we got a call from HQ. We have to take care of... a thing real quick. Did you know that… “Bona fide” in Latin is—it means “good faith”? So I would love if you had—that’s our motto, and if you had good faith in us to go take care of this business for a bit, and then we’ll come and we can take care of this business, of the consultancy thing, plus I think T—uh, Laces has you covered anyway. She’s kind of the visionary, I don’t know if I mentioned she’s kind of my visionary situation. So. Right, y’all?
[MUSIC - “The Notion” starts]
JACK (as Fourteen): Yeah. Absolutely. You know, the brains behind the brains.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): That’s what I always say.
ART (as Grand): Brains behind the brains.
ALI (as Tender): Uh-huh.
JACK (as Fourteen): Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Morning's): Pe—other people have brains and brawn, not here at Morning’s Observation Milk Corporation. We’ve got the brains behind the brains.
JACK (as Fourteen): We’ve got brains, brains, a driver and a lawyer.
ALI (as Tender): We do have some brawn if you need it.
ALI: And Tender winks.
AUSTIN: I—she [laughing] like, absolutely blushes. [Ali laughs] And then like drinks the—like quick drinks the screwdriver.
[Ali and Jack laugh]
ALI: Perfect.
JACK (as Fourteen): If you’ll excuse us.
AUSTIN (as Poem): Of course.
ALI (as Tender): By all means.
ART (as Grand): You know man, it takes brains to be a lawyer, don’t sell yourself short.
[Austin laughs]
[music continues, ends]