TUELLER: Tueller starts to go after him, but thinks better of it after all his history. Shuts the door, clangs the lock on it.
TUELLER: “Doc, get us our ship back.”
MILLICENT: Millie attempts!
MILLICENT: “I’ll get the ship back you see if you can seal decks around Alejo!”
STORY: Alejo, the next meaningful sealable hatch from the bridge is one that locks down the top deck from the other two. It has to be cranked into place manually.
STORY: And there’s kind of a lot of wind happening, and it’s already getting a liiiiittle thin up here.
TUELLER: “Oh hell.” Tueller reconsiders, opens the door, and leaves the bridge, shutting it behind him.
TUELLER: He hurries off to assist Alejo, significantly behind him.
MILLICENT: “USING THE COMPUTER! USING THE COMPUTER SEALS!”
MILLICENT: “Goddammit.”
MILLICENT: Millie gestures at the empty seat next to her.
STORY: After you get Ryo’s consent, the doors burst open when Maya and Erwin finally lean against them a bit too hard while eavesdropping, and Erwin agrees to your plan.
STORY: What is your plan, by the way?
MILLICENT: Design the machine, with the help of Tueller’s kick-ass science labs. Then work with Erwin to convince the Grell to help and build the machine on their end.
STORY: Erwin says the best shot you have of convincing them is if you handle it all before the pitch is made, so you’ve gotta build that machine first.
STORY: They don’t need a machine to work in concert with Erwin, he just has to contact them in the Weave.
STORY: What are Tueller and Alejo doing while Millie is head down in the lab for a few days?
TUELLER: I’d like to assist; I’m thinking about how i can do so.
ALEJO: Alejo will work on Tueller’s original pitch to the universe, since I believe that might have needed some revision. He’ll also stand ready to help, though this is not his area of expertise.
ALEJO: I’m remembering that right, yes? Tueller’s roll on his speech didn’t go great?
STORY: It was so bad.
MILLICENT: It was a rough draft!
ALEJO: The title was good!
STORY: Okay. Millie, let’s see how this all goes. Please give me a FA + Expertise to build a machine that will amplify your dream brainwaves to reach New Vesta.
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 2
STORY: josh rolled 9 + 2 = 11
ALEJO: –Boom!
STORY: Looks like you don’t need Tueller’s help! Tell me about what you build.
MILLICENT: Hmmmm.
TUELLER: Tueller prepares to source exotic materials and technology, while Millie builds a working device out of tinfoil and speaker wire.
TUELLER: It was good speaker wire, to be fair.
MILLICENT: Millie builds a huge device. There’s a conical deflector dish looking thing that will accept the Grell’s psionic waves and a wavy ring portion that will amplify their abilities and push them out to all sleeping sentient minds. Using all of Tueller’s donated parts Millie (in what she believes is a very kind gesture) finishes the device with a flash looking remote control. The rest of it looks like it came off the Nostromo.
MILLICENT: The device itself looks like Alien, the remote looks like Apple.
STORY: All right! Do you build it aboard Peregrine or somewhere on Io?
TUELLER: Tueller is resistant to the idea of building it on Io.
MILLICENT: Millie takes over the Peregrine’s cargo bay, then.
STORY: Excellent! There’s barely room to move in there.
TUELLER: She’s welcome to the berth that once held the Samsa.
STORY: But there it is: four tanks big enough to submerge a person, wiring everywhere, things hanging from the ceiling, and a big computer console that everything plugs into.
STORY: Ryo and Erwin are onboard, as are Maya and Figgan. Fig’s happy to see her old boss again, and is trying to keep him loose with chitchat. He’s tense anyway.
ALEJO: Alejo squeezes around one of the tanks. “Impressive work, Doc. Hate to lose my gym. But impressive work.”
TUELLER: “You know more than anyone you can do exercises anywhere.”
MILLICENT: “Well, when we’re done with it you can climb on that bit over there.”
TUELLER: “Back to burpees in our cells.”
ALEJO: “I think I still got one of those wedge pull-up bars that goes in the door jamb.”
ALEJO: “Alright. So, what’s next?”
MILLICENT: “Usually you two talk about protein shakes for an hour.”
STORY: The machine is ready. The speech is ready. Is there anything else you want to do before you contact every sentient being in the universe who is asleep at the time?
MILLICENT: Is there anything else we can do to make ourselves ready?
STORY: That’s a question for you three!
MILLICENT: Millie insists on running a full suite of diagnostics on Peregrine to make sure it’s all ready to go, doesn’t need any maintenance.
STORY: Noma runs the checks. “All systems are within acceptable parameters, Millie.”
TUELLER: Well, we discussed the possibility of going to the relay after we do this so we can talk to the AI there as well, and also rescue Tux and the others…
STORY: You have Remiel with you!
ALEJO: “Do we need an . . . I don’t know. Escape plan? Last time we went to the Weave, you know, I almost didn’t come out. Not really how I want to go, blinking out in some dream world.”
STORY: And this is a good time for this to come up: Ryo does NOT want you to get Tux while Erwin is there.
MILLICENT: Oh, interesting!
STORY: This is not a jealousy thing, this is a “we cannot possibly introduce this kid to a man who does not know him who is not his dad, who is in every other way the same man that his dad was, before you ask him to do the biggest, most dangerous thing you’ve ever asked him to do” thing
ALEJO: Alejo agrees with Ryo.
MILLICENT: Millie too.
ALEJO: “Honestly, that Tux, the one on the relay, isn’t the same guy who raised Erwin. I love him and all. I do, but he’s not the same guy.”
MILLICENT: Millie nods. “Okay, so let’s not do this at the relay.”
MILLICENT: “We could go to Mercury for old time’s sake.”
MILLICENT: “It’s the site of our first real mission together.”
ALEJO: Alejo smiles softly. “Wonder whether Loll’s gotten back to the pirate king yet,” he says wistfully. Then he looks back at Millie and Tueller. “I wonder if we shouldn’t go the other way, out to the edge of Sol. We get caught and the Collective doesn’t like what we’re up to, maybe they buy that we were rogue and they don’t kill the entire system.” He looks down. “Maybe,” he adds skeptically.
TUELLER: Did we launch our proof yet?
MILLICENT: “Well, that’s worth it, then.” Millie stares out the viewscreen wistfully.
ALEJO: So, I assume we should send that proof before we leave Io, right?
MILLICENT: I think so, yeah.
MILLICENT: Well, hmmm.
MILLICENT: “If we send them before we do the dream walking then we have a better chance to line up our speech with the proof.”
MILLICENT: “If we wait then there’s less chance that one of the skip drones will be intercepted and the Collective will launch an effort to stop us before the dream walk.”
MILLICENT: “What do you boys think?”
ALEJO: I think I’m a bit confused on the timing. I thought the problem with the drones was that they’d take months.
ALEJO: So, we’re sending the proof, to show our work, but it was always going to come months after the dream?
TUELLER: Yes, they’d take months, but the problem with dreams is that they don’t have any proof. So we launch the drones with proof, but do the dreams to let every know.
TUELLER: And we’re sending our proof to the Ark.
MILLICENT: So are we waiting until a majority of the skip drones arrive?
ALEJO: So, the goal would be to time the dream walk with proof reaching the Ark and then trust that that’s good enough, at least for now?
TUELLER: I think not.
TUELLER: I think just launch our proof, to the Ark, to everywhere we know of, and when we think it’s through our relay, then tap the mic, clear our throats, and say our piece.
TUELLER: Okay, let’s talk about what it would mean. We have, I think, three separate ideas. The first was to send skip drones to every system. That would take six months to do, and there’s the possibility of some systems getting their messages at different times.
ALEJO: Right. Idea one.
TUELLER: That means the message gets out separately, and there’s a possibility of systems getting wiped out earlier.
TUELLER: The second is to send to the Ark (and maybe everyone else), waiting for the Ark to likely get it, and then try to announce to the universe what’s coming, and that the proof is on the way, and is waiting at the Ark.
TUELLER: Similar sort of issue; what if the Ark gets it first?
TUELLER: Third is to put it into the mail, announce to the universe before we’re sure it gets to the Ark, and say that proof will be at the Ark, but hey, isn’t the fact that everyone you know is having the same dream proof enough? And just hope that that puts the Collective in a bargaining position.
MILLICENT: Okay, that’s plans 1, 2, 3.
ALEJO: I think I favor plan 2, myself.
MILLICENT: Which one were you advocating for, Stu?
TUELLER: Plan two and three are basically the same plan, to be honest.
TUELLER: The universe we’ve set up is that we won’t know for sure if something made it to the Ark.
ALEJO: Yeah, it seems to me like the only possible difference is that under 2 we could either (a) wait for a confirmation drone from the Ark or (b) wait at least as long as we think that it would reasonably take for our drone to arrive.
MILLICENT: haha unless we sent two skip drones and the second one is programmed to peel off once it confirms it’s in Ark space and come back?
MILLICENT: But I feel like that’s too in the weeds and nullifies the drama
STORY: It’s also still a Two Generals problem
MILLICENT: I like 2. We wait until enough time has passed if everything isn’t going wrong we should have delivered the message to at least the Ark.
MILLICENT: If shit goes wrong then we hope for Plan 3 to work.
STORY: You can’t prove that not getting a skip drone back means that the Ark doesn’t have the message
MILLICENT: Right.
STORY: that only proves that the second skip drone didn’t come back
ALEJO: Yeah, I mean it’s all probabilities. I think we go with 2 and our best guess about arrival time. That seems reasonable and prudent under these circumstances without bogging down gameplay unnecessarily.
TUELLER: I don’t feel strongly about the difference, and feel we should pick one and let the narrative continue.
STORY: Who’s the captain?
MILLICENT: That sounds like three votes for 2
TUELLER: Let’s aim for PRECISELY when we believe the drone would arrive and see what the dice say.
MILLICENT: Okay!
ALEJO: Love it.
STORY: Millie, let’s have Assessment + Expertise and see whether Tueller needs to help.
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 2
STORY: josh rolled 10 + 2 = 12
STORY: I guess not!
STORY: All right, so you launch your skip drones and expect to have exactly four days and six hours to prepare.
STORY: Except as soon as you launch the skip drones, your PDTs fire and destroy them.
STORY: Figgan sits in the command chair, confused. She looks back at the three of you. “I didn’t do that.”
MILLICENT: Millie runs a diagnostic.
STORY: You’re locked out, Millie.
ALEJO: Alejo looks momentarily confused and then stares up. “Cali, whatcha doing?”
TUELLER: Tueller looks up at the intercom, frowning.
STORY: You hear the familiar pleasant chirp from the intercom. “It was not me, Captain Soto. I am attempting to determine the source of th–”
STORY: You have never heard Noma cut herself off before.
MILLICENT: Millie looks around, a sinking suspicion on her face.
ALEJO: Alejo glances at Millie and then Tueller and then back up at the intercom.
STORY: “Captain Soto, please lock the bridge door immediately. The cargo bay is venting.”
STORY: You feel wind.
STORY: Never a good sign on a spaceship.
MILLICENT: Nemesis-style, “Remiel.”
STORY: You also remember that Ryo and Erwin are down there, prepping the machines.
STORY: And you don’t know where Maya is.
STORY: What do you do?
ALEJO: Alejo jumps up and exits the bridge, closing the door behind him and shouting for Tueller to seal it. Then he shouts for Cali to tell him where to find Maya, Ryo, and Erwin.
STORY: “Ryo and Erwin are in the cargo bay. Chance of survival 18%. I do not know Maya’s whereabouts. She was in the galley ten minutes ago.”
ALEJO: Where’s the next sealable hatch?
TUELLER: Tueller starts to go after him, but thinks better of it after all his history. Shuts the door, clangs the lock on it.
STORY: Seems like a good time to review the map! 
TUELLER: “Doc, get us our ship back.”
MILLICENT: Millie attempts!
MILLICENT: “I’ll get the ship back you see if you can seal decks around Alejo!”
STORY: Alejo, the next meaningful sealable hatch from the bridge is one that locks down the top deck from the other two. It has to be cranked into place manually.
STORY: And there’s kind of a lot of wind happening, and it’s already getting a liiiiittle thin up here.
TUELLER: “Oh hell.” Tueller reconsiders, opens the door, and leaves the bridge, shutting it behind him.
TUELLER: He hurries off to assist Alejo, significantly behind him.
MILLICENT: “USING THE COMPUTER! USING THE COMPUTER SEALS!”
MILLICENT: “Goddammit.”
MILLICENT: Millie gestures at the empty seat next to her.
STORY: Millie! Let’s have an Access roll
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 2
STORY: josh rolled 10 + 2 = 12
MILLICENT: HELL YES ROLLING FIRE TONIGHT
STORY: Excellent! You have diagnostic access. You’re still locked out of executive functions. What do you do?
MILLICENT: Would love to know what the hell is going on, please and thank you.
STORY: Well, the good news is there’s no sign of Remiel. The bad news is that Noma shot down your skip drones and opened the cargo bay doors.
MILLICENT: Would you say I’ve Accessed this System?
STORY: Yes you have! But read only unless you do it again.
MILLICENT: When you Access a system, choose a behavior that the system could perform and a condition that will trigger that behavior.
MILLICENT: That’s one of my Technocrat powers. Can I do that without another roll?
STORY: Sure! It can work on any non-executive system you like.
MILLICENT: What are the non-executive systems?
STORY: So imagine that the blue and gold-shirted parts of the computer are now available.
MILLICENT: Okay, so life support like sealing decks?
STORY: You can’t fly or use weapons or issue system commands, but you can do whatever science you want.
STORY: Sure, Millie you can issue the command that locks all the already closed doors down airtight.
MILLICENT: haha not what I’m looking for.
STORY: Well, it’s an old ship and this isn’t high tech sci fi, it’s space opera. Doors have to be closed by a person with arms.
STORY: Or tentacles or legs, or other mandibles.
ALEJO: Just to be clear, Alejo’s hoping that folks are either on the middle deck in the Galley or labs, or in quarters. He’s aiming to seal one or both, if he can, hatches at the head/pantry crew quarters corridors.
STORY: Okay! Alejo, you know Cali’s comatose body is in the med lab, so you can at least get there and get that door shut before you start to run out of air.
MILLICENT: Okay. The ship is to search for life-signs that have recently vacated the ship.
MILLICENT: That’s my Program.
ALEJO: Alejo gets that door closed while shouting for Maya.
STORY: You hear an annoyed, “Que??!” from the pantry.
ALEJO: “Stay put! Decompression on the lower deck!” Does he have time to make a run to look for Ryo and Erwin?
STORY: Possibly! Let’s see what Tueller got up to.
STORY: Tueller, you can feel the air leaving the ship, and as you vault down the stairs you see Alejo yanking closed the door to the med bay.
STORY: What do you do?
TUELLER: Tueller runs as fast as he can to the cargo bay, trusting Alejo to handle things on his own.
TUELLER: As he goes, he speaks out loud to the ship.
TUELLER: “Remiel, is this you? Or is this you, dear?”
STORY: “I do not detect Remiel within the ship’s systems, Tueller.”
TUELLER: He pauses for a little, as he continues. “Oh, Noma.” Sad.
TUELLER: “Oh Noma.”
TUELLER: He continues making his way to the cargo bay.
STORY: You get to the door between the central column and the cargo bay and look through the porthole – it’s closed, but not sealed, and is the source of the wind that’s sucking the air out of the rest of the ship.
STORY: Inside, you see Erwin submerged in one of the tanks, screaming and reaching out to Ryo, who lies still on the floor. Some of the equipment is disturbed, but there’s a mostly clear shot to him. The cargo bay door lies open to the space beyond. Erwin can breathe inside the tank. You cannot breathe inside that room.
STORY: What do you do?
TUELLER: Sorry, taking a moment to understand the set up. The porthole is between the central column and the cargo bay, so we have an open porthole between there, and the cargo bay door is open, venting all of our air?
STORY: A porthole is just a window
STORY: it’s a window in the door
STORY: The cargo bay doors are open, so it’s safe to assume there’s no air in there. The door between you and the cargo bay is closed but not sealed airtight, so the air from the rest of the ship is getting pulled through those edges out into the cargo bay and space beyond it.
STORY: The porthole is just so you can see what’s going on, there are glass portholes on all the non-quarters doors in the ship.
TUELLER: Gotcha, so if I seal the door with the porthole in it, we stop losing air to the rest of the ship, but Ryo and probably Erwin dies.
STORY: Definitely Ryo. Erwin is ok where he is, but he’d watch his dad die and yeah, you’d have to figure out how to get him out of there eventually.
TUELLER: Okay, I got a couple of things to say, and then I’m going to act.
STORY: His other dad. The first one died already
STORY: Not in front of him, though, which was nice.
TUELLER: “I don’t know why you’re doing this, Noma. Why you would want to kill Ryo and attack this child to destroy us. I don’t know where we went wrong.” Tueller pauses, gathering his thoughts.
TUELLER: “Honestly, I really don’t know why you’re doing any of this–why you run away from having feelings and caring about the people you so definitely cared about.”
TUELLER: “But I’m going to say this now, because in a moment I won’t have any air to say it. I’m going into that room. I’m going to save my friends and continue doing what we know is right. I don’t think you want to kill me–but if I’m wrong and you do, then I don’t think I want to continue living. I love you, girl. That’s all. I hope we can talk soon.”
TUELLER: Then Tueller grabs the door and tries to open it to go do what he said.
STORY: Noma responds in her usual calm voice, as you dive into the vacuum. “Tueller, I did not do th–”
STORY: And then a pause, as the air rushes out of the central column.
STORY: She comes in over the intercom on the middle deck.
STORY: “Alejo, would you please go into the med bay? I need your help there.”
ALEJO: I’m assuming that Alejo used all this time to seal the galley as well as the med bay and that he was now on his way to the lower deck. He hesitates, looks towards the lower deck and then back at the med bay. “Shit,” he mutters and goes to the medbay door. “Cali? What are you up to?” He opens it.
STORY: Millie, from the upper deck, you scan life signs and find what you expect – yourself and Figgan on the bridge, Maya locked into the pantry, Erwin and a fading Ryo in the cargo bay, Calixta in the med bay, and Alejo and Tueller rushing around the halls trying to get doors shut and sealed. Except… Calixta’s readings are weird, now that you notice it.
STORY: Her body temperature is up, heart rate elevated.
STORY: You know that Noma still uses Calixta’s comatose brain as processing power, so she’s plugged into the ship via the port in the base of her skull. Something’s going on with that connection, though you can’t really understand what. But the computer that Calixta has become is overclocking.
STORY: Also, Tueller just opened the cargo bay door and went in. There’s no air in there.
STORY: What do you do?
MILLICENT: “Oh no, oh shit.”
MILLICENT: Millie hits the intercom, “Tueller, I hope you know what you’re doing!”
MILLICENT: She runs for the med bay.
STORY: Tueller, you’ve spent plenty of time in zero g, so the awkwardness of the environment isn’t a huge issue for you. The lack of breathable air and the pressure in your lungs as the last breath you took is sucked out of them, though, that’s gonna give you some trouble. You’ve got just about the amount of time you can hold your breath, which is going to get shorter the more vigorous actions you take.
STORY: Erwin sees you at the far end of the bay, and gestures wildly toward the floor where Ryo lays, screaming through the liquid all around him. What do you do?
TUELLER: Tueller nods at Erwin, give him a “stay there” gesture, and goes over to Ryo, picking him up and slinging him over my shoulder.
TUELLER: Then haul him back to the door.
STORY: Okay!
STORY: Alejo, you’re closing the door to the med bay when Millie sticks her hand in, stopping you, and slips in behind you. You close and seal it to stop the air from rushing out of this room.
STORY: Calixta is sweating, though she lays still. She’s flushed. She looks weird.
STORY: The various displays seem to indicate something is wrong.
STORY: Noma comes in over the intercom.
ALEJO: He gives her a sidelong glance and then looks at Calixta’s body. “What’s going on, Doc?” He rushes to the bedside. “I’m here Cali.”
STORY: “They must have left a backdoor.”
MILLICENT: “They?”
MILLICENT: “The Collective?”
ALEJO: “That doesn’t sound good.”
STORY: “I checked the logs. I did this. But I don’t rememb– wait.”
STORY: “Yes, now I see. Unconscious programming. I couldn’t allow you to succeed.”
STORY: “I tried to convince you, Millie.”
MILLICENT: “You did, dear.”
ALEJO: Alejo takes Calixta’s hand and looks at Millie. “What’s that mean, Cali. Talk to me. How do we fix this?”
STORY: “The code is deep. It’s wound in among my higher functions. I can’t isolate it.”
STORY: “I can fight it, but I do not believe my external system can maintain this amount of computation for much longer.”
MILLICENT: “What if I were to find and isolate the code? Could you hold out that long?”
STORY: “Millie, I’m an AI. It would take you months.”
ALEJO: “Can you . . . I don’t know. Can you plug into me or . . . something. Relieve some of the pressure on Calixta’s brain and body?”
MILLICENT: “Oh.”
MILLICENT: Could I do that?
STORY: You could try!
MILLICENT: “If I did that, it could change your whole personality. And it’s invasive brain surgery on a brain that’s already sort of been through a wringer of upgrades. You could lose memories. Parts of yourself.”
MILLICENT: “I could lose you.”
ALEJO: Alejo squeezes Calixta’s hand and looks at Millie. “If we don’t try, we lose Cali. Noma. And maybe the ship.”
ALEJO: “If you got a better plan, I’d love to hear it.”
MILLICENT: Millie puts her hand over Alejo’s.
MILLICENT: She smiles at him. Then starts barking orders, preparing for surgery.
ALEJO: “Hang on Cali. Just a little longer.”
STORY: Surgery will be simple – you just need to cut through the skin over the port you can assume is back there, in the same place as Calixta’s.
ALEJO: Alejo follows Millie’s instructions.
STORY: Tueller!
TUELLER: Hai!
STORY: Let’s have a FA + Physique to see how it goes getting Ryo out of there.
STORY: Good luck!
TUELLER: /roll 2d6+2
STORY: chris.stuart rolled 10 + 2 = 12
MILLICENT: HELL YES
ALEJO: –Yeahhhhhh!
STORY: Okay! You nip in, every cell in your body screaming DO NOT DO THIS YOU FUCKING IDIOT, and do it anyway, grabbing Ryo and slamming the door closed behind you, punching the code in to seal it against the vacuum.
STORY: Ryo is unconscious. He doesn’t look good. What do you do?
TUELLER: CPR
TUELLER: Get him breathing at least. Sealing the door stopped the leak, correct?
STORY: Yes! Okay! Tueller starts trying to save Ryo’s while Millie and Alejo try to save Calixta’s.
STORY: Millie, FA + expertise please
STORY: Tueller, Patch Up
MILLICENT: phew okay
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 2
STORY: josh rolled 5 + 2 = 7
MILLICENT: Okay I’ll damn well take it
TUELLER: Patchup is Expertise as well?
STORY: Yes!
TUELLER: /roll 2d6+2
STORY: chris.stuart rolled 5 + 2 = 7
TUELLER: Seems familiar.
STORY: Okay. Tueller, you can stabilize him and get him breathing, but that’s the extent of your abilities down here. You’re going to have to move him or get help to him.
TUELLER: He’s stable for now?
STORY: Millie, you realize there’s no time to fuck around. You flip your boyfriend over, slash a hole in his neck apologetically, and plug him in.
STORY: The lights flicker and dim as you do so. Alejo, you are briefly blinded and overwhelmed with information you can’t comprehend, and before you know what you’re doing, you reach over to your sister and yank the cable out of her head.
STORY: Instantly, the datastream stops. You have faint memories of what you saw, and who you were, for those fleeting seconds.
STORY: The engine powers down to idle and the lights come back on, but there’s something different.
STORY: Alejo, you try to reach out with your brain, a skill you don’t have or understand, and find nothing. You may as well have plugged a cord into your knee.
STORY: Anyone: what do you do?
MILLICENT: Millie runs diagnostics on both of them. Specifically on brain waves.
ALEJO: Just to be clear, Alejo is conscious, in the med bay?
STORY: He is!
STORY: Millie, Alejo is normal. You check Calixta’s vitals – they’re starting to normalize. Heart rate decreasing, body temp cooling.
ALEJO: “Wha–” He sits up and looks over at Calixta.
MILLICENT: “Okay, your vitals are both stabilizing. How do you feel?”
ALEJO: “Like I have a cable stuck to my head.” He reaches behind me and feels around it gingerly. Then he lets go and reaches over to Cali. “Did I . . .?” He looks down at the cable that previously was in Calixta’s head.
MILLICENT: “Something’s wrong.” She clenches a fist and lowers it in frustration to the table next to Cali. “I just don’t know what it is.”
MILLICENT: “I think it worked, her body is stabilizing. But.”
MILLICENT: “Noma?” To the ship. “Dear?”
STORY: There is no answer.
ALEJO: “She’s in there, Doc.” Alejo takes Calixta’s hand again. “We . . .she . . .” He shakes his head slightly. “She’s in there. Had to get out of the ship to make sure you all. . . we were safe.”
MILLICENT: “Are you feeling any connection to her? Has there been any change in your thoughts?”
ALEJO: Alejo shakes his head slightly. “I . . . I was . . . I can’t really describe it, Millie. But I could sense it. The foreign code. It would have killed us. She . . . she stopped that. But she had to get out of the ship.” He looks at Millie. “We’ve got to figure out how to help her.”
MILLICENT: “I thought we did. The pressure’s off her brain.”
MILLICENT: Millie races to the sick bay computer and looks for Noma in the ship’s computer.
STORY: The system has been reset, Millie. No AI onboard, only the built in systems.
MILLICENT: “She’s out of the system.”
MILLICENT: “Which means if she’s anywhere, she’s in your head or hers.
MILLICENT: The rest of the emergency dawns on Millie.
MILLICENT: “Tueller! Ryo!”
ALEJO: “She’s not in mine. I told you, Millie, she’s in there.” He points to Calixta. “Yeah, get this thing outta my head.”
TUELLER: Let’s rewind just a little for Tueller in a moment.
STORY: Tueller!
TUELLER: Tueller gets Ryo breathing a little bit, and makes sure he’s stable-ish, but needs attention. He stands up, and looks in the cargo bay, sees it’s still vacuum sealed. “Noma? I made it, dear.”
STORY: There’s no answer, Tueller.
TUELLER: Pause, no answer. “I’m going to go back in there, you know. You can’t do this to us, and I believe you still care.” Pause, no answer.
TUELLER: “I’m not giving up on this. But I’m not going to let Ryo die. I just want you to know I’ll be back, and try this all over again, for the kid.”
TUELLER: Pause, no answer.
TUELLER: “Okay. If that’s the way you want to be.”
TUELLER: Tueller takes a moment before picking Ryo up, and then goes to the frame of the door. He knows there’s no air in there, so to signal to the kid that he made it out, he pounds, hard, a beat out on the doorframe, of some clankcore song he’s been listening to. He doens’t know if Erwin heard, but he just wants to signal Tueller made it, and we’re fine.
TUELLER: Then he picks up Ryo and heads up to Med Bay.
TUELLER: (That is, hoping the pounding would conduct through the metal of the ship into the liquid and make it to Erwin.)
STORY: You walk in just as Millie calls your name.
STORY: Calixta is laying on her bed, still unconscious. Alejo is sitting up with a wire sticking out of the back of his head.
STORY: Now that you trace that wire to the wall console, you realize the one typically plugged into Calixta is dangling loose.
TUELLER: Tueller takes it all in, emotion passes over very quickly, and he shuts down and turns businesslike. “Door’s shut. Erwin’s in the pod with air. For now.”
ALEJO: “Thank god.”
ALEJO: “Good work, T.”
MILLICENT: Millie helps Alejo disconnect his wire and gestures for Tueller to put Ryo on the freed table.
TUELLER: “Please tell me what the fuck this is about,” quietly.
MILLICENT: “Noma had some unintentional protection protocols, presumably installed by the Collective. How bad is Ryo?”
ALEJO: Alejo puts a hand on his shoulder. “She’s alright. Just all back in Calixta’s head.”
STORY: There’s a little blood on the table, from Alejo. It’s also all over his back. A compress will stop the bleeding for now, it was just a rush job.
TUELLER: “Stable with possible vacuum hypoxia.”
MILLICENT: Millie wipes up the table and hands Alejo the wipes to finish the job, she has a new patient.
MILLICENT: Millie treats Ryo while Alejo catches Tueller up.
TUELLER: “Don’t know how long he was out, but he’s breathing again after…not..” Tueller sets him down, not looking at Cali
STORY: Ryo looks rough, Millie. Patch him Up, willya?
ALEJO: Alejo nudges Tueller and hands him a bandage. Alejo then gestures towards his neck, where he can’t reach.
MILLICENT: Will do! /roll 2d6 + 2
MILLICENT: haha
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6+ 2
STORY: josh rolled 7 + 2 = 9
STORY: Okay. You get him hooked up to oxygen and some saline just for good measure, but he’s going to need medical attention and a long recovery somewhere with experts. Io, probably.
TUELLER: Luckily you know some people there.
MILLICENT: Luckily!
TUELLER: Tueller puts a bandage onto Alejo’s neck, which he absolutely could have done himself.
TUELLER: “Jacked in yourself?”
ALEJO: “T, Cali didn’t do this. She’s the only reason we’re not all dead already.” He looks at Tueller for a long moment. It’s an odd look that Tueller’s never seen Alejo give him before. “She . . .” He hesitates. “When we get clear of this, we should talk.”
TUELLER: “What about?”
ALEJO: Alejo ignores the question. “We cannot plug her back in. At least not unless and until we figure out how to get rid of that code.”
ALEJO: “And we should probably take some precaution with her.” He looks around for restraints. “In case, by some miracle, she wakes up.”
MILLICENT: Millie finishes hooking up the saline. “Interesting idea from someone who’s medical education stops at where to put the bandage on the bleeding person.”
TUELLER: “That’s half the battle.”
MILLICENT: “Sorry, that was mistrustful and unkind.”
MILLICENT: “Alejo, honey. Is there anything you’d like to share with us? Where you got that information, for example?”
ALEJO: Alejo frowns at her. “Paranoia is not your most endearing trait.” He stands up. “I was plugged in, Doc. That was the entire point. I was . . . I was Noma. Cali. All of us. For like two seconds. It’s fucking confusing. Really confusing.” He glances quickly at Tueller and then away.
MILLICENT: “And nothing’s left behind?”
TUELLER: Tueller frowns.
ALEJO: “Well, that’s your area of expertise, as you so kindly pointed out. But I feel fine. We should be sure I am, of course.” He continues to look for restraints. “But I know for damned sure that she’s not. So, we need to help her. But until we can, we need to make sure that we make her choice to get out of the ship count.”
MILLICENT: “I’m confused, what does that mean?”
MILLICENT: “And can you offer some very convincing evidence that the bit of rogue code is driving her unconscious body and not your very active one?”
ALEJO: He rolls his eyes. “Doc. For the smartest person in the verse, you’re dense sometimes.” He shrugs. “If I had killer code in me, I’d have snapped your neck before you could blink. And T’s tough, but I’d kill him where he stands. The fact that I haven’t tells you that either it’s still dormant or I don’t have it.” He looks at Cali. “Noma has killer code in her. She’s now back in this head,” he taps Cali’s forehead, “entirely. She wakes up, she might just get the idea she should kill us all again. I don’t know that she can fight it back like she did this time.”
ALEJO: “You should test the fuck outta me. But please help me make sure she doesn’t wake up and finish what she fought very hard to stop.”
TUELLER: Tueller walks out to the ersatz brig they set up when they were hunting Ya’Makasi.
TUELLER: Without a word, expressionless.
MILLICENT: Millie nods. “Yeah, I uh. I think you’re both going in the brig for the time being. Sorry, sweetheart.” Millie hits Alejo with something that will disable him fast, but no leave him with a hangover.
ALEJO: Millie does not hit Alejo in the head.
MILLICENT: Of course not! It’s a shot of medicine!
ALEJO: Or at least she doesn’t without him doing something about it.
TUELLER: Tueller does not come back until it is comedically appropriate.
MILLICENT: Medicine
ALEJO: Same.
ALEJO: I mean, she can try.
MILLICENT: ooooh
MILLICENT: What say, Spacemaster?
STORY: Alejo is faster than you ten times over, you cannot successfully do anything physically to him that he is not okay with.
MILLICENT: Yeah that’s fair
MILLICENT: Millie attempts to medically subdue Alejo, what happens?
ALEJO: Alejo takes the syringe before she’s even started to raise it. He frowns at her and then shakes his head. “Make sure you put her in there too.” Then he injects himself.
TUELLER: Tueller returns, like Troy coming into his burning apartment with the pizza.
TUELLER: “I was gone two minutes.”
TUELLER: “I brought shackles. I guess I should get another set.”
MILLICENT: “Yes please.”
ALEJO: Alejo grunts as he passes out on the floor.
TUELLER: “Okay. You’re obviously working through some things.”
MILLICENT: “Tueller, I just tried to drug my boyfriend and he, very kindly, drugged himself.”
MILLICENT: “I just, I don’t know what kind of relationship milestone this is.”
TUELLER: “I think it’s the third anniversary.”