TUELLER: “Guys. Sorry, I’m having a thought.”
TUELLER: “I want to run it by you all because it’s a crazy and stupid and maybe dangerous thought”
TUELLER: “This is a giant photocopying and casting machine.”
TUELLER: “And what we have here is a universal conspiracy that we need to get the word out.”
MILLICENT: “Wow.”
TUELLER: “So this has to get to the Ark, too.”
MILLICENT: “Someone’s coming for my throne.”
TUELLER: “We need Earth as ready as possible, but the Ark needs to know.”
MILLICENT: “That is possibly the most reckless and rash idea I’ve ever heard.”
MILLICENT: “Not that I let you finish.”
TUELLER: “I was going to say we should split the party.”
MILLICENT: “Oh.”
TUELLER: “But I think maybe we should do both.”
TUELLER: “Go to the Ark and to Earth.”
MILLICENT: “I thought you were going to say we should free the copies that are here and convince them to carry the message to every Ark civilization in the ships we make for them.”
TUELLER: “Oh maybe that’s a better idea than mine.”
MILLICENT: “Hail to the Queen, baby.”
STORY: You have told the truth to the 216 conscious souls aboard the Sol jump relay.
STORY: They have not rioted, for now.
STORY: This session I’d like to do two things: first, there are a number of problems you have to solve as the new administrators of this facility.
STORY: Second, I thought it would be a good time for some specific Cramped Quarters rolls – now that you have some time to breathe, I’d like to see how everyone reunites with their formerly dead friend Alejo.
STORY: We can either do that concurrently or one at a time, thoughts?
TUELLER: Sprinkle them throughout?
MILLICENT: What kind of structure are you envisioning for this?
STORY: I’m going to pose a problem to you and ask how you handle it. That part can be handled either in discussion of what your characters do/would do/want to do, or as a scene, up to yinz.
MILLICENT: Okay!
TUELLER: Ok
ALEJO: Works for me.
STORY: Okay!
STORY: The first, and most urgent problem: though you have calmed the crowd from rioting, they don’t yet trust you and accept your leadership. They’ve just learned a lot and aren’t yet sure whether you’re holding back the part where you execute them all. What do you do to get things calmed down and the base operational?
STORY: Don’t all answer at once.
TUELLER: It’s a hard question!
TUELLER: Tueller has some paper where he writes up notes. He seems to be trying to set up an anarchist collective with vague memories of political economy classes from college.
TUELLER: There are lots of hierarchical drawings that get scrunched up and thrown into the incinerator.
ALEJO: Alejo suggests taking small groups on tours of the station, showing them the stuff that they’ve not seen before.
MILLICENT: Millie thinks the best thing is to keep people busy. She’d like to see who’s got a technical or machinist or maintenance background to see who might be able to care for the sleepers.
ALEJO: “We need to show them, not just tell them.”
TUELLER: Tueller waves them off, like, “go do that while I work on this.”
MILLICENT: “That’s a good idea. Small groups, maybe 10 at a time so we can field questions.”
ALEJO: “Perfect. Good.”
MILLICENT: So, I think we should combo those plans. Spit up and take people in rotating tours of the whole station while asking questions about their backgrounds and answering their questions.
STORY: Okay! I want to remind you, you had a plan last time to try to recruit the leaders of a few different groups, is that abandoned?
ALEJO: We should start the tours with the leaders.
MILLICENT: Yes! The leaders! Thanks for the reminder
STORY: Okay, who’s gonna lead this endeavor?
TUELLER: Nominating the guy with the most charisma.
ALEJO: Millie should go on the tour too, though. The leaders need to hear from the big boss, I think.
TUELLER: Tueller works on writing up a proposal going forward, modeled after the post-Francoist Pact of Forgetting. Recommending with disarmament of all security forces, a blanket amnesty for any offenses committed under the previous leadership, and proposes attempts to reorder our society, focusing on equitable ways to continue working on the station essential systems–food, air, water, sewage, and such.
MILLICENT: Plus she should be there for technical questions.
STORY: All right! Alejo, let’s have a FA + Influence to see how your tours go.
ALEJO: /roll 2d6+2
STORY: ablair01 rolled 5 + 2 = 7
MILLICENT: I feel like as a player I don’t want to add because I know it’s not Millie’s strong suit.
MILLICENT: But she’s definitely there and talking.
TUELLER: Does Millie still have the inspiration via tech talk thing?
STORY: I think that means a Get Involved roll! She was brought to help, I think that means she tries to help whether we as players know she’d be good at it
MILLICENT: Fair
MILLICENT: Is that Influence or Mettle or what?
STORY: Get Involved + Influence
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 0
STORY: josh rolled 10 + 0 = 10
MILLICENT: haHA
STORY: Eyyyy, look at that.
ALEJO: –Woooo!
STORY: Alejo, let’s say you started with the heads of each department. Tell me what goes wrong – Millie, tell me how you fix it.
TUELLER: —I’m going to respond to that roll with Courtney’s favorite line from Avengers 2, which was a guy in the audience who yelled, “Fuck yeah Vision!”
ALEJO: Haha.
ALEJO: Alejo has gathered all of the heads of the departments, who are mostly curious at first.
STORY: Booth is in charge of maintenance, Conrad for security, Stephanie for ops. You don’t know the head of science, you can give that person a name.
ALEJO: Stephanie, however, is late to join the group, as they wait for Millie. When she arrives, she sees Alejo and says, “Isn’t that the fucking janitor? Who the hell put you in charge?”
ALEJO: Alejo laughs and tries to spin things. “I know, right? It’s a new day.”
ALEJO: She isn’t having any of it, though. “No way am I taking orders from a janitor. I don’t know what’s going on, but this is ridiculous.” As she talks, some of the others begin to nod in agreement. Conrad in particular seems to be buying her dissent.
ALEJO: Millie. You’re up!
MILLICENT: haha thanks
MILLICENT: Nice tee up.
ALEJO: Alejo keeps trying to stem the discontent, but he’s barely keeping a lid on it when Millie shows up.
MILLICENT: “Good afternoon, all. I’d ask if you’re ready to begin our tour, but I can see we’re having fun belittling Mr. Soto instead.”
ALEJO: “In all fairness, I was the janitor.”
MILLICENT: “Don’t get me wrong. It used to be a fun pastime of mine, too. But then I saw him captain our ship through all sorts of things. I’ve seen him in more firefights than I can count. Always cool as a cucumber. He managed to keep us all alive when we were being hunted by rogue Ark security. Once, he convinced a god-level AI who had our lives in hands in a dream world to stand down by talking pretty to it. He’s calm in a tough situation, he has a good head on his shoulders and he cares about people. Genuinely cares about his crew and the people he takes responsibility for. If that’s not what you’re looking for in leadership then I can only assume that you wouldn’t know a real leader if he bit you on the ass.”
MILLICENT: “The line for the tour begins on my left. The line to apologize to Mr. Soto begins on my right.”
ALEJO: Alejo looks a little bashful. Anyone who knows him has probably never seen him look bashful before.
STORY: Everyone lines up on the left, except Stephanie, who stands there awkwardly looking at her feet for a little before mumbling an apology and joining up.
STORY: Okay! Employee mutiny quelled for the time being.
STORY: Let’s do a Custom Alejo Cramped Quarters. Tueller, want to go first?
TUELLER: Sure.
TUELLER: Just roll?
TUELLER: /roll 2d6
STORY: chris.stuart rolled 8
STORY: I think we’re just trying to answer the question of how well Alejo reconnects with everyone after his absence, so yeah
STORY: He reconnects 8.
STORY: Spin me a yarn!
TUELLER: What does that mean?
TUELLER: Reveal aspect of our past.
STORY: Yeah!
STORY: Not a lot of unexamined past left between those two
TUELLER: But there is!
TUELLER: Neither of know what we’ve been doing the last year.
STORY: There you go
TUELLER: So, at some point, I think Alejo has to follow up on “So Tueller’s been in jail?”
STORY: Would you like me to set the scene?
TUELLER: Tueller has commandeered a cabin, where he goes kind of crazy, trying to forge a government.
TUELLER: Writing up bits of what he remembers from political philosophy classes and by watching his sisters work. He keeps the door open, though, and so when Alejo walks by one day, he says, “Bud!”
TUELLER: “Ejo!”
ALEJO: Alejo stops and leans in the door. “Hey.” He smiles. “How goes the constitutional drafting?”
TUELLER: “Uh, pretty shitty, and also I don’t think any of these people will really respect me as a Truth And Reconciliation Agent.”
TUELLER: “If they know who I was before…jail, at least.”
TUELLER: “Also I can’t remember any of any Constitution.”
TUELLER: “I grew up in a place that had Murders and Acquisitions Department, not a Senate.”
TUELLER: “Though they’re often the same thing.”
ALEJO: Alejo steps inside. “Not sure I agree with the first part.” He gestures to a chair. “Mind?”
TUELLER: “Go ahead.”
TUELLER: Tueller sits down himself on the corner of a table and takes a drink of water.
ALEJO: He sits. “M&A does seem like a lifetime ago.” He pauses and then laughs, realizing the joke.
TUELLER: “Literally” pointing at Ejo “and figuratively” back at himself.
ALEJO: “So. . . prison.” He looks at Tueller for a long moment. “Seems like it really had an impact. Like a good impact. You seem more . . . I hope this isn’t awkward, but more comfortable in your own skin? Yeah?”
TUELLER: “Oh sure. I have a therapist. She’s stolen our ship, but I’ve got one.”
TUELLER: “I went to regular meetings.”
TUELLER: “They’re not stupid, it turns out.”
TUELLER: “The meetings or the therapists.”
ALEJO: Alejo does a bit of a double take.
TUELLER: “They’re like drinking buddies except they know what they’re talking about when they give you advice.”
TUELLER: “And they help you give better advice to yourself.”
ALEJO: Alejo laughs at this. “Yeah, I see that. I’ve never . . . tried, but could be good.”
TUELLER: “Well, we have her on retainer, so if we survive, you should sit with her.”
TUELLER: “We’ve all got baggage.”
TUELLER: “Part of mine is that I got you killed.”
ALEJO: “Retainer? Like, you hired her?”
TUELLER: “The Doc did. I’m broke.”
TUELLER: “Gave away everything before I went to jail, in the hopes it would get me clemency.”
ALEJO: “You know, I don’t remember my death. But I’m absolutely confident you didn’t get me killed. You know I trust you with my life. And I always will, right?”
TUELLER: Tueller is very silent for awhile.
TUELLER: “I appreciate that, but you weren’t there. This is a thing I have to carry, for now. It’s what I did.”
TUELLER: “I’m glad you’re here, but I did what I did, and you being here doesn’t make who I was okay.”
ALEJO: “Tueller, guys like me get killed sometimes. Just because I trust you, it doesn’t make it on you when I catch a bullet.”
ALEJO: “But I’m glad I’m here too. And I’m glad you’re here.”
TUELLER: Tueller grimaces, and doesn’t know what to say.
TUELLER: After a pause.
TUELLER: “Something else you should know.”
TUELLER: “The you that was there…he missed his moment to kiss the Doc.”
TUELLER: “By this much.”
TUELLER: Fingers almost touching.
TUELLER: Tueller smiles knowingly.
ALEJO: Alejo smiles weakly. He starts to say something. Stops. Then looks down. “Something we seem to have in common, him and me.” After a long moment, he looks back up. “But what’s another life for if not for fixing dumbass mistakes.” He gives Tueller a nod in response to the knowing smile.
TUELLER: Tueller shrugs. “That’s kind of what they say in group.”
ALEJO: “Speaking of missing a kiss . . . how’s it going with Cali?”
TUELLER: Tueller laughs loudly, a single bark. “I have no idea!”
TUELLER: “You know she’s Noma, right?”
TUELLER: “That’s a conversation you should definitely have.”
ALEJO: “Oh yeah. And Calixta.” He shrugs. “You and I need a drink soon. When you taking a break from your opus?”
TUELLER: “Wait, you guys have drinks here?”
TUELLER: Tueller looks down at his cycled water.
TUELLER: “What the fuck am I drinking this shit for?”
ALEJO: “It’s some real shitty homebrew, but yeah, I can hook us up.”
TUELLER: “Okay, let’s try to get it so people don’t homebrew guillotines, first, and then the first round’s on you.”
ALEJO: “Deal.”
STORY: All right! Ready for your next problem?
TUELLER: Yep.
ALEJO: Yes! Good scene, T.
TUELLER: You too!
STORY: There’s a large piece of the base you guys hadn’t found yet that is roughly the same size as the housing for the sleeping pods. This section, however, is warm, damp, brightly lit, and dedicated to hydroponic vegetable production. The plants also help purify the air. You’ll need staff for that, it looks like Manaaki was also handling that bit single (or dozen) handedly. Millie, in looking through the operational systems and speaking to Stephanie you also put together this extremely unpleasant truth: all the non-plant-matter food is recycled tissue from the core operation of the base. It’s been broken down and reconstituted, but it still all started out as people. If you stop feeding everyone meat today, you’ll run out of plant-based food in three days. How do you solve this one?
MILLICENT: whoa
MILLICENT: So, people go through the relay, they’re executed and fed to the base’s residents?
MILLICENT: Also, can you clarify something that’s been bugging me? What happens to the ships?
TUELLER: Soylent Green.
STORY: That’s the least friendly version of it, yes
MILLICENT: Are they being atomized?
STORY: That’s a great question!
STORY: They get broken down into base materials and stored, then those base materials are used to reconstitute the new ships when they come through. Same as the meat and all the plastics and shit.
MILLICENT: Gotcha.
ALEJO: Alejo sits at a table, looking at Millie as she explains things. He shrugs. “Grew up eating CRIK. Doesn’t seem all that different.”
MILLICENT: So, would it be possible to tweak the system to send staff aboard to confiscate (presumably) non-cannibal meals before breaking down?
STORY: There’s always about a dozen ships worth of storage on the base at any given time, that’s part of why it’s so slow to travel through them – you need to make sure close to the same number of ships come through as leave.
STORY: That’s theoretically possible, but a big step.
STORY: Assessment + Expertise please Millie!
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 2
STORY: josh rolled 3 + 2 = 5
MILLICENT: COME ON
STORY: Bad news, Millie. Pausing the automated jump process to send in a crew to forage for food would almost certainly attract the attention of the onboard AI.
STORY: Which, by the way, you have avoided so far and are confident you can avoid if you stick to normal operation of the base. It’s mostly there as security.
STORY: So anything outside the norm you run the risk of alerting your sleeping AI.
MILLICENT: Millie finishes with, “…and if we pause the operations to sneak onboard and grab food from each ship we’d almost definitely alert the station’s AI.”
MILLICENT: “I don’t see that we have much of a choice at this point.”
ALEJO: “It’s all reconstituted, right?” He shrugs again.
MILLICENT: “Think that crowd out there is going to take it so well?”
MILLICENT: “We’re going to need a team to keep up that work, too.”
ALEJO: Alejo looks to the others to see how they’re reacting. “I’m . . . maybe my read of this isn’t the best. What’s everyone else think?”
STORY: Calixta shrugs alongside you. “Maybe this is the thing we lie about?”
MILLICENT: “I think I see the technical need here.”
TUELLER: “I’m radical honesty guy right now but that hasn’t served me well either.”
MILLICENT: “And so I can get my head around it. I don’t like it, though.”
MILLICENT: “It feels like we’re holding on by telling the truth. And if we stop now, we risk everything.”
MILLICENT: “Plus, if Tueller’s work is going to build the near future of this place, what happens when someone we don’t know is voted into a position of influence to figure this out?”
MILLICENT: “Or one of our cafeteria workers gets an attack of conscience?”
ALEJO: “Yeah, seems like not a big deal unless we make it one? But again, maybe I’m missing how squidged people will get if they know.”
TUELLER: “It’s not exactly cannibalism, but it’s not exactly not cannibalism either”
MILLICENT: “Maybe we tell the leadership group and get them to weigh in?”
MILLICENT: “Might help to garner some trust with them, if nothing else.”
TUELLER: “We all have survival instincts, though. We need to eat. But we need a goal beyond this.”
TUELLER: “What are we doing here? What gives people hope? What’s after this?”
MILLICENT: “That’s a great question.”
ALEJO: “That’s a damned good question that I’d like to answer too.”
STORY: Calixta blows air out of her mouth. “That’s a big question.”
MILLICENT: “I think we can’t begin to answer it until we know this station isn’t going to get the human race killed.”
MILLICENT: “That’s a big, bold goal, too.”
TUELLER: “We can get people to accept their lot in life if they’re going to get murdered, which was the old way. But people are going to get rilled up if we feed them reconstituted galactic travelers and say this is the new life.”
MILLICENT: “Okay, fair.”
MILLICENT: “So, what are our goals after all this?”
STORY: “Getting the fuck off this thing?”
STORY: “That’s still the plan, right?”
TUELLER: “I can speak persuasively about the AI murder that might befall mankind if we fuck this up, but we need to give these people a future.”
TUELLER: “All of us.”
ALEJO: Alejo touches his nose and nods.
ALEJO: “We’ve got to get off this thing.”
MILLICENT: “Well, it has to start with the destruction of the jump relays, right?”
TUELLER: “Yeah, getting off of this. But not having the AI Collective turn the sun into a supernova is as well.”
TUELLER: “They can definitely do it. The Ya’Makasis estimated that we were a couple generations from being capable of it.”
MILLICENT: “We can’t continue to submit the galaxy to inadvertent slavery every time they want to leave their system.”
MILLICENT: “So, initially, if we move against the Collective we’re facing a future alone. Cut off from the rest of the Ark civilizations.”
MILLICENT: “Until we can figure out the math behind wild jumps.”
STORY: Hey, question
STORY: Is Tux in the brain trust here?
TUELLER: He should be!
MILLICENT: I think he should be too
STORY: Like is he present for all these high level conversations?
STORY: Okay! Passes with a majority
ALEJO: Yeah, I think Alejo invites him.
STORY: So Tux speaks up.
STORY: “I’ve been thinking about this.”
TUELLER: —We definitely want Tux’s opinion on AI dream eating at some point.
STORY: “Cloud computing, like you said – it automatically corrects. That’s one of the strengths. Lose one machine, no big deal, it just offloads to another.”
STORY: “So if we did it slowly… we could maybe, and this is a big maybe, but maybe get all those sleeping people unplugged without the Collective noticing.”
STORY: “We’d have to take care of the AI onboard, and we’d have to, y’know, do something with all those people.”
TUELLER: “Feed them.”
TUELLER: “Explain to them what we’re feeding them.”
STORY: “I was thinking more let them breathe.”
STORY: “We add four thousand people to the life support, it’s gonna run out in a few hours.”
MILLICENT: “We’re going to need an Ark of our own.”
MILLICENT: “A refugee ship.”
MILLICENT: “And someplace to send it where we can feed these people without worrying that it will get back to the Collective.”
STORY: “And we need to get it connected to the one dock without anyone noticing.”
STORY: “And figure out how to wake everyone up,” Calixta chimes in.
STORY: “Without killing them, I mean.”
TUELLER: “Any ideas, guys? Because I know only one person in the solar system with the resources and intelligence to pull that off, and she’s the genocidal madwoman who pushed my family to research how to blow up the sun, so I don’t think we can count on her help.”
MILLICENT: “What happened to Chandra’s resources after he died?”
STORY: Calixta shrugs. “With Ryo and I out of the picture? Probably being warred over by all the sublieutenants.”
ALEJO: Alejo looks back and forth at them. “Didn’t someone way Ryo was . . . working for your sister?”
STORY: “Yeah, and that guy owes us a favor.”
STORY: “Or we owe him a favor. Somebody needs to do someone a favor.”
STORY: “I think we owe him at this point. Nevermind.”
MILLICENT: “Hmmm.”
MILLICENT: “So there’s a fortune out there we might be able to claim.”
MILLICENT: “But that would take some doing and make some noise.”
STORY: Tux looks confused. “Why are we worried about money?”
MILLICENT: “We’re going to need a ship and plenty of resources to keep the thousands of people on this planet fed while we do whatever our plan will be to stop the Collective.”
TUELLER: “We have the resources to build a ship right here.”
TUELLER: “We have a device built to build ships.”
MILLICENT: “Oh.”
MILLICENT: “Right.”
MILLICENT: Millie feels so dumb.
TUELLER: “This is a ship building station.”
STORY: Tux laughs. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
MILLICENT: “Food will still be an issue, as far as I can tell.”
STORY: “And air!” Tux pipes in again.
TUELLER: “Sorry, Tux, did I step on your moment?”
STORY: “Nah, mate, you’re good.”
TUELLER: “Let the record reflect that Tux is the genius here.”
STORY: “We’re an autonomous collective.”
TUELLER: “I’m just the fast talker.”
TUELLER: “Also Millie.”
TUELLER: “Sorry Doc.”
MILLICENT: Millie shrugs.
MILLICENT: Baffled.
TUELLER: “Also I have no idea what the next step is.”
MILLICENT: “Can we snap back to our immediate problem?”
TUELLER: “We all need to eat, but we are working on getting us out of here soon.”
MILLICENT: “We need to decide whether to tell the people on this station that they’re eating reconstituted people meat.”
TUELLER: “And they HAVE been for as long as they’ve been here.”
ALEJO: “If we have a bigger plan, I think we can sell the food thing.”
MILLICENT: “Do we bring in the leadership group first? Tueller, does your constitution have something for this?”
STORY: Calixta leans on a counter, arms crossed, thinking. “Five people are easier to convince than hundreds. I think we get leadership in here and talk to them about it.”
TUELLER: “I haven’t liked many of the governments I’ve sketched out. I think we’re mostly looking for some form of anarchy, but we’re all united in a common cause, so yeah, let’s bring in the leaders.”
TUELLER: “As long as we can avoid making an aristocracy here I think we’re good.”
TUELLER: “Maybe an anarchosyndacalist commune?”
MILLICENT: Millie shrugs. “I was more into STEM.”
MILLICENT: “This humanities stuff isn’t my bailiwick.”
TUELLER: “We’re starting a giant space co-op.”
STORY: So, what’s the decision?
TUELLER: Bring in the leaders, tell them the situation.
STORY: Okay! Who wants to lead that explanation?
MILLICENT: It’s a technical explanation, but we’re appealing to the leadership. I think it ought to be Tueller and Millie.
ALEJO: Agreed.
TUELLER: Yikes. Okay.
STORY: All right! Tueller, why don’t you get us started. What’s your angle of approach for this conversation?
TUELLER: Radical honesty!
STORY: (Trying to determine stat to roll)
TUELLER: —I mean, playing to my strengths I should try to literally strongarm them.
STORY: Sure, but your argument for them to be cool with this, is it rational, philosophical, emotional, what?
TUELLER: Rational!
STORY: All right! This is the practical choice. This or starve. FA + Expertise, please
TUELLER: We need to eat, we have been eating, and to continue to survive we need to continue. Otherwise the Collective will nuke us, but we’re working very hard to get out of here quickly, and all together we’ll do it.
TUELLER: /roll 2d6+2
STORY: chris.stuart rolled 4 + 2 = 6
MILLICENT: oh yikes
STORY: Rescue us, Millie!
TUELLER: Well, that seems an appropriate roll to “let’s continue to eat people.”
MILLICENT: Okay.
STORY: Your argument, in a nutshell?
MILLICENT: It’s a simple calculus. If we resort to eating non-meat options available to us we’ll run out of food in three days. If we start to scavenge from the ships passing through or do anything else out of the ordinary we’ll alert the local AI and be executed. We keep the station running as it has until we can escape.
STORY: Get Involved + Expertise please!
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6 + 2
STORY: josh rolled 10 + 2 = 12
MILLICENT: There we go
STORY: Millie, tonight’s MVP
TUELLER: FUCK YEAH VISION.
STORY: Tell me what happens, Vision!
ALEJO: Fuck yeah vision!
MILLICENT: Millie makes this case, dispassionately and in front of a whiteboard with the math. She drops back into teacher mode. At the end of the lesson her new pupils ask questions and she patiently asks them or guides them to her answers through rhetoric. They walk away finding themselves stunned to be agreeing.
ALEJO: Alejo walks over to Tueller and whispers, “Keep eating people?” He smiles, gives him a friendly shoulder punch, and walks away.
STORY: All right! Your second big problem solved. Time for another catch up with Alejo, this time with Calixta.
STORY: Alejo, give me that cramped quarters roll please.
ALEJO: /roll 2d6
STORY: ablair01 rolled 6
STORY: Oh no.
STORY: Okay! This ends in bad feelings for both of the siblings.
ALEJO: Ugh. Not what I wanted for my evening of relaxation. Okay.
TUELLER: —Don’t fuck up my roll, buddy.
STORY: Calixta really takes to the gardening, and spends a lot of her time there over the next few days. She works silently, with a mostly peaceful, thoughtful look on her face.
STORY: She greets you when you’re thirty feet behind her. Always had good ears.
STORY: “So, how am I different?”
ALEJO: “Well, you’ve still got stupid great hearing. That’s not changed.” He walks up and kneels down next to her.
ALEJO: “You seem a little more . . . decisive.” He picks that last word carefully.
STORY: She chuckles. “Okay. You’re… more patient.”
ALEJO: He laughs. “Gotta be when you have four dozen toilets staring back at you.”
STORY: “What else.” She sprays a mist over some lettuce.
ALEJO: He shrugs. “Thing with T is new. Not just T. But seems like you have more serious feels.”
ALEJO: “You never told me how you wound up with Chandra.”
ALEJO: “Not that you have to. But if you want to talk about it. You know.”
STORY: She rolls her eyes. “There’s no thing with T.”
STORY: “Chandra was work. He turned out to be interesting, but he was work.”
ALEJO: He holds up his hands, mea culpa style. “Alright. My turn. How am I different?”
STORY: She moves down the row, spritzing the other plants. “You don’t want to know.”
ALEJO: He moves with her. “Well now you have to tell me.”
STORY: She shakes her head. “Mm-mm.”
ALEJO: “Ouch.”
STORY: She sighs, turning back at the end of a row and now facing you from across a web of string bean vines. “You’ve lost your edge.”
STORY: “You think I care about feelings because you do. You’re getting stupid, Cinco.”
STORY: “These people, I care about them too, but I’m not going to get killed for them.” She shakes her head.
STORY: “And you already did.”
ALEJO: He tilts his head at her. “This about the pliers? I mean, I would have fucked some fool up with ’em.” He smiles softly. Takes a deep breath. “Maybe I have. Lost some edge. Or maybe I’ve just found the edge that really matters.” He stands. “I hope you do too.” He gives her a quick squeeze on the shoulder and turns to go. “Nice work on the garden, by the way.”
STORY: She shakes her head, and her eyes moisten, but she doesn’t let Alejo see. “Mm,” she mutters in agreement.
STORY: All right! Dang!
STORY: Would you like another problem?
TUELLER: No!
STORY: Fair enough. You must, though.
TUELLER: —Everything works perfectly and the AIs apologize to us
STORY: You already started discussing this, but I’d like to hear your thoughts/ideas/plans? on getting off this bucket.
STORY: When, who’s coming with you, how.
STORY: etc
TUELLER: Well, Tueller isn’t primary on this, but he recommends we try to figure out how to use what the system has to build a ship. How big that ship can get, and if it’s possible is a place to start.
TUELLER: Our other options are to see if we can start putting people, as we wake them up, on to passing ships so to slowly offload the weight.
TUELLER: (That’s not a great idea, just one Tueller comes up with)
STORY: Tux wants to know whether we intend to leave the ship operational when we depart.
TUELLER: It’s a good set up to lots of sitcoms, though.
STORY: Are there people staying behind?
TUELLER: Tueller doesn’t want to do so, though he’s afraid of the AI Collective and has an astonishingly detailed plan about how to destroy a star that he worries the AI Collective would use on us.
ALEJO: “Maybe we set up some sort of rotation, with volunteers, to keep the lights on here, while we figure out how to shut the entire system down?”
TUELLER: —I had a boring commute, so I really do have that.
MILLICENT: If we can distract or derail the local AI we could probably unhook all of the current human brain processors and shut this place down.
MILLICENT: Without alerting the Collective.
MILLICENT: But that’s a local bandaid.
TUELLER: So, we want to shut it down, leave, and destroy/disable it?
MILLICENT: And if everyone left it would render the relay inoperable, which would be caught very soon
MILLICENT: So ideally we probably want to free the people and leave a skeleton crew who we can swap people in on a rota to replace so it’s more like shift work.
STORY: Calixta shrugs. “We could try to kill the local AI.”
TUELLER: “Yes, well, I’m in favor of that.”
MILLICENT: “Wouldn’t killing it alert the Collective?”
STORY: “If we succeed, and we empty out the onboard bodies, they don’t get a warning until one of them actually comes to the system.”
ALEJO: Alejo looks sidelong at her. He nods approvingly. “Could work.”
TUELLER: “If we leave this thing running, more people are getting sucked into it.”
STORY: Tux stands. “W– hm.” He sits back down.
ALEJO: “What would it take?” He looks at Calixta.
TUELLER: “Is this a ‘free-floating Noma’ strength AI?”
TUELLER: “Or something else?”
STORY: Calixta shrugs. “I’ve never really chatted with another one.”
TUELLER: “Me neither.”
MILLICENT: “Wait, if we leave this running we could set it to do what we’ve been told it does. Destroy the traveler on one end and reconstitute them on the other, without keeping the bodies for use later.”
STORY: Tux shakes his head. “The sleeping brains run the thing.”
STORY: “They’re needed, if we want to keep it running. And we’re needed to keep them alive.”
MILLICENT: “Oh, I see.”
MILLICENT: “Well, then we’re going to have to keep it running until we’re ready to strike everywhere, right?”
MILLICENT: “You don’t think the Collective will get word of it if this relay shuts down? The Ark would be abuzz with the news.”
STORY: “They absolutely will.”
ALEJO: “Well, unless we kill the local AI, right?”
STORY: Calixta shakes her head. “Killing the local AI just buys us time to get everyone out.”
MILLICENT: “Even then. I can’t imagine they don’t listen to the chatter from the Ark.”
STORY: Calixta sits on a table, knocking on either side of her, thinking.
STORY: “So we either escape, just us, and let this thing keep running, or we break everyone out and one way or another, eventually Sol loses their relay and possibly worse.”
STORY: “Certainly we’re hunted by the Collective until all the versions of us are dead.”
TUELLER: “Yeah, we gotta shut this shit down and then circle the wagons.”
TUELLER: “Otherwise we gotta kill ourselves and hope the Collective just kills everyone here and starts over again.”
TUELLER: “Those are the only options. We’re in so far that we’re committed.”
TUELLER: “We get these people out of here, we kill that ghost, and then we muster humanity.”
TUELLER: “I got the order wrong there, but that’s basically it.”
MILLICENT: “I suggest a different order-yes.”
STORY: Calixta looks uncomfortable. “To war, then?”
MILLICENT: “I think we get this station up and running again, then leave, then come up with a plan that works for all the relays. I think it will go better if it all happens at once.”
ALEJO: “We have any idea what the Collective wants? Why it’s doing this? I mean, I’m all for mustering humanity for a fight, but . . . we lose, right?”
MILLICENT: “If we rob them of their cloud processing? Maybe. We at least force the fight to their homeworld, wherever or whatever it may be.”
STORY: Tux looks uncomfortable with that idea, Millie. “And if they discover we left before we have a plan? Everyone onboard here is dead, minimum.”
TUELLER: “Shut this shit down.”
TUELLER: “Guys. Sorry, I’m having a thought.”
TUELLER: “I want to run it by you all because it’s a crazy and stupid and maybe dangerous thought”
TUELLER: “This is a giant photocopying and casting machine.”
TUELLER: “And what we have here is a universal conspiracy that we need to get the word out.”
MILLICENT: “Wow.”
TUELLER: “So this has to get to the Ark, too.”
MILLICENT: “Someone’s coming for my throne.”
TUELLER: “We need Earth as ready as possible, but the Ark needs to know.”
MILLICENT: “That is possibly the most reckless and rash idea I’ve ever heard.”
MILLICENT: “Not that I let you finish.”
TUELLER: “I was going to say we should split the party.”
MILLICENT: “Oh.”
TUELLER: “But I think maybe we should do both.”
TUELLER: “Go to the Ark and to Earth.”
MILLICENT: “I thought you were going to say we should free the copies that are here and convince them to carry the message to every Ark civilization in the ships we make for them.”
TUELLER: “Oh maybe that’s a better idea than mine.”
MILLICENT: “Hail to the Queen, baby.”
TUELLER: “But I don’t think anyone’s better at explaining this than you are, Millie.”
TUELLER: “I’m not sure there’s anyone I would trust more to explain to the Ark what’s going on here than you. And also explaining to Earth.”
MILLICENT: “Well, we can’t just make hundreds of Millies and make hundreds of ships and send them to all the Ark civilizations.”
MILLICENT: “Can we?”
TUELLER: “I’m not sure we can. But we can get to the Ark.”
STORY: Tux coughs. “Let’s say we do this crazy plan. How do these ships and their occupants get to all of those worlds?”
MILLICENT: “Using the relays one last time?”
STORY: “How?”
MILLICENT: “Or.”
TUELLER: “Or not? I got ahead of myself, I guess.”
STORY: Tux shakes his head. “The UUIDs here – the AI has them.”
STORY: “They’re probably cross-refing everything.”
STORY: “We try to travel through this machine, my guess is we turn into pudding.”
MILLICENT: “Oh come on. Do we really have to figure out the wild jump math before we can leave here?”
TUELLER: Tueller shrugs. “I guess this is why I’m not the ideas man.”
MILLICENT: “It’s a field of math so complex it’s been abandoned in favor of just using the jump relays.”
MILLICENT: “Noma.”
MILLICENT: “You broke the wild jump math to get us to the Ren Faire planet.”
MILLICENT: “Can you do it again?”
MILLICENT: “Can you show us how?”
STORY: Calixta takes a deep breath. “Even if I could make those calculations, the math’s not possible without a computer. We try to do it on this machine, the AI will catch us and we’re dead. So that’s another point in our order of operations.”
STORY: “Kill the AI, take all the sleepers offline so they can’t warn the Collective, then do the math for a wild jump to the ark before we run out of air.”
STORY: “And before all that, somehow fabricate enough ships to get five thousand people off this base. Secretly.”
STORY: “This is a toughie, guys.”
TUELLER: “Yeah, it’s not great.”
MILLICENT: “We might be able to build a computer that can do the calculations for us.”
MILLICENT: “It would have to be near AI in capacity.”
MILLICENT: “But far enough away not to be noticed.”
MILLICENT: “What do you think, Noma?”
STORY: “You want to build it and keep it offline from the relay’s network?”
MILLICENT: “Yeah. We’d need it to do the calculations for a couple hundred jumps. Just enough to send one ship to each Ark civilization.”
STORY: Tux laughs.
STORY: “Sorry. Sorry.”
STORY: “But you know.”
STORY: “This is fucking nuts.”
MILLICENT: Genuinely, “Do you have a better option?”
STORY: “Nope! Let’s go with this.”
STORY: Can someone… summarize the plan?
TUELLER: We’re going to build a computer that Noma can use to pilot jumps, use that to jump people to warn the universe about the AIs plans, and then at some point kill the AI holding us captive, and go back to Earth to also warn them.
TUELLER: Without starving, rioting, or running out of air.
TUELLER: Anything i missed?
STORY: You’re going to also covertly build ships to jump those people in
STORY: And keep the relay running while you do
ALEJO: “We have the absolute best bad plans.”
STORY: Where will the ships be stored?
STORY: Actually, I’m good with this if this is the plan. I think those questions are the kind of things you guys should be thinking about
STORY: But if everyone’s good with this as The Plan, I think we can do our last cramped quarters
MILLICENT: hmmmm
TUELLER: Sure! We can think about this plan for two weeks.
MILLICENT: I’m open to lots of feedback on this
TUELLER: Tueller was just going to suggest making copies of the five of us and shooting us to every system.
TUELLER: SPLIT THE PARTY BUT DON’T SPLIT THE PARTY.
TUELLER: CRAMPED QUARTERS WITH THE DOC AND THE ASSASSIN.
MILLICENT: That’s an interesting wrinkle!
STORY: Yeah, let’s roll.
STORY: Millie, roll them bones
TUELLER: —each subsequent episode is a different version of the party in a new system.
ALEJO: –I like it!
STORY: — please don’t make me run that
STORY: — also ethically that’s… a big mess
TUELLER: —Then we all get back together.
STORY: — that’s the messy part!
STORY: anyway
STORY: Millie!
MILLICENT: /roll 2d6
STORY: josh rolled 9
STORY: Okay! Would you like me to set the scene, or are you good?
MILLICENT: Please, go ahead
STORY: We’re a few weeks into your occupation of the base, and there’s a fridge in the basement cafe that keeps breaking. Millie, you’ve seen a handful of tickets come in about it – it’s low priority, and the techs haven’t gotten to it yet, but you’re certain you could fix it on your own and you’ve been doing a lot of paperwork. You clock out for the night after 1 am but that fridge… it’d be so relaxing to just tinker for a while.
MILLICENT: mmmm I bet I could make it have an ice machine
STORY: Alejo, are you still working as a janitor under this new arrangement?
ALEJO: He’s still helping out, yeah. He’s not doing it full time, but yes.
STORY: All right. It’s the end of your once-a-week janitorial double shift, and you’re beat and starving. The large cafeterias all close up after dinner, but you know the code for that basement cafe and you bet there’s something snacky down there you could find.
STORY: The nighttime lights are on, so it’s dim in here – most of the tables and chairs are just blobs as your vision adjusts. There’s a light coming from behind the counter – and… is that humming?
ALEJO: Alejo steps through the space, all stealthy but mostly curious.
ALEJO: He reaches the counter and peeks over it.
STORY: Millie’s on her back, head underneath some machinery right below you.
MILLICENT: “And we juuuuust connect this wire here and.”
ALEJO: Alejo ducks back down quickly. Startled himself. He sits there for a moment. Then eases back away from the counter, stands, coughs loudly and stomps forward, humming.
MILLICENT: The counter is aglow in blue and purple underlights.
ALEJO: He starts to whistle.
MILLICENT: It looks like the wheel well of a very ugly Honda Civic.
ALEJO: He moves very slowly and loudly.
MILLICENT: “Oh, hello there. Just tricking out the snack fridge.” Pause, beat, head lowers. “An extremely sane thing to do.”
ALEJO: “Oh!” Alejo startles. “Doc! Wow. Hi.”
MILLICENT: “It turns out that I can’t stand not fixing something.”
MILLICENT: “Or, working on something.”
MILLICENT: “So now the fridge has retractable stairs so I can reach the top shelf and an underlight in case someone is sneaking in for a midnight snack. I guess? I don’t know.”
ALEJO: He smiles, a little awkwardly.
ALEJO: “Sorry to interrupt your . . . fridge fixin’ time.”
MILLICENT: “It is a little like therapy, but then so was therapy.”
MILLICENT: “I think a good friend is probably better than making this fridge talk, the next thing on my insane list.”
MILLICENT: “Would you like a snack, Alejo?”
ALEJO: He smiles and nods. “I would. Very much.” He comes around the counter to raid the fridge with her. He stands beside her. “Wow. This fridge is tricked out!”
ALEJO: “What would you make it say, if you were to go with that plan?”
MILLICENT: “Thank you. Oh, nothing much. Hello, goodbye. A list of ingredients inside and meal ideas based on them.”
ALEJO: “Oh really. I think it’d be sassy. Give me shit for raiding it at 1am.”
MILLICENT: “That way you don’t have to open the fridge to tell what’s inside. As I say it sounds less and less sensible”
ALEJO: He looks over at her. “It sounds pretty great, actually.” He meets her eyes. Then he looks back in the fridge.
MILLICENT: “Thank you, that’s very kind.” Millie sinks into a chair. “Difficult shift?”
ALEJO: He reaches in and grabs some cheese. “It was long, yeah. But oddly, cleaning is peaceful.” He brings the cheese over to the counter and stands across from her. “You know, T told me something a while back. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
ALEJO: He lifts it up and smells it. “Oh god!” He wraps it up again. “That’s . . . something. Give me reconstituted people any day.”
ALEJO: He walks it back to the fridge. Over his shoulder: “He said that I . . . well, the other me missed an opportunity. With you.” He stands at the fridge.
MILLICENT: “Ah.”
MILLICENT: Millie sighs.
ALEJO: He turns to her.
MILLICENT: “I suppose I owe you the story.”
ALEJO: “Only if you want to share it.” He says this softly.
ALEJO: He grabs a loaf of bread that resembles a french loaf and comes back to the counter.
MILLICENT: “Where, uh. I’m sorry, I don’t know if this is offensive or not. What do you last remember? What was your last jump?”
ALEJO: “On the way to find you. At Chandra’s. Tueller and I were coming to get you. I was in . . . a pretty dark place. Or I’d been in one. But . . . ” He takes a long breath, “All I could think about was finding you.”
MILLICENT: “Oh that’s.”
MILLICENT: “Well that’s more recent than I thought.
MILLICENT: “You found me. Tueller. Well, he Tuellered. And we were in a race to steal a ship and get away before Chandra’s security forces brought us down.”
ALEJO: He listens intently, watching her closely.
MILLICENT: “We got just outside the hanger. Calixta said she would go get Noma, but we didn’t know what that meant at the time.”
MILLICENT: “Tueller drew some fire and boarded the ship. It was just you and me.”
ALEJO: He nods, following along.
MILLICENT: “We were waiting for Calixta to make a distraction. You told me to run and not look back, when the moment came. You said you couldn’t make it without me, but I could make it without you.”
MILLICENT: “You were wrong.”
ALEJO: Alejo tears up. He smiles. He swallows hard. And then he leans over the counter and kisses her.