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Vince
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Josh
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Vince
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Vince
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Trish
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Vince
Find the right mobility solutions so they.
Trish
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Vince
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Josh
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Trish
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Vince
Find your road@enterprisemobility.com warning.
Nora
The program you're about to listen to contains explicit language and descriptions of adult themes and graphic violence that some people may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.
Vince
My friends, my friends, my friends. Hi.
Genevieve
Hello.
Vince
Hello. I am very excited for this table. I honestly am not. Only because I have to. God, it's so hard not to do spoilers. Love you, love you, love you. I'm sorry. I love you.
Josh
That implies nothing.
Vince
Vince. Josh, thank you for coming. I don't. Why do you keep coming back?
Genevieve
Why do we keep coming back, Vince? Gluttons for punishment. I think so.
Vince
You know, that's up to you, man.
Josh
I welcome it.
Vince
You do? You're like.
Genevieve
Misery loves company. Yes.
Vince
We literally. I. Vince. Storytime. You two heard this, but Vince walked in and was like, I read the whole rule book. Yeah, yeah. And went straight into it and I sent it like yesterday. So, yeah. Yeah, Cool, man.
Danny
Good.
Vince
I'm glad you're here. I'm honestly legit glad you're here. Thank you for saying yeah. Trish, it's good to see you again.
Stacy
You too.
Vince
You know, we're doing spooky stories.
Trish
It's been a while.
Vince
It has been a while since. Oh, God, Foreververse days.
Trish
Yes.
Vince
That's still on. Pluto everywhere.
Genevieve
Yeah.
Trish
I have so many friends that are like, I turned on my TV and saw you and I'm like, wow, that was from a long time ago.
Vince
Yeah. I was just adding streaming services the other day and I was like, I wonder if it's still there.
Trish
And I totally am.
Vince
Yep, I'm still there.
Trish
Well, I have to play, you know.
Vince
What they were playing?
Trish
What were they playing?
Vince
Puppet Land.
Trish
Aw.
Vince
Yeah, I know.
Trish
So sweet. But, yeah, no spoilers for anyone who hasn't Seen foreververse yet, but I feel like I took my character out in a way that would be appropriate for 10 candles.
Vince
I actually agree with you. Yeah. I also, for people who was on that show, I don't know if this felt it to you. Was that like Navy SEAL training in the RPG world? Oh, my God.
Trish
You know, a little bit, yeah.
Vince
Cause it's like, okay, new system. Go character by tomorrow.
Trish
Well, but same psyche.
Vince
Same psyche.
Trish
Quantum leaped from game to game to game to game to game. But same base character.
Vince
Same base character. You were juggling two character sheets, but. And one had to be flopped out every month or so. Yeah. It was a thing. Hi, Nora.
Trish
Hello.
Vince
You're the only one. I loved playing with you on LA By Night. Yeah. It was the first time we played together ever. I know. And we're only, like, recent friend acquisitions, but that was super fun, and I was super excited when you decided to come and play.
Stacy
Yeah. We got to play dark characters as well.
Vince
Yeah. Yeah. It was fun being bad guys.
Stacy
It was. Although you're sorry, guys.
Vince
Your judgment's still out, so to speak.
Stacy
I know.
Vince
Yeah.
Stacy
What happens? We'll see.
Vince
I don't know.
Genevieve
Check it out.
Vince
Or it's just gingham. Sundry is just becoming a dark place. A little bit. A lot of vampires, a lot of people.
Genevieve
Dark places. Ivan. No. No.
Vince
But, yeah. No. Thank you for all playing. This is. This is. I love this because this series has been just so different. Like, some days, and we were like, wow, I've never played with any of you before. And then some days I'm like my old friends. So let's get into it, shall we? Let's do a scary.
Genevieve
Let's do it.
Vince
Take your. You have five pictures which are going to be acting as our cards for this session. I'd first like you to take your top one. This will be the virtue. And we are going to pass it to your left. Yeah. So take it and hand it to the person to your left. Or, no, do not write on it yet. Take it and pass it to the person to the left.
Stacy
I see.
Vince
Yes.
Trish
Great.
Vince
Now, on that, I would like you to write a virtue sharpie. Sharpie. Yes. And you know, you're either in Clan Fine or not fun when it comes to sharpie times. So virtue, meaning what is something that you look up to in someone? What is something.
Genevieve
This is something that this character would look up to.
Vince
Yeah. That you appreciate about someone. Because this is a virtue that you will be ostensibly and literally handing to someone else.
Trish
Okay.
Josh
Done and done.
Stacy
Mm.
Vince
I know, I heard you stop writing.
Trish
God, do we have to keep it a secret?
Vince
We will not be keeping it a secret. We are going to hand them out. This is kind of like getting your camp name. When someone gives it to you, I love it. That's your virtue and your vice. So. Yeah.
Trish
Mm. I love this collaborative character creation.
Vince
It's different and it's because the story system's so fluid. It allows for a lot of interpretation. And like you pointed out earlier, and I know you talked a little bit about, I like my spreadsheets when it comes to my planning.
Trish
Oh, you know I do.
Vince
I know you do. So it was definitely one of those. I want you to think about it, but don't think about it too hard.
Trish
Well, that's. Yeah, I didn't plan too much for today because I am an over prepper and then sometimes it gets me into, like, wonky gear catch situations when something happens that I wasn't prepared for. So.
Josh
Well, I planned my whole character and then walked in and promptly threw it all out.
Genevieve
Threw it all out.
Vince
Yep. As is very common in this. Give them back to their owners. To your right.
Trish
That is for you, sir.
Vince
Thank you.
Stacy
This is not a one word thing.
Vince
Technically, a one, like a virtue should be something that is if you say it really fast.
Genevieve
So just the first word, then maybe.
Vince
Then the first one.
Stacy
Strength.
Vince
Why don't you. Why don't you. Yeah, why don't you tell us, Nora, what did you get?
Stacy
Strength.
Vince
Yes.
Stacy
I can't see what the other. What did you. What is this?
Genevieve
Strength by truth. Truth gives me strength.
Vince
Aha. Okay, so you could say so one thing.
Genevieve
Honesty.
Vince
Honesty.
Trish
Yes, great.
Vince
Honesty.
Genevieve
I was describing honesty.
Stacy
I'm just gonna write that in the most poetic way.
Vince
Honesty. Honesty.
Trish
Honesty.
Vince
That is definitely a virtue.
Josh
I'm over here.
Vince
Yeah.
Trish
I like where we're going today.
Vince
Yeah, it's fantastic. Jeff, I write two sentences now that all of the blood has gone to your face. Why don't you go next?
Genevieve
So I got resourceful.
Vince
Resourceful.
Genevieve
Very resourceful.
Vince
That's also very concise.
Genevieve
Very concise. To the point. One word.
Josh
It's so many syllables, though. It's like the same.
Vince
Trish, what did you get?
Trish
Insightful.
Vince
Insightful. Okay, so we have resourceful, insightful, honest. And how about you, Vince?
Josh
I got dependable.
Vince
Dependable, Very practical virtues over here.
Josh
Yeah, I'd say.
Vince
And very resourceful is very practical as well too. So it's just you. Yes, Insightful is very cerebral. So.
Trish
Yes.
Vince
Now let's take another one of your portraits. And let's pass it to the right. Yes. Now, on this here. Oh, no, on this, I would like you to write a vice. Something that you would not wish upon anybody. Something that you. Something that creates more problems than it solves.
Trish
One word.
Vince
Again, one word. Be very direct about it. So this is. This is your vices.
Genevieve
I wrote the Oxford Dictionary.
Josh
I received the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on the back of mine.
Genevieve
Miriam's dictionary states that this type can be used in many ways. Fabric.
Vince
And let's pass it back. So go back to their owners to the left. Thank you.
Josh
It's a great photo, right?
Vince
You're not mean to make a photo.
Trish
I do appreciate that photo.
Vince
It was not on purpose. Why don't you start a soft fence?
Josh
I got greedy.
Vince
You're greedy.
Josh
I'm very greedy.
Vince
So greedy. And then remind me what the virtue is again.
Josh
Dependable.
Vince
Greedy and dependable. You're dependably greedy.
Josh
Fun contrast to play there.
Vince
Yeah, absolutely. And how about you, Nora?
Stacy
Covetous.
Vince
Covetous.
Genevieve
That's a new one.
Vince
All right. Yes. Excellent.
Genevieve
It brought out the orthosaurus.
Vince
Trish, what did you get?
Trish
Selfish.
Vince
Selfish. Insightful and selfish. All right. Interesting.
Genevieve
Interesting.
Vince
Josh.
Genevieve
I got blunt.
Vince
Yeah, straight to the point.
Genevieve
Straight to the point.
Vince
All right. That makes a lot of sense.
Stacy
The irony of your last.
Genevieve
Yes, you're very honest. I like this.
Vince
You're already twisting your mental dials. Yeah. Making those mental dials. So I will describe to you the situation you're in. And, oh, boy, do I have a treat for you today.
Josh
Oh, good.
Vince
Yes. After much discussion before this setting, I'm pleased to tell you that you are on the International Space Station for this episode.
Josh
Oh, delightful.
Vince
Which means in so many different ways, what has been happening in this world. You have only the knowledge of what you have been able to scramble. And we did discuss getting the radio to work, but only a week after everything went down.
Josh
Yeah.
Vince
All right. And since then, you have been watching the Earth go through turmoil, Just constant turmoil. And very quickly, because of your position on the International Space Station, you have noticed the moon is getting closer. And it is not getting closer in the way that, oh, it's bigger in the sky. As you would see from the ground, it's physically approaching the planet. And as a result, is when you are making your pass to come to where the moon is. You see, every time you pass it, it's currently has. It's coming at you.
Josh
It's gaining on us.
Vince
It's gaining at you, in fact, because you're in the International Space station and you have actual instrumentations that allow you to measure this kind of stuff. And because you were not affected by the EMP that destroyed the entire planet on bottom side, you were able. Cause otherwise if I ruined you with power, you'd all be dead right now because of life support. In fact, probably all of your instrumentations did BL for a brief moment, but then once the solar panels kicked back in and you replaced the batteries, everything was fine. But with your instrumentation, you can tell that it's going at the speed of a Boeing jet. So basically it's at a decaying orbit of around anywhere from 430 to 500 miles an hour. And that's the speed it's maintaining and it's been maintaining for the last two and a half weeks.
Trish
So ISS is maintaining, or the Moon.
Vince
Is maintaining, Moon is maintaining speed. And now you're at the position in which the Moon is close enough to change and steal your orbit. And that's where we're going to start our story today.
Josh
So doing this bizarre figure 8 kind of pattern right now with the moon.
Vince
And the Earth, you haven't. The figure 8 pattern is going to start to begin.
Josh
Oh great.
Vince
Yes. So ostensibly you're in a position where you know that the actually. No, you're right. You would have actually gone through that Figure 8 orbit for a while where it would have stolen and then you would have exchanged it back. Yes, that makes a lot more sense because it would have stolen you way before you gotten too close to it. So figure eight, you have been exchanging orbits with the Moon as it has been closer and that orbit has become tighter and, and tighter as our story begins. So with that said, I would like you to take a third card and I would like you to write a moment that you hope your character can achieve in this story. It has to be something that has a chance of succeeding, that can succeed. Excuse me. But also has an option of fail as well too. This is important because if you to fulfill this moment at some point in the story, you will get a mechanical benefit for it.
Josh
This can be more than one word.
Vince
Thank you, Vince.
Genevieve
Yes, I was like, I'm really limited here with one word. I don't know how I can save the world in one word. I don't know.
Vince
But that is truly the. It is a moment that you hope your character can accomplish in the story.
Genevieve
It.
Vince
Like a Polaroid picture. It's a new asmr.
Genevieve
I don't wanna. I'm not trying to moat out. That's what I'm saying. So, I mean, how far can I go on this?
Vince
Is this something you can accomplish?
Genevieve
Yes.
Vince
Is it something that can fail?
Genevieve
Yes.
Vince
Then write it down.
Genevieve
Okay.
Josh
You were hoping that basically you're intending this happens during the session, during the episode, and if it does, if it goes well, you gain a benefit.
Genevieve
That's right.
Vince
Thank you. For the Oxford dictionary version or the rule book version. I read the rules.
Trish
You would think it would be the lawful neutral kid, that would be like. I read all the rules. But not today.
Vince
It's okay.
Trish
Curious. Vince, your IRL alignment.
Josh
Oh. Oh, boy. I'd like to say it's chaotic good. Well, no, you see, a lot of people say they're chaotic good, but aren't actually when push comes to shove, chaotic neutral. That's fair. No, I'm definitely more neutral.
Genevieve
Good.
Trish
Okay.
Josh
I'm just, you know, I like doing good things, but I don't feel that every rule or regulation is necessarily the best at all times.
Trish
Got it?
Josh
Yeah.
Vince
How about you guys? No, I think you just need to share today.
Stacy
I would just rather look at you quizzically. Rather side eye you instead of answer that question.
Trish
I always like asking people that question. I just think it's fun.
Vince
It is a fun. It's a fun question that only Vince gets to answer.
Trish
So I figured if Josh needed more time.
Genevieve
I do. I'm still writing.
Josh
Oh, it was a. Yeah, I gave it more time.
Vince
Yeah. Nice. See, and you know, my favorite bit is that I have enjoyed in this show and I have been observing how lovely the silence is and I love watching your natural host instinct kick in. You always do.
Josh
Dead air fill the.
Genevieve
Fill this room.
Vince
No dead air. You just want to make sure that it's all taken care of. And oh boy, am I loving the place that it's putting you in right now.
Trish
So, yes, you're ready for me to be super uncomfortable today is what you're saying.
Genevieve
I'm not ready to be comfortable. Like, I've already been chastised for writing a sentence. I'm ready to go.
Vince
This is more into it.
Josh
Use it.
Vince
Speaking of being chastised, what's your moment and who are you playing today? Josh. And please introduce us.
Genevieve
Today I'll be playing Joseph Myers.
Vince
Joseph Myers.
Genevieve
Joseph Myers was a shareholder for the company that pours money into one of the many rockets that delivers supplies to the space station and was on a mission with a branding officer, I believe to check out the space station and made it up there. But he is a corporate guy and he is, like I said, a shareholder. So he has ulterior motives for the company.
Vince
Got it. So he's a company man.
Genevieve
He's a company man who made it up here alone, however, so something behind that.
Vince
Got it. So you made it up. Did you come with the, like you said, the, the corporate.
Genevieve
I came with a little corporate knowledge, a little bit of maybe.
Vince
But you said you came with a corporate employee or you came as a corporate employee.
Genevieve
I came as a corporate employee.
Vince
Okay. Correct. And then what moment do you hope to generate in this story today?
Genevieve
Activating a nuclear warhead that disrupts the moon orbit. So.
Vince
Oh, so you want to detonate a warhead?
Genevieve
Possibly, yes, that's possible. That could be why I'm up there is to Cool.
Vince
Great. Awesome. Trish, who will you be playing today?
Trish
I am playing Stacy Martell.
Vince
Stacey Martell.
Trish
Yes. And Stacey is a very well respected and highly accredited marketing director from the United States who was sent to ISS by the International Space Station program by the union of nations that run ISS to come up and create some videos selling the general populace on why the ISS is needed.
Vince
So there's. This is interesting. Do you want to have it be like there's an upcoming bill to basically or an upcoming proposition to pour more funding into the station and you are there to help?
Trish
Yes. And in some nations that's. That's more of a thing than others. Right now, due to political climate, some people feel that money could be better invested elsewhere. So I, Stacey, can spin anything.
Vince
Spin doctor in space.
Stacy
Yes.
Trish
And so I was sent to the ISS to create a series of video packages that convince everyone why ISS is worthwhile and why they should invest their money.
Vince
And what is the moment you hope to create in this story?
Trish
The moment that I hope to create is to send at least one, preferably more of the video packages that I have created to Earth.
Vince
So your goal is to actually do your job, spend fast.
Trish
And the video packages I feel like that Stacey has created while up here kind of morphed in what they were from selling ISS to almost more of a journalistic Holy shit. This is what's happening up here.
Vince
So now you become a disaster reporter instead?
Trish
A little bit. So it's a hybrid of both. So this is still really great, but also what the hell is happening?
Vince
Videos done. All right, excellent. Vince, who are you playing today?
Josh
My name is Danny Baron. Danny, I am the comms officer on the ISS and a mechanical engineer. And yeah, I just maintain the comms systems. I would have been the first to realize comms had gone out when everything kind of went to hell. And the first to try working on a radio replacement to establish some sort of contact, which we.
Vince
That's great. Yeah. So ostensibly, you reconnected whatever you could at this point, which. At this point, which I would say from what I know from your timeline and where you are, there has definitely been radio transmissions, but they have basically been guys in bunkers.
Josh
And it's also situational in terms of, like, which part of the Earth we are orbiting over at any one moment.
Vince
Sometimes you catch it, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you hear terrible things, and you've heard terrible things. You've also heard things you cannot explain. So I do imagine you being like a sonar, you know, sub guy sitting with your cans on.
Josh
Yeah.
Vince
What moment do you hope to create?
Josh
My moment, it says I will gain hope when the comms flicker to life. And I swear I hear my wife's voice.
Vince
You want to hear your wife's voice one last time? Okay. You want to hear your life voice? All right. Sounds excellent. Nora.
Stacy
I am playing Genevieve Zane. Genevieve, who is a microbiologist, and she specializes in extreme weather conditions. So her goal is on doing research on the ISS is to hopefully find in sometime in the near distant future if we are able to colonize on other planets. However. So not there yet.
Vince
No.
Trish
So not there yet.
Vince
Yeah.
Stacy
She's also secretly a ancient astronaut theorist.
Vince
Oh, okay, cool, cool, cool.
Stacy
Writing books under a pseudonym. Can't tell anybody about that because she wants to keep her job. But I don't want to say it's aliens, but it's aliens I love.
Vince
Okay, cool. And what moment does this ghost writer of ancient alien archaeology hope to create in this story?
Stacy
He wants to find out about what they are.
Vince
You want to know about them. Okay. Capital T. Them. Yeah, capital T. Them. All right, great. Excellent. Well, that leaves us with one final task before we actually begin our story. And I would like you to take a third card that is with you, one that hasn't been written upon yet. And we are going to pass these to the left. These are your Brinks. So what this basically means is an observation your character has made against another character that has seen them at their darkest and lowest moments. Now, this is going to be a little different. Oh, did we pass yours already? Did I pass? Okay, so this is for you and I. This is going to be a little tiny bit different because I'm actually going to participate in this with you. So you pass to the left, and then. No, you're fine. You're getting there. And then I'm here and Then.
Josh
So I get one from you.
Vince
Yes. And then I have Trisha's. Great. So what this means is you're going to observe someone at their very lowest point in basically write the I have seen you. And a couple examples they give in the book are just terrible low points. Something like, I've seen you lose it over this dead dog. You cried for hours and I almost left you. Or things like, I have seen you worship them. I have watched you whisper a silent prayer when you didn't think anyone was looking. So we've had some incredibly awful brinks that have come up as a result. That does not mean you need to write something awful. It is just something that you've seen someone do.
Josh
But it is like that darkest side of someone is.
Vince
Yes, it is. And for Vince and Trish, different for us. How this is going to work differently with me is that Vince, you will be writing a brink for them. You get to see. You get to basically do a I have seen them. And this can apply not just to the proverbial them, but also the situation. You've seen these monoliths which you have observed have come up the state of the moon that you have very clearly observed as it is coming into the orbit of the Earth closer and closer. And it could even be about the proverbial them. This is your opportunity to kind of expand on our world. Yeah. And Trish, I will be writing a they have seen you an observation that them has imposed upon you in this circumstance. So there we go. So exciting.
Genevieve
This is something our character has seen the other characters do.
Vince
This is character with their own eyes.
Genevieve
On the space station.
Josh
This is character they can also like. One example was, you know, I have seen you on trial for the murder of your family. That's something that only you know about that person. And it could have taken place before the event or during or what have you, but it's just something you know about them that informs their character that no one else knows.
Genevieve
I don't have enough room on this card. My diatribe here.
Josh
Brink Volume 1 by Josh Petersburg.
Genevieve
In the beginning, there was the edge. A cliff overlooking a precipice.
Vince
One would say a brink.
Genevieve
A brink. One would say close to the brink. Close to the edge. Highway the Danger Zone by John Cleese.
Josh
Now, Ivan, wait, please. I will wait. And as well, the Brinks are the one thing, not virtues and vices. But the Brinks are intended to be kept secret.
Trish
Yes, got it.
Vince
They aren't kept, meant to be secret. This one's always tough for Me.
Josh
What are you gonna do to trash.
Trish
What if they seen me?
Vince
Right? I'm dying to know.
Josh
I hope you find out. You have this, right?
Stacy
Yes.
Josh
Before we actually started the game, I came up with a plan for every single person I could possibly write a ring for and what they would all be. And I was so excited about this one. I was hoping that I would get this.
Stacy
You would write it all out before I would.
Josh
My phone has a note on it. It's like this long. Guys, I'm crazy.
Genevieve
It was 100 pages. The book was. Was legit.
Vince
Yes.
Genevieve
Yeah.
Josh
100 page rulebook.
Genevieve
It was. It was intimidating.
Vince
Yeah.
Genevieve
To be in 12 hours.
Josh
It's also awesome how many different. Because in the appendix in the back there's all like the example modules of ways you can run the game and the different ways you can adapt the rules to different settings that, you know, do or don't include creatures or do and don't include this. It's such a flexible system. It's really awesome. He said buying for time storytelling, you guys. Yeah, Cooperative storytelling.
Genevieve
They called me the long winded writer.
Josh
Ivan just wants to thoroughly terrorize Trish and I admire that.
Trish
I think that's what's happening.
Josh
Yeah.
Genevieve
It takes deep thought to execute. Deep horror.
Josh
Yes. Honestly, the only thing that I might enjoy more than writing a ring for them is them writing one for me.
Genevieve
The fidgeting has begun. The mic.
Josh
I know, I know.
Trish
I'm about to be real uncomfortable today.
Vince
All right.
Josh
Hey now, Ivan, I just want to preface this a little bit. You are. This is open ended. You are entitled to play it however you want because I'm not sure what's already been established.
Vince
Thank you, Fence.
Josh
So it's intentionally a little bit vague. I just.
Vince
No, I appreciate you letting me know. Okay. So. Yeah. Okay.
Stacy
Oh, got dark real quick.
Vince
Yeah.
Stacy
Well played, sir.
Genevieve
Oh my.
Josh
I want.
Vince
I. I ironically know exactly what that means.
Genevieve
That's what I really. When I turned it over, I was like, ah. I was like, I didn't even know that was there.
Stacy
One and one. Now. Got it.
Vince
Got it. I have to write the print down.
Josh
I'll burn your eyes.
Vince
Trish.
Josh
Game secrets.
Trish
Okay, now we have one more picture.
Vince
That's the character concept. That's simply your name, your occupation. If you wish I could write that down. Now. It's about as much of a character sheet as 10 candles will allow you to have. So it's really for you.
Josh
I rolled a 40 on strength, so.
Genevieve
You so mega stalled.
Josh
Oh my God.
Vince
Cool. Okay. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Cool, cool, cool. Great, great, great. So basically what we're going to finally do, now that you have this concept out, they will be laid close to your side. You may take your virtue, your vice, and your moment, and you may organize them in whichever stack you'd like. The only thing that's important is that the brink must be on the bottom. This is important because you can only burn the card that is on the top. Virtues and vices will allow you to reroll any one that might occur in the game. The brinks, should you get to it, will allow you a full reroll of everything. And you cannot generate your moment unless it is the card on top at the time in which that moment comes up. So what that means is that if you, for example, your moment came up, Joseph, in which there's a chance to detonate the warhead, if your moment isn't on top of your deck and say you put your virtue in your vice on top of it, and you didn't rip those up as a result of doing rerolls before you got to that moment, it would not play out okay. Versus if you put your moment on top and your moment does not come up, you cannot get to your virtues and your vices until the moment has been completed.
Trish
Got it.
Vince
So this is why you have to stack the deck and virtues and vices.
Josh
Give us rerolls on ones, essentially.
Genevieve
Okay.
Trish
Single use character sheet is not a burnable card. Okay.
Stacy
And you said brink was on the very bottom.
Vince
Must be on the bottom, because it's.
Genevieve
All you have left.
Vince
It is all you have left exactly as it is. So for anyone who's keeping track, because the good news is that on the International Space Station, you are working off of an atomic clock and not something that's tied to Earth's magnetic field. You're looking at day 19.
Josh
Day 19.
Genevieve
Day 19, yes.
Vince
Right.
Josh
And this is day 19.
Vince
Since the monoliths came, since the monoliths rose, since, in your perspective, the blip of the power went out. And let me preface this with. Your story begins on the International Space Station in which you are currently exchanging orbits with the moon. It has come so close into your proximity that you have managed to be able to maintain a figure 8 orbit between the moon as it is constantly exchanging you and it is constant diligence. There has been someone who has taken the time and the opportunity to pilot this course. You've had a navigator on the International Space Station this entire time, and you and he has been ostensibly making every waking moment to replot the course of the International Space Station in order to maintain this. But the moon is getting closer now, and everything has to be re corrected. This is something that has to be done every six hours, hours or so. On top of that, you were supposed to be resupplied weeks ago when everything first started happening. And so far you're three weeks behind on your food supplies. You've managed to ration as best as you can. You've been paying particular attention to your water at this stage, but you are dangerously low on supplies. Thankfully, due to the solar panels, you've been able to maintain power. But because the moon is taking up so much more of the sky than it was when it was in the ISS's original orbit, there have been long spans of night, and you are in one of those spans of night. You are running life support, and that's it at this point. Just the air is keeping you alive at this stage because the sun has not come back and you have been ostensibly jettisoned to the dark side of the moon. So now you're on the return course to come back to Earth, but it is still dark and the batteries are not charging due to sunlight. What do you do?
Josh
I've been on the phones for the last hour or so trying to again establish contact with anyone planetside. We've had spurts of communication, but nothing.
Vince
Concrete, and one very delightful song.
Josh
Song?
Vince
Yesterday a rogue broadcast on a ham radio signal came up and it was just someone, and you didn't catch their name because you had. You didn't catch the beginning of the broadcast, but it was someone singing. Someone on Earth was singing a song and you kind of recognized it.
Josh
This is ISS to Earth, ISS to Houston, to Moscow, to anyone who's picking it up. Is anyone down there? Anyone? It's been 19 days now, and could really do with hearing a voice right now.
Vince
Not uncommonly. No response.
Josh
Okay, we need to take, I don't know, we need some kind of proactive action because the scrubbers are almost crapped out. Food's low, water's low, life support is on its last legs, and we're not gonna last up here for much longer. No one's coming.
Trish
Have you been able to get through it all?
Josh
No, I'm hearing just music and warnings and the occasional distress signal, but no one can hear me. It's a fucking ham radio. I mean, we're in space, so. No, we gotta either find some way, I don't know, off this station, or a way to extend the supplies we have so we can last until whatever's going on down there is done.
Trish
I mean, forgive my naivety. I haven't spent very much time up here, but is there any way that we can science up some resources?
Josh
We have the module you came in on.
Trish
Yeah.
Josh
You two. It's not. Without the resupply. It's not designed to make the return trip the way it is right now. We could try and jerry rig something to get us back planetside, but that would only really work if there's someone to receive us on the other end.
Stacy
So we're stuck here. And I don't know what other proactive measure we could take. We're already rationing our supplies out there is definitely.
Vince
And again to keep this conversation and this story going beyond the rationing and supply, the more direct problem at hand is that your course correction needs to be adjusted or something. The moon most likely is going to throw you off your orbit and will send you out into deep space.
Genevieve
At this point, the module we came on still has battery power that we can transfer some of our system's life support on. When I work for the company, I learned that it is very possible to revert the systems. However, the module only fits two and the escape pods only fit three.
Josh
Yeah, I don't think getting off is probably not an option. But that's if we can use some of that power to help correct the course of the station. It buys us time so we're not flung off into space.
Trish
Sure.
Josh
Or what have you. Okay. Yeah. Is the navigator still here on the station?
Vince
You do know where he is? He's in a module. Let's put him in. Let's put him in the Zvezda Russian service module because that sounds appropriate. That's usually where he tends to spend his time. He's been sitting there literally with a notepad and has just been crunching numbers for the last two and a half weeks, making sure that every little adjustment is made in order to prevent the slingshot effect, so to speak.
Josh
And what's his name?
Vince
Let's have his name. If he's to be in the Russian space module, we can make him Russian.
Genevieve
Dimitri.
Vince
We'll have him be Dimitri.
Genevieve
Dimitri.
Josh
Alright. Dimitri said he'd be in Zvezda right now working on the calculations. If we can just get. Let's get over there, get in touch with him and see what he needs to make this work. And if we need to draw power off. I would rather not do that. But if we need to draw power off of the your module, then we'll do that. Fine. But we got to keep the station in orbit.
Vince
So you begin making. Well, I'm sorry, that's what you two would like to do. Is there anything else at this point that anyone else is interested in or are we all just converging on Zvezda at the moment?
Trish
I know that I reported on a piece, I think a few years back about growing plant life here on iss. Is there a way for us to potentially expand that effort and grow vegetables, grow some type of sustenance?
Stacy
We're not, we're not there yet. I mean I'm barely, I'm working with single celled organisms, just trying to keep them alive in harsh conditions. That's, that's far, far from being able to plant anything. I mean we really need, if we don't get these supplies, I don't, I don't know.
Genevieve
There is a tissue lab for genetic culturing, but it's mostly just harvesting sproutlings and seeds to see them grow. There's not enough.
Josh
Everything here is like experiment sized. It's not, we can't farm the iss, at least not for this many people.
Trish
Got it.
Vince
Unless you wanted to convert it into something. But there are definitely enough seeds. But that is completely your prerogative. This is an intense survival situation and it's nice that you guys are thinking about the long term, but you are having this conversation as you get close to Zvezda. The ISS is obviously a very small contain, so you're walking single file as you're making transitions from each one, doing your movements in zero G. As you're getting through. And as you get close to Zvezda, you actually are looking into the open area and you can see Dimitri's clipboard is kind of swaying in the midst of the zero G. And a long string that had his pen attached to it has been tied and wrapped around one of the chair backs and is just kind of listfully floating in the middle of this open service module.
Trish
Well that's not a good sign.
Josh
Dimitri.
Vince
You don't hear a response?
Josh
Where the fuck did he go? Okay, I want to go inside the module and look around.
Vince
Well, as you go into the module, kind of look around, you see that nothing's really out of place besides this floating clipboard that's kind of wavily moving around. Everything seems to be where it should be. My cheat sheet. Stacy, as you kind of get closer, you grab the clipboard and you pull it forward and look it up and you can see in Russian big red letters have been written. Do you know Russian?
Trish
Very, very small amounts from what I've needed as far as my interfacing right before I came to the iss.
Vince
Okay, you can definitely see and read enough for it to say I'm sorry, guys. What?
Stacy
What's wrong?
Josh
What?
Trish
This isn't good. There, as you can see. And I will pass it around so that everyone may examine the evidence. It's all red letters and very big.
Vince
Does anyone else speak Russian?
Josh
Just conversationally, because we all work together.
Trish
On the iss, see what you think. But from my limited knowledge of the Russian language, it looks like an apology.
Vince
Fuck.
Josh
I want to go to the comms on the wall that just intercom for the station itself and I want to hit the button and I'm going to call it. Hey, Dimitri, if you're on, of course you're on the station. Wherever you are on the station, get to a comms and ping us. I don't know what the fuck you're doing not being in Svetska right now, but we need you here.
Trish
I mean, do we think he just left? Like, gave up and left? Left?
Josh
Yeah, like went to the corner store? No.
Vince
What?
Josh
No, we're all. Okay, we're all tense, we're all kind of bummed out right now, but no, he's still on the station. There's nowhere else to go.
Vince
Right.
Genevieve
Well, you could have taken one of the escape pods and left us here. Oh, no, check the monitor. I mean, honestly, we don't have the.
Vince
Power right now with the emergency systems on, you won't be able to check statuses of anything unless you physically investigate them. Because at this point it's maintaining life support. With its red dim light, I can't.
Genevieve
Tell if it's gone or not.
Vince
The board's off. Yep, there you go.
Trish
No, I meant darkly. If you said I'm sorry and gave up and left to fucking float out in space until he explodes or whatever happens.
Josh
We had to have known there would have been some. The system would tell us. It always tells us.
Stacy
Okay, are there sleeping quarters we can check?
Josh
I guess. Okay, hang on, let me see if I can. I can maybe try and pull something up here.
Vince
Do you want to try to see? What do you want to pull up on the board?
Josh
I want to get this thing open.
Vince
You have literally access. I mean, you can turn on some of your power to go and check the systems. That is definitely an option.
Josh
I want to try and just get this thing open and temporarily get it running enough to check.
Vince
All right. It's a lot of dice.
Josh
Okay, that's we got a success and we Got one. One loss. Not rerolling that.
Genevieve
There you go.
Vince
One, One for me, two for you. So by all means, tell me kind of how you go through the process of getting the board up and running, basically going from reserve power or emergency power and giving it just enough juice so that you can check the systems, and then I will tell you what you see.
Josh
Okay. So I'm just describing how I get the thing on.
Vince
Yeah. I just would love to hear how you feel like your character. And if this is by the way, by all means, if it's too technical, since obviously we're all space astronauts inside of the this. But. But I'm giving you narration rights to be able to tell me how you get the power on.
Josh
Okay.
Vince
For a moment. Yes.
Josh
Okay. So I am one of the few mechanical engineers left on the station right now.
Vince
One might say the only yes.
Josh
One might say the only yes. So I, I, I get the panel open. There's an access. An access channel just underneath. I get it open, and I know that there is a. There's basically a mainline power grid that runs through the entire station.
Vince
Right.
Josh
It accesses through auxiliaries, every other system, but I can channel power off of the main line mechanically without having to go through the emergency system.
Vince
Basically just turning the spigot on in an area enough just to let it.
Josh
Yeah, it's a little bit Lego y. It's just reconnecting the line. It diverts power temporarily without having to reboot the entire system.
Vince
Great. So you divert enough power that you basically see the regular fluorescent lights of this module. Click on. In fact, part of the module that you're in, including the airlocks that are close to your area, as well as the engines that are used to correct orbit, which are right next to you, all kind of boot on for a moment. And you can see systems dialing and rebooting. And you do see The Airlock Hatch 1 is currently red as if it has cycled. Okay.
Josh
Technically, it might not mean anything. It's also, there are errors all the time. Technically, Airlock 1 is registering. It has been recently used.
Trish
Oh, shit.
Vince
It could be Poisk.
Josh
Poisk. It could be from an eva. It could be from a lot of things.
Trish
Great.
Josh
I don't want to jump to conclusions right now. Okay. But Dimitri's not here, so he's not responding to comms. At the very least, we need to try and still get this course correction done while we have time. We can look for him later. Yeah, but we don't have a lot else we can do. Right.
Genevieve
Now.
Vince
You do see that the notes that Dimitri has left are still on the clipboard that he's left into it. It's a ho lot of advanced astrophysics science. It's a bunch of gobbledygook for anyone who doesn't understand astrophysics. But there is some numbers on there that could make sense. So who wants to put in the course correction?
Trish
I mean, anyone good with this? I was president of Mathletes, but I don't feel like this is preparing me for this specific challenge.
Josh
I'm going to be busy just trying to keep power in this module, so someone else has to do all the inputs.
Stacy
Listen, I only have like undergrad level physics. I don't know.
Genevieve
Well, I've seen the schematics for it. I. I could try.
Josh
Okay, yeah, Just put in what's on the clipboard. It's not. It shouldn't hopefully be too complex. Okay, I'm gonna try and reroute power.
Genevieve
While you do that, I'm gonna take a big deep breath and kind of turn to the side and swallow my spit without anyone watching.
Vince
Of. Great. And you go up to the dimmed interface panel and you see the UI laid out before you. Three ones. Three ones. Four sixes.
Genevieve
But four sixes.
Vince
I will take those. I get one dice to see if I can steal narrative control. Nope, I can't. So. Okay, but please, why don't you take narration rights in this conflict?
Genevieve
So I take the clipboard and I start running my finger down the numbers and I very deliberately make sure I don't make any mistakes, because any wrong number can send us spiraling off towards the moon, can use too much fuel, too much boost, and if we go from too far to the left, it's over. So I run the entire numbers and luckily there's a safeguard check on the system when nothing will be finally inputted until I hit the button. So I double check everything. Everything looks to be normal to my knowledge, but I am not a navigational expert, but it looks correct. And I push the button to enter the coordinates.
Vince
So as you push in the button, you hear the of the outside engines, they boost up and you can feel the vibrations of the module that you're in just rattle ever so minor. It's good. But vibration and jet fuel is jet fuel. And you can feel as kind of the space station starts to make this slow pivot as it's making its course adjustment appropriately.
Genevieve
That's a $700 million turn, guys.
Stacy
How much time does that save us? Well, or how much time does it give us.
Genevieve
According to this, we're just back on regular track to continue the orbit around the moon. This just keeps us from careening into it because it keeps coming closer.
Trish
Okay, do we know where we are to finish the orbit around the moon and get back to the orbit around the Earth part, where we'll have the sun?
Genevieve
It looks like at least three hours until we get out of this darkness.
Vince
Okay.
Josh
At least what Dimitri was working on last was stabilizing the orbit so we maintain that new path. Granted, the moon is apparently moving, but this should correct us enough that we maintain our sort of cyclical trajectory long enough to figure out how we can get off the station or we can get help.
Genevieve
When three hours comes up, we'll be facing the Earth, and if we have a shot to get back, it'll be then.
Trish
I mean, I'm sorry to get dark here, but do we even really want to get back? Look, we've all been seeing where the moon's going. I feel like maybe, maybe the safest answer should somehow try to get people here.
Josh
Until what?
Stacy
We have no supplies?
Josh
How do we. How do we live on this thing?
Trish
I don't know. That's why I feel like that's what we need to figure out. I mean, if the moon's gonna slam into the Earth, that's not a viable option.
Genevieve
Standard operating procedure for these types of events is to just follow straight protocol, go with the navigational systems and continue the mission until we figure out an alternative.
Josh
The way these things usually work. One of the other Leslie was telling me about this. But the orbit is anomalous, obviously. The moon moving toward Earth is bizarre and crazy, but these things, because of the massive size of these bodies, tend to self. Correct. It's much less likely the moon will actually collide with the Earth than it will simply find some new oblong path as it eventually reaches equilibrium. Our best chance of survival is getting back to Earth. And there's a perfectly good chance everyone on Earth will survive, pending whatever else might be going on down there. I've been hearing some weird shit on the comms, but if we stay here, we're going to die. It's a guarantee. We have to try and get off the station.
Vince
Now. You mentioned Leslie. So what role does Leslie serve on the station?
Josh
Leslie is the captain of the ISS for the American team.
Vince
Got it. The captain of the American team. Okay. All right, great. So, and you know, that is something that Leslie has absolutely told you. I mean, it is Leslie, to make sure that no one makes any rash discussions at this point. But even Leslie has mentioned that at that point, the oblong orbit of the Moon at this stage will definitely wreak havoc upon Earth for sure. You know, going crazy with tidal floods and maybe even causing some unnecessary earthquakes that have been dormant for so long because the Earth's magnetic field is off. But that is their professional opinion, that everything should settle in at some point.
Josh
So it's better than staying here.
Genevieve
Well, there were 4 billion people in Earth and there were 40 in space, so I think our chances down there are a little bit better.
Josh
Yeah. Okay, next order of business, I suppose, would then be to see what we can do about this module you came in on to see if it's even viable to try and take that off the station.
Vince
All right, so let's say for the purposes of this, that that module that brought you in has been originally offloaded and garnished for supplies, but there is definitely a chance because of trying not to use all of the power, There is a chance that there could be more stuff inside of it because you've been. You've ostensibly kept it on lockdown this entire time. So if you want to go investigate to see if there might be some extra supplies inside of there, that would be great. I just want to know who is going to cycle the airlock to go inside.
Trish
Genevieve.
Stacy
Yeah.
Josh
Honestly, she's been on like twice as many EVAs as I have.
Vince
So it's time to get an EVA suit.
Stacy
Yep.
Vince
And it's time to go into the module.
Trish
All right.
Vince
Are you going out through piask, or are you going out through a different. Because the PIASK airlock in Prius, that is one of the areas where you can do docks. It's Rassvit and Piris, who are the areas where supplies come in at. So there's basically two different areas that you can have supplies come in too, that you could EVA out of to go to the module. So. Ooh. In fact, let's make it this. The reason you have to EVA out is because at some point there was an emergency system and it just. It just disconnected. And it's been managed to staying with you, but it's just kind of ever. So it's maintaining orbit with you, but it's away, so you gotta pull the module in.
Genevieve
I like that better.
Stacy
Okay.
Vince
Yeah, Cool.
Stacy
No pressure.
Vince
No pressure. But you can't drag it in. You have to just go into it.
Stacy
Okay.
Vince
You know, so you can carry what you can carry.
Stacy
Okay. So I'm putting on this suit.
Vince
Yeah.
Stacy
And then having to go out there.
Vince
Yeah.
Stacy
Carry things back.
Vince
Yeah.
Trish
Okay.
Vince
Yeah.
Stacy
All right.
Vince
Yeah, let's do that.
Stacy
Does it matter which one we go through anymore?
Vince
It doesn't matter.
Stacy
Okay.
Vince
No. An airlock's an airlock for the purposes of our story.
Stacy
Okay.
Vince
I'm sure the people who are ISS nerds will yell at me, ISS and then one one for me.
Trish
Yeah.
Stacy
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Trish
So do I have enough juice in my camera battery to film this?
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Vince
You tell me.
Trish
I don't know, honestly. But I'm gonna hit it a couple times because you know, that's how you get things to turn on. And I wasn't supposed to be the cameraman but that's fine and turn on my camera and just kind of watch as best I can with the.
Genevieve
I'm gonna say if you notice she's highly trained in the spacewalk apparatus with the EVA suit. It was provided by our stockholders and it's made at Michigan related factories.
Trish
It looks really good and these are the kind of exciting things you can do aboard the iss.
Stacy
Now before I go out, do I know how much time I have to.
Vince
Go in and out to go in and out. So you definitely with the air supply that you have on this multi layered EVA suit. You see this is where I have to get reality checked a little bit. So I'm gonna be very general and say that you are in the, you are more in the half an hour hour category than you are and then like the minutes category. Yeah. Because no proper EVA can be done in minutes. It probably. I've heard that there are spacewalks that can take up to a full hour. So we're going to work off of those assumptions since we're all just playing astronaut for the day. Okay?
Stacy
Okay.
Vince
All right.
Stacy
I'm testing my communication system.
Josh
Yeah, I'm gonna have comms open. I hear you. You're coming through fine. Just take your time.
Stacy
Okay.
Vince
Are you going out the same airlock? The one thing I think it is important. Are you going out the same airlock that was. That was mentioned that had the red alert on it, or are you going out the other one?
Stacy
I would say the other one.
Genevieve
Good idea.
Stacy
Red alerts are very.
Vince
So you cycle out and please narrate to me how you accomplish this spacewalk to get to the module effectively.
Stacy
So there's really like I'm just walking along the outside of the module itself, so I'm not out, just like using little tss.
Vince
You tell me, because this is part of your story as well too. So whatever I've given, feel free to elaborate, expand upon, or, well, not disregard.
Josh
So you're taking over story.
Stacy
Okay, I'm just going to try to run over as fast as I can.
Vince
Like just using your personal momentum as you're walking with the magnetic boots.
Stacy
Yes.
Vince
Okay.
Stacy
While keeping communications. I don't know. I've never done this before. You have to walk me through this.
Josh
Okay? No, you're doing fine. Just remember, I know it's been a while. Remember the training. Okay, you're closing in now. You're gonna want to reach out and grab.
Stacy
I see it.
Vince
Yes.
Josh
Grab the hatch there.
Stacy
Uh huh.
Josh
Okay, good. Now if you can work the door, there's gonna be a release of air when you open it because it's detached, but hold on. And then you can just pull yourself inside.
Stacy
Okay. Okay.
Vince
As you open and you cycle through this detached module, you go into it, you do see something out of the corner of your eye. It seems to be something, a shape, a shadow that's kind of. It's pitch black. But you do have the starlight and the little bits of the moonlight that is giving you a little bit of illumination in the void of space that you are in. But something is reflecting light.
Stacy
What the fuck is that?
Josh
Everything okay?
Stacy
I think. I think so now. I don't know. It just must be something I saw. I don't know. It's nothing. It's nothing. It's fine.
Josh
Jen, you sure?
Stacy
It's just something caught my eye. I'm not sure what it is.
Genevieve
Turn the camera over here. Magnetic boots brought to you by Myers Industry are the finest in the industry. And they can always be counted on, even in outer space. See, I told you.
Josh
Let's keep it going.
Vince
So you get inside of the hatch and you do see that while you had an opportunity to unload some supplies when the module first was docked into it and brought into the station, that it detached during the whole incident, we'll say. And since then, you've not been bothering to want to do this up to the. So you do go in there and you do see that there's about. I'd still less than a quarter of the original supplies that are still in there. But you get to carry what you carry. So what do you focus on?
Stacy
Food and water.
Vince
Great. You grab as much food and water as you can physically hold onto and you walk back into the module, you cycle through and you pull yourself up into the EVA suit and you're back now inside of the. Inside of the airlock module.
Trish
Wow. What a heroic moment. Genevieve, tell us what that was like.
Stacy
What? I'm sorry, I don't. I don't like being on camera. It was. Things are. There was supplies in there.
Vince
Yeah.
Josh
Guys, bigger problems right now. I know.
Stacy
Yeah. Really, we don't have time for this.
Trish
You are the hero. And again, we have another adventure here on the International Space Station.
Genevieve
Cast and crew is always on top of board and make sure they get the job done, folks.
Stacy
I can't fucking believe this.
Josh
Why are we letting sieves on here again? I don't.
Trish
It's really good.
Josh
What do you got?
Stacy
I just brought some back, some food and water. I don't know what technical equipment we might need or they might have. So I don't know if we need to go back out there, but for now, at least we have food and water.
Josh
Now. I really should have asked while you were out there. Okay. When you were in the module, if you were paying attention, there would have been a panel to your right. Even in low power states, it will give you a readout of the current status of the ship insofar as the onboard batteries go. Do you know if it read green? It would be just letters in green. Were you able to see that?
Vince
Why don't you roll to see if you're observant enough. This is a conflict that could be both and bad. So I'm all for it.
Genevieve
Conflict got you to the conflict. Cheek.
Stacy
All right, two for me.
Vince
I will use this opportunity to also take narrative rights or try to roll for narrative rights. And I actually have a lot of dice in this circumstance because you have four right now. So I get six let's see if I get more than two sixes, which I do not. I get one six, so it is still up to to you, Genevieve.
Josh
Tell the story.
Stacy
I saw that there was a green light, but something's odd. There was only half of the supplies that were in there.
Josh
I mean, we might have inventoried wrong when you guys first docked. I don't know.
Genevieve
The manifest is usually correct, but yes, absolutely, there could have been a few.
Trish
I mean, is it possible that our missing navigator may have absconded with some supplies?
Stacy
I did see something. I mean, it's silly. I don't know. I don't know. I just saw a thing and it just caught my eye for just like a second, but come on.
Josh
Okay, it's all. This has been a rough couple of weeks.
Genevieve
Space debris.
Josh
Yeah, it's getting to our head a little bit. This is not abnormal. We've trained for this. It's okay, sure, let's. The module has power, that's what matters. Yes, which means we could use it to try and get off the station, but we would need an incoming return trajectory, typically supplied planetside, and we'd obviously need to be able to get in there and start it. That usually requires it being attached to the iss. There are ways to make that work, but not with what we currently have with us.
Trish
Okay, so what are the next steps?
Vince
So to be something to kind of keep into it, because I do see more stuff, there is an opportunity here to maybe reattach the module. You do have a remote manipulation arm that's on the station, and it's usually used for very minute techniques, but for the purposes of our story, we could use it in order to basically either attach or reattach the module, or at least get it to a situation where it's easier to get to and from it to resupply. That being said, the remote arm uses power.
Josh
We do have the remote arm that assists with EVAs and docking. We could use that to reattach the module, or just try and guide it back and then attach it manually. But it's power hungry, and that means it would need to temporarily divert power from the only other system we have running right now, which is life support.
Vince
And more importantly, do you want to sit and enjoy this food that you just found as well too, so. Or water, whatever it is.
Trish
How long do you think we'd have to be without life support? I mean, is it sustainable?
Josh
I mean, it wouldn't, it wouldn't negate life support. We wouldn't necessarily run out of air or water. Cycling. But what it means is that it's going to operate in a low power state for the time it takes, maybe five to 10 minutes, tops.
Genevieve
Hopefully, if we only run one carbon dioxide filter instead of the normal two, the air will become lighter. We may become lightheaded, but we can turn it back on after. And that's the most minimal drain on the power, right?
Stacy
As long as we all do it before we pass out, yes.
Josh
The only difficulty being the fact that we now don't have sun access. The solar panels can't recharge while we're on this side of the moon.
Trish
Got it.
Josh
So if we drain it too much, the life support will not last until we come around the other side of the moon. It's mathy, but this might be our.
Stacy
This might be our only shot to.
Josh
Bring that back, though it almost definitely is our only shot, I think.
Vince
So at this point, then, if the plan is to use the remote manipulation arm in order to get closer into it, this circumstance, I guess. Who would like to remote pilot the arm?
Josh
Well, I'd like to take a second, actually. We did find food and water. I'd like to enjoy some of this for a moment. And then before we actually try and reattach the module, I'd like to take a tally of who is still on this ship.
Vince
Oh, yes.
Josh
Something happened to Dimitri, whatever that was, and we haven't heard from anyone else.
Vince
Leslie's been sleeping today, so I'd like.
Josh
To make sure everyone else is still okay and they're on board with this plan.
Trish
Okay. Do you want me to go around and take inventory? I mean, I can just kind of pose as if I'm getting statements from everyone about their life so we don't freak anyone out.
Josh
Yeah. If you can check crew quarters and the galley just to make sure everyone is there and accounted for. And also knows that we're going to be trying to get the module running.
Trish
Okay, got it. So I'm gonna start going around through the ship as I've known it in the approximately four to five weeks that I've been here. And just let everyone know that for our comprehensive reports that we are taking back to Earth, I would like a statement from them as to what their daily life on the International Space Station is like.
Vince
Great. So I'm going to say that beyond Dimitri and Leslie, there is one other person on the space station with you, and that is it. And everyone else has succumbed or fallen in one form or another in various different ways. Yes. Because, I mean, we're presuming at this point that. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Making a lot of assumptions here at this point, but yes, I'm going to say the old. There's only one other person alive who's left on the station right now, presumably alive. And who is that?
Trish
The person left on the space station.
Vince
Is besides Dimitri and Leslie.
Trish
Besides Dimitri and Leslie is Annabelle.
Genevieve
Annabelle, yeah.
Vince
And what does Annabelle do on the station?
Trish
Annabelle is pretty far down on creepy doll on the comms team. So she's on the comms team, but she's more entry level as far as entry level gets to iss. So she's one of the best at what she does, but she's not high up the food chain.
Vince
So I'm going to say that you have not spoken to Annabelle in a while and it's because her outlook on this situation has taken her down a downward spiral so intense and so incredibly debilitating that you've actually had to sedate her a few times.
Trish
Jesus.
Vince
Because it has been so tough. Violent outbursts, yelling, screaming. And she was not at all claustrophobic in any of the tests leading up into this. She was a very reasonable, grounded engineer. But as soon as the prospect of not coming back to Earth was potentially a reality for her, it was like a switch just clicked on and suddenly she wasn't Annabelle anymore. Some wild feral thing that just wanted to get out of its cage. So with that said, are you going to go check on her?
Trish
Yeah, yeah. As far as everybody else that's disappeared from the space station in one way or another, as you said, am I potentially going around room to room and finding bodies or are they just not there?
Josh
Do you want to put it down to a conflict roll to see what we find?
Genevieve
It's so dark.
Trish
Well, I mean, how else are people just disappearing from the space station?
Josh
No, no, I agree.
Vince
And I'm actually just trying to decide. I'm just trying to decide how much I want to take control of this and how much I want to leave to this to a conflict roll. Yes, I know what's going to happen with or without the success. Okay.
Trish
We didn't lose any dice and we have won six.
Vince
Actually. This is your territory. This is 100% your territory, Stacy. So you get to tell me exactly how this goes down and I am more than happy to help you in this circumstance, but let me know, tell me who was left. And you have some assumptions about what happened to Dimitri. So was it a joined effort or did he make a decision on his own?
Trish
Well, I start going around from door to Door and sleeping quarters and offices. Because I don't know if people are choosing to work or choose to, in this time, spend time in their rooms and knocking on doors, I'm not hearing a response. So the first time I knock on a door and don't hear any response, I let it be. I figure they're sleeping. I move to the next one, knock on the door, don't get any response, try to knock again on the same door. Excuse me. Excuse me. Hi. I'm here reporting for the International Space Station, and I need a statement from you. Are you available? Okay, well, we'll. We'll be in the comms office. If you change your mind, move on to the third room, knock on the door. Uh, hello? Hi, this is Stacy Martell reporting for the International Space Station. Are you available to make a comment?
Vince
Go away.
Trish
Hello?
Vince
Why are you.
Trish
If you could just let me in for one second, I'll be very quick and not interrupt you at all. But I would also love to fill you in on some of the goings on here at the space station.
Vince
No. No. The answer is no. I'm not letting you in. I'm not letting you talk to me. Just go find your own room.
Trish
Do you need a shipment of resources, perhaps?
Vince
What are you, a fucking robot shipment of resources? No, no, I'm fine.
Trish
Do I know if this is Annabelle's room?
Vince
I don't know. Is it Annabelle's room? I'm not trying to pass it on to you. This is your success.
Trish
Sure.
Vince
This is your narrative rights?
Trish
Is that you, Annabelle? I wasn't sure if this was your room. I'm going around room to room, but. But honestly, I'm here to help. And you may have noticed that it's been very dark here lately.
Vince
Yeah, no, it's been dark. The world is dark. Everything is dark. And yes, I'm fine. I just don't want you to come in right now.
Trish
Okay. Okay. Then I won't come in.
Vince
Thank you.
Trish
At all. If there were a way to find some light, but it would require your help, would you be interested?
Vince
It. The pause is enough to maybe be a shrug. Maybe.
Trish
Okay. We're working on something really promising right now.
Josh
Okay.
Trish
And if we. If we need your help, would it be all right if we come back? We can talk through the door if you're more comfortable that way.
Vince
Sure. Just. I don't know. Just. Whatever you want to do, go for it.
Trish
Okay. Keep up. Hope we've got this.
Josh
Stacy, whoever you've got, bring them back to the airlock right now. We have something going on out here. We need you here.
Trish
Okay, I'm going to really quickly just run through the rest of the rooms and knock, hello, knock, hello. And just markdown who's not there. And I feel like I do get one of the rooms, the door is open, and I find absolutely no one in there at all.
Vince
No one in there at all. It's Leslie's room and they're not in their office at the moment. It could be somewhere else in the station, but at least all the sleeping areas that you've checked. You've heard from Annabelle. Okay, that's about what you know.
Trish
So then I'm going to circle back to Annabelle's room, and if the offer for help is still available, we could use you now.
Vince
Oh, God. Jeez, that was fucking quick.
Trish
Sorry.
Vince
All right, yeah, just let me get dressed. I'll be out in a second.
Trish
Sure, no worries. On the comm. Be there in a second. Bringing Annabelle. No one else is here.
Josh
No one. Okay, whatever. Just brief us when you're back.
Trish
Got it.
Vince
So you, Stacy, come back? Unless you want to wait for Annabelle to come into it.
Trish
I'm gonna wait for Annabelle.
Vince
Okay.
Trish
Yeah.
Vince
It takes a few minutes longer than it should to get dressed, but you kind of watch as Annabelle, she has, like shoulder length dirty blonde hair and she has just bags under her eyes like she's been crying for God knows how long. And she kind of pulls up her flight suit or over this dark tank top that she's wearing and she zips up and goes, okay, let's go.
Genevieve
For the record, let's just leave most of that questioning footage of the B roll, put it on the cutting floor.
Trish
100%.
Genevieve
Absolutely.
Josh
It's just Annie. Where is everyone else?
Trish
Didn't answer their doors.
Vince
Danny, they're gone. All of them.
Stacy
Wait, what do you mean?
Josh
I'm sorry, gone?
Vince
Why would they stay?
Stacy
Where would they go?
Genevieve
This girl's been highly sedated. Maybe she's a little bit loopy from the space, the travel.
Trish
No, no, it's a good story.
Vince
I mean, what, you just want to stay here? I heard you talking for a while ago and you're right. Why go down? Why even. Why even bother at this point?
Josh
Hey, we want to go too, but we want to fucking live, right?
Vince
Yeah. Good for you, Danny. I'm glad you've got this gumption to turn this tin can into your salvation.
Genevieve
Okay, Maybe it's time I go get some more sedatives. Annabelle, you might not be feeling as good as you thought.
Vince
Don't fucking touch me. Joseph. Sif.
Josh
She's fine, she's fine.
Vince
Just don't get anywhere close.
Josh
I watched Leslie go to bed last night. I saw her get in her cabin. Where is she?
Trish
Not in her cabin. That was the one door that I did open. I was sure if I would find a corpse.
Vince
She was trying to go do something in the hydroponics lab. Last I heard from her, for whatever it's worth. Close to your lab, she.
Genevieve
Genevieve. It's.
Trish
Hey.
Vince
Hey.
Stacy
That's worth a lot.
Vince
Yeah. Yeah.
Trish
Well, thank you.
Vince
What did you need from me? I mean, you said you needed my help for something.
Josh
Yes, we're trying to get the command that the module they came in on reattached to the space station. So we can try and jettison off this thing, right? Get back to planetside.
Vince
Yeah, it dislodged in the thing, sure.
Josh
Yes. You are the robotics expert here.
Genevieve
So?
Josh
So I need a little bit of assistance. I can jerry rig the thing to work, but I'm not great at controlling it. I just need a bit of help.
Vince
It's gonna take power.
Josh
We can give it power temporarily. I crunched the numbers. We can spare maybe 10 minutes without draining life support before we hit the sun again.
Vince
Alright. Well, I mean, however.
Josh
I don't. I know how this sounds. I was looking over the schematics and trying to compare them to make sure the module was in the right orientation to reattach to the station and I did. It could be anything. I saw something out there and it looked like what you said. You.
Genevieve
Floating space debris probably couldn't.
Josh
It might be.
Trish
It might be humanoid or mechanical.
Josh
Look, I could. I'm not trying to cause a thing, but I could have sworn it was moving. It's.
Vince
Do you want me to bring it in too? With the arm?
Josh
Danny, I'd rather not do that. But last I saw, it went around the other side of the module. What it could have. All I know is that space debris doesn't change your trajectory while it's floating around.
Trish
Okay.
Vince
All right. Well, whatever it is, there's not much we can do about it. So if you just want me to pull in the module closer so you can resupply easier, I'll do that.
Josh
Yes. Let's just reconnect the module. But we lock down the airlock until everything is secured and we know for sure.
Vince
So this is the point where I'm going to have you do the conflict roll. I think in this circle, since you're manipulating the power, let's just see how the whole Ordeal goes because I'm not gonna roll. For Annabelle at the moment, this is a conflict and you took the lead on it. So I'll take the 1 1, but you can have the 1 6. Go ahead.
Stacy
If you saw something and I saw something, we are potentially pulling that something in towards us. Are you sure you want to do this?
Josh
It's a risk right now that we have to take. We can lock the airlock down from the inside so it's inaccessible from the exterior. The function exists. We're not supposed to activate it because if someone's on an eva, they get shut out. But we can do that.
Vince
So let's go into this because I. I personally feel like that this whole process will probably exist. You did get a success onto it. So using Annabelle, you're able to reroute the power to get into the actual module. And she does use the robotic arm. It comes to life. You can hear as it slowly starts to manipulate and move its way down the module, which is still just slightly spinning, but still staying adjacent to where it is. You look through the security cameras that she's using to remote manipulate this arm. She grabs a hold of the module and slowly starts to guide it, ever so slowly back to where it is. And as you are getting it close to the airlock, it's taking time, but Annabelle seems to be savoring every single moment, guiding it and moving it back in.
Josh
Oh, come on.
Vince
This is delicate work. Just let me do it.
Trish
You're doing a great job.
Vince
And she puts the module back in place, using almost up the entire 10 minutes to get it into place. And at that point, the cameras have pivoted enough and you have moved into the light enough that you can see the thing that is floating into the breeze. And it is an EVA suit that is just dangling by a single cord that seems to be outside of the airlock that you did not go out of. It's much more distinct using the camera's robot arm. Fuck.
Trish
Dimitri.
Genevieve
Yeah, probably turn the camera off.
Josh
I don't know why he'd take a fucking eva. Okay, whatever. Okay, I'm gonna hold on.
Stacy
Leave him there.
Josh
I'm gonna reroute power back to lifestyle support now that it's attached.
Vince
It does. You probably have a 30 second buffer rather than a 10 minute buffer now.
Josh
Okay, so with the trajectory that we put the ISS on, we should have just enough life support to get us into sunlight again so we can recharge the batteries. We have the module attached now.
Vince
Can I go now?
Josh
Yes, you can just be there's something going on here. Just be careful, okay?
Vince
Yeah.
Josh
Stay in your bunk if you could. Or stay with us, but let's not get too adventurous on the station.
Stacy
I know this is a difficult time, but we're here for each other. We're all we have.
Vince
Well, I appreciate that, Genevieve, but I don't really think that's going to matter in the end. So. Good luck with your module. I hope whatever is in there gives you something to hold onto until then. I'll just. I'll be where I'll be.
Trish
Thank you.
Josh
If you see Leslie, can you let her know to come find us or hit the comms or something?
Vince
Yeah, if I see Leslie, I'll let you know.
Josh
Okay, thanks.
Vince
And Annabelle, just as calmly as if it was four weeks ago when nothing was wrong, just makes her spacewalk back into her room.
Trish
Hey, we got the job done. Okay.
Stacy
Hey, if we see anything, you get.
Trish
The camera rolling, okay? Yeah.
Josh
Okay. This whole plan about getting off the station when we reach Earth orbit again, it really depends on Leslie being here. I assumed she'd still be in her bunk, but we still need her in the module.
Trish
Annabelle said hydroponics.
Josh
Hydroponics, yeah. If she's in there, we need to go find her. I don't know why she's wandering around the station, but we gotta track her down.
Vince
Okay.
Trish
Are we going to do anything about Dimitri's suicide mission?
Josh
If he's wandering out there for as long as I think he has, it's done. I'm fairly certain he chose to be out there.
Trish
Okay.
Genevieve
It's not just. We're not gonna call it a suicide mission. We'll call it sacrificed during the operation. Technical failure in the suit.
Trish
Sure, sure.
Josh
People will know what happened here.
Genevieve
I got shareholders to report to. Okay, so when we make it back down there, if you ever want to have any more supplies put up here, you're gonna follow the protocol in the sop.
Stacy
You really think this doesn't really matter now?
Genevieve
I don't have time for this.
Trish
Or if we can get some kind of message to them down there, maybe they can send us more supplies. If the plan A doesn't work, you know there's always a plan B.
Genevieve
That's exactly right.
Trish
Plan C. Well, we're gonna be okay.
Vince
So does this mean, Joseph, that you're gonna be the one to go find Leslie and the hydroponics? Or are you going to leave that to the engineers and the scientists?
Genevieve
I will go find Leslie and the hydroponics. I'll go find her. Okay. Since you Guys want to sit here and figure out our next move? We have to save energy and we can't all move because there's not enough oxygen. Only one of us needs to take it up or more carbon dioxide will hit the atmosphere and we'll all be passed out and not going anywhere.
Trish
Good call.
Josh
Be my guest.
Vince
So you basically move to where some of the other laboratories are. There's the European laboratories that are on the other side of the station. So you basically do the clunk, moo, clunk as you grab ahold of each one of the sides and make this maneuvers. Getting to the other area where you know that the hydroponics and Genevieve's lab with all the microorganisms are currently at. And you get closer into the lab and you can see that Leslie is in there. And they seem to be hunched over something at the moment or currently look like they're deep into an observation of some time as you kind of get closer to where Leslie is. But at this point, you probably even have another full. Call it 15ft.
Genevieve
And I'm looking through a window?
Vince
No, you're looking through the doorway.
Genevieve
Through the doorway. Is it a closed doorway with them?
Vince
No, most of them are open. Most of the portals are open. Unless there's some kind of catastrophic failure, I'm going to say most of the portals are open in the circumstances. So.
Genevieve
Leslie. Hi, Leslie. My name's Joseph Myers.
Vince
I know. You look up and you look as Leslie turns around and you see there's blood covering her mouth at the moment. And she seems to have the corpse of one of your specimen rats in her hand at the moment. And there's a chunk that's been pulled out of it at the moment, Leslie.
Genevieve
I'm going to grab the portal door to the hydroponics and slam it shut immediately.
Vince
You slam it shut. Let's see if you do it in time.
Genevieve
No.
Josh
3, 6 fucking way.
Trish
Joseph is the man.
Vince
So, Joseph, as you grab, please. I mean, I guess at this point I have a whole bunch of dice that I could potentially roll due to.
Genevieve
The zero gravity as she's chewing.
Vince
And no, no, there's no way I.
Genevieve
Can let it go due to the zero gravity as she's chewing through the rat. These coagulated red bubbles are kind of floating through the air and it kind of. It's weird cause it looks like it's in slow motion. And her eyes are bloodshot with purple creases running through the white of her eyes. As I slam the door, she presses her face up right up against the glass and vomits against it.
Vince
And it just lifts up, and you can see the mixture of the mucus as well as the disheveled rat corpse is laid out. And she doesn't slam it very hard, but she throws her body against it for a moment before she pushes away and goes, as you watch her through the portal, through the smear of the yellow and red just gore that's there, and kind of goes back to the cages again.
Genevieve
I kind of look down for a second and I check and I look down the hallways, and I see them all not paying attention. And there's a couple emergency systems that can burn out anything in the room.
Vince
Oh, like a contamination fail safe.
Genevieve
Contamination fail safe. And since no one's looking, I put my hand on it.
Vince
Well, that's gonna involve you rerouting that power. And definitely, since you are not the engineer of this, I'm going to have to ask for a conflict roll on that as well, too.
Genevieve
I didn't touch it. I just put my hand on it.
Vince
Oh, on it.
Genevieve
Just put my hand on it. Didn't use it. I just put my hand on it. Okay, so I haven't made the decision yet, but I'm contemplating.
Vince
Will you let me know if you choose to hit that or not?
Genevieve
So cool.
Vince
Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. All right. I think at this point. Genevieve, Dani, Stacey, Everything okay with you guys down there?
Genevieve
Everything okay?
Stacy
Yeah, yeah.
Josh
Have you found her yet?
Genevieve
Working on her right now. Just some with the door.
Josh
Okay. Hurry up, please. This place isn't a mansion.
Stacy
You sound weird. You don't sound like you're trying to sell me something.
Genevieve
It's the oxygen. I think it's starting to kick in.
Josh
He just is weird.
Trish
Slow breaths. You got this.
Genevieve
Thanks, Stacy.
Vince
Genevieve, it is your lab that he's so close to.
Stacy
I'm going to go down there to check it.
Vince
All right, so, Joseph, as you're sitting looking at this, knowing that you're gonna have to reroute the power before you hit this button, which should. I mean, it is the proverbial red button. It's not. And by the way, I should, for the record, say it's not one of those. We're gonna cleanse the room. It's a detach module airlock, and then just jettison it out kind of a situation. But you hear the boom, boom pong of clearly the rungs as Genevieve is making her strong velocity, and you can hear her more than really see her as she's coming up behind you at the moment.
Josh
Do we hear the thudding as well.
Vince
The thudding.
Josh
Yeah. Of her.
Vince
Not from this far away at this stage.
Genevieve
Dr. Genevieve.
Vince
You come across into it.
Stacy
What the fuck is happening?
Genevieve
The door.
Stacy
What is on the door?
Genevieve
Look, I don't know what's happening in there, but we can't tell anyone what's going on right now.
Josh
What?
Genevieve
I'm just gonna kind of like move my hand.
Stacy
I kind of move out of my way to check out what's happening.
Vince
I will tell you that the first thing you see is the gore, the red blood and the. The vomit that's all across the window at the moment.
Genevieve
I think. I think she's gone. I think she's. I know. I think she's gone. We can get rid of her. We can pull the button. We can. I don't know if we have the power. I don't know if we should.
Stacy
What happened to her?
Genevieve
I don't know. I don't know. I went to the door and.
Trish
Did you see her?
Stacy
Did you say anything?
Genevieve
I said her name and she. She was eating a rat and she vomited on the window and she's convulsing and floating through the air. I don't think it's a good idea we open the door right now, doctor. I don't think it's a good idea.
Vince
I think at this point. Raised voices. Yes.
Josh
Yeah. So I'm gonna also converge on the altercation running.
Genevieve
Jesus Christ.
Josh
What's going on?
Genevieve
You know, as you can see, probably. Fuck.
Josh
I'm also gonna go to the window and see what I can see through it in the door.
Vince
I mean, you peer through it, but it has coagulated and has run. It's made its smear. At this point, you have an opaque window at this stage. Opaque with blood and foam.
Josh
Is that Leslie?
Genevieve
I think it's what's left of.
Josh
What did you fucking do?
Genevieve
I didn't do anything, okay? I came over here and she was floating in the air to twitching and vomiting and eating part of the animal.
Josh
So you locked her. That's a medical.
Genevieve
If I didn't lock her in there, she's out here with us. Okay.
Josh
Fuck. Jesus. Come on. I'm going to open the door. All right, Give me those guys.
Stacy
I'm running to the lab.
Vince
All right. To the other end.
Stacy
To mine. To mine.
Vince
It's in the same. Oh, you're gonna go into the lab with Leslie.
Stacy
Oh, it's the same lab.
Vince
It's the same module.
Stacy
I'm opening it up.
Vince
Both doing it.
Trish
I am hiding behind.
Vince
Actually, we haven't seen. We haven't seen a roll from Genevieve in a bit. So if that was your choice, because it's your lab and your lab, if.
Genevieve
You two do this, you're in full control.
Vince
Oh, man. Okay, look, it's another day of sixes. Another day of sixes. Tell me what happens.
Stacy
I unlock the door and I'm trying not to slip over vomit and covering.
Vince
Just. It's less slipping and the more the effect that it's just.
Stacy
Oh, that's right. That's right.
Vince
Gravity is the gravity you're on avoiding it. And the smell. Oh, God, the smell. Oh, yeah.
Stacy
Fuck.
Vince
And you do hear the sound of eating as just. It's just something.
Genevieve
Close the door, Doctor. Close the door, Doctor.
Stacy
I just want to grab my.
Vince
All your specimens.
Stacy
All my specimens and my journals and everything.
Vince
You can definitely see as you're going and running for the specimens and getting what you can and trying to grab your organisms, you can see that clearly some of it has been smashed, broken. You do find your notes, your laptop, especially the one that's there. And as you get close to it, because of the proximity of these labs all next to each other, it's only like a station away from where Leslie is after having finished another one has now just taken it. And you can see this one is still alive. And it's squeaking as she kind of just looks at it, not looking at it, but past it and has her head over it. And you see the. As she just pulls. And you watch as bits of skin and tissue pull away as you can hear the crunch of bone. And she looks at you and she starts to speak. But it is not a language you know, and it is not a language you've ever heard.
Genevieve
Close the door, Doctor.
Vince
And you grab and she lunges for you.
Genevieve
Oh, God. Doctor, look out.
Stacy
Running out.
Vince
No ones. No sixes. This scene ends. She lunges for you and she grasps just enough of your coat to pull you and prevent you from making a quick escape to the. The door. Nine candles, nine truths. Good news, you have nine dice. Again, we need to speak some truths about this story. The first is the world is dark. That is for certain. Genevieve, since your conflict roll was the one that failed, you get to speak the first truth. Truth.
Stacy
I made it out the door.
Vince
You made it out the door. We're going clockwise, so Joseph, you are next.
Genevieve
I grabbed the door and tried to close it behind her.
Vince
You tried to close it behind her?
Genevieve
Yes.
Vince
Great.
Genevieve
Tried.
Vince
Stacy.
Trish
I maneuvered myself around Joseph and was able to close the door the rest of the way. That he wasn't able to close it.
Vince
You finished closing the door?
Trish
I finished closing the door.
Genevieve
Her fingertips were in the crease.
Vince
Your truth's already gone, though. But that's great. We can get into it. You dropped some of your organisms in the process of getting out through the door.
Josh
Upon the door closing, Leslie disappeared from view into an adjacent lab.
Vince
Leslie went to a causeway. Okay, great.
Stacy
Oh, do we keep going?
Vince
Yes. You're number six now.
Stacy
There's a noise coming from down the hall.
Vince
Okay, seven.
Genevieve
I noticed that the other door to the causeway where Leslie was headed is open.
Trish
We can't explain it, but all of us feel strangely drawn to the noises coming out of that room.
Vince
The sound. Oh, that's better. I like what you're doing with the sound. The moon is starting to crack. We pick up our story just as quickly as it ended. As you are outside of the laboratory module door, having just slammed it in Leslie's face. But in the map in your mind, you do know that there is another way around. There is another way out of this laboratory. And Joseph, you know that door is open.
Genevieve
Danny, we gotta get the door closed over there, okay?
Josh
Yeah, let's. We can probably beat her there. Hang on. Let's go. I want to move through the station.
Vince
Okay, move through the station. Go as quick as you can. Try not to hit your head on anything. Frantic spacewalks. Okay, good one for me, the rest for you.
Josh
So I hurriedly, frantically move through the crawlways, the walkways of the station, grabbing and pulling myself. I've done this a thousand times before. Yes. Redirect momentum to get to that other door where she might be coming through. And I arrive there, grab the door, ready to close it, knowing that she should have gotten to this point at exactly the same time I did her just before. As I'm closing it, I realize she's not here.
Vince
She's not here.
Josh
I don't see her in the labs at all.
Vince
Got it.
Josh
I still close the door. Yeah, but I don't know where she is.
Vince
All right, there we go. And then you report back to the group.
Josh
I got the door shut, but.
Genevieve
Lock it, Danny.
Josh
It's all locked down. But she wasn't.
Genevieve
She wasn't what?
Josh
She's not in the labs.
Genevieve
She's not in the fucking lab, Danny.
Josh
It's impossible that she got there before I did. Okay, it's double the length through the labs.
Trish
Okay, well, she obviously was influenced by something. Maybe she's moving slower.
Josh
Okay, that's the other thing that I wanted.
Stacy
We heard her, didn't we?
Josh
I don't know what that was down the hall.
Trish
Yeah, yeah, I thought I heard that.
Josh
Wait, did we all hear that?
Vince
I thought it was just me at that point. You can actually feel more than hear. You can just feel this shockwave just that rustles and moves and just vibrates the space station in a way that when an airplane gets turbulence when it hits some choppy air and it just shakes it ever so lightly as you come into it. And you peer out through a portal hole and you can see a crack, an apocalyptic crack as the moon is just cracked like an egg as it spider webs across its southern hemisphere.
Josh
What the fuck?
Trish
Okay. Okay, problem solved. Are we still thinking it will have an orbital root.
Genevieve
The moon is breaking around the Earth.
Trish
That would mess all that up, right?
Genevieve
The moon is breaking.
Stacy
What is happening?
Josh
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We still have no choice. I don't know what to do about this right now. But we still have.
Stacy
Leslie was eating rats.
Josh
I am aware.
Vince
Tink, tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, Tink, tink, tink.
Genevieve
Start hearing debris from the moon. Small pieces of sand.
Vince
Start to small little tiny clicks. Just tiny pebbles that just seem to be cascading against the side of the ship.
Josh
This station is designed to withstand space debris moving at over a thousand miles an hour. As long as we don't collide into the main body of the moon, we will be okay. The trajectory is set, the orbit will hold. The moon's gravity is still there. We're going to be okay until we get Earthside. Once we're facing the Earth, we can try and get down.
Trish
I mean, will the Earth be okay?
Josh
If it's not, there's nothing we can do. We can't just duct tape the moon back together.
Stacy
You're right. You're right. We can't.
Josh
Okay. It's okay. It's fine. But Leslie, I wanted to mention.
Vince
This.
Josh
Is not actually the first time that I've seen that.
Trish
Wait, people eating rats?
Josh
It was.
Genevieve
It was what?
Josh
We had another guy once earlier. We called it just like a psychotic break. We assumed that he just went stir crazy. I don't know. Cabin fever?
Genevieve
You're talking about Derek Marcus?
Josh
But yes. How do you know about that?
Genevieve
Because I'm part of this company. And Derek Marcus was sent back to Earth for a reason. We were told he was sick. We weren't told he was eating rats and vomiting blood.
Josh
We thought the symptoms could manifest any Number of ways weird things can happen up here. It's desolate, it's isolated. But Leslie is now doing the same thing. And the things that she was saying that. That fucking gobbledygook. She was saying Derek was talking the.
Trish
Same way and he was sent to Earth.
Genevieve
Do you know what happened to Derek Marcus when you sent him back? Derek Marcus laid in a lab for two weeks until his body disintegrated.
Vince
Jesus.
Trish
How do you put a spin on that?
Josh
Okay, maybe. Maybe it's viral. Maybe there's some kind of pathogen on the station.
Stacy
We have to quarantine Annabelle.
Genevieve
We do.
Vince
Oh my God.
Josh
Fucking Annabelle.
Genevieve
We do.
Trish
Wait, do you think she may already be contaminated?
Stacy
She acted pretty fucking weird to me.
Trish
Yeah, but like not eating rats weird?
Stacy
Not yet.
Josh
If there's a chance.
Stacy
I don't want to take that chance.
Trish
Well, to be fair, she is kind of self quarantining at the moment. I don't think if we ask her to come out of her cabin that she will.
Genevieve
Small little droplet of blood floats by us all and I kind of move my head. Don't touch the blood. Don't touch anything.
Vince
Yeah, yeah. Actually I would probably go so far as to say that, you know, this small droplet of blood, they're micro, they're tiny, they're like beads. And you're not too sure where and how and when they came from. They are out here at the moment though.
Josh
Okay, we need to. Let's just get to Annabelle, make sure she's still in her quarters, check on her, make sure everything's okay. I'm not too comfortable with locking a person in her cabin if we don't need to. But let's just have a look, see how she's doing.
Genevieve
If you saw what we saw, you wouldn't call her a person.
Josh
If. If she has this. If this is even a thing we're.
Stacy
Speculating right now, at least just to warn her if anything.
Vince
So you all begin making a very slow and purposeful move as you get through the station. And the place feels so much smaller than it did previously. Every little corner, every shadow in this darkened red light, illuminated space just seems to scream that something is there in the corner waiting for you. And this oppressing deepening darkness that is constantly surround you is what is on your mind as you especially Genevieve, can just hear that voice, that just piercing, deepening, darkened voice that is in your mind as you get closer to where Annabelle's quarters are. And you just hear screaming as you get closer, just screaming as loud as they possibly can. Annabelle's voice. And she's just yelling, why? Why? Why? Annabelle.
Josh
Annabelle, voice.
Vince
Watch the ears. But the. You hear the. You just hear as the continued cries of her just yelling into just why? Why? There's no reason. It's just the moon. The fucking moon. Oh, God. And there's this delirium in her voice that you can hear as just. She seems to be crying or laughing. There's some bridge in between there that's so hard to tell. But, you know, there's a porthole in her room and she can see out. And you know that she probably has seen the same thing that you have. What do you do?
Josh
Okay, we need to sedate her again. She's going to be a problem.
Genevieve
Good luck with that.
Vince
Okay.
Trish
I mean, do we, though, can we just maybe leave her in her cabin? That's where she wants to be.
Genevieve
I am totally on board with that.
Josh
Agreement where she can hurt herself. I'm also trying to look out for her right now.
Genevieve
Better hurt than us, Danny, we're still alive on here. We still got a chance.
Josh
It doesn't have to be a dichotomy. It doesn't have to be one or the other. They're not mutually exclusive.
Trish
No, no, no, but we can find some compromise. I mean, she said she wants to be left alone, and we brought up that maybe she's already contaminated. If we go in, we would just contaminate ourselves. We have to look out for the greater good here.
Genevieve
She's exactly right, Danny.
Vince
At this point, you actually hear Annabelle's door opens at this point as she swings up open and you hear her scream, fuck you all. Just end it now. And she shoves herself past you and throws herself through the causeway as she starts grabbing ahold of pulleys and is just moving through the space.
Josh
I want to go after her as.
Vince
Fast as you can.
Josh
I want to try and catch her.
Vince
Catch her on the legs. You hear going, it's just the moon's gone. We're fucking dead. Everyone is dead. One for me, one for I. You take her, but you grab ahold of her legs. You get both arms around her naked feet as she's moving herself forward and she comes around and she's taking her arms and she's just turning around and she's just trying everything she can to wrest your hands off of her legs at the moment.
Josh
I want to pull myself up her body. Danny, don't put her arm around her throat.
Vince
No, just stop.
Danny
Just let it happen.
Vince
Just let it all happen.
Josh
I need you to relax right now, Annie. Relax, relax, relax. Breathe.
Vince
And she just takes another just adrenaline burst as you're clasping around her neck and she digs her teeth into your arm as hard as she can get some thinking, she bites into it and just starts pulling at you as much as you can. What do you do?
Trish
Just let her go. Just let her go and do what?
Josh
She'll bring the station down.
Genevieve
Choke her out, Danny.
Vince
Choke her out.
Josh
I'm trying it.
Vince
Choke her out. Okay. See if you can bring her to an unconscious state as she is digging into your flesh with every ounce of strength she has. One success.
Josh
One.
Vince
Okay. All right, tell me how it happens.
Josh
Okay. So I was hoping we'd be able to sedate her or that we'd have a less violent way of doing this, but she's given me no choice. And I tighten my arm around her.
Vince
Forearm and you can hear stealing the wind from her and she's. You fucking asshole.
Danny
You self righteous, egotistical pricks.
Josh
Just relax.
Vince
Stop, stop, stop, stop. You know everything. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. She passes out.
Josh
Fuck.
Vince
And you look down, it is bleeding. It is bleeding. She not only bit through your arm, but she bit through the skin. And you're seeing these tiny droplets of blood.
Josh
Yeah, I'm fine. Let's get her strapped to her bed and lock her door.
Trish
She's right, you know. We don't know everything. Why do we presume that we're the ones with the answers?
Genevieve
Because we're still alive.
Josh
Yeah, what's our alternative? To give up and die? Look, maybe this doesn't work. Maybe we launched the module and we just fucking hit the moon. I don't know. But we're definitely gonna die on here if we don't do anything.
Stacy
At least give her some food and water before we lock her in.
Josh
We'll put some in the room.
Genevieve
I'm gonna grab a medkit that was near the office that she just came out of. And I'm going to try and help suture his wound wrapping, which is basic gauze. And I'm going to pull a syringe from the same pack as well that has the very heavy sedative loaded into it. And I'm just going to hold it up and be like, well, we either inject her with this now and, you.
Vince
Know, so you just want to hold onto it with the syringe.
Genevieve
I want to inject her with the syringe.
Vince
So you put the sedative into her unconscious body and Then you, Stacy and Genevieve, you kind of take her body floating and put her back into her bed, leaving her with some food and water. And lock the door.
Trish
Sorry, Annabelle. We shouldn't have taken that choice away from you.
Vince
As you lay her down, you can see that she's been furiously writing in something in a journal that's close in hand, just penning away. They're just inked with tears at this moment, just all over it. You can see through her porthole off to the side. You can see as the moon is just coming into its orbit and it's just slightly peering through, but you can just see the distance between the chunk and the larger mass of the moon is just drifting just next to each other. Just like. Just like if you broke a cookie, just watching it peel away.
Genevieve
I'm gonna go through. I'm looking through her papers, trying to read what she said, and I get this kind of just. It's just the same sentence. She just wrote the same sentence over and over and over.
Trish
What does it say?
Genevieve
It says, shadows aren't only in the day, shadows are the night.
Vince
Two sentences. Shadows are only in the day, shadows are only in the night, and.
Genevieve
Shadows are only in. Shadows are in the day and shadows are the night.
Vince
Yes. Shadows are in the day and shadows are in the night.
Genevieve
Over and over. Yes, and over.
Trish
Well, you know, it's very poetic for being in the dark side of the moon.
Josh
Okay.
Stacy
She's not gonna survive in there.
Josh
We are down robotics, we are down navigation, and we are down a pilot.
Trish
And I mean, do we even know that the course correct we did before will be on the same trajectory now that the moon's mass is completely different?
Stacy
I don't know.
Josh
I'm not a physicist.
Genevieve
At this point, I have no idea. We can only cross our fingers and hope.
Trish
Okay, so I guess.
Josh
And if we want to do another one, if we want to try and alter the trajectory again and we have to drop power off the module to do that, then we can't launch the module.
Genevieve
If we disconnect the module and shut the power down, where Leslie was, was, we may be able to spare a few volts for another boost.
Trish
I mean, can we. Can we shut the power down? Pretty much everywhere else. I checked all those cabins and they were empty.
Stacy
We should.
Vince
So you want to isolate the.
Stacy
There's no sense in keeping power open right up and running.
Josh
We've already channeled almost everything to life support. We've shut down almost every non essential system on the station. Right now, the only things left are life Support a few lights and comms.
Genevieve
Turn off the lights.
Trish
Turn off the lights. Everywhere but maybe one room that we hole into. And turn off the life support. Maybe everywhere but one room that we hole into, provided that isn't some zombie plague. And now that you've been bitten and you start eating rats and.
Josh
Yeah, that's not a real thing. It's not a fucking. We don't even know if there is a disease. We know they both manifested similar symptoms, but a lot of people can get sick a lot of ways, especially up here.
Trish
Sure.
Vince
So if I'm hearing you correctly, you'd like to hold out inside of a module somewhere and turn off life support lights anywhere else. Where would you like that to be? You don't have to be specific to the map. You just tell me if it's. Is it a lab, is it a service module, is it a cargo block? What would you like to hold up into?
Josh
I suggest we leave life support on in as much of the station as possible, because if we leave rooms uninhabitable, we will not be able to get through them if we need to. That's not a solution we should take as plan A. Lights, fine, basic stuff like that, fine. But we need to be able to breathe in the whole station.
Genevieve
Right now we need to be somewhere where there's four doors around us. We gotta close the entrances.
Josh
The module right Next to Airlock 1, we can access the module, the launch module. From that point, we can also lock down most of the rest of the ship. The food and water can be stored in there. And I can put. And bring in the ham radio.
Genevieve
Do it.
Vince
All right, so you basically get together as much as you can to lock down the single modular. You bring in whatever you've managed to put together that you can hotwire directly into this radio, and you sit there in the red light and you wait.
Trish
Genevieve, I think I saw in the commotion, you pull a laptop out of your Oscar office. Do you still have that by any chance?
Stacy
Yeah, I mean, I grabbed everything that I could from my station. What room did I ended up leaving?
Vince
Well, it's all in the same area. If you have it all together, I'm assuming at this point you've all found a module, you've brought whatever you can bring into it, and you've shut the one door, the one exit out that you can get out into, and you've shut it and you've put the lights on their lowest setting and you've turn off life support everywhere but where you are. So whatever you manage to grab from your laboratory you have with you.
Stacy
So I do have my laptop and charger. I grabbed my notebooks and just some of the cultures that I could.
Vince
Shit. Shit it.
Josh
What?
Stacy
One of them's missing.
Genevieve
Which one?
Stacy
One of them's missing. Oh, God.
Josh
Okay, you dropped a sample. So what?
Stacy
So what? The whole reason why I'm here is to conduct this research. And maybe, maybe if we get it out alive, at least I have something to show for it.
Josh
It's still going to be in the labs. It's still in there somewhere. I'm sure we can.
Stacy
Do you want to go into where? Barfy McRat. Captain.
Josh
When and however we get help or the team is sent up to recover the station, I'm sure it'll still be there.
Vince
Time ticks as you stay inside of this module, and slowly, agonizingly, the minutes pass.
Josh
I'd like to be on the radios this whole time, just trying to send or receive any sort of signal.
Trish
And I'd like to, if Genevieve will allow it to be on her laptop trying to do the same.
Genevieve
I'm gonna be kind of just looking out the window, a little distracted, like my mind is on something else.
Vince
Right. Well, as you go and sit in your private moments, contemplating what you can, using the limited amount of power that is available to put this laptop to use, and using the radio to try to find signals, signals, wherever you can get. Just sits. Time stands still almost. But you know, it is passing and you feel like at some point you should be getting close to when you've broken the orbit and come into the light, but it doesn't come. The light doesn't arrive, and you still feel this omnipresent dark shape and it has this halo around it. Should you take the opportunity to go look at it.
Josh
Yeah.
Vince
And it's infuriating how much it's blocking your lifeline at this stage. And that's when the tinking, which at first was very light and minor, just every once in a while, a thunk, dunk, dunk, dunk. And it was the only sound to break the monotony of your key. Tapping and you tapping on the radio now starts to come in earnest. You can hear it. In fact, the first time you're really aware of it is when as something just collides across the side of the modulator. And as you hear it, just metal, just for a second, and hissing. Small, minor, just tiny bits.
Genevieve
Something hit the airline outside. Danny. We're spewing oxygen into the atmosphere. Danny.
Josh
Okay, I'd like to. Can I hear any sort of distance in terms of the hissing.
Vince
It's in this room.
Josh
It's in the room?
Vince
Absolutely.
Josh
Okay. I'd like to explore the room to try and find where a leak may have emerged.
Vince
Two ones. No successes.
Josh
I'm actually going to burn.
Vince
What is it?
Josh
A trait? It's my vice.
Vince
Greedy.
Josh
Greedy?
Vince
How do you want to apply greedy into this situation?
Josh
That's a good question. Well, I mean, we haven't determined success or failure yet. So should I roll this, see if I actually succeed, and then go from there?
Vince
If you think it'll help.
Josh
Yeah. Let's see whether or not this even goes well to begin with.
Vince
No. No.
Genevieve
Does not go well at all.
Vince
So thus ends our scene. Eight candles, eight truths. First, the world is dark. This conflict has failed. Danny, you cannot find the air leak. You don't know where it is, and there's some greed that is invoking inside of you right now. Something's happening. There's. There is a truth that needs to be spoken right now. And it is an opportunity to leverage your vice if you so wish. And you do have the first truth.
Josh
While exploring for the leak in the room, I sequester off a small pile of supplies, water and food, in a storage cabinet to use for myself should I have to attempt an escape alone.
Vince
You hide supplies somewhere, Genevieve.
Stacy
We're still. We're still able to breathe for the time being.
Genevieve
I look out the porthole and I see Leslie floating by.
Vince
4, 5.
Trish
I have uploaded all of my camera footage. I've transferred it all to Genevieve's laptop. In the time that we're sitting there, assuming the worst.
Vince
Leslie is still moving.
Josh
The hissing stops.
Stacy
I can still hear that noise.
Vince
The voice or the noise? Genevieve, year seven. Which means, Joseph, you get the last one. Last truth.
Genevieve
The voice is getting louder and undeniably loud. Like it sounds like it's going from a yawning moan to metal churning and like a gear moan. Like it's a mechanical human, like, groan.
Vince
If I may, because I've been in this setting a few times already. It is a hum. It is a deep, throaty, full blown hum. As if, like, have you heard Tibetan throat singing?
Josh
Yes.
Genevieve
Double double harmony.
Vince
That double harmony attitude. It is a sound, but it's not human in that kind of throaty way. But it is resonating, guttural, deep. And it does seem to be on itself as far as harmony. He goes. Yes. We pick up our scene immediately where we left off. You are looking, Danny, frantically, for whatever this sound is. And you use this Opportunity more to sequester supplies away than you are really to truly find the leak that is around there. It's. Something inside of you is clicking. What are you thinking right now, Danny? What is going on through your brain?
Josh
If there's a leak in the hull, we're not gonna survive much longer at all. But if it comes to it, if everyone does succumb or things go south, I need to be able to try and get off this station, even if it's alone.
Vince
Okay, Stacy, you have a laptop filled with media content right now. The power's low. I know what you want to do. So just tell me. Tell me what you want to do.
Trish
I need to. And for Genevieve's sake as well. This holds our legacy. And if this is the end, this is all that's left of us. And your work. And your work and all of our work. And if there is anything left on Earth, we need to somehow get this footage. There.
Stacy
There's a problem with there's limited power supply. And you're choosing to be on that right now?
Trish
I mean, would you like to take the lithium polymer battery out of this laptop and somehow use it to.
Stacy
Well, actually, it still needs to be.
Josh
There is a problem with that. We should have seen the sun by now. We've come around the far side of the moon. Maybe the math is wrong, but this is when we'd be in sunlight.
Vince
Okay.
Josh
And I don't see the sun.
Trish
Sure, sure. Well, you know, like we discussed, the trajectory would be off because of the moon splitting apart and stuff. But that doesn't mean that we're never gonna see the sun, Right? Just means that. Not when we calculated.
Josh
It's. It's supposed to be right there.
Genevieve
Yeah, it will be right there.
Josh
It's thing in the sky.
Genevieve
It will be right there.
Stacy
It's moving slower.
Genevieve
Yeah, maybe. Maybe we need another boost. Maybe we lost time when whatever hit us hit us and it spun us off.
Trish
Sure.
Genevieve
I can look at Dimitri's notes again, but I don't think anything is left that can help us.
Vince
So there's a couple of options here, considering. If I'm interpreting what you would like to say, and just using the knowledge of the space station at hand. You're right. And I'm going to say, for the purposes of this, you've been running off laptop battery not pulling from the grid. The battery's low. It's to the point of where it's on sleep mode. You've got maybe a couple of hours before it is dead.
Trish
Sure.
Vince
You can boot up the Flight module again, you're in the. We're going to say you're in the same room that you did it the first time so you can reroute the power again to go check out the flight mode module and use the boosters to recorrect course again. Probably will be nearly the end of your power and, yeah, we'll leave it there. I'm also open to what everyone else wants.
Josh
Trying to course correct right now means we'd be doing it blind. We don't have a navigator, and it means virtually draining the life support.
Trish
It also, I mean, we don't even know what. What the mass of the moon is right now, or, you know.
Josh
No, it'd be a guess. It'd be literally just taking a shot in the dark.
Genevieve
Well, a shot in the dark is better than floating forever in the dark.
Stacy
It's better than doing nothing.
Josh
Not if it drains our life support. We're already down to dregs right now because of the gambit we pulled trying to get the module reattached.
Trish
Okay, so the other option then, just to play devil's advocate, is to leave the life support on and have it run as long as it can. And what hope that an envoy from Earth comes up here with more supplies?
Josh
The other option, now that we've appeared around the far side of the moon, is to try and use the module to.
Vince
Jesus. Just as it slaps again, another large crease just collides right into the capsule yet again.
Genevieve
Dani. She's outside. She's outside.
Josh
Who's outside?
Genevieve
Leslie's outside.
Vince
And at that point, you can hear hands just scratching along the side of the metal casing as something just seems to be taking a wet hand and running it, as if taking it across a newly washed car as just.
Trish
She's alive outside.
Genevieve
How did she get outside?
Josh
I have no idea. Okay. There's a lot going on right now. There's no way we can stay on this station and survive. We need to get on the module and try and get off. You guys have a return path programmed into the module. This is not where we intended to launch from, but if we can repurpose that, we may be able to get us onto a safe return trajectory.
Trish
Okay. And just to explore options, I know we don't have a lot of time, but, I mean, Leslie seems to be able to survive out there. If Leslie can survive out there, then maybe we can.
Josh
I don't. That's not really what I'm getting from that personally. Okay.
Vince
Okay.
Stacy
I don't want to be like that?
Josh
No, there's something going on with her.
Stacy
I really don't see any other way right now.
Vince
So is it to the module?
Trish
Yeah, if that's what everybody wants to do. I'm on board.
Josh
We got to get off the station. We got to go.
Vince
Okay. All right. Okay. So that involves opening the door up that you have locked and going back into the station, which currently has zero light and zero life support.
Josh
Well, no, I think we left the life support running, but turned all the lights off.
Genevieve
Yes.
Vince
I see. Okay. So as you come to the door, you start to pull it open, and you clear the airlock, and. And you see the darkness of the International Space Station laid out in front of you. You can still hear the movements.
Trish
Do the movements still seem to be following us?
Vince
It's just sound. It's just sound, Stacy. And when you're in a tin can, it feels like sound is coming from you everywhere at this point. And as you open the door, you can feel the brisk, musky air of the stale air that is from the station wash over you as this dank, humid air follows you.
Josh
I'd like to search some of the supply panels along the side of the walkways for a Maglite or just a big flashlight.
Vince
Okay, go for it.
Josh
You've got to be shitting.
Vince
One. One. No Sixes. That's your hope?
Josh
Yep.
Vince
Yep. No. Thus we end our scene. Seven candles, seven truths. We first start with, the world is dark. Denny, you seem to be taking a lot of the first truths lately, but I implore you to do it yet again. What is the first truth?
Josh
I did not find a handheld flashlight, but did find an LED headlamp.
Vince
So. You found the headlamp. Mm. All right, Genevieve.
Stacy
I grabbed a utility pocket knife.
Vince
Grabbed a pocket knife. I.
Genevieve
Made sure the EVA suit was still intact for a spacewalk.
Vince
So are you just. Is there a truth that you're checking EVA suit?
Genevieve
Yes.
Vince
Okay. Absolutely. 4.
Trish
The sound of Leslie's hand, presumably on the outside of the space station, see, seems to follow us as we move through the hallways and into different chambers.
Vince
You haven't seen the sun yet because you're on a collision course with the moon.
Josh
Ham radio, though largely silent until now, has started flickering to life with a voice I can almost make out.
Vince
Last one.
Stacy
The darkness feels suffocating.
Vince
Dany, as you are leading your crew through. Genevieve, Joseph, you've grabbed whatever you can to go into it. Stacy, you have your ears trained on this door, this module that you're in, and you swear to God it's following You. You can just. With your mind's eye, just picture Leslie out there using whatever grip they have. Momentum, just hugging onto them, pulling themself across for all that it's worth. Genevieve, that noise. The dark humming into your brain. It wants you to take that knife. It wants you to hold it. It feels safe. It's so comforting to have it in your hand right now. Stacy, you want something. You need something. This. The fact that Leslie is so close to you, it terrifies you. There's something going on in your mind right now. It's more than just why you came up here. What are you thinking?
Trish
I am trying so desperately to find hope right now. In everything that's going on, when it seems like all is lost. And in my mind, there's always a solution. There's a solution to every problem. You just have to find it.
Vince
But you're having a hard time finding that it right now.
Trish
Sure.
Vince
I mean, I'm asking you.
Trish
Yeah, I. Starting to go places that don't make a lot of sense, only to have a place to go.
Vince
Right. Danny? As you lead the crew out going through it, you suddenly hear the ham radio flicker on and it.
Josh
Hello? Can you hear us? Can you hear me?
Vince
Oh, God.
Josh
We're on the International Space Station. What's going on down there?
Vince
You continue to hear static as something continues to come on. And you finally hear a different voice, something else. Clasp a pawn. And you hear it. We know true one dark. They come from one three don't go towards. And someone. It's not good information, but someone's listing something. Truths that seem to be laid out.
Josh
Okay, well, the radio is working. I'm hearing someone, but it's not making any sense. The signal's not strong enough right now. Okay, we gotta. It'll get better as the orbit gets closer to Earth.
Trish
It's something.
Josh
It's something. And I can try and tweak it and boost the signal, but first we gotta get to the pod.
Vince
Are you bringing it with you? Yeah. All right. So you exit through the door.
Trish
Yeah.
Vince
And you go through.
Josh
And I'm taking point with the point.
Vince
With the light so you can keep looking through. And as you kind of are again grabbing and moving through with your emergency light. And it is the one piece of white light that you've had so far in this entire moment. Everything has just been red emergency lights for weeks at this point. This one bright white light is just so stark. And just to see color, just to see a spot, small amount of normalcy as you're looking across the space station is both gratifying and also jarring at the same time, as normalcy is back. But it is not. Dani. As you continue to move and you move forward, you see the module in front of you and you know that you have to go down in order to get into where. So you need to move up and then go down into the space to get to where you're connecting and could potentially disconnect away from it. And as you're moving forward, you get closer and closer. And then that's a moment when a head lifts up and you see the eyes, just a hand block its face, and it's that dark, dirty blonde hair that you know of to be. As you continue to see blood across her mouth, and it looks like her stomach has been torn in from the inside. And you can see pieces of her flesh just seem to be coagulating. And something in her stomach is wiggling. It's physically moving. As you see something just flapping in the zero g as it makes its way up into her body cavity. And she just starts shaking her head and convulsing as she looks up and she grabs a rung and flings herself towards you again.
Josh
Jesus, fuck.
Trish
Can we all see that or are we single file?
Vince
Right now you're single file through, but you do hear it. You do hear the convulsing, you do hear the tiny, tiny screeches of something.
Josh
So I'm. My intent here is to literally, as.
Vince
A reflex, just clock her right as you do one. Several successes. Ooh, two ones. All right, tell me how it happens.
Josh
Okay, so she's rocketing toward me right now, using the momentum from her push. And I focus the on her face, which appears to really get to her. And as she's coming up, unable to see where she's going now, I just reflexively reach out and just catch her right in the temple.
Vince
All right, you just give her a right jab as you watch as you connect with her temple and her head just hits the side of the module cabinet as it just bounces. And you see as her body is disoriented as it starts doing small turns in the zero G. As you look at your hand and you look at the blood upon your hand and you step back and your momentum does not stop even with the clocking. In fact, if anything, that momentum pushed you towards the other direction. And you find yourself bong. And you feel metal clasp against your lower back as you impact against the side of the module. And all of you tumble like a chance. Who didn't get off the slide in time and you just all buckle into each other as you slowly all pool into a group right in front of this open space.
Trish
Can we see Annabelle's body?
Vince
It's spinning. It's tumbling.
Genevieve
I see her body spinning towards an unused portion where an airlock is. And it's a two door system. So she's going towards the first door. And we're lucky because the opening device is close to me to open that door.
Vince
Are you lucky?
Genevieve
Am I lucky?
Trish
I'm taking out my camera and using what juice is left to try to film what Annabelle looks like right now.
Stacy
And my knife is out, ready to attack if that doesn't work.
Vince
Got it.
Genevieve
So I'm rolling to see if I can open.
Josh
Does he get one more die?
Vince
Yeah.
Josh
Okay, There we go.
Genevieve
So I'm rolling to see if I can pull the latch that will open the first door.
Vince
You want to get her in that airlock?
Genevieve
Get her in that airlock.
Vince
Let's see how lucky Joseph is getting Annabelle.
Genevieve
I'm gonna look at her in the camera and I just don't. I don't give a fuck anymore.
Vince
Whatever. Yeah, you push her in. Wow.
Josh
Wow.
Vince
Three successes.
Josh
So you're making all of the rules.
Trish
From now on, right?
Genevieve
I got those. V. Dave dies, I guess.
Vince
Yeah. So you, yes, you, please take it away from me. I get a couple, I think.
Genevieve
Okay. So after Dany punches her, she screams and her head rattles against that. But he comes hurtling back into us. We all fall in the zero grav, but I grab my arm on the side of the tunnel and just instinctively I hit the airlock button. So the first door just pow, violently opens up. Pow.
Vince
And just whacks her and just smashes her. Okay.
Genevieve
Off the side.
Vince
I like that. So this idea that you are basically like you had mentioned, she was part in there, but you just kind of watch as. Because it's all in emergency power. There's no safety protocols inside of this. The emergency airlock ostensibly pins her into the airlock and. And you can see this distended gore, as I mentioned earlier, coming from her stomach. And it just is oozing now over the top of the airlock as it seems to pinch and it's going into her system and you can hear a tiny squeal. It seems to be there, but her body is more just looking around and it is taking pieces of her own flower and shoving it into her mouth as she is staring towards you, but not towards you as she's looking into this thing. This thing that's staring in front of her.
Josh
Okay, we gotta move. We gotta move, guys.
Genevieve
Come on.
Trish
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Vince
You go past and you throw yourself down and you can see as you get within arm's length. She makes a grab, but very haphazardly, almost as if it doesn't matter at all because there's stuff here. And she puts it back into her mouth again. As each one of you descends into the module and you find yourself in a tiny entry module that was used to come up into the space station. It's probably the size of this table.
Trish
Can we seal off what that looks like? I want to seal it off.
Vince
You seal it off and the four of you sit in this cylinder, this squat cylinder. As you open it is blackness. It is darkness inside of here. What do you do?
Josh
Okay.
Trish
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to get out of here now.
Josh
Nothing's getting through those doors.
Stacy
Is everyone okay?
Josh
Yeah, we fine.
Vince
Are we good?
Genevieve
I'm all right. I'm all right. She didn't scratch you or anything, did she?
Josh
I mean, not that time.
Trish
She bit him before.
Genevieve
No more wounds.
Josh
Okay.
Trish
Did anyone get a good look at what was in her stomach?
Josh
Yeah, I don't even. I don't want to think about it. There was something, but I heard something inside her.
Stacy
It was like. Like squeaking, but not.
Genevieve
Look, when I told you that Derek Marcus disintegrated, I. I wasn't being 100% truthful. What actually happened was Derek disintegrated, but not all of his body. Something was left behind. There was something new. That wasn't Derek.
Vince
Did it speak?
Trish
Could we communicate with it? Is it in Area 51?
Genevieve
I don't know. Because that type of information was way beyond my pay scale at the time. But I do know that whenever they brought Derek home, whatever they buried wasn't Derek.
Josh
Okay, we have to assume this is probably happening in a lot of places. Right now, I don't think it's just us. But our best chances of surviving are still away from this place. Even if we have to try and pilot this thing mostly manually.
Trish
Sure.
Genevieve
We need to get out of here.
Stacy
They knew that that happened to him. That that means nobody's coming for us.
Trish
And why the hell did they send us up here after that?
Genevieve
There's people coming for us. There's people coming for us.
Vince
So are we going to Genesis in this thing?
Josh
Well, I'm going to take a minute first to just tally up what basic supplies we have with us now.
Trish
Sure.
Vince
You have about a quarter of what actually I would say, yeah, about a quarter of what was originally brought up because it is the handful that you took back and used was a blip in it. At the same time, the supplies that you may have squirreled away, I mean, I don't think you brought those with you. So it's basically what you have inside of here. There is enough food, there is enough water to last quite a while.
Trish
Okay.
Josh
Okay. Next thing is if we're committing to this. I want to reroute the remaining station power to the module, make sure we're fully topped up, and the life support systems in here will last as long as they possibly can. I can overclock the systems a little bit.
Vince
Let's overclock the systems a little bit, please. Look at all these beautiful engineering roles you're making. Danny, don't make me roll. Unless you want someone else to do the engineering for you. Unless Genevieve's feeling a little sassy and not wanting Danny to feel like he's got the grasp on everything right now.
Josh
Wanna work the power?
Stacy
You know, if your arm is. If I'm getting.
Josh
Yeah, I'm a mess.
Stacy
If I'm questioning, I'll talk you through it, what your arm's looking like, right?
Josh
I'll talk you through it. It's those wires.
Vince
16, 1 1. Okay, Genevieve, you've done this once before with the robotic arm. Having Danny talk you through it. Tell me how it goes down.
Stacy
Danny, what do I do?
Josh
Okay, so first things first. We gotta pull out the main line for the module here. It's designed to route power cyclically, but we need to have it siphon power off the station instead. Okay, we're still connected. We're still latched, thankfully. So you can just reverse. I'll show you that switch there. If you switch that, it reverses the polarity and it pulls power from and Sunshine Lake.
Vince
You're able to get it together and put into it. And you do feel the power come into here and you flip onto the emergency red.
Stacy
Oh, I think I got it. I think I did something nice.
H
Great.
Josh
Okay. We should be topped up now.
Vince
It flickers. It just flickers ever so slightly.
Genevieve
Oh, shit.
Trish
Is it supposed to do that? It's fine.
Josh
It's fine. The system is not designed to hold quite this much juice, but it can.
Trish
Okay.
Josh
This will give us as much time as we can possibly have in a module this size. So now it's just launching and let's see. The built in trajectory is designed to take you on a return path, but not launching from this position. We're going to have to do some manual jockeying here.
Genevieve
This is the module me and her came up in.
Vince
Yeah. Okay, great. So you're going to disconnect and then you're going to start moving it around as much as you can. Great, then let's disconnect. So you basically, Danny, look at everybody as you go into this. And as you said, we're ready to do this. You take the. I don't know what these things look like, but for dramatic purposes, a big old lever. Just a big old lever. Just an airplane open the door ever. That kind of attitude. And you just. And you feel it just slowly coming away as you watch the ISS just drift away from you ever so slowly. That's when you can start to see just how much it's getting pommeled. You have a single view viewport for this. I should make it abundantly clear.
Genevieve
So all our heads are huddled there.
Vince
It's literally about this big. As all of you are kind of going through it. And before the ISS stays away from your view. You can see as it's just being pelted with rock and debris. And that's when for a singular moment, you watch as a bright light just hits your viewport. And the sunlight is so bright and jarring and intense as you've pushed away from the space station. It's just a single beam and it just kind of hits against the wall as this beam of sunlight crests as you move just 100ft or so away. Wow. Okay.
Trish
And we have no solar panels on.
Josh
Here, but we have power. We have a lot of power in the module.
Trish
We do.
Josh
And this was always the plan.
Trish
Yeah, yeah. And you know what's funny?
Genevieve
Module's batteries have a shelf life of at least. Of at least 40 hours.
Trish
Great. Cool. Cool. You know, I feel like in every sci fi movie you watch, you know, like the goal is to get to the space station so that you're not out on your own, and then you get there and you find the aliens. Right. And then the goal is to get back off. And we did. And this should be the happy ending part. We're heading to our happy ending part.
Josh
It might be, I hope. Yeah, I'm hoping it is, except the Earth's cracked.
Stacy
People are dying.
Josh
The moon's cracked.
Trish
The moon's cracked. We don't know that the Earth is.
Stacy
The moon's cracked.
Trish
Right, right, right.
Stacy
We left Annabelle our cruise.
Josh
I think she's better off right now.
Trish
I don't know how much was left of Annabelle.
Stacy
Leslie just contracted something and was just floating around.
Josh
All of us are given emergency training in the event that we lose the pilot. In the event that we lose the station. Yes, we all have a basic understanding of how to get the module down, but it relies on quite a lot of guesswork. We're supposed to have contact with Houston or Moscow the entire time, which we don't have right now. We have no one to talk us through this.
Stacy
And that's considering if we had a normal gravitational pull, which we don't.
Trish
But you brought the comms, right?
Josh
I have the radio, yeah.
Trish
Okay, that's something.
Genevieve
This module is equipped with several fail safes. Not all of them are apparent or maybe even ready right now due to our power. But there is a possibility that the pre routed course could still be in the nava system, the navigation system. And if we can get enough juice on the solar panel, we can triangulate where we are in relation to the orbit and maybe the computer can plan a boost. We have enough power to make it happen.
Josh
Let's see if we can dig it up.
Genevieve
But maybe we have to manually get further into the sun first.
Vince
I need that so that if you're going to plot any kind of manual course to get into the sun. There is no solar panels in the module. I'm so sorry. But as you mentioned, the module does have some power and you do have a little bit of fuel left in those boosters, so.
Josh
So let's see if we can get that navigational chart pulled up.
Trish
And if we can get around and more into the sun, maybe the comms will start working.
Genevieve
We can just start to burn towards Earth.
Trish
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Josh
We're in space, so all we need is a push and momentum will take us the rest of the way.
Vince
All right. Is that the thing then?
Genevieve
This is the push.
Vince
This is the push towards Earth.
Genevieve
Towards Earth.
Josh
My man.
Vince
One for me.
Genevieve
So close.
Josh
So now if you have a virtue or vice active, you can burn it to reroll the one.
Genevieve
My top is my virtue is what I'm going for is my wish is the top.
Vince
Whatever you have on top is what you can roll for a rerollable one.
Josh
So you could consume that and it becomes part of the solution, but you can reroll the die that landed on.
Vince
A one one one.
Genevieve
Let's do that, I guess. Right, Right.
Vince
Give it to me.
Josh
It's a choice.
Vince
What's the virtue on top that you're burning?
Genevieve
Activate the nuclear warhead. Disrupting the moon.
Vince
So that's what's on top. Your moment, my moment. Your moment. Is on top.
Genevieve
Okay.
Vince
Yeah, you can't burn that.
Genevieve
So then I can't do it then, unfortunately.
Josh
Okay, that's fine. We succeeded.
Trish
Yeah, we succeeded. And I want to watch what Joseph is doing. Just kind of prepping for the worst to make sure I know how to do it.
Vince
Yeah, you're looking at it and. Well, what exactly what are you doing, Joseph?
Genevieve
I'm sweating. I'm beginning to sweat profusely. And in my brow, the droplets are kind of just. They don't fall because we're still in zero G, so they just kind of float upwards. And the small window is starting to get steamed from all the body heat of us inside and not enough oxygen. And I kind of pull an Apollo 13 when I just put my hands on the booster thrusters and I just peek out the window. And that darkness, darkness. And then a sliver just goes right behind as soon as it hits my eye.
Vince
All right. And you go straight, you just see that sliver and you just gun it and you boost through whatever you have left and you hit it for, you know, and you don't know if you went through all of it, but we're talking 1, 1,000, 2, 1,000, 3, 1,000, let it go. And you can feel the momentum. You can see as the space station just. And disappears, as do things in space do so quickly. And you're watching as the moon now coming into your purview, into your tiny port. You see, it just is a huge planet, and you're this close to it. You can see the crack. You can see it split, the craters of the moon as they are. You can watch, as you can see, it seems to just. The crack just seems to be drifting just next to each other. And you can swear to God, you can hear them crunching together as just rock on. Rock is just like slowly creasing on each other. And you can see that at this point, the Moon is starting to tilt in a lopsided way as it's just beginning to spin as this crunching rock is into it. And it's enough of a spin that you can physically still see it from the altitude that you are. You go.
Josh
Now. The module is designed to survive reentry into atmo.
Trish
Great.
Josh
And once we hit that, the friction will slow us down. We're coming at it at a pretty good angle right now. And once we're through, through all the tough stuff, the chutes will deploy and we land. I have no idea where we're going to touch down, but hoping it's not open water or Something. But we can deal with that when we get there.
Vince
So you are all together in this place, all four of you crammed in this cylinder as you ride through the void of space.
Josh
I'm getting back on the comms now that we can actually see the Earth a little bit and try and make contact with someone.
Vince
Yep.
Trish
I am on Genevieve's laptop. And fortunately, this is the type of laptop that has a SIM card in it. So if I can access any kind of cellular data connection from anywhere we are, then I could potentially connect.
Vince
I would. I would have to think about that for a hot moment. I know. I know. I want it so bad. But.
Genevieve
When he talks to himself, shit hits the fan, you know that it's gone.
Stacy
We're gonna die.
Genevieve
We're gonna die.
Trish
Yeah.
Genevieve
But in space, no one can.
Josh
Hear you scream, but they can watch you explode.
Vince
Throw a SIM card in there and try to see if by some chance you get some kind of satellite connection.
Trish
Okay, I'm gonna take the SIM card from my no longer powered cell phone, but take that and plug it in too.
Vince
All right.
Trish
No successes. Can I burn?
Vince
Do you have a virtue on the top?
Trish
I do have a virtue on the top.
Vince
What is it?
Trish
Insightful. Okay.
Vince
So.
Trish
Knowing that I could not connect to anything with the SIM card that I had in what I was originally accessing was US Data connection. I try international connection, because the SIM that I was given was through the International Space Station program, which is obviously from a lot of different countries going a different route, trying to take what I know and apply it.
Vince
So there's this funny thing about EMPs. You were high enough to maybe not have it be concerned, but you find nothing. You sit as you watch that little spinning disk as you attempt to connect to a network, and you watch it as you wait for that dial to turn to anything. Bloop. Your computer goes dark. Six candles, six truths. Stacy, we start with you first. The world is dark.
Trish
The laptop is out of power, and any data communication we could have hoped to have other than radio, is no longer an option.
Vince
Oh, yes. That was very clear.
Genevieve
The.
Vince
Module clockwise. So that's okay. You will have a chance it you.
H
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Trish
There.
Vince
Is a beam of light coming from the earth.
Josh
The radio now has a clear signal.
Stacy
I'm growing very concerned about the wound forming in your arm.
Vince
Would you like to speak a truth about the wound?
Josh
You can establish like pure canon.
Stacy
Oh, it's infected.
Josh
First time.
Vince
Yeah.
Genevieve
A piece of the moon is going to hit the module.
Vince
6.
Trish
The food we have on board looks to be not as much as we had thought initially.
Vince
Six candles, six truths. The world is dark as you crest over the edge of the moon and it is like coming across the horizon of the earth like this could be some nature documentary in which they give you those wonderful space shots as the earth comes into light. But it is the moon. And you see the blue marble that is our planet come into focus as you are now making that return orbit from the moon's trajectory. And let me tell you something to really give you an idea of perspective when I mean the little blue marble we've all seen pictures of. You know, the earth looks like where the Moon is. I want you to instead imagine a world in. In which through your tiny porthole, you see one half moon. And coming out from the blackness of space, you see the Earth fill up your entire field of vision. Everywhere from the porthole, as far as you can see up, everywhere from the porthole, as far as you can see down, as these two contrasting colors now barely being illuminated by the sun's light. And it is being interrupted as it is more from when your module hits the sun for a hard second and you get the porthole before it comes back into darkness again. And they just. It is an otherworldly sight. You are probably looking at the moon being rather than thousands of miles away, more like hundreds of miles away from each other. What do you do?
Genevieve
We are way closer to the Earth than we thought.
Trish
Guys, that's great news.
Vince
It's fine.
Josh
As long as we can get into.
Genevieve
Atmo at this speed, we're gonna burn up. There's no way we can enter the atmosphere.
Josh
It'll still slow us down enough. The parachutes will take care of the rest.
Trish
Okay.
Josh
We probably have a little bit of fuel left to compensate if we need to.
Trish
Sure.
Josh
It'll still be a little while off. So let's focus on right now, Danny.
Genevieve
There are pieces of the fucking moon falling from the sky.
Josh
And there's nothing I can do about that right now.
Genevieve
But if we keep going down, Danny, there's not gonna be anything left. We have to go around.
Vince
Bong, bong, bong, bong.
Genevieve
Look, look. I'm gonna pull him to the porthole and I'm gonna show you how close the Earth is.
Vince
And it's one of those. You only catch it every few seconds. Cause it has to make a full rotation and come around. But then when it does, and it does take a while, so you catch a second of it before you leave the purview of the Earth. And again, we're imagining a world in which you're getting a slow pan of what is in front of you. You see blackness, you see space, you see darkness. And as you come around, you do see just these giant chunks of space rock that just seem to be floating. And they're large, but they seem to be getting bigger as they are coming somewhere. And it is now an asteroid field that you've looked at as you see that the moon has just done another chunk and has splintered. And you now see what was once open space is now a debris field of moon rock laid out in front of you.
Genevieve
I have an idea. This module was equipped with Certain modifications not necessarily known in the Geneva treaty. And by that I mean we have options. And by options, I mean we have nuclear options on this ship.
Josh
What?
Genevieve
The company decided as a fail safe method that a small but extremely potent warhead would be attached to the module. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a hundred. This thing's a 10, but it still packs a bang.
Stacy
Okay, so decided that that.
Josh
Fucking game to you guys.
Genevieve
Shareholders and bonds. We thought it was a good idea. Just in case something needed to happen in evidence. I mean.
Stacy
In case what needs to happen? In case the moon needs to be more. More broken up into pieces.
Trish
I mean. Okay, okay. What can we do with this information? We could fire it at potentially a piece of debris to knock it off course or something. But then. Scary. If we do re. Enter the atmosphere and burn up, wouldn't we turn into a nuke?
Genevieve
The shockwave would send us flying. We'd be disintegrated in seconds. We have to figure out a way.
Trish
Oh my God.
Josh
A warhead the size of the Tsar Bomba would not be enough to send the moon on a different course. It's like altering the rotation or orbit of a.
Trish
Not the moon, but maybe. Maybe a piece of moon debris. I mean.
Josh
At what cost? Then we're gone.
Trish
Would shooting it off in one direction change our trajectory? Would the motion, yes, in one direction make us go another direction?
Josh
It has an equal chance of destroying the capsule. You'd have to time that flawlessly.
Vince
I get what you're getting at with your hopes here, Joseph, and I totally understand it. But I want to understand that there is a tiny mini nuke that you've put inside of this thing. A p. A tiny pea shooter nuke that's somehow into this thing. Correct. I mean, I'm into it as I always am.
Genevieve
Let's call it maybe not even. It's not even necessarily a nuclear missile. It's just concentrated uranium which could be detonated.
Vince
It's still splitting atoms. It's a nuclear reaction. Is a goddamn nuclear reaction. Whether it's Nagasaki or whether it is A area 51. Yes. So whether it's a test. Any case, I'm still down if you are. But how are you going to do this? To try to create a reverse physics effect to try to get you into or clear through the debris Debris field. What is the plan?
Genevieve
If we jettison the warhead, it has a remote detonation that we can time for 30 minutes from now. 30 minutes or an hour should give us enough time to clear the blast radius. It's just A thought.
Vince
If.
Josh
If this is timed flawlessly. Yes, the shockwave would give us a little boost in the direction we'd like to go and clear some of the debris heading towards us. It could work. But that is such a slim chance. I need to reiterate.
Trish
What else do we have?
Vince
I do enjoy slim chances as far as conflicts go. So this is the perfect chance of something could fail. And let's see if it does. By all means. Joseph. Wow.
Josh
My God.
Vince
1 6. No ones. Briefly tell me how this thing somehow manages to work.
Genevieve
There's a timing device in the warhead that I can set for an hour. And it's already based in the module as like a torpedo bay. When it'll just launch on its own. It has its own self operating systems. It will carry itself. It won't drain any more of our power. But it will go off in an hour. No matter what.
Vince
You successfully launched it does not mean it has to detonate. But you did successfully launch it. Fair enough. So I'm going to give you your hope dice for whatever it's worth. Can't believe I'm handing you a hope dice for sending off a nuke. But that's ten candles for you.
Genevieve
I work. I tried to make it work.
Vince
Yeah, no, it's all good. It's all part of the story.
Trish
So does that mean that that hope picture is burned or.
Vince
I'm gonna leave it there on it at the moment. Because what is happening if we get down to the brink, which is something that can happen. The hope dice will go away if he fails with it. But we're not there yet.
Genevieve
Thank your corporate overlords.
Vince
So it out and we leave it there. You have half an hour. You have an hour. Hour. You have an hour until this thing goes off.
Josh
Knowing what might be coming. I'd like to hop back on the phones and try and establish a connection to Earth now that we're so close and the moon is no longer obscuring us.
Vince
Okay, you do get. I mean the static is clear at this point. It is not faded, it is not clear, it is brisk. And you are going through the channels as much as you can. And you are consistently getting static over and over again. And you occasionally going through each one. There's no repeat broadcast, there's no emergency system. Those things you heard, those truths earlier, they are not there. But it does stop. And you do hear something. And it is that humming again. That deep, throaty, royal. And it is so intense in fact you can even hear a higher pitched harmony like something shrieking in the background. The more you listen to it, the more you dive deeper into it, the more you can hear tiny, unique sounds. It's almost like. Like listening to the sound is like gazing into a mandala. And the more you stare at it, the more you listen to it, the more you can hear. And the deeper you go.
Trish
What do you hear?
Josh
It's this noise. I unplug the headphones and switch on the speaker on the ham radio.
Vince
It pops onto it and you just hear it. It's just this resonating, this sound upon sound upon sound. And it is.
Josh
It's on like half the channels.
Stacy
What is that?
Vince
It is piercing. Stacy. It hurts so much, Joseph. It drives you insane. It feels awful. It just is off putting in a way that you cannot even imagine.
Genevieve
Can you turn it down?
Trish
Turn it off.
Genevieve
Turn it off. Turn it off. Danny.
Josh
Nothing else. It's just that.
Genevieve
I mean, I've never felt anything like that before. It's like it eats at your mind.
Vince
Upon taking another path on the Earth. You're close enough now that you can see the Pinheads. Just the single black columns and areas in which there isn't cloud cover. And oh, by the way, should I tell you, the storms. Oh, the storms that are above the Earth. These swirling hurricane like clouds that are just every once in a while covering the seas. And in the areas in which you can see down to the ground below, they are just like blackheads across the face of the Earth. Just little pockmarks. But it is so consistent. It's geometrically perfect.
Trish
What is that?
Josh
Is this happening everywhere?
Trish
What are those things? You know, I would think maybe they're, you know, craters from debris hitting. But it's too.
Vince
They're all perfectly aligned or uniform.
Genevieve
It's like. It's like they were there all along.
Josh
Guys, I. I hate saying this out loud, but what if. What if we're it? What if this is it? What if something happened down there and we're. We're what's left?
Trish
I knew we should have tried to grow plants on the space station.
Josh
Maybe we missed the worst of it. Maybe there was. Maybe it happened and then it's gonna be over. And then we can make something out of the Earth. Even if it's just us.
Vince
Wow.
Stacy
Even if we make it, what is left? What? Nothing. Nothing is like what it was before. We don't know what that is.
Josh
I don't know. I don't know.
Stacy
We were pulled into different orbits and now we don't know what life is like down there.
Vince
Oh, fuck.
Stacy
What's wrong.
Josh
Kind of just hurts. It stings.
Trish
Yeah.
Stacy
Let me look at it.
Genevieve
This can't be a coincidence. This can't be a coincidence.
Stacy
Jesus fucking Christ.
Vince
It's swollen. You can tell it's discolored at this point. I mean, infection is, you know, usually something that takes a little while in order to get through, but this seems to already be putrefying.
Trish
How.
Stacy
How are you just okay with that? Right now.
Josh
I'd really prefer this wasn't happening, but I can't.
Genevieve
You need to fast forward.
Josh
Do you have anything on board?
Genevieve
We need to make him a tourniquet so we can cut the blood and just stop the swelling. Just here.
Josh
Then I'm gonna lose the arm.
Genevieve
Better lose the arm than lose all of us.
Stacy
Yeah.
Trish
I mean, you saw the tentacles coming out of the middle of Annabelle, right?
Genevieve
If you want to be a corpse with a squid arm, well, that's your prerogative.
Vince
Okay, are we. Are we committing some kind of major surgery, right, or just tourniquet.
Josh
We're starting with tourniquet.
Vince
Okay.
Genevieve
This is a tourniquet.
Vince
Okay.
Genevieve
She has a knife.
Stacy
I was like, I do have a knife.
Josh
I'm gonna pull my belt off my suit and just tie it around above the elbow.
Vince
All right? You tie it up around the elbow, and you put all the pressure on it and you. I mean, it's. The tingling of the lost blood is now more. You're feeling it just as much as the actual pain itself. So I would like to see, though, because I do so love a good dice roll. Genevieve. I would like to see how well this is doing.
Josh
As long as it's not me.
Vince
One one, two six. Two sixes. This tourniquet is doing its job.
Josh
Okay, how much longer until that thing explodes?
Genevieve
45 minutes.
Josh
Okay, let me check on the power. Hang on. I want to see how the power and life support's holding up.
Vince
Power and life support's fine. It's taking some time and it's going through, but, I mean, under normal circumstances, I would say all system's okay.
Genevieve
We'll touch the atmosphere in 30 minutes. That's a 15 minute.
Vince
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You see a porthole, a hand onto it, streaking.
Genevieve
It's fucking Leslie.
Vince
And it opens, and you can hear pounding onto it, and you hear a gurgling voice. I mean, God, if you. You don't. Oh, you don't hear it, but you can hear it, and it's just saying something. It is saying something. You can't tell what it Is it is awful. Awful right now, but it pierces into your mind and it sounds something like Let me in. Let me in.
Stacy
Fuck that.
Vince
And these hands are pulling and you can hear it is pounding everything you can, but it doesn't sound like a fist pounding against the module. It sounds like a rock being pounded into this steel over and over and over again.
Josh
There's no way she can get in. This whole thing is solid machined steel and aluminum.
Vince
There's no way.
Josh
There's no way.
Stacy
How is she alive?
Genevieve
There's no way.
Trish
Yes, that is the question.
Josh
She'll burn up when we hit atmo.
Genevieve
Yes, great.
Vince
Great.
Trish
Should we try to enter atmosphere? Sooner than 30 minutes.
Josh
Then there's nothing else to propel us.
Vince
All right. Are you going to wait it out? Wait for this thing to go down.
Josh
I want to see if there's any more juice in the engines.
Vince
Well, you can turn it on. You won't be able to know, but you can turn them on and put it on if you want.
Josh
I wonder, is there a way.
Genevieve
There's a way for her to. Hopefully. Maybe she's over by the engines that boost her off.
Josh
If she wanders that way, we can try and turn him on and just give her a push away from the module.
Stacy
How are we gonna get her to wander that way? Someone start knocking on the.
Genevieve
Someone tap on the window.
Josh
Yeah, let's try and get her attention.
Trish
Okay, Okay, I got it. And I'm gonna tap on the window and. Leslie, Annabelle, whoever this is, we can hear you. What is it that you want? How can we help?
Vince
And so you hear the. It's something. They are talking to you. But they are not speaking in any voice you understand. You are hearing and it is shrieking. It is piercing. But you feel more than you understand this draw towards the earth. It wants you to go to the Earth. It wants you to just let it happen. Come into is so safe. If you just let them in, everything will be okay.
Trish
Can I tell if they mean let them in, let them into the Earth's atmosphere or let them into.
Vince
They are telling you, Stacy. You will be spared. You will be great. Granted the final passage. If you just let me in and let them go. They are not for the next place. But you are. We know what you've done. We know that you are chosen. And if you would just let us in, then you will ascend.
Trish
Guys, Leslie's still in there. I can talk. I'm communicating somehow with Leslie. We can't just.
Vince
What?
Trish
We can't just let her die.
Genevieve
Out there, we.
Trish
You gotta let her in.
Genevieve
You're not talking to her.
Josh
Are you fucking nuts?
Trish
I am. I am talking to her. I can hear.
Stacy
Leslie.
Trish
And I'm gonna lunge for anything that's gonna open these.
Josh
I'm gonna lunge for her.
Vince
Yeah, it's great.
Genevieve
Oh, my God.
Vince
So technically, this is a conflict. Definitely is a conflict. But it's against two people who wanna go into it. So in the purposes of telling the absolute best story, I would like to see Dany, who wants to hold her back, roll this to see how it happens and how it goes down since Stacey, for this. So please, 1 6, 1 1, you grab Stacy, you hold her with all of your might. I'm going to roll one arm, by the way. Yeah. And you grab her and you hold her. And Stacy is still rambling at you. Stacy is going for this airlock.
Trish
Stacey, we have to save Leslie.
Vince
What is wrong with you?
Josh
If you open the door, you'll vent the module. We're all gonna die.
Genevieve
Stacy, calm down. Stacy, just.
Trish
Can't we just open it enough to let Leslie in?
Josh
It's space out there.
Trish
I'm trying to save someone, okay? All we've been trying to do is work to survive here. How can we not do that?
Josh
You wanna survive?
Stacy
You wanna leave that door closed? That's not Leslie out there.
Josh
If you open the door, we're all gonna get sucked into space.
Genevieve
Then who's alive, Stacey?
Josh
Who's left?
Genevieve
You're in here with us. You're not out here with her. You're in here with us. You're not out there with her.
Trish
She should be in here.
Josh
Don't listen to her.
Trish
She should be in here.
Genevieve
She should not be in here. Stacy.
Trish
She should be in here.
Genevieve
You saw her.
Josh
She's not right.
Trish
I'm gonna see if I can get free from his grasp. And instead of lunging to the. To the hatch, I'm gonna try to go back to the. Like, the porthole.
Genevieve
The porthole.
Vince
Okay. This one's for you.
Trish
Okay? I'm gonna try to go back to the porthole and escape there. 1 6.
Vince
All right.
Trish
So I wrestle free of Dany's one arm and shove him away from me and go back over to the porthole and tap on it and say, leslie, I can hear you. I'm trying to let you in. Please remember that. I'm trying to let you in.
Vince
And at that point, you see the rock that Leslie had been holding onto, and it comes down upon the porthole with as much effort as can be managed as it just. Can you watch as it spider webs just for a second.
Josh
I want to go over to the command panel and hit the boosters for whatever juice is left to try and shake her loose.
Vince
All right, keep rolling, buddy.
Josh
We get that one, too.
Vince
So, yeah, keep rolling, buddy.
Genevieve
Come on, Danny, take us home.
Josh
Oh, no.
Vince
All right. No sixes. No ones. This season ends immediately.
Genevieve
Oh, God.
Vince
Five candles, five truths. We are getting into a danger territory. Now, since we are more than halfway done decisions, we can get into a situation where dire consequences absolutely can happen in the circumstances. So with this said five truths, Danny, you have the pleasure yet again, of giving us the first truth.
Josh
So it didn't work because it failed. But I'll say the remaining fuel in the module, the fumes were just enough to jostle to sort of shake and lurch the command module. So she's just hanging on by a thread?
Vince
Yeah, by one grasping hand where the edge of the booster rockets are. I think that's nice. Go ahead, Genevieve.
Stacy
The radio spontaneously erupts with more sound.
Vince
Okay. All right, Joseph.
Genevieve
I look out the window with a horrified look, seeing the new nuclear warhead much closer than it should be.
Josh
Stop it.
Trish
I take what was a sturdy metal, like meal tray that was on board and use it to try to finish cracking the porthole glass.
Vince
Okay, so you found something to hit the porthole with from the outside.
Trish
Yeah, to let Leslie inside.
Vince
I will end you. The warhead goes off. Five candles, five truths. They've been spoken. And we start our scene immediately with a bright flash of light just erupting out of everywhere. It's searing. And you feel first the small shaking. And then in your mind, more than around you, you hear the screech as Leslie is evaporated off of the module. And you begin to shake and you begin to move and everything begins to just start to jostle and get into it. And you can hear metal bending and twisting and just everything. And more importantly, you can hear the sounds of impact. On impact, on impact. On impact, as your module is just flung with as much force as possible as it is now careening at a speed straight towards the planet.
Josh
That was not 45 minutes.
Genevieve
These things aren't an exact science. Fuck nuclear physics.
Vince
You cannot hold still. All of you are pressed through just the sheer velocity that you're in. All of you are on the back edge of the wall. Now, as you're starting to get closer to where the atmosphere is and you can feel your body, you can barely even get a hand up off the ground because the G forces are just so extreme right now.
Josh
As we were forced back to the back of the module, I leaned my body to try and catch the radio with my body so it wouldn't hit the wall.
Vince
Got it. And you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Genevieve
He's like, that's cute. Roll.
Josh
Oh, my God.
Genevieve
Oh, my God.
Trish
No successes.
Genevieve
No successes.
Vince
One.
Josh
One doesn't even matter.
Vince
No click and pop. So.
Josh
Yeah, this is where things get fucked.
Vince
Four candles, four truths. Things are happening, Danny. I can't believe I'm taking this one from you. I don't even care. You don't get the first truth. You've had so many first truths. Instead. But I'm not going to take it. I'm instead going to give it to Genevieve at this stage. First truth. For in this point.
Stacy
I'm at some point gonna stab at you for putting our lives in danger.
Vince
You can also say that it happens.
Stacy
Oh, yeah. I swing at you for trying to break that glass open.
Vince
2. With the pocket knife.
Stacy
Yeah.
Genevieve
I.
Vince
One more time. Sorry, would you mind? And again, for the purposes of getting into it, would you just like to say I stab you with the pocket knife.
Stacy
I stab you with the pocket knife.
Vince
All right.
Genevieve
We hit the Earth's orbit.
Vince
You hit the Earth's orbit. 3.
Trish
I very surprised by the stab wound that I've just received in my lower left abdomen. Use all of my energy to try to. I mean, I would. I say, would. I would assume she's. Because of the G force and us being pulled back, she's now on top of me. I guess if.
Vince
Or next to you, adjacent to you, you can. With your truth. You have power.
Trish
Okay. Being very surprised by the new wound to my lower left abdomen. I use the G force pulling us back against the wall to get that arm up and just let the G force take my elbow back straight into her windpipe.
Vince
So you. So you get her off.
Trish
You get it lifted enough to.
Vince
How about this? This is a way I like to interpret the truth. You get her off her and you pin her down using the G force.
Trish
Great.
Vince
How's that sound?
Trish
Sure.
Vince
Okay. We begin this scene. Four candles, four truths. The world is dark. The world is always dark.
Josh
Did you have a truth?
Vince
There was. Oh. Four get a truth. Excellent. Excellent. Let's just keep it going. Stacy, you can steer. Healer. You can still hear Leslie's voice in your head even though she's gone. All right. You have now erupted. The G force is pulling your module and all of your bodies laid up against it. Genevieve, you have used this opportunity to throw Something in. But now you can feel a.
Josh
Just.
Vince
Lack of air as Stacy's arm is against your windpipe and you're grabbing with all that force and you can hear her gasps of air at the moment. What do you do?
Josh
I want to reach over to get Stacy off of. To roll her over.
Vince
Joseph.
Genevieve
I'm going to grab the controls and go for another boost because we're just hitting the orbit. I have to slow down the module. I'm trying.
Vince
So you're trying to recorrect.
Genevieve
I'm trying to recorrect. I'm not even. I know this is chaos, but I watch him do it and I just.
Josh
Try and yeah, I've got this. Don't worry.
Vince
Recorrect as much as you possibly can.
Genevieve
Recorrect as much as I possibly can.
Vince
Okay. Try to find a safe landing spot. One for me and you.
Josh
Oh, he didn't roll his hope die.
Genevieve
I did not roll my hope die.
Vince
You still got a success. But you're good. Yeah. Doesn't matter if that's a rope in the future roll that because that succeeds on a five or a six.
Genevieve
Oh, okay. I did not know that.
Vince
So you gun it and using again just the dredges of whatever and it's more at this point just flitters just.
Genevieve
Trying to turn it anything I can. Yes.
Vince
And you take it as you steer as far away from the ocean as you possibly can trying to find coast or anything that you can land on so that you won't be stuck in the middle of the the ocean should. And when and if this thing lands and you push and move with all of your forces you can fighting against that g force you can start to see the front of the module is turning red. That iron hot just heat shield is absorbing so much heat. You can see it's starting to make an effect on the outer and it's starting to get warm in this thing as you continue to careen at a wild velocity in Genevieve. Dani, I know you want to try to get Stacy off, but Stacy, I am more interested in what you want to do right now.
Trish
She stabbed me. The bitch stabbed me.
Josh
You're trying to vent the module.
Trish
No, not anymore. Leslie, for all we know, isn't even there anymore.
Genevieve
Stab her again. Jennifer. Eve.
Trish
What the. Really?
Josh
Okay, everyone calm down. Enough. Just get off of her.
Trish
If you stab me again, I swear to God.
Stacy
What the is wrong with you? What's wrong with you?
Trish
You just stabbed other humans.
Stacy
Killed us all. Yes, because you're going to kill us all.
Trish
I Was trying to save Leslie.
Stacy
You know what? Leslie cannot be saved right now. And you know what? You're not talking to her.
Trish
Who made you go freaking, made you omnipotent God?
Stacy
Me.
Vince
Enough.
Trish
You sound like a four year old.
Josh
It's done. She's gone.
Stacy
You sound like an insane person talking to somebody who should not be alive that tried to kill us all. And what did you do? You grab a freaking tray to try to just blast the freaking window and kill everybody.
Vince
None of us.
Stacy
I'm the crazy one.
Trish
I'm the four year old stabbed me.
Stacy
You deserve it. You deserve it.
Genevieve
None of us hit the ground. It's coming closer. I'm trying to tilt it up.
Vince
The porthole is the all viewpoint that you have at this point. And you're watching as the shattered windowed porthole out of nowhere. Just. And as you start to hear the atmosphere come in, you can hear wind gusting through and you can start to see and more feel than anything the wild is breaking into the atmosphere. You hear everything displacing the air inside of you. This porthole having lost its integrity from being hit on either side is now just careening and you can see fire just.
Trish
Leslie, are you out there? Are you out there? Leslie, can you hear me?
Genevieve
There's no one out there.
Vince
And what do you do?
Josh
What kind of danger does this pose that we can see in terms of the porthole being broken?
Vince
The porthole being broken at this point is literally just the point that it's created. It's creating such a vacuum because we're.
Genevieve
In the atmosphere already because it's lit up so there is already oxygen because we're in the atmosphere.
Vince
So that's the thing.
Stacy
Is the tray large enough to we can cover the hole?
Vince
That's the thing. It's the vacuum because it's now pulling you all towards the hole. It's trying to suck you out of this tiny porthole right now.
Stacy
Does the tray cover it though? Try to cover that.
Vince
Does it cover it?
Stacy
Does it cover it? Can I? Can I?
Josh
Yeah. What's on top there?
Stacy
I'm covetous.
Vince
How are you applying covetous in this circumstance?
Stacy
My tray. It's my knife. Get away from.
Vince
This is my life. I'm taking care of myself. We're doing this. Okay? So Genevieve, as you grab this tray and you are looking at Stacy just like. You fucking crazy bitch. How could you do this? You grab that tray and you feel the air just as much as anything else. Take you as you're guided towards this porthole and you slam the tray up against the porthole, and it sticks, but you can still feel it pulling into it. And you can hear the sound of the wind coming beneath it. And you look towards your group, and you're thinking something. What do you say to them?
Stacy
You're lucky this tray worked, because otherwise I would have used you to block it.
Vince
Suddenly, the tray breaks, and you feel as your arm, which was the closest thing at the hand, just flies out of the window. And the velocity is so strong and the heat is so great, your arm is gone. Within seconds, as you feel this thing pull itself out. And suddenly, your arm, your torso, your neck, you scream as part of you is being pulled out through this porthole. This tiny little sense that is not enough to room for your body. And you're watching the three of her. As suddenly, as quick as it happens, her body is just cracked and boned and flung out from this porthole to disappear.
Genevieve
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Vince
Genevieve.
Genevieve
Oh, my God.
Vince
Genevieve.
Genevieve
Oh, my God. What have you done?
Vince
Thank you so much for playing. I really appreciate you taking the time to come this. Nora, well done. I'm going to have to ask you to leave my table now.
Stacy
I hope the knife's still there.
Vince
Three candles, three truths. Normally, Nora, Genevieve would give us the first truth. But since she was forced out through a porthole, I will speak the first truth. You're going to hit the ground. You're going to hit the ground. Joseph.
Genevieve
The parachute's activated.
Vince
Oh, wait, no. Yes. Sorry. It would go clockwise, but you can still have your truth.
Genevieve
Okay.
Vince
Yes.
Josh
I was thinking the same thing. You are.
Genevieve
I have another one, too.
Josh
Okay, good. The parachutes have not been deployed. There's time to do it.
Vince
Okay.
Genevieve
I grabbed the knife.
Vince
All right. Three truths, three dice. Our story begins with Dany activating the manual shoot release. As you suddenly feel all of the momentum, the G force just displace immediately as you're all thrown back again.
Genevieve
None of us are buckled in.
Vince
None of you are buckled. And you feel it. And you hear bone snap, all of you, as you hit back.
Genevieve
I can't feel my legs. I think I'm paralyzed.
Vince
And there's this muddy.
Josh
I can't feel my legs.
Vince
This muddy thought, this air that all the blood is gone. It takes every amount of effort. It is only the pain that is preventing you from passing out at the moment as the G force suddenly lessens up and you slowly start to descend. Well, slowly is definitely a slower than you were. Yes. What do you do.
Trish
Genevieve?
Josh
I'm gonna try and grab onto anything I can to brace myself against becoming impact. The impact.
Vince
All right, Joseph.
Genevieve
Stacy, My back is broken and I can't feel anything past my. My waist. And I'm laying like strewn about. Yeah, just kind of. I still have the knife in my hand and I just grab a latch to hold on.
Vince
Stacy.
Trish
Leslie, if you can hear me, I tried. I tried to let you in and hopefully you're still out there. If you're still out there. The porthole's open. You can come in now.
Vince
Stacy.
Trish
I hear you. I hear you, Leslie.
Vince
You just hear your name being spoken. And through the descending porthole, as you come closer to the earth, you can see one of the monoliths. Its beautiful, slick, perfect form descendants downwards. And there is something coming from it. You can see a pinprick of light in the darkness that is this black onyx form as you all slam straight into the ground. And you being the only one that didn't have a chance to hold on. Stacy, I'm going to have you roll as you're staring out at this beautiful, wonderful thing.
Trish
No successes in a one. But, but, but, but, but I am going to burn my vise.
Vince
Yes. Which is selfish.
Josh
Yeah, that tracks.
Vince
That tracks perfectly.
Trish
To reroll this one.
Vince
Yes, please.
Trish
So while I was staring at the gorgeous, stunning monolith, I saw everybody else grabbing on and realized that none of them were smart enough to buckle in or use a seatbelt and was able to get myself to a place where I could actually buckle in.
Vince
All right, let's see. No. Three candles now extinguished. Two candles, two truths. Stacy, as you get yourself in the seat, you can see this monolith. And you're looking at both Dani and Joseph knowing that they will fail and you will succeed. As you sit and strap yourself in, you pull the buckle and you place the harness in front of you. And you sit and you stare openly the porthole, knowing that something is broken, but also not caring in so many ways. You can hear them moaning and agony and pain. Joseph continuing to lament that he can't feel his legs.
Genevieve
I can't feel my legs, Annie.
Vince
I can't feel my legs as this thing impacts and crashes straight into the earth. You look into the monolith and the last thing you see before the bent metal shoots straight through, concaving into the module itself and cuts you from the crown through to your hips, is the monolith. What are you thinking as you. You see this last thing in front of you?
Trish
I have ascended.
Vince
Thank you so much for playing, Trish.
Trish
Thank you for having me I'm gonna.
Vince
Have to ask you to leave my table, Joseph. Damn. Danny. As this module impacts into the ground, you watch as this split of steel, almost like a perfect wedge, just cleaves Stacy right in half. And you hear her body slip. That thwap, thwap falls onto either side of her chair. And you sit there, and all you hear is the crackling of the radio and the dripping of blood. There are two truths in which to speak. Stacy normally would say the first truth, but instead, I will speak the first one. You are very close to the monoliths. A monolith? Danny.
Josh
The door to the module opened in the crash. We can easily access the outside side.
Vince
Great. Two candles, two truths. Joseph and Danny, you lay broken on this module floor.
Genevieve
We've got to get out of here, Danny.
Vince
Yeah. Come on.
Genevieve
Come on, Danny. My legs are broken. I can't feel them. But just move them and I'll pull myself out. Just move my leg.
Vince
Are your arms okay?
Genevieve
My arms are okay.
Josh
Okay, Grab on. Grab onto me.
Genevieve
All right.
Josh
And I'm gonna sling him kind of around my back, like piggyback style, so.
Genevieve
I can get him as he picks me up.
Vince
And you wear him.
Genevieve
My legs look like two toothpicks that just.
Vince
Clicked out. So compound fractures out. Mm. And you carry him on your back as you inch yourself out. Ribs are broken. It hurts so bad it's agonizing, but you manage to sling him like a Jedi Master, on your back as you crease out through the airlock.
Josh
And I'd like to lay him down leaning against the outside of the module so we can get our bearings right.
Vince
It's daytime. The light is bright, and the sun is out.
Genevieve
And the way he laid me there is that we're laying on the ground, and the sun is behind the monolith, so the shadow is right next to us.
Vince
Oh, I would even say that's. I love that. Let's keep that going. It's a big monolith. It makes a big shadow, and as a result, it's light. It's daytime. But the monolith shadow puts you in darkness. High five.
Josh
I'd like to lean in, back to the module. Grab the ham radio. We need help. We need anyone who can listen. We're planetside now. Someone should be out there. I want to turn it on. Hello? We escaped the International Space Station. We're downed in some. I don't know where we are, but we're near one of those big. The stone things. Is anyone out there? I don't know. Police, military, Anyone, Ashley, anyone right now would be really nice.
Genevieve
Danny, tell him. I can't feel my legs.
Josh
We're injured.
Vince
We twist through the dials and continue to repeat this phrase over and over. You hear a voice, suddenly crisp and clear, come out through the radio. Danny? Ash?
Josh
Ashley? Oh my God.
Vince
Is that you? Danny, where are you?
Josh
I don't know. I got off the station. Baby, where are you right now? Are you okay?
Vince
Go to it.
Josh
What?
Vince
Danny, just go to it.
Genevieve
I'm gonna look at Danny talking right now and I'm gonna realize the radio is completely broken.
Vince
It's not even on.
Genevieve
It's not even on and he's talking to it.
Josh
Baby, what do you mean?
Vince
Just.
Genevieve
Just.
Vince
It's there for you. Just go to it. It's waiting. Is that where you are? Danny, you've been so good. You've done so good. But it's time. It's time to let go now. Just go to it.
Genevieve
As the sun tilts, I start to see. The shadow is beginning to move a little bit. And I start trying to drag myself towards the light part of it away from him in the darkness.
Vince
At this point you can start to hear and feel ground being displaced under you. And you actually watch in the shadow of the monolith, just something long, tiny tendrils like a giant centipede as something pulls itself out of the dirt. And you see a wide open lamprey style mouth with articulating tentacles pull itself slowly out and it's crawling towards you.
Genevieve
Danny. Danny, get out of there.
Vince
Danny.
Genevieve
It's all right, Danny.
Vince
It's time to go.
Genevieve
Danny, get out of there.
Vince
Okay.
Genevieve
It's coming for you, Danny.
Vince
Okay, what do you do?
Josh
I'm gonna go toward the creature.
Vince
You're gonna go towards the creature? What about you, Joseph?
Genevieve
I am going to go away from the. Can I roll this one too?
Vince
Yeah. It's your hope dice.
Genevieve
It's my hope dice. And this is all I hope.
Vince
One. One. If you would like to try.
Genevieve
Yes. Can I burn this.
Vince
Once? Roll it, Danny. As you stand up, dropping the headset from your hand, your wife's voice still in your ears, you can hear the sound. You can hear the calling. The deep resonating voice that is pulled into you. And you walk towards the creature, but it doesn't go to you. It ignores you. It flatly is going for Joseph. No, don't take me. Please, just take me. There's a jealousy in your heart. And you look at it and you stare at it. And you look at him as Joseph. You see this thing grab Its tendrils. One of it lifts through your shoulder, wrapping you up, the other one pulling upon your broken leg. You can't feel it hurts. Oh, God. As it lifts you up and it slowly, head first, puts you inside of its mouth. And with each passing muscle, each movement, it slowly pulls you into its. Its gullet. And, Danny, you watch as this thing is consumed. His man is consumed in front of you. And you can only weep and wish instead it was you that was there. And with that, we end this scene. Josh, thank you so much for playing. You did so well. Thank you.
Genevieve
Please leave.
Vince
Danny. Danny, you watch. This creature, having taken Joseph into its maw, lifts it down. As it crawls back into the hole. It stands there and it looks at the receding sun as it continues to move into the light. And. And before the light can go back into its tiny little crevice, it finds darkness again by diving back into the rock, leaving you alone. Leaving you here in the shadow of the monolith. You're losing a lot of blood. You are broken as you stare at this thing. And there is no light to guide you because you have nothing. Only the silence and the bright, burning light bristling on top of you. Thank you so much. Vince. Is there anything you want to say? There is. Unfortunately for you, there is death, as you have nothing. No supplies, no water, no nothing. And you do not even have friends anymore around you. But you are alive. And maybe that is worse than death. What is going on in your mind? What is with you right now?
Josh
I just. I just want to be with her again. And if she's. If she's with them, if Ashley is with them, then I want to go with them, too.
Vince
You do not find them, Dani. They do not come to you. And it is almost a week before you finally feel the last breath of.
Genevieve
Your.
Vince
Lungs give way and your heart slowly stops to beat. You haven't moved from this spot in the time that it took you to lay down and die, hoping that any moment, anytime, at one point, they would come and take you. Hoping that they come and take you.
Josh
I'm sorry, Ashley.
Vince
I'm sorry. Vince. Thank you for playing. There's so much I want to say, but I'll save it for the moment. I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I'm so sorry. There is only one thing left to do, and that is listen to the messages of our dearly departed characters. Thank you.
Trish
Hi, this is Stacey Martell coming to you from the International Space Station where. Ugh. Who am I?
Vince
Even Kidding.
Trish
God, the shit we've seen here. I don't even know if anyone's ever going to watch or listen to this. You know, I came up here thinking I could make a difference. I could educate people, maybe even win an award for this one. But with everything that's happened now, it just seems so unimportant. I can usually put a positive spin on anything, but even I can't deny what I've seen. I mean, is this the end of everything? No. No, I can't think like that. It will be just fine. Turn this shit off.
Josh
Okay. So I tried collecting my thoughts and rehearsing a bit before doing this, but it all sounded like shit anyway, so I'm just gonna wing it. I don't know how everything up here is gonna go, so I wanted to broadcast this for you if you hear it, and maybe a bit for me. I'm sorry, Ashley. I'm so sorry. I. I tried. I really did.
Vince
The.
Josh
The comms went out and I couldn't reach you. And I'm not trying to make excuses, but I. Fuck. I don't know. Maybe I could have done more. I just. With how things look like they're going down there. I just hope you're okay. I love you. And I really hope you're okay.
Stacy
This is Dr. Genevieve Zane, log entry 134. Morale is as good as it could be. I mean, all things considered. Some power issues are becoming a nuisance. I haven't been sleeping very well. I keep getting those sleep paralysis nightmares where I think something's at the foot of my bed. The microorganisms I've been subjecting to harsh conditions have been behaving as expected up until today. One of the cultures is oddly mutated. I mean, completely unrecognizable overnight. I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at. Just like everything else around me lately. I hope supplies are coming in soon.
Genevieve
You know what I think? I think it's all a lie. I think we were told this whole time. The sun shines on us and creates the shadows. That's a lie. We are the shadows. We are the dark trails left behind. And it's up to me and this company to take us into the new light. I arranged for this mission because I wanted to show the world what we're capable of. And hopefully we have the right tools here to do it. I just hope I wasn't too late. When my father, Joshua, left me the money to create tasc, I knew I couldn't let him down. And now it's up to me. Show the world that military defense spending was all worth it. And in the corporate lens, everything's got a price, including life.
Vince
I don't have much time. I am being transported by the Ecclesiad vessel Merkava to stand trial for heresy of the highest order. But I will not renounce my work and to my last breath I will speak the truth of this plague ridden world that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Radulf Bwein Chapter now available throughout the known world Imagine with me as if you were there. Discover Tales Unrolled A new Dungeons and Dragons actual play series set in a small tropical town called Alma that is suddenly plagued by a mysterious curse. Four of the villagers must come together to save their town and the people they love that live there. They will have to face and defeat demons, real and imagined. Otherwise they risk falling victim to the curse. Watch or listen Tales Unrolled Available as a video series on YouTube and as a podcast wherever you listen. I hope that with you maybe we can make sense of this together. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we.
Josh
Explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.
Vince
Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors.
Genevieve
We cover them all.
Vince
And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer. Yep, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.
Genevieve
He made a billion.
Vince
But is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Podcast Summary: Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry – Chapter Seven: A Different Approach | Ten Candles: Eclipse
Introduction
Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry, hosted by Geek & Sundry, immerses listeners in epic tabletop role-playing adventures. The current season, Ten Candles: Eclipse, is a tragic horror series where 40 players, guided by Game Master Ivan Van Norman, navigate a doomed journey with no survivors. This summary delves into Chapter Seven: A Different Approach, released on May 12, 2025, capturing the key discussions, character developments, and the unfolding horror that befalls the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Character Creation
The episode begins with the hosts—Vince, Josh, Genevieve, Trish, and Stacy—gathering to create their characters for the Ten Candles campaign. The process involves defining Virtues, Vices, Moments, and Brinks, which shape each character's strengths, flaws, aspirations, and pivotal observations.
Genevieve Zane: A microbiologist specializing in extreme weather, secretly an ancient astronaut theorist. "I want to find out about what they are." [17:27]
Stacy Martell: A highly accredited marketing director sent to the ISS to promote its value amidst political climate doubts. "The moment that I hope to create is to send at least one, preferably more of the video packages that I have created to Earth." [19:37]
Joseph Myers (played by Josh): A corporate shareholder and comms officer with ulterior motives. "Activating a nuclear warhead that disrupts the moon orbit." [18:21]
Trish (played by Stacy): Engages in character creation with enthusiasm despite the looming tragedy. "Honesty." [07:28]
Notable Quote:
Trish: "I love this collaborative character creation." [06:21]
Setting the Scene
Game Master Ivan sets the stage aboard the ISS, where the moon is physically approaching Earth, threatening to alter its orbit disastrously. The crew has been surviving on limited supplies since an EMP wiped out power on Earth. As they monitor the moon's descent, tension mounts with the realization that their life support systems are dwindling.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Danny (Vince): "This is shifting our course, and we need to stabilize it before it's too late." [13:15]
Initial Challenges
The crew attempts various strategies to manage their dire situation. Joseph Myers proposes detonation of a nuclear warhead to disrupt the moon's orbit, a contentious and high-stakes plan.
Notable Quote:
Joseph (Josh): "My moment, it says I will gain hope when the comms flicker to life. And I swear I hear my wife's voice." [21:34]
Rising Tension
As the crew grapples with technical malfunctions and dwindling life support, interpersonal conflicts and psychological strains surface. The discovery of Annabelle, a crew member exhibiting violent, cannibalistic behavior reminiscent of previous mental breakdowns (Derek Marcus), escalates the horror element.
Notable Quote:
Trish: "She's right, Danny. We don't know everything." [26:30]
Horror Unfolds
The situation deteriorates as Annabelle's condition worsens, leading to gruesome events aboard the ISS. The crew faces horrifying transformations and the looming threat of the moon's collision.
Notable Quote:
Genevieve: "Shadows aren't only in the day, shadows are the night." [116:38]
Attempted Escape
In a desperate bid to survive, the crew attempts to shuttle themselves back to Earth using the ISS's modules. This involves high-risk maneuvers, including navigating through debris and managing failing life support systems. The mounting threats culminate in catastrophic failure as the moon cracks and debris pummels the ISS.
Notable Quote:
Josh: "We have to try and get off the station." [52:37]
Climactic Tragedy
The episode reaches its tragic peak as the ISS collides with Earth following the moon's disintegration. Characters face fatal injuries, and the countdown to disaster affirms the "zero survivors" premise of the campaign.
Notable Quote:
Josh: "I'm sorry, Ashley. I tried to let you in." [226:00]
Conclusion
Chapter Seven: A Different Approach serves as a harrowing testament to the Ten Candles campaign's premise, embodying themes of sacrifice, despair, and the inexorable march towards tragedy. The meticulously crafted narrative, enriched by character development and escalating horror, culminates in the inevitable downfall of the ISS. This episode underscores the emotional depth and storytelling prowess that Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry brings to tabletop adventures.
Final Notable Quote:
Genevieve: "We are the shadows. We are the dark trails left behind." [117:11]
Insights and Reflections
Overall Summary
Chapter Seven: A Different Approach masterfully entwines character-driven drama with escalating horror, set against the backdrop of a doomed ISS. The episode highlights the strengths of collaborative RPG storytelling, delivering a poignant and tragic conclusion befitting the Ten Candles campaign's dark theme.