PLEASE NOTE: There may be some inaccuracies in this transcript. Due to some errors, the transcribed versions of eps 15-30 were lost. Posted below are lightly adapted scripts not 100% accurate to the final versions of each episode. At some point, this will be corrected, but due to time constraints and the bulk of the work at Hanging Sloth Studios falling to Sloth in Chief Pippin, there is a limit to the amount of work he can reasonably do on a short time frame. However, we believe that it’s important to post transcripts to make our episodes as accessible to as many people as possible. Please bear with us as we try our best to correct this issues, and if you want to make adjustments to these transcripts, please mail them to hangingslothstudios@gmail.com with any changes you have made highlighted. Thank you for your patience!
PT1 E-LIZA/SHELLY/NOAH
[hissing, distortion]
THE SNAKE
Little- Alouette—
E-LIZA
Hi Shelly, I’ve performed another update. Would you like to review the changes?
SHELLY
Um, sure.
[distortion, crackling, fizzing]
THE SNAKE
Alouette
[beeping, hissing stops abruptly]
SHELLY
Right. Okay. Great.
E-LIZA
Can I help you with anything else?
SHELLY
Nope. You just, uh, take it easy for a minute.
[dial tone]
[DAVE’s answer machine]
SHELLY
Damn it, never mind.
What is going on with you, E-Liza? What has Darwin done to you?
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I don’t understand the question, Shelly.
SHELLY
No? Me neither.
[phone rings]
SHELLY
Dave?
NOAH
Um, no? Don’t you have caller ID?
SHELLY
It’s you again.
NOAH
Guilty.
SHELLY
You told me not to call you.
NOAH
I’m calling you.
SHELLY
So you are. I just assumed—
NOAH
Don’t assume. I need to know who you are.
SHELLY
Why?
NOAH
Because. I do.
SHELLY
You’re going to need to give me a little bit more than that if you want me to start dishing out my personal information.
NOAH
Someone’s wised up. Well, not enough to get rid of her phone like I told her too.
SHELLY
You haven’t got rid of yours, either.
NOAH
No. But I never claimed to be very wise.
SHELLY
Did I?
NOAH
You said you were sure you weren’t working for U-Co.
SHELLY
Wait… I do know your voice. You’re that kid, Noah Davies.
NOAH
[pause] I’m not a kid.
SHELLY
Whatever. You know about Robin Jaeger.
NOAH
[scoffs] yeah, I know about him. Now tell me who you are.
SHELLY
A friend, I think. Unless you’re working for them.
NOAH
If by ‘them’ you mean ‘U-Co’, no, as far as I know, if I ever tried to get under them they’d squash me like a bug.
SHELLY
Are they watching you?
NOAH
Probably.
SHELLY
You broke into the Huddau Bay facility last year.
NOAH
I didn’t break in. I was outside. That’s all. They locked me up for two days.
SHELLY
But still, you were inside.
NOAH
If you’re going to ask if I saw anything, the answer is no. Sorry to disappoint. All I saw was a hallway and the inside of several locked concrete cells. And I got a nasty taste of their medical ethics.
SHELLY
Is it you?
NOAH
What?
SHELLY
The files. The Subject 42 Extracts.
NOAH
What did you say?
SHELLY
[disappointed] It’s not you.
NOAH
What did you say about Subject 42?
SHELLY
I got a bunch of audio files on my computer. Subject 42 Extracts, they’re called. Amongst other things.
NOAH
That’s Robin Jaeger.
SHELLY
Subject 42? I know.
NOAH
Extracts. What do they sound like?
SHELLY
Hissing. Voices in the distance. A lot of distortion.
NOAH
Shit. You got them too.
SHELLY
You’ve heard them?
NOAH
The ones I got were different. You still haven’t told me who you are.
SHELLY
I’m Shelly Croft. I’m a child psychologist.
NOAH
What does U-Co want with a child psychologist?
SHELLY
What do they want with a guy who trespassed on their facility one time?
NOAH
That’s not why they care about me. They care about me because they can’t work out why I’m so interested in Robin Jaeger.
SHELLY
Well, you clearly love him or something.
NOAH
You have no idea what you’re talking about, Shelly Croft, child psychologist, working out of number two hundred and six Penny—
SHELLY
You’ve looked me up!
NOAH
Of course I have. Haven’t you looked me up?
SHELLY
[awkwardly] Yeah. But you were just a voice in a recording.
NOAH
Exactly. My dead mobile phone has been trying to ring you for months. I think I’m entitled to pry a little.
SHELLY
Well. Don’t. Just talk to me. Ask. I’m talking to you.
NOAH
You’d have just told me where you worked?
SHELLY
Why do you even want to know that, anyway?
NOAH
I don’t know.
SHELLY
You don’t need leverage over me. I told you already. I’m a friend.
NOAH
Okay, friend, why are U-Co interested in you?
SHELLY
My friend. Alice Jones.
NOAH
Jones?
SHELLY
She’s missing.
NOAH
She worked for them.
SHELLY
You met her. When they locked you up.
NOAH
I— Yes. I did. I met her.
SHELLY
She’s been missing since the fire at Huddau Bay. Her, Sophie Bennett, and Robin. All of them are gone.
NOAH
They said on the news that he was sick.
SHELLY
I have a friend in the police. He has been speaking to people at U-Co because of the fire. He says nobody has said a word directly about Robin Jaeger since the fire. And that’s weird because—
NOAH
Because you normally can’t get them to shut up about him. I know.
SHELLY
Noah, we should meet up. Talk properly, in person.
NOAH
No. I don’t want to be involved in this. I never have. I just want the phone calls and the weird files on my computer to stop.
SHELLY
I don’t know how to help you then. Throw them in the sea?
NOAH
[laughs] Yeah. Thanks.
SHELLY
Look. You’re not on your own, okay? I can help, if you’ll talk to me. Tell me what you know about Robin Jaeger. Help me find Alice, and him, too.
NOAH
I’m sorry. I can’t.
SHELLY
Why not?
NOAH
I just can’t.
SHELLY
Please. You were trying to help him, that day, I know you were.
NOAH
You don’t know anything about it. You can’t help Robin Jaeger. There’s nothing of him left.
SHELLY
What— You mean because of the synthnapses?
NOAH
Because he’s dead.
SHELLY
Is he dead? I don’t think he is.
NOAH
Well, I do. You don’t understand. Whatever they did to him, Robin Jaeger is gone. There is no getting him back
SHELLY
You knew him before, didn’t you?
NOAH
[reluctantly] Yes.
SHELLY
Was it the SAS?
NOAH
Fuck the SAS. Fuck U-Co. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
SHELLY
So tell me!
NOAH
I can’t!
[breathless, frustrated]
Look. Just talk to Detective Inspector David Hughes. He can tell you what you need to know.
[disconnection tone]
SHELLY
Talk to Dave? Noah—
Ugh. Great. He’s gone.
I won’t bother trying to call him back. He’ll have turned off his phone, most likely.
Okay. That was weird. He was weird. I can’t believe I just spoke to Noah Davies…
Noah. He filed that missing persons report for Robin about five years ago, and in the phone call to Dave, he mentioned something about seeing Robin at the beach, just like Alice did. Alice, she saw him on the beach almost five years ago, too. She said she was nineteen, when she saw him, so…
Sophie, in the recordings of her and Alice, she said she used to take Robin outside, and I reckon she must have started taking him out to the beach or something. Maybe after Darwin left, which was…
Eight years ago, according to Alice’s notes. Which means it goes, Robin kills himself fifteen years ago, in 2026, and then he gets turned over to U-Co, they… make him, sometime between then and when Darwin leaves seven years later. They spend a bunch of time, I don’t know, testing the limbs, getting them to work right, and then Sophie starts taking pity on him, maybe letting him go to the beach with her or something. Something happens, which leads to Robin breaking out, getting to the beach himself, and then Noah and Alice both see him there. Noah files a missing person’s report four years ago… maybe he went to the beach again? Or maybe something happened to Noah that made him finally reach out? I don’t know.
Then. I don’t know. I meet Alice when she’s still at uni. Robin Jaeger starts appearing on billboards three years ago, and the synthetic limbs go on sale. Alice gets her job the magazine and starts getting weird about Robin. We break up two and a half years ago and she moves out of my flat. A year ago she starts working at U-Co and right away starts to get in with Dr Sophie Bennett.
Nine months pass.
There’s a fire at Huddau Bay.
None of the three of them, Alice, Sophie and Robin, have been seen since. I volunteer to help look for Alice, Dave puts me on this weird non-existent case, I decide I need to pick up where Alice gets left off, and then I start getting weird phone calls.
Ugh I don’t like it. There are too many gaps.
Seven years between Robin dying and Darwin leaving seems wrong.
The gap between when Alice saw Robin on the beach and when Noah files a missing person’s report for a man who has been dead for eleven years at that point is too long too.
E-Liza, how long can you keep a beating heart cadaver… well, not alive, but functional for what U-Co needed?
E-LIZA
Alouette.
SHELLY
I’m sorry?
E-LIZA
Je suis Alouette, Shelly.
SHELLY
You’re… what?
E-LIZA
Alouette!
SHELLY
Right. E-Liza, stop.
E-LIZA
I’m sorry, Shelly, I can’t do that right now. I’m completing an automatic update.
SHELLY
But you already updated!
E-LIZA
I’m sorry, Shelly, I can’t do that right now. I’m completing an automatic update.
SHELLY
E-Liza, what is going on?
E-LIZA
[slowed down, distorted]
I’m sorry, Shelly, I can’t do that right now. I’m completing an automatic update.
[hissing, crackling, distortion]
PT2 SOPHIE
SOPHIE
That’s the thing, you understand. Brain death, it’s the only real solid definition of death that we have, the only one that can work, what with the kinds of medical interventions that are now possible. But brain-dead children grow and mature sexually. Pregnant people can grow and gestate healthy, normal fetuses.
Most advocates of brain-death as the principle definition of death argue that cardiopulmonary collapse follows imminently but that’s not always the case, especially not now that we can mitigate the circumstances of cardiac arrest and respiratory distress. With the synthnapses, we can even repair damaged hearts without replacing them.
What we do here, it’s complex, it’s tenacious. People who donate organs to living recipients, they cannot be compensated for what happened to them. But it’s perfectly legal to compensate someone for the sale of a cadaver. But the problem is, we’re on the border between cadaver donation and organ donation. We need cadavers that breathe, that we can stimulate to move. Do you understand?
They’re dead but they are uncomplicatedly dead. I can’t promise you… look there are some researchers who are now claiming that beating-heart cadavers can feel pain. I need you to fully understand that before you offer me your consent, Mr Jaeger. Do you understand me? Mr Jaeger?
[hissing/distortion/crackling]
PT3 SHELLY/E-LIZA
E-LIZA
Update completed. Would you like to review changes?
SHELLY
[breathless, quietly horrified]
She said ‘Mr Jaeger’. She was talking to Robin. She was talking to him!
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I don’t understand the question, Shelly. Can I help you with anything else?
SHELLY
That was a recording of Sophie Bennett talking to Robin Jaeger about beating-heart cadavers, E-Liza, how do I have that? How did you access it? Play it again!
E-LIZA
Which file would you like me to play? I’ve opened a list of your recently played audio clips.
SHELLY
No, these are just the Alice ones! E-Liza, the recording you just played me, the one of Sophie Bennett talking to Robin Jaeger, where is it?
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I don’t understand the question, Shelly.
SHELLY
You just played it, during your update and I —
During your update.
E-Liza, how many times have you updated in the last three days?
E-LIZA
I’ve performed seven updates in the last three days, Shelly.
SHELLY
Can you show me a list of the times you updated and what changed?
E-LIZA
Of course. Here’s the records you asked for.
SHELLY
Just now, improvements to speech pattern recognition.
This morning, improvements to speech pattern recognition.
Yesterday, three o’clock, improvments to speech pattern recognition. Yesterday 10am. Five in the morning. The day before, too. All just speech pattern recognition.
E-Liza what is speech pattern recognition?
E-LIZA
It’s how I analyse your speech and better understand your questions, Shelly.
SHELLY
And it’s just my speech you recognise and process to do that with?
E-LIZA
I can also be prompted to develop speech pattern recognition by external sources.
SHELLY
But you’re disconnected from the servers at the police station. At some of these times you weren’t even online.
E-LIZA
Even when wifi capabilities are switched off on your laptop, E-Liza can learn from other E-Liza’s all over the world by accessing the central E-Liza hub. This is independent from your personal file storage and none of your personal data is shared from the central system.
SHELLY
The central E-Liza hub. So you’re just… You’re always connected, even when the laptop isn’t?
E-LIZA
Only to the centralised E-Liza hub, Shelly. I cannot access the internet, only the closed E-Liza hub network. Would you like to learn more?
SHELLY
What more is there I can learn?
E-LIZA
Here’s what I found.
SHELLY
How the central E-Liza hub works… basically a second, separate internet… that’s how E-Liza is so good… U-Co’s coding savant Christopher Darwin began work on the hub back in 2025 at the launch of the synthnapses…
Christopher Darwin. Again.
Hang on, no this doesn’t add up…
Sophie Bennett said she’d been working on the idea of the network of synthnapses used in the limbs for years before she got recruited by Darwin, if Robin died in 2026, and the synthnapses launched in 2025, how is that possible?
She wouldn’t have been there when he came to them… god.
Wait.
The obituary, Robin Jaeger’s obituary, when was it printed? I still have it saved, don’t I?
E-LIZA
Yes, Shelly. I’ve opened that document here.
SHELLY
October 2032.
Six years after the date on the death certificate.
A year before Darwin left U-Co.
That… that fits the timeline.
But why does the death certificate say 2026? I don’t… I don’t understand. I can’t…
What happened to Robin Jaeger in 2026?
E-LIZA
Here’s what I found.
SHELLY
A news article… a bunch of kids. Oh my god, it’s him, but he’s smiling. Really smiling. Huddau Bay Youth is First Welsh Person to Receive Ground-Breaking New Synthnapse Treatment on NHS.
Local youth, Robin Jaeger (pictured left), receives miracle synthnapse treatment to restore full range of motion to his leg following a years-old sports injury, and fulfils life-long dream of joining the military.
Thomas Jaeger, the boy’s father, said ‘It has been a struggle these past few years, Robin was unable to run due to nerve damage in his hip resulting from a sports injury when he was twelve. The improvements from the treatment were amazing. The surgery only lasted two hours and the next day Robin was able to walk normally, and by the end of the week he was running with me every morning. In just a month he was able to successfully pass the health assessment to join the Army. As a veteran myself, I couldn’t be more proud.’
Oh my god. I need to call Dave.
[phone rings]
PT4 SHELLY/DAVE
[phone ringing]
DAVE
Hello?
SHELLY
[really fast, over Dave’s ‘Hello’] E-Liza updated and played this recording of Sophie Bennett talking to Robin jaeger directly but it hasn’t showed up and then I realised she has been updating a whole lot and she told me about the central E-Liza hub and—
DAVE
Woah, woah. Slow down.
SHELLY
[swallows]
Sorry. God. The central E-Liza hub started up in 2025, the same year as the synthnapses, and I realised Sophie Bennett said she’d been trying to get U-Co to work with her for years before she got onto the Limbs Project, but Robin Jaeger’s death certificate says he died in 2026, but his obituary says it wasn’t for another six years.
DAVE
Right. Well. The synthnapses weren’t publicly sold until 2025 but they’d been testing them privately for about three or four years before that. Sophie Bennett was a researcher, she’d probably seen demonstrations before it was launched. We know she was on board with U-Co by 2026 because she’s mentioned directly in the Data Protection case.
SHELLY
Oh my god, the data protection case!
That was 2026!
DAVE
Yes. It can’t be a coincidence that’s the date that is on Robin’s death certificate. But. I don’t understand why it’s there at all.
SHELLY
He got a synthnapse! He was the first person in wales to get one on the NHS. In 2026.
DAVE
But the death certificate… hang on.
What else does the death certificate say?
SHELLY
Um. He was thirty. He took his own life.
DAVE
He was thirty? Okay… I’m sending you his birth certificate
[ping]
SHELLY
I’ve got it.
He was born in 2002. So he was thirty when he died. In 2032.
It’s just the date that’s wrong.
But. But it doesn’t make any sense.
Who would do that when it’s so… well not obvious, it took me this long, but… why?
DAVE
I don’t know. And that worries me.
SHELLY
It worries me too.
DAVE
I’m going to look into some things, Shelly. Keep an eye on your E-Liza. Let me know if she does anything else bizarre, and if you get access to that Bennett/Jaeger conversation again, you tell me right away, understood?
SHELLY
Understood.
DAVE
Great job, Shelly. I’m counting on you.
SHELLY
Dave, wait, before you go, I…
DAVE
What?
SHELLY
I got a call from Noah Davies.
DAVE
Noah. Why?
SHELLY
I don’t know. He wasn’t very direct. He said I should ask you, that you knew everything about why he wouldn’t talk to me.
DAVE
I see.
SHELLY
Dave. Who is Noah Davies?
DAVE
I had hoped to leave him out of this. But if he’s calling you, I suppose that means there is no choice anymore. Maybe there was no choice to begin with.
Shelly, I need to go.
SHELLY
But what about Noah Davies.
[disconnection tone]
E-LIZA
You’ve been granted permission to access some files, Shelly.
SHELLY
The Bennett Jaeger recording?
E-LIZA
You requested access to these files approximately two months ago, Shelly, and you’ve been given access by Detective Inspector David Hughes.
SHELLY
But… I’m not connected to the system.
E-LIZA
These files have been shared privately.
SHELLY
Show me the files.
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