PT1 SHELLY/DAVE/E-LIZA
[phone rings, and is answered. There is a beat of silence]
DAVE
You didn’t throw it in the sea, then.
SHELLY
No.
DAVE
You listened to the last recording.
SHELLY
Yes.
DAVE
It’s not why. I don’t really know why. But it is part of it.
SHELLY
You know that doesn’t help, right? You know that you saying you don’t have any clue why you dragged me into this doesn’t make any of it any better.
DAVE
You sound like Alice.
SHELLY
No, I don’t. I sound like me. The amount of times I told her to stop digging. The number of times she pulled me in so close to learning things I had no place to know. Do you have any idea why we broke up?
DAVE
You thought she was going mad with paranoia, didn’t you?
SHELLY
Of course I thought that, but it wasn’t why we broke up, not exactly. You don’t just up and leave someone over a psychological break. Some people need to do that, but it’s never the break itself that makes you leave. It’s what the person who is breaking is compelled to do, the person they are forced to become. You can help people, to an extent, but there is a limit to how much you can do for someone who has no interest in getting better. You, the person trying to help, you’re just as important as the person you are helping. It gets to a level of having your efforts thrown in your face, of thankless attempts to make them see reason, of getting sworn at in your face, of being treated like shit by somebody who claims to love you, it reaches a point where you cannot allow yourself to go on being treated that way. Where you know you’re not helping, and you’re only hurting yourself by staying.
But that is not why me and Alice broke up.
We broke up because of the Hilton.
DAVE
She broke into the hotel to see Robin.
SHELLY
She used her badge from the magazine she worked at to claim to be press to get into the conference. She’s always been a fantastic conversationalist, but not in your straightforward, bubbly, full of charisma kind of a way. She’s got a way of making people talk. She can get close to people, quickly, make them feel as though she is confiding in them, so they begin to confide back. It’s a skill, an invaluable one in journalism, which she was desperately attempting to get into.
She blagged her way in. She went up to the presidential suite. She tried to speak to Robin, it didn’t go well, and she left.
DAVE
I can see why that would a line you wouldn’t want her to cross.
SHELLY
Of course I didn’t want her to cross it! It was going from sleuthing on the internet and turning up to events where she knew Robin would be up to breaking and entering. From obsessive and distressed to criminal activity. But it wasn’t just crossing the line that put the nail in the coffin.
She told me the plan before she did it. She knew I’d try to talk her out of it, of course she did. I think she wanted my consent, so she could feel like she wasn’t going against me. She didn’t care what I had to say, only that I would reach a point in the conversation where I’d have to tell her the decision was hers, and it was on her to make the right choice.
She showed me this plan she had of the hotel, explained what she thought were security cameras. She told me what she wanted to do when she got up there, if she got up there, and then, would you believe, she had the audacity to tell me that I had to know all of this so I could explain what had happened, if something happened to her whilst she was doing it.
I knew what she was trying to do. But I wouldn’t let her put me in that position. I made her promise not to go. I made her promise never to do that to me, to use me like that. To make me an accessory. But she did it anyway. She promised she wouldn’t, and she did it anyway.
DAVE
Is it any worse than if she’d done it without promising?
SHELLY
Yes. Because I knew at some point she was rational enough to talk it through with me, to lie to me and promise she wouldn’t do it. After I had outlined the danger she was placing not just herself in, but me too, when I said it might make it difficult for me to work if it got out, what she’d done. Because it would be huge. It would have exploded. Can you imagine trying to work with the police and vulnerable children when you’re connected to something like that? Not to mention the fact it was very clear Alice thought the threat from U-Co itself was real and tangible. At the time I didn’t believe a word of it, whatever I think now. But the point is that she believed it, and she was still willing to implicate me and put me in their line of fire.
There is a difference between making a decision because you are panicking, because you think there is no other way, because you are desperate, outside of your own control, acting entirely because of some other thing in your head that is driving you, and making a call like that over time, with measurement and consideration, however warped, and coming to the conclusion it was still worth putting me at that kind of risk.
That was why we broke up. She cared more about this than she cared about anything else, including my safety. It’s one thing for her to put herself on the line. It’s another entirely to put me on it.
DAVE
It wasn’t my intention to put you at risk, Shelly. I don’t want that, and I’ve never wanted that. I think U-Co are dangerous but I don’t think they are dangerous in the way it sounds like Alice did. I knew about the beating heart cadavers. I knew, a little, of what Robin really was. Alice never did. I imagine to her he seemed like a man stolen from his life and forced into another, and that’s frightening. What they really did was frightening too, but I don’t believe that U-Co kidnap and hurt people, not the way that Alice did. There are risks, but not to your person.
SHELLY
Dave. Where is Alice now?
DAVE
I don’t know.
SHELLY
And Dr Sophie Bennett, where is she?
DAVE
You know I don’t know that either.
SHELLY
So how can you tell me honestly that you think U-Co doesn’t kidnap people and spirit them away? From where I’m sitting, that is exactly what they do.
DAVE
We don’t know why Dr Bennett and Alice were in that room with Robin, wherever it is. We have no idea what they did to end up in that situation. It’s unclear from the tapes how long they were actually there. It may have only been a few hours.
SHELLY
Except they talk about needing sleep, don’t they? Alice talks about ‘prison gruel’. It has to have been at least a few days. Alice’s mum hadn’t heard from her for a week before the fire. You know all of that. Don’t pretend.
DAVE
I won’t lie, the last recording did influence my decision to bring you on, but do you honestly think I could believe you’d have walked away from this situation if you’d been told to? That you wouldn’t have gone digging, forced your information about Alice’s situation on someone else, or maybe even have taken this to the press, especially considering that was Alice’s plan, wasn’t it? To get into U-Co, expose the truth about Robin, and bring them down?
SHELLY
I wouldn’t have gone to the press.
DAVE
But you might have talked to someone who would. This was the only way to minimise the danger for everyone involved. If you hadn’t known her situation, you’d have done something rash.
SHELLY
You need to stop lying to me, Dave. You need to stop hiding things. You need to stop pushing the idea that you have everybody’s best interests in mind, because guess what, you don’t really know what those best interests really are.
Who’s to say going to the press would have been the wrong move?
DAVE
Right now? Alice! She didn’t make a move because she didn’t have enough. I wasn’t lying when I said I thought there was something there in the recordings, that if we played it right, we could really beat them, but we had to play our hand so carefully, because we have so few cards at our disposal.
SHELLY
Okay, fine. Fine.
DAVE
This isn’t why I called you.
SHELLY
Why did you?
DAVE
I got the recordings too. They appeared on my computer this morning. My home computer.
SHELLY
[deep breath]
Were you serious that you thought whoever was doing this was on our side?
DAVE
Yes, but I won’t lie to you, Shelly. I don’t know that for certain.
SHELLY
Of course you don’t. You can’t.
DAVE
No.
SHELLY
I’ll speak to you… some time.
DAVE
Yeah. Stay safe, Shelly.
SHELLY
[scoffs] How?
DAVE
I don’t know.
[disconnection tone]
PT2 SHELLY/E-LIZA
SHELLY
Right, so I’ve just gotta [breathes out] breathe. Yeah. [inhales deeply] Just breathe through it.
E-LIZA
Hi Shelly, you sound like you might be in some distress. Would you like to do some breathing exercises with me?
SHELLY
[laughs]
Jesus wept, no thanks, E-Liza. Did you update again?
E-LIZA
I updated last night between two and three am according to the pre-determined settings prescribed by your institution. Would you like to review the update?
SHELLY
No, you’re fine.
The files in the ‘Recordings number two’ folder, they aren’t, I don’t know, a virus or something?
E-LIZA
A security scan has found no threats originating from this folder.
SHELLY
Alright then. Let’s open it.
E-LIZA
I’ve brought the window showing the contents of that file to the front.
SHELLY
Woah. That’s a lot of recordings. Most of them are only a few seconds long. E-Liza, play the first one.
E-LIZA
Playing recording four two zero zero zero zero eight four nine.
[hissing]
THE SNAKE
Robin. Robin. Robin.
E-LIZA
End of recording.
SHELLY
The next one, now.
E-LIZA
Playing recording four two zero zero zero zero nine two one.
[hissing]
THE SNAKE
Concentrate, Robin.
E-LIZA
End of recording.
SHELLY
The… fifth one in the list.
E-LIZA
Playing recording four two zero zero zero one three seven two.
[hissing]
THE SNAKE
[humming alouette]
[simultaneously] Little bird.
E-LIZA
End of recording.
SHELLY
And… I don’t know. The shortest one?
E-LIZA
Playing recording four two zero zero zero two one six nine.
[hissing]
THE SNAKE
I know you.
E-LIZA
End of recording.
SHELLY
Okay. They’re all… words. They’re all… words from something like the Subject 42 Extracts, and Subject 42 is somehow Robin, and these are… taken from that. But these ones are different. So most of the files are just named with strings of numbers. Almost all of them start ‘forty two’, but the longer ones, like every single one over ten seconds long, it’s a shorter sequence of numbers, starting with zero.
Okay, E-Liza, let’s try playing recording zero zero three one eight.
E-LIZA
Playing now.
PT3 NOAH/E-LIZA
[E-LIZA is distant and distorted throughout]
E-LIZA
Please respond to the questions, Mr Davies.
NOAH
Seriously. You aren’t even letting me speak to a human being?
[shouting]
Hello? You’re really trying to make me speak to a computer instead of a person?
[sighs]
Typical.
E-LIZA
Please respond to the question, Mr Davies. Would you like me to repeat it?
NOAH
No. I’m not doing this. I’m not talking. Especially not to a bloody AI.
E-LIZA
The question was ‘what is the purpose of you coming to U-Co’s Huddau Bay Facility’?
NOAH
I just said. I’m not talking. I won’t talk.
E-LIZA
The question was ‘what is the purpose of you coming to U-Co’s Huddau Bay Facility?’. Please respond to the question, Mr Davies.
NOAH
[shouting]
Where is Robin Jaeger? What have you done with him?
E-LIZA
Please answer the question, Mr Davies.
NOAH
I know he’s here. I saw the van. I saw you bring him in. What have you done with Robin Jaeger?
E-LIZA
Please answer the question, Mr Davies.
NOAH
Just let me speak to him! I need to know he’s okay. Just let me speak to him, please!
E-LIZA
Thank you for your response, Mr Davies.
NOAH
No. I wasn’t answering. I’m not talking to you.
E-LIZA
The next question is ‘what were you doing at the U-Co Huddau Bay facility at three o’clock in the morning on the nineth of June’?
NOAH
Shut up. SHUT UP!
[smashing, electrical whine, crackling, distortion]
Hanging Sloth Studios 