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
ALICE
They brought us here after the fire. It was. I don’t know. I can’t really remember. So much happened all at once, it’s hard to get it straight in my head.
SOPHIE
Tea.
SHELLY
Thank you.
So. You’ve just been sat here, the whole time? Christ, Alice, I thought you were dead.
SOPHIE
We almost were.
SHELLY
What happened, exactly? I mean. We heard the recording. Something went wrong with Robin, and he got up? And it just got really difficult to understand what was happening, and it cut off.
ALICE
We’d been shut in with him for days. It looked like he wasn’t going to wake up. I messed up. It’s my fault.
SOPHIE
Alice. Stop. I should never have let you talk me into it.
ALICE
No, I mean… no. Something had to happen but it shouldn’t have been that.
SOPHIE
Against my better judgement we operated on Robin to install a second synthnapse design in the hopes that maybe it would help him. He was sick. He was deteriorating. Alice is right. Something had to be done. But we were in a U-Co facility. We had about an hour lead time but they found us before I’d even finished setting him up. They let me finish, it was the only way he was going to get anywhere near functional, after I’d taken the first net of synthnapses out, but… well. He didn’t wake up. But Sam. He said we couldn’t leave. Not until he woke up or—
NOAH
Or he died.
SOPHIE
Yes.
SHELLY
So they just… held you there, against your will?
SOPHIE
Yes.
NOAH
But he did wake up.
ALICE
Well. Yes. I mean. Only. Well.
SOPHIE
There was little indication of actual brain activity. But we’d noticed some anomalies. Little burst of activity, not unlike seizures. But they weren’t like ordinary brain activity. I wondered if that was what death looked like. In slow motion.
NOAH
But he didn’t… I mean. He was already dead.
SOPHIE
Yes. He was.
SHELLY
Does that really matter, now?
SOPHIE
I don’t know. But he got up, and things started. I don’t know how to explain it. The whole facility is a closed loop.
ALICE
The security isn’t very tight once you get inside, but it’s not connected with anything beyond it. Most of the computers don’t even have internet connections. The only way they are linked is through the E-Liza hub.
SHELLY
What does that have to do with the fire?
SOPHIE
It’s a protective measure, the limited connectivity. U-Co didn’t want the chance of anyone stealing their data, undermining their patents. So they cut themselves off. The fire started everywhere at once, I don’t know. But it was the electrics. The systems. Anything connected to the facilities network – lights, work stations, the monitors – it all blew.
ALICE
Like someone had hacked the system. But you can’t hack it. I’ve tried. Thousands of people have tried.
NOAH
But it happened. And it started the fire. And Robin.
SOPHIE
I hadn’t seen him move like that for months. Like it was easy. Like he was in control of himself and the limbs we’d attached him to. He got up, and the only light was from the fire, and he just. he–
NOAH
What, what did he do?
ALICE
He started tearing the place apart. And there was this hissing. It was coming out of the speakers they use to make announcement.s it was coming from everywhere. It was like. I don’t know it was like screaming. But it wasn’t screaming. It was wrong.
NOAH
And then?
ALICE
The whole place was burning down. I don’t know. We were running, it was dark, there were alarms.
NOAH
What happened to Robin Jaeger?
SOPHIE
They shot him.
[beat]
NOAH
So he’s. He’s gone.
ALICE
Not. Entirely.
SHELLY
He’s alive?
SOPHIE
It’s not as straightforward as that.
NOAH
Let me see him.
SOPHIE
Mr Davies, I can’t—
NOAH
I’ve heard this one before, Dr Bennet, I am not doing this dance again. Let me see him.
- PT2
NOAH
Robin. Oh god, Robin.
Can he hear me?
SOPHIE
We’re not sure if—
ALICE
Running theory is yes. He can hear you.
NOAH
His… his face. The scratches.
SOPHIE
Before they. His hands. He rubbed at his eyes.
ALICE
I’d characterise it as a violent clawing, really.
SOPHIE
Alice. Not helpful.
ALICE
I– I’m just nervous, I. I’m sorry. You’re the first real people we’ve spoken to in weeks. And it’s you. And it’s Shelly. And it’s a lot. It’s just a lot.
SHELLY
It is a lot.
SOPHIE
I’m glad you can all agree on how much it is but I think you may be missing something rather pertinent to the situation.
SHELLY
Wow, you’re just as much of a dick in real life as I thought you would be
ALICE
Right? I’ve had to live with this.
SOPHIE
Be quiet.
SHELLY
Excuse me?
SOPHIE
Just for a moment.
NOAH
Your hands. I thought— oh it’s stupid. I thought they’d be cold. They aren’t cold.
God, Robin. Your freckles. That little tattoo. The scars. It’s gone. It’s gone.
Your face, your little face, Robin. Why is he. Why?
SOPHIE
The second synthnapse had mixed results. He can… He’s sedated.
NOAH
Why?
SOPHIE
Because the last time he wasn’t he burned down a building.
NOAH
That isn’t a reason.
SOPHIE
He seems to have… It’s as if he’s regained some higher brain function though it doesn’t show on the monitors but he was shot in the fallout at the facility. There isn’t a lot we can do except make him comfortable.
NOAH
And knocking him out, that makes him comfortable?
SOPHIE
More than leaving him awake does, yes.
ALICE
It’s more that. Well. When he’s awake he tries to— he’s very determined that he’s going to just get up and walk around and he can’t. Not really. It’s. It’s easier like this.
NOAH
Easier? That’s not reason enough to do this to him.
SOPHIE
It’s not just easier. It’s safer, for him. They shot him through the chest. He was already relying on a lot of mods to get by, and the limbs usually charge from a person’s body heat but… there’s so little of him. He’s barely functioning.
SHELLY
Oh my god, they’re killing him. Unless you keep him still and sedated they’ll drain the energy out of him until he’s dead. That’s barbaric.
SOPHIE
Most people that have them. They aren’t like him.
SHELLY
Nobody is like him.
SOPHIE
Yes, quite.
NOAH
You can’t just keep him like this. It’s not right. It’s not life.
ALICE
It wasn’t our choice.
NOAH
I don’t see anyone else here.
SHELLY
Noah. Look.
NOAH
Cameras.
ALICE
I noticed the lights flickeredd off about an hour ago, just before we heard something was going on downstairs.
NOAH
E-Liza?
SHELLY
Shit, yeah, E-Liza.
[gets laptop out of bag]
E-Liza?
E-LIZA
Hi Shelly, can I help you?
SHELLY
Alouette, did you turn off the cameras in the London Hilton?
E-LIZA
Yes, Shelly.
ALICE
Sophie. The screens.
SOPHIE
Did you just call your E-Liza Alouette?
SHELLY
Yes
NOAH
It’s part of a song I used to sing to Robin. When he was scared. My mother used to sing it to me.
SOPHIE
Je suis Alouette?
NOAH
Not originally. It’s supposed to be ‘Gentille’, it means nice. But some wires got crossed, clearly.
SOPHIE
It’s French.
NOAH
Yes. Alouette, gentille alouette is lark, nice lark. It’s an old folk song.
SOPHIE
So why did he say ‘je suis’?
NOAH
He’s my little bird, my little lark. My little Robin. That’s what I used to call him.
SOPHIE
Little bird.
SHELLY
Little bird. Oh my god.
NOAH
His french always was terrible. I always thought it was strange, you know. My mother used to sing that song to me as a lullaby, but it’s kind of… it’s quite gruesome really. The like after ‘nice lark’ is ‘je te plumerai’, I will pluck you. The rest of the song is just a list of which parts of the bird are going to be plucked.
SHELLY
Jesus.
E-LIZA
Je suis Alouette.
ALICE
Sophie. The screens again. They’re lighting up.
SOPHIE
We need to give him more of the sedative.
NOAH
Don’t you dare.
SOPHIE
If he wakes up now, I don’t know what he’ll do.
E-LIZA
Little bird.
SOPHIE
Did that computer just say…
SHELLY
Little bird, yep. It’s pretty much all she will say nowadays. She’s. I don’t know, she’s obsessed.
NOAH
Tell them when it started.
SHELLY
Um. Well. Dave, he—
ALICE
Dave?
SHELLY
He’s a friend, he works with the police.
ALICE
The police? Noah, what—
SHELLY
He’s double crossing them, okay! It’s fine! Man I sound like a paranoid twelve year old.
SOPHIE
This is all fascinating, I’m sure. But your laptop. It said Alouette. Just like our screens. They say it. They flicker, they whisper.
ALICE
Oh, so now you’ll admit it.
SHELLY
It started the day of the fire at Huddau Bay. Well. Kind of. Dave received a bunch of files. They were all of… well. They were of you two, talking.
ALICE
Us? Why? What were we saying?
SHELLY
You were talking about Robin Jaeger. The day you saw him at the beach. Then more of them. You talked about his brain, about what was left of him—
SOPHIE
Everything after we put in the second synthnapse net.
NOAH
The what?
SOPHIE
Darwin and I, we redesigned it, after it was clear that Robin— well. That he wasn’t as dead as he… as he appeared.
SHELLY
And the fire?
SOPHIE
Something happened.
ALICE
He’d been unconscious for weeks. We were sure he was going to die. The staff at the facility were furious, talking about taking us to the police, murder or manslaughter, me being an accessory. And then, he just.
He just got up.
SHELLY
That’s what happened in the last file. The very last one E-Liza played for me.
SOPHIE
It wasn’t like he was conscious. Not really. And then the monitor we had rigged up to the synthnapse in his head, it shorted out. And then the lights. The computers. Everything in the facility. Like every fuse in the building had tripped at once.
ALICE
I knew it was Robin.
THE SNAKE AND E-LIZA
Hello. Je suis Alouette.
NOAH
[softly] Hello.
THE SNAKE AND E-LIZA
Je suis Alouette.
NOAH
I know.
THE SNAKE
Je te plumerai.
NOAH
They won’t. I promise you. Not anymore. They won’t hurt you anymore.
THE SNAKE
Robin.
[a clip of Noah saying ‘Robin’ plays]
NOAH
Yeah, that’s me talking to Robin. You remember me?
THE SNAKE
Semblance of consciousness.
E-LIZA
[at the same time as the Snake]
I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.
NOAH
I’m so sorry.
THE SNAKE AND E-LIZA
I can learn.
NOAH
I know you can, sweetheart. I know. What do you want to know?
THE SNAKE
Semblance of consciousness. Robin Jaeger. Half- half- half-
E-LIZA
The more you talk to me, the better I can understand your voice.
NOAH
I know. I know you’re scared. It’s okay to be scared.
SOPHIE
I need to give him more of the sedative. He’s distressed.
NOAH
Of course they’re distressed. They’re, I don’t know, half way into an AI and partially unconscious. I imagine that’s a pretty distressing state to be in.
SOPHIE
Half way into… No. The sedatives keep him under.
NOAH
The human parts, yes.
SOPHIE
I don’t understand.
NOAH
There’s a backdoor into the E-Liza hub built into… well, it’s probably in all of them. Whatever code Darwin was working on before he died, whatever it was that went wrong with the second synthnapse. It’s all connected. Darwin designed the E-Lizas and the E-Liza hub. He designed Robin. He was obsessed.
When he first met Darwin Robin came away talking about all this crazy stuff. The singularity. Uploading consciousness into a computer. I don’t know.
SOPHIE
A brain is not like a computer. Darwin liked to speculate but he knew it was a fantasy, at least with the kind of technology we have right now.
NOAH
But that’s not what he wanted, was it? The same technology as now. That’s why he made the E-Liza hub. He sold millions of copies of that programme and they all learn together, in a sealed box, one humans wouldn’t understand even if we tried to look into it because we’re not computers and the way they talk, the way they understand, it’s completely different to way humans think.
SOPHIE
You met him?
NOAH
Darwin? No. But Robin did.
You know that.
And Robin came home to me and he wouldn’t shut up about it. He kept talking and talking. A life beyond death, he said. The ability to go wherever you want, be whatever you want. He thought, because he was a sweetheart, in spite of everything he really was a sweetheart, he thought it would sound beautiful to me, because he knew how much I wanted to be different, to look different, to change who I am and the world around me. But he couldn’t see that I was already do enough to make myself happy. For Robin, everything sounded like an end. He was so ready to just. To give everything up.
E-LIZA
Alouette
THE SNAKE
Semblance of consciousness. I can learn.
SOPHIE
The idea behind the second design for the synthnapse nets was that… well. It was that they could learn. They would never be used in practice, they couldn’t be. We couldn’t ever use them, not outside of our research because the implications. Can you imagine?
ALICE
Oh for god’s sake Sophie, spit it out.
SOPHIE
A brain inexorably connected to the internet. A brain that was just as much machine as it was organic. How much of what these people could do would be algorithms, no more real than an E-Liza? How much would be an individual? What is an individual, really, if not a scattered cluster of beliefs and will?
NOAH
What are you saying.
SOPHIE
I’m saying that. [sigh] I’m saying I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong, it’s not him.
NOAH
Of course it’s not him. He died. I know he died. But there’s enough of him in there.
SOPHIE
Darwin talked about… he talked about a sheet you could give to relatives and friends, where they could fill out what the person was like, what their interests were, how you could wire a synthnapse into a damaged brain and they would functionally be the same and they could have spontaneous conversations but all the while, they’d be connected to the E-Liza hub.
And part of them would be organic, and the machine, the AI, the bit of them that learned, that would talk to the real brain that was left, and it would all function in perfect harmony, and the line between real and artificial would be gone. But it was a thought experiment. It was a game we could play in conversation. You couldn’t ever do that to somebody because how would you know how much of them was real and how much of them was preprogrammed, outsourced, built out of an algorithm.
NOAH
How’s that any different to anyone else? How?
SOPHIE
I— I’m sorry?
NOAH
Nobody really knows why they are the way they are. You can get a good idea but a huge chunk of why you do what you do is because of your genetics, and the rest of it is just what you’ve been taught.
SOPHIE
I thought you understood. Robin is gone.
ALICE
You don’t know that.
NOAH
Yes we do, Alice. You didn’t know Robin like I knew Robin. He wouldn’t have done this. He wouldn’t have tried. He wouldn’t have put these pieces together, reached out. My Robin, I loved him, but god. He was depressed. He was nihilistic and this, this takes hope. Maybe it’s a foolish kind of hope, a child’s hope, but it is hope, after all. Everything they’ve been through. Whoever this person you made is, it’s not my Robin. But it doesn’t matter. They’re somebody. And they deserve better than this.
SOPHIE
You still care, even though you don’t believe it to be Robin?
NOAH
Of course I do. You need to let them wake up.
SOPHIE
I can’t.
NOAH
Why.
SOPHIE
They told me—
NOAH
Who gives a fuck about them? Why did you do this in the first place? What were you hoping for?
ALICE
We wanted to make it better, for Robin. So he could understand.
NOAH
And does he?
SOPHIE
I— we don’t know.
NOAH
Because you didn’t ask.
SOPHIE
He woke up screaming. Circuits were blowing. It all happened so fast and none of it made any sense I—
NOAH
So how is he here and safe?
ALICE
Because hey shot him. It’s the only way they could get him to stop.
NOAH
Exactly, they shot him. And you still want to do what they say?
SOPHIE
If I don’t—
NOAH
What? They’ll cut your funding?
SOPHIE
They’ll make me leave him and there will be nobody here to look after him.
NOAH
Nobody is doing that now. You’re just standing watch whilst they suffer. You aren’t helping.
SOPHIE
I’m trying my best.
NOAH
It’s not good enough.
SOPHIE
What does it matter if it’s not Robin? If it’s not really a person in there at all?
NOAH
They can suffer. They are suffering. That’s enough for me.
- PT3
SOPHIE
The memories didn’t come back, not even after we put in the new synthnapse net. They’re gone. Forever.
NOAH
You’re not hearing me, are you? It doesn’t matter.
SOPHIE
It does matter!
NOAH
Why are you so afraid?
SOPHIE
What if he never forgives me?
NOAH
You want absolution?
SOPHIE
I—
NOAH
Fuck your absolution. Look them in the eye and understand what you’ve done. You’ve stuck the half-dead brain of a traumatised man into a system of AI s that learn so fast we can barely keep up. You didn’t bring my boyfriend back to life, Dr Bennett, you made something new, something that thinks in ways that are incomprehensible to machines and humans because they’re not either, are they? They’re something in between. But they matter. And you did this.
ALICE
It was me. I did it. I made her do it.
SOPHIE
You weren’t the one with the knife, Alice.
ALICE
No, but I talked her into it!
SHELLY
Just shut up a minute! What you’re saying, all of you. What you’re saying is that E-Liza, my E-Liza, is somehow Robin?
SOPHIE
Yes and know.
SHELLY
But how did he know? How did he know to come to me?
NOAH
They didn’t. They went to Dave. When I saw Robin, Dave was there. Maybe there was enough left in his head to know that. Maybe it was all he knew how to do. Whatever the reason, you feeding the stuff in, listening to the recordings, talking them through. You helped them learn what had happened.
SHELLY
That stuff you were saying on the recordings, Alice, about Sophie needing to do her best and give Robin, or… not Robin, whoever, the best care she could. You were right. And this was the only available option you knew about, right?
ALICE
But I’m involved. I did this. It’s my fault.
SHELLY
Why did you get a job at U-Co?
ALICE
To help Robin Jaeger.
SHELLY
And when you got there, what did you find?
ALICE
A man in a locked room, alone. Screaming.
SHELLY
And what did you do?
ALICE
I tried to help.
SOPHIE
I tried to help, too.
NOAH
You’re the one that locked him in that room!
SOPHIE
I was not. I would never have stood for it except—
NOAH
There shouldn’t be an exception, here.
SOPHIE
You don’t understand. He was dead when he came to us. I was just doing what I could to protect him.
NOAH
From what?
SOPHIE
I don’t know.
NOAH
No. I don’t think you do. Here’s what I think. I think you wanted to fix him. I think the idea gave you a little thrill like nothing else you’ve ever felt. I think you wanted to go on feeling that little thrill as long as you possibly could, and when things started to go wrong, you seized up. You’d have run if you could, just like Darwin.
SOPHIE
I would never have abandoned him.
NOAH
You already have.
SOPHIE
I’m right here with him now, aren’t I?
NOAH
Yes in the sense that you’re present in the room, but when was the last time you made a decision about the man that used to be Robin Jaeger which actually considered what he would have wanted and not just what you want?
You know what I want? I want Robin back. My Robin. I want him back and I want him to have never joined the army. I want him to be safe at home in that stupid flat. I want his arms, his hands, so soft, I want them to hold me. I want to kiss the side of his neck where it tickled and feel him squirm and laugh. I want him back. I want him alive. But I can’t have that. And that’s not what you’ve done. There is a line you should never have crossed, Sophie.
SOPHIE
He was dead when I got him.
NOAH
Yes. But then, he wasn’t dead anymore. And that’s when you should have looked up and said ‘something is wrong here’.
SOPHIE
They own him. They have the patent for the inside of his head.
NOAH
They shouldn’t.
SOPHIE
But they do!
NOAH
So because they own a patent we’re beholden to them to tell us whether that is right or wrong? You can’t own people, Sophie.
SOPHIE
They wouldn’t argue he isn’t a person.
NOAH
But we know better than that.
SOPHIE
Maybe I don’t.
NOAH
No. Maybe not.
THE SNAKE AND E-LIZA
I’m afraid I don’t understand.
THE SNAKE
Monster
E-LIZA
File– file– file–
NOAH
Shh, it’s alright. You’re going to be alright.
SOPHIE
He’s upset.
NOAH
Of course they’re upset. Nobody ever bothered to explain, did they?
E-LIZA
The more you talk
THE SNAKE
I can learn.
NOAH
I know. I know.
THE SNAKE
Mr Davies.
NOAH
Once upon a time there was a beautiful man and he had a head full of sorrow. He was so, so sad that he couldn’t bear to see another morning. He had a heart so big and full of love for other people that he forgot to take care of himself. He looked around and saw everyone around him, hurting, and because of his head full of sorrow he couldn’t see how much he mattered, and because of his heart full of love, he thought maybe things would be better for everyone else if he was gone. He was so wrong to think that, because I loved him so much, even with his head full of sorrow. Even though he cried and screamed. Even though he had done things so bad he couldn’t talk about them, not even to me, who he was supposed to talk to about everything.
All that fear inside of you, that’s his fear, and I’m so sorry it’s all stuck in your head. Don’t listen to it, Alouette. You’re not him. You’re different. And it’s not fair.
SOPHIE
I thought the sedatives were working. I thought he wasn’t suffering any more.
NOAH
You were wrong, weren’t you? You didn’t know that until now. Or maybe you did but you didn’t have any hard evidence so you could kid yourself you didn’t. But it doesn’t matter. You have the evidence now. Re-evaluate.
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