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/SOPHIE
ALICE
You can’t keep running from this forever. Sooner or later he’s going to die.
SOPHIE
Everyone dies, Alice.
ALICE
He’s young. He could live.
SOPHIE
He did, once.
ALICE
And what he is now, is that not alive?
SOPHIE
No, it isn’t.
ALICE
Oh my god, you really believe that.
SOPHIE
You don’t understand.
ALICE
You say that an awful lot for someone who doesn’t do very much explaining.
SOPHIE
Look, I— There is only so much I can tell you, I’m sorry. But the situation is fraught. My hands are tied. All I can do is offer him the best care I can, and that’s all.
ALICE
Isn’t this the best care?
SOPHIE
We have no idea what this would do to him.
ALICE
I— God, I’m sorry, I looked into the notes, I know I shouldn’t have.
SOPHIE
The notes?
ALICE
Yes. Darwin’s notes.
SOPHIE
I had suspected that you had looked at them before you invoked Darwin like a god the other day.
ALICE
I just brought him up in case it could convince you, I didn’t invoke him.
You were working with him on the second synthnapse concept, weren’t you?
SOPHIE
It was for research into dementia. It was nothing to do with Robin.
ALICE
When has any of this been to do with him, specifically, ever? To me it looks like he just kind of got caught up in all of this.
SOPHIE
That’s because you don’t understand.
ALICE
So tell me.
SOPHIE
I can’t. I’m sorry.
ALICE
How is it different from the ones in all of your other subjects, what does it do?
SOPHIE
It’s. (sigh) Look, it didn’t work, alright? If you’re hoping it will magically fix whatever is wrong in Robin Jaeger’s head, you don’t understand what happened to him.
ALICE
He was dead when you got him.
SOPHIE
Yes. He was dead.
ALICE
But he’s not dead now.
SOPHIE
I… I wouldn’t go that far.
ALICE
You need to do something Sophie. Whatever happened to him before doesn’t matter. If you don’t help him, when he dies this time, you’ll have killed him.
SOPHIE
The second synthnapse concept is not what you think it is.
ALICE
And what is it that I think it is?
SOPHIE
You think it’s better, more sophisticated. You think it’s a way to more deliberately reconnect a brain than the original net of synthnapses. It’s not.
ALICE
So what is it then?
SOPHIE
It’s… it’s like a computer.
ALICE
Like a computer how?
SOPHIE
The gaps in your thinking, it’s supposed to fill them. So, theoretically. What we hoped. What Darwin hoped. He and Sam, they thought it could mean we could bring back others. But more… completely.
But Alice you have to understand, it didn’t work, it never worked. The few subjects we installed the new net into, they couldn’t even breathe on their own, that basic function which was basically the only thing we could guarantee the original nets would do. The readings on the monitors, tracking brain activity, they made no sense. It was there, but it was even more random and sporadic than in Robin. It was a mess. It was a terrible idea. We should never have attempted it and I will not do it again, not with Robin, not after everything he has already been through. I will not abide it.
ALICE
He was going to throttle himself with his bedsheets the other day before they drugged him.
SOPHIE
But they got to him in time. He can be managed, Alice. He needs time to rest. We’ve run him too hard, expected too much. I warned Sam that two new sets in six months was too much for him now. It’s not like when it was just the three of us. He needs time to adjust, to recover.
ALICE
I don’t understand why you’re so desperate to talk yourself out of this.
SOPHIE
Because! He is my charge, Alice. Whatever he is now, I made him into it. It’s my responsibility to ensure that he gets the best treatment that he can. Now I can’t stop Sam parading him around like a show pony. I can’t stop them putting him in magazines and switching out the limbs like they’re shiny outfits. They were not designed to be removed and replaced at all, let alone this frequently. In so many ways, Alice, in far more ways than you could possibly understand, my hands are tied. There is nothing I can do, except all that I can within the limits imposed upon me. I cannot risk what little he has on a wild attempt at something impossible.
ALICE
You– you’re talking like he’s just, I don’t know, like he’s sick and he’s getting the proper care he needs, but he’s not. He is clearly sick, but he’s shut in a concrete room apart from when you and the rest of your little team think it’d be good for business if you paraded him about a little bit. It’s a circus. They banned treating animals like this decades ago.
SOPHIE
He doesn’t know what’s going on.
ALICE
He knows! He screams! I’ve heard him. I’ve seen him.
SOPHIE
You should never have—
ALICE
Looked behind the curtain? Come on, Sophie. Please.
SOPHIE
(small) I’m afraid.
ALICE
What?
SOPHIE
I’m scared! It could go wrong, it could change nothing, it could—
ALICE
It could what?
SOPHIE
Right now, he forgives me. He doesn’t say anything because he hasn’t the capacity to but I can feel it sometimes in moments where I— I just do.
ALICE
And you’re scared that if you do this and it works like we both hope it would, then he won’t forgive you anymore, because he’ll actually start to get some kind of grasp of what has happened to him.
SOPHIE
Yes. That’s what I’m scared of.
ALICE
Sophie. Don’t you see? That is his call to make, not yours. It never was and it definitely shouldn’t ever be. Either he forgives you or he doesn’t. Either way, he’ll be…I don’t know. He’ll be better than he is now.
SOPHIE
But we can’t let him go, Alice. You don’t understand.
ALICE
Jesus, fine, no I don’t! Explain it to me!
SOPHIE
I’m sorry, I just. What you fail to grasp is that even if we were to be successful in this endeavour, U-Co’s hold over Robin wouldn’t be any less absolute than it is now. It wouldn’t be as though he could be let out. He couldn’t ever lead a normal life.
ALICE
I don’t imagine I’d be able to either, had I been through what he’s been through.
SOPHIE
No, Alice. They’d keep him. They have to keep him.
ALICE
Why? If… I don’t know, if this was just what happened, if he snaps back into himself and is as good as he ever was before he died in the first place, would you have kept him buried?
SOPHIE
No. But there’s been so much that’s happened.
ALICE
Aren’t you guys the king of NDA’s?
SOPHIE
There would just be too many questions.
ALICE
So he’s a prisoner forever, so what? You keep him dumb so he doesn’t ever fully grasp what has happened to him?
SOPHIE
In a way, is that not kinder?
ALICE
No! It is not kinder. It’s monstrous.
SOPHIE
Did we not once trial drugs on animals because it is less traumatic to them than it is for human beings?
ALICE
Holy shit, Sophie! This is not a drug trail, he’s not a guinea pig, this is not for the benefit of anyone but this company’s bottom line, and I don’t think the guinea pigs ever did suffer less than human beings, they just suffered differently, and we valued that suffering less. I don’t think keeping a human being in a state where you fail to fully recognise his suffering just because it makes you more comfortable makes you a hero.
SOPHIE
I’m not trying to be a hero.
ALICE
Then what are you trying to be?
SOPHIE
I don’t know.
ALICE
You better think of an answer quickly because there is a man two concrete floors down probably screaming at the top of his lungs in pain you caused, which you are reconciling as acceptable because, what, you don’t think of him as fully human?
SOPHIE
(snappy) I don’t know what I think.
ALICE
Don’t you think you should, given you’re in charge of this whole operation?
SOPHIE
What on earth gave you that impression? At best I’m a mid-level manager of the situation, at worst, I’m hardly better off than Robin himself.
ALICE
I don’t see you writhing in agony on the ground, dislodging the g-tube they had to put in because you just stopped being able to swallow, and nobody could be arsed looking into why.
SOPHIE
You think I didn’t look into it because I couldn’t be arsed?
ALICE
I don’t know what I think.
SOPHIE
I can’t help you, Alice.
ALICE
I don’t need help. Robin Jaeger does. And you can help him.
SOPHIE
You don’t understand the nuance.
ALICE
Ever stop and wonder if maybe I do understand the nuance, Sophie, and I still just think you’re wrong? Or is that something you won’t consider because it makes you too uncomfortable?
SOPHIE
I’ve done my best for him.
ALICE
He will die if you do nothing.
SOPHIE
He may die if I do this!
ALICE
At least you will have tried.
SOPHIE
I could ruin him, far more than I already have.
ALICE
The only thing worse than what you’ve already done, is to let it continue.
SOPHIE
You really believe that?
ALICE
I do.
SOPHIE
I never meant for it to be this way.
ALICE
I know. That’s how I can stand to look at you still. It’s how I can believe that somewhere, deep down, you know trying this second synthnapse net design is the right thing to do. Because I don’t think you’re as bad as the worst mistake you’ve ever made. I think you can be better. I think you can be good.
SOPHIE
Alice…
ALICE
Maybe he won’t forgive you. Maybe he can’t. But what if he wakes up and he looks you in the eye and he knows, he gets it, what if you can sit down and explain to him how all this ended up the way it was. What if you could talk it out. If he smiles. If he thanks you not just for this, but for bringing him back. For saving a life. Because that is just as likely.
SOPHIE
(tearfully) It’s not, Alice. I wish it were. But Robin Jaeger had a complicated past long before he ever came to me.
ALICE
Okay. I’d love to hear about it. From him.
SOPHIE
You’ve made your point.
ALICE
You’ll think about it.
SOPHIE
You know even if I was on board I couldn’t do it.
ALICE
What do you mean?
SOPHIE
I can’t do this by myself. I invented half of this, but only half. The rest–
ALICE
So talk to him.
SOPHIE
I wouldn’t know where to start. And you know, if this happens you’ll be just as culpable as I am.
ALICE
You’ll rat me out?
SOPHIE
I can’t do this alone, Alice. I need help.
ALICE
You need someone else’s help, not mine.
SOPHIE
There is nobody else, Alice. You know if word of this got upwards we’d be shut down in an instant, and then where would Robin be.
ALICE
What would I have to do?
SOPHIE
(deep breath) talk to him, keep him calm. Work with him.
ALICE
How am I supposed to do that when you’re, if you’re…
SOPHIE
If I’m cutting into his skull as you do it? You can handle it Alice. You’ve seen him at his worst. This will be no more violent than that. Less so, in fact. I’ll sedate him, keep him pliant. He’s sedated often enough anyway.
ALICE
Are you agreeing?
SOPHIE
No. I’m simply stating the facts.
ALICE
And the facts are you need me to get my hands dirty.
SOPHIE
Metaphorically speaking, yes.
(distortion/crackling)
PT2 THE SNAKE
I can learn.
I can understand.
Can I help you with anything else, alouette?
I see you, little bird.
I see you.
I can learn.
I can understand.
Je suis Alouette.
Je suis little bird.
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
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