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 THE SNAKE
THE SNAKE
(underneath a heavily distorted ‘concentrate’ underpins the words)
I see you.
Help.
I see you
Help.
(crying)
I see you.
Help.
Little Bird.
Little Bird.
Little Bird.
Help.
Help.
Will you stay and hold my hand?
Help.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Make it.
Stop.
Help.
It hurts.
It will hurt.
I don’t understand the question.
I can learn.
Help.
I can learn.
Help.
It will hurt.
I can learn.
Help.
Help.
Help.
PT2 SHELLY/E-LIZA
(the Snake, Pt1, plays continuously)
SHELLY
E-Liza?
Christ, E-Liza, I told you tell me when you were updating.
E-LIZA
E-Liza has encountered a problem. Resetting systems now.
SHELLY
Not this again! Are you kidding me? E-Liza. What is this whispering?
E-LIZA
E-Liza has encountered a problem. Resetting systems now.
SHELLY
Well bloody do it then! Stop whispering and turning on and off, this is the opposite of helpful, christ!
E-LIZA
Alouette.
SHELLY
Yes, yes, Alouette, I know, I know!
E-LIZA
Je suis Alouette.
SHELLY
Yeah, that’s lovely, but what the hell are you doing?
E-LIZA
I can learn. I can learn. I can learn.
SHELLY
I don’t doubt it E-Liza but what the hell are you trying to learn by doing this? How does this help you or I don’t know literally anyone?
E-Liza?
(the whispering stops)
SHELLY
E-Liza? Hello?
PT3 SHELLY/DAVE
(phone rings for a long time)
SHELLY
Hello.
DAVE
The E-Lizas.
SHELLY
Yours too, huh?
DAVE
All shut down at once.
SHELLY
No whispering?
DAVE
None.
SHELLY
Great. That’s just great.
DAVE
Shelly. I just got a call.
SHELLY
It wasn’t from an unknown number was it?
DAVE
No. It wasn’t.
SHELLY
Who was it?
DAVE
A friend. In Sao Paolo.
SHELLY
You have friends in Sao Paolo?
DAVE
That’s really not the point right now.
SHELLY
Spit it out then.
DAVE
Christopher Darwin is dead.
SHELLY
What? What do you mean ‘Christopher Darwin is dead’?
DAVE
Shelly. There really isn’t a lot of room for ambiguity in that sentence is there? I meant what I said. He’s dead.
SHELLY
But. But how?
DAVE
It looks like he was shot in the head.
SHELLY
‘Looks like’? Was he or wasn’t he?
DAVE
It’s hard to say for certain because of the state of the body.
SHELLY
What was wrong with it? There wasn’t a fire?
DAVE
No. He’s been dead for a while.
SHELLY
A while?
DAVE
Best guess right now is that he’s been decomposing for about two months. Sao Paolo is a very humid climate. Not great for preserving a body.
SHELLY
He was in Sao Paolo?
DAVE
He was.
SHELLY
But. How? When? There’s nothing anywhere about where he is, he just vanished after he left U-Co. If he’d left the country you’d be able to find out, wouldn’t you?
DAVE
There are a number of ways he could have left the country without passing through border control.
SHELLY
But why?
DAVE
Clearly he didn’t want to be found.
We wouldn’t have, if the neighbours hadn’t complained about the amount of vermin on their property. The police went around expecting to ask some playboy to clear the rubbish off his mansion’s porch and instead they found… well.
The house was huge but there was hardly anything in it, apparently. They thought it was strange coming up the drive that there were no cars outside. There was a sort of stable, open archways for parking your expensive super cars behind locked gates, safe from theives but on display to be envied, but every single bay was empty. The garden was a mess, looked like nobody had tended to it in years. The front door wouldn’t open, even when they tried to kick it in, so they went around the back.
There was a pool with about a foot of green, rancid water at the bottom of it. They found a sliding glass door hanging open. The curtains were covered in mould.
SHELLY
Gross.
DAVE
It looked like he was living in just that one room, apparently. Mattress on the floor, thin little blanket. Six computers. All of them were turned on. There were a bunch of cables, looked like he had been pulling them out of the walls. And the whole room was lined with tin foil.
SHELLY
Tin foil? Like a giant tin foil hat?
DAVE
Apparently, Taylor says its a kind of a makeshift faraday cage. You know. No signal gets in or out.
SHELLY
Jesus.
DAVE
Yeah. And Darwin was lying dead in the middle of it. His hands were still on the keyboard.
SHELLY
God. That’s horrible.
DAVE
Yeah. It is.
SHELLY
How did they know it was him?
DAVE
His ID badge?
SHELLY
What?
DAVE
His U-Co ID badge. It was on his back.
SHELLY
On his back?
DAVE
yes.
SHELLY
So he didn’t do this to himself, then?
DAVE
Very unlikely.
SHELLY
Right.
DAVE
Right.
SHELLY
The computers?
DAVE
No luck recovering anything from them so far, apparently. They’re all running some kind of code, but it doesn’t matter what people do, they just keep running it.
SHELLY
What, even if they unplug them?
DAVE
I don’t think they’ve unplugged them.
SHELLY
What, that hasn’t occurred to them?
DAVE
I’m sure it has. Only personally I’d be pretty nervous about unplugging a computer with a load of random code on it run by Christopher Darwin.
SHELLY
Surely if he was going to blow stuff up it would happen when the code finished not when it was interupted, right?
DAVE
What makes you think he was going to blow stuff up?
SHELLY
Six computers with mysterious code and a shady guy who’s been on the downlow for years?
DAVE
I’m more concerned about what it might be running. What would happen to that thing if the computers were powered off.
SHELLY
Like he might secretly be running the world of his computer or something?
DAVE
No the world, no. But he coded the synthnapses and the E-Liza’s. If this code was important, it would be a disaster if we stopped it from running.
SHELLY
So, what?
DAVE
The experts are looking at it?
SHELLY
That’s it?
DAVE
That’s it.
SHELLY
We just wait?
DAVE
We just wait.
SHELLY
Jesus.
DAVE
Yes indeed.
SHELLY
And me?
DAVE
Oh well you’re off the investigation and your laptop is dead, isn’t it?
SHELLY
Yeah. Right.
DAVE
Which brings us around to the point. What happened with your E-Liza?
SHELLY
Same old same old really. Whispering. Yelling about an error and not doing anything about it. Alouette.
DAVE
We had blank screens and Alouette.
SHELLY
So I’m still disconnected.
DAVE
Disconnected and accelerated.
SHELLY
And it all started at the same time, right?
DAVE
Yes. At the same time as the guys in Sao Paolo went into Christopher Darwin’s server room.
SHELLY
Wait, what?
DAVE
At the back of the room he was lying dead in, there was a trail of cables from his computers. And they followed them to a cupboard. And in the cupboard was a tiny server farm.
SHELLY
I don’t know what a server farm is.
DAVE
Me neither. It’s a computer thing. It’s important, I think. Anyway there was a trip wire. And when they knocked it all the computers at the station went down.
SHELLY
You were right. It was Darwin.
DAVE
Except you’re forgetting he’s been dead the entire time we’ve been looking for Alice.
SHELLY
So.
DAVE
So.
SHELLY
I’ll call you back.
PT4 SHELLY
SHELLY
God, where is it, where is it?!
Here.
‘Christopher Darwin. Born in Houston, Texas. Moved to London when he was two. Dad worked in Data Security, no idea about mum. Car crash at sixteen, dad died, lost use of hand. Obsessed with singularity. Developed early models of synthnapse whilst still at uni, not recognisable as what U-Co sells for another fifteen years, though. Possible links to ARGs – Cicada, HoneyBee, The Man in White.’
Obsessed with singularity.
And then… (rustling)
Sophie said ‘interested intellectually, thought experiments, what if put self into computer’.
What if. What if he’s in the computer.
What if this whole time I’ve been talking to E-Liza I’ve actually been talking to Christopher Darwin and then it doesn’t matter if he’s dead, he’s already uploaded himself. Mayhe that’s what he was doing. I’m sure Sophie said something about there being trillions of synapses in the brain, how big of a net of synthnapses you’d need to run that. This server farm, I bet that’s what it is. I bet that’s what it does, I bet—
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
Can you hear me?
SHELLY
Yes.
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
Will you stay and hold my hand?
SHELLY
I– what?
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
If he comes and she’s not there, it will hurt.
SHELLY
E-Liza. You’re not making any sense. You’re scaring me.
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
It will hurt.
THE SNAKE
Little bird.
SHELLY
Darwin. Is that you, in there?
THE SNAKE
Concentrate. Concentrate. Concentrate.
E-LIZA
Playing file now.
PT5 ALICE/SOPHIE
SOPHIE
Funny. It sounds like you’re in the kitchen, making coffee.
ALICE
(from another room)
Funny weird or funny haha?
SOPHIE
Both. Oh, it’s late.
ALICE
(closer now)
You don’t have to be anywhere do you?
SOPHIE
No. Not until the evening.
ALICE
Press conference?
SOPHIE
Indeed. I wish Sam could handle this on his own.
ALICE
Nah, you don’t. You like that he relies on you.
SOPHIE
He relies on me to babysit.
ALICE
What do you mean?
SOPHIE
Nothing. It doesn’t matter.
ALICE
Hmm. Okay. Are you in a cream and sugar mood or a ‘black and bitter like my soul’ mood?
SOPHIE
Bitter.
ALICE
Figures. You know it’s wild how much stuff you have here. It’s more than is at your apartment.
SOPHIE
Pathetic, isn’t it?
You know. Last week. It was the first time I’d been there for three months.
ALICE
Where?
SOPHIE
The apartment.
ALICE
You haven’t been home for three months? Jesus, Sophie. You need to take a holiday.
SOPHIE
At this point I wonder if I should just give in and commit to living here full time.
ALICE
But it’s work. And it’s miserable. And there’s dead people.
SOPHIE
We make Robin do it.
ALICE
Sorry?
SOPHIE
I— Never mind.
ALICE
(pause) Does Robin Jaeger live here all the time?
SOPHIE
He does.
ALICE
You sound sad.
SOPHIE
Well, it is sad, isn’t it? Miserable, as you say. A concrete monstrosity.
ALICE
Why?
SOPHIE
Lasting consequences of brutalism.
ALICE
What? Oh. The architecture.
I meant Robin. Why does he live here?
SOPHIE
I told you he’s… unwell.
ALICE
What’s wrong with him?
SOPHIE
Before he came to us, he was… he was not in the optimum state, shall we say.
ALICE
Hence the fake limbs.
SOPHIE
No. It was deeper than that.
ALICE
But you’re helping him, right?
SOPHIE
I don’t know. I’m certainly trying.
ALICE
I’m going to make you that coffee.
SOPHIE
Thank you
(sounds of clinking and a kettle in the background)
Alice. What’s this.
ALICE
What?
SOPHIE
Why are my private files on the floor by the dresser?
ALICE
I— I knocked them?
SOPHIE
They were in the drawer.
ALICE
I was looking for socks.
SOPHIE
Socks.
ALICE
I stood in a puddle.
SOPHIE
Really?
ALICE
Yes.
SOPHIE
and you just threw these files marked important on the ground?
ALICE
Well. No.
SOPHIE
You read them.
ALICE
No. Yes. A bit. A glance, really.
SOPHIE
Alice. These are. This information is not for civilians.
ALICE
Civilians?
SOPHIE
You don’t understand.
ALICE
No. I didn’t see much but I saw enough to know I most certainly do not understand.
SOPHIE
How much did you see?
ALICE
A bunch of stuff about Christopher Darwin. About why he left.
SOPHIE
Why he left.
ALICE
It was something to do with the synthnapses, wasn’t it?
SOPHIE
(relieved sigh) Yes.
ALICE
Okay. It’s something to do with Robin Jaeger, isn’t it? The way that Robin is sick. It’s something to do with the synthnapses. It didn’t go the way Darwin was hoping it would, did it? He was trying to do something else, wasn’t he? Something different to what actually happened. That’s why Robin Jaeger is sick, isn’t it?
SOPHIE
I can’t talk about this Alice. Not just for privacy but. Legally. I can’t.
ALICE
Okay.
SOPHIE
Okay?
ALICE
Yeah. Coffee.
(distortion/crackling)
PT6 SHELLY/E-LIZA/THE SNAKE
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
Robin Jaeger is sick.
SHELLY
I– what?
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
Robin Jaeger is sick.
THE SNAKE
Little bird.
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
It’s something different. I can learn.
THE SNAKE
Little bird.
SHELLY
He’s sick because of the synthnapses and Darwin wanted to fix that.
THE SNAKE
Concentrate
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
I can learn.
SHELLY
What, what can you learn?
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
Something different.
SHELLY
What?
E-LIZA & THE SNAKE
Je suis little bird.
Will you stay and hold my hand?
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