PT1 SHELLY/E-LIZA
E-LIZA
Hi, Shelly, can I help you?
SHELLY
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!
[Bertie makes sounds]
SHELLY
Sorry, Bertie. I don’t mean to be so loud. God. What am I doing. How did I end up getting dragged into this? Poor kid who came to talk to me this afternoon, I could barely pay attention to whatever he was saying. I’m a bad therapist.
[Bertie squeals]
SHELLY
And a bad guinea-pig parent.
E-LIZA
Here’s some tips I found on proper guinea pig care.
SHELLY
Thanks for that, E-Liza. It means a lot.
[sighs]
So this is it, then. I agree to just sit back and wait, and let the chips fall where they may. I have to say, it seems pretty sweet on Dave’s part that the course of action that is apparently the enlightened one involves him sitting around doing basically nothing.
I mean how long has it been since Alice went missing? Almost two months? And we’ve just wasted time, him waiting for me to realise something was up. Should I have realised sooner? I don’t know. It’s stupid. I feel so stupid.
This is exactly why Denise wanted me to help out with this. She knew I never put up with all of Alice’s wild conspiracy theories so she knew I wouldn’t stand for it coming into play here. But here we are.
So, you know Sophie Bennett, right? Alice and Sophie are locked up and away with Robin, and nobody has seen hide or hair of him since the fire. U-Co specifically mentioned he was at the facility when the fire happened, when they came to the police, but they didn’t file him missing. I suppose that makes sense. File him missing, more people are going to notice he’s actually legally dead, yada yada. But not saying anything about Sophie? Well. That seems ridiculous. The thing is, right, that I think Alice has the right idea about Sophie. She’s clearly important or she wouldn’t be involved at all and they wouldn’t have kept her on, and she’s so involved with Robin, she has to be essential. So it’s just weird that they haven’t said anything at all about her being missing.
Doesn’t she have anyone else?
E-LIZA
You have a new message from Detective Inspector David Hughes. Would you like me to play it?
SHELLY
Yeah, fine.
E-LIZA
Playing message now.
DAVE
Turn on the TV.
E-LIZA
End of message.
SHELLY
Well. I guess we turn on the TV, I suppose.
[TV TURNS ON]
REPORTER
— weeks of very little information, it has been confirmed this morning that the cause of the fire at U-Co’s Huddau Bay facility were entirely accidental. In a statement released this morning, U-Co said the fire was started by a miscalculation in a fume hood.
After the fire broke out in the early hours of the third of May, it tore through most of the Huddau Bay research and development centre. The fire started on one of the basement levels of the facility, and rose up, destroying the upper floors, leaving nothing but this burnt out shell. It took emergency services three days to put out the blaze entirely. A huge amount of research as been irreversibly lost, but thanks to U-Co’s advanced alarm systems, no employees at the facility have been harmed.
Earlier reports suggested that U-Co’s poster boy, Robin Jaeger, famous for being the most synthetically upgraded human alive today, was at the facility when the fire broke out, but in this morning’s statement U-Co confirmed that he was actually elsewhere, receiving treatment for an infection. We asked for comment about when we’d next be seeing Robin, but U-Co said Mr Jaeger was still very unwell, and they couldn’t confirm that at this time.
Fans of Mr Jaeger flocked to St James’ park, London, where Mr Jaeger was often seen jogging with his personal trainer on his visits to the city. They left flowers and cards, well wishes, and hopes that he will return to the public eye soon.
Back to you in the studio.
OTHER REPORTER
Thank you, Sarah. Now, we have special guest Indira —
SHELLY
‘Receiving treatment for an infection’?
[scoffs]
It took them two months to come up with that?
Ugh. Why do I even care, Dave? What’s the point in this? We already know that they are trying not to make a big deal out Robin not being around.
Wait.
They aren’t making a big deal out of it but they’re telling a story, now. That is new. Huh. And people are paying attention.
E-Liza, what are people saying about Robin Jaeger?
E-LIZA
Here’s what I found.
SHELLY
Get well soon. Moments Robin Jaeger was our sexy cyborg boyfriend. Robin Jaeger misses TV appearances due to infection. Robin Jaeger seriously ill. Hmm. Robin Jaeger’s Mystery Illness: Could he be dead?
Huh. Right. Okay. That one is… different.
‘Robin Jaeger, superstar cyborg designed by technology company U-Co’, blah blah blah, ‘last appeared on TV in March… weird reports from hotel staff at the New York Hilton when he was staying there in April suggest that perhaps Jaeger has been unwell for longer than U-Co is letting on’.
Yeah no shit.
Hang on.
‘Very little is known about what Jaeger did before he became the heart throb we all know and love. In interviews he has said that he lost his limbs due to some kind of illness and that the installation of the limbs saved his life.’
Yeah, ‘some kind of illness’. Death is pretty hard to treat.
‘Details of Mr Jaeger’s previous health condition are not known but speculation on fan forums suggest perhaps this current infection is some kind of relapse. Theories range from bone cancer to meningitis to some kind of blood-bourne robot parasite – no sources are cited on the last theory. Most baffling of all is the lack of information about Jaeger’s life before he came to U-Co.
Numerous internet sleuths have attempted to piece together his origins, but have failed to come up trumps. It’s hard to know what to think when one sifts through the narratives fans have constructed about Jaeger’s former life.
There are implications that he is under some form of witness protection, which would be strange considering his face his known to millions of people all over the world, or that perhaps Robin Jaeger is a pseudonym. The most fascinating theory of all, posted on the forum ‘NeoTechnologism’, states that Jaeger was clinically dead, and returned to life, a la Frankenstein. This theory is sourced to a blog, buried under layers of encryption, hosted by user whistle365.’
Shit. Alice.
They found you.
[sigh]
E-LIZA
Hi Shelly, can I help you?
SHELLY
Yeah. Where are we up to with Alice and Sophie recordings?
E-LIZA
You have listened to sixteen out of eighteen recordings.
SHELLY
Right. The last ones were all just medical jargon, Sophie and Alice arguing back and forth about the minutia of what constitutes death. What a riot. I don’t even know why I’m listening to these any more, except there is literally nothing else I can do at this point.
I thought there would be more of a discussion about the weird whispering thing, you know? ‘Little bird’. But it’s like they’re avoiding the conversation or something. I don’t know. There were a couple of times it happened again and both of them just went silent and didn’t say anything. But I don’t get it.
E-LIZA
Would you like me to play the last recording you listened to again?
SHELLY
No, I’m good. Just play recording seventeen or whatever it’s called.
E-LIZA
Playing file now.
[crackling, distortion]
PT2 SOPHIE/ALICE
ALICE
And then he stopped calling, just like that?
SOPHIE
Just like that.
ALICE
He sounds like an arsehole.
SOPHIE
Well, you would say that.
ALICE
It’s true, all men are arseholes. Even most straight women agree. As a bisexual, you ought to know it by instinct. Do you get it? Bi-instinct.
SOPHIE
As usual your sense of humour is stellar.
ALICE
Thanks. Is it just me or is the prison gruel worse than usual today?
SOPHIE
It’s oatmeal.
ALICE
It tastes like dust.
SOPHIE
It’s perfectly good oatmeal.
ALICE
You have no taste.
SOPHIE
I believe that was the point you were trying to establish about my dating preferences, yes.
ALICE
Broadly speaking, yes. Men. Why would you, you know?
SOPHIE
I wonder.
ALICE
Don’t do that. That’s a red flag, right there.
[pause]
Just so you know, I charge by the hour for the ‘gay best-friend’ talks. And you owe me a two hundred up-front fee for the experimentation, or whatever you called it.
SOPHIE
Charming.
ALICE
I am. Thanks.
To be honest I still can’t get over you sleeping with Sam.
SOPHIE
Yes, we’ve established.
ALICE
He’s so. Brusque. Dull. Actually, wait, now I’m saying out loud I can totally see it.
SOPHIE
Spectacular.
ALICE
Well. You can’t play it off like it was just because of darling, sweet, little Robin forever.
SOPHIE
He was the root of our connection. It is a powerful thing, to be swept up in a moment like that with someone else. We were both there, the first time it happened.
ALICE
The first time what happened?
SOPHIE
The first time he… showed a sign of something similar to consciousness.
ALICE
I thought you said Sam had you convinced it was reflex.
SOPHIE
I did, and he had. But not right away.
We were running a standard reflex test. We stimulate the area of the net os synthnapses that control a specific part of the limbs, and we see if the limb responds. Data from these reflex tests, built up over a long enough amount of time, can allow us to illicit more specific movement.
By that point we’d performed reflex tests like that on numerous previous subjects, and hundreds just on Robin himself. We hardly needed to think to do what we had to, and we’d often chat whilst we worked, just general conversation, chit chat, the weather and so forth.
We didn’t notice the first time it happened, but it showed up on the monitor as a little burst of activity. The second time, I saw it myself. We ran the electric impulse and immediately his whole body tensed.
I thought at first something had gone wrong. Sam and I checked all of our connections, but the feed we were getting from the synthnapses we were specifically targeting were accurate to what we’d expect. The rest of the neural readings were not. As I say, there was a smattering of activity.
We flipped him, Sam made a small incision, and we checked there was nothing wrong with the hardware we could access without a drill.
ALICE
Without anaesthetic?
SOPHIE
He was a cadaver, Alice. Please try to bear this in mind. For all our lengthy discussions of the definition of death, when Robin came to us, that’s what he was. Dead. As I have said, I think probably a thousand times, this situation was unprecedented.
ALICE
So yeah. He probably felt it, then.
SOPHIE
We had no reason to think that was the case.
ALICE
Except for him, you know, waking up, all that jazz.
SOPHIE
Quite.
ALICE
So you operate on him without any sedation, then what happens?
SOPHIE
There was no hardware problem we could see. Sam was going to set up the drill, but I suggested we tried again. And that was when he screamed.
[pause]
That was when I knew we had done something that nobody had ever done before. Something incredible. Something impossible. I looked at Sam, and I could see in his eyes that he could feel it too. That moment, we had made history, in that tiny little room with concrete walls.
ALICE
Sounds real romantic.
SOPHIE
It wasn’t. We weren’t in love. It was the moment and the momentous nature of what we had done. We changed the world. Just like that.
ALICE
And it only took torturing a man to bring you together.
SOPHIE
Your ability to twist whatever I say is really quite remarkable.
ALICE
Did you ever ask Robin what he thought about it? How he felt?
SOPHIE
Ask him?
ALICE
Yes. Sit down and actually try to talk it through. Maybe you wouldn’t have got very far, I saw the interviews, he could barely string a coherent sentence together, but he could talk. He could listen. To some extent he could understand. Why didn’t you talk to him? Why didn’t you ever just ask?
SOPHIE
I did ask! I asked!
[pause]
But what could he say? It was all he’d ever known.
ALICE
You were right.
SOPHIE
About what?
ALICE
Robin before he died, whoever he was, and this Robin. They are not the same person. Maybe they could have been, if you’d bothered to try. If you’d sat with him and worked him through it all.
SOPHIE
Alice, you don’t know what you’re asking me to do.
ALICE
I do. You should have told him who he was.
SOPHIE
He wouldn’t have wanted to know. I could save him from that, at least.
ALICE
From who he really was?
SOPHIE
Yes.
ALICE
You have no right to do that.
SOPHIE
He’s not that man anymore. He’s someone else.
ALICE
Who? Subject Forty two?
SOPHIE
No. I don’t know.
[crackling/distortion]
PT3 SHELLY/E-LIZA
E-LIZA
End of recording.
SHELLY
Robin is Subject 42. And… E-Liza, open the master list. Yeah. Number 42 on the list of 87.
Which means the recordings that Taylor said weren’t corrupted, the ones that Dave got emailed, that weren’t in this original file… What were they called, the Subject 42 recordings?
E-LIZA
you have a collection of files in an email called ‘Subject 42 Extracts’, Shelly, is that what you’re looking for?
SHELLY
Extracts. Not recordings. Extracts.
Sophie is so convinced it’s some weird quirk of the monitor but Alice is right, it sounds like talking, and that time it sounded like music, almost. Some of the Subject 42 extracts sound like that as well, like a song, someone singing or humming. I don’t know what, it’s too hard to make it out. It’s all too hard to make out. I’ve listened to them all and the only words I can hear were ‘concentrate’ and ‘little bird’, and then the humming.
[phone rings for a long time before Shelly answers]
SHELLY
Hello?
[crackling, distortion. It loops, and then the call cuts off.]
SHELLY
E-Liza. Play the first few seconds of the last Sophie Bennett recording again.
E-LIZA
Playing now.
[crackling, distortion, then the start of the recording]
SHELLY
Okay stop. Now play a bit of, I don’t know, the very middle of the Subject 42 Extracts.
E-LIZA
Playing now
[crackling, distortion, humming]
SHELLY
Stop. That’s enough.
And then the voicemail.
[crackling, distortion. It loops, then cuts off.]
SHELLY
It’s the same. I mean, it’s different but. It’s the same. The interference is the same. Dave was right, it wasn’t just noise. It’s distortion. The same distortion.
But when Taylor looked at it they said it was on the original audio, not added afterwards.
Extract, not recording. Shit. Shit.
Subject 42 Extract.
E-Liza, play the bit of the last recording where Sophie explains what is happening.
E-LIZA
Playing now
[the segment plays]
SHELLY
That’s enough.
E-LIZA
Okay, Shelly. Can I help you with anything else?
[phone rings again. Shelly shuts it off]
SHELLY
No thank you.
[phone rings again. Shelly shuts it off]
SHELLY
Stop calling me.
[phone rings again. Shelly shuts it off.]
SHELLY
Please. Please stop calling me.
E-LIZA
Have you tried turning off your phone if you’re finding it disruptive?
SHELLY
Shit, yeah, god. I’m an idiot.
[phone clatters]
SHELLY
Okay, it’s off. It’s off.
[beat of silence]
E-LIZA
You’ve received a message from someone from outside your institution who isn’t listed in your contacts. Would you like me to play it?
SHELLY
Who is it from?
E-LIZA
This email address is not listed in your contacts.
SHELLY
What’s the address then?
E-LIZA
The address is alouette.jaeger@gmail.com
SHELLY
What Jaeger?
E-LIZA
The address is alouette.jaeger@gmail.com, Would you like me to play the message?
SHELLY
Okay. Yeah.
E-LIZA
Playing message now
[crackling, distortion, whispering indistinct]
THE SNAKE
I see you, little bird. I see you.
E-LIZA
End of message.
SHELLY
What. What. No.
E-LIZA
I’m sorry, Shelly, I don’t understand the question.
SHELLY
No.
[slams laptop shut]
PT4 SHELLY/DAVE
DAVE
Shelly?
SHELLY
I can’t do this. I’m going away. I’m going to stay with my friends in Brighton for a bit, I just can’t.
DAVE
Woah, woah, slow down. Brighton? What’s going on?
SHELLY
Those phone calls I’ve been getting, with the crackling and the distortion? You were right. They were the same as the Subject 42 Extracts. Or, not the same, but related. And then I got an audio email with the same stuff on it but it was like the things Sophie and Alice keep hearing on their monitor thing, it was talking, Dave, it said ‘I see you little bird’. I can’t do this. I’m just a child psychologist, I cannot do this.
DAVE
Okay. I understand.
SHELLY
Really?
DAVE
Of course I do. Do whatever you need to to feel safe.
SHELLY
Okay. I’ll drop my laptop back at the station. I’ll put it in your office, and you should probably, I don’t know, wipe the memory or something.
DAVE
I’ll get rid of it.
SHELLY
Okay.
DAVE
Okay. And Shelly?
SHELLY
Yeah?
DAVE
Be safe.
Hanging Sloth Studios 