Transcript
S2 E10: Burn
Narrator X: The Foldlight illuminates. [Tense, frantic music.] The control deck comes alive with instant, urgent, lightning-fast activity, with the humming and whirring sounds of various bocular and punch-discular devices. [A menacing Sentinel sound.] (Steve) “Oh no, here it comes! Shut the door! Shut the door!”
Narrator M: bellows Steve, sproinging as far away from the active Foldlight as possible, desperately shielding his brain-pendulum.
Narrator S: Merlin needs no second urging. He’s already on it.
X: A lever clunks, filaments sparkle, fold twitches,
M: and with great immediacy, the hangar door seamlessly walls with solid dark mica, sealing the Ship against any intrusion, like a healing wound.
S: The sun sunbeams. A huge black shadow slams onto the Ship, rippling with feathery appendages that crawl over every surface, seeking entry.
X: (Everett) “Fuck you.” Everett slews the dorsal laser lens hard to starboard, and fires.
S: Epic fucking bullseye.
X: The Sentinel recoils, twitching, jerking, dark writhing fluid leaking weightlessly from its body.
M: Its countless whiskery legs ripple and spasm.
S: Half of its body seems to lose strength as it peels away from the Ship, flopping bonelessly like a ribbon in a breeze.
M: It seems… stunned? Or like it’s having a seizure or something.
S: Is it dead? No, but the laser definitely affected it. Whatever it’s doing, it’s not in singleminded pursuit of the Foldlight anymore.
X: Everett is roaring vindictively over the intercom.
S: No tearrors. The fold within and without the Ship remains inert, non-reactive to the gunfire, thank god.
X: Inside Control, the blizzard of activity continues without pause.
M: Merlin, the Biological Man, Felix, Cleo, and Dot are frantically activating all of the various punch-discs they had preloaded, while Steve hunkers down as far away from the flashing, gleaming cylinder of the Foldlight as he can.
S: Though the Ship has been sealed, it’s still full of languid non-reactive blob belt fold, giving Control a bizarre murky appearance.
M: The discs cycle into the press and reader, their toothy metallic edges flashing in the sunlight, a cascade of effects triggering with speed.
S: Reddish moss mottles the helm observation windows, tinting the sunlight an even more apocalyptic ruby-orange.
X: Disks are spinning, tines catching against notches, translating into a flickering disco within the Foldlight.
M: Food and water storage rooms below decks door open, allowing access.
S: Bocular rewinders hum to life, recharging,
X: as, backlit by the blinding sunbeam, the huge black silhouette of the Sentinel twitches, limbs tightening, rippling appendages gathering themselves. It is recuperating fast.
S: Everett’s voice comes over the intercom.
X: (Everett) “My gun’s still cooling. Shoot it, Tzila, shoot it!”
S: In the ventral gun deck, Tzila cranks the Ship’s second gun around, coming about with the huge fresnel lens, taking aim.
M: The Sentinel twitches, whirling.
X: (Everett) “Tzila, shoot it! Tzila!!”
S: (Tzila) “I’ve got it, I’ve got it!”
M: And Tzila opens fire.
[A bad sound.]
X: At the speed of light – literally – like a signal flashing through fiber optics, the Sentinel’s entire massive body transmits instantly along the beam of the laser and materializes inside the narrow ventral gun deck,
S: folded and squished and compacted like an intestine.
M: Tzila doesn’t stand a chance.
S: A gust of burnt-flesh-smelling air whooshes from the open ladder chute.
X: Everyone in Control hears Tzila’s distorted screams over the teletheric as the sun’s beam iris-targets the lower gun deck.
S: The only thing worse than the sound of that scream… is its abrupt end.
X: (Everett) “Tzila, NO!!”
S: (Steve) “It’s inside the Ship! It’s inside the Ship! Turn off the Foldlight! Turn it off!”
M: (Merlin) “And trap us all inside?!” Merlin is thinking a mile a minute, his brand-new bocs practically steaming.
S: He’s already flipping the first punch-disc over, reinserting it, desperately submitting the command to unseal the hangar door that they had just re-sealed moments ago.
X: And while that’s triggering, he’s already onto the next thing, frantically searching for the disc to brick solid the ladder shaft with spare mass.
M: Maybe he can trap the Sentinel, freeze it in place before it–
S: But there’s no time.
X: Like a recurring nightmare, an explosion of horrible feathery black appendages bursts into Control with lightning-fast twitching speed, centipeding over the ceiling, the walls, grappling blindly, frantically, toward the Foldlight.
S: Merlin is directly in harm’s way, but suddenly, someone else is in front of him, launching between Merlin and the Sentinel’s grasp,
X: buying Merlin… just a little more time.
S: (Felix) “Name the new month after me!”
X: Felix barely has enough time to speak as the Sentinel’s tendrils seize him,
M: and before Merlin can even process this, Felix is gone.
S: And the Sentinel is still very much here.
M: (Merlin) “I need the brick disc!! Where is it?!”
S: The Sentinel is lashing straight at him.
X: Surging forward to buy even just one more moment for Merlin, the Biological Man torpedoes himself across Control toward the Sentinel.
M: Merlin acts on immediate instinct –
S: self-preservation, is what it is –
M: and repels the Biological Man out of the way with a mighty and freshly-charged bocular shove. (Merlin) “NO! Biological FOOL!” Crushing appendages lash around Merlin, their touch carrying the same shocking wrongness as bedrock. All he can see is sunlight. The scent of hot metal fills the air, and in a flash, Merlin is vaporized.
X: Cleo is screaming. Steve is screaming. The Biological Man is screaming. And before they know what they’re doing, Dot makes a lunge for the light switch, but the Sentinel is everywhere.
S: Unstoppable limbs clamp around Dot’s body now.
X: They hear Cleo scream.
S: (Cleo) “Dot!” And a hot searing sunbeam blazes upon them, blinding them completely.
X: But then, [schwing!] Dot feels the Sentinel’s grip go weak. They try to gaze through the insane spotlight glare of the sun, seeing strange floating shapes, a cluster of severed dark limbs drifting in midair, twitching, oozing bubbles of spasming black tearror from their neatly-cut bases.
S: Cleo hovers before them, wild-eyed and panting, holding a sword made of dark mica.
X: That’s nice, Dot thinks. Kind of surprising. Pretty cool. Kind of hot.
M: Amidst the mayhem, glaring sunlight, people getting vaporized one after the other after the other, lashing black centipedal limbs, Cleo – and Cleo alone – sees Steve’s headsack flare.
X: All the way across the control deck, the Foldlight’s switch flips.
S: The Foldlight extinguishes. So does Steve’s noggin.
X: Instantly, the Sentinel loses interest in the situation in that creepy alien way they’ve now seen far too many times, and the huge black silhouette of slithering limbs and whirling tendrils dissolves into the dark orange glare of the sun, and it is gone.
M: All is quiet again, except for the gasping of breath and the pounding of heartbeats.
S: Pollen and leaves swirl in the sudden vacuum left behind by the Sentinel’s disappearance as the airborne fold filling Control slowly resettles.
M: Everett comes floating down out of the ladder shaft, white as a sheet, shell-shocked, trembling.
S: Her gaze hovers over Cleo, Dot, the Biological Man, and Steve – the survivors.
X: (Everett) “Merlin?”
S: she asks hoarsely.
X: (Everett) “Felix?”
M: The Biological Man shakes his head.
X: (Everett) “This is my fault. This is all my fault.”
S: Nobody responds. They don’t even know how to compute this. They don’t even feel grief anymore, just horror and doom.
X: They are absolutely fucked.
M: The red moss on the windows bathes them in shifting clouds of blood-red light.
X: A few dim lights tentatively twinkle to life once again inside Steve’s head as he stirs.
M: He’s visibly trembling in the aftershock of the massacre, but he’s doing his best.
S: (Steve) “Listen, we must not despair. I really need you to not give up here. It’s very important. I know what this is like all too well. But as long as we are still here, there is hope! Persevere! Keep it together, you guys.”
X: The Granddaughter’s eyes are hollow. (Dot) “Keep what together? There is nothing left.”
S: (Steve) “WE – we are left. That’s not nothing! That’s still more than I have had as long as I’ve been here!”
X: Cleo looks emptily at the dark mica sword in her hand.
S: (Cleo) “It’s not enough. We’re not going to make it.”
(Steve) “We will. We must!”
X: (Everett) “We’re fucked,” says Everett, shaking her head.
S: (Steve) “We are not. We can make it. We CAN!”
M: (Merlin???) “Yes, we can.”
(Biological Man) “What??” says the Biological Man, looking to the teletheric around his neck. “M-Merlin??”
S: Everyone in Control freezes. What the fuck?
X: The teletheric crackles again.
M: (Merlin) “Check, check. Yes. Yes, it’s me! Can you hear me?”
X: (Everett) “Uh, y-y-yeah, yes. Yes! Merlin! Hello? Merlin? We can hear you!!” Everett calls. There is an explosion of shouting now as everyone clamors around the teletheric.
S: (Cleo) “Yes, we can hear you!!”
M: The Biological Man holds the teletheric in his hand firmly, sweat glistening on his temples. (Biological Man) “Merlin, where ARE you?!”
(Merlin) “I, uh… I have no idea. But you’re not going to believe what I’m seeing right now.”
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