Narrator 3: Phineas Thatch is attempting to do his own accounting.

Narrator 2: There have been no notaries present for days. No one to keep his account up to date. No one to tell him the value of his actions.

Narrator 3: No one to tell him what to do.

Narrator 1: And if it wasn’t apparent already, we’ll just make it very, very clear for you: that doesn’t feel so good to him. He has not been handling this very well at all. Poor guy.

Narrator 2: But he is TRYING. Trying to be a good little Trust boy and live life the way he was taught. So… this is where we find him.

Narrator 3: Tucked in a little alcove of a kelp maze — almost like a meditation labyrinth — on the grounds of the Lazaretto, Phineas has found a small bench. He’s secreted away a piece of paper, a pencil, and is attempting to enumerate every deed that has transpired since he was last with Spahr.

Narrator 2: Since he was last with the Trust. It’s not like he has anything else to do. He keeps trying to help the Mothers with their preparations for the rescue expedition to Midst, but… they don’t need him.

Narrator 3: He writes that down, though.

Narrator 2: He tried!

Narrator 3: ‘Attempted to assist the Mothers Merciful in mounting aid… healing… response to the doomed islet of Midst,’ he writes… then he scratches that out.

Narrator 2: ‘Made intentions to help abundantly and repeatedly clear despite no one needing me…” He crosses that out, too.

Narrator 1: Well, that IS pretty Valorous, though! HOW Valorous would that be, though? he wonders.

Narrator 3: He circles the crossed-out line and then attempts to add some tick-marks for the number of attempts he’s made to offer his help.

Narrator 2: This is not really part of his expertise; this isn’t something that anyone is trained or supposed to do on their own. This is what notaries are for!

Narrator 1: This is so frustrating! And he has no idea what the current conversion rates are. Obviously the market must be in a terrible, terrible state right now. He has no way of really knowing what that means from way down here deep in the Fold. But this is a… this is a fool’s errand! He-how… how are you supposed to do this?

Narrator 2: His heart is beating very fast.

Narrator 1: He doesn’t know what he’s worth anymore.

Narrator 3: The tip of the pencil snaps off against the paper.

Narrator 2: That’s okay! He can just sharpen it! Everything’s fine! There is a solution to every problem!

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Fuck!” he yells.

Narrator 2: He stands up. Hurls the paper and the pencil to the ground. Rubs his hands through his hair. His palms are sweating. He starts to pace back and forth.

Narrator 3: He looks disheveled. Like shit, really.

Narrator 2: He’s missing pieces from his armor and it is barely staying on. It looks… well, not very heroic anymore. It’s actually kind of pathetic the way he keeps having to hike it up onto his shoulder.

Narrator 1: He doesn’t FEEL very heroic either.

Narrator 2: He looks like a decomposing shell of an Adsecla.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I… I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do!” Phineas gets down on all fours and attempts to gather together the pages that he’s been scribbling on and put them into a loose pile. At least if he carries this with him… if he ever gets back to the Trust…

Narrator 1: And as he is about to get to his feet again, he starts briefly. Because towering above him, directly ahead, is a black-clad horned figure.

Narrator 2: A Mother.

Narrator 1: Gazing down at him.

Narrator 2: Hands clasped in gentle inquiry. [As the Mother]: “Excuse me, young man. Are you in need of some help? You appear to be spiraling into a panic attack.” She bends down towards him. Offers a hand to help him to his feet.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “No, I-I don’t need help. No. Thank… thanks, though. Thanks?”

Narrator 2: The faceless black-shrouded head tilts quizzically to one side. [Mother:] “Are you sure?”

[A beat. Phineas takes a long, slow breath.]

Narrator 1: You can do it, Phineas.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I…”

Narrator 1: Come on.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “The truth is…”

Narrator 1: Come on…

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I-sure. I guess.”

Narrator 3: (Mother) “You would like help?”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I…”

Narrator 1: ‘Do not show weakness.’ It echoes in his mind. Needing help places a burden on others, and therefore incurs Caenum.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I… I don’t have…”

Narrator 2: (Mother) “Young man, this is what we do here. You are not a burden by needing help. I am offering to help you.”

Narrator 1: The feeling of this… he’s… he’s not prepared for this. Someone WANTS to help him? Someone…

Narrator 2: (Mother) “In fact, you are likely more of a burden to others in your current state if left untreated. A burden… or worse.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I mean… sure. I would… I guess I would like some help, but I… I’m not sick. I don’t have… any of the conditions that I’ve seen you treating here.”

Narrator 2: (Mother) “I understand. We do not merely treat maladies of the Fold here. We treat maladies WITH the Fold, in fact, in many cases. Not every ailment is something inflicted by the Fold, nor is everything something that can be seen on the surface.”

Narrator 1: She extends a black-clad graceful, spidery, almost skeletal hand to him. “Come, follow me.”

Narrator 3: And Phineas, having — again — literally no better idea of what to do… takes her hand.

Narrator 2: The Mother, who introduces herself to him as Mother Anguish, leads him into the Lazaretto — through the many spiraling, incomprehensible corridors. Up several flights of stairs.

Narrator 1: Past many grant chambers: a room full of mirrors, a room full of gently-humming machines, a room full of super-weird anemones.

Narrator 2: A room full of people fixing bicycles?

Narrator 1: A room full of gently-sleeping bodies hovering in midair.

Narrator 2: They push through a doorway curtained in heavy, dark gauze into… well, not what he was expecting: not some dark, drab treatment room. A greenhouse. Verdant. Lush.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Whoa…”

Narrator 2: Phineas gasps a little at the beauty of it. The unexpected foliage.

Narrator 1: It is a place of dark serenity, still completely suffused with the inky Fold. This is no solarium; there is no bright light shining through green leaves in this place. It is an inky cocoon.

Narrator 2: The high ornate walls of glass don’t look out into bright unlight, but instead… the inky swirling void of the Fold. And a broad balcony looks directly out into the vast nothingness. Moths flit in and out freely,

Narrator 3: perching here and there on glowing tendrils of lichen,

Narrator 2: their velvety black wings spotted with bioluminescent blue glowing spots.

Narrator 1: Several other Mothers move about the chamber silently, going about their occult business, tending to the plant life, watering the greens, pruning abstract orchids with silver instruments.

Narrator 2: One Mother is tending to a rack of jars, each one containing a gently glowing blue and black cocoon. Mother Anguish leads Phineas over to the Mother tending to these jars. [Mother Anguish]: “Mother Trauma, may we have your assistance?”

Narrator 1: (as Mother Trauma) “If it’s quick, yes.” This Mother, identical in garb to all the others, turns his veiled gaze to look upon Phineas.

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish) “We require the use of a chrysalis that is nearly ready to eclose, if you have any.”

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “Several. To what purpose? What ails you?” the Mother asks Phineas directly. “What is your plight?”

Narrator 2: Both Mothers turn their indistinguishable heads towards him. [Mother Anguish]: “Go on. How would you describe your ailment?”

Narrator 1: Boy, how DO you describe this?

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I… I just… don’t…”

Narrator 1: Actually that does kind of sum it up! But really, though: what does ail him?

Narrator 2: He is struggling to find the words to describe this yawning… sense of… purposelessness.

Narrator 1: He’s super depressed, that’s for sure!

Narrator 2: Oh, yes, he’s extremely depressed, and, uh, feels that his entire life has been a waste and he’s never been right about anything in his entire life. And…

Narrator 1: Let’s be perfectly honest here: he feels insane, catastrophic guilt.

Narrator 2: He’s a failure.

Narrator 1: Loss. Abandonment. Terror.

Narrator 2: No one likes him. No one SHOULD like him.

Narrator 1: He is about as low as it is possible for a person to feel right about now.

Narrator 2: And so he says:

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I… I don’t… feel… very… good…”

[A beat.]

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “…about who I am.”

Narrator 3: (Mother Trauma); “I see,” says the Mother. “I have just the thing.” And Mother Trauma turns to his specimens — the racks upon racks of innumerable enclosed moth cocoons —  and with one dexterous long shrouded hand reaches far up into the back of one shelf and plucks one particular canister from the array, and brings it down gently, and holds it before Phineas.

Narrator 2: This chrysalis more transparent than the others… the wings of the creature inside, visible, pressing against the membrane, glowing intermittently.

Narrator 1: And inside this glass canister — as in all canisters of this kind — there flickers and pulsates a gentle, black form that Phineas is now all too familiar with. Encircling the chrysalis is a small, gentle, tearror.

[A fearful silence as Phineas recognizes the tearror.]

Narrator 2: Phineas wonders if he should be alarmed for a moment… but it seems that this is all perfectly expected to the Mothers. Mother Anguish is helping him down into an upholstered arm chair. [Mother Anguish]: “Would you like to remove your armor? You may be more comfortable.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Uh, no, uh… thanks. Um. What exactly are… are we going to do?”

Narrator 1: Mother Trauma, just across the chamber, is affixing a valve and a hose (and what looks an awful lot like a gas mask) to the top of the moth jar.

Narrator 2: Phineas turns his gaze back to Mother Anguish. [Mother Anguish]: “This is a species of moth native to the Fold. I don’t know if you are aware, but many species of flora and fauna here in the Fold use light to communicate. You could almost think of light as the language that we share with the Fold. It is one way we have to communicate our intentions and our needs to this vast… consciousness? Force? Whatever you would like to call it.”

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “She’s oversimplifying.”

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish) “Yes, it’s very complicated, Mother Trauma.”

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “The layperson could hardly hope to understand.”

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish) “He is a specialist in these moths. In any case, these creatures know far more about the Fold than we do, even with our generations of study… for all our research and all our observations pale in comparison to the instincts of these simple creatures. This chrysalis is ready to hatch. It is communicating this to the Fold on some level, whether or not it knows it consciously.”

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “Are you ready, Phineas,” Mother Trauma asks, holding out to the canister, “to transform… as well?”

Narrator 3: And Phineas makes his own choice: “Yes.”

Narrator 2: Nowhere to go from here but up, he figures.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I consent.”

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish) “What you are about to experience may at times be intense, but it is important for you to know that you are leading this experience. You are in charge, not us. If at any point you wish to stop, simply let us know and we will pull you out. We will be accompanying you as your support. As your guides. But this is YOUR journey.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I… understand.”

Narrator 2: He does not understand.

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “Relax, child, if you know how…”

Narrator 2: Phineas, despite these assurances, can’t help but feel a sense of trepidation as the gas mask is strapped to his face, the tube feeding directly into this canister of bugs and tearrors. (A single bug and a single tearror. It’s very scary. It’s very weird for him.)

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “Breathe slowly and deeply,” Mother Trauma instructs.

Narrator 2: He HAS been holding his breath up to this point.

[Phineas exhales a long, shaky breath.]

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “IN, not OUT.”

[Phineas breathes in deeply.]

Narrator 1: And Phineas inhales, and before his very eyes can see quite clearly the dark, swirling tearror inside of the canister…

Narrator 2: …siphon up the hose… into his mouth… into his head… into HIM.

Narrator 3: And it’s not unpleasant.

Narrator 2: It’s not what he was expecting.

Narrator 3: Almost like being in a sauna. The hot steam.

Narrator 2: It has a relaxing effect, the opposite of what he thought it would, and his vision begins to dim. He feels himself sinking back into this plush armchair that they’ve seated him in. He sees the glowing blue canister before him and to either side the tall, indistinguishable silhouettes of Mother Trauma (the mean one) and Mother Anguish (the nicer one).

Narrator 1: The greenhouse around him seems to twist and coil, to expand and contract and then… to implode.

[A surreal implosion. A change of state.]

Narrator 2: It is gone… or HE is gone. He has gone somewhere else. [Mother Anguish, distantly, echoing]: “You will feel disoriented. That is to be expected. Do not be alarmed.” He hears the voice of Mother Anguish. “Simply find your bearings and begin to move forward in whatever way that makes sense for you.” Phineas begins to see… things. It’s not just darkness. There are things to see here. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “There are… doors?”

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish, distantly) “You want to open the fourth door on the seventh level. Can you see that?”

Narrator 1: He DOES see that. This is very incomprehensible. There’s a figure floating towards him?

Narrator 2: What are those things on the walls?

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “What are… those?”

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish, distantly) “Oh, don’t speak to those. Don’t worry, just walk right on past. Walk also past the paintings and any sounds you might hear coming from inside the walls. You will want to go into the light.” That’s never good.

Narrator 1: Well, there’s definitely some kind of light growing brighter and stranger all around him, before him, ahead of him…

Narrator 2: It looks like unlight.

Narrator 3: It is almost comforting to him, and Phineas lets it envelop his experience.

Narrator 2: And in a flash, he is surrounded by familiar sensations: by hot, warm, desert-y smells.

Narrator 1: Phineas is on Midst, standing in the bustling main street of Stationary Hill,

Narrator 2: as it was not so very long ago,

Narrator 1: the moon hovering overhead, the red rocks, the town of Stationary Hill surrounding him, everything moving in a…

Narrator 3: …hazy kind of slow motion.

Narrator 2: As he gets his bearings, Phineas realizes that the two Mothers are here with him, standing out starkly in this scene, clearly not belonging there. They’re looking around with a curious sort of scientific interest at everything that they see.

Narrator 1: Mother Trauma nods understandingly. “Ah, yes, this does make sense.”

Narrator 2: Glancing up at the sky, they observe the moon, intact, hanging there. [Mother Anguish]: “So where are we, Phineas? When are we?”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Well, uh… I… this is… Midst… um… just… not… not long ago at all. But before… the moon… exploded. Before the tearror.”

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “Yes, clearly!”

Narrator 2: says Mother Trauma.

Narrator 3: Mother Anguish nods and casts her eyes around.

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish) “It doesn’t occur to any of these people that the moon is about to fall out of the sky.”

Narrator 1: Trauma laughs. [Mother Trauma:] “They’re distracted. There’s a lot going on. And moons obviously don’t usually do anything so dramatic.”

Narrator 2: In a flash, the scene shifts: in the sky, the smoking shards of the moon slowly plummeting in slow motion. In the streets, people frozen in the middle of their attempt to flee for their lives. [Mother Anguish]: “Ah, yes, this would be traumatic for anyone.”

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “But nevertheless, this isn’t what’s troubling you, Phineas. Not really.” A statement moreso than a question.

Narrator 2: Mother Trauma points his hand up into the sky at an object that is rendered with far more clarity than any of the bleary, hazy, dreamlike images surrounding them: the golden flagship of the Consector.

Narrator 3: Oh, yes, that IS what’s bothering him.

Narrator 2: THAT… and the clearly-visible (though distant) form of Jonas Spahr,

Narrator 3: visor low, leaning from the gangplank of the ship,

Narrator 1: leaving Phineas behind. It DOES have to do with that man. So much of this does. Phineas feels his surroundings dissolving again, the ground beneath his feet shifting, the kaleidoscope of colors around him morphing and smearing into a new scenario.

Narrator 2: The Mothers told him he would be in control and maybe on some subconscious level he is, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way; he feels like he’s being carried by a current. Carried down, down, downcurrent.

Narrator 1: Something is leading him. Something inside of himself.

Narrator 2: He feels a growing sense of… resistance. Wait, where is he going?

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

Narrator 2: He opens his eyes again. He hadn’t realized he shut them. Well, the whole concept of eyes and a body — it’s all rather… pretty irrelevant here.

Narrator 1: This is some moth!

Narrator 2: He is no longer on Midst.

Narrator 1: No, now he’s somewhere much, much worse.

Narrator 2: Somewhere much more familiar, in some ways, though occluded by the haze of memory.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “The Delta.”

Narrator 2: Now for Phineas, this memory… it’s not very visual. It’s more emotional. When he lived here as a child, he was too young to remember many things clearly. But what he does remember is not good. It’s horrifying. It is where all the detritus of the cosmos washes up at the end of its journey along the Fold’s current. The end of the universe, in many ways.

Narrator 3: Here the light is a bizarre, oily smear: a strange hazy sunset that curves down toward an indeterminable point in the fixed distance.

Narrator 2: The horizon hurts the brain to look at. The surface of the Fold ocean here upon which Phineas and the Mothers are standing is a choked, muddy morass.

Narrator 3: They’re all knee-deep…

Narrator 2: …in some horrible mixture of coagulated tearror and pieces of islets and ships and all the garbage that has washed downstream over the years.

Narrator 1: Structures, scrap metal, buildings, vehicles, bodies.

Narrator 2: Here is where tearrors go to die as they roil their way down the current, picking up more and more mutations, becoming more and more incomprehensible and chaotic. Here is where they all end up. And the people that live here… are the most unfortunate.

Narrator 1: People… like Phineas.

Narrator 2: Phineas doesn’t remember much. He knows that he was alone. He knows that he had no family. No one to look after him.

Narrator 3: Fear surges within him.

Narrator 2: They say that structure is important for developing children. Some sense of safety, even if it’s a small pocket.

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “Ah, yes,” Mother Trauma says, looking around the horrific landscape. “Patients we receive from the Delta are invariably… difficult to treat.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I don’t want to be here. I… I want to go. I want to leave.”

Narrator 2: Mother Anguish looks towards Trauma. [Mother Anguish:] “Should we pull him out?”

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “No, it appears someone already has.”

Narrator 2: Phineas looks up. He has fallen to his hands and knees at some point, up to his elbows in the muck.

Narrator 1: And standing before him, as once he did in Phineas’s own past…

Narrator 2: (Phineas) “Jonas…”

Narrator 2: The young Adsecla Jonas Spahr is reaching out a hand to him, having come here with his own Consector many years ago.

Narrator 3: Some mission of mercy for the press, no doubt, but all the difference in the world to Phineas.

Narrator 1: Spahr smiles upon him. [As Spahr]: “Give me your hand. It’s going to be okay now.”

Narrator 2: Phineas reaches out his hand… and takes Jonas’s.

Narrator 3: As Jonas pulls him up, Phineas incurs the first and greatest debt of his life, the balance of which still hangs around his neck to this day.

[A beat.]

Narrator 1: Ooooh, this hurts!

Narrator 3: He hadn’t thought about THAT in a long time.

Narrator 2: Obviously, the memory is still with him on a deep level, but seeing it that clearly again, as if it was really happening…. The scene dissolves once again.

Narrator 1: Phineas is feeling a momentum now. He IS guiding this story. Not consciously, perhaps, but this is his doing. And he knows where he must go next.

Narrator 3: And Phineas is aware of the scene resolving around him: The Black Candle Cabaret.

Narrator 2: He is here not as an embodied memory, but as an observer… almost as though he had just walked in the front door.

Narrator 3: With Spahr.

Narrator 2: To see HIMSELF there at the counter. At the bar. With… Sherman. He’s not sure if he can watch this.

Narrator 3: He knows he has to.

[Distant sounds of struggle. Screams. Violence.]

Narrator 1: He watches the scene unfold slowly and strangely from an observer’s perspective. A display of horror.

Narrator 3: Brutal. Crystalline.

Narrator 2: Removed from the immediate panic and fear and desperation of that moment, watching himself as an observer, he sees with a new clarity what he did.

Narrator 1: The scene unfolds. He watches himself seize Sherman and drag him from the Cabaret out onto the street. He follows.

Narrator 2: Here is where the memory diverges from reality somewhat, for as he enters the streets of Stationary Hill, following himself, the streets are practically empty. In fact, only two bystanders to be seen: there distantly, a woman he now recognizes. Lark. Staring straight at him. Not the HIM-him… the… you know, the memory-him. The “him” dragging Sherman. And Lark is holding behind her — protectively, defensively, turning the young girl’s head away with her hand — Tzila.

Narrator 1: Meeting Lark’s ghostly, frozen, spectral gaze, Phineas asks:

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “How do I fix this? I HAVE to fix this.”

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “A question raised often by Trustees, I find,” Trauma is heard to say. “You cannot repair what is done, Phineas.”

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish) “Deeds don’t cancel one another out in reality,”

Narrator 1: says Mother Anguish, watching Phineas closely.

Narrator 2: (Mother Anguish) “All you can do is choose a new direction from here.”

Narrator 3: The trio find themselves in a final scene: the Arca chamber deep within the bowels of the Central Vault,

Narrator 2: the towering pillars of Valor and Caenum flanking Phineas as he kneels there in his gleaming, brand-new Adsecla armor, Spahr watching proudly,

[A distant, dreamlike crowd cheers and celebrates.]

Narrator 1: witnessed by rows and rows of the Trust’s most Valorous citizens,

Narrator 2: while Senior Notary Fleit stands before him and intones formally:

Narrator 1: (as Fleit, distant and dreamlike) “…do you, Phineas Thatch, pledge yourself to the sacred duty of the Prime Adsecla, to rooting out Caenum in the cosmos, to cleansing your own Caenum through your noble endeavors, and to ensuring the eternal flow of Valor?”

Narrator 3: At the time, this was an occasion of joy. Of such accomplishment. But in THIS time, this space, this echo of that moment, Phineas is left with a feeling… of revulsion.

[A beat.]

Narrator 2: All he can think about are the dreams he had in that moment, and where they ultimately led him. What it has brought him.

Narrator 1: Where HE… brought HIMSELF.

Narrator 2: He gave everything he had to the Trust. He followed the rules. He did what he was supposed to do.

Narrator 1: Until his own desperation to succeed… led him to ruin.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “This is not what I want. It was not how I thought it would be…”

Narrator 2: The Senior Notary is waiting for Phineas’s answer.

Narrator 1: Will Phineas accept this high office and do his utmost to uphold the will of the Trust?

[A break in the music. A release of tension.]

Narrator 2: And he opens his eyes.

Narrator 3: His REAL eyes.

Narrator 2: Mother Anguish leaning over him, unbuckling the mask around his head,

Narrator 1: the greenhouse quiet and glowing gently around them.

Narrator 2: As soon as he is free of the mask, Phineas is on his feet. The armor has been cutting into his body as he sat in this chair for who knows how long, cutting off his circulation. It hurts him.

Narrator 1: Mother Trauma is unsealing the jar. The chrysalis inside is no more; a damp, withered new moth clings to the glass,

Narrator 2: the papery, tissuey husk of the cocoon discarded on the bottom of the canister.

Narrator 1: The Mother’s dark hand reaches inside,

Narrator 2: gently, caringly.

Narrator 1: (Mother Trauma) “There we go, little one,” Trauma says, raising the delicate, newly-emerged moth on the jar,

Narrator 2: letting it struggle. It will be ready to fly soon. Phineas is aware that Mother Anguish is putting a steadying hand on his arm. [Mother Anguish]: “Now, caution, Phineas. You are likely to be feeling intense emotions at this moment. So please remember that your journey has only just begun. A cure is never complete. You have only taken the first step towards your metamorphosis, and it is up to you to continue going in that direction.”

Narrator 1: Mother Trauma, leading the way, steps out onto the balcony overlooking the black abyss of the Fold… and places the newborn moth on the edge of the balcony railing.

Narrator 2: It flutters its wings, stretching them out, drying them. Testing them.

Narrator 3: A gentle blue strobe emits along the length of its thorax.

Narrator 2: Phineas watches as the moth completes its preparations and takes off into the air — into the Fold — fluttering away into the darkness.

Narrator 3: As the moth flies away and as the Mothers watch him impenetrably, Phineas takes a deep breath… looks out into the darkness… and casts what remains of his armor over the edge into the abyss.