12 characters: Priest, Renata, Announcer, Stone, Lawrence, Larissa, Tojo, Therapist, Peters, Hernandez, Marissa, Computer
Click on a character's name to get their lines highlighted.
Renata (43 lines, 664 words, 20.89%) - [Kathleen Li] Renata Mutombo is the mayor for 22 years now. Now around 50 years old. Ambitious and competent. No longer in campign mode, she should sound more natural and less practiced than before.
Marissa (36 lines, 443 words, 13.94%) - [Virginia Hargrove] Communications Chief Marissa Flint is 48 years old and enjoys the responsibilities of her new job. She's now married to Arash Ahmadi.
Larissa (21 lines, 368 words, 11.58%) - [Lindsay Townsend] Chief Mech Larissa Flint is now 40 years old and much more experienced than last season.
Tojo (18 lines, 288 words, 9.06%) - [Gwenith Knight] Farah Tojo is a bright young adult who's an apprentice mechanic. Brings a youthful eagerness and excitement to the job.
Stone (22 lines, 433 words, 13.62%) - [John Gaunce] Doctor Stone has become ever more wrapped up in his research over the years and resents being torn away from it.
Lawrence (6 lines, 122 words, 3.84%) - [James Lorenz] Chief Lawrence heads up astronomy section.
Hernandez (16 lines, 244 words, 7.68%) - [Lindsay White] Eva Hernandez is now acting as an aide and go-between for the acting mayor.
Priest (6 lines, 303 words, 9.53%) - [David Nagel] The asteroid's sole religious services provider is 22 years older and wiser than last season, but his role hasn't changed much.
Peters (13 lines, 117 words, 3.68%) - [David Loftus] Salish Peters, chief mechanic. Great-grandfather was the first mission commander, and he never tires of telling people so and relating the stories of Earth he remembers hearing from great-grandpa. Sensible, direct, kind of average working Joe. Now about to turn 70, he has a husband and two grown kids.
Therapist (7 lines, 127 words, 4%) - [Ahmad Joudeh] Doctor Tam Peters is the husband of Salish Peters and therapist to all.
Computer (1 line, 12 words, 0.38%) - [Ty DollaTree] The voice of 253 Mathilde's computer system.
Announcer (3 lines, 57 words, 1.79%) - [Erin Suminsby] Reads opening, closing and credits.
Script format: Margined | Marginless (for phone viewing)
Listen along as you read:
1 SOUND: arboretum, solemn church-like crowd
2
Priest:
It's difficult to hold a memorial service for people who aren't dead. I've never attempted one before. But in the vastness of interstellar space, at relativistic speeds, anyone who isn't here with us is effectively cut off from us forever. So we must attempt to mourn their loss, or our loss of them, so that we can move on with our lives in some fashion.
The tragedy here is that there are so many. We lost fifty seven people -- fifty nine if we lump Marcus Flint and Arash Ahmadi with them though their circumstances differed. Over the coming year I'd like to do a separate service for each of them to do their memory justice, but today we have to deal with them collectively.
All of us lost family, many of us lost close family. I lost one of my daughters and my sister. Our mayor lost her father. Those wounds will never fully heal. But maybe it'll help to imagine them making it back to Earth and being given a hero's welcome. They'll be the first interstellar explorers to make it back, and they'll bring back stories -- our stories, tales of their lives with us that'll be repeated the world over and inspire box office record shattering holotainments. Whether you believe in a literal heaven or not, our loved ones are on their way to a beautiful blue planet where they'll be welcomed, looked after, and safe.
Mayor, you wanted to say a few words?
3 Renata: Yes, thank you. I want to let all of you know that I feel what you feel. We mourn together. I'm going to have to ask a lot of you because we're shorthanded and still in existential danger, not because I'm heartless.
4 Priest: To consecrate our loss, I ask each of you to come by the temple later with a token of your loved one to offer as a sacrifice for the fire.
5 SOUND: opening theme
6 Announcer: Quiet Please dot org presents Two Fifty Three Mathilde. In the early 22nd century, the crewed asteroid 253 Mathilde left the solar system on an interstellar mission. Generations later, after a hundred and fourteen years, a new star system stretches out in front of them…
7 Announcer: Episode 18 - Fallout
8 SOUND: mayor's office room tone, door opens, footsteps enter
9 Renata: Yes, Doctor? What can I do for you?
10 Stone: [with difficulty] Mayor, I've reached a difficult decision.
11 Renata: Go on.
12 Stone: I'm submitting my resignation from medical practice. I can help train my replacement, and I can continue doing some medical and scientific research, but I'll no longer be our doctor.
13 Renata: I'm sorry to hear that Doctor... if I can still call you that. May I ask what brought this on?
14 Stone: What happened to Ahmadi was my fault.
15 Renata: As far as we know, he's still alive. Didn't you hear he stowed away with Marcus Flint?
16 Stone: He suffered a fate worse than death. And it's my fault he was able to sabotage us.
17 Renata: We wouldn't have been able to resist the invasion anyway, and you helped us repel them. And your nanobot idea may have saved us... I mean, they're not after us yet.
18 Stone: Or it may not have done anything, or if successful it may get the people we left behind stranded so they can't be taken home to Earth, or it may even get them killed in retribution. But that's not the point. The point is I didn't care enough about my patient to treat him properly.
19 Renata: It's just one lapse.
20 Stone: Go shake hands with Eva Hernandez if you want another example.
21 Renata: That was just an impossibly difficult decision that had to be made in the moment to save Peters.
22 Stone: I wish it were, but it wasn't -- it was a really easy decision, second nature to me from so much practice thinking of people as just means to ends. These two situations, they were just symptoms of the real problem that's been growing within me for a long time.
23 Renata: Oh?
24 Stone: When I was young, I really cared about people and my experiments were a means to help them. Somewhere along the line I got so wrapped up in the experiments that the people became just a means to further my experiments. I've stopped thinking about my patients as human beings, and when their ailments aren't novel I just see them as boring distractions. That scares me -- I don't know why it didn't scare me before, but it does now. If I were younger maybe I'd try to plow through it and keep going while trying to work on myself, but I'm in my 60s and I need to take a step back from work to rediscover my humanity.
25 SOUND: a pause for thought
26 Renata: Can you recommend any potential replacements?
27 Stone: Sergey Kochergan or Yen Singh would be good, ideally both to give you some redundancy. They both apprenticed for me a while back, so they've got a head start.
28 Renata: [sadly] I wish we had enough people for redundancy, a lot of people are going to be doing a lot of multitasking as it is. We've lost so many.
29 Stone: And I'm partially responsible for that. I'm sorry.
30 Renata: I don't blame you, Doctor.
31 Stone: You can call me John now.
32 Renata: [uncomfortably] That's going to take some getting used to.
33 SOUND: alert beeps
34 Renata: Sorry... John... but it looks like this is urgent, I've got to take it.
35 Stone: No problem.
36 SOUND: Stone walks out, door opens and closes for him, while Renata presses accept
37 Lawrence: [sfx: processed] Mayor, I'm sorry to say we're not out of the woods yet.
38 Renata: *sighs* It would've been too much to hope for. Are they coming after us, then?
39 Lawrence: Their asteroid is decelerating hard now, they may be turning around to head for Earth. But they've sent a little parting gift after us. A hunk of rock.
40 Larissa: [sfx: processed] We think it's a relativistic kill vehicle, mayor.
41 Renata: Can we outrun it?
42 Larissa: No.
43 Renata: Outmaneuver it?
44 Larissa: It has an engine on it that's continually accelerating it, so we can't just step out of the way and expect it not to follow. Being so much smaller than us, it's way more maneuverable than we are.
45 Renata: So what'll happen if it hits us, how big an explosion are we talking?
46 Larissa: That depends how fast it's going...
47 Lawrence: I've got a preliminary estimate based on the current distance, course, and rate of acceleration. It's going to reach 80% of lightspeed.
48 Renata: We're not that far from them yet, wouldn't it hit us before it got up that much speed?
49 Larissa: Because it's so small it accelerates a lot faster than us... but you'd still be right, if they hadn't created more distance before launch and then used a purposely curved course to allow more time to accelerate. That's why I say it's a relativistic kill vehicle and not an intercept vessel.
50 Tojo: That, and anybody on board would be dead from the kind of acceleration it's doing.
51 Lawrence: Anyway, there are two possibilities with the impact. It could fragment Mathilde into a million pieces, or it could leave her mostly intact with a huge crater, and molten hot for centuries. Either way, we're all dead at the moment of impact so it's not our problem.
52 Renata: How long do we have?
53 Lawrence: Twenty, twenty-five hours, probably. I'll get you a more precise number soon.
54 Renata: Chief Flint, I'm putting you in charge of coming up with a plan. It should go without saying that all people and resources are at your disposal, and that none of us will be getting any sleep.
55 SOUND: end scene
56 SOUND: Peters quarters room tone, door opens and footsteps enter, plops down on couch
57 Therapist: How are you feeling, Salish?
58 Peters: There's that question again.
59 Therapist: It's important.
60 Peters: [emotional] I can't believe they're gone. That we'll never see our kids again. How are you so composed about it?
61 Therapist: I remind myself that Aniket and Judy are in a better place now.
62 Peters: Are they?
63 Therapist: They're safe. They're not about to be blown to smithereens like we are. They're headed back to Earth where they'll probably live long happy lives and tell our grandchildren all about us.
64 Peters: [emotional] Doesn't it bother you that we'll never see them again?
65 Therapist: Of course it does. Frankly, I'm feeling a bit resentful about your role in that.
66 Peters: What?
67 Therapist: [resentful] It's your fault we're not over there with Aniket and Judy right now, your fault we rebelled and took back Mathilde and ran off. You could've cooperated, could've just kept out of it.
68 Peters: [incredulous] I was fighting for our freedom!
69 Therapist: Call it what you will, the result is the same: your actions cut us off from our kids forever. Not to mention probably getting us killed shortly.
70 Peters: *non-verbal noise of frustrated disagreement*
71 SOUND: end scene
72 SOUND: cafe
73 Hernandez: [calling out from a distance while approaching] Doctor Stone!
74 Stone: Not anymore.
75 Hernandez: I heard. May I sit here?
76 Stone: Sure, Hernandez.
77 SOUND: pulling out chair, sitting down, pulling it up
78 Hernandez: It's a hundred and twenty yuan for the veggie burger?! That went up fast.
79 SOUND: order processing sound after she taps it on the table
80 Stone: It's the worker shortage, with so many of the people who were growing our food lost they can't harvest much and the law of supply and demand does the rest.
81 Hernandez: Huh. I suppose you could help out there.
82 Stone: Maybe.
83 Hernandez: A different kind of work might do you good.
84 Stone: I'll consider it. Say, not to be indelicate again, but isn't it kind of hard to eat a burger with one hand?
85 Hernandez: A bit, but the prosthetic helps hold it.
86 Stone: You know there are options that'd let you control it via neural interface?
87 Hernandez: I'm not that eager to have someone cut my head open at the moment, especially you, no offense.
88 Stone: None taken.
89 Hernandez: Do you have any other plans?
90 Stone: Not really.
91 Hernandez: You should see Dr. Peters.
92 Stone: I will.
93 Hernandez: Look, what you did was wrong and nothing you can say will bring my hand back. But the fact that you've realized it and taken responsibility means I think I can try to forgive you... if I see you really change.
94 Stone: Realizing there's something wrong with my emotional responses to situations is a lot easier than correcting it.
95 SOUND: engine room?
96 Larissa: I wish we still had the ship.
97 Tojo: Why?
98 Larissa: With the right fuel load it could be fast and maneuverable enough to steer it into a collision with their relativistic kill vehicle.
99 Tojo: We do have a ship, Chief.
100 Larissa: What?
101 Tojo: Two ships, in fact.
102 Larissa: Oh, yeah, the ones left behind when the aliens left. I wonder why they were left.
103 Tojo: Maybe they were supposed to be piloted by the ones we killed.
104 Larissa: Or maybe they're broken... let's hope not.
105 SOUND: multicom activation
106 Marissa: [sfx: processed] What's up, sis?
107 Larissa: Marissa, you're our languages expert. I need you to go out to one of the alien shuttles with apprentice Tojo and see if you can figure out how to fly it.
108 Marissa: Right now?
109 Larissa: Our lives probably depend on it.
110 Marissa: Okay.
111 SOUND: end call
112 Tojo: Problem almost solved, then?
113 Larissa: Hopefully it's a step on the immediate problem, but just intercepting this one rock won't be enough, they'd just send another... and if we pull this off we can only do it twice. Somehow we'll have to make them think they got us.
114 Tojo: Or make them think we've got our own RKVs we're using to stop theirs, and might aim at them if they persist. Which shouldn't be too hard since they were already worried that's what we'd be up to.
115 Larissa: Peace via mutually assured destruction, or the bluff of it?
116 Tojo: Worked for Earth.
117 Larissa: I'd hate to bet our lives on them making a stupid mistake. But maybe their pondering the matter will buy us some time, and time will buy us distance, and distance could bring us safety. A little rock can only eat so much of itself for fuel, and it might take them a lot longer to launch a bigger one.
118 Tojo: Computer, calculate maximum kinetic impact of a relativistic kill vehicle similar to the one currently pursuing us, if launched from the other asteroid a week from now. Choose size and acceleration for maximum damage, but constrain size to plausibly be an unnecessary chunk of the other asteroid. Assume we're trying to evade at our maximum acceleration and their acceleration remains as at present.
119 Computer: Maximum impact 1.25 times ten to the sixteenth Joules, or 3 megatons of TNT.
120 Larissa: That's a moderately sized nuclear bomb... and they know where our base is to target.
121 Tojo: We have another ship to block that one, though. And we can evacuate the upper levels and work on shielding.
122 Larissa: Well, get on out there and help Marissa so we can make these calculations matter.
123 SOUND: end scene with long transition
124 SOUND: alien ship interior, sounds of working
125 Marissa: I feel like a three year old who sneaked into a fusion plant trying to understand how all the controls work before I know how to read or what any of the technical background is.
126 Tojo: [with wonder] I feel like a kid in a candy store holding an all you can eat pass. This is amazing technology, so much to learn and try to copy.
127 Marissa: It won't be much use if we're all dead, so keep your mind on the task at hand.
128 Tojo: Yes Chief. From the layout, I believe this section would all be movement controls.
129 Marissa: That agrees with my interpretation of the glyph patterns. But how do we fly?
130 Tojo: I don't think there's any way to figure this out in time without experimenting. We'll have to take risks.
131 Marissa: And hope we don't get ourselves killed, yeah. Well, I'm thinking this one looks most like a launch button. You?
132 Tojo: I'll go along with that.
133 Marissa: Brace yourself, here goes...
134 SOUND: button press, hologram activation sound
135 Marissa: Well, that was anticlimactic.
136 Tojo: This looks like a holographic map of local space. There's the Tau Ceti system.... here's Mathilde.
137 Marissa: Maybe it's asking us to choose a destination. Pick something really close.
138 SOUND: pinch selection
139 Tojo: Okay, I think it's selected.
140 SOUND: tap selection
141 Marissa: And confirmed.
142 Marissa: But we're still not moving.
143 Tojo: Let's try to think like we're hexapods with trunks. What control would we want to use for takeoff? Maybe to control the speed...
144 Marissa: What about this long cylinder? Looks like there's room to raise and lower it, and it'd be easy to grasp with a trunk.
145 Tojo: Give it a try... it's on bottom now, maybe that means landed.
146 SOUND: lifting metal cylinder, gentle engine activation and rise
147 Marissa: [excited] That's done it, we're moving!
148 SOUND: mayor's office
149 Marissa: We have good news and bad news.
150 Renata: What's the good news?
151 Marissa: We've figured out how to fly the shuttles and we think we can crash one into the oncoming RKV at a sufficient speed.
152 Renata: That's fantastic! And the bad news?
153 Marissa: We haven't figured out how to automate it.
154 Renata: [grasping the impact] So you mean...
155 Marissa: Yes, somebody's going to have to pilot it.
156 Renata: You can't set the course and then jump out?
157 Marissa: We can't get it to automatically respond to the RKV's course corrections, and it's sure to try to evade an impact. If you could give us another day, we could probably figure that out...
158 Renata: I can't do that, we'll all be dead tomorrow. This has to launch in the next hour to give us a chance to escape serious damage from the relativistic debris field.
159 Marissa: Then one of us has to die, mayor. Your choice who.
160 Renata: [gravely] Understood. Give me a few minutes.
161 SOUND: transition music
162 SOUND: hall background, same as ex-mayor resignation speech
163
Renata:
[sfx: loudspeaker] We've lost so much -- every one of us has lost so much. We're irrevocably separated from our families. Some of you are asking yourselves, was it all worth it?
You all know the latest existential threat we face. We think we've found a way to save our world, but one of us has to die to do it. It's up to me to make that choice, but there was only one real option -- I can't send another person on a suicide mission, this is something I have to do myself. So I'm saying goodbye to all of you, friends, family and colleagues. If our time weren't so fleeting, if we weren't counting down the minutes to our destruction, I'd tell each of you personally what you've meant to me over the years. But the clock is ticking, so I have to tell all of you at once. May we meet again in another life.
164 SOUND: temple
165 Priest: Welcome, mayor.
166 Renata: I've only got a minute.
167 Priest: I suppose it would be redundant to ask you to make a sacrifice.
168 Renata: Maybe, but I've brought one anyway.
169 SOUND: sacrifice into the flames
170 Priest: It's a brave thing you're doing.
171 Renata: Take care of these people for me.
172 Priest: I'll try. Goodbye, mayor.
173 SOUND: transition music
174 SOUND: communications room
175 Renata: [sfx: processed] I've got it moving upward, now what do I do?
176 Marissa: In the panel on your right, press the middle button.
177 Renata: Okay.
178 SOUND: hologram activation
179 Marissa: Do you have the holographic display up?
180 Renata: Yes.
181 Marissa: Did you find the RKV on it?
182 Renata: I think... ah yeah, that's gotta be it.
183 Marissa: Pinch the spot to select.
184 Renata: Got it. I think I'm on course now.
185 Marissa: You're going to need to keep watching that. It's going to be making evasive maneuvers to try to avoid you.
186 SOUND: gradually longer times between messages due to speed of light
187 Renata: I see it just made one already, how do I counter that?
188 Marissa: Just find the new location and pinch it again.
189 Renata: Okay, and I just keep doing that?
190 Marissa: Yeah, that's all, as long as you can keep in front of it.
191 Renata: Seems like it'd be so easy to automate.
192 Marissa: [with some guilt] I'm sorry, mayor. It should be, we just didn't have time to figure it out. This is all so senseless.
193 Renata: I know you did your best. And things could be a lot worse, we're very lucky you figured out this much or everyone else would've been dying with me.
194 Marissa: Still, I'm so sorry.
195 Renata: Don't be. Please.
196 Marissa: You must be getting pretty far from us now, I can hear the message delays getting longer.
197 Renata: I can see it out the window now, it's coming up fast.
198 Marissa: Just keep it in front of you, don't let it get around you.
199 Renata: This is going to work, I've got it centered. Good luck to all of you back there, do great things with the full lives I'm hoping this buys you. Wow, here it comes--
200 SOUND: static
201 Lawrence: [sfx: processed] Impact confirmed.
202 Larissa: [sfx: processed] Course change initiated, looks like we'll be clear of any significant debris.
203 SOUND: a pause
204 Marissa: [sadly] Congratulations, us. We win. Now why don't I feel like going to a victory party?
205 SOUND: long musical exit to scene
206 SOUND: mayor's office, door opens and footsteps enter
207 Hernandez: Do you have a moment for a quick briefing, mayor?
208 Peters: That's *acting* mayor.
209 Hernandez: Whatever, sir.
210 Peters: Go ahead.
211 Hernandez: As you can feel, we've got our acceleration up to point two gee. Chief Flint thinks we can do better soon by deploying all of the backup engines.
212 Peters: That's great, tell her I'll lend a hand with design enhancements after we organize an election so I can quit this temp job. And what's the latest from astronomy section?
213 Hernandez: Chief Lawrence reports no sign of any more RKV launches from the alien asteroid and no change in their course away from us.
214 Peters: No news is great news there. I wonder what's going on over there, though.
215 Hernandez: Maybe they believe we have our own RKVs now, maybe they didn't look too closely at the debris and assumed we were destroyed. Maybe the nanobots worked and incapacitated their offensive capabilities. Maybe they just didn't have more than one RKV available to fire and maybe it takes a long time to produce a new one.
216 Peters: I suppose we'll never know.
217 Hernandez: There's a lot of things we'll never know.
218 Peters: Frustrating, isn't it? But that's life. Can't expect everything to tie up perfectly in the end.
219 SOUND: 3D projection room
220 SOUND: door opens, footsteps
221 Marissa: [sfx: fading in] Tau Ceti looks so small already. Almost like any other star.
222 Larissa: I wonder what dad's up to back there.
223 Marissa: And Arash. I hope he's himself again and they're not at each other's throats.
224 Larissa: Think we'll ever know?
225 Marissa: By the time we can rebuild the communications dish, we'll be out of range of their ship's tiny transmitter. I don't think we'll ever hear from them again.
226 Larissa: [wistful] I wish we could do something.
227 Marissa: We can imagine. All we can do is imagine, and hope.
228 SOUND: closing theme
229 Announcer: You've been listening to Two Fifty-Three Mathilde, episode eighteen: Fallout.