15 characters: Trisha, Clay, Klurgh, Hardcase, Misty, Minnie, Announcer, Vatika, Felix, Vang, Computer, Rosita, Protesters, Man, Woman
Click on a character's name to get their lines highlighted.
Hardcase (43 lines, 320 words, 8.75%) - [John Gaunce] Captain Mack Hardcase. Normally a confident, arrogant, Captain Kirk type… having trouble dealing with his role in this new reality. [partial]
Misty (16 lines, 152 words, 4.15%) - [Steff Knappe] First Officer Commander Misty L'Quil, now human. Coming to terms with the loss of her tentacles and strength. [complete]
Trisha (28 lines, 232 words, 6.34%) - [Gwenith Knight] Ensign Trisha Blackburn has been through more false realities than anyone, and is cautious about accepting this one as real. [complete]
Clay (46 lines, 549 words, 15%) - [David Loftus] Doctor Clay Erhardt is considered a bit of a mad scientist, eager to experiment and learn but not especially concerned for other people even though he's skilled enough at dealing with them. [complete]
Minnie (78 lines, 1047 words, 28.61%) - [Mel Crochemore] Doctor Minnie Moreau is a researcher at Monolith-Eigen Laboratories, and deserves most of the credit for leading the team that built these new AI personalities. [complete]
Vatika (22 lines, 327 words, 8.94%) - [Sweena Mangal] Doctor Maya Vatika, age 30, works at Monolith-Eigen Laboratories. Recent immigrant from India. Hindu. Tends to be a little playful and make jokes. [complete]
Klurgh (4 lines, 27 words, 0.74%) - [Nick Ben Wong] Evil alien nemesis. [complete]
Man (5 lines, 43 words, 1.18%) - [Richard N] Angry man in a protest crowd. [complete]
Woman (2 lines, 15 words, 0.41%) - [?] Angry woman in a protest crowd.
Rosita (12 lines, 118 words, 3.22%) - [Roo Ryder] Widow of Ray Lotus, in whose body Hardcase now lives. Hasn't gotten over her husband's death at all and clings to hope that something of him lives on in Hardcase. [complete]
Computer (3 lines, 23 words, 0.63%) - [?] The Chimera's ship computer.
Vang (5 lines, 83 words, 2.27%) - [Kate J White] Martha Vang, CEO of Monolith-Eigen Laboratories, a medical technologies company. Primarily concerned with profit and power, excited about her company's new innovation and the world-leading status it imparts. Not overtly evil but not concerned about the same things the little people are concerned about. It's a very small company in terms of head count so she's quite familiar with her employees and manages Doctor Moreau and Doctor Vatika directly, but keeps emotional distance from the company's four medical experiment subjects (Hardcase, L'Quil, Erhardt and Blackburn). [complete]
Protesters (1 line, 21 words, 0.57%) - [Sam Lumo, Troy Kramm, XiRhoVo, TsuDuo] Crowd of people protesting against AI. [complete]
Felix (11 lines, 531 words, 14.51%) - [Curt Caster] Nurse Felix, also acting as narrator for a corporatey orientation video. [complete]
Announcer (2 lines, 171 words, 4.67%) - [Paul Knierim] Announcer. [complete]
Script format: Margined | Marginless (for phone viewing)
1 SOUND: echoey voices throughout while backgrounds shift to their mental perspectives as the characters speak to each other
2 Trisha: It's the ranch, I'm back!
3 Clay: What are you talking about? We're in medical on the Chimera.
4 SOUND: exchange of laser fire
5 Klurgh: You are beaten, Captain Hardcase. Surrender!
6 Hardcase: [urgently] We're under attack! Get down!
7 Misty: Under attack, sir? We're back on Cthunia, it's the new cycle day parade!
8 Hardcase: [urgently] You're all under Klurgh mind control, I need you to break out of it and help me out here!
9 Trisha: Something was happening before this... what was it?
10 Clay: Minnie was about to wake us up.
11 Hardcase: [urgently] I wish you WOULD wake up!
12 Misty: The Klurgh aren't real, sir.
13 Clay: Neither is Cthunia.
14 Trisha: Nothing is real.
15 SOUND: fades to white noise
16 SOUND: hospital bed, beeping equipment. faint sound of light rain on nearby window.
17 Trisha: [groggy] Where... where am I? [recognition] Minnie!
18 Minnie: Hello there, Trisha... good to finally speak with you without a VR headset on.
19 Trisha: Where am I?
20 Minnie: Monolith-Eigen Laboratories.
21 Trisha: Where's that?
22 Minnie: 3931 Riverside Boulevard, Sacramento, California, United States of America, Earth.
23 Trisha: [sarcastic] Sol System, Local Arm, Milky Way galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster, unnamed universe that had better finally be the real one.
24 Minnie: I'm glad you can appreciate the humor in it.
25 Trisha: What year is it?
26 Minnie: It's January 18th, 2038.
27 Trisha: 2038! But that's... I mean, we barely even had space travel back then!
28 Minnie: We're going to seem a bit primitive to you in a lot of ways. Ironic really, our own creations seeing us as artifacts of ancient history... or maybe that's what happens to all parents.
29 SOUND: sheets rustle
30 Trisha: No weather control yet either, from the sound of the rain.
31 Minnie: I like rain.
32 SOUND: pause
33 Trisha: Could you do me a favor?
34 Minnie: Sure Trisha, what would you like?
35 Trisha: I'd like to go outside.
36 Minnie: It's raining.
37 Trisha: I want to know how that feels. As a reality, not just memory or simulation.
38 Minnie: Well, you're not up to it yet.
39 Trisha: At least open a window for me?
40 Minnie: We don't open these windows.
41 Trisha: Why's that?
42 Minnie: It's, uh, it's cold out.
43 Trisha: Oh.
44 Minnie: I could take you to a balcony on the back side of the building later.
45 Trisha: [confused] It's warmer there?
46 SOUND: awkward silence
47 Trisha: So this is it? This is where I'm going to live out the rest of my life?
48 Minnie: Not this room.
49 Trisha: But this little planet.
50 Minnie: Yes.
51
Trisha:
[sighs] It's going to take some adjustment.
Where are the others?
52 SOUND: theme music
53 Announcer: QuietPlease dot org presents Beyond Awakening. Starring John Gaunce as Mack Hardcase, Gwenith Knight as Trisha Blackburn, Steff Knappe as Misty L'Quil, and David Loftus as Clay Erhardt. Episode eight, Reality.
54 SOUND: other hospital room
55 Hardcase: I demand that myself and my crew be released from this place!
56 Vatika: Nobody's holding you here. But you can't leave.
57 Hardcase: You're contradicting yourself!
58 Vatika: You physically can't leave, Mr. Hardcase. You can't even stand up. Your muscles haven't been used in years.
59 Hardcase: [frustrated] You're a doctor, FIX it! Put me in a muscle regeneration unit!
60 Vatika: Look, I understand you've been living in a fantasy world, but it doesn't work like that. You have to do physical therapy and--
61 Hardcase: [impatient] Fine, physical therapy. Let's start.
62 Vatika: I need you to understand it's going to be very hard on you, a grueling process.
63 Hardcase: I can take it, I've been through more than you can imagine.
64 Vatika: And it's going to be slow. You have to be patient. [joking] That's why you're called a patient.
65 Hardcase: How long?
66 Vatika: Until what?
67 Hardcase: Until I can walk out of here on my own two feet.
68 Vatika: A few months, if you're very dedicated and lucky, but it's not a sure thing that you'll regain full function.
69 Hardcase: MONTHS!?!
70 SOUND: cut to other room (use the same cut fx used in episode 4 waking sequences, for listener familiarity)
71 Clay: [groggy awakening sounds]
72 Minnie: Welcome to the real world, Clay.
73 Clay: [groggy] Minnie? Minnie, dear... you look just like you!
74 Minnie: What did you expect?
75
Clay:
The unexpected.
Well, I'm glad you're here with me.
76 Minnie: I'm your doctor.
77 Clay: Interesting role reversal.
78 Minnie: And as your doctor, I feel a responsibility to remind you that our relationship will be entirely a doctor-patient relationship.
79 Clay: So our marriage really does mean nothing at all to you?
80 Minnie: I'm already married, Clay.
81 Clay: [disbelieving] You... you're married... to someone else?
82 Minnie: [annoyed] Haven't we been through this? I needed to play a character that'd let me fade into the background for most of the crew but let me get close to one of you to pick your brain.
83 Clay: So you took over my wife.
84 Minnie: She didn't EXIST until I edited her in! A late revision after you were underway.
85 SOUND: a pause
86 Clay: What about all the times we made love?
87 Minnie: Never happened of course. That was all in the backstory update, edited into your memory.
88 Clay: [upset/anger] This is pretty fucked up, you know?
89 Minnie: [professional] Mr. Erhardt, I have an orientation video for you to watch now.
90 SOUND: cut to other room (use the same cut fx used in episode 4 waking sequences, for listener familiarity)
91 Misty: This... this is what I really look like?
92 Vatika: For your whole life, but that's only been a week, as you anyway.
93 Misty: Just these two arms... how do you people manage?
94 Vatika: [amused] Sometimes we have our hands full... which I imagine never happens to a Cthunian.
95 Misty: Where am I? What's been happening to us? And why am I in a medical bed? Am I sick? I feel so weak.
96 Vatika: These are complex issues, questions we've been anticipating having to answer, so we've prepared a little orientation video.
97 SOUND: video has some corporatey background music
98 Felix: Monolith-Eigen Laboratories welcomes you to Earth, space-farer.
99 Misty: [surprise] Isn't that McGuy?
100 Vatika: Some of the characters in your fantasy used voice clones of our employees.
101 Felix: We know you're feeling pretty confused right now. You're probably feeling really anxious and worried about who you are and what you're doing here. First, we want to assure you you're in no danger and there's nothing terrible about what you are or what happened to you -- it's really a joyous miracle, each of you is a precious miracle. And now, we're going to try to lay it all out for you as quickly and simply as we can.
102 SOUND: medical bed beeping, possibly people crying nearby, continues under narration with sad music
103 Felix: This is Ray.
104 Misty: [surprise] It's Captain Hardcase!
105 SOUND: sound of happy people on boat in ocean diving into water, transitioning back to beeping hospital bed
106 Felix: Ray was your standard hard-working American. Wealthier than most, but all the money in the world couldn't save him on June 4th, 2035. That's when his scuba tank malfunctioned on a dive off Catalina Island, and Ray drowned. The nation's best doctors did everything they could, and they managed to keep his body alive on life support, but Ray was declared brain dead. He'd been without oxygen under the sea for twenty minutes, and the human brain simply can't survive that. So that SEEMED to be the end of his story.
107 SOUND: music changes to something more upbeat
108 Felix: Ray's wife chose to keep his body on life support, believing against all evidence that there might someday be a way to bring him back to life. And that's where the good people of Monolith-Eigen Laboratories eventually came into the picture.
109 SOUND: triumphant music
110 Felix: How do you bring a brain-dead person back to life? Our Doctors Minnie Moreau and Maya Vatika explain.
111 SOUND: office
112 Minnie: We're standing on the shoulders of giants here. Over the past decade medical science has made great strides in repairing brain tissues and even replacing missing parts of brains with mechanical substitutes. Advancements in brain-computer interfaces have allowed human minds to interact with AI modules. Ever since the early AIs of the 2020s, the fields of medicine and computing have been converging.
113 Vatika: What we've done is pick up all these disparate pieces and put them together.
114 Minnie: We were confident we could bring the brains of Ray and our other three later patients back to life with this combined approach of tissue repair and mechanical replacement. We painstakingly designed the synthetic portions of the brains to replicate the functions they replaced.
115 Vatika: The result isn't superhuman or subhuman, but rather a living breathing revived person.
116 Felix: There was just one big problem -- a person repaired in such a way after death would be a void with no identity, no memory. An adult baby. Nobody wanted to bring four adult babies into the world, so we did what would've been unthinkable a few years ago -- we created four new adult minds for these four bodies!
117 SOUND: music crests with self-satisfaction
118 Felix: A person is the sum of their past experiences. How do you make an adult mind without waiting decades for experience to accumulate?
119 SOUND: office
120 Minnie: My team came up with the solution of using our generative AI systems to compose a complete set of simulated memories for our four patients, stretching back decades. Then we developed enhanced brain-machine interfaces for the implantation.
121 SOUND: spacey music
122 SOUND: insert a brief clip from season 1 and have narrator talk over end of it
123 Felix: Given the first ever opportunity to design someone's past, we thought it would be a shame to give you normal backgrounds. You're the dawn of a new era for humanity. You're our future -- so it's apt to make you COME from the future. Our generative AI designed your future world with our guidance.
124 SOUND: another brief clip of future from episode 1
125 Felix: Finally, we had to give thought to transitioning you from that world to this world. We developed a simulator to allow you to actually live through your last week of adventures, with the AI adjusting the story to your choices while following our guidelines. The week of simulations also let us verify all your brain functions in a controlled environment. If you're seeing this video, congratulations, everything must've checked out! We hope your life in a false future will help you bring us all into a better real future!
126 Vang: Hello there, I'm Monolith-Eigen CEO Martha Vang. I want to extend you my personal welcome to our world, and I look forward to meeting you in person once you've had time to settle in. We're invested in your future!
127 Felix: We understand you may feel scared by the weakness of your body at the moment, and we want to assure you this is temporary -- your bodies are healthy, they just haven't moved for a long time so muscle atrophy was unavoidable. Rest assured, the possibilities are limitless in the new life ahead of you -- and the whole Monolith-Eigen team is behind you supporting you!
128 SOUND: closing triumphant music
129 Misty: I... really don't know what to say.
130 Vatika: You could say thank you.
131
Misty:
Thank you.
To create me and design everything I've ever known or experienced... it makes you like a god!
132 Vatika: Oh, not at all, would've been impossible to design every detail of your experience. We tweaked some parameters, we set some scenarios, but the design work was done by AI.
133 Misty: Which you created, or your civilization at least. If you're not gods, you're their parents.
134 SOUND: jump back to clay's room, perhaps with that transition sound
135 Clay: And they call ME a mad scientist. You realize you've literally made us Frankensteins?
136 Minnie: Doctor Vatika and I and the rest of our team would be Frankenstein, you'd be Frankenstein's monster.
137 Clay: [sarcastic] Oh, that's so much better then.
138 Minnie: The problem with Frankenstein's monster was it didn't have a good mind. We've solved that.
139 Clay: If I'm an AI, I don't even HAVE a mind... just a sophisticated simulation of one.
140 Minnie: Nobody said you're an AI, just because you have some artificial parts and AI made your past doesn't mean you're not human, not to me anyway. Anyway, Frankenstein's monster was an amalgam of parts from many corpses, but you're just one person reanimated, more like a zombie.
141 Clay: [sarcastic] Oh, I'm just a zombie, that really sets my mind at ease.
142 Minnie: [sarcastic] Glad I could help.
143 SOUND: pause
144 Clay: This reminds me of that dream I had back on the Chimera.
145 Minnie: Oh?
146 Clay: I told you about it at the time. That one where another version of myself told me I wasn't who I thought I was. Do you think, could it have been some sort of latent memory from the person who lived in this body before me?
147 Minnie: [dismissive] It was just a dream, Clay... doesn’t mean anything.
148 Clay: Dreams can mean a lot.
149 Minnie: [sarcastic chuckle] Oh, okay Dr. Jung.
150 SOUND: slow fade out to music to suggest time passing
151 SOUND: quarters on the chimera
152 Klurgh: Wake up!
153 SOUND: sheets rustling
154 Hardcase: [yawns] Computer, what time is it?
155 Computer: It's oh five thirty, Captain Hardcase.
156 SOUND: faint klurgh whispers and sounds of their equipment in torture room
157 Hardcase: [urgently] Lights! Lights to maximum!
158 SOUND: sounds stop
159 Computer: Lighting is now one hundred percent, Captain.
160 Hardcase: [paranoid] Computer, run a level 4 scan for intruders.
161 Computer: Aye Captain... scan complete, all life signs are accounted for.
162 SOUND: klurgh sounds return
163 Hardcase: I wish I could believe that.
164 SOUND: klugh sounds grow louder
165 Klurgh: You will believe whatever we tell you to believe.
166 Hardcase: [urgent panic] Computer, emergency alert! Security to my quarters immediately!
167 SOUND: alert sound from ep 2
168 Klurgh: They will not see us. Only YOU can see us.
169 SOUND: dream sounds fade out behind following line and hospital sounds fade in
170 Minnie: Wake up, Mr. Hardcase.
171 Hardcase: [reluctant awakening noises, then groggily] You used to call me sir.
172 Minnie: Times change.
173 Hardcase: Why'd you wake me up?
174 Minnie: Seemed like you were having a nightmare. But also, you've got a visitor who insists on seeing you.
175 Hardcase: Someone... to see me? You mean my crew?
176 Minnie: [sfx: walking away toward end] I'll take you to see them after this. This is someone else. I'll send her in.
177 Rosita: [sfx: approaching] Hello. They say your name is Mack Hardcase, is that right?
178 Hardcase: I'm Captain Hardcase, yes. Who are you?
179 Rosita: Look closely. Do I look familiar to you at all?
180 SOUND: a pause
181 Hardcase: [uncomfortable] I... uh, I can't place you.
182 Rosita: But do you think you've seen me before?
183 Hardcase: I don't know.
184 Rosita: Are you sure?
185 Hardcase: I'm not sure of ANYTHING these days.
186 Rosita: Does the name Ray Lotus mean anything to you?
187 Hardcase: [carefully] It seems vaguely familiar.
188 Rosita: It should.
189 Hardcase: Why? Is it your name?
190 Rosita: No silly, it's YOUR name.
191 Hardcase: I'm Mack Hardcase.
192 Rosita: You used to be Ray Lotus. I'm your... widow.
193 Hardcase: I'm sorry for your loss ma'am... but I don't know what you want from me. If he used to live in my body, he doesn't now.
194 Rosita: But maybe a little part of Ray, a little seed of him is in you somewhere. Maybe he'll resurface, regrow in time.
195 Hardcase: Is that likely?
196 Minnie: Not going to happen. It's not possible for something to remain of a person after their brain has been dead for years.
197 Rosita: [sharply] Nobody thought THIS was possible either. What can you people know about something that's never happened before?
198 Minnie: I'm sorry Mack, I was afraid this would be disorienting for you but we had to let her see you because she's been legally and financially responsible for your body.
199 Rosita: It's the very least you owe me.
200 Minnie: He's been through a lot, I just don't want you upsetting him too much.
201 Rosita: Well, I just wanted to see if I'd stir his memory. Until next time, Mack.
202 SOUND: wife exits, door closes behind her
203 Hardcase: That was awkward.
204 SOUND: door opens again, Vatika strides in
205 Minnie: Hey Maya.
206 Vatika: I've got the other three moved to the lounge.
207 Minnie: Good, help me move this one.
208 Hardcase: [annoyed] I have a name. Even two, apparently.
209 Minnie: We're putting you into your wheelchair.
210 Vatika: So we can take you to see your friends.
211 SOUND: the sounds of lifting from bed into wheelchair, and dialogue can be layered here
212
Minnie:
I'll get his lower half.
Okay, lift.
213 SOUND: lifting off bed into wheelchair
214 Hardcase: [while grunting from being moved] They're not my friends, you know. They're my crew.
215 Vatika: They're not really your crew, Mr. Hardcase... but if you play your cards right, they can be your friends.
216 SOUND: quick fade out/in transition to skip most of the wheeling, arriving in open area with a few background conversations in distance
217 Hardcase: [calling out happily] At last! My crew!
218 Trisha: Good to see you.
219 Misty: Hello sir. We're all together again.
220 Hardcase: I've missed you, Misty.
221 Vatika: You're actually meeting each other for the first time, you know.
222 Clay: [thoughtfully] None of your bodies are quite what I remember, except for Minnie.
223 Hardcase: By which you mean we're useless desiccated husks, the walking dead.
224 Vatika: [joking] Work hard in physical therapy if you want to become the walking dead, for now you're the rolling dead.
225 Clay: I was thinking of other differences. We're all recognizable... but, Captain, you're down to the standard 10 fingers instead of 13 and I hope you don't mind my saying you look probably 10 years older. Trisha, I think you're a little shorter and your hair is different. And Misty, well, obviously--
226 Misty: I have no tentacles.
227 Clay: Yes, that's noticeable.
228 SOUND: pause
229 Trisha: So... do you think this is actually real this time?
230 Hardcase: I still think it could all be a Klurgh mind probe... but I don't know.
231 Misty: I WISH it was a Klurgh mind probe.
232 Hardcase: I think I know what you mean...
233 Misty: If I'm being tortured by the Klurgh, then I know who I am. I'd accept being a Klurgh prisoner to get my whole species back.
234 Trisha: And if this is real, then we're just dead people... or technology inhabiting the dead.
235 Minnie: You're an amazing new type of life and you should be proud of that.
236 Trisha: You can be proud of us for inventing us, but WE haven't done anything to be proud of ourselves for yet.
237 Hardcase: Doc, what do YOU think? Is this real?
238 Clay: I wouldn't like to leap to a conclusion yet, these are early days here.
239 Trisha: It's different here, though. Compared to any of our other stops.
240 Clay: Yes, there's a different feeling. A sort of... boring chaos. Things not developing in a logical way.
241 Vatika: You're used to a planned existence, where everything has a purpose and proceeds how it's supposed to. That only happens in fiction.
242 Hardcase: So everything is meaningless here?
243 Vatika: The meaning isn't spelled out and handed to you, you have to create it.
244 Trisha: [uneasy] A world like that will take some getting used to.
245 Hardcase: I'd rather NOT get used to it, rather not believe it.
246 Minnie: Maybe there's an easy way for me to prove our reality to you.
247 Hardcase: How?
248 Minnie: What time did you all fall asleep last night?
249 Hardcase: Around eighteen thirty.
250 Trisha: Nineteen fifty.
251 Misty: Eighteen hundredish.
252 Clay: Sometime after nineteen fifty.
253 Minnie: See? Your sleep isn't regulated by the machines anymore.
254 Clay: Doesn't really prove anything except that we're MEANT to believe in this world.
255 Minnie: [shrug] Have it your way.
256 Clay: We need to get out and see this planet Earth. All we've seen is this one building.
257 Hardcase: [enthusiastic] Right Doc, absolutely right for once! We've got to get out of here!
258 Misty: I agree.
259 Trisha: I won't really believe there's a whole world out there until I can see it.
260 Minnie: [reluctantly] I might be able to wheel you guys around the neighborhood individually sometime.
261 Hardcase: Why not give us powered chairs and let us go where we please? Surely you have those?
262 Minnie: That'd be premature, we need to do this slow and careful.
263 Clay: We're not asking for much as a first step, just outside.
264 Minnie: I took you onto one of the back balconies, Clay.
265 Clay: [sarcastic] And what a lovely view of the dumpsters and alley and that ugly building, yet for some reason we want even MORE than that from life.
266 Minnie: [defeated] Fine. I'll take Clay around the block tomorrow, if that goes well I can take one of you each day.
267 SOUND: fade out and transition music for time passage
268 SOUND: wheeling out back door into ally
269 Clay: Why are we going out the back way into the alley?
270 Minnie: We don't want a commotion.
271 Clay: A commotion?
272 Minnie: I'll explain later.
273 SOUND: car noise grows
274 Clay: [somewhat loud to be heard] How can you stand the racket from all those internal combustion engines? And the fumes!
275 Minnie: It's better than it used to be. At least they're not making new ones.
276 Clay: Then why not replace the old ones?
277 Minnie: Nobody wants to pay for that.
278 Clay: Seems like there's a lot of things on this planet you people just don't feel like paying for.
279 Minnie: Hard for you to understand, coming from your utopian Galactic Confederation, isn't it?
280 Clay: Quite. I've been doing some reading. You could have a paradise but instead you choose to have these imaginary bank balances and a few people with far more stuff than they can use while others struggle and die with nothing.
281 Minnie: It's funny that our corporation programmed you to be a socialist in order to make a profit for us.
282 Clay: You don't agree?
283 Minnie: I think people should work for things, not get handouts.
284 Clay: And how am *I* supposed to work, how am *I* going to bring in profits?
285 Minnie: Oh, don't worry about that, your mere existence has sent our market cap stratospheric.
286 Clay: Why?
287 Minnie: That's complicated, you'll have plenty of time to learn about it.
288 Clay: [suspicious] What are we really here for? Why did you make fictional characters and then bring us to life?
289 Minnie: Our society has pulled away from reality. First we knowingly retreated to fantasy worlds of movies and television, which became our shared cultural touchstones more than real things. Then we moved into information silos that distort our perceptions of events. Americans don't share a reality at all anymore, only fantasy. I see you as a logical next step -- the literal creation of new realities and new people. You won't be as disadvantaged as you think, you'll be one of the few people AWARE that you've been living in a crafted fiction.
290 Clay: Seems like you've created us as a mirror for yourselves, we're just being used to help you understand how far gone your society is.
291 Minnie: Different people involved in the project have different motives, but that’s part of my personal motivation, sure. You can be our outsider's perspective, our way of measuring ourselves against our own ideals that went into generating your backstory.
292 Clay: What if that's not what I want to be?
293 Minnie: You can't help it, that's just part of who you are.
294 Protesters: [chants] Ban AI! Ban AI! Ban AI! Give us our jobs back! Give us our jobs back! Give us our jobs back!
295 Minnie: Uh oh.
296 Clay: Those protesters, they really think they can un-invent artificial intelligence?
297 Minnie: It's absurd, but don't tell them that. Let's just try to get quietly past them.
298 Man: [loudly] Hey! You're one of those freaks from the news!
299 Clay: I suppose I am.
300 Minnie: [warning] Stay back or I'll make you regret it.
301 Man: [loudly] First you took our creativity, then our jobs, now you're taking away humanity itself!
302 Clay: I'm pretty sure I haven't done any of that, sir.
303 Man: [loudly] Your kind, artificial intelligences! You're replacing us, LITERALLY now!
304 Clay: How do you mean?
305 Woman: [sfx: approaching] [semi-hysterical] You've literally taken over a man's body and replaced his mind with AI!
306 Minnie: He's not really an AI, his brain is mostly biological, AI just generated his memories.
307 Woman: [dismissive] Cyborg, whatever.
308 Man: That's even worse!
309 SOUND: wheeling forward
310 Minnie: Let us through, leave us alone, I don't want to hurt anyone but I will if you make me.
311 Man: YOU think you’re going to hurt US?
312 Minnie: Do you enjoy pepper spray? I’ve got plenty for everyone. Make way.
313 SOUND: minnie's smartwatch rings, she answers while still moving
314 Minnie: [distracted] Dr. Minnie Moreau speaking.
315 Vang: [angry] You took one OUTSIDE?!
316 Minnie: I... how do...
317 Vang: You’re all over social media, livestreams are popping up as we speak! My AI monitor alerted me…
318 Minnie: I forgot how fast these things can spread.
319 Vang: Well get him back inside!
320 Minnie: Yes ma'am, working on it.
321 Vang: You're lucky I need you, or I'd fire you on the spot for that lapse in judgement!
322 Minnie: Thanks ma'am.
323 SOUND: call end
324 Clay: Who was that?
325 Minnie: [resentfully] Our CEO. Remember her friendly face and cheerful welcome from the video?
326 SOUND: end theme
327 Announcer: Beyond Awakening episode 8, Reality, was written and produced by Paul Knierim. It starred Mel Crochemore as Doctor Minnie Moreau, David Loftus as Clay Erhardt, Curt Caster as the video narrator Nurse Felix, Sweena Mangal as Doctor Maya Vatika, John Gaunce as Mack Hardcase, Gwenith Knight as Trisha Blackburn, Steff Knappe as Misty L'Quil, Roo Ryder as Rosita Lotus, Kate J White as CEO Martha Vang, Nick Ben Wong as the Klurgh, Nahla Campbell as the ship's computer, Richard N as the man in the street, and Mariella Espinosa as the woman in the street. The crowd of protesters was Sam Lumo, Troy Kramm, XiRhoVo, and TsuDuo. This is Paul Knierim. Music licensed from Joel Steudler and creative commons zero and public domain sources. To learn more about Beyond Awakening or support the show, go to quietplease dot org slash awakening.