Weird Adventures in Space #13

Hello everybody and welcome to a brand new episode of Weird Adventures in Space, the SHU Podcast's premier sci-fi superhero real play radio drama. My name is Jay and I will be your GM today or a near reader or storyteller or whatever you'd like to call it. I'm here with a couple of folks, we're going to be playing some games and telling you some stories. Now that means you will hear some dice rolling in this episode, but you don't need to be into games to enjoy it.

Before I get started down the long, long road, I would like to introduce my cast. Hi, I'm your jesel. I play Wayfear. My dude is a multi-hundred year space alien who crash landed on Earth after escaping his home planet which was run by the Riker Corporation.

Essentially a wal-mer as a labor camp. He's a little guy who kind of looks like he's got cricket antenna, he's got a big nose, he's got little eyes and he yells a lot. I'm Logan and I play Yamah Akita. He is a bikin.

There's species is kind of like a half dog, half human. I think anime, a dog person. A martial artist who kind of has his own style. Or a bar fighter.

Hi, I'm Rob. I am playing Sham. He's a member of the Sun and Day race who are a bi-pedal plant like Form. We have the ability to grow in community with other plants.

Hi, I'm Zach. I play Arlu. She's a I'm in purple. Other almonds are other colors.

Arlu's missing her left arm right now. She's got a gym in it. She's got a giant Arleskar. She's got on the center of her chest and she looks like she hasn't slept very well in a very long time.

Hi, I'm Bailey and I play Carrie Mathis, aka the Lotus. She is a metahuman from Earth who died in the mid-80s, was resurrected, died several other times and came back usually with another arm. She's also missing her left arm. The top half is currently crystal at this point.

She's also had a shadow arm. Currently controls light constructs and has weird magic energy that I'm hoping to explore. Hi, I'm Tony. I play Greg.

Greg's a he's a human man. Basically, Jack-of-all-trades, master of some as an affinity and ability and a willingness and desire to basically make inefficiencies more efficient and inconsistencies more consistent. Last episode, you finally got a win over the Rador Corporation. The multinational cosmic menace that's discouraging you for 12 episodes.

And you go back to your quiet face on the surface of Mars, but Red Hills is not all it seems. There's something sinister bubbling under. Something that's been bubbling for a long time and will shock everyone when it reaches the surface. This is episode 13 of Weird Adventures in Space.

Give me some of that old-time religion. Our episode starts in a large gymnasium on the colony of Red Hills. The gymnasium, which is typically used for sports, is then emptied out recently to make room for all of the new inhabitants to Red Hills. Specifically, hundreds and hundreds of various aliens freed from a Rador Corporation labor camp and about two million miniature Ammonites that were running out of a broken-bottled city.

We've got Wayfarer here, along with Dr. Dudad, both of who are representatives of the Union of Superheroes, as well as Greg, who is, I would say, the leader de facto mayor of Red Hills. You do the building projects, you do the construction, you make sure things are running well. You make inconsistencies more consistent.

Let's try to get that catch raised now. You three are sitting here in front of about 30 Raghor Savenians. Raghor Savenians are a specific species of alien. They come from a very, very far away star system.

One that's really only traversal by going through black holes. And they're the same species as our friend Wayfarer there. They were recently freed from a Raghor Corporation labor camp by the Union of Heroes, and are now in week two of trying to learn the basics to integrate into society. Wayfarer, this has been very hard to do, because, as you know, Raghor Savenians are named that way, because Raghor has owned their planet for so long that the rest of their culture has disappeared.

What you realize from growing up in that culture is that they don't teach you anything that you need to survive. They don't teach you how to take care of yourself. They don't teach you how to read. They don't even teach you how to speak.

You just kind of mumble and grumble to whatever can get you through the day. When Dr. Duda, the resident doctor of the Union of Heroes, decided to visit today's class, she observed and took notes. And as the class is over and the Raghor Savenians are known about and talk to themselves, she approaches you, Wayfarer and you, Greg.

And she says, so can you give me the brief on these guys again? We've got so many different alien species here, Alan. These guys are your guys, but I don't know much about them. Okay.

I guess we've been living with Raghor for a long time, certainly before I was born. I think these guys are essentially worker drones. Physically, we're kind of similar. They live a long time like I do, and they're really hard to kill like any other ways.

They've been socialized very differently to be efficient workers in a warehouse environment, but not so much as people. Do you have any environmental needs that we need to address while we're building for these folks? You're always good. Water is good.

They should be able to eat just about anything organic at least. How about breathing? Do they breathe all right? Do we need to change the atmosphere mixture?

No, they breathe all right. She turns to Greg and says, Greg, I'm not really up on the scale of your operation. How many houses can we get done per week here? And obviously, all these people need a place to live.

How many people are there? Well, in the room right now, there's like 30, but I would say there's 900 or so that they rescued from Pluto and then another 2 million that are still like unshrunk in the bottle city. Well, we're going to need quite a bit more. We weren't ready for this, but the way I'm seeing it is.

I mean, if we could probably maybe like do it in phases because any one particular house dependent upon the size of the crew could take up to six weeks to build, we could take into account the people's like what they want. If they want to commune, we could build communes like compounds that could go quicker. If each people wants an individual house that could be more problematic. Gotcha.

And I'm guessing there's an exactly a huge labor pool up here. You think we should be bringing people in from Earth to help? That couldn't hurt. And perhaps we could we could call on the people themselves if any of those people have skills or a desire to help.

One of the records of any ends in the room hears you and he kind of like waves his hand and goes, Hey, Hey, I think I can help. All right. I don't know what you're doing, but I've been doing like work with my hands my whole life. Well, it's going to be a pretty pretty massive building project here.

And then we're going to have to like coordinate supplies and ways to keep these people housed and fed while they're waiting and stuff like that. So the guy in the crowd who doesn't really have a name, he kind of walks up to you, he looks just like Wayfarer, just slightly different. He goes, I've got nothing but time. And I don't really know what else to do with myself.

I've got so much to learn about the world. I want to do something with my hands. I feel I hear you guys talking about how you don't even have houses for people and I want help. Like, I'll help you build the own house.

I stay in if that's how it works. I'm happy to do that. Well, yeah, that's a that's a great help. And if you want to talk to more of the people and see if you can't like get a whole crew or a group of crews going, oh, you mean like you need more I could definitely do that.

We're going to need a pretty big workforce here. We're going to be pretty strange for manpower, especially if we want to get this done as quickly as possible. He wiggles his antenna and way fewer you and no one else here are really high pitched whining noise. Okay.

I'm meeting from his antenna. And when he does that, all of the other raguars of anyones in the room stand up and go, can we come to? Yeah, he's supposed to do that looks and goes, I mean, splitting their time around like other people and the classroom seems really healthy. I mean, that's a goal for me.

If you think you should put these people to work great, but only if I want to. I have an idea how to handle this particular problem like on a on a math scale. Dr. Doo that looks like he goes, Greg, please tell me what you're thinking.

Rather than just go all out and try to quickly as possible build as much housing and and and and whatnot for all these people at full size. Maybe we should find out if there's any group of these people who are fine being the size they are. Then we could just we could start a building project for the people the size they are that go a whole lot quicker because we need a whole lot less materials, a whole lot less resources to build communities for people on a small scale. And then if anybody wants to be shrunk back up, we can then start that project to have two side by side projects for different size people.

She says that's genius. I didn't even think of that. And you know, I'm going to the bottle city anyway. It's in my lab.

I gotta go there when I go pick up my sandwich. So I'll mention it to him. I think that's a good idea. Wayfare.

How about you? How are you feeling about everything? I know this has to be a lot for you. I guess it feels odd.

I can't say the last time that I was around, my people think were very good, but they seem to be back when meeting in kind of a healthy way. So I guess I'm glad for them in that respect. Typically speaking after they get done with their classroom the day, they kind of just follow you around to wherever you're going. As do dads waving off and taking off in the room, it's just you and Greg and your civilians.

You guys know what music is? All of their antennas perk up and start wiggling and go, we think we've got some music. Come on. You play music on the ship, right?

Yeah. There's more than that. Oh yeah. What do you mean?

Do you just go to places and they do music? Sometimes, yeah. I'll be like that. That's incredible.

I'm going to go to spring home and grab my iPod shuffle. I mean, yeah, it's so light and compact that you get there really quick. Awesome. You're just showing them that the shuffle?

Oh yeah. I'll clean music off of it. I have a bunch of playlists that people keep sending me for some reason. I don't think they're really good, but they try really hard.

I immediately send away for a link to one of my preferred playlists, which is seated with Molly Hatchet, Molly Hatchet, Fog Hat, and Van Hegar, era, Van Halen. With a little bit of with a little bit of Sami Solo stuff, sprinkled in for flavor. No, I have to ask. That's because you're in character, right?

Not my go-to, but if when Molly Hatchet's flirting with disaster comes on, I perk up a little. Not good. That's on. Not going to lie.

It's a pretty cool tune. Here's the thing. The Van Halen era, Van Halen, is the best music. Yeah, I agree.

Without actually despising David Lee Roth, oh, I'm still close. As a showman, as a he is the exact rock star you want a rock star to be. For sure. As a person, I can't stand a guy.

Massive dickhead. Oh yeah. Just a normal Sami Hager on the other hand. Pretty chill dude.

Yeah. Yeah. He seems like the sort of dude that just was born on a boat and will die on a boat. And I don't mean to suck up our time.

I admire Sami Hager as a person and Greg Wood as well, because Sami Hager first started out in the construction industry, specifically perfecting fire suppression systems for apartment buildings. What? Yeah, Sami Hager is an expert at fire suppression. That's fucked.

I have a new level of respect for this man. Yeah, he's pretty awesome. Take that Gary Sharon. He actually was instrumental in, I believe, either California State or one of the counties in California getting fire laws changed to allow for fire suppression systems, but be mandated to be installed in apartment buildings for people's safety, because he demonstrated how quickly and efficiently they could put a fire out versus calling the fire men to come and have them put it out.

He actually set a building on fire with one instance installed. Just go ahead. Call 911. Watch this.

And they timed it and they're like, okay, got you. Imagine if you get millions of dollars from being a rock star and you spend it like making ocean better. That's the thing. That whole rock star deal was like, that's his hobby.

Fire protectionist is passion. Yeah, it was at least. Well, that's the best thing people with money could do. Yeah, true.

Like, I think the two cool things you could do with money is like make make things a little better for people and then build like a weird amusement park for yourself. The only two good things to do with money. Yeah, so you can hug people. So yeah, I'm camp Sammy.

Sorry. Put that flag in the ground. Oh, yeah. So, um, Wayfarer, you are able to sit there and play the music of or your regular civilians.

They also enjoy Van Hager. I mean, who won the man's a fire protection expert and a poodle-haired pimp. These civilians are kind of looking at you for guidance while you're sitting there popping around and they're like, what do we do now? Al?

Um, I don't know. I guess this is the first day in the rest of your lives. Um, yeah, kind of. I guess we're here to kind of help you go out in the world, meet people and find things that bring meaning to your life.

The things that you would like to do, the things that bring you joy, hopefully will be a part of the rest of your life here. One guy in the crowd perks up and goes, can you help us pick names tonight? Okay, cool. They're all kind of like heading out towards the door and going, we should go out before we get StuTark out.

All right, you guys. So it's wayfarer than the regular civilians have left. And Greg, it's just you on your lonesome. Your duties are done for the day.

You get to hang up the hard hat, so to speak for a couple hours. What do you do with yourself? I do hang up the hard hat, but I don't, I can't, I can't let the current events like leave my mind. So I'm just gonna just try to chill, but I'm still gonna like go just go up out to various situations.

I just want to make sure that like all the people who are, you know, temporarily being housed and aren't shrunk up yet. Like, I want to make sure that they're not uncomfortable. Like the accommodations we set for them is our, are my people keeping it clean, is there plenty of food, is anybody in any kind of distress? I just, I don't want to, just don't want to walk away from that thinking that somebody might be, you know, having a bad day.

I think that for lack of a better way to put it, you're taking a scenic trip, right? Like you're kind of checking out all the little odds and ends and corners of the colony. Yeah. When you go to your vehicle, the AI Rover speaks up and says, Hello, Greg, where are we going today?

Just for a slow trip? You got somewhere you need to go? Am I taking home? No, not, not straight home.

Let's just do a slow cruise mandarin through the community, stopping, you know, keeping an eye to it, keeping air to it, that kind of thing. Rover, the Dog AI puts on your favorite playlist and you drive off across the red sand. Hi, that's me. Today is your last day in the rehabilitation center.

Yay, baby. For the most part, your wounds have healed and you've got the opportunity to get some extremely high quality health care, mental health care, as well as like an ongoing plan so that you can keep working on your arm and working on textiles and stations of your arm. You said it's been about two weeks, right? Yeah, two weeks.

I'm staying on top of that situation with Coma Kid. If anything happens with her, I want to know immediately. But like other than that, I'm probably like just doing like last minute arrangements. I assume that if you like work for the union, there's like an apartment complex or wherever where the heroes stay.

I mean, everybody gets their own house. Like if you want to live in a house, you can if you want to live in an apartment, you can. It's like Greg was saying, it's totally up to you. I want to set up a house because when Catherine is allowed to leave, I want to make sure she has a place to go.

You know for a fact that if she wants to run a house, she'll get one too. But I will say that you kind of take off to make your rounds for the day. Like you were saying you check on the girl who's in the coma and you check on your sister. When you're making your rounds and you get to the voyeur's room, the psychic menace in a coma that tore me to do the last couple of episodes, you see sitting outside the door, the detective that was helping you out, Dicky Trane.

He's sitting there kind of just got a pencil on his mouth like a cigarette. He's reading the newspaper, the Martian Times. Do you figure out the crowd's word puzzle yet? Oh, you know, you know, I'm not that smart.

So, uh, no, I'm getting there. You seriously go and say that to me. You choose on it and goes, I mean, I'm a good gumshow. Bress this stuff now so much.

Look, uh, I know you've been coming here every day. I've seen it. I'm not touching her, I promise. No, I didn't like that.

I didn't like that. I feel like a fucked up. Like I feel like putting you in that position. You're the one that figures everything out.

Like what the hell am I even doing here in the first place? Well, I got some free time. I just been posting up outside this room, thinking about it, trying to make sure that you're not the only one taking care of. I mean, in all fairness, you did a lot because having you there validated anything that I said because if I had brought what I found to anybody else without having backup and I look like the bias big sister just trying to keep Catherine out of shit.

I hear that. I hear that. I appreciate that. Thank you, care.

No problem. I heard you're checking out today. Yeah. Can't stay here forever.

Got your shit to do. And like as you say, she's like picking at her like fake arm just a little. You might have to show you something quick. Go ahead.

Kind of unbutton the top couple of buttons on his dress shirt. Oh my, Mr. Tran. He shows you his chest like right above his spectral muscle and he's got four bullet wounds in there and he goes, before I got my powers, I got shot a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.

I guess what I'm saying is, um, take your time. Nothing heals overnight. You're not wrong. This is, um, this is hand number four, I think.

Girl, you never get used to having a, to some sort of alien or monster or something to cut your arm off. That's not what you get used to. Just how's your sister? I think she's doing better now that she's not worried about people's seeing her as something she's not.

How do you ever truly get it over shit like that? I don't know. Gotta do it on your own terms. I'm glad I got a chance to talk to you though because I want to let you know I'm actually moving to Red Hills.

Nice. From, uh, from Onyx. I just a couple of months I spent here, right? Wait, wait.

Are you telling me from Onyx Ranch? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No shit dude. Ruby River.

Oh shit. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

That makes sense. We went before I got too wrapped up in the shit when I was going to a high school. My, uh, my ex used to run track. We went to a track meet down there.

We fill your beholder once. Awful, loving mascot. Oh beloved mascot. Oh, what have you done?

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding with it. Nothing serious. Uh, they gave up a lot of cabbage if I remember correctly.

So, uh, I guess what I wanted to tell you is, because I'm gonna be sticking around if you ever need anything, all right? The engine business garden goes, I would say, oh, you won, but I think that we can maybe help people out. And the offer goes both ways, man. He nods.

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but I'll figure it out eventually. He goes, I've been on this earth a long time and I haven't figured it out yet either. He starts buttoning his shirt back up. It's easier every day.

He's helping. He gives you the salute. I'm gonna go talk to Catherine as long as there's like nothing like radiating off of that room. When you go to see your sister, she immediately sits up and bed and she's like, what's up?

Just come in to visit. Want to make sure you're okay. Moving on to the day. Yeah.

Not really sure how that's gonna go, but are you excited? This isn't exactly the most interesting place in the world. It's not, but the real world is fucking scary. She giggles and kind of goes, yeah.

But I wanted to let you know that I did put in a request for a space that was big enough that if you wanted to, you don't have to, but if you wanted to, you don't have to worry about trying to find somewhere else. I don't mind if you want to come stay with me. If not, that's all taken care of. You just have to say this is where I want to be.

The union's okay with that? Yeah. Okay. I can either file scary.

I know that I'm a big threat risk. So it's always half the people on this planet. I really haven't stuck in this room for a long time. Oh, yeah.

It's okay. I don't want you to think that I tried to set you up when I brought us here. I was trying to do the right thing. I wanted to make sure you had what you needed.

I don't want you to think that you're stuck here, but Carrie, I was going to ask to move in. You have to. Well, I want to. We'll call you one your room.

I don't know. I'm green. Yeah, no, I can feel you on that one. Is there a room for the for the boy?

So like a yard he can run around in? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Well, she's looking at one. I'm good at him. Everything has high little, very hard desires. And he just kind of stares at you and then nods solemnly.

He's a very, he's a very intense dog. Good boy. Such a good boy. She kind of looks at you and goes like, I don't know.

I just feel like shit's different now. And I feel like I feel dangerous. I feel like I've read to other people. Yeah.

So did I when I came out of hell. Well, shit. She kind of throws all the blankets off her legs and goes, all right. All right.

Let's get in the bag. Let's do this. Fuck. Yeah.

She comes over and gets a big ol hug. Most infection Carrie's gotten in years. And as she's throwing all her shit together after hugging you, she says, and I get to smoke cigarettes outside. Fuck yes.

I'm sick and tired of being bored. You'd spend the rest of the day cleaning up her room and helping her check out. Fuck yes. Down in the bottled city, Tiny Arlu sits on a tiny throne.

Great. I mean, it's proportionate to her size, but I would say that what they're all like, what an inch tall the other night or even smaller. So you're in the city in the bottle because your mentor Taylor has requested your presence. If I'm sitting on a throne, I'm sitting on its sideways with my feet over the arms.

Hell yeah. I don't have to have respect for the position that I'm in. Taylor is also in the viziers Magister, which is a large chair and he's also sitting in it weird. He's got like his legs up on the back of it and he's hanging down.

So when he had it turned around backwards and sitting on it, the cool teacher's style. No, he's sitting in it bisexual disaster style. He himself is an older man of cherry red devil skin. He's got velvet blue crushed jacket and pants on.

He's a wizard, a time wizard, as well as other time magics. And over the past couple of weeks, she's kind of gotten into this rhythm, Marlu, where Taylor kind of just takes care of those things. Right. Like you don't have to be the adult in the room.

But he does say that he needs you there because they're kind of realizing he's doing all the work. So you might need to give a speech or something. He's basically just saying like, what are we going to do, Arlu? Like we can't do this forever.

I mean, we could just not do it and run from all of it. Well, I mean, like advocate to throne. Why don't you just do in public? Then they might leave you alone.

No, they won't. I bet they will. You know, they're pretty into this new post-bottle life down there. I got to say, in the time that you've been gone, they've been having a much easier time.

The religion stuff is getting weird, Arlu, but it ain't that many people. It really isn't. I've been trying to get them to stop worshiping me for almost 22 years now and they still have it. Well, right.

Have you ever been in a position of power before where you can actually do something to change it? Because you are now. No, not really. Okay.

I'm getting the phi, but you don't like being queen. There's a vibe. I thought it was hopefully a perish. I mean, most vibes are if you're a vibrator.

Goddamn it. But he says, I got an idea. Okay. What if you decide to abticate the throne in public and then you just do you?

If I just blow up the throne and tell them to just fucking get some democracy up in this bitch. I think they'll listen to that if you tell them what democracy is. You're just telling them to be normal. Oh, it was that easy?

Hey, never know until you try. I guess what I'm saying is that like these people won't stop pounding you if we are going to go live on Mars. Like it sounds like we're doing like these people are going to leave you alone. Yeah, they won't but don't necessarily need them.

She doesn't want to be in charge, but she also thinks that she kind of has to be in charge even if it's just for a little bit because they don't have electricity yet. And they're going to be living on an extra planetary for concolary. Do you say this out loud to him to Taylor? Kinda.

Maybe he'll say like that's exactly what we should be going on. Honestly, like if you just blow up the fucking castle and tell them I'm bringing you electricity, pretty sure you got them. Like here's clean water, here's fresh food. I haven't exactly been living with a lot of that stuff in a goddamn bottle or move.

I can't blow up the castle because it's already burned most of it down. Well, yeah, but you didn't get to do the fun part, which is blowing it up. That is a great point. How long has it been since you did a big explosion magic, Arlo?

I'm just a little here. What if we just tell people that you're on their side but you're not in charge of them? Here's the other thing with the whole democracy thing is that I don't know exactly how we're going to vote for people and probably could just end up voting back into being in charge. Not if you write the rules and say you can't be voted in.

No one else has that power right now. Can we just make it back in random? What do you mean? I've watched a lot of news about this U.S.

place on that earth. Specifically the house, not the senate. You want some proportional representation. You want a bunch of people to represent a bigger bunch of people.

Yeah, that kind of thing. He goes like, I think you're on something. That seems easy. And we can write up a charter or that'd be nothing.

I think I've noticed about the earth's version of this. Usually they get entrenched because they don't have term limits and that's bullshit. Let's not let them do that. As soon as you're going on a term limit rant, Dr.

Duda comes walking into the Royal Hall and as soon as she does, Taylor stands up and goes, baby, what's up? Oh god, gross. That's not a loud ending character. Dude, that looks forward and goes, believe me, Arlo, I feel the same way.

But he is really charming, so. I'm gonna dramatically walk down the roof. She goes, no, I needed to talk to you. I needed to talk to you.

Oh, okay. Fine. She's gonna sigh but be very like not thrilled to be here. Dude, that comes up and goes, Greg came up with an idea that might think I think might make this shrinking situation easier.

Okay. He was saying that like maybe some people that want to be on shrunk. In which case we wouldn't need a bunch of materials. We could just build them a tiny life.

Do you think there are people like that? Oh, maybe everything in here is going to build this scale. Even though we're like millimeters tall, we still probably feel like we're, you know, we're whopping four foot, 10 tall still. The few Amazon's iPhone shrunk so far have been having really bad scale and perspective issues.

They're very dizzy. It's hard to see. But I mean, they accommodate with time. I guess, do you mind talking to folks and seeing if there are people who don't want to be on shrunk?

Sure. That would be awesome. If we ever do this, if this, we could just do this, as a mess. Everybody, if they just want to be smaller big.

She goes, I think that's a genius idea. We should go do a census. All right. And then she goes, all right.

I'm gonna go kiss your mentor or whatever. Great. I don't need to know that. I know.

And then she walks away. Where's you now, Arlo? Anywhere but this room. Are you going to go to your castle or are you going amongst the people?

I don't have a castle. If I do, I blew it up or I'm gonna go. Okay. Let's go blow it up.

Is that your game plan to go blow the remnants of that castle up? Yeah. Or just like stress release set it up a more on fire than begin. So in your long hike across the city, you can see that the people have really changed.

Like they're not in crowds. They're not like screaming your name or whatever. And a lot of them don't even live in the old streets anymore. They've created small houses and towns and places to visit on to dad's desk.

Your game plan is to walk over to the old castle and then blow it up, right? I decided on fire for a form of stress relief. When your populace sees you doing this, they come out and visit around the castle to watch the spectacle. And they're like chanting your name and like hupin and hollering and is it called outside?

No, it's a temperature control room. I want to set a small fire and then leap them and fly away from him. Okay. While you're flying away from them, they all cast fireworks magic on the castle to let it explode more and make it a bigger and more colorful spectacle.

I appreciate that. First while he's with Arlo. Well, yeah, while he's on your back. Probably gonna go home in and have conversations with while he asks she can watch the hockey game.

There's a side only in his mansion tonight. Here. It's on earth. You do a lot of away games.

The league will be a lot better when they get access to teleporters. Perhaps the same could be said of real hockey. Does everyone have a favorite food? Don't think so.

I don't think she's ever eaten anything that's particularly you know, more than just keeping her alive like vegetables, plants. I don't think she's ever had anything that you would see like a membership or anything. She's never had anything like a dish. She's been like single ingredients.

I'm gonna say that once you get home and you're like setting up to watch hockey or whatever, while he actually transmute into a human form. Well, she does are human form. She doesn't look totally human. She looks like demigottish, you know, instead of normal human together, like lightning underneath it.

She's very intense. And she goes, I think I want to make you dinner. Is that cool? Yeah, sure.

How long have you had two legs? Just before? She immediately grows 12 more legs. I'm gonna have as many legs as I want.

But I figured it's easiest to use human cooking instruments with human hands and human feet. Yeah, that's probably accurate. I was very distracted. Plus, if I can be honest earlier, I'm fucking hungry.

I want to eat a giant pile of food. The last couple months have been stressful. You've almost died several times. I did die.

I'd like to find out. I was dead. Almost. Almost.

There's an asterisk. You're alive now, buddy. It's an asterisk. It's not an official record book.

So she actually tries to make you the first dish ever. What is it? I'm curious. What is it?

Yeah, what is it? Rice and fenugreek leaves. I don't know what those are. But I would have mentioned they're probably good.

Yeah, they're very aromatic herbs and leaves. So like you put them in rice and it makes the rice taste quite complex and interesting. It's simple. But it's like the first thing you've had in a long time that wasn't like pulled out of like a package or scavenged from some alien planet.

It's nice. It's warm. It's comfortable. Shum.

Shum is back in town. You've had two weeks since evading the Rigor labor camp to find your feet about you. You've got the remainder of the sun and day from the labor camp with you. They're also going through the same acclimation process as the Rigor Sivanians and the shrunken aminites.

But with Isne as the point person instead, the union has thought it appropriate to give you an a key to a couple of weeks off. So what would you do with your freetun? I had already thought this before but I mentioned it but Shum started brewing some sun and day ale. Hell yeah!

That's awesome. Is it a specific type of ale? It's a recipe he found in the books that is making of him so it's from their ancient culture. Awesome.

Can you make me a crafting role? That is a plus two. Shit it's good beer. I'm going to say that unlike earth beer it picks carrots off within a week or two.

So you're going to have plenty of beer to pump out to folks that want it. But it also is like a pretty involved process and you just tend a lot of time just learning. In the meantime you've seen several folks move into your neighborhood, alien PCs you're not familiar with. What used to be a pretty sparse little place to live is now filled with people.

Yeah, I think I'm just going to want to through the street and invite people over to try this. Oh I love it. Do you have any on here? Are you inviting them back to your house?

Inviting people back. Just everyone is welcome. Hell yeah. Can you make me another crafting role?

That's only plus one. You know that's still pretty good for a neighborhood block party. So the A was a hit and also people were starting to bring over food and play music. You see all these people that you live around you finally get to meet them for the first time and shake hands and say how do you do this?

There's one person there really stands out in the crowd. You haven't seen him before. It must be a recent move but it's a robot. It's an android.

It's gold from head to toe. It's kind of like a chiseled human look but he's got enormous robes on him. Like priest robes and he's just enjoying the ale milling about. He seems to be pretty charismatic so a lot of people are talking to him.

But when you walk by he does wave you over. Yeah I'll approach and reach out to handshake. He gives you a nice handshake, a firm handshake and says John of the Union of Heroes. I just wanted to thank you for all you've done with this great beer.

Thank you for inviting everybody out today. Sure I've had a bit of time off so I figured I'd share what I've done. Well I'd say keep going you're killing it. I just don't know.

I don't want to introduce myself. I'm new to town. My name is Brother Klyxas. I'm a pastor in a local church.

For the most part I just like to keep myself and stay quiet but I'll tell you what whenever you throw in a rager like this I'm swinging by this is hell a lot of fun. You're welcome anytime. So brother Klyxas. What brought you to Mars?

What brought me to Mars? That's an interesting question. I was built on Mars. I'm actually pretty brand new.

Yeah I think I've been here for maybe a month or so. Someone built me. A good friend of mine. His name is Gary.

I built me in his garage. Sort of inspiration. And you know I just decided that I need to spend my life bettering others. Yeah I think we'd be happy to have you around here.

Oh that's really good to know. Tell me, John, do you go to church at all? I can't say I do. I've never been one for religion as such.

Yeah I hear that. You know based on the current state of the world who could blame you. I just want to let you know that we're probably going to be putting up a new church in the neighborhood soon and you're always welcome and not just to pray or worship. Yeah that's good.

Sorry did you say what got you worship? I'm a member of the church of the father and the father is who we worship. We worship the predecessor. He is a reborn man.

He's a reborn martyr and brand new shoes. All I know is that despite all of the metaphysical stuff and all the big questions a lot of the writings in the book of the father have helped me and guided me in my short life. I didn't even say I worshiped yet, Sean, but I would say that I've been given purpose. Think of it this way.

If you don't know for sure what to believe, it's really easy to stick to the stuff that treats people well. Yeah. Yeah I think that's a very good sentiment. I do have a question about safety here on Mars though.

Safety is very much Greg's domain but I can try and help. I haven't made any seems like a big great guy. But I'm thinking more like broader scale. Is the right work operation already here?

Is this safe from them? Afford whisperings. Honestly, they're trying to come. We're pushing them back as much as we can and we have a confidence we can stop them.

Well, when that day arrives I will happily pick up my mace to help you find the scourge of the galaxy. Thank you Sean for your time. I don't mean to hold up. Plus this beer is getting to me.

I may be a robot but I was programmed to get drunk. Well, enjoy it if you can then. There's no problems there buddy. So anything in particular you're looking to do with this party are you just legitimately kicking back?

Just kicking back. Just actually need a break. I'd say after a couple hours is me on the sunny day. We'll show up to your party.

Hey Sean, I hope you don't mind I invited us because uh, where is there's a black party and it's spread? Yeah, everyone's welcome. But it's not a day during the rest of the group and you'll party to the end of the night. But over to Logan.

Logan, what's she doing with your free time? The best two weeks are key to probably been split in this time between going to visit Constance and also probably trying to figure out a housing arrangement for all his new hires. Well, I mean they're kind of going through the same integration process that everyone else is or you're either learning stuff and they're not really going to be able to have their own house in place to go for a while. But, you know, you have to stay in regular touch with them and you're familiar with Greg and Wake or doing over there.

So you have a regular contact with them and you know that they're like safe and out of place to stay and that kind of stuff. So Plutonians aren't like the Jotanes and just came out on a Kia's lawn. Oh no, no, no, no. The Plutonians actually were very curious about your society because they've never left their own planet.

They've only known a diamond tailscape their entire life and this is very, very different. After the two weeks, he's probably going to start looking into various things that have been on his mind. Oh, okay. Kia was one of the first people to notice that something was being built on Phobos.

Yes. You probably would have tried to get in contact with the rest of the team to see if they figured out anything about that. Well, this would be a moment to ask. Everybody on the team gets a buzz from Makita.

Hey, so I've been wondering, has anybody else noticed the construction project on Phobos? There's construction on Phobos. Now Greg, this is something you definitely have heard of. That's the casino, right?

Yeah. It's the casino that is may showed you a couple of episodes back. I thought we went then we do a flyby or something. Yeah, she did a flyby and told you what was there, but you haven't stopped like a team or anything.

Yeah, it's the casino that's built then being built like on the fly. It's like a rogue operation. There's no records of it. Oh, Papa, casino.

It is. It just started building with no approvals, no plan review, no nothing. That reminds me, I've been meaning to get back up there and check out what's going on. But yeah, we're aware of it.

We just don't have a lot of specifics. I was thinking about heading up there saying what's going down. So if anybody wanted to come with, that would be a good time to come in. But I'll be leaving in probably like 45.

Yeah. I'll be there in 30. I think I might actually want to stay here and do some stuff. Come on, Wayfarer.

Come bond with the team. I'm gonna say everybody gets too keen as house that needs to. You can take a quick flight on the carcass. When you get there to the moon, you are greeted by a beautiful spectacle.

It is a golden city. It looks like a casino city. There are casinos everywhere, everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of casinos. They're still under construction.

Nobody's here yet. There also seem to be places to live, several churches, several markets and restaurants. It looks like it's a big teaming metropolis that's just waiting to be filled up with people. It's completely unpopular.

Completely unpopular, other than like some of the construction people and they're all androids. Is there like a welcome to sign or like a name for this place? No? No, yeah, no.

It looks like it's very much the under construction. So is my rover here? Did I bring Rover? Yeah, he came on the ship.

He came with you. Hey, Rover. Of course. I want to set Rover to to survey mode.