Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 24 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

(Intro music plays, then fades out, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: you dock in the Cassiopeia, go ahead and roll… So who all is going to start repairing stuff? Is, is this a team effort? Is this just Ollie and Zahn and Polaris's Son?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was gonna say Son Boy is helping

Jenine/Marty: Marty staying behind to help repair Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: Well, shouldn't you get Rho to the med bay?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, right. That's the thing. Well, nothing's powered on yet. I'm

Bee/Polaris: Oh, right.

Jenine/Marty: Don't run away!

Avery/GM: Here Rho, enjoy this decompressed ship.

Bee/Polaris: Well  I mean, with the gravity off, it'll probably be easier to move her to the bed.

Avery/GM: This is true.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, the, uh, life support will come on first and the gravity would come on second, so…

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: In that window you just hover her over.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So you don't have to drag her or carry her. Because Ollie and Zahn are gonna be fixing the ship.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say Ollie and Zahn go ahead and roll intelligence repair… or intelligence fix. Sorry.

Bee/Polaris: Does my child have to roll too?

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead and roll.

Bee/Polaris: What?

Avery/GM: And you can just use your stats.

Bee/Polaris: for what? What is it? Intelligence fix?

Avery/GM: Well, it has a plus two fix, so,

Bee/Polaris: oh, thank goodness. Okay!

Avery/GM: so intel… whatever your intelligence is, and then fix.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: 13.

Bee/Polaris: 12.

Zach/Zahn: God damn.

Chris/Ollie: Also 13.

Avery/GM: Also 13?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Avery/GM: Holy crap.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I've got a lot of… a lot of fix.

Avery/GM: Okay. Y'all turned a two day job into a one day job.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go!

Zach/Zahn: into a 20 minute job!

Chris/Ollie: Just get a montage going on.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I mean, Zan was quick, but unintentionally thorough when he cut this wire.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, I remember being intentionally thorough actually.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah fair enough. So it's just a, it just takes a little while, you know, takes like a standard, you know, 10 hours to get everything fixed up the way it was and then of course, since the gravity was turned off as well, like some things had like floated and then when the gravity comes back on it kind of, Comes back down and like makes a mess. So there's also just like a mess to clean up, you know, things like that. While these repairs are going on, Marty, you said something about trying to fix Polaris.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I got tea and crumpets.

Avery/GM: You come into the cockpit as Zahn and Ollie are probably heading out into the Casio to start repairs.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I make a little goodie bag for Zahn. I'm like, take it with you.

Zach/Zahn: He, uh, does like the, the cheers, like with what, what you give him, like the takes it, lifts it up and then also nods down like, thanks… Straight out straight outta the Gatsby meme.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Marty, you come into the cockpit with the tea and the, and the goodies, and Polaris is just. Sitting there stoically.

Bee/Polaris: he has his knees up on the chair, like his feet up on the chair.

Jenine/Marty: I do that like fun thing where like you have your arm like fully extended, like ready to tap on someone's shoulder cause you don't wanna scare them, but you don't wanna get hit. You know, you do like the full, like extend kind of like, or like when you are like trying to shoo a bug away, that's kind of what's happening. But not shooing, but like trying to get attention but knows like, this is like a… okay.

Bee/Polaris: she's not touching him?

Jenine/Marty: Well, she's trying to like, but like putting body away, so like just arm, you know what I mean?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think once Marty touches him, he like, flinches like he's going to do something, but knowing that he's only surrounded by his friends, he's not gonna like, actually do a harm. but, uh, he, he will turn on the sound. He'll, he'll turn up the volume on his environment now

 Jenine/Marty: I brought snacks.

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up on Visor.

Jenine/Marty: How are you doing?

Bee/Polaris: Double thumbs up on visor, and then a loading screen, and then like a th like a sideways thumb.

Jenine/Marty: I brought some sweets and snacks. Do you wanna hug? Do you wanna talk about it? We don't have to talk about it if you don't wanna talk about it. Do you wanna hug? Do you want me to just like sit here and like not say anything and just like hand you snacks as you're doing whatever you're doing? How may I assist?

Bee/Polaris: You've given him too many options to, to respond to. He's now like scrolling through his emojis to figure out. He'll, just like, you'll just see like the, the blinking line indicating that someone's about to type and then you, you just see on his visor. It says, I'm good…

Jenine/Marty: Why do I feel like you're lying to me?

Bee/Polaris: on snacks… I'm good on snacks.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. My brain almost said insight check, and I'm like, that's wrong.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Roll an insight check. I'll roll. Deception.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: A connect is that

Avery/GM: Zone of truth?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: So I guess that would actually be a connect roll if you wanted to.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah, sure.

Bee/Polaris: To, for what?

Avery/GM: To discern kind of…

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris didn't lie. Like when you asked if he was okay, He did the thumbs up at first and then did like, the side was like

Jenine/Marty: Uhhuh,

Bee/Polaris: kind of

Jenine/Marty: Uhhuh. Uhhuh, okay. Cool, cool, cool. So you're good. You have snacks. Do you want me to just, do you want me left alone? Do you wanna talk about what's. What's going through your head there? Do you need help deciphering things? You were a little quiet during our little conversation earlier, so just wanted to check in.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will type on his advisor. Let me catch up with transcripts to see what you guys said.

Jenine/Marty: Sorry, tr transcript. We wait, so you weren't listening?

Bee/Polaris: No.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris catch himself on what everyone said and then he'll, he'll actually take off his helmet and say, is Rho still in the ship?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Should we move her to the Med Bay?

Jenine/Marty: Well, I don't know if, if they're done fixing things yet, right?

Zach/Zahn: As you say that, you hear the (makes power up noise with his mouth)

Avery/GM: the Apple startup sequence? Yeah, Brrrr.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just blinks.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Maybe now we can, we can move her.

Bee/Polaris: He'll just nod and put his helmet back on and then go to help move Rho.

Jenine/Marty: Before she just like puts up a cookie.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just like stops and looks at the cookie and then just like gently puts his hand on the cookie and lowers the cookie.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: no, no cookie time. He's not in mood for cookie

Jenine/Marty: valid. She just follows behind with like a plate of goodies and like two thermos of tea.

Bee/Polaris: Aw. Polaris will pick up a Rho and help move her to the Med Bay.

Avery/GM: Sure. That's not a problem. Polaris is a big strong lad.

Bee/Polaris: He, yeah, he is. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: He's only not charismatic or wise.

Avery/GM: Excellent. So yeah, you're in the Med Bay with Rho. Rho, by the way, when you moved Rho, they, she did not stir at all, like

Zach/Zahn: full comatose.

Avery/GM: No reaction. Yeah. Marty, do you, do you hook row up to some of the more advanced machines here?

Jenine/Marty: Yes, I do.

Avery/GM: Cool. Yeah, so yeah, you start hooking. Hooking her up. The, the heart rate monitor is a little more advanced here and actually gives you more detailed information about like blood pressure, things like that. You do notice that on the Brain Wave reader, the only waves that are reading are delta waves, which are the lowest brainwaves ever recorded for humans. So…

Bee/Polaris: oh, she's actually in a coma.

Avery/GM: Actually in a coma. Yeah. Which may be a pr which may or may not be more of a protective measure that…

Chris/Ollie: No, that's actually, that's great for us.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Because there's no reason for her not to just rage again when she wakes up.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Cool, cool, cool question. Is there a way for me to just like also get like a, this feels like a highly advanced area. Is there like a nice little like pager-esque kind of a thing that I can have that's like connected to her, like heart rate thing and like brainwave thing so I know what's happening at like all times when I'm not in the room with her.

Avery/GM: Oh, definitely. Yeah. There's

Jenine/Marty: Sick!

Avery/GM: Yeah, there's definitely probably some sort of like, yeah, little mobile monitor that you could clip onto your belt or something.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool.

Avery/GM: Have you taken Hermes out of The Minos and, and are you gonna put it in or no?

Chris/Ollie: No. Uh, I want to scrub the ship just to be sure. I, I don't think there's a problem, but, uh, Ollie wouldn't, wouldn't allow it until he had, you know, installed the latest version of Norton Antivirus.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: and ran a scan, a deep sweep.

Bee/Polaris: you're gonna have to create

Chris/Ollie: in safe mode.

you're gonna have to create a, a fake version of that, cuz we can't say

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Horton.

Zach/Zahn: Horton.

Chris/Ollie: Horton antivirus.

Zach/Zahn: Horton antivirus.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. There you go.

Chris/Ollie: But if power's on, then Ollie will probably sim simultaneously doing that with his drone because it was set up and ready to…

Avery/GM: okay. Yeah. So you're gonna, you're gonna run the, the drone and, and see if you can find…

Chris/Ollie: make, yeah. Make sure the ship is safe for AIs.

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead and roll a wait… Does your drone have stats?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, well I'm controlling it directly.

Avery/GM: Oh, so it have your stats. Okay, then

Chris/Ollie: yeah.

Avery/GM: Roll a, uh, an intelligence program check.

Chris/Ollie: It's a 16

Bee/Polaris: Jesus

Avery/GM: Holy. God. Yeah. No. You find no trace of The Iaso program. It ran… With such a good roll, I will say that you realize that the Iaso program, once it is in a system, it runs and then destroys itself.

Chris/Ollie: Wonderful. and I'll let the crew know

Zach/Zahn: that Hermes is safe.

Chris/Ollie: Good news. The Cassiopeia is now deemed safe for all AI inhabitants.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I'm gonna go get Hermes to put 'em in the Hermes.

Zach/Zahn: You get a, you get a thumbs up in the group chat from Zahn.

Avery/GM: Polaris. You come down to the engine room with Herman's AI Crystal, and you don't immediately see a place to put it.

Bee/Polaris: Oh,  Polaris is just gonna hand it to Zahn because he was gonna go put on some band-aids because he is still very hurt. Yeah. So Polaris is gonna go, he's gonna Hand Zahn Hermes and then go un cuz like he got stabbed with his own laser blade. So there's probably like a hole in him. It's like a cauterized hole that's just in him So he's gonna go do something about that.

Zach/Zahn: as you're handing her to me, I look down and I see the hole. I'm like, you should probably get that looked at buddy.

Bee/Polaris: He types on his visor: That's the plan. And then he, he goes and does that.

Zach/Zahn: You get a thumbs up from Zahn as he goes to plug hers into the, uh, into the Cassiopeia, now known as the Hermes.

Avery/GM: Sure. You don't immediately see a location for Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, you know what, Navi probably wasn't a chaos emerald, huh?

Avery/GM: Mm

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Bee/Polaris: Navi was just a, you just put a flash drive, you just slap 'em in there.

Jenine/Marty: Can we not put Hermes on a flash drive and just go boop?

Zach/Zahn: No, Two different galaxies of technology, man.

Bee/Polaris: Can we tape Hermes to a flash drive and plug in the flash drive?

Jenine/Marty: and go boop?

Chris/Ollie: Well, we, we pretty much. Have that, like we have the flash drive that's in Polaris's helmet.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Well, yeah, that's like that…

Chris/Ollie: We can pretty much, yeah. Do the same thing with the ship, so, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Well, Polaris doesn't know that he's, he's gonna go put something, he's gonna stuff some gauze in his burn hole.

Zach/Zahn: We can hypothetically put Hermes in one of the Ollie backup bots and then just have the bot plug into the Cassiopeia.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, No. We have the bot physically sit in the chair and pilot the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Now, out of curiosity,

Chris/Ollie: he also controls the ship remotely.

Bee/Polaris: Now, out of curiosity, do we want Hermes to have a body?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. There's a recipe for trouble.

Zach/Zahn: He has an entire, he has a body. It's an entire war ship.

Bee/Polaris: Yes, I know, but I mean, do we want him to have legs that he can use to leave?

Chris/Ollie: Because. If, yeah, if he's got arms and legs, he can equip whatever weapons he wants.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Hermes can learn how to strangle is my thing. Like you, we don't want him to learn how to strangle.

Chris/Ollie: Hermes is like I've discovered, I like it when I see the light leave their eyes.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh… Oh my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: I find it fascinating when the light slowly leaves their eyes.

Zach/Zahn: Why are we turning Hermes into Sociopath?

Jenine/Marty: Why not?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, that is the, like the trend that we have observed. So he's like in the baby stages.

Chris/Ollie: So back to trying to install this core, Ollie will hold his hand out to Zahn and say, if I may?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Here, and he hands over the Hermes.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will run a scan of the, uh, blueprints of the Cassiopeia.

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm.

Chris/Ollie: And see where, if any, this thing could plug into.

Avery/GM: So go ahead and roll intelligence program. I guess it's kind of a moot point, but you never know.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. That is 13.

Avery/GM: So you, you succeed. What you find is that, So you don't find exactly like plugin chaos emerald here, but you do find that a lot of the equipment in the research area is very similar to the stuff in Alioth’s Lab that was able to connect you with Hermes and with this AI… with this AI that you know now came from a different galaxy. So there is definitely a way. Using some of this tech here that you could fashion an apparatus to hold Hermes and connect it to this ship. It'll just take some time.

Chris/Ollie: Well determining that. Ollie will just mention to Zan as he makes his way over to the work bench. It seems the work is never done and he, he starts getting to work on that.

Avery/GM: Okay, sure. Uh, that'll probably take you the rest of the day. The current day.

Chris/Ollie: Got it.

Avery/GM: What's everyone else doing?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, uh, Polaris goes and he was gonna go put a Band Aid on, but he goes and gets the salmon.

Zach/Zahn: Aw

Chris/Ollie: Oh yes. Oh, and also, yeah, you don't have to help me Zahn. That's just what Ollie is doing. You can…

Bee/Polaris: oh, Polaris's son is probably helping you.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Son Bot is definitely helping. Um, yeah. Sun Boy. This little diminutive little, you know, 12 inch tall…

Bee/Polaris: His name… Yeah. His name is Deif!

Avery/GM: That's right, Dief!

Bee/Polaris: Spelled like Lief, but with a D.

Zach/Zahn: Dief!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Uh, like, uh, and, and for, uh, for reference, just like Ollie is totally aware and cognizant that he is a never sleeping, never resting, never eating, you know, machine. So if you wanna say like, yeah, Ollie, you do all the work, he's, he's like, yeah, sure.

Zach/Zahn: But Zahn likes to doing the work.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Zahn, yeah. Zahn only does the work

Chris/Ollie: That’s right, he is a workaholic

Avery/GM: Polaris, I will say that. You would've passed through this workshop area and the salmon was sitting on that table right there. So you easily grab it and take it with you.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I get the salmon.

Avery/GM: back to the Med Bay.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is going to set about doing some mods, I guess.

Avery/GM: Okay, let me check. So you, you all already repaired all the holes that were in the ship, right?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Spent a couple days doing that.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay.  Yeah, it was a couple days. Okay, cool. You wanna make more mods?

Zach/Zahn: Of course I do.

Avery/GM: Killin’ me Zach. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I have a list for my armor that I…

Bee/Polaris: mods, mods, mods.

Zach/Zahn: Basically the things I have on my to-do list are upgrade my vacit to 50% duration operation. I have the translator torque that I bought, I want to add it to my helmet. And then I wanted to add bubble seals to everyone's armor or clothing or whatever and then boosting weapon damage output is basically adding a plus two damage to everyone's guns.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I just realized that I don't think we ever fixed Polaris's ship.

Avery/GM: No, you haven't fixed Polaris's, uh, ship after, um, the race.

Zach/Zahn: I said I wanted to do it and add the regenerative armor to it, and you were like: no!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris doesn't want things added to it. He just wants it to not have holes in it.

Avery/GM: It's more like dents and scratches and cracks. It's not full on penetration.

Chris/Ollie: Well it was like a one hp.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, it was, wasn't it?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. It was…

Avery/GM: Yeah. Never mind.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it was fucked up.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah, never mind and you did use your, and you used your wing to

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Baseball bat a uh,

Bee/Polaris: the guy

Avery/GM: A little tiny pod.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Avery/GM: So Zahn, if you're gonna do mods, I would like you to roll just 2d6 straight up.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, what?

Avery/GM: Just 2d6.

Zach/Zahn: six total on the dice.

Avery/GM: Okay. You are able to get two of those mods done, so pick the two. I will say you won't… if you pick weapon output, you will not get to everyone's weapons, I don't think.

Zach/Zahn: No, I didn't think so. So I would like to upgrade my Vac suit to additional 50% duration, just in case that becomes important at some point.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: And then I would like to spend the rest of my time adding bubble seals to everyone's clothing, if that's acceptable.

Avery/GM: We'll, okay. We'll say that you do start, like you, you grab some of the armor from like this armory here and you do start like tinkering with it and like putting bubble seals on it for emergencies and stuff.

Zach/Zahn: And I make sure that Marty has a vax or has a bubble seal.

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Because I don't think Marty has any armor whatsoever.

Jenine/Marty: What's arm? What's armor?

Bee/Polaris: Defenses?

Jenine/Marty: Defenses. Ha ha.

Bee/Polaris: Marty's defenses are hugs and healing.

Jenine/Marty: Uwu… uwu please, no!

Bee/Polaris: wait. Did that work at one point?

Avery/GM: I mean, not really, but I mean that's how y'all got out of pirate fighting.

Bee/Polaris: True.

Chris/Ollie: Not only got got out of it, we made some homies.

Zach/Zahn: Oh hey, we do need to give them a call!

Avery/GM: I was just gonna see, um, what else Marty was doing and then Polaris, if you were doing anything else besides healing up. And then we're gonna do a bit of a time skip.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Gotcha. Yeah, Polaris was just gonna put a bandaid on and then put the salmon in next to Roe.

Avery/GM: Aw.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Marty's just gonna continue reading through this document. And just like see if there's any like, errors in the theory and writing them down if seen, probably just good notes…

Avery/GM: Sure

Jenine/Marty: That’s what she is doing.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that makes sense.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Go ahead and roll. A intelligence-heal or an intelligence-know?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, it's fine. 10.

Avery/GM: 10.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: You realize that the brainwave pa or the psychic pattern that Oswald drew is reversed.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh.

Avery/GM: It should have. It should have been the other way.

Bee/Polaris: What an idiot.

Avery/GM: And you re… but you do realize that reversing, that actually does eliminate the 30% chance of causing complete mental failure because one of the side effects listed was basically the helper could become catatonic.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, that little piece of shit.

Bee/Polaris: I don't think he was trying to kill you.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah

Avery/GM: Probably not intentional. Probably more incompetence.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. You should send back his notes.

Jenine/Marty: She's still gonna say it. She's

Chris/Ollie: That’s pretty susy.

Avery/GM: Oh, totally.

Jenine/Marty: She's still gonna say little piece of shit. Doesn't know shit.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no. Yeah. Just send it back to him like as if it was the basic, like are you really trying to kill me with this stupid shit?

Jenine/Marty: No, she’s…

Bee/Polaris: I was gonna say like draw over it

Jenine/Marty: in a red pen.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly. Like a teacher correcting an essay.

Jenine/Marty: That's what she's doing.

Chris/Ollie: Yes. Perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Great notes, smiley face. However, I found one inconsistency

Avery/GM: to be fair, and I don't know if Marty intended this, I did act accidentally establish that Marty was top of her class, so…

Bee/Polaris: this guy's just real smug and probably rich.

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: yeah, yeah. Someone got out of like actually doing stuff in the field and was like put in a lab, so…

Bee/Polaris: got 'em.

Chris/Ollie: Oh no, this is great…. Because let's pull up with Rho, fix him in front or fix her in front of this guy and then give him his his graded test paper and be like: dumbass.

Bee/Polaris: Literally just go, just go to his place to use his lab and that is it. Don't even ask for his help, just get papers for the Republic saying like, yes, you have authorization to use this lab. Fix her in front of him and then dip.

Jenine/Marty: We should, that's what we should do. We should ask him for like, If we can use that lab space.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no, don't even ask him. The Republic, or at least Machamp has an IOU for us.

Jenine/Marty: No, ask MaChamp. We should ask MaChamp if we can use that space.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, you can send MaChamp an email.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah and MaChamp will requisition the lab, and then we'll just walk in as the boss's boss and be like, Hey, nice to see ya.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Oswald like outside, like who I, I reserved this laptop who took it out from under me, and then you just walk in. Oh, hey Oswald, Long time no see!

Jenine/Marty: What's up loser?

Bee/Polaris: You do like the L on your forehead.

Jenine/Marty: No, she has class. She would never, she'd be thinking it!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would do the L. Polaris would do the L.

Jenine/Marty: Cool.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. She would just be transmitting the image of it to his brain.

Avery/GM: So what does Marty end up wanting to do after finding this error?

Jenine/Marty: She starts doing the corrections and then like with like a red, like. She does like the fun, like opens like, like good notes equivalent on, on her tablet and starts writing like big red circles. And like anytime she sees like a mistype or like grammar issues, she also is like fixing it and is about to send it and then stops and then she like starts writing an email to um, uh, a general MaChamp. Um, doesn't send it yet, but like, has that like ready to show everybody and be like, this is, this is what we can do.

Avery/GM: So Marty, you're, you're contemplating sending that to MaChamp. Will time skip to the next morning? Everyone's kind of sitting around the table eating breakfast or in Ollie's case, contemplating putting more food into its…

Chris/Ollie: Oh, no, to make it clear, it, it's not like I'm eating every meal, just the stuff that Bruce gives me.

Avery/GM: Oh gotcha. Ok.

Bee/Polaris: Aw. Aw, that's cute. So you just sit down with a plate of food in front of you and just never eat it?

Chris/Ollie: Well, I don't know. For, for the normal, uh, like when, when Bruce is here and he makes his special dishes, gives him out, you just see him like putting it piece by piece as if he's eating into his chest cavity.

Jenine/Marty: So we've seen seen him do this?

Avery/GM: Yeah. But he usually doesn't bother to show up for normal meals.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: Okay. So the four squishies are, or three squishies are sitting around the breakfast table.

Chris/Ollie: Are we on the Wait, we're in the Cassiopeia now?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: This has gotta be a. Actually, no, it's not. Probably not that big. Cuz it's all automated, huh? Yeah

Avery/GM: but there were, there were two tables cuz there were supposed to be a lot more crew.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. Are the body still down there?

Zach/Zahn: No, we… we ejected them all.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. We gave them the burial at burial at space.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Did we do?

Bee/Polaris: No we didn't.

Zach/Zahn: We did.

Jenine/Marty: Wait, I thought we did.

Avery/GM: No, you were supposed,

Zach/Zahn: we did.

Jenine/Marty: No I thought we did. No, that was our During our time skip.

Avery/GM: Oh was it?

Bee/Polaris: I thought we were, wasn't talking about it, but we never did cuz we were gonna like launch 'em into the sun or something.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, we did do that.

Bee/Polaris: Did we? Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I am 87% positive.

Bee/Polaris: I'm just gonna believe you

Avery/GM: If not we…

Chris/Ollie: Because wait, we haven’t moved the Cassiopeia at all… oh no Yeah, we have

Bee/Polaris: Yeah we have

Chris/Ollie: moved it all the way here, so we definitely, yeah, we stopped off and

Avery/GM: if, if not, we will retcon and say, yes, you have taken care of the, the bodies.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I was just gonna go ahead and trust what you guys say cuz my memory is trash

Avery/GM: anyway, so you're all kind of sitting around having a breakfast. To start off your day. Go ahead.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn't wanna be rude, but he's al he doesn't really want to eat. He's eating like his bars while he's trying to finish reading the document.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, about, about your,

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Avery/GM: Your origins.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is doing something very similar… he's eating whatever food is provided, but he's got like a, he's has his left arm like resting on the table while eating. So he is like hunched forward over the table, very unprofessional. but he is got a hologram up of the documents of the, the Cassiopeia about Terra and where its origins are and its mission, and he is just reading that over for like the 30th time now.

Jenine/Marty: Well, well, Marty made breakfast buns like, like, you know how there's like, like the little like

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: yeah. Like red bean buns, but like made it like breakfast and just is like, okay. They're like, yeah, she made that for breakfast for everybody.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris will, Polaris will like, take a few bites of his bar, but like to not be rude, like eat, like a couple bites of the bun too.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn, not to be rude, obviously thanks Marty.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is still zoned out.

Avery/GM: Polaris, you do find notes in the document you're reading that do indicate that they suspect you also came from the Milky Way.

Bee/Polaris: Cool

Avery/GM: and there are a list of, at first, what appeared to be like random numbers, but as you're kind of like waking up, you know, eating breakfast and kind of like your, your brain is finally turning on for the day.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: You do realize that this list of numbers is actually a set of. Different, different sets of coordinates and there's about eight of them.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will like highlight all the coordinates, copy and paste into chat and send it into chat with like no context cuz he just keeps reading after that. But he figures that's important.

Jenine/Marty: Well this is a lovely breakfast. How did everybody sleep?

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. They're both like reading in their helmets.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: No, Zahn is eating. So he’s you know,

Chris/Ollie: oh, okay.

Zach/Zahn: He has his helmet off.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Your, he… your helmet is like half deconstructed and just your mouth is revealing.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my god.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris has his like pulled up so he can eat, but he's still reading. But he did send a message to like the group chat as in for the whole crew. So you guys get the list of coordinates.

Jenine/Marty: These… this is cool you wanna share with everybody at the table. What, what, what the coordinates are?

Bee/Polaris: He just says Milky Way with parenthesis question mark parenthesis.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool, cool, cool. Oh, we also still need to listen to that second message

Zach/Zahn: that we do. Oh,

Chris/Ollie: perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Where's Ollie?

Chris/Ollie: in the workshop.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: You, you do hear Hermes over the loudspeaker. Ollie you have finished connecting hers to this ship.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Avery/GM: It is not the prettiest connection ever. It's definitely like there are some wires and some, you know, some connectors in place that like, eh, if you trip 'em just the right way, they might disconnect, but it'll do, and Hermes comes over the loudspeaker in the mess hall and it's just like: I can play that second message if you would like. It is very informative and honestly quite concerning.

Jenine/Marty: Sorry?

Zach/Zahn: you didn't think to mention the concerning part Sooner?

Avery/GM: Oh, it is just concerning to me and my wellbeing.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Jenine/Marty: You're important. We wanna make sure that you're okay as well. If anything concerns you, let us know.

Avery/GM: Very well. I will play it for you. Please do not be alarmed.

(ambience fades out, track “Dark Matter” fades in)

Avery/GM:  (as Bruce) Well, everyone, I hope you enjoy your food. If you'll excuse me, I'll go and start working on the dishes.

Pothos: Yes, yes, fine. Thank you, sir.

Rhea: Pothos, thank you for having me here. As much as the hegemony despises the republic, I must say the luxuries they enjoy are very impressive, and this food spread is better than anything we typically get back on Tartarus. I trust things are going well?

Pothos: Yes, Rhea, quite well. Things are proceeding just as we planned. The Terrans have found several of the wormhole that we built and should start pouring through any day now once we've started the hostilities The Republic and Hegemony will be able to force the remaining independent systems into an alliance, and slowly The Eternal One's plans will come to fruition.

Rhea: Excellent. Once I get back, I'll send out the decoy and deploy the virus. Ithaca sounds like the perfect planet to stage our little play, don't you think?

Pothos: (laughs) Yes, Rhea. I think Ithaca sounds like the perfect place.

Rhea: I trust that we won't have anything to worry about from the Republic's military, will we?

Pothos: No. Military is stretched so thin trying to keep the peace on the core worlds that we won't have the time or resources to assist.

Rhea: What do you know about the Oracles.

Pothos: The Oracles? You mean that urban legend about some invisible agency keeping balance across the galaxy, sworn, noble protectors of order and justice? Come on, Reya. Next, you're gonna tell me that Beff Zejos has returned from his exile and reestablished Jungle. They’re stories. Nothing more. Now let's finish this meal and head down to the vault. I finally found that piece of tech you've been asking for.

Rhea: Oh, the AI hunter? Excellent. Our little Hermes will finally be coming home.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh. Ah, yikes.

Jenine/Marty: Hermes... Hermes…

Avery/GM: I do not wish to return to the Hegemony.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Cool. We don't want you to go back either. Why didn't we get this, this, this recording played. I appreciate you, Hermes. I appreciate you immensely. You're doing great and do two thumbs up, like pointing to whatever camera I could find.

Bee/Polaris: I just realized something that maybe Polaris would realize but wouldn't really vocalize. But question for you, Avery. The custodians don't have AI crystals. Like they're not…

Avery/GM: they do not.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. But they have the ability to transfer AI to have bodies like them.

Avery/GM: They have the ability to transfer their AI units to bodies. Yes.

Bee/Polaris: but we established that they could do that for Ollie, right?

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yes, we did.

Bee/Polaris: So then could. We give Hermes a body and destroy the crystal so that they can't track him.

Avery/GM: That's a good question…

Bee/Polaris: because if we know about this AI hunter, we can just make it so they can't hunt the AI.

Avery/GM: This is true. I will say though, the difference is, Is that, well, currently Ollie has his core cut, but if Ollie destroyed the cut piece of core, Ollie would just have the one core. The problem is, is that Ollie's core is cut currently and you don't know where the second piece is

Chris/Ollie: No, it, it's in the dog

Avery/GM: or I meant, I meant Hermes.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Avery/GM: Hermes’ core is cut and you don't know where the second piece is.

Bee/Polaris: So we would have to destroy the smaller piece

Chris/Ollie: Find and destroy the other piece.

Bee/Polaris: so we have to cross a AI hunt Hermes. Well, no. Bruce told us the location of where he went.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Right.

Jenine/Marty: But they have, they're… no wait.

Avery/GM: So that recording was take took place on Calydon, which is the financial capital of the Republic. It is not where Hermes' second piece is.

Bee/Polaris: That is true, but we know the names of the people that were talking and they said that they were gonna, they were going to take 'em. They were gonna take 'em to the lab.

Avery/GM: what was the other person's name? I only got Rhea.

Bee/Polaris: Pat… Pathos?

Avery/GM: Pothos. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Do would, would we be able to do a quick like space, Google on incognito mode on these, these two

Avery/GM: You can definitely try and search for anything about these individuals.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: You might wanna use a VPN.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I would like to do that on incognito mode with a VPN.

Avery/GM: Sure. Roll intelligence-know check.

Jenine/Marty: Beautiful.

Bee/Polaris: Did Bruce mention what day or like what time he did this so that we know how much time we have before this AI hunter comes after

Avery/GM: It was not recorded in the message. You could ask Hermes and he might know when it was transmitted.

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha.

Jenine/Marty: That, that, that's a four.

Avery/GM: You find nothing on Rhea at all. This person, there is no record of that name anywhere searchable that you can find. On Pothos, The only thing you know is that that person is the Minister of Finance for the Republic. The third most powerful person in the Republic basically. Handles all the money and basically, yeah, essentially pathos is like the Fed.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Avery/GM: the fed chair.

Jenine/Marty: Love that.

Bee/Polaris: Dang. We're gonna have to, we're gonna have to pull a national treasure, huh?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I mean, we're talking economic and psychological warfare. It's, it's all coming together.

Bee/Polaris: Also, what was the name of the planet that Rho said Got, uh, bodied by Alioth.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that one was…

Avery/GM: Adis

Bee/Polaris: Okay

Avery/GM: A. D. I. S.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, so it wasn't Ithaca. Was Ithaca the name of the planet?

Jenine/Marty: Ithaca is what they wanted to take.

Avery/GM: Ithaca's the name of the planet that is about to be targeted by something

Bee/Polaris: Yes. Okay. They do have a bunch of wormhole. I have to wonder if the coordinates that we have are wormhole coordinates. The ones that Polaris sent in chat

Chris/Ollie: Must be, I'm guessing this is all live streamed.

Bee/Polaris: What is?

Chris/Ollie: the conversation and the… or yeah, the conversation tape.

Avery/GM: Yeah, the, the transmission would've been played for you as well, Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Wait, wait. Were the coordinates in the audio transmission?

Bee/Polaris: No. Polaris sent the coordinates in the group chat in like the group text chat, so everyone's communicators have it.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. There we go.

Avery/GM: The coordinates are from, Uh, Polaris's documents that that Alioth had.

Bee/Polaris: As far as you guys know, Polaris just pulled these coordinates out of his ass. Like he didn't give any context or anything. He just sent coordinates to you guys and said that they were from the Milky Way Question mark.

Zach/Zahn: Nice.

Chris/Ollie: Well, since Ollie use. Free at the moment. He, he's gonna head over to the, uh, navigation computer and plug in all the coordinates and just send 'em as way points for possible exploration so we know where they are.

Avery/GM: Sure. You notice that four of the way points are in your galaxy, but you plug in four others. And they don't match up to any known coordinates in your galaxy. The only thing that makes sense is that they match up to coordinates that are approximately 75,000 light years away from your current galaxy.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, he, he's gonna screenshot that little bit of info and post it in the group chat with the thinking emoji and be like, worm holes.

Bee/Polaris: Worms. Question mark. The worm emoji. The worm emoji. The thinking emoji.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that exactly. He's gonna pipe over comms and, and ask, shall we set a course?

Zach/Zahn: Negative. We need to get Rho operational.

Avery/GM: Yeah, just send a, send a comatose psionic through a wormhole with no context.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we could just go to the entrance and see if it's actually a wormhole, even though they did say on the recording that they have several wormholes. Wait, is one of the, is one of the coordinates near where, um, the custodians parked?

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Like where, where's the nearest ones?

Avery/GM: Yes. The nearest one is about two days travel from your current location.

Bee/Polaris: That's where Rho came from.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Bee/Polaris: So we have Rho’s home worm… Wormhole… Home… Home Hole home… worm… Please edit that out. No, I'm kidding.

Zach/Zahn: Phrasing!

(Ambience fades out, Outro music plays, then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond The Furthest Stars is a 1up podcast network production. Intro and outro music produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from Creative Commons. The tracks used today were Star Freighter and Dark Matter.

Avery/GM: This year our show was honored as a selectee for the Rainbow Roll Fest. A three day festival during Pride Month to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ lead actual play podcasts and streams. Be sure to check out this entire Rainbow Roll Fest June 23rd through 26th at twitch.tv/rainbow Roll Fest.

Avery/GM: We'll be back on July 1st with our next episode. See you out there Beyond the Furthest Stars!