Book cracks open the protractor and does a ton of moon science, while Ocean turns to an old friend to delve into the secrets of his past.

This one is basically math.

Welcome to Oops!

All Apocalypses, a show where we explore the collapse of society by playing fun, tabletop role playing games.

I'm your host, Stu Masterson, and I'm joined by two yanks from across the pond.

I liked that, Jacob.

I liked that a lot.

That's my new ringtone.

Ay!

I'm walking here.

Hey everybody, I'm Brady.

I'm drinking a Guinness, and I play Book McCready, the dour detective who is realizing that his commitment to the truth may not be the ally that he thought it was.

And I'm Jacob.

I'm drinking an Arizona green tea, and I play Ocean, a gentle giant, and burgeoning moral compass, it seems, for Book's forming cult.

Yeah, that's sweet of you.

You really are.

And I'm drinking a spicy ranch water in case anyone cared.

Oh, hell yeah.

Ranch!

Does it taste like ranch?

Tastes like ranch, tastes like water.

They need to start making those with real tequila.

We need to make them with ranch dressing flavor.

Tequila is the only alcohol I don't enjoy.

What?

But you're drinking ranch water?

Love ranch water.

That's a tequila drink.

Well, I like when it's spicy.

Then I'll send you a recipe.

I'll get you drinking tequila again.

This week, like every single week, we're going to be doing a BuzzFeed Presents Apocalypses.

And this week, we made a whole lap already, and we've come back around the old stoopy poopies here with his list.

And what we're going to do this time, it's kind of a two-part question.

One is which emoji most represents you?

And then also, which one do you use the most on your phone?

If you had a phone and you're texting all day.

Okay, let me look at my emojis to try and pick one out.

That was...

Everyone go open your phones and look at lists of emojis.

Brady doesn't have to because he's a Gen Z party kid.

I am not, in fact, Gen Z.

Gen Alpha, sorry.

No, I'm right on the cusp of millennial.

No custom emojis from your Discord channels because that would make it way too easy.

That would.

I have amazing Discord emojis.

Yeah, mine would be cat jam, easy peasy, and then probably wallowy Jeeves, I'm sorry.

So the emoji I think Ocean uses the most is the grimacing face emoji.

Yes, that's a good one.

Because I feel like he's just constantly being told a plan or telling a plan and being like, all right, I'll get a shot.

I don't know about this one, this guy.

Yeah, and the emoji that I think describes Ocean the most because his world is constantly being shattered by new revelations is the shaking violently face emoji.

Which one is that?

Allow me to post it into Discord.

Is it at a diagonal angle with a bunch of waves going around it?

It's this one right here, yep.

Okay, yes.

Because his world is constantly being turned upside down.

His life is just very tumulus.

So one might think that the emoji that represents Book the most is the detective emoji, which is a little dude.

I have to interrupt you.

That is one of my favorite emojis because I love putting it after very obvious questions.

Yeah, it's a great emoji.

And it always takes me 30 minutes to find, ruining the comedic timing.

You'd think that that would represent Book, but in fact, it is the scream face emoji because Book is constantly put into situations where he's extremely out of his comfort zone and is close to death or dead or his life is untenable.

The emoji that Book uses the most is the detective emoji.

After every single test.

Yep, exactly.

Can I make a guess, Stu, on what your most used emoji is?

I know what it is.

Yeah, mine's easy.

You all know mine.

Your most used one is the fucking turtle.

It's the turtle.

Turtles everywhere.

If anyone, I know a couple of listeners have somehow tracked me down on Discord.

If there's ever turtles in anything I type back, my phone auto-corrects any time I write the word ha ha to a turtle.

So it just makes turtles all over the place.

And I did that one time because I had a lot of people complain that I was saying ha ha way too much.

Like at the beginning and end of every sentence constantly.

So I made it a turtle, so I would stop doing it.

But I really like the turtle, so I just do it as much as I ever would.

That damn turtle.

So do you still type ha ha and it turns into a turtle?

Yes.

Or do you find the turtle emoji?

No, the first thing I do when I get a new phone is auto-correct ha ha to turtle.

It's amazing.

And make sure I have a keyboard that supports that functionality.

It's amazing.

Or I wouldn't get the phone.

Yeah, so I still type ha ha.

So you can really read it as a ha ha, even though it is a cute little turtle.

And it is just a very cute emoji.

It's a good one.

But the one that represents me is probably upside down smiley face.

I think.

Unless you guys got any other strong opinions.

Just looking through here real quick.

I think upside down smiley face is a good one.

I would not dare refute you.

This episode is probably gonna be a little bit different than most of our episodes.

We're probably gonna be like jumping all over the place with time.

This is like not to lower the stakes or anything, but this is gonna be one of the few times where you pretty much know I'm not going to suddenly kill you or attack you with the silent or anything like that.

This is like a getting shit together and Hamlet opening episode.

So I think there's gonna be a lot of fun to find there.

So let's get back to that action question mark.

Biddle-a-loo, biddle-a-boom, biddle-a-loo, bing.

So what do y'all wanna do?

Book wants to execute Hickory Fleek.

Have you, you've made a 180 since last time?

I'll put them on trial.

I'll see what the masses want.

Okay, is that one of the things you wanna do?

Let's try to come up with...

Well, no, I think first things first, like Book, Book is a practical man.

He wants to fortify Hamlet Opening.

I think the top lists I've definitely got is fortify Hamlet Opening, research an alternative energy source, and his idea currently is that light source that we found way back in session zero that we have not brought up ever again.

Maybe we can have some guys that are like, if Couchwolds is still around, maybe we can ask him to go scout ahead for us or something.

Yeah, he can like scout a path for us.

Because he can both wiggle into stuff and turn into a trolley.

Yeah, allegedly.

Or whatever the fuck it is.

Turn into a hand truck.

You don't know what he can do.

So yeah, I like that idea.

So prepping for a journey to search down that possible, that light that we found way back when.

Ocean definitely needs to talk to Kara.

That is the big thing that he really wants.

That's one of the big things he needs to do, is catch up on with her and figure out what's going on.

Book has a couple extraneous things that he wants to do.

Once Hamlet opening is fortified, Book definitely does want to put Hickory Fleek on trial for being a big prick.

Book also wants to investigate the moon mirror that is in his laboratory slash his observatory.

And there's a couple things that I would like to try to identify.

One is Book wants to look at the craters of the moon and try to use that to kind of map his position, meaning where we are on the earth.

And then also use the size of the moon to determine how far away we are from the moon, and then hopefully get an idea of how deep we are underground.

Now, there is a challenge with that.

The variation in the moon's orbit, it is a very, very circular orbit, but because it is so large, the variation in the moon's orbit is, I think, larger than the radius of the earth.

Which means that our margin of error is going to be pretty high.

I haven't taken astronomy or astrology in quite a while.

Does the earth's tilt matter much for the moon distance?

That is why Book is trying to identify where he is on earth.

Okay, so if you know where you're at, you should know.

Well, if I know where...

Basically, the earth's tilt does matter, but if I know where I am relative to the moon, basically what craters I'm seeing, I can figure out basically what my angle is, if that makes sense.

Oh, I just realized, in that flashback that Ocean had, there was that map of where possibly he landed.

Do I remember a rough location where that map was showcasing?

Yes, I think you guys working together, combining the map from your flashback, the map you guys had from the lighthouse, and book's math will definitely help you narrow down where you could possibly be.

Perfect.

That would be super cool, and that would also believe that there should be a way for us to identify what part of the moon's orbit it's in so that we can take out some of that variance, but I haven't figured it out yet.

This won't be just a snapshot.

You can do this over a couple weeks.

I think we will need to probably get...

The problem is because we're dealing with such a small window of opportunity...

It's not even showing up every day.

I have to be basically constantly looking, and I have to plot the difference of the size of the moon and take the average, probably, but then also do a bunch of other random shit.

Let's actually start with that, I think, even though that takes a long time.

Maybe this is how Book recuperates from his many, many injuries.

Because you guys are so fucked up.

I cannot exaggerate the amount of almost dead both of you really were.

You were completely screwed and you need severe medical attention, but you can get it set up where you're getting that, while you guys are mostly home bodies at Book's place.

I think Book is on an IV from Maple, but he put a pot of coffee, and he's siphoning a little bit of coffee into the IV, and he's just trying to stay awake for like a week straight to get as much moon data as he can.

Seems like a great way to recover from nearly dying.

And while he's doing that, we definitely want to be coordinating the fortification of Hamlet opening.

There's a custom move for when you're utilizing your parents' notes.

We haven't really talked about what's in them much, just that you got these notes, and there's some other stuff kind of strewn about your workshop.

And I want to give you some mechanical benefit or something you can learn from those in a way that plays into the game well.

So I'm making a custom move that, lucky for you, is based on Sharp, because that makes sense.

I also have my B-words move.

Bitch, it's just bitch.

Let's see.

What could a B-word for the moon help you with figuring out where the Hell Wheel are located?

I'll let you have advantage on this custom move based on Ocean's assistance with the multiple maps you guys have dealt with.

So through this, I imagine, as you're trying to capture all of these readings, you're getting this reflection of the moon in different times.

Some days it doesn't show up at all.

Other times you're actually able to see it like a couple days in a row and measure these minute differences.

Luckily, your parents seem to have all the right tools necessary to do this, how to sketch it out on little paper from the reflection, all the right compasses to measure the different angles and things.

And then you're also cross-referencing this.

Calipers to measure the size.

Yes, lots of calipers of different dimensions.

And you're also comparing this to your parents' notes, which are not written very clearly, but it clearly has a lot of information in them and their own sketches of the moon of different sizes.

The biggest disconnect between your parents' notes and what you have is date.

You have no idea when theirs were being taken or anything like that.

You can sequentially see, okay, this was three days from their previous sketch or something like that, but you don't know how that ties up to you in any way.

What did you get?

Oh, I haven't rolled it yet.

I was stalling for time that whole time for your roll dice.

The move is, make read these notes.

When you utilize your parents' notes, roll plus sharp.

On a 10 plus, you choose two.

On a 79, you choose one.

There's only two options, which is nice for you.

Exclusively, thanks to my plus three, I got a 10.

Nice.

So you get both of these.

You get both.

You make a connection that your parents have previously failed to make.

So this is going to be something that is true, that your parents didn't think of.

And the other option is you basically reveal a connection that your parents had previously figured out through comparing their notes, learning what they had, and you guys are going to be on the same page for whatever this is.

So there is some risk here as you learn things that may diverge from the path of your parents while trying to track them down.

I just have to say, McReadTheseNotes is an amazing move name.

Thank you.

Thank you, I came up with that.

I'm going to rip my hair out.

Okay, so do I choose the connections that I made?

I think normally when you do this, I'm going to let you choose exactly what your connection is, but since you already mentioned you want to try to find the depth, that is something I can tell your parents did not know.

So if you want to use it for that, you can.

Or you can come up with something yourself.

I definitely want to use it to figure out how deep we are underground, or not how deep we are underground, because again, we don't know.

We could be above sea level for all we know, but I want to know how far I am from the moon on average.

You're going to make me do math.

Hold on.

Oh my God.

The moon is so fucking far away, dude.

It's very far away.

Holy shit, man.

Oh my God.

Okay, you're a super genius to be able to figure this out.

Holy crap.

I am a super genius for figuring this out.

He's a super salute.

You have a lot of information you're putting together here with some very ingenious connections that you're making between them that are probably beyond what Stu can come up with.

But you have a lot of resources.

You got your parents had some books on the moon and orbits and things like that.

So you get some understanding of what at least the truth was at some point in the past.

You know, people wrote these books at some time, and it has data in it.

So you know what that should be.

And you're able to compare that to your many, many observances that you make over this next few weeks.

You get an understanding of lat and long through some of this research.

You read some of the side real speed equations and they talk about the importance of latitude and longitude.

And you're able to do some research, figure out what that means.

And you realize that the lat and longs that you saw in the Stu that you got on the map from the old man whose name we're actually not sure what it actually is.

In the lighthouse.

In the lighthouse.

Yes, the lighthouse man.

They seem to make sense to be nearby where you're at.

That's not vastly different.

You think those lat and longs were accurate.

Oh, I should also be able to get an idea of how fast the moon is going.

Yes.

Relative to the speed.

Well, relative to the speed.

So it's not really that easy.

If you know everything else, yeah.

You know how long it's before it goes out, you'll be able to do the math.

If you know how big the moon is and how long it's visible.

Based on those lats and longs that you have with some wiggle room and your calculations and things like that, you know from your books that the distance to the moon from the surface, which is for some reason why where all these books were written, is supposed to be on average about 0.38 million kilometers.

Oh, shit.

When you're doing these measurements, you do them enough that at least you're convinced it's not an error, but you're getting something that seems to be about 30 kilometers larger than that.

Okay, so we're 30 kilometers underground.

That's what it seems like.

Assuming these dates or this information from these old books.

Assuming that the moon hasn't gotten closer, which it would.

With some amount of time, yeah.

They'd be getting closer and closer each year.

But that would be doing it in the other direction, right?

So you could be more.

I guess that would be saying this is the floor for where you're at.

But also a giant fucking asteroid could have knocked it out of the sky.

Those coordinates you get match up with some of the reference images you've gotten from your research from these many books here that show how the moon looks different in the northern and southern hemispheres and how it can change based on your location.

You know you're somewhere in the northern hemisphere.

It looks like your latitude somewhere in the 12-degree-ish region north.

You got like plus or minus five on that one.

Somewhere in that region.

I think it's harder to get a more exact longitude.

Yeah, it would be way harder.

I would probably need to know the date.

Which you certainly don't have.

In that something looking through your notes, you know your parents were trying to figure out tremendously.

They really wanted to know the date for some reason.

So Huntsville is 34 degrees north.

So we're not in Huntsville.

Ooh, Hawaii is 19 degrees north.

So we're even closer to the equator than Hawaii.

Spicy.

Enchanté.

We should just call this episode math.

The movie.

The episode.

The math.

The episode.

Do you feel like I gave you enough for a connection your parents previously made, or do I need to give you more for that?

No, I think that's perfect.

The Mariana Trench is at 11 degrees north and 142 degrees east.

The maximum known depth is 11,000 meters.

11,000 meters.

And you guys are almost three times that.

What the fuck?

So you know you're pretty deep.

Wow.

Pretty deep.

How the hell?

I bet we're under the Mariana Trench.

Wow.

I'm so stumped on the logistics of this.

That they built a whole city that far underground?

Yeah.

If this is the future, why do you guys have old jeeps?

I Googled the radius of the earth in meters, and it says 40,000 miles.

Thank you.

That's not what I asked for.

Converting 40,000 miles to meters?

Bam, pootaboo, badabing.

So your parents had previously mentioned in some of their notes or in some of the things they were looking up in the lighthouse that they were researching the metonic cycle, which is when the lunar phases sync back up with the solar phases, basically.

So it lets you kind of stamp a calendar date based on moon cycles compared to solar cycles, or normal calendar, as people would say.

You know, that's a period of usually, oh, exactly 8, 19 years, according to Wikipedia.

It's a 19-year period.

You know your parents were trying to figure out, and it seems like they did not have the answer yet.

But for some reason, they really wanted to figure that out.

I can see why.

Metonic cycle.

Oh, that's very exciting.

That's very exciting.

I am...

Jacob's boredom is matched by Ocean's, as he sits in the corner watching.

Ocean's got the map.

Ocean's got a point.

So we're...

I like to think how this happened is that we've been...

We're carrying around our IV polls.

Maybe we've got...

What was the guy that we kicked in the balls?

What's his name again?

Fuck, I keep forgetting.

Meanie.

Maybe Meanie's like...

Oh, Eenie Meanie Miney Mofay.

Maybe they sent Meanie over to us, and Meanie is being our home health nurse and is making sure we're getting into shape, but we're taking bed rest, and we're rolling our IV polls around, helping with the maps and figuring things out.

And the moment that Book starts doing all this crazy math shit, Ocean just sits down in the corner and stares off in the distance.

Ocean, Book is Pepe Sylvia'd up.

Yeah, and Ocean is just watching, very confused, but pretending to understand as he narrates his whole life.

Stu, do we have a school globe?

Yes.

Okay.

I'd like to take a compass, and I would like to basically draw a five-degree.

Band around plus or minus five degrees on 12 degrees of latitude in the Northern Hemisphere.

And then I want to basically pull Ocean over, and I want to go kind of section by section and see if he recognizes any portions of that band.

Can I cross-reference that with the...

Yeah, you give me a sharp roll.

It's the one thing Ocean's not very good at.

The one thing you're not good at.

Can I help by being really cool?

Yes, you can make an assist.

No, not by being cool.

So, that's a six.

Let's see if your help pulls it up.

Oh god, I can't roll an aid roll.

I really didn't think I would have to help.

I've got plus zero sharp.

I rolled a one and a two.

Oof.

We didn't do so hot.

So, you remember.

Here's what you remember.

And it's going to be nothing new.

But you do remember what we went over in your flashback, basically.

You know that your little dot said Pacific Ocean on it.

So, that does help narrow it down a lot.

You recognize that, actually.

This is a big reading moment for you.

That you recognize Pacific Ocean in his globe as he's going over it.

You go, I've seen those letters before.

Oh, that was in this location.

That makes you think of the map.

You remember those other dots.

They were kind of around it.

But you really feel like some were on the green part, not the blue part, like you were.

And you cannot remember what those were labeled.

You just...

Okay, so my...

You remember they had these big long coordinates next to them, but you can't remember the numbers and stuff.

It's been so long.

But narrowing it down to the Pacific Ocean, I feel like that does help you.

I think that's extremely interesting.

It does take a little bit out of my Mariana Trench theory, because you said green, not blue.

But who knows?

There's a lot of atolls around there.

Maybe they grew, and now the Mariana Trench is surrounded by a landmass.

You also don't know how zoomed out that map was.

That map could have been fucking everything.

Is Ocean able to tell if the school map, the globe map, basically does not have enough detail for him to match up to what he saw?

Basically saying we would need either a much larger map or a much larger globe.

A larger resolution.

In order for him to match up to the landmasses that he saw.

Yeah, I think that's a fair statement, that he can't tell.

There's nothing that looking at this globe makes you go, this is wrong.

Like, oh, I remember this was...

Maybe we're in Australia.

Australia?

That'd be fun.

No, Australia's in the southern hemisphere.

I'm an idiot.

You know you're in the northern hemisphere.

One of the few things you know.

Unless the poles switched.

Is that possible?

Probably not.

You hear a vroom sound.

A what?

Vroom sound.

A car.

A broom.

This is about two weeks after we've started, maybe even a little more.

And, hold on, this is going to be really funny later, don't worry.

This is not for you guys.

It's a nod for us.

We're supposed to wait for you.

You see peeling around, skidding into your front room, Vesuvius's head on top of a souped up RC car.

The power slides, gravel and dust comes pouring into your cave as he Tokyo drifts all the way right into your room.

It's about the size of a large lunchbox, not big at all.

So it's mostly head.

It's mostly head.

I thought you were going to say it was one of those from Wal-Mart, like one of those kiddie trucks.

You know?

No, those were all stolen immediately.

Those were actually useful.

Is his head powering the car?

Do we have to charge his fucking car head?

That's actually going to be a roll for Ocean.

Oh, so he charges in and then I just look at it and...

No, this is previously.

This happened over...

You were helping with this on the side a little bit.

Oh, okay.

Oh, yeah.

Fuck yeah.

All right.

What roll do you want me to even do?

Give me a Rita Citroel, actually.

Sorry.

Don't you have a...

I apologize.

A tinker?

Didn't you take a move from the...

No, I never did.

He has no tinker.

Oh, I thought you had a tinker.

His thing speak is from the gear head.

He's already used that on Vesuvius' head, unfortunately.

Oh, that's actually a 10, thanks to my plus one from Cy.

You got a 10 on your tinker.

Okay, so this is actually less about...

You guys were going to get this car working anyway, even if you failed this, obviously, because he's coming in here right now.

But this is the reason I did a Rita Citroel, is there's pieces of information that you're going to actually learn about Vesuvius as you're going along with figuring this out.

You actually are able to figure out how to power it based on Vesuvius' whatever power cell is running him.

You're able to hook that up.

And while you're figuring this out, you're very careful.

You're getting help from Maple to not kill him.

You don't know what parts he really needs, because again, most of him just looks like straight up human parts, except this small little part right at the base of his brain stem.

But you're able to figure out how to connect that up to the RC car.

You're also able to set him up with where he can control the throttle with just by leaning forward with his shoulder on one side.

So he's got this mix up that he's even practicing it for a little bit now to be able to pull off these cool Tokyo drifts.

But he's pretty autonomous.

But while you're playing around with that, figuring out how to hook it up, you realize that this, the glowing light that's inside Vesubius, reminds you of two different things you've seen before in the past.

One is a cylinder that was held in Charles Davis MacCready's hands.

I figured.

It's the exact same color.

That makes Ocean's heart skip a beat a little bit when he sees that.

The strange pale blue light that you guys found underneath Subtropolis, or underneath the Long Dark, wherever you guys were fucking around.

Yeah, I think it was in the Long Dark.

Is the same color.

You don't know if it's the same thing, but at least it looks like the same color.

Okay, so as he's tinkering with it, I think this is actually a great moment to tie in one of our goals.

He looks at the, as he's tinkering and working with Vesuvius, he kind of turns to Book and says, Book, that light, that reminds me.

Do you remember probably a little bit over close to a year ago now, when we were going through the Long Dark, and we found that light source, and we got trapped in the tunnels and had to bury our way out after trying to get to it?

Book is sleeping with his face smushed against the mirror.

Did you wake me up?

Yeah, as he notices you don't respond, he shoves you a little bit like, Book, Book, the light from the Long Dark.

Yeah, I'm awake, I'm up.

I've been measuring the moon, see?

The moon is gone.

I mean, Vesuvius, he's got a little bit of...

Said the light, yeah, you can turn the light on, man.

Yeah, no, no, no, no.

The light from the Long Dark.

The Long Dark.

Oh!

The light that we got trapped in the cave tunnels with.

Yeah.

Weren't able to get to it, but we saw it.

Yeah, the thing collapsed, and then we had to dig ourselves out.

Yeah, if Vesuvius, whatever is powering Vesuvius, that small amount of that light can cause that RC car to be controlled completely autonomously and never have to be charged.

If we could somehow get that light and harness it, if it really is, what's powering Vesuvius?

Well, I suppose at one point it was powering his whole body, potentially.

Yeah, we could probably hook up Hamlet opening and be completely autonomous from the silence.

We could become self-sufficient.

That way we wouldn't have to be reliant on the AI, yeah.

Ooh, baby.

I am turgid.

Turgid.

Yeah, that means I'm hard.

Oh, baby.

But as they're having that conversation while tinkering...

That wasn't necessary.

When Vesuvius zips around the corner, Ocean will be like, Hey, Vesuvius, what you doing here?

Hey, I've come to wrangle you up.

He nods his head quickly and sunglasses fall onto his nose.

I'm here to lead you.

How is he nodding?

He's on an RC car.

I see his little neck is what's attached, so he's got a little wiggle room, right?

He's got some neck meat.

He can move his head back and forth like that.

I don't like it, but I suppose.

I'm here to lead you to Kara.

She asked if you were up and around moving, and I let it slip that you've been able to kind of hobble around a little bit in the last few days, and she would like to speak to you if possible.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Meanie, do you think I'm okay enough to venture out for a little bit?

As long as Vesuvius goes with you and watches you, and he can come, zoop to me, and let me know if you collapse or anything.

But yeah, you're still not great.

Did you know you were shot multiple times?

I did, Meanie.

I did indeed.

Yeah.

You got to avoid that.

It's tough.

It's tough in this position.

It sure seems like we're magnetically attracted to bullets.

I've avoided most of my gunshots with just head movements.

Like, if you make them think you're going one way, you're really going the other.

I really want to try and catch one with my hands.

Oh, you should try that.

Not, like, in front of your face.

You should try to catch one like over your shoulder.

Lower risk, higher reward.

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

But once you get that down, maybe move to in front of your face, because that will really frighten or dismay someone on a full success.

I want to reenact that scene from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, where the spear comes towards the guy's face.

He just catches it.

All right, real quick.

Speaking of, like, tinkering with Vesuvius, while I'm doing...

Let's, like, do a brief little flashback back to that.

While tinkering with it, did...

Is it possible to observe and check and see if he still has any connection possibly to the AI that we could somehow sever?

Because if we can do that, can I, like, open my eyes to the psychic Maelstrom while tinkering on him?

You could try.

We can try to.

Because I would love...

If there's something connecting, it would be nice to see if we could sever that connection, because that could be useful for all the Cyclades, really.

Yes.

Give me and open your mind to the psychic Maelstrom.

Oh, that's an 11.

That's an 11.

Okay, so you maintain full control of it.

So if you actually...

Normally, the way I do this out of this narrative is when you roll full success, I usually ask you, like, one question, and then I let you kind of guide it, and I try to answer your questions.

Or if you roll the 6 to 10, I ask you one thing, and then just keep talking.

Yeah.

This time, I think I already know what you want, but if you want to interrupt me with anything else, you certainly can with your full success.

No.

About a week ago, you were trying, you're making this connection, you've gotten a voltometer hooked up to it somehow, and you can tell it's gonna, it seems to, like, not be losing any charge, even though it's keeping his head safe.

It's not providing, like, a ton of voltage out, but you decide it can power this RC car with some tests you do.

And while you're doing that, you're really trying to figure out, how does this work?

This is the only part of him that doesn't seem fully organic, this one little cell integrated into the back of his brain stem.

And as you're touching it, you open your mind to the psychic maelstrom.

You feel out from within him, and you can almost feel Vesuvius' senses, and this area of effect that he understands.

And it seems a little like it's not just his vision, like right where he can see around him, or right in front of him, it's kind of this cloud around him, and you feel like this is what Vesuvius is understanding.

And you get this kind of sonar-like pulse, where it seems like something is trying to find him and communicate to him, but right now, it isn't able to reach him.

Since you rolled a full ten, you don't just snap out of it right there.

You can try to take him, move him outside or anything like that, and no matter what you do, it still seems unable to reach him.

It seems like right now, he is severed off.

Okay.

Interesting.

Pull it out.

No, I think that one.

I want to pull out the chip that's making him...

It's also making him alive.

Oh, is it?

Yeah.

It's the thing that's...

Is that the thing that's also glowing green?

Yes.

Pale blue.

Sorry.

I don't know why I got green.

The colors are very important.

Oh, I thought you said that the thing that my dad was holding was green.

No, it was pale blue also.

Oh, no.

I just have been picturing that wrong in my head this whole time.

No, the green stuff is always when Ocean's in a nuclear power plant, which has been like six times.

That's what I'm thinking of.

So I guess after learning that and...

Let me rephrase.

You feel like the ping is coming from outside of him and trying to reach him.

I'm going to wrap his head in tinfoil, make it a Faraday cage.

Yeah, you don't think he is...

the thing inside of him is reaching out.

Okay.

So it's not that he's contacting anything.

It's that something is trying to locate him.

Okay.

That makes sense.

I think that lines up pretty well with what we've seen so far.

Stu, while Ocean was in the Psychic Maelstrom, did he get a chance to also perceive if the AI was trying to find the soldiers that it abandoned in Hickory Fleek's courthouse?

Is that something I would be able to tell?

Because I think, yeah, that would make sense for me to also check if there's any nearby while I'm tinkering.

The live soldiers are near your place, so you don't feel that same ping going towards them for some reason.

It seems like just Vesuvius.

Oh, I don't like that at all.

Maybe she just doesn't give a fuck once the people get severed like that.

It's like they're sleeper agents.

Wait, so, okay, there's no ping going towards them.

Is there a connection between them, or is it just not even...

There's no connection, and it's not even trying to make one.

Nothing that he can tell from there.

He doesn't see any, feel any connection or anything like that.

Interesting.

With those ones right there.

I don't like that at all.

I don't like that at all.

I think that's it that I'd want to additionally do while tinkering with Vesuvius, so we can flash back to the forward, and Ocean will go with Vesuvius to Kara.

Kara has actually been providing security for Juniper.

So far, Book has whispering truth to all of his bodyguards, including Kara.

But this time for good.

This time for noble cause.

Vesuvius leads you to Juniper's bar, which right now is pretty empty.

Juniper is there.

He gives you a nod.

It seems like a good amount of the stolen liquor has been returned, but certainly not all of it.

It seems like he's trying to get back on his feet, basically.

Kara is in a booth and stands up excitedly when you come in.

Hey, hey, you're on your feet.

Feeling all better?

Feeling better.

I think I still got a little bit of ways to go.

Me and he's been working pretty well with us, so hopefully it won't be too much longer before I'm able to get back out here and start helping you guys.

So I think we have some things to talk about.

Yeah, I think we do, Ocean says with that pause between as he sits down at the booth and he kind of waves Juniper over, and was like, Hey Juniper, what you got to drink right now?

What was the thing that the boxcar children were drinking?

Gas.

I thought we had a name for that drink.

Or maybe I just said, I'll have what they're having.

He brings you nothing.

He brings you two gin and tonics.

That seems like a good, nice, sitting down, reminiscing drink.

So when he kind of looks at Kara, he's like, look Kara, my memory is really fragmented and hazy about everything that we've been through.

I remember meeting you.

I remember you teaching me about healing things with the maelstrom.

I remember joining up with the silent.

I remember doing missions with the silence, some of which I think we died in.

And the last thing I remember seeing you was us with those...

I don't think she would remember that she would know their names.

So with the man and the woman and the baby and the power cores that we were trying to get a hold of them.

And that's it.

But as far as I'm aware, I've known for a while that just instantly that you were dead.

I don't know how I've known that, but...

I don't remember dying.

I remember most of what you're talking about there.

I don't remember any of us dying either in other places, but I do remember that mission that didn't go great.

We had to go recover those power cores, and then I remember you leaving after that.

I left after that?

Yeah.

Is your memory fragmented as well, or is that just something unique to me?

I don't remember some of those things you mentioned.

Like you said, we went on some missions where you think we died.

I don't remember that.

And I don't remember...

I don't remember why I was coming to Hamlet opening.

I didn't even know I was coming to see you, but I just know I was supposed to come here and kind of negate that courthouse, but I don't know why.

I don't have any thought of the purpose behind it.

Usually when I think about my missions, I remember several of a lot of the missions, dozens, and it was always like a goal.

We had to go get something.

We had to go start up one of those nuclear plants.

We had to do things, but I don't remember why I was here.

I don't remember what I was doing right before I got here either.

And I don't remember any of the times you mentioned us dying.

Maybe we didn't, I'll be honest.

It's just, like I said, I don't...

My memories just seem to come in waves, and I only see fragmented segments of things.

Do you remember a time when we were in a...

We went down into one of the nuclear plants, and we got attacked by these robots, and then we cleared them out, and then another group of mercenaries came in, and even though we managed to take them out, we were probably on death's door.

No, I don't remember that at all.

Both mercenaries and robots.

I've dealt with robots, and I've dealt with mercenaries.

I could be misremembering.

I could be misremembering.

Is that actually how it went, Stu?

Yes, no, yeah.

Okay, I just...

I was going to say, you guys can have a longer conversation.

Oh, I think so.

No, not that.

As you narrow down the finer details of it, she seems to not remember that particular thing.

But you are positive in your memory that she was there.

Well, the mission where I left, can you tell me what happened?

First, you have to give me a retroactive do battle roll.

All right, retroactive.

With my plus three?

Yes.

Okay.

So, anyone listening?

I leveled up last session, and I spent it to become the hardest of boys.

I have maxed my hard.

I now have plus three.

A hottie boy.

And that was a...

Fuck, I accidentally deleted the dice.

It was a six and a three, not three.

So, that's a 12.

With your retroactive 10 plus, where you would get to choose two things from a do battle.

Kara looks at you and she goes, yeah, it didn't go well.

That man tried to like attack us.

He pushed his wife back to the other side, knocked the gate down, and then charged at us.

And you had to shoot him, and we brought him all the way back to the tower.

I don't know what happened to him after that, but he was alive.

He was holding his breath when she said we shot him, and then he breathes a sigh of relief.

But he was alive, right?

Yeah.

Book's spider sense is untamely.

He wakes up again with his face pressed against the mirror.

He's like, that was weird, and then falls back asleep.

And you don't remember what happened to him after that?

No, we brought him back to the tower, and our job was done.

We usually don't follow up on what we bring back too much, but I don't know if you remember this, but it seemed to get to you a lot.

I didn't know why, but I think that's why you left.

You left not long after that.

That was really our last real, real mission.

Ocean kind of rubs his face, and he looks at Karen as that man that I've been with.

Book, you met him a couple times, right?

He's the one that kind of freed you from the influence.

Yeah, he snapped us out of it with some weird knowledge.

He's probably my closest friend, and I've known him for a good long while.

He's the first person that I have true memories of that are coherent and long.

I think those were his parents.

Oh shit.

I don't know why I left after that.

I don't know what could have traumatized me enough to leave after that.

I don't suspect.

From what I remember, I was pretty mission-focused, so something must have happened.

Yeah, like, not to be a little harsh, but we've killed people before, you know?

Yeah, yes.

Maybe they were a little more shooting at us first than he was, but yeah, we've killed people.

Did his mom, where's his mom?

We don't know.

We've been trying to find them.

Most of what I've spent the last year or so doing is trying to help him find his parents.

Okay, well, we know where one is, maybe.

That's nice.

But I'm guessing he also wants to know where his mom and, was that his sister?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, they were way down in there.

I don't even know how they got out.

Where was this?

That this happened, Dad?

Oh, God.

Um, it was a huge well.

I think I could probably get us back there.

I'm not positive, though.

Yeah, I think we need to go back.

But here's the thing.

We can't tell him about the fate of his dad.

Not yet.

You're worried he's gonna go kinda like in the courtyard there, go gun to blaze him into the tower?

Yes, I think he's going to get himself killed if he tries to take down the Silent.

You rat bastard.

I don't think we're ready for anything like that.

Is Ocean wrong?

You son of a bitch.

Is Ocean wrong?

I don't think he is.

I think Book would want to go to the tower, yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

He would get his fucking killed.

So we can't tell him about this, but I think we can tell him that we found his parents.

We had an encounter with him.

I genuinely don't remember what happened afterwards, so I'll just tell that.

And if we go back, maybe we can retrace our steps a little bit.

How long ago was this that happened?

It's been like at least three years, maybe three or four, somewhere around that.

So there was potentially a pretty sizable amount of time between when Book's parents left and when they encountered Ocean.

Yeah, almost certainly.

In Ocean's memory, he wasn't that much younger than he is now, I would say.

Even he would be upset.

Would Ocean be able to guess how old Navella was at the time?

Ooh, I don't know.

Are you good at toddler rate guessing?

I can give it a shot.

Roll Sharp.

I don't know if toddler guessing is a sharp skill.

Fine, roll hard.

Roll aggro.

Roll weird.

They're very mean.

Try something challenging.

Guess how old Navella Toddler is.

Roll sigh?

She was beyond toddler at that point.

She was actually...

Like walking?

Give me another read-a-search roll.

Oh, so it is sharp, apparently.

Yeah, it does end up being sharp.

And I'll give you a number of facts about how you remember her based on your number of successes.

Okay, that is exactly a seven.

Okay, and I'm going to say this is working with Kara.

You're kind of sitting there trying to remember, and it does seem like she remembers it a little bit better.

And you're not very good at guessing children's ages, so you're like...

I don't think I've seen very many children.

There's not too many children in the Apocalypse.

So you guess something more like four.

You're like, I think she was about four.

And Kara's like, no, she was definitely older than that.

Remember she was holding that camera?

Like, she had to be at least six or seven.

What?

Wow.

The fact that she was that old, though, and not dead.

Yeah, it looked decently healthy, would you say?

Would I say that she looked noticeably sick or did she not seem noticeably ill?

I would say it looked like a sickly child, but not wife.

A sickly child, but not like deathly ill.

Yes, not deathly ill.

It looked like a sickly child.

Okay.

That changes things significantly.

Hmm.

Ha-cha-cha-cha.

Well.

I'm glad I asked that.

That's a good question.

If only the spirit of the book were there.

To actually hear any of this fucking shit.

Yeah.

So, as I kind of have this conversation and kind of piece things together, Ocean looks at Kara and is like, what can you tell me about The Silent?

My memory is so spotty about what I did and what we were, our goals or anything.

But do you, what can you tell me about what they want?

Well, our team, like we usually, we always worked at least together, but sometimes we had like about up to five people backing us up.

We were one of the teams that always was going out.

We weren't like doing patrol, like the people who came attacked us and stuff like that.

We didn't stay in the tower much.

We would come back with things, but we pretty much lived in the Subtropolis and the Long Dark the entire time.

What we did together was usually try to go to like big power plants or things like that and re-initialize them or something.

I don't know, you always use these fancy words.

You were like the computer dude.

Was I?

Yeah, you like type so fast on these things.

Kara, I got something to tell you.

I can't read.

How do you type so good if you can't read?

I don't know, I can't even type.

I unwittingly connected another power plants a couple weeks ago, and I distinctly remember tapping up with my fingers, but I didn't know what I was doing, and I was not going very fast.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you next.

Like, when you left, where did you go?

And you don't remember that?

I don't.

It was very sudden.

You fucking left me a note, like an asshole.

Did I?

Yeah.

What was the note?

Well, I clearly didn't keep it, I threw that shit away.

But it basically was just saying that you have to go, and that you hope you'll come back at some point.

But like, I know what I do remember.

I think apparently my memory is not fully to be trusted.

But I don't remember you saying anything like, we gotta bring down the tower, or you need to come with me, you need to escape too.

It was like you had to go do something.

You had to leave.

I don't know what you're doing.

I wish I could tell you, Kara.

I really do.

The last thing I remember, the first thing, I have a clear, coherent line of memory about, was just waking up in the long dark somewhere.

And I remember being terrified that I don't remember anything else.

And I just, I knew I needed to go down deeper.

I guess that's not too different than the first time I found you.

Yeah, it seems to be a consistent, consistent line of events with me.

But maybe the reason I want to go deeper is I know that that's where Book's mom used to be.

I don't know.

But yeah, I think we need to go down a little well if you can help us get us there.

That would be very appreciated if you could help us.

From what I remember, it's pretty dangerous there.

But I can definitely help.

Oh, that's fine.

That's fine.

I don't give a shit about that.

Okay, we just took down a courthouse.

It wasn't even intentional.

It was completely by accident.

Danger is our literal middle names at this point.

Yeah, what were you actually doing in the courthouse?

We were just trying to spy on Frida, that girl that seems to be in charge of everything now.

Yeah, she tried to frame us for something, and we were just trying to spy on her and figure out what she was up to, and then...

That seems like it really took a turn.

It really did.

It really did.

And then I have one more question.

What the fuck is with this head on a RC car?

Well, you see, we met a man named Suvius, and he was pretty cool.

And then he showed up again, and he had a very different voice.

And then we decided we were going to use him as a mold, spy on people in the courthouse who were up to no good.

And then he exploded, and all that was left was his head.

But he seemed like a pretty chill, cool dude, so we just decided to keep him around.

You think...

And that seems like it has to be connected to the tower, right?

Yeah, 100%.

I'm pretty sure he was a silent...

Yeah, I can tell he was not one of us.

Like, Vesuvius, that thing, or that guy, sorry, was not like one of us ever, at least that I'm aware of.

But I agree, like I said, gotta be related.

That would line up honestly.

I never saw Book's dead body, right?

I only ever saw his, like, the dead body in the lake.

In the sewer?

There was a dead body that was just like Book's, but his face was missing.

But you did see it.

Ocean kind of thinks for a second, says.

That kind of lines up.

I think the Silent are working on creating robotic doppelgangers.

I rescued Book once from the tower.

I managed to get in and find his body and take it back, but we found his original body, or some dead body that looked identical to him without a face.

So I wonder if this is some new thing that they're creating to try and infiltrate places.

Yeah, that's pretty horrific.

Yeah, I know nothing about that.

I don't know anything about robots or fake people, just people like us who apparently aced their auditions.

I do miss that cheese.

Yeah, I don't think it's a good idea to head back there anytime soon for it though.

Yeah, no, I would like a little break.

It seems like it's pretty safe here right now, at least.

Yeah, well, before we go to the well, there's one thing that I really need to do, and there's a possible alternative energy source that I think Book and I found a while back that I would really like to dig into before we go, because I just don't feel comfortable leaving Hamlet Open and connected to the tower as our primary source of energy.

I think we need to find another way to get disconnected from it.

Have you heard anything about this?

He describes the light that he saw and the connections he's noticed between the light and the power sources that they've been collecting.

That honestly seems like a little similar to the Moonwell itself.

I don't know if you remember when we were going down there, there were those weird offshoots at all the random angles.

So we went down this big central part, and there were all these small tunnels going off in each direction.

But our directions were to go to the bottom, and then take the like three o'clock one.

And we ignored all those ones above, but they were going up at like weird angles shooting way off.

And that kind of sounds like what you're describing, just like scattering some of that light somewhere.

Because that light, it seemed like it was coming from everywhere.

I don't even know.

That was a weird place.

Yeah, I think we're pretty close to one of those openings.

I think I'm gonna have some people try and scout it out so we can see if there's a way to get to it and get connected to it.

Okay, yeah, I'll help you however I can.

Okay, well, I appreciate you.

And if you need anything, just let me know.

Yeah, glad you're alive.

I think I owe you.

I think I owe you probably a lot.

There are two things you can do where you wouldn't owe me anything else anymore.

One is just promise me you'll never just leave a note when you're fucking leaving me.

At least say it to my face.

And then two, it doesn't have to be today, this week, this year even.

I would honestly prefer if it's not for a while, but just at some point, I want you to help me take down the fucking tower.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Oops!

All Apocalypses.

Go to your favorite pod catcher, the thing you're listening to this right now, and try to rate it five stars.

Most of them won't let you, but if they do, please click it.

If you would like to send a message to all of us, the easiest way is to send an email to oops at stoo.cool, that's S-T-U.

If you want to reach any of us specifically, like you want to tell Brady something neat about his mystery board, or if you want to tell me something that may be too sneaky for the players to know, you can use our first names at stoo.cool.

The music and editing was performed by Stu, the logo was made by Brady, and Jacob likes to party.

Love you, bye.

Bye.

Okay, everyone see their waveforms?

I see some waveforms.

I see the waves.

How you ever see the waves?

I wanna know.

I don't know waves.

What is happening?

Yeah.