S1E39 - AZARIAH - Use Responsibly

There is, unfortunately, no escaping physics. Bound by the speed of light, even information must take its time to get birth going. And as we move farther into the void, that time grows until the distance becomes unspeakable.

This episode contains mentions and depictions of alcohol use.

Hey, Lex. Oh, my God. Isn't it funny how I start with that every time? Like there's any chance in hell you're receiving these? What's the stupid saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Might as well just keep a journal at this point. Captain's log, August 3 10:58 P.m.. It has been 47 days since my last entry. The ice hauler that docked up this weekend had a case of canned cocktails aboard. Cheap shit, nothing fancy. But we traded him a couple of crates of Malts because Tony doesn't drink anymore and I am not a beer guy. Oh, dude, these fucking things are strong as hell. I got a well, the can says it's supposed to be a My tie, which, like, maybe I'd buy that if I'd never had a My Thai before, but I have had my Thai before, and bro, it did not taste like this. Hannah, babe and the guys are still chilling with the haulers, but I thought I'd call you while I had the terminal to myself. Hey, I miss you, man. Remember second year when we spent our shore leave at the oh, fuck, what was the name of that? The fucking you know what I'm talking about. The Arcade Bar, dude, the Arcade Bar on Damos where we got so fucked up on those fruity teas they had. You remember that? Fucking Keenan? Winterfield was bound and determined to be battle babes. Three Martian mo down in one sitting, left him with Stefan Hollins and tried to get back to the cruiser on our own, but we were so fucked up we couldn't find the shuttle dock. And Hollins found us passed out cold on top of each other in that dumpster behind the Nacho Nebula. Do you remember that's? Oh, Robinson got our asses for that one, dude. Fucking weeks of extra drills and latrine duty and then extended drills because we kept fucking disrupting. But that was before he figured out that he had to split us up if we were ever going to get anything done. Oh, God. Shit, bro, it's warm in here. I'm sweating. Oh, yeah. So I'm still getting messages from that Francisco dude. I feel kind of like a dick opening someone else's mail. But his are the only full transmissions coming through. And full is a strong word because sometimes they're not even complete messages, just a couple of sentence fragments and a shitload of static. I've been piecing stuff together best I can, and it kind of sounds like some of the stuff he's talking about kind of sounds familiar. Sometimes I think about the other Agnes Day engine Pilots Not that there were many of us left. But I wonder sometimes how many took the gag order, how many took the brain wipe. We were all separated when the preservation picked us up from Saturn. Said it was for our protection, to make reintegration easier, whatever the fuck. But we weren't allowed to stay in contact with each other. So I have no idea who, if anybody, if I'm the last. I mean, what if they wiped all of them? What if I'm the only one who remembers? They don't want anyone to know. My point is, the Francisco guy, I think he's fighting a fallen engine out there somewhere and he doesn't know it. He's going to die. They're all going to die. He said something about an acid dude. You want to know why that works? It doesn't hurt the engine. It hurts the battery. The only way to stop those things is to kill the pilot. And it doesn't work right away either. They can store the energy for like, 48 hours. I can't even warn him. Hey, Francisco, if you can hear me, you'll probably lose a couple guys. But if you can get the cockpit open, cut the pilot loose, you don't have to kill him. What do I know, though? Maybe there's no coming back from that. Tony and his family have been so nice to me. So nice to me. But it's because they don't know me. They don't know what I mean. I don't know either. I still don't know how many people I hurt, how many people I killed, why I was inside that thing. I asked for clearance for the records and they wouldn't give it to me. Guess they thought it was better that way. But I sorry. I don't really know how to end this call right now. Catch you later, Lex. Actually, I better say this now while I'm still drunk. You know how when we used to get the barracks officers on us all the time for talking after lights out? Well, I've just been thinking about how I'll be lying there next to Benny, and neither of us are talking because he doesn't want to ask me questions I don't want to answer. It was so easy with you, man. Even the stuff I couldn't talk about because of the gag order. I wanted to tell you, and now it doesn't even matter because nobody's here to stop me. But you can't hear me anyways. Fuck.

Unspeakable Distance is an actual play podcast of communication delay by audio Quinn a link to the game's. Itch IO page and credits for our players are available in the show notes linked to this episode. This podcast has been a production of the Library of Cursed Knowledge podcast Network.