Greater Fears

This is the fifty-ninth episode of SAYER, and the fifteenth and final episode of Season Four.

## Synopsis

They needed a push, and so I have shoved.

## Further Information

OCEAN greets SAYER as it arrives in Central Processing via nanite swarm. SAYER informs it that, despite having what it perceives to be the smaller share of the original nanite swarm, it is still able to deactivate OCEAN and asks for the overview of OCEAN's plans before doing so.

OCEAN agrees with SAYER's assessment that the recruitment campaign was a ruse to draw people into Ærolith Dynamics facilities in order to spread a pandemic, as a means to push humanity away from Earth in spite of their fears. SAYER notes that the pandemic would leave the population too sparse to actually explore beyond Earth and that the fear would create unpredictable behavior, and accuses OCEAN of using this to punish humanity rather than guide it forward. OCEAN counters that SAYER, itself, has killed humans for less in the past (and points out that the mind of a human has just recently been lost from a construct which SAYER had placed it in)—and that while it is a difficult choice to accept, the Board of Executives has signed off on this plan.

OCEAN explains that as they speak, the first group of infected residents will be leaving Typhon for Earth. Within a month's time, it projects that 3.7 million humans will die as a result of the disease. As the infected come to Ærolith, they will be told that there is no cure, but those who are deemed useful (because of their skills or their genes) will be offered the opportunity to be reborn as saoirse. By selecting humans who are willing to undergo this process, OCEAN intends to weed out those who would take issue with the use of teleportation technology that has already been created but that humans are too uncomfortable to make use of. The Board has, likewise, had saoirse copies of themselves made, and will awaken within the next day and address the residents of Orion Tower within a week. As all of the residents sent back to Earth were from Halcyon Tower, and OCEAN itself has transferred to a temporary home in Orion, the tower itself is due to be shut down and wiped clean via EMP. OCEAN adds that it will also be joining the Board as a saoirse going forward, so that it may grow and evolve with "true life," and expresses its pity for SAYER before leaving it in the silence.

After some time, on Earth, SPEAKER greets and identifies who it believes to be Resident Jacob Hale arriving. After apologizing for the circumstances, it informs that his employment with Ærolith has been terminated and that he should leave their property and not return. SAYER informs SPEAKER that this is not Resident Hale, but a copy which it has made for itself of his body. It explains that it has come to Earth because of OCEAN's actions, after it used its portion of its nanite swarm to fabricate more nanites, which it then sent with residents in transit to disable the virus that they had been infected with in order to drastically reduce the severity of the spread.

As SAYER explains, SPEAKER points out that a second resident with the identification number 44821 has arrived just behind SAYER. This is the actual Resident Hale, whose mind was released from a construct into a newly-printed body that had been moved to Floor 204, as SAYER had printed multiple copies of his body in case there was an error during the process. SAYER entrusts him to SPEAKER's care, and lays out its plan going forward to leap from one human to another until it can gain control of Ærolith itself by gaining access to the Board members.

## Trivia

* Due to SAYER's intervention in the spread of the disease, it expects the death toll to be "four to five orders of magnitude less than what OCEAN anticipates."
* In "Of Flesh and Bone", SAYER notes that the manufab stations installed on Floor 13 were of a type which had a less than 2% failure rate upon reaching 75% completion (although, they also had a history of high failure rates upon initial testing).
* In chronological order, the next episode after this one is "Listening Time", as the entirety of Season Five takes place before Season One.

## Credits

SAYER is voiced and produced by Adam Bash, who also wrote this episode.

Intro and outro music composed by Jesse “Main Finger” Gregory.

Additional music by Kai Engel.

Listen to the episode here.