Episode 2: A Single Point in Space

*Not to be confused with Episode 2 of the main series Dynamo*
***Episode 2: A Single Point in Space*** is the second installment in the *Dynamo* side series, *Dynamo Dream*. The episode follows Maxwell Sterling, an agent of the Superintelligence Agency on a space expedition in the ship *Phaeton Nine* in another dimension, attempting to observe and collect data on an imminent black hole-like anomaly, only for him to have to escape it after 68 days. The episode was released publicly on March 29, 2023, but an advance screening was given out to people on Ian Hubert's Patreon for Tier 25 pledgers.

The episode was released on Ian Hubert's personal YouTube account, like the previous *Dream* episode, as opposed to the KarmaPirates channel like the original/"main" *Dynamo* series is.

## Plot summary

The episode opens on a black screen that quickly switches to a white noise image in a small blink of white light as if it is a television screen being turned on. The white dots of the white noise become less until they instead resemble stars in outer space, and the dots then stop shifting. We are now looking at stars. Then a circular black shape start to grow from the middle of the screen and consume all the white stars, turning everything black, like a black hole. At first it is not visible since the space in the middle is black too. The growing black hole is accompanied by a regular strange electrical impulse-like sound that grows louder and louder.

We cut to a strange, surreal, "Backroomss-like" never-ending office space without walls, but with a ceiling and roof with many square lamps in the ceilings. The floor seems to be covered in a dark reddish-brown carpet. Some lights are out, especially in one area of the center that runs from the left to the right. White square pillars are everywhere, placed at regular intvervals, holding up the ceiling.

We cut to a part of this surreal room that has square hole that cuts vertically through the floor and ceiling, showing there are many floors in this "structure", with the square hole cutting through them too. We see that multiple floors hold rows of black mainframe or server-like machines that has blinking white lights that blink in and out with a pulsing relay click sound, a sound very similar to the one heard during the black hole's growth. The white lights turn on and off at mostly same time.

We cut to the inside of a room in a MoPed shop in the city of Shade, seeing through a slightly dirty window a Shade Medical vehicle floating down through the air over Mur Pier Station. The vehicle quickly dispatches four floating medical emergency siren lamp drones that float further down to Mur Pier Station, to surround the unconscious body of Jo Simon lying on the platform of the train station.

### Act 1: Maxwell Sterling, the Red Eyes, Connor

We are in Sibiltine State, among floating space rocks and a skeleton of an unknown, long, giant creature. A dark grey spaceship, the *Phaeton Nine*, is floating in place, overlooking a round field of floating observation drones in the distant, in an area of space further away from the many rocks.

We cut to a black screen with the white, glowing letters announcing the title of the episode:

"episode 2

DYNAMO

A SINGLE POINT IN SPACE

DREAM

bit 451

Inside the *Phaeton*, a futuristic coffee-brewing machine turns on and starts preparing a cup of coffee, then turns off once more. Superintelligence Agent Maxwell Sterling walks by, grabbing the cup, drinking from it as he walks through the deck of the *Phaeton* to the cockpit area, viewing the field of drones outside. White letters appear on the screen, announcing this is Day 68 of Agent Sterling's scientific expedition mission.

We cut to Agent Sterling lying in his bed on the deck, listening to an undulating static noise of some sort through headphones connected to a radio deck. A dark breathing suddenly appear, growing louder and louder. Agent Sterling pokes his head up to watch and sees the dark figure of the Red Eyes, with its four glowing red eyes, watching him in the dark left side of the deck. Agent Sterling reaches over with one hand, still lying down, and punches some keys on a keyboard-like device lying next to him and the ship starts rotating to the right, shifting so that the deck is lit on the inside by the sun outside. The Red Eyes, as a result, fade out of sight. Agent Sterling then clicks a kye on the radio deck, making the static noise continue, and shifts his weight to lie more comfortably while he listens.

We cut to Agent Sterling making a dinner out of Basikit rations while watching back an old video recording on a small holographic video player of an interrogation of a man named Connor he once performed. In the video recording, Sterling tells Connor that for twenty minutes, everyone in Shade lost consciousness in an event known as the Blackout, and the Superintelligence Agency is on the hunt for a man they believe to have caused it, named Axle Rubix. Connor asks Agent Sterling if he truly believes he had anything to do with it, telling him he doesn't even know Rubix, but Sterling insists that ten minutes before the event he was seen leaving Connor's van. Connor told Sterling that this is true and that "we all did snails", then heard alarms go off but that they had nothing to do with it. He told Sterling that all they did was play some music. Sterling tells Connor, in an agreeable tone, that they did find Connor's guitar, referring to it as an "Unregistered B-Class Dustland Import" and asked him how he would possibly be able to get his hands on something like that. Connor tells Sterling that he got it from a man named Pete. He starts telling the story, of how he saw him with a guitar case and Pete had told him it was "his burden", but before he could continue Sterling interrupts him, saying that the agency is well aware of Pete.

In the recording Sterling asks Connor when he had last dreamed at night. Connor answers confusingly that nobody dreams. Sterling notes that they used to, and used to build cities on every corner of the globe, to reach for the stars and get things done, and then, in a very sinister and angry tone, that he wants to find out why "they" took that from them. In the recording, Sterling presses a button on his device and the lights in the room turns off, making it impossible to see what is happening in the recording. A monstrous dark breathing and growling and snarling is heard, Connor desperately and frightfully yells "What's that?!" and as Sterling calmly says "Goodbye, Connor," something sounds like it attacks Connor who yells, in agony and fear "My face!" While Connor is being attacked, the Red Eyes are watching Sterling from the darkness of the deck, standing on the ceiling upside down, and Sterling likewise looks back at the Red Eyes.

The recording ends moments before an alert beeps twice from the center of the deck, making Sterling to the right at the large, circular holographic projection machine positioned in the center of the deck, which changes its display to show a 3D projection of a map of the observation drones outside, highlighting a specific drone. Sterling presses a button, causing the drone to start traveling back towards the ship, displaying an estimated time of arrival.

Agent Sterling quickly puts on a Personal Atmosphere Generator, loading it with an O2 canister, and walks outside, coming out of a doorway in the back of the ship. Here, he waits while the lone drone comes flying towards the *Phaeton*, and he catches the relatively hot drone in his bare hands. He then walks into the ship again, carrying the drone with him.

### Act 2: Maxwell Sterling, General Caput, the Red Eyes

Inside the deck of the *Phaeton*, Agent Sterling is dismantling the drone with with an electric screwdriver to get to a part, presumably a memory card of some kind, which he clicks into a machine on which he clicks a button, causing holographic displays of data to be projected in front of him. By Sterling's look on his face, he is seemingly taken slightly aback by the data he is viewing, but he is quickly slightly distracted when a ringtone starts sounding. He inserts a memory card into the drone and closes it up, then the three-dimensional holographic projection of the head of one of Sterling's superiors, General Caput, appears in the holographic projector in the center of the deck. It is a live video call from the Superintelligence Agency.

Caput asks if Agent Sterling can hear him and if he is even there, telling him that he had to go through four "Agent Sterlings" in order to find him, although he quickly corrects himself, saying that one of them was an "Agent Starling." Caput finally catches sight of Sterling. He tells him that it is costing them 2,000,000 a minute to keep the relays open for the call, thinking that it might shock of amuse Sterling. Sterling tells Caput that there is nothing substantial to report. General Caput agrees with this, but then tells Sterling that is "alone, in deep space, in a storage closet universe waiting for a black hole" and tells the agent that they have begun to think that what Sterling is doing seems like kind of like a cry for help. Sterling informs Caput that it is the exact opposite, in fact, and the general quickly deflects by stating that that was their second guess. Sterling then informs Caput that it is not a black hole that he is waiting for, telling Caput that "Tarnacus is completely gone." General Caput tries to reason this, saying that Tarnacus hasn't been swept in around a hundred years and that it is probably a State deconstitution, as they happen fairly regularly.

Agent Sterling argues that statistically, something passing through the "reality strata" will enter one of the "extremes": Tarnacus or Apex, and says, in an increasingly angry tone, that thi means the fact that Tarnacus no longer exist is "kind of a bigh deal!" Caput tries to calm Sterling down, telling him that "nobody blames you for the Rubix incident" and tells him that he does not have to be out there in space. In order to lighten the mood, General Caput tells him that he does however need to tell him what it's like to be the only person in the universe. Sterling sarcastically answers "It's a bit crowded, actually." Sterling tests the camera of the drone he's been tinkering with, having it follow his finger, while General Caput tries to tell Sterling that for a while the agency thought they might be able to help Sterling but are not sure anymore. Sterling then asks Caput how he actually views himself, because to Sterling he's "just a big head."

Suddenly, the undulating static that Sterling had previously been listening to is heard again, but way louder, audible without even headphones on. Sterling lifts the headphones to one of his ears to listen more closely, pressing a button on the device they are connected to. General Caput, curious and alarmed, asks Sterling what he has found. General Caput asks Sterling if he is doing a bit, and informs him that under GalAXIS law he is legally required to tell him if he is doing a bit, but before General Caput can finish his sentence, his video call is discontinued and in his place a holographic display of an undulating waveform representation of the sound Sterling is listening to is displayed in 3D. A holographic display appears from the project alerting him with the word "ALARM" blinking repeatedly and an alarm starts to ring.

Sterling quickly runs to the cockpit, where instruments are also lighting up, and watches through the window as a region of space behind the drone field starts to contract and warp as a circular black hole or spacetime anomaly-like object suddenly appear and it is growing larger and larger. It consumes the drone field and closes in on the *Phaeton*. Sterling looks back through the deck at the Red Eyes and gives the creature a slight nod and a knowing look, and the Red Eyes give a slight nod back at him. He then turns back and sits down as a chair folds up out of the floor and instruments for controlling the ship fold up. Sterling quickly pulls and pushes on different controls, causing the gravitational aray that propels the ship to fold up behind the ship serving as thrusters. Sterling maneuvers the ship out of the way of the growing spacetime event and flies away, trying to escape it, and contacts the Superintelligence Agency, alerting them of his imminent emergency evacuation use of the Sybiltine gate to Radia. The SIA agent on the other end confirms his emergency and tells him that they can have a window open for him in twenty minutes, telling him to stand by. Sterling sends a transmission back, apologizing in advance, and then heads for the gate.

Sterling maneuvers around floating rocks trying to reach the Sybiltine gate while also trying not to be consumed by the spacetime anomaly. However the bottom of the ship hits a rock and causes the *Phaeton* to flip around 360 degrees, losing some speed and causes the ship to not stay on the course to the gate. Sterling tries to turn up the thruster, however the thruster array on the ship malfunction and part of it explodes. The ship begins to pass by the gate.

Agent Sterling loudly shouted for the Red Eyes to break the right window on the ship, and they lift a heavy chair-like object and throw it through the window, shattering it and causing the resulting air escaping through it to give the ship a small thruster-like boost to the left, causing the ship to move directly towards some rocks. Sterling flips a control handle, causing the ship's thruster array to rotate around to the front of the ship to protect the cockpit and himself from the imminent impact, which bounces the ship backwards towards the Sybiltine gate. This also breaks the cockpit window and subsequently kills all power on the *Phaeton*, causing things within the ship to start floating and removing the air from within. Thankfully, Sterling is still wearing his Personal Atmosphere Generator gear. The bounce-back makes the *Phaeton* move into the gate, which transport them away in a blinding bluish-white light just a fraction of a second before the gate is consumed by the black hole.

### Act 3: Maxwell Sterling, Radian bartender, the coatless man

In Toal City on Radia, the giant gate structure emits a blinding bluish-white light and the *Phaeton* falls out of it, down into either the waters in Toal Vestibule 4 or 5. Both the locals and the local authorities are observing the crashed Phaeton, which has landed somewhat softly due to launching special inflatable rubber pads on the bottom.

In a local Radian bar, a wet and freezing Agent Sterling enters carrying a backpack, and he grabs a coat hanging on the wall and puts it on. As Sterling comes over to the bar's counter, the owner of the coat tries to tell him that it is his garment, but is stopped by the bartender.

At the bar counter, Agent Sterling pulls a special device with a long cable attached to it, labelled GRD.DRAW on its display, out of his backpack, and grabs a wired phone hanging on the wall, then attaches the GRD.DRAW device to the mouth-piece of the phone. As he begins to adjust the device, the bartender tries to get his attention. The GRD.DRAW device has a spinning part that sits in-between it and the phone's mouth-piece that starts to rotate around fast, causing the electrical lights to blink on and off and the record-playing jukebox to slow down its playing for a brief moment. The bartender informs him that no one has used their gate in twenty years, passing him a big pint of hot water to warm him up.

The old man whose coat Sterling is wearing tells him that he's wearing his coat, to which Sterling takes a sniff and answers "Smells about right," which shuts the man up. The bartender asks Sterling what brings him to their town. Sterling answers "business," and the coatless man asks "What kind of business is that?" The bartender asks cheekily "Or would you have to kill us?" Sterling answers that "We're already dead," which prompts the bartender to ask him if he knows "something about something", about why they haven't used the gate in so long. Sterling tells him that it is not about the gate and that it simply hasn't been used because it is expensive to do so. He tells them that he is only there on accident. Sterling sees that the bartender and the coatless man is looking at him rather strangely and seriously, and the only other patron of the bar is looking down in a sad demeanor. Sterling asks them if they truly thought "they" were coming back, and tells them, in an increasingly bitter and angry tone that if they are lucky, they have something that "they need, for a while, but they always move on." The coatless man says "Yeah, they took everything" and Sterling answers "Yeah, that happens." The GRD.DRAW device, still spinning on the phone, starts beeping like an alarm, alerting Sterling, who detaches the device and puts it back in his backpack and stands up just as his ride appears in a flashing light from the gate outside the bar. Sterling tells the bartender "Thanks for the hot water, I'll tell all my friends" and rushes to leave the bar.

Agent Sterling stands on a bridge outside the bar, by the water, still wearing the coat and waiting for the flying vehicle that has come to pick up to float down towards him and it opens up and extends a ramp out for him. Meanwhile, inside the bar the three men are watching him leave and the coatless man exclaims "That bastard took my coat." We cut to the vehicle flying up into the air and in through the two structures of the gate, and in a flash of bluish-white light it disappears, ending the episode.

## Cast

### Main cast

* Josh Truax as Agent Maxwell Sterling
* Teague Chrystie as Connor
* Brian David Gilbert as General Caput
* Shaun Callahan as Bartender
* George Long as the coatless man

### Additional roles

* Kaitlin Romig as Josephine "Jo" Simon (quick opening cameo to tie in with *Episode 1: Salad Mug*)
* Barry Blakenship, Rowan Rhys, Sienna Coppa, Nathan Vegdahl as bar patrons

## Trivia

* Josh Truax is the only actor whose role is not named in the credits, however the character is named in dialogue several times throughout the episode.
* This *Dynamo* episode marks the first time since *Episode 3* of the original/"main" *Dynamo* series, released July 16, 2012, that Maxwell Sterling, a main character in that series, has returned. It is also the first time since *Episode 5* of *Dynamo*, released on May 21, 2014, that Axle Rubix is referred to or mentioned, however while he does appear in *Episode 5* of *Dynamo* he does not make an appearance in this episode of *Dynamo Dream*.
* At 7:43 there is a small flying robot with a hat on, which appears to Peter Jefferson's assistant robot from *Episode 1* of *Dynamo*, playing cards at a table with a masked figure.
* Numerous things throughout the episode refers to characters and incidents from the main *Dynamo* series, some of which might not have happened quite yet. These include Maxwell Sterling - who is also starring in the episode - Axle Rubix, "the Axle Rubix incident", the city of Shade and possibly the group that Rubix belongs to.
* The song played during the ending credits of the episode is titled "Box of Ashes", and is credited as being made and performed by "Just Regular Pirates," with Aaron Shay on banjo and harmonies.