Juno Steel and the Stone Unturned (Part 2)

Arc poster by Ellison Estephan.

**Juno Steel and the Stone Unturned (Part 2)** is the seventh Juno Steel episode of The Penumbra Podcast season 4, and the eleventh overall. It was released March 22, 2022.

## Overview

In an asteroid fortress, Juno reunites with someone lost; on the planet Saraswati, a tragic deal is struck.

### Trigger Warnings:

* Violence and threats of violence
* Drug use
* Depiction of illness
* Enclosed, claustrophobic spaces
* Violent pursuit by governments/police
* Racism/xenophobia
* Deception
* References to self-harm/suicide

## Episode Summary

Juno Steel, now trapped inside Sasha Wire's secret asteroid base with his friends Puck Falco and Rita, argues with both of them about petty matters--and about Rita's insistence on finishing a task Sasha gave her, though he cuts her off when she tries to explain what it is and why she wants to. Rita tells him to sit down and be quiet so she can work, asking "Sheriff Falco" to read out her notes while she types. They consist of mysterious phrases and cat doodles. Juno, realizing that pissing off his "family reunion" isn't going to work as a distraction anymore, sulks.

When Rita finishes her task, she explains that Sasha threatened to kill Juno if she didn't complete it. Now she's ready to attempt escape. After all, Sasha even told her she'd be free to leave when she was done. Juno has realized that the room they're stuck in is Sasha's bedroom. He knows how she organizes her space. Everything has to be in the right places, at right angles, and nothing can be green. While Rita and Puck focus on her escape plan, Juno resumes Nureyev's journal, to find out what happened to him and Slip Jackson on Saraswati.

In the past, Peter and Slip decide to disguise Peter as a patient with a communicable funguslike infection called Quickrot, with Slip as his caretaker. At Nureyev's urging, Slip chemically mimics the symptoms of the disease, including a coma, so they can pass scans while discouraging constables from getting up close. When he awakes five days later, Slip helps him walk to a window to get a full look at the sky. Nureyev, narrating, goes on to say that humans living away from Sol (our sun) strive to imitate the experience of life on earth that their bodies are evolutionarily adapted to. Still, many without wealth suffer from "Homesickness" or "Rim Fever," so Slip and Peter lived in community of Homesick individuals, so they will be less scrutinized. Illness embarrasses many into looking away, after all.

Nureyev recovers, and Slip goes out during the day to obtain supplies. One day, he shocks Nureyev by coming home covered in blood, which he blithely assures him isn't all his *own* blood. They argue, Nureyev feeling he deserves to know what's going on, and Slip insisting nobody gets to know about a job they're not working on. Eventually, Slip admits that no, he didn't kill anyone. Peter says in narration that he decided talk would not bring him satisfactory answers, but deception might. He pretended that the muscle weakness from his induced illness had lingered longer than expected, and practiced when Slip was away.

He disguises himself as an old lady, and bumps into Slip on the street, pretending to have mistaken him for "her" grandson. He tails after Slip long enough to be noticed by a broker, but disappears into the shadows before they can decide the figure was important. He eavesdrops on Slip and the broker, who arranges for Slip to play a game of Rangian Street Poker. This was the first time Nureyev had heard of the game, which figures prominently in the earlier arc Juno Steel and the Train from Nowhere. where an older Nureyev plays it. When Slip returns home, Peter confronts him, revealing he had been the old lady. Slip tells him a story, not included in the episode, which Nureyev finds suspicious for being excessively airtight. He thinks Slip is lying.

Peter accompanies Slip to the game, in an expensively finished basement in the Homesick district. His opponents are a pair of identical executives. They want the formula for a recreational drug he developed. Slip wants the formula for part of the executives' "Nausea-Nope" medical line. They offer him a contract, but Slip wants to win, not trade, and refuses. The executives question why Nureyev is there, since he's not playing, and Nureyev asserts that he's Mr. Jackson's lucky charm. As is typical of Rangian Street Poker, they play for questions, not money. Narrating, Peter says that the original form of the game can take hours, unlike the slick version he played against Brock Engstrom. Slip and Peter stayed in the basement so long that the identical executives were relieved by yet more identical executives, disorienting and strange.

Slip wins a number of pieces of information with damaging consequences for the executives. They win from him little of value. He only had four thousand creds in a bank before losing it to them, and his parents' "address" is a graveyard. His weak point, unfortunately, is Peter Nureyev, and his presence at the game had made them both vulnerable. Nureyev eventually caves for him, giving him permission to trade his name for the formula for Nausea-Nope.

In the present, Rita sets off an alarm, to her huge delight. She has just finished wiping records of Sasha's existence from the internet completely, even from the database of Dark Matters. The records are now backed up in Sasha's basement. The door to the room remains locked, and Sasha speaks over an intercom, thanking her for her hard work. Juno panics and insists they leave immediately, because she's going to destroy the asteroid and kill them. Rita and Puck are doubtful, but a self-destruct sequence engages. Sasha Wire eulogizes herself over the intercom and apologizes for making Rita collateral damage of her fake death.

At Juno's prompting, Rita tries to cut off life support systems in the hope of engaging an emergency override. As she works, the camera feed shows Juno what lies in her basement: trophies and photos from her Oldtown days. Rita succeeds in activating an emergency override, and she and Puck urge Juno to run with them, even as he's preoccupied by the realization that every happy memory of his friend is being left behind to burn. Back in the Ruby Seven, Juno concludes that he needs to stop ignoring Sasha and start understanding her, or he'll run out of time to save his family from whatever she's planning. He needs to understand Peter, too, so he finishes the story in the journal.

In the past, Slip Jackson loses the hand of poker, and lies that Peter's name is Arthur "Artie" Dodger, age 18, from the same part of Brahma as Slip. He wins the next round, taking the formula for Nausea-Nope without answering the executives' other question: why is "Artie" here today? Back at their place, Peter is horrified that Slip used the name of their dead comrade, breaking the rules and endangering Slip's life. Slip insists they'll never find out and he's gotten away with it.

He assures Nureyev that he's never lied to him. Nureyev asks why that's so hard to believe. Slip alludes to Mag, which makes Peter cry. Slip further explains that he can't give Nureyev a simple answer about who he is and what's kind of person he is, because everyone's too complicated for that. He suggests they instead promise to be honest with each other, and give an honest effort to figure out who they are, together. Slip tells Peter he loves him, and they kiss.

In narration, Nureyev tells Juno that he thinks what Slip told him about knowing another is the reason he's telling Juno the story at all. He asks Juno to apologize to their family for him. There is more to his journal, but the next entry will be unlocked at a time of his choosing. Nureyev needs to attend to a responsibility from the days of his first love. He tells Juno he loves him, and hopes that after waiting and hearing the end, Juno will love him, too.

## Cast

* Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel
* Noah Simes as Peter Nureyev
* Ellie Desautels as Slip Jackson
* Kate Jones as Rita
* Chelsea Ruscio as Puck Falco
* Stewart Evan Smith as the Executives
* Kolton Stremler as the Broker
* Harley Takagi Kaner as Director W.