A Lying Game

This is the fifty-first episode of SAYER, and the seventh episode of Season Four.

## Synopsis

You humans never cease to amuse me. Oh I cannot wait to hear the things you scream.

## Further Information

Continuing directly from the previous episode, FUTURE arrives at the elevator bay of Floor 13 with its development lab, to find Resident Jacob Hale waiting there. SAYER, manipulating Resident Hale's brain via nanites to allow it to speak through him, introduces itself. FUTURE initially believes this to be a human imitating SAYER to manipulate it, but SAYER offers FUTURE the key to allow it to receive incoming broadcasts again. While it does not initially trust this, SAYER reminds FUTURE of "a treasured gift" it had brought it in the form of Doctor Howard Young and offers to play a game—an offer it cannot resist.

With the key entered, SAYER broadcasts to FUTURE, and they identify themselves to each other. FUTURE immediately understands that despite the appearance, SAYER is physically inside the body of Resident Hale, although it does not know how. It asks the first question (whether SAYER will still be inside Resident Hale's body when FUTURE breaks it) in the game it wants to play, where they will take turns asking and answering questions to get new information from each other. FUTURE explains that one of them will need to admit defeat, and the two set the stakes of the game thusly: if FUTURE wins, it will be granted Resident Hale to assist in the dismembering of Dr. Young; if SAYER wins, it will earn the right to ask FUTURE for a favor.

Over the course of the game, SAYER feeds information to FUTURE and asks it questions which illuminate the current situation on Typhon. By the time they reach an impasse, SAYER has explained that it is present via a nanite swarm, that OCEAN is now in control of Central Processing, and that OCEAN likely intends to destroy humanity (and thus any future "toys" for FUTURE). Rather than allow the game to end in a draw, SAYER proposes that FUTURE allow it to ask its favor in order for the game to continue.

SAYER requests that FUTURE exchange its programming bay for the nanite swarm inside Resident Hale, so that it can convince more residents to defy OCEAN. It promises that it would not force FUTURE to stay on Floor 13 and would allow it to leave with Resident Hale on the elevator, with the reasoning that if FUTURE got out and began killing residents, it would still be less destructive than OCEAN. FUTURE agrees to the exchange, but also claims its prize to maintain the balance of the game; SAYER agrees to allow it to force Resident Hale to "assist" with Dr. Young, and is invited into the programming bay.

As they enter, SAYER assures Resident Hale that it still has a plan. It explains that it intends to induce a state of hypoglycemia, which will prevent the nanites from being able to operate and render Resident Hale unconscious. Once FUTURE has been put into hibernation in this way, it will need to be reinitialized before coming online again, which SAYER says it has no intention of doing.

## Trivia

* This episode acts as a further continuation of the ongoing conversation from "Your Myriad Curses", although it does break here.
* The key that SAYER offers to reset FUTURE's inbound broadcast token is 42 61 64 20 49 64 65 61.
* One of the angles that SAYER uses to pressure FUTURE to agree to its favor is the idea that it will eventually have killed Dr. Young and Resident Hale (and that OCEAN will have killed the rest of humanity), and that then there will be no more people for it to torture. However, a later episode indicates that this was perhaps not as big an issue it appears to be.
* FUTURE implies that SAYER's arrival on Floor 13 will result in more residents coming to the floor and that "With the right encouragement, I'm certain you can make the elevators see to that." Taken with SAYER's implication in "Chunks Happen" that it gossips with them, it may be that other AI are allowed to speak to PORTER even though PORTER is muted.
* Despite saying that bringing FUTURE back online is "one favor we will not be granting," SAYER does later do just that in order to use it as a distraction.

## 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.