Episode 72 - Errors

## Errors

a simple black background with a white jagged line for the border, probably meant to emanate lightning. Within the border a coffin like structure is hooked to cables and tubes and has a single red square where the head would go was this a coffin, as if a window. Bellow this image yet still within the border are the words "72.ERRORS".

### Author

William A. Wellman

Danielle opens a door, Olivier calls the storm, and Diggory finds their way through a dark place. The theme of tonight’s episode is Errors.

***Content Warnings:** Heartbeats, Abuse, Animal Death (implied about some birds), Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Birds, Emotional Manipulation, Body horror, Electrocution*

## Intro - Ancient Scribes

Nikignik narrates to the Dreamers Anderson Faust as he creates Clemetine Maidstone, listening to computers and generators, monitors and alerts, the whispers of his colleagues, and a conspiracy of chittering reconstruction arms as if they were melodies, a heartbeat punctuating the rhythm. He watches as her eyes opened for a moment, fixed on him even as the fabricator arms kept putting her together. She was not supposed to be awake, and yet, she stared, and he felt for the first time that he had flown too close to the sun, and she was awful wax, dripping like blood.

Nikignik stands in the light of a glowing sun within the Prime Dream with Danielle O'Hara, who they suspect can hear a little of what they were saying. In a perfect show (metaphorical) no one would be able to look backstage to examine the woodwork and the trapdoors, and yet that was where they were, Danielle's attention fixed of the communications array for Box Andromeda, as she hoped to live through the next few hours.

## Story 1 - Overwhelmingly Awake

Danielle O’Hara stands in the world behind the Prime Dream, the backing to its carefully embroidered tapestry of imagination and memory, having been there longer than she'd ever stayed before, but having nowhere else to go, missing her appointment for her psychological evaluation (see Episode 61 - Protectors), and the dreamscapes of her parent’s home crawled with flies. Listening to the sounds of the Botulus Corporation security systems and hoping that Riot Maidstone was going to be alright (see Episode 71 - Trials). Valerie Maidstone had not resurfaced in the Prime Dream since Other Riot had appeared, but she knew that if Danielle was going to tell her about Riot's pending rescue attempt, now was the time. So she starts to search the Prime Dream for Valerie, finding her playing on a stage to a make-believe audience the songs of her Stonemaiden days. Danielle tries to call out to her, but her polite "excuse me" was lost in the sounds of the music. She quickly decides that there was no point in being polite, as Riot and her friends would be there any minute now.

She binks and finds herself suddenly on stage, and the music falls into a single screeching tone as Valerie looks up at her sudden arrival. Valerie recognises her, asking if she was dreaming about her or if she was actually there. Danielle tells her that she was there, that Riot was coming, that real Riot, she was going to get them out. Valerie takes this to mean that was was in fact dreaming, Danielle tries to tell her that it was real, but Valerie tells her that she wished that was true, and she didn't thing Other Riot (referring to her just as Riot) wanted to go. Danielle tells her that she [Danielle] had to go now, but the rescue was going to happen soon, telling Valerie to be ready. The returns to the darkness beyond the Prime Dream, finding it in chaos, taking this to mean that it had begun. There was a hailstorm outside, impossible for summer in California, the stones setting off the motion sensors and the defence grid. So the security team shut off the security system to wait for the storm to pass. Danielle acknowledges that this was too strange for the timing to be a coincidence but wonders how Riot was able to do that (see Olivier Song). a sensor becomes faulty on an unused supply door at base level, and Danielle becomes aware that this was the plan she'd given to Riot. Danielle opens all the doors of Box Andromeda, and then opens the lid to her own dreaming pod. Danielle wakes up, terribly, painfully, and overwhelmingly.

### Interlude 1 - Ask For A Phone

Nikignik tells the Dreamers that there were few means by which they could reasonably escape the troubles of life, but nevertheless, some general points of advice may serve them well in the strange and violent world in which they found themselves. If their car broke down on a rainy night, they should stay in it until the morning, and not approach the neighbouring castle to ask for a phone. If they were being chased by a towering figure with a sharp object in their hands, do not look back at them, look instead ahead to make firm their footing. If they were chased by a towering figure after their car had broken down at night, do approach the castle. The terrible host inside may scare away their pursuer. If they grow close to the master of the castle and decide that they no longer wish to leave, be careful, as they have a complicated history with the towering figure, and it will not go well if they rush into a new relationship with them before resolving their issues around vulnerability.

## Story 2 - The Andromeda Heist

Olivier Song summons a hailstorm, enacting the effects on Dreaming Box Andromeda from Story 1 - Overwhelmingly Awake, upon the security system going down Diggory Graves tears out of the treeline to one of the sides of the Dreaming Box, peeled open a small door, and slipped inside. Olivier takes that as his cue, striking the roof of the box with lightning to try make another entrance, keeping the storm up and flying back to the RV to retrieve Riot Maidstone, picking her up and flying them both up to the top of the Dreaming Box, right on time for Danielle to have opened all of the doors, letting them in. Olivier watches as Cluster Drones begin to also crawl out of the top of the box, only to explode. Riot finds a trap door, probably a service port, and they get inside of the box, Olivier hoping that they'd been missed in the commotion as he climbed down the ladder. Riot tells Olivier that they were looking for the residential level, asking if he knew what that looked like. He doesn't but he tells her he does, that it would probably look nicer and be on the lower levels. They keep walking, coming across several different sizes of Botco Drones. The two find an elevator, entering it only to be met by the Boxy AI system, who asks them to identify themselves. Riot says her name is Lady Ethel Mallory, but Boxy recognises her Voice as Riot Maidstone (see Clementine Maidstone), telling her that she was in an unauthorised area and would be returned to the residential floor. Olivier asks how it knew her name, and Riot tells him that she didn't know but it was doing what she wanted so she didn't care.

They arrive on the residential floor and start looking for where they might be keeping Valerie when they run into Melanie Flores, who asks Riot why she was so dirty, before noticing Olivier and asking who he was. Olivier quickly makes up a lie about being "Oliver" from the Marketing program, which causes Melanie to go on a rant about how if the marketing department wanted to work with Riot, they'd have to work with her, before telling Olivier to 'get lost', which he does, but only goes so far as to hide behind a corner. Melanie tells Riot to go back to her room until the storm quieted down, but she tells her that she wanted to see her mum, which Melanie allows, leaving her away with Olivier following but staying hidden. They end up at a glass door guarded by two drones. Melanie leaves and Rior pushes her way inside the room, and Olivier goes to follow, but hears the sudden sound of sirens and is attacked by the two guard drones.

### Marketing - Polite Discourse

Lady Ethel Mallory interrupts Nikignik's broadcast with her marketing segment, begging with addressing the announcement that "Riot" (Other Riot) made in Episode 64 - Stations, that it had caused a stir, and all she could say was: Good for her. It was difficult to stand up and say what she believed, when it was unpopular, and her audience was so large. But she'd had strong feelings about how Botco's management, that it had room to improve. She tells the listeners that for her personally, she hoped to hear much more from her in the coming months. That if Botco truly valued individuality, progress, and free opinion, they would let her speak.

### Story 2, Continued - The Andromeda Heist

Olivier fights with the drones, getting hit by one and injured quite badly, opting to run inside of the room Riot and Valerie were in instead of facing them as well as their incoming backup. He finds Riot in an embrace with her mother who was sitting in a hospital bed, though this is cut short as he enters the room, causing Valerie to back herself up against the raised portion of her bed, turning to Riot and asking who he was, if she [Riot] was in trouble. Riot quickly tells her that Olivier was her friend, that she was glad to see her okay, that they were going to get her out, and then they could talk. Valerie begins a sentence, but trails off, clearly confused by the situation. Olivier reaches into his pocket and pulls out a walkie-talkie, asking Diggory if they had Danielle. They respond, telling him that they did and asking if they had Valerie, He tells them that they did, that they'd rendezvous back at the RV before initiating radio silence. He tells Valerie and Riot to take cover, Riot pulling her mother out of bed, before he turned to the window, and punched through the wall with no fewer than five lightning strikes from the outside. He turns to tell them that he wouldn't drop them, before jumping out of the hole, pulling them after him just as the door to the room burst open to men in black armour and drones.

Olivier flies them back to the RV, him collapsing upon arrival, rolling into his cloak the storm dying down as he did so. He looked out as the red eye (see Dreaming Boxes and Episode 49 - Rescues) of Box Andromeda light back up, before flickering and turning off, he laughs at this, as of course the eye was closed, he’d put a hole in it. He fells someone putting their arm around him to pull him to his feet but finds it not to be Riot but Valerie helping him towards the RV as Riot got into the driver’s seat. Valerie introduces herself to him, her also weak enough that she was struggling to walk in a straight line, and he returns this gesture. Finding his seat at the back table in the RV, still rather faint from the injury and the massive amount of energy he'd had to use to maintain the storm, he watched as Valerie climbed into the passenger seat next to her daughter. She [Valerie] tells her daughter that she had alot of questions, but the first one was who was she [Riot] and why did she look like her daughter.

### Interlude 2 - Make It So

Nikignik tells the Dreamers that they might not have noticed, but space was full of masters (see Indescribables), that there were so many great powers devoting themselves to their particular specialty, even some with less impressive specialties, like mud (see Lolgmololg). But nerveless, for all their diverse talents Nikignik was yet to encounter a being who could control time. Time moved at different speeds, but it did seem that once something had happened it was done, irreversible. He asks the Dreamers if this seemed fair to them, that in a universe where he could be anywhere, he wanted at any time he wanted, that they could do so much in the moment, but absolutely nothing once it had passed. He tells them that he had been confined at times in his life, locked away and forgotten. Yet for all his freedom now, he still felt trapped, his new vessel was the past which he should have prevented, and a present which he could not change. For him and them alike, there was only a future left for them to alter, the life they were given, impossible to make perfect.

## Story 3 - To Share A Jacket - 1

Diggory Graves walked through the darkened internal halls of Box Andromeda looking for Danielle O'Hara. Percy Reed asks them if they knew where they were going as they went up a flight of stairs. They tell him that Danielle had told Riot to follow the access halls, that they were pretty sure the saris were an emergency exit. Percy asks if their sense of direction applied to scary metal labyrinths, but they just tell him that they felt that the upcoming door was the one they wanted to go through. The go from the staircase to the residential floor, just in time for two machines to pull free one of the dreaming pods from where it was stacked with the others and slide it down to the ground floor. The lid of the box releases and slides off, and Diggory approaches, asking if it was Danielle inside and introduced themself, getting a groan in response, before nodding slightly. Diggory wraps their jacked around her, telling her that her name was Danielle, she was alive, and they were going to get her out. They pick her up, tuning to leave only to find Other Riot staring at them. They mistake her for the original Riot, and ask what she was doing down there, of she'd gotten separated form Olivier. They get the Walkie Talkie message from Olivier (see Story 2, Continued - The Andromeda Heist), turning to Other Riot and asking if she was ready to leave. She tells them she was, and they leave, back to the metal door they had broken their way into, with one hand holing Danielle and with the other ripping it off its hinges to serve as a makeshift shield form the hail.

They get a distance before it becomes apparent that they had Drones chasing them, and Percy tells them that they needed to hurry, asking if Diggory could carry both Danielle and 'Riot'. The politely ask Other Riot if they could pick her up, before gently putting her over one of the shoulders, Danielle the other, and braking into a sprint for the trees. They quickly get to the RV, finding the side door open, setting down Other Riot and Danielle gently. Riot speaks up from the front seat, telling them she'd been worried they wouldn't make it, and Valerie asks Riot what the hell Diggory was, but Diggory simply greats her before looking around to take stock of their companions, the two Riots staring wide eyed at each other before original Riot screamed and reached for her sword, just as the drones caught up to them.

## Outro - Errors

Nikignik waxes poetics about Errors, telling the Dreamers that it was tempting to look back on their time spent living and feel a sense of regret, for missed opportunities, for the paths they did not take, for the futures they denied themselves. But they were all stumbling through life and learning how to live as they went. Each path they had chosen would have brought them something different, but there was no perfect path, no quintessential way to be. And if regret was heavy in their hearts, and guilt followed their conscience, they should be comforted if only by an abundance of tomorrows. They would get to try again, and again, and again, and when the day came when you can no longer try, they should know that the memories would grow less sharp with each passing aeon, and the sun would rise on them one day where that moment no longer pained their soul.