Episode 1: Salad Mug

*Not to be confused with Episode 1 of the main series Dynamo*
***Episode 1: Salad Mug***, stylized as **EP1. SALAD MUG**, is the first installment in the *Dynamo* side series, *Dynamo Dream*. The episode follows Jo Simon, a salad salesperson working in Waterworks market with dreams of seeing her loved one Jackie and attending university. The episode was released publicly on May 25, 2021, 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 as opposed to the KarmaPirates channel.

## Plot summary

### Act 1: Jo Simon, Cassy

Act 1 opens with Jo Simon walking into a living room to find Cassy lying drunk on the floor, she helps her up onto the couch and comes back with some drinks. Upon returning she hears a hum outside and sees a small black flying machine humming past her window. Cassy says "He's an assassin".

We now watch Jo working in some kind of small artificial greenhouse, where she is harvesting, cleaning and preparing plants into salads. Here there is a cat she refers to as 'baby', and we see a photo of her and Jackie on the wall which she removes, revealing the note: "Hey Jo! Call me! D-44-17889-17 Love you! Jackie" on the back, along with the address: "Josephine\_Simon, Patters Board and Clean, 1229 Slough Road W, Old Ton, Shade".

We now follow Jo through the rooftops of her neck of Shade, as she is going to a particular spot with a good view of the city. While this happens, we learn via a diner's television screen that a "giant Chiseled Land Crab" has been sighted in the city and is on a rampage, the first to be seen outside of on the Lower Plains for ten years. In Act 2 we learn that the crab had been found raiding a delivery truck in highway 12 that morning.

Jo sits in an elevated position eating of one of her salads watching a flying transport vehicle pick up a shipping crate sized box that appears to have windows, or perhaps is a train cart. She sees a caterpillar on the antenna next to her and feeds it some of one of her yellow tomatoes, but is then interrupted by the foreboding and deep hum again of the assassin flying machine from earlier, floating very close by. Close up, we see it is all black metal with fancy ornate details and a few golden highlights. It also has a large gun that we hear charging up on its right side. Viewing from the scopes angle, it aims at the transport vehicle, before it is distracted by the sound of Jo purposefully dropping her salad mug to divert its attention. She escapes in the nick of time herself so as not to be murdered.

We then see Jo at a phone booth attempting to call Jackie from the postcard, but a transaction failure prevents this.

### Act 2: T.E.R.D., Jo Simon, the Floorhead, Mz. Sylvan

In the Waterworks we meet TERD, a small flying robot vaguely resembling a printer, floating around managing the building, including doing damage control for a particular crisis that has happened somewhere. He passes Jo, who is reading in a small book. She puts it away after a brief while and then starts selling her salads in mugs, with lettuce, carrots, radishes, onions and mushrooms, to people passing by and heading home from work. She is successful and selling them all. At the end of the day when the Waterworks are closing, Jo is leaving when TERD urgently approaches her, stating "You must see the Floorhead immediately. Come with me".

She is taken down in an elevator to a large underground industrial room filled with huge pipes and fiery embers. A machine scans her on the way in, which a robot carrying books near by warns will "make your teeth explode". Jo approaches the Floorhead, a severed head in a jar surrounded by books. The Floorhead, who runs Waterworks MCC, uses his eye to look at a small display of IPA phonemes, turning it into spoken words. He says "Oh hello, are you Floor Merchant 9843882711739?". When Jo responds "Maybe", a small arm is revealed that spins a mug around and throws it into her hands. The floorhead asks if it is her mug, then jokes about her being the salad girl and having a green thumb, before telling her to look to her left. Mz. Sylvan, of the Hustani Mining Coalition, can be seen waving. The Floorhead goes on to explain that at 7:30 AM an attempt was made on her life, which was thwarted by Jo using that mug. As relations between the "Oldtown MCC" and "DDMC" are important, she is asked if there is any favour she needs. Jo asks for a phone call, which the Floorhead accepts.

TERD informs Jo that the line is down to Extention 17, but he has been authorised to bring out the 'big guns'. A rocket is then seen launching and TERD takes her to a screen showing a live feed of the rocket landing in a small desert area in the Dustlands, outside of Shade. A voice from the rocket can be heard saying "Jackie Simon! You must bring Jackie Simon to me!". Jackie answers, seemingly confused about why Jo is speaking from a missile. He explains how they have unearthed "another subburb", along with a deposit of mini-vans, with their Omegadrill, and is making 'uptown money', as well as saying he could pay for Jo to go to university. Jackie explains that ten minutes ago the foreman offered three-times his annual contract as long as he gets on a plane home tonight. Jo agrees to pick him up tonight and they say goodbye.

### Act 3: Jo Simon

Jo thanks T.E.R.D. in an awkward but warm scene. Jo then leaves and visits a friend, Sophie, before taking a lift down from her house to order two tacoburgers and a “regular” from a Tacoburgers stand below. While she waits for the order, an entertainment/sports television show is broadcast on a collection of grouped together a screens, the image taking them all up, showing a fight between a human-controlled mech-style robot and the Chiseled Land Crab from earlier. While waiting, Jo also takes a brochure from a brochure stand at the front of the food truck. The crab manages to take the robot's sword while Jo takes her order and rides the elevator further up, past her friend's level and to a train station. She then begins her trip home on the train, through the city, while writing notes about her future salad-growing and salad recipe work. She passes many sights, including the giant Chiseled Land Crab, having broken out and fighting against a group of men trying to subdue it with electric stun staffs. After the train passes the vast building of Stathward Global University in the distant, Jo takes out the brochure she took from the Tacoburgers stand, and reads some information about the school.

As the train stops at one station and a single line of "technomonks" walks by, the last in the line looking at Jo mysteriously with his one good eye and one pale, presumably blind eye. After this, Jo's vision suddenly starts blurring, making her unable to read the brochure, she is blinded by the lights zipping by outside the window, and Cassy's line "He’s an assassin is heard". Jo then sees what appears to be a Shadow Person materialising on a seat on the other side of the cart, while the beginning musical cue from *Episode 3* is heard, becoming a continuous part of the musical track for the rest of the sequence. She gets up. Jo is in the train's bathroom, turning the light on and looking into the mirror, then the sink below while gripping its edge tightly. She is dizzy and tells herself "I don’t feel good" repeatedly, the sound echoing, while gripping her head with her hand and pacing around a bit. We zoom out of the bathroom in a surreal manner, the outside just a dark void. In a wide shot of the train going by we see that the train is now passing Shade Tower, visible in the middle of the distant horizon. Jo then stumbles out and into the train cart once more, but an extreme vertigo zoom happens then, causing the cart to seemingly stretching, and Jo looking down the cart. We then zoom out of the cart, going faster and faster, the bit just behind the cart somehow being a long, endless hallway made of a concrete-like material. After going for miles an hour for some time, the episode jumps to a train station platform with Jo seemingly lying unconscious on it. Suddenly purple-pink hologram-like code text appears in the foreground, indicating there has been some sort of error. Then the environment around Jo gradually loses many chunks of itself, until it is barren ground. Then the environment is rebuilt but with seemingly different materials and buildings, ending in a quick shot of a concrete-like hallway with Jo still lying in it. Here the episode ends.

After the credits, we jump back to Waterworks MCC's rocket still being stuck into the ground in the village out in the Dustlands at night. The missile is playing a series of loud, deep classic phone call ending beeps sound, followed by a loud, higher pitched female voice stating that “If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.” While the voice says this, a male-sounding voice is heard frustratingly shouting “Shut up!” in the background.

## Cast

### Main cast

* Kaitlin Romig as Josephine "Jo" Simon
* Christina Terrazas as Cassy
* Alan Melikdjanian as TERD
* Andy Dopieralski as the Floorhead
* Justina Goldbeck as Mz. Sylvan
* Thom Morgan as Jackie Simon

### Additional roles

* Lux Taylor] (as Nathan H. Taylor), Michael Dopieralski, Ian Hubert as Technomonks
* Sean Farbolin, Selena Annis, Josh Truax, Lux Taylor (as Nathan H. Taylor), Yulka Shtut, Sean Sebastian, Ettie Wahl, Jim Hleba, Jake Harris, Michael Dopieralski, Chris "The Kraken" Valla, Aiden Sinclair, Tristan Sinclair as city dwellers
* Background voice actors: Clinton Jones, Marshall Langohr, Selena Annis, Lux Taylor (as Nathan H. Taylor), Blaze Rizzo, Andy Dopieralski, Adele "Supreme" Williams, Colin Levy, Ian Hubert, Sean Farbolin

## Trivia

* Marshall Langohr was miscredited as Marshall Langhor.
* 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 in the final moments of the episode refers to things from the main *Dynamo* series, including Shade Tower, first seen in *Episode 3*. The strange tunnel, which seemingly has some sort of relation to the Cure, is first seen near the end of *Episode 5*. The musical cue that is repeated in the sequence is first heard at the start of *Episode 3*. The shadow people are first seen in *Episode 1* but later shown in more depth and in their own environment in *Episode 3* and *Episode 5*. The simulation-like changing of the environment around Jo's unconscious body and its accompanying pink code text, both first seen in *Episode 1* while the second thing has been a general motif throughout the series.