This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Diego F. Salinas: Let's fucking go. I'm ready to play this game that I know nothing about.

[0:30] Madelyn Murphy: No, but that's what's up. That's what I mean. We're recording. We're in here. I'll just start. The X is there. I think that's in here, right?

[0:40] Diego F. Salinas: Here we go. Ready?

[0:41] Madelyn Murphy: One. Go around the table clockwise, taking turns reading these cards aloud.

[0:46] Diego F. Salinas: I'm already in.

[0:49] Madelyn Murphy: The land has been in turmoil for as long as any of you have been alive.

[0:53] Diego F. Salinas: The Queen has decided to undertake a long and perilous journey to broker an alliance with a distant power.

[1:01] Madelyn Murphy: The Queen has chosen all of you and no one else to be her retinue and company and accompany her on this journey.

[1:10] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, I'm already flooding my basement.

[1:13] Madelyn Murphy: She chose you because she knows that you love her.

[1:22] Diego F. Salinas: You are welcome to look through the illustrated cards for inspiration.

[1:25] Madelyn Murphy: If there is one that players are drawn to, display it on the table to represent your Queen.

[1:30] Diego F. Salinas: All right, so let's do that.

[1:33] Madelyn Murphy: OK, what do you guys think?

[1:36] Diego F. Salinas: OK, Diego, so we're new at this. Also, hi, I'm Maddie.

[1:40] Madelyn Murphy: Oh, I'll do it. I'll bring us in in a minute. Officially, I don't know where I'm at. We are recording.

[1:44] Diego F. Salinas: Hey, welcome back. We're doing for the Queen again.

[1:48] Madelyn Murphy: It's Alex and Aabria who's eating noodles. We got snacks. We got cards. We got limoncillos.

[1:54] Diego F. Salinas: Diego and Maddie are here. We're looking at Queens.

[1:57] Madelyn Murphy: This art is so sick.

[1:59] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, it rules, right?

[2:00] Madelyn Murphy: We've got front and backs, by the way.

[2:01] Diego F. Salinas: Front and backs? Oh, the choices.

[2:03] Madelyn Murphy: Too many choices now.

[2:04] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, there's a lot. Here's what I'm going to do. We've got to go quick as a wink. I'm going to make my three selects.

[2:09] Madelyn Murphy: Great. I think that's great. Each of you pick three.

[2:13] Diego F. Salinas: Look at the back.

[2:17] Madelyn Murphy: I got three.

[2:18] Diego F. Salinas: The joy of the blue.

[2:19] Madelyn Murphy: I love that that's one of the ones. The immediate difference between the table last time was horny for and what the table this time is for is so wildly different.

[2:27] Diego F. Salinas: It's great.

[2:28] Madelyn Murphy: No, okay, I got my three, Diego.

[2:29] Diego F. Salinas: All right.

[2:30] Madelyn Murphy: All right, first one, Celestial Ho, looking powerful as fuck. I'm into it.

[2:34] Diego F. Salinas: This one, this Chaperone-esque kind of Joan of Arc, sexy-ass sword.

[2:39] Madelyn Murphy: How's she holding it? She's not holding it by where you're supposed to. She's kind of gripping it above the hilt. Intrigued.

[2:44] Diego F. Salinas: And then this Carrie-esque, murder-esque prom queen. She is holding a butcher knife and weeping blood.

[2:50] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[2:51] Diego F. Salinas: What you got?

[2:52] Madelyn Murphy: Strong selection.

[2:53] Diego F. Salinas: Thank you.

[2:54] Madelyn Murphy: I got fierce warrior lady with a jaguar.

[2:56] Diego F. Salinas: Ooh.

[2:57] Madelyn Murphy: I got cyberpunk tech queen.

[3:00] Diego F. Salinas: I knew you'd go for that one.

[3:01] Madelyn Murphy: I didn't even see her last time.

[3:03] Diego F. Salinas: And I have lady lion's mane of the fungal realm.

[3:07] Madelyn Murphy: Fun.

[3:08] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, okay. Lady lion's mane and slash.

[3:10] Madelyn Murphy: No one ever picks my favorite queen, which is just like the 80s bad bitch.

[3:14] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, yeah?

[3:15] Madelyn Murphy: She's just in a, yeah.

[3:17] Diego F. Salinas: She's looking like a Cyndi Lauper.

[3:19] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[3:20] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, yeah.

[3:21] Madelyn Murphy: We don't have to pick her. She's just my favorite little gal.

[3:24] Diego F. Salinas: You know why I honestly, why I went, nope, but I love her so much? Notice, this is, she's so tall and powerful. Her feet are so small.

[3:31] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[3:32] Diego F. Salinas: Her chin is so small. Her forehead is eight inches.

[3:34] Madelyn Murphy: Yes. Yes. She's built like Megamind.

[3:39] Diego F. Salinas: Spieider.

[3:41] Madelyn Murphy: I immediately went like that forehead too big, those feet too small.

[3:44] Diego F. Salinas: I don't trust your balance.

[3:46] Madelyn Murphy: All right. So this is our pantheon of six.

[3:48] Diego F. Salinas: So we got to get down to one.

[3:50] Madelyn Murphy: I'm going with gut.

[3:52] Diego F. Salinas: And it's, I'm going to narrow it down to two.

[3:55] Madelyn Murphy: Great.

[3:56] Diego F. Salinas: Cyberpunk or, oh, God.

[4:00] Madelyn Murphy: I'm going to veto Chaperone.

[4:01] Diego F. Salinas: Huh?

[4:02] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, we're good.

[4:03] Diego F. Salinas: I'm vetoing Chaperone.

[4:04] Madelyn Murphy: Chaperone, she out.

[4:05] Diego F. Salinas: Then prom queen with butcher knife.

[4:06] Madelyn Murphy: Okay.

[4:08] Diego F. Salinas: Break the timer.

[4:09] Madelyn Murphy: Which pick one of these two?

[4:10] Diego F. Salinas: Oh man. Prom queen with butcher knife is so wild, but let's go.

[4:14] Madelyn Murphy: Let's go techno.

[4:15] Diego F. Salinas: I think just because I played last time and I want to give us a like wildly different vibe.

[4:19] Madelyn Murphy: All right. Let's do it.

[4:20] Diego F. Salinas: So yeah.

[4:22] Madelyn Murphy: You want to play for the prom queen?

[4:23] Diego F. Salinas: For the prom queen?

[4:24] Madelyn Murphy: I mean, oh God. Now that you say that.

[4:26] Diego F. Salinas: She's got a knife.

[4:29] Madelyn Murphy: We got to do it again.

[4:30] Diego F. Salinas: Oh no.

[4:31] Madelyn Murphy: We're going to have to play again.

[4:32] Diego F. Salinas: Oh no.

[4:33] Madelyn Murphy: Oh no.

[4:34] Diego F. Salinas: But yes.

[4:35] Madelyn Murphy: Oh God.

[4:37] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, I can resume my actual high school persona of backpack girl though.

[4:41] Madelyn Murphy: Oh, backpack girl. Guess what? I didn't go to prom.

[4:44] Diego F. Salinas: Not because I was cool.

[4:45] Madelyn Murphy: Because nobody asked me.

[4:47] Diego F. Salinas: Isn't that the same?

[4:50] Madelyn Murphy: You could argue that nobody asked you because you were so cool.

[4:54] Diego F. Salinas: They were intimidated by you.

[4:55] Madelyn Murphy: You were so cool.

[4:56] Diego F. Salinas: You were too hot and good.

[4:58] Madelyn Murphy: You put the sad in Sadie Hawkins' name.

[5:02] Diego F. Salinas: Maybe 10 people wanted to ask me, but they didn't know my name.

[5:05] Madelyn Murphy: So they kept being like, backpack girl. That's it.

[5:08] Diego F. Salinas: Oh no.

[5:09] Madelyn Murphy: They didn't know you were going to put the hell in home.

[5:10] Diego F. Salinas: I do like the history of you as a high school cryptid.

[5:13] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, truly.

[5:14] Diego F. Salinas: Truly. Backpack girl sighted in lingerie.

[5:16] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah. I was very dense. I took up a lot of space with my backpack, but I was quick. So that's the trick.

[5:23] Diego F. Salinas: Let's think of a blue sail term.

[5:26] Madelyn Murphy: Is it too late to go back or did I already make a choice?

[5:28] Diego F. Salinas: I made a choice.

[5:29] Madelyn Murphy: Okay. I'm just thinking of a pangolin that just rips ass and I love it.

[5:35] Diego F. Salinas: As in farts?

[5:37] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, for whatever reason. I don't know why I made you farty, but I just like pangolins.

[5:43] Diego F. Salinas: I mean, but a pangolin also has them big. It could actually tear an ass apart with its giant claws, but they're friendly.

[5:49] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, they're so cute, but they also are like no cage can hold me. And they just dig their way out of like cement walls all the time.

[5:56] Diego F. Salinas: They're so cool.

[5:57] Madelyn Murphy: I go here now.

[5:58] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah. Does somebody want to give us a solid...

[6:02] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, Diego, describe her to the listening public.

[6:05] Diego F. Salinas: And Marie's going to add a bunch of fucking techno audio stuff to this. So like really give it...

[6:09] Madelyn Murphy: Oh, what?

[6:11] Diego F. Salinas: Sounds like Samurai Jack.

[6:14] Madelyn Murphy: All right. Our techno queen raises a blue cybernetic arm across a field of blue screens that float in front of her.

[6:23] Diego F. Salinas: She is garnished with these neon clothing.

[6:28] Madelyn Murphy: With rosemary and parsley.

[6:29] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah. And like a little bit of crispy garlic.

[6:32] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, but like the future...

[6:33] Diego F. Salinas: Vaporwave babe.

[6:35] Madelyn Murphy: Salt bae looms above her with a fresh pinch of salt.

[6:38] Diego F. Salinas: She's a cyberpunk microwave.

[6:41] Madelyn Murphy: But she's looking strong and confident. She's got these like cool like multicolor headphones, these sick yellow shades, and is dressed in this like flowy tech wear that glows with digital light.

[6:56] Diego F. Salinas: I'm going to add something in. Think of anybody watching it like Arcane meets Tron.

[7:00] Madelyn Murphy: Yes, very much so.

[7:02] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah. Hell yeah.

[7:04] Madelyn Murphy: All right. Let's leave her out where we can all see her.

[7:07] Diego F. Salinas: And who's pick is next?

[7:11] Madelyn Murphy: I think I read that one.

[7:12] Diego F. Salinas: So then I pull?

[7:14] Madelyn Murphy: Yep.

[7:15] Diego F. Salinas: Seven, find the card that reads the queen is under attack. Do you defend her? And remove it from the question card deck.

[7:22] Madelyn Murphy: That has been done.

[7:23] Diego F. Salinas: Then shuffle the remaining question cards and place them face down in the center of the table.

[7:26] Madelyn Murphy: That has also been done.

[7:27] Diego F. Salinas: Okay. So next up for me.

[7:29] Madelyn Murphy: Wait, so you put it in already?

[7:30] Diego F. Salinas: Huh?

[7:31] Madelyn Murphy: I have it.

[7:32] Diego F. Salinas: Okay, we got to put it in the deck.

[7:33] Madelyn Murphy: Oh, should we put it in the deck?

[7:34] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah.

[7:35] Madelyn Murphy: And have a...

[7:36] Diego F. Salinas: Okay.

[7:37] Madelyn Murphy: Hold on.

[7:38] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, no, it's like how far down do we want to put it?

[7:40] Madelyn Murphy: Oh, the answer is like halfway.

[7:42] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, okay.

[7:43] Madelyn Murphy: Okay. And we're still going to have to go grab it back.

[7:45] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, probably. I mean, I don't know, man. I feel like the four of us, we might be fast.

[7:50] Madelyn Murphy: We'll see.

[7:51] Diego F. Salinas: But we'll see.

[7:53] Madelyn Murphy: Okay, I'm up next. Next rule card. Place the card that reads, The queen is under attack. Do you defend her randomly in the middle of the question card?

[8:00] Diego F. Salinas: Okay, we did that.

[8:01] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, we did that.

[8:02] Diego F. Salinas: Okay. When you have read the rules cards, take turns drawing question cards and reading them aloud.

[8:08] Madelyn Murphy: Interpret your card and answer it however you wish.

[8:12] Diego F. Salinas: Ooh.

[8:13] Madelyn Murphy: That's the game. Other players may ask you questions or make suggestions on your turn, but whether you answer those questions or include those suggestions is entirely up to you.

[8:22] Diego F. Salinas: And I'll add the caveat, you can always lie.

[8:25] Madelyn Murphy: Oh my God.

[8:26] Diego F. Salinas: So we love the queen and we've been brought together, but we can have our own autonomy.

[8:30] Madelyn Murphy: Oh my God.

[8:31] Diego F. Salinas: The queen knows we love her.

[8:33] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[8:34] Diego F. Salinas: The only thing that begins that is true is that she knows that we love her.

[8:39] Madelyn Murphy: All right. Everything that happens from there can be whatever.

[8:42] Diego F. Salinas: Oh.

[8:44] Madelyn Murphy: 11. Place the X card somewhere everyone can easily reach it.

[8:49] Diego F. Salinas: Okay.

[8:50] Madelyn Murphy: 12. If you encounter a question or an answer that you don't want to be included in the game, tap the X card. That content is removed from this game.

[8:57] Diego F. Salinas: Ah.

[8:58] Madelyn Murphy: Nice. Little boundaries.

[9:00] Diego F. Salinas: And I'll give another little caveat to that. As you get further along in your character, you might pull a card that you're like, oh, that doesn't feel appropriate, or we already kind of covered it. You can X out that card without it being like a content thing and just be like, nope, I don't want that. I want a new card.

[9:15] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[9:16] Diego F. Salinas: If you draw a card that is removed this way, by yourself or someone else, simply draw another card and continue your turn as usual.

[9:26] Madelyn Murphy: You can also choose to not take a turn on any round. To do so, say pass. The next player can answer the question you drew or draw a new one as they prefer.

[9:34] Diego F. Salinas: Can we change that to ass with a P?

[9:36] Madelyn Murphy: Yes.

[9:37] Diego F. Salinas: Thank you. Also, this might say it, but we were playing last time where you can just give it to someone else.

[9:42] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, it doesn't have to be in order. You think it's more appropriate if I get it and I'm like, no, I want you to answer this question.

[9:47] Diego F. Salinas: Yep.

[9:48] Madelyn Murphy: Oh.

[9:49] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah.

[9:50] Madelyn Murphy: Oh. 15. Continue answering question cards until the queen is under attack card is drawn.

[9:55] Diego F. Salinas: I'm going to just say this now. This might be the sexiest thing I've ever done.

[9:57] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[9:58] Diego F. Salinas: Bruh.

[9:59] Madelyn Murphy: And I've had sex once.

[10:00] Diego F. Salinas: It's hot.

[10:01] Madelyn Murphy: What was it like? Tell me.

[10:03] Diego F. Salinas: Prove it.

[10:04] Madelyn Murphy: It was a lot of slapping of skin.

[10:08] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[10:09] Madelyn Murphy: And, you know, just narrating to each other what we were going to do, but not actually doing it.

[10:15] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, yeah.

[10:16] Madelyn Murphy: So I guess pantomime? Because I'm a fan of it.

[10:20] Diego F. Salinas: Pantosex is what they did before phone sex.

[10:23] Madelyn Murphy: Pantimime.

[10:24] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, pantimime, baby.

[10:26] Madelyn Murphy: Oh man, that's a great character. Like a dirty clown for like.

[10:30] Diego F. Salinas: Pantimime.

[10:31] Madelyn Murphy: But I am pantimime. I'm doctor.

[10:33] Diego F. Salinas: But also mostly like silhouettes, too. So you're also doing it behind backlit sheets.

[10:39] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah. Still fully dressed.

[10:41] Diego F. Salinas: Anyway.

[10:42] Madelyn Murphy: Perfect.

[10:43] Diego F. Salinas: Anyway.

[10:44] Madelyn Murphy: Anyway. 16. Each player should answer that question in turn. Then the game is over.

[10:50] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah.

[10:51] Madelyn Murphy: Nice throw.

[10:52] Diego F. Salinas: Thank you.

[10:53] Madelyn Murphy: Whoever wants to can draw the first question card.

[10:56] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, right in. Let's fucking go.

[10:59] Madelyn Murphy: Okay. You had a vivid dream about the queen. What about it surprised you?

[11:03] Diego F. Salinas: I'm going to go with that the queen was not, you know, she stands for so much and has all of this power and prestige. And this was a case that I had a dream about her in which she was truly humanized to a point where I wasn't impressed by that regal veil anymore.

[11:23] Madelyn Murphy: There was something in the dream, maybe my subconscious processing that this is a person. This is a fallible human. And something about that really deeply resonated with me.

[11:45] Diego F. Salinas: How long ago did you have that dream?

[11:47] Madelyn Murphy: I think two days ago. And it was one of those sticky dreams that stays with you.

[11:53] Diego F. Salinas: So there's that first day of trying to push it away. And then that second day of feeling very much so affected.

[12:00] Madelyn Murphy: Two days ago. But how long have we been on the way to this like enemy nation?

[12:09] Diego F. Salinas: I'm going to say a month.

[12:11] Madelyn Murphy: I'm going to say, okay. I think that it has been a slog. And it's one of those of you're so excited to begin a campaign. You think it's going to be quick, but everything is hurry up and wait. So we have been just going. There has been no action. Only anticipation. And now as we believe we are near, I have this dream. And I cannot shake it.

[12:34] Diego F. Salinas: You go.

[12:39] Madelyn Murphy: Was this the type of dream you woke up from naturally? Or were you shaken from it?

[12:42] Diego F. Salinas: I fought to escape this dream.

[12:48] Madelyn Murphy: In lucid dreaming almost there's that moment of knowing that you are dreaming. And that powerlessness to get out. And so essentially I woke up from it. But very much so I clawed my way back to consciousness.

[13:03] Diego F. Salinas: Who in the retinue, if anyone, did you tell this dream to?

[13:09] Madelyn Murphy: I told you.

[13:11] Diego F. Salinas: How did I respond?

[13:13] Madelyn Murphy: You took it very seriously. Because I spoke to you because you value dreams.

[13:21] Diego F. Salinas: And you read meaning into them. I'd say, how much can I tell you about yourself?

[13:28] Madelyn Murphy: This is the fun thing. Especially if I ask you, how did I respond? We're immediately taking swings fast. So in the degree that I know you, you are one of our, you are prized for your knowledge of symbols. You have encyclopedic knowledge of various things. You are a polyglot. And you also give credence. You're one of those where the arcane and the technological and the celestial. You have this sort of, you are the one who can, if anyone's going to bridge ethereal qualities and technology. You are our main professional in this.

[14:09] Diego F. Salinas: Essentially, so the techno-mage, I went to you, consulted you, looking for comfort. And you actually are part of the reason why it remained tacky. Because you went, well, it could mean this. It could mean this. Or it could mean nothing. But you gave me seeds to give back.

[14:23] Madelyn Murphy: Credence to my experience. Did you download your dream onto a memory shard after it was done?

[14:30] Aabria Iyengar: Yes, but at which point some of it had already been corrupted because hours had passed.

[14:34] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, let's go. I have that shard hanging in a pendant about my neck, and I haven't shared it with anyone yet. Okay. But again, you know about it. And also, I will even posit this, I downloaded the memory after I consulted you. So there's a possibility it has already been affected by your contribution of knowledge. Let's fucking go.

[14:59] Madelyn Murphy: I love it here. So I'm sitting in a sea of doubt. I don't know what to believe about this myself, and the hypotheses I'm forming. And that's what we call a hot fucking start.

[15:09] Diego F. Salinas: Hell yeah. I don't know how to play this game. I'm happy to be here. You're doing it, Peter!

[15:13] Aabria Iyengar: The Queen made a dire threat before this journey began. Do you think she'll carry it out?

[15:22] Madelyn Murphy: Yes. I don't think—I'm so sorry, Diego! I'm so sorry, I made the weirdest noise.

[15:31] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, just a throat noise? Yeah, yeah. We're all drink space Nessies.

[15:34] Madelyn Murphy: We're all drinking—Sail past our window. We're all housing LaCroix's. Here at 27 to Taver, we go through so many LaCroix's a day, and Diego's throat just did its—It was beautiful.

[15:44] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, a little—Gaseous release.

[15:45] Madelyn Murphy: A little like—Yeah, yeah. Probably picking up on that.

[15:48] Aabria Iyengar: The best. I'm gonna say that sound appeared prominently in the background of my dream a lot.

[15:53] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah. I'm incorporating it now. There's a whole lot of sort of bubbling noise going on. There's distorted, bubbling, howling, feels like something coming from a great depth is coming towards us.

[16:03] Aabria Iyengar: Cool. Yeah, I do think she'll carry it out, because I know that she has no choice. She threatened—She told our realm that if our mission isn't successful, that she would be forced to, I mean, essentially reboot our kingdom.

[16:27] Madelyn Murphy: She would be forced to pull the plug on the system that is binding all of us together, because it's been corrupted, and if we don't manage to fix it, the only recourse left will be to basically unplug the kingdom and plug it back in again.

[16:49] Diego F. Salinas: Did she make this threat before or after she was kidnapped?

[16:59] Aabria Iyengar: She made it after. We had rescued her. She was gone for a week. Some people are calling it a kidnapping. Some people are calling it an abduction. She disappeared from her chambers and reappeared a week later with very, very few signs. She told us who took her.

[17:24] Madelyn Murphy: There are people that think that the Code Angels are other beings. There are people who think that they have been made up by our priests. There are people who think—There are a lot of theories about these beings who exist on the other side of the screens.

[17:51] Aabria Iyengar: And she told us that they summoned her, that they needed her help. They told her that they had been corrupted, that—Yeah.

[18:06] Madelyn Murphy: She told the people that after she came back from her experience with them, and also, if someone could think of a better name than Code Angels.

[18:17] Diego F. Salinas: No, that's great.

[18:18] Aabria Iyengar: I don't know. Love that. But yeah, sure. The Code Angels.

[18:21] Madelyn Murphy: Screen protectors.

[18:22] Diego F. Salinas: Screen protectors.

[18:26] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah.

[18:26] Madelyn Murphy: Oh, monitors.

[18:28] Diego F. Salinas: The monitors. Actually, that's pretty good, too. We call them lots of things.

[18:31] Aabria Iyengar: Yes.

[18:32] Madelyn Murphy: And it depends on who you're talking to, that they talk about these extradimensional beings who—the only way that anyone has ever been able to talk to them is through screens, essentially. But she said that she went—they took her to their realm, talked to her, and they were the ones who told them that their code, the code that is supporting our entire society, has been corrupted, and it needs to be fixed.

[18:57] Aabria Iyengar: So where is the queen now?

[18:59] Diego F. Salinas: She's with us now. We've been on this journey—

[19:03] Madelyn Murphy: Did this kidnapping happen before we started?

[19:04] Diego F. Salinas: It was started before the journey, yes. So she came back. She came back. She was gone for about a week, and the civilization was in—Our kingdom was in an uproar. I think a lot of dealing with the populace fell to you, Diego. You spent a whole lot of time trying to keep order while she was gone and did a great job. And when she came back, I remember it was very difficult for you to hear that we were changing directions for the entire kingdom and that she was going to herself, take it upon herself to go and find the source of the corruption.

[19:47] Aabria Iyengar: Is Diego considered the right-hand political advisor? I mean, what is Diego's relationship to the queen? Is it closer or adjacent to all of our roles?

[20:00] Diego F. Salinas: I'm not sure I want to speak for him that much.

[20:05] Madelyn Murphy: You can leave it.

[20:06] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, but yeah.

[20:07] Aabria Iyengar: And so again, to clarify for me, we are very close to arriving at a place we've been traveling to for a month, and the queen is with us.

[20:14] Diego F. Salinas: I'm not sure we're close to arriving. So the four of us have left the palace, right? She told the kingdom, the queendom, I guess, that we had to go and seek out the source of the corruption and that she needed the four of us to go with her. We've been traveling for a month and I'm not 100% sure. I'm not 100% sure she knows where she's going.

[20:46] Madelyn Murphy: When was the last time you saw the map?

[20:47] Diego F. Salinas: The last time I saw the map was when all five of us were sitting around it and she was plotting a course through this mountain pass. That was about five days ago.

[21:02] Aabria Iyengar: Okay.

[21:02] Diego F. Salinas: It was a heated argument.

[21:06] Madelyn Murphy: Some of us were for going over the mountains, some of us were not.

[21:09] Diego F. Salinas: She insisted that that was the way to go.

[21:12] Aabria Iyengar: That was the way to go.

[21:13] Madelyn Murphy: How do we speak to the queen? Frankly, is it a conversation or is the hierarchy quite clear?

[21:21] Diego F. Salinas: When the five of us are together, we speak as a council.

[21:30] Aabria Iyengar: But she has the final word always.

[21:33] Madelyn Murphy: It's the RuPaul's Drag Race of it all.

[21:34] Diego F. Salinas: Yes.

[21:35] Aabria Iyengar: The decision is Rue's to make in the end. Okay.

[21:38] Madelyn Murphy: First among equals.

[21:41] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah.

[21:42] Madelyn Murphy: Okay. And we're going to a mountain ass with a P.

[21:46] Aabria Iyengar: How does the queen remind you of her status while on the journey?

[21:51] Diego F. Salinas: The cards have anticipated.

[21:53] Madelyn Murphy: Wowie zowie.

[21:56] Diego F. Salinas: First among equals.

[21:59] Aabria Iyengar: In a world like this, where the constructs that we choose and we summon and we hold to space when we are not energy. And this might not be the way everyone thinks, but it is the way I think of us in this world. She always tweaks something. She is never 100% the same. She's always like skirting the edge of what you remember of her. It feels like being in a space with her one-on-one. She makes you feel like you're in a dream where there's always something a little bit off or a little bit wrong.

[22:41] Diego F. Salinas: I hate being alone with her.

[22:44] Aabria Iyengar: She's like, would you describe it as like she's the living embodiment of a liminal space?

[22:52] Diego F. Salinas: Yes.

[22:52] Aabria Iyengar: I think like above game, I would say that. But I think within game, the techno mage would never use that.

[23:01] Madelyn Murphy: Sure.

[23:01] Aabria Iyengar: Because I think we exist in a liminal space all the time. And it is the grand effort of our people to hold fast to consistency. And she lets herself flit away at the edges in a way that I think is just very off-putting. And in that little bit of stutter, in the node that is our hearts, she wants us to feel something close to fear all the time.

[23:35] Diego F. Salinas: And as our technomancer, do you happen to know the lore? What is the background? Why is our queen our queen? Is it inherited?

[23:44] Aabria Iyengar: She was the first one.

[23:46] Diego F. Salinas: Okay.

[23:48] Aabria Iyengar: First among equals.

[23:49] Diego F. Salinas: When did you get your first skin glyph?

[23:55] Aabria Iyengar: The day I figured out how to unplug from our web.

[24:05] Diego F. Salinas: I don't have the same fear from that threat, turning us off and on again, the reset.

[24:13] Aabria Iyengar: Turning us off and on again, the reset. There are ways. And some of us have had funny little conversations as we drink and hang out on another endless night on this journey that may or may not be real. But if anyone asked me, sincerely, I would explain the beginning of a process to remove yourself, to become singular.

[24:40] Diego F. Salinas: Has anyone here asked you, frankly?

[24:49] Aabria Iyengar: Not yet, but I have hope.

[24:57] Madelyn Murphy: I got the chills, baby. I understand why all of us are talking so low.

[25:00] Diego F. Salinas: You also, you understand why we like walked out of this last week, just like freaking out too.

[25:06] Aabria Iyengar: Freaking out too.

[25:09] Madelyn Murphy: There is a rumor about you and the queen back at the royal court. How did it start?

[25:14] Diego F. Salinas: We are all fist pumping silently.

[25:17] Aabria Iyengar: Is it true?

[25:23] Diego F. Salinas: A lot has been said about what the queen and I do on the days of her private study. I've known the queen since we were both children. And while she has had duties and responsibilities as we have grown up in order to run this queendom, I've always been in her orbit. I've always been a confidant and I am used to there being rumor and speculation about exactly what her and I do in our private time together. And I can neither confirm nor deny any rumors of any supposed impropriety for she is way above my station, even though I am a childhood friend.

[26:17] Madelyn Murphy: Do you have feelings for her? Would that go beyond platonic history?

[26:22] Diego F. Salinas: Absolutely.

[26:23] Aabria Iyengar: Absolutely.

[26:24] Diego F. Salinas: I've been in love with her since the first shards of the ether coalesced into the net that is the sky.

[26:37] Aabria Iyengar: One of the main sources of these rumors is that it's well known that you both have, you share a skin glyph on your right forearm. When did you get it? And what does it do?

[26:51] Diego F. Salinas: The confines of the castle always bothered Lady Erika. And one day when we were of ten and six years, she wanted to sneak out of the palace. I had managed to download a security key that would get us out. And upon pressing my hand onto the many panels of the castle, they opened before us and we were able to explore the shimmering city outside. She wanted to get a skin glyph. And I knew that if they caught her getting one, it would be awful. There'd be a lot of a lot of trouble and hubbub from the royal family. So she made me swear to get one with her. So that way we would both walk that path together. Mine is a series of numerical values broken up by dots and dashes.

[27:56] Aabria Iyengar: The queen has not revealed the exact nature of her skin glyph yet.

[28:01] Diego F. Salinas: A lesser known rumor, one given less credence because it's just not quite as amorous, but one your party knows well is also that you and the queen were born on the same day. And according to some documents at the very same time, it seemed as if you two were almost fated to be in each other's orbit. Do you ever think about that?

[28:26] Aabria Iyengar: The circumstances of my birth and my upbringing have not allowed me to put much trust in fate or the grand code. I have gotten to where I am through hard work, ingenuity, and a...

[28:48] Madelyn Murphy: Collection of information that has made me valuable. I don't know if we're fated to be together, but I choose to be by her side every day and every dawn. So, not her lover. What do you do? Why do we think you're here?

[29:07] Diego F. Salinas: Who said I'm not her lover?

[29:09] Madelyn Murphy: You simply refuse to confirm it.

[29:11] Diego F. Salinas: Or deny it.

[29:13] Madelyn Murphy: Okay. What purpose do you serve? There are four of us here as Erica moves through whatever she needs to move through to move us forward on this journey. I know why I'm here. Why are you here?

[29:30] Diego F. Salinas: I'm not here to slay the creatures that might come stalking out of these crags. I'm not here to find the path that we're supposed to take. I'm here to be Lady Erica's ears. I'm here to administer her duties and make sure that in her absence, that we currently have left the kingdom for, the kingdom that we are trying to save doesn't fall into disarray. So while I may not be the one scouting for water or food, I am the one answering the emissives that come through, making sure that things are running as the Queen would like them to back in the capital of Arcadia.

[30:14] Madelyn Murphy: How is the capital doing? Truly?

[30:17] Diego F. Salinas: Well, it's been a tough year. The crops didn't come in exactly as we wish they would have been downloaded. The people are restless, especially following the Queen's disappearance. So there's a lot of unrest, and I can tell that there are agents seeking to subvert and supplant the Queen's rule. There might even be agents in this very circle.

[30:45] Madelyn Murphy: Why would you tell any of us? She knows that we are loyal and that we love her. She chose us. And frankly, you probably were part of that decision making, seeing as you administer so much advice.

[30:56] Diego F. Salinas: There's a lot of information that flows my way. My job is only to pass it along to the Queen for her to make final judgment. Are we going to drop the pretense about you not having a say in any of this? Or are we going to keep doing this? We've been traveling for a month. She asked for advice and I answer. Okay.

[31:13] Madelyn Murphy: I don't think I have total sway of her mind. I do enjoy when I can be the last person she talks to because it makes me feel like we did when we were younger. Where it was just her and I wandering through the endless corridors of the Palace of Arcadia. And now so often it's just she and you with the map. All the three of us are excused. She and you with the supplies. She and you with the last word.

[31:46] Diego F. Salinas: It's important that the Queen knows everything. And I'm usually the one who has the most up-to-date information.

[31:56] Madelyn Murphy: It's just, it's just all of us just like clapping.

[32:04] Diego F. Salinas: Fuck you!

[32:06] Madelyn Murphy: The Queen trusts you.

[32:08] Diego F. Salinas: Lightning rod. My card is the Queen trusts you, but no one else in the Royal Court does.

[32:16] Madelyn Murphy: Awesome.

[32:22] Diego F. Salinas: As the Queen's primary bodyguard.

[32:24] Madelyn Murphy: Oh, yes.

[32:27] Diego F. Salinas: I have a reputation. As one could say, I'm known as the virulent berserker.

[32:41] Madelyn Murphy: And early on, I was marked by one of Arcadia's worst ever viral attacks. My family died, as did most of any of the nearby villages that were impacted. And I survived. I am marked by it, by physical scarring, and no degree of filters and various upgrades and software ramifications can, they can soften the edges. But everyone knows that I was the sole survivor.

[33:18] Diego F. Salinas: And everyone knows that in being marked, I have a very unique ability to carry viruses without necessarily being impacted by them. I can spread them. I can destroy them. I can reconfigure them. This is partly why Aabria and I have connected so deeply, because I fascinate her technomage mind. However, I am the ultimate weapon. I am also the easiest assassin for the Queen.

[33:55] Madelyn Murphy: This has been an ongoing debate through every cycle. Things are tense between Diego and I as he visibly tight, it gets tense if I even go to so much as touch her. I feel that I am in full control of my abilities. I have worked incredibly hard to master them. However, there is an issue with the berserker angle. And when I let loose, it has always been advised that all of you back away.

[34:30] Diego F. Salinas: What percentage of your body is still flesh? And what is cybernetic?

[34:39] Madelyn Murphy: He's called the stupid man now. The story, the public story is 20%.

[34:48] Diego F. Salinas: As you all know, it is 48%. That is an uncomfortable ratio for most folks. It is fused, it's easier to hide in that it's not as if I have, you know, I look like the Terminator. Much of the cybernetics are internal. They line my arteries and vessels, meaning that it's very hard to make me bleed or better yet, bleed out. You might cut the skin, but you don't have to cut the skin. You might cut the skin, and it may appear that I am injured, but the internal systems tend to preserve themselves.

[35:33] Diego F. Salinas: As well as I have heightened reflexes, abilities, most of this, and I cannot be killed by piercing the heart. And as far as we've discovered, the lining of my skull, essentially, that there's delicate tissues that surround the brain. Those have formed a nebulous, a sort of web mesh network, not penetrable, not affected by typical viral agents that other folks, what we would call the common cold. So far, it seems that I am immune to most biological and virulent attacks.

[36:19] Madelyn Murphy: I still require sleep. I still require eating and drinking. But my efficiencies are, I am not met anyone who has quite the physical capabilities I have.

[36:32] Diego F. Salinas: You carry a virus that was implanted in you by the Bishop Prime. It is, as far as you know, deadly to anyone.

[36:50] Madelyn Murphy: How did he convince you to carry it for him?

[36:54] Diego F. Salinas: He didn't. I was a child. I was not given a choice. And the experiment backfired, the experiment backfired, and which is why there was the outbreak that took my family.

[37:12] Madelyn Murphy: Berserker, 48% is higher than any recorded survival rate in the Queendom, in all of Arcadia.

[37:26] Diego F. Salinas: And I am fascinated by you, because I'm just wondering if you've noticed yet the intelligence inside of you. Has it started speaking to you yet? Or is it still dormant?

[37:43] Madelyn Murphy: I have always had incredibly vivid dreams. I have always, in the past, they were almost felt as if recordings of the trauma I suffered as a child. In my dreams, I often will process the day's lessons and results. It almost feels as if it is filing and sorting things into efficiencies and systems that I can therefore implement faster, better, stronger. Sometimes it feels like I wake up and I've gone through an update. I have always felt in control. The last dream I had felt like a conversation, as opposed to a story that my mind was unraveling as it sorted through data.

[38:31] Diego F. Salinas: This is why I am perturbed. This is why I will not speak of it to Diego. And I'm on the fence about sharing it with Murray. We have a very deep kinship and closeness, as he's the only one who doesn't shy from my touch. Nor does he, as much as I love Aabria, sometimes feel that I am being evaluated by a techno-mancer. But to find that my exquisite mind is doing functions that I am unfamiliar with puts me in a highly anxious place.

[39:12] Diego F. Salinas: Six months ago, when you came into the service of Our Lady Erica for the first time, you submitted for routine cranial memory examination to test for any abnormalities, allegiances, conflicts of interest, so to speak. The one memory I wasn't quite able to access clearly when I conducted that was the time you first saw Lady Erica. When was that?

[39:44] Madelyn Murphy: I can neither confirm nor deny this.

[39:54] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, boy. What promise did the Queen make to you before this journey? Do you think she'll keep it?

[40:01] Madelyn Murphy: You keep getting the best, like, double, double tap. Juicy, juicy! Juicy, juicy! Juicy, juicy! We're calling that a juicy, juicy Q. That's what we call it. JJQ. JJQ.

[40:15] Diego F. Salinas: Growing up on the streets of Arcadia is so much different from the lives that the people lead in this tower. I skulked for years covering my body in glyphs. Skin glyphs now from my wrists all the way to my shoulders, they cover my body, my neck. They come up to the bases of my eyes and they are, as everyone knows, keys. The keys open doors and doors can let you out, but they can also let other things in.

[41:02] Madelyn Murphy: I scrounged and scrapped my way in and out of so many doors, acquiring information, helping various criminal elements. Sometimes the city watch would come to me, sometimes gangsters, sometimes just a poor, desperate man who wanted to know where his wife was. And I look, and as I look, and as I find, people see me. People see me.

[41:28] Diego F. Salinas: And when the tower finally took notice of me, I had almost nowhere to run. I spent two years tied to a wall, untethered, unplugged, desperate to get back in. And then all of a sudden, I was needed. Something had happened to the Queen. She had been having visions. She needed someone who could travel beyond. She needed somebody who had seen things, who could look upon them again. Someone whose vision of the net was vast.

[42:12] Madelyn Murphy: Vision of the net was vast. And so, I found myself moved almost instantly from the bottom of the tower to the top. Getting used to court was easy. It's just like the streets, just smells better. They're playing the same game, just eating hors d'oeuvres while they do it.

[42:43] Diego F. Salinas: And I found myself adept. I made friends quickly with the enforcers. I realized who had the Queen's ear, and I realized where their power lay very, very quickly.

[43:00] Madelyn Murphy: Before we left, the Queen told me that the angels had a way to make the voices in my head disappear.

[43:11] Aabria Iyengar: If I could come and help. Because she believes that I am the only person who can talk to the source of the corruption. They said I was needed and so she brought me. I hope desperately that she will keep her promise because I am not sure anymore how many of the doors are open and how many other entities are freely entering and exiting my mind.

[43:52] Aabria Iyengar: As the Royal Gatekeeper. We call him Locke. As Royal Gatekeeper. Aka Keymaster. Aka Young Bolt. That's when you first entered court. Aka Young Bolt.

[44:19] Aabria Iyengar: Have you ever personally attempted to speak to the screen protectors?

[44:25] Diego F. Salinas: I have. I grew up in the church, so I do refer to them as code angels. Do you know the Bishop Prime?

[44:33] Aabria Iyengar: I don't know him personally. I feared him often. I would sometimes go to the Abbey to plug in and recharge when I didn't have enough credits to recharge myself. And they watched me and watched my descent. They would ask for favors as well. They need to know things and I had access to information. They asked me often. Never directly. Never directly would the Bishop Prime contact me, but his agents often would ask. Goddamn LaCroix's. His agents often would ask me for updates on the goings on at the top of the tower. And so I would look through a door or a window and see and report back to him. And report back to him. He was always interested in defense. He wanted to know. And he always told me that it was in the Crown's best interest, but he was always curious to know whether or not how well the Queen was protected.

[45:52] Diego F. Salinas: Have you ever personally felt like an experiment to the Bishop Prime?

[46:01] Aabria Iyengar: No, but I know you do. I was too busy feeling like an experiment to myself. I think, I mean, again, I've never, having never spoken to the Bishop Prime, I can only assume that he is, like most people, a little afraid of me. I think one of the reasons that you and I get along so well is because you are one of the few people that is not. When you first came into the Queen's service to help her decipher visions and dreams, she granted you a pardon, but my records are absent as to the nature of your previous transgression. What happened?

[46:48] Diego F. Salinas: Do it. Do it. The crash was my fault. The crash was my fault. It was my fault. I was asked to do it. I was asked to do it by one of the criminal families that had many interests, right? They needed the market to fall. They needed the crash to happen so that they could gain a political foothold. They had so much power that was economic, but we've always kept those two worlds separate in this Queendom. Arcadia was the servant of two masters. There was the marketplace, and then there was politics and religion, and one controlled the other, and they wished to combine those two worlds so that they could begin their ascent up the tower as well.

[48:00] Aabria Iyengar: Is the Cinder Cyberkit still in touch with you?

[48:09] Diego F. Salinas: Yes. Are we aware? Um, you, of course, I think Diego, of course, the Chancellor, would have immediately recognized some of my earliest and largest glyphs that they used to try and claim me. I've, of course, modified them since, um, but they do have access to me. Yeah, my memory banks were open to them, and once you open a door, it is difficult to close. So they are in contact with me, but also I'm in contact with so much information is coming through my brain at all times.

[49:01] Aabria Iyengar: Do you think your information will be enough to save you?

[49:06] Diego F. Salinas: I'm not here to be saved. I'm here to be deleted. If I can fulfill this purpose, um, the Queen says she'll stop the voices, and I'm not sure what's going to happen after that, but if the angels can close all of the doors and wipe my skin clean, I could start over. I am beholden to so many. I am running from warrants from the bottom, the top, the middle, the left, right, and center of the tower. I, my years in the base of the tower were almost relaxing. It was the safest I've maybe ever been in my life, and just as I had gotten used to it, just walking through my doorways and talking and taking strolls in the ether, I was pulled back into the game.

[50:10] Aabria Iyengar: You and I have posited, or better yet, I've expounded, just, just as a hypothetical, what if instead of being turned off, you could become a little bit more like me?

[50:26] Diego F. Salinas: It's a thought. We only need one bomb, my god. Chancellor, do something.

[50:34] Aabria Iyengar: I mean, the paperwork itself is gonna take weeks. I resent being called a bomb. You're gonna call me by my name, call me the Berserker, and do it to my face.

[50:46] Diego F. Salinas: Okay, Berserker. I add another cyber log to the cyberfire. Let's all make our, like, AI-generated fire sounds now. Instead of smoke, it's just a bunch of ones and zeros drifting off into the black night.

[51:05] Aabria Iyengar: This fucking, like, like, blue piece of wood just, like, shimmering with a code running. Yeah, it looks like a fucking pixel bonfire. Prop from G.I. Joe cartoons.

[51:21] Diego F. Salinas: Oh my god. No, I'm not sure what would happen. I'm, I am, there are too many glyphs. I, I don't, I'm not sure if I got any implants at all, for I am 100% flesh. If I start implanting, I think that would open the doors, not just to my memory banks, but to the whole net. And that's, well, that's the corruption we're here to solve.

[52:02] Aabria Iyengar: Solve. Solve. Priya just did the coolest thing, like, such a G, scratching her nose, picking a card. The Queen once expressed a desire you knew you couldn't fulfill. What have you done about it?

[52:19] Diego F. Salinas: I've said nothing. Not to her. Or her twin.

[52:27] Aabria Iyengar: Oh my god. I stand ready as ever in the service of my Queen. It will be well. It will be well. It will be well.

[52:55] Diego F. Salinas: My big answer is, uh, I'm not telling you.

[53:00] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, you can neither confirm nor deny.

[53:02] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. The Queen ordered you to do something you knew you would regret. Have you forgiven yourself for doing it?

[53:12] Aabria Iyengar: I love these cards! I love this game! Forgiveness is difficult for the Chancellor. He finds it hard to forget the errors of his past, and those plague him night and day. Like, he goes to sleep with one regret or mistake and wakes up remembering another. It's why he works so diligently. It's why I work so diligently to found this Queendom on stability and order. It's why I take my job as Chancellor of Information so seriously.

[54:03] Diego F. Salinas: When I was first appointed as the Chancellor of Information, the day after Lady Erika ascended to the throne, her first order was to secure information. Not on any particular target, but on the entirety of the Queendom. Every last peasant, lord, merchant, and vassal that was in our network. She wanted backdoor access to their memory shards. And I did it.

[54:49] Aabria Iyengar: It's all stored on a hard drive that the Queen keeps on her person at all times. It connects wirelessly to the Tower of Arcadia, and it feeds her the memory shard information from the previous 24 hours of anyone within the walls, the firewalls of the city.

[55:18] Diego F. Salinas: Have you no other solace but your friend?

[55:25] Aabria Iyengar: This line of work doesn't lend itself well to friendship. I feel like I always have to keep everyone at arm's length. Very rarely do I feel like I can let my guard down. It's only when the Queen and I are reading old shards of literature or passing and flicking through the screensavers that we realize, or that I realize, that I finally like exhaled that last little bit that I've been holding in. And as soon as she dismisses me, the weight of responsibility is back on my shoulders.

[56:11] Diego F. Salinas: How recently did you ask her, once again, to show you her glyph?

[56:18] Aabria Iyengar: You her glyph? The first night of our trek here, on the first night of the 30 days, I had rolled up my sleeves as I was tending to the fire, and you could see the sequence of numbers, dots, and dashes that create a perfect circle around my upper forearm. And when I offered my final counsel for the evening and gave my final official update, the Queen itched at her arm, her right arm, where I know she has her matching glyph. And I asked her, what did you ask the glyph master to put on your arm 10 years ago? She gave me a coy smile and dismissed me for the night.

[57:13] Aabria Iyengar: Locke, his glyph is showing. What does it unlock?

[57:20] Diego F. Salinas: The hard drive. Of course. What else could it be? That's the whole key. I clocked it day one in court. He has the key on him.

[57:35] Madelyn Murphy: Is it the only key? She has the key on her. And it's the only key. The key to everything. To everyone. To every memory shard in the kingdom. Yes, but he has it on his arm. And she also has the key. So there are two keys. Yes, but he doesn't know it. I don't know that this key unlocks the hard drive. I don't think so. So you're basically a failsafe. You're a two-factor authentication. Yeah. I've asked you before, like hinted. You and I've been alone many times. Because, you know, as Chancellor of Information, how very valuable am I to you?

[58:11] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, yeah. Immediately. Day one in court, you were just like, oh, this person can get in and out unseen anywhere. I bring stuff back with me. I bring vestiges of the things that live in the ether with me. But the quickest way in and out of memory shards and of hard drives is through these doors. They're not safe. But they're fast. And they're silent. And I have helped you instantly. I became an asset. But I know what you've been after. And I know what you've done. And I know who you're doing it for. And I know you don't know what's on your arm.

[58:58] Madelyn Murphy: Fuck yeah.

[59:05] Diego F. Salinas: The Queen made you feel something you've never felt before. Do you want it to happen again?

[59:12] Madelyn Murphy: As I think this question, I scratch absently at my right arm. And I think to the question that Diego had asked me earlier, that I refused to confirm. I think I'm going to say it. When I was 10 and six, I had almost nowhere to be. I too was on the streets, desperately trying to figure out my abilities. And very aware that the Bishop Prime was looking for me. When I wandered into a glyph shop, I worked there for several months sweeping floors, generally accepting crumbs that I could, little bites.

[1:00:05] Diego F. Salinas: Never a megabyte for you.

[1:00:09] Madelyn Murphy: I was grateful to be under the radar. Imagine my terror knowing, with a cyber syndicate, any time people viewed me as potential, as a weapon, as a thing to be studied. And so oblivion and being unknown, I greatly valued. So imagine my fury when who walks into the glyph shop, but a young Erica, at the time could only tell that she was in finery, regal, privileged. And you, again, someone with an air of arrogance and knowledge, someone who could walk the streets without peering over their shoulders.

[1:01:01] Diego F. Salinas: I tried to hide,

[1:01:04] Madelyn Murphy: but Erica found me. She saw my bare feet under the curtain. And she looked me up and down with the intensity of a wealthy, haughty person. And just when I thought she was about to crack a smile at my misfortune, she asked me my name. And she said, I am so sorry. I do not know what has befallen you. But I do know, I do know that you're hurting.

[1:01:50] She recognized that I was hiding. She promised to keep a secret. She promised to keep a secret. And she said, I will call on you another time. And thus proceeded once a month, Erica and I would meet in the shadow. We would meet in the shadow of Microsoft glyph. And we would very slowly get to know each other. She asked thoughtful questions. She never shied away. And this is why my ascension to her guard was so fast. This is also why I know that Erica needs fail safes wherever she can. Keys on keys. She can't always trust everyone.

[1:02:38] Diego F. Salinas: But you can trust someone who's already lost, who's already hated.

[1:02:43] Madelyn Murphy: You can trust that person to do whatever needs to be done. Should betrayal happen? Should things not work? And then I scratch absently at my right arm again. Berserker, what do you do when one random morning, another month into this endless log to nowhere, you find a little memory shard on a necklace by your pillow. An offering.

[1:03:20] Diego F. Salinas: I immediately review it.

[1:03:24] Madelyn Murphy: This is the techno mage's prophecy from years ago. Multi-factor authentication. Like, it's multiple keys. But every key needs to be turned at the same time. So you need more people. There will never be enough. You have to find someone who can turn every key simultaneously. This vision wrapped in a dream, wrapped in something that feels more like a memory, even as you view it. If you've wondered about the techno mage's fascination with you, it is that.

[1:04:20] Diego F. Salinas: I immediately compare that techno mage's shard to the shard hanging around my pendant.

[1:04:25] Madelyn Murphy: I play them at the same time. And I'm beginning to see certain sheens, certain glitches, certain pixelated anomalies seem to reflect each other. I immediately go to the technomancer. I'm tired of this slog. I am worried. The queen is not looking well. She is looking gaunt. She is looking haunted. She allows me to guard her, but she no longer looks me in the eye as she used to.

[1:05:05] Diego F. Salinas: And I go to you and I say,

[1:05:08] Madelyn Murphy: say, you had spoken of another examination you want to do. I will allow it.

[1:05:20] Diego F. Salinas: Thank you for your trust.

[1:05:24] Madelyn Murphy: And I think the thing you don't quite see is like in that overlay and simultaneous play of both shards. The older memory pushes in on yours a little more, corrupts it a little more.

[1:05:38] Diego F. Salinas: Your dream's a little more different now.

[1:05:47] Madelyn Murphy: God damn it. Just a little, just a little bit. Memory shards are fickle things. That's why we say memory shards, they be hards. That's what we say.

[1:06:00] Diego F. Salinas: I approve the banner, yeah.

[1:06:05] Madelyn Murphy: He's in his wacky era. We caught him in a mood.

[1:06:09] Diego F. Salinas: This is just when Dogecoin came out. He was off his rock. Crypto is an actual narcotic in Arcadia and it fucks you up.

[1:06:23] Madelyn Murphy: It opens everything up for just a minute. And like, but for just, it's like you're doing a, like a, like electronic whip it. It's just like you can see everything.

[1:06:34] Diego F. Salinas: I think one of Diego's great shames is in his ascent in his career. He had a couple of weeks of just on a massive crypto bender.

[1:06:41] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[1:06:41] Diego F. Salinas: Wi-Fi, Alaska.

[1:06:42] Madelyn Murphy: I was-

[1:06:43] Diego F. Salinas: Yes, there it is. Wi-Fi, Alaska. The only time you cut loose.

[1:06:49] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[1:06:50] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah.

[1:06:51] Madelyn Murphy: It was spring break for three months.

[1:06:54] Diego F. Salinas: Sweet. Here we go. Let's get weird.

[1:06:56] Madelyn Murphy: What spring?

[1:06:57] Diego F. Salinas: Blood, blood, blood.

[1:07:00] Madelyn Murphy: What do you do that disappoints the queen on this journey?

[1:07:07] Diego F. Salinas: I don't want fruit. I want caffeine. I ain't gonna be healthy.

[1:07:11] Madelyn Murphy: The mango's like a little good.

[1:07:13] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, it's a little not ripe.

[1:07:15] Madelyn Murphy: It's a little leather.

[1:07:15] Diego F. Salinas: Feel appropriate. I'm over-caffeinated body by chemicals for today. Let's go.

[1:07:19] Madelyn Murphy: Hell yeah. Just all 48%.

[1:07:22] Diego F. Salinas: 48%.

[1:07:23] Madelyn Murphy: Caffeine.

[1:07:26] Diego F. Salinas: Three months into this journey now.

[1:07:30] Madelyn Murphy: Oh, god.

[1:07:31] Diego F. Salinas: Now we're playing.

[1:07:32] Madelyn Murphy: We've made it over the mountains. We are haggard. The berserker who once was so adept at providing for us now has almost nothing. We are so far away from the tower that our signal is losing strength.

[1:07:48] Diego F. Salinas: We are all gone. We are all tired. We are all hungry. And we still don't know where we're going.

[1:08:05] Madelyn Murphy: The keys, the glyphs, the doors are still open.

[1:08:12] Diego F. Salinas: It is getting harder and harder and harder to keep tabs on Arcadia.

[1:08:19] Madelyn Murphy: But it is becoming more and more obvious to us that we are becoming more and more and more and more open to the things and the ether that our net has been trying to keep out.

[1:08:35] Diego F. Salinas: The veil is thinning.

[1:08:37] Madelyn Murphy: Yes. We've made it down the other side of the mountains. We have found ourselves in a valley that we thought would be not our salvation, but at least a solace, a boon to this journey.

[1:08:52] Diego F. Salinas: From up there, it looked lush.

[1:08:54] Madelyn Murphy: And now that we are down in the valley, we find it almost unlivable. It is harsh in the other way.

[1:09:01] Diego F. Salinas: We are in a desert now.

[1:09:03] Madelyn Murphy: From the peaks, we could see the sea, but now here, it is just scrubland for miles.

[1:09:11] Diego F. Salinas: And everyone knows one grain of sand in a microchip can corrupt it all.

[1:09:14] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah. It's bad.

[1:09:16] Diego F. Salinas: Silica flats.

[1:09:17] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah.

[1:09:18] Diego F. Salinas: The silica flats!

[1:09:19] Madelyn Murphy: Yeah, the silica flats. So good.

[1:09:20] Diego F. Salinas: We're cooking now, baby.

[1:09:21] Madelyn Murphy: And the queen has begun to speak of a second tower.

[1:09:27] Diego F. Salinas: Though, we have little evidence of it.

[1:09:33] Madelyn Murphy: Do you hear them on the wind?

[1:09:34] Diego F. Salinas: The amount of microburps happening in this world at the time as we-

[1:09:39] Madelyn Murphy: The tummies are a paid actor.

[1:09:40] Diego F. Salinas: We're all starving to death. All we have to live on is the-

[1:09:47] Madelyn Murphy: We can get water easily, and the Berserker's carbonator implant is working very well.

[1:09:54] Diego F. Salinas: So we do manage our little celebrations.

[1:09:56] Madelyn Murphy: Thank god, seltzer water, the only thing we can drink without dying.

[1:09:59] Diego F. Salinas: Your name before you were the Berserker was LaCroix.

[1:10:02] Madelyn Murphy: I know! That was my street name.

[1:10:05] Diego F. Salinas: LaCroix.

[1:10:07] Madelyn Murphy: LaCroix.

[1:10:08] Diego F. Salinas: Ha! And now I'm LaCroix.

[1:10:11] Madelyn Murphy: I'm LaCroix.

[1:10:12] Diego F. Salinas: I'm LaCroix.

[1:10:13] Madelyn Murphy: I'm LaCroix.

[1:10:14] Diego F. Salinas: I'm LaCroix.

[1:10:15] Madelyn Murphy: What?

[1:10:17] Diego F. Salinas: And I do it by, if you hold up, you know, your little bowls of liquid, I stick my nose into it and it goes-

[1:10:26] Madelyn Murphy: Which is why I constantly am sneezing.

[1:10:28] Diego F. Salinas: This morning, the Queen is furious.

[1:10:32] Madelyn Murphy: The map's gone missing.

[1:10:34] Diego F. Salinas: The map that we sat around together night after night listening to her explain to us why we were going ways and us arguing and her constantly telling us all that she knew where we were going, that the angels or the screen protectors or whoever we called them were guiding her.

[1:10:57] Madelyn Murphy: And it's gone now.

[1:11:01] Diego F. Salinas: It's gone.

[1:11:02] Madelyn Murphy: And as she looks around the circle, accusingly, and comes to me, to Lott.

[1:11:13] Diego F. Salinas: She asks if I know what happened to the map.

[1:11:17] Madelyn Murphy: And I say, I can neither confirm nor deny that I know where it is.

[1:11:26] Diego F. Salinas: She's furious.

[1:11:27] Madelyn Murphy: She screams.

[1:11:28] Diego F. Salinas: She walks away.

[1:11:32] Madelyn Murphy: I follow her at a respectful distance.

[1:11:35] Diego F. Salinas: Oh Locke, you know where she's going.

[1:11:38] Madelyn Murphy: Which one of us has access to the last 24 hours of all of us?

[1:11:45] Diego F. Salinas: The Chancellor will give up our secrets.

[1:11:49] Madelyn Murphy: And whom destroyed the map?

[1:11:54] Diego F. Salinas: Don't you already know?

[1:11:58] Madelyn Murphy: Yes.

[1:12:00] Aabria Iyengar: I do have access to the memory shards, but here in the valley, the signal to Arcadia is weak. It's been taking longer and longer for these memory shards to buffer. But I'm reviewing the footage for all of us. A second per minute, I'd say. You get like, I feel like the speed is on your screen that's implanted in your pupil. You basically for every real minute that happens, you get one more second of footage. Exactly. It's laborious. So I can only check it in like spurts of time. A lot of the time here I've spent in the Silica Flats. I have spent it in when we're not walking in. I've been plugged in inside of my tent, trying to parse through the images that make it through. One of those images was of you, Locke, walking away from camp last night, the last night that the map worked. You woke and wandered into the wilds beyond our cyber light. What were you doing for two and a half hours?

[1:13:27] Diego F. Salinas: I awoke with a start, which is strange for several reasons. I rarely sleep, and when I do, it is deep. My entire right arm was on fire. The glyphs had lit up. No one had ever tried to take control of me physically like that before, and I had to find privacy to fight them. On my way out of camp, there was the table. There was the map. The map's not just a map to where we're going, but it's a map of where we've been. It is a trail leading right to us. And so, I had to destroy it. Lest the... what's the syndicate?

[1:14:15] Aabria Iyengar: Cyber syndicate.

[1:14:27] Diego F. Salinas: Cyber syndicate, yeah. I tried cinder-cyber camp. Cyber syndicate's great. Lest the cyber syndicate realize where we were. Here we are, defenseless, starving. Dying. On a suicide mission to nowhere.

[1:14:44] Aabria Iyengar: Do you not believe the second tower exists?

[1:14:46] Diego F. Salinas: To follow the voices in your head.

[1:14:51] Aabria Iyengar: I believe that there is a second tower somewhere, but I also don't think that the Queen is following anything other than... the voices that someone else put in her head.

[1:15:05] Diego F. Salinas: The screen protectors. Your desperation is also very clear, because the syndicate had told you that had... if you weren't able to effectively keep open ties of communication and effectively play both sides, as you had promised long ago, that Hector and I would... if you weren't able to effectively keep open ties of communication and effectively play both sides, as you had promised long ago, that Hector and I would...

[1:15:34] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah. And you can clearly feel...

[1:15:36] Diego F. Salinas: I can feel him, and I mean, that was it. All the doors were open. He attacked me through every glyph, through every opening. He was there, and he was essentially telling me that they were coming. And so, this is absolutely a stalling tactic. It took me two and a half hours to fight him off from inside of me, and then to not destroy the map, but to reverse-engineer the map, to try desperately to throw them off of our trail.

[1:16:06] Aabria Iyengar: You have another issue, though, is that the digital hand. He left his mark on you.

[1:16:11] Diego F. Salinas: A handprint on your chest.

[1:16:12] Aabria Iyengar: Oh, yes. Now, I really wish that the Berserker had not followed the Queen, though I know why she did. You are in pain, and you are on the outs, and I think it's time for me to finally ask if you are ready to unplug yet. Your tethers to this web will kill you.

[1:16:39] Diego F. Salinas: Are you ready to begin?

[1:16:41] Aabria Iyengar: I don't know if I'm ready, but I think it's time. I have to. I don't know what happens, but they can find us through me. I'm the only thing left. I am a trail of breadcrumbs that has to be swept away. I've spent so much time running. It's time to hide.

[1:17:10] Diego F. Salinas: I don't know. I think this conversation just happens as I'm walking back into camp. You are there, waiting for me, up, backlit by the cyberfire.

[1:17:27] Aabria Iyengar: I got wires sticking out of my head.

[1:17:29] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, you're plugged in. You're plugged all the way in. Scrambling through the feed. You can just see, like, static on my eyes.

[1:17:35] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, and the berserker asleep outside of the...

[1:17:38] Diego F. Salinas: No, I'm following the queen.

[1:17:40] Aabria Iyengar: Oh, the queen. I waited for the queen to leave. She's left. You've followed her. I would have preferred to speak to all three of you.

[1:17:46] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm here. I'm ready to unplug.

[1:17:53] Aabria Iyengar: They're coming. I don't know if that will help turn this expedition around, but it's the only thing that can stop them. If they find us and return with her, with her arm, with his arm, they'll own everyone.

[1:18:19] Aabria Iyengar: Can we do a little bit of a split scene right now?

[1:18:21] Diego F. Salinas: Sure.

[1:18:22] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah. So as all of this is happening, I have followed the queen a respectful distance. We crest through, down a slow, shallow incline. We walk for 15 minutes away until I am absolutely and utterly certain that we are out of your shot, at which point I close the respectful distance. I take her by both arms, look deeply into her eyes, and say, Erica, the symbiosis is fracturing. It is not going cleanly. I am getting some of your downloads. I don't think that I can hold the information for you. I don't think that the data you are implanting is staying uncorrupted. I am worried that the copy you are inserting will not be you.

[1:19:21] Diego F. Salinas: I love it here.

[1:19:23] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, it's real good. Okay, it is 4.37. We are coming down. What do we think? Another...

[1:19:30] Diego F. Salinas: Who's turn? Is it your turn?

[1:19:32] Aabria Iyengar: It's my turn. I think you pull a card, and then...

[1:19:34] Diego F. Salinas: Okay.

[1:19:35] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah. We'll wind it down. Let's see where we're at. Because I want to find out a little bit more about this lunatic.

[1:19:41] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah. Before we do, was there any response from the chancellor?

[1:19:45] Aabria Iyengar: Oh, yeah. From the Technomage? Like, asking if either of you, both of you, all of you, were ready to finally unplug?

[1:19:56] Diego F. Salinas: As I come out of my scanning stupor, my eyes are still, like, rolling around in my skull. Like, every now and then, they flash with, like, a pink or a blue static-y light as I come back out of the post-verbal scanning that I've been doing.

[1:20:14] Aabria Iyengar: We hear fan exhaust through your ears.

[1:20:16] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah. Smell weirdly good. I have thought about unplugging. I mean, has anyone? You know, we've all considered it. Maybe, you know, the scariness of the endless void or the other reality that exists that some speculate from. If I'm going to unplug, I'm going to make sure that the job has been done to the best of my ability first. I need to make sure that the kingdom is safe, that Erika is where she wants to be, and then after that, yeah.

[1:21:05] Aabria Iyengar: God, man, she doesn't know where she wants to be.

[1:21:08] Diego F. Salinas: Don't you? Do you know what's written on your arm? Do you know what she's got written on her arm? It's the...

[1:21:15] Aabria Iyengar: They're pulling us.

[1:21:18] Diego F. Salinas: She's pulling us. They're telling us.

[1:21:20] Aabria Iyengar: The angels?

[1:21:22] Diego F. Salinas: The angels. God, that's just a fiction. That's been written for her. That's been written for everybody else. They've pulled us all the way out here, man. They're coming for us. And if she wants them to come for us, that's probably the best thing that can happen then. She doesn't know they're coming. She thinks we're going to everything salvation. She thinks there's an easy fix. She thinks all she has to do is hope and walk and move, and that there's an answer. Just an answer. There's one more key. One more key to turn. One more door to open, and that will bring harmony to everything. The net. The ether. Everything will come together and coalesce. And she's about to pull out the card at the bottom of the house.

[1:22:17] Aabria Iyengar: I am not here to tell her what to do. I can only advise her.

[1:22:21] Diego F. Salinas: You are her twin, not her servant.

[1:22:26] Aabria Iyengar: You get that, right?

[1:22:27] Diego F. Salinas: But I was born under the wrong stars. That is why I am not. That's why I've had to work so hard to be by her side, to foster that relationship. First among equals.

[1:22:44] Aabria Iyengar: You say that, but I don't know what that means. There was nothing before her. There was nothing before the two of you. The thousands of years of history that Arcadia has. A corrupted memory. A dream. We're real. We're here. There's fire on our faces. There's silica between our fingers. What are you talking about?

[1:23:12] Diego F. Salinas: What you don't realize is as you are talking about this, you earlier said the line, I'm not here to tell you what to do. I am here to advise you. I said it at the exact same time to her. That's great. And whatever happened, there was a blue spark in both of our pupils at the same time. Not that we would have known.

[1:23:34] Aabria Iyengar: In our eyes, yes. I suddenly start feeling like my chest is very tight. As I think about all the history books that we both grew up reading, the stories and fantasies of heroes from eras past. The songs written millennia ago, the cathedral carved out of the cyber stone. Like, what are you telling me?

[1:24:02] Diego F. Salinas: You both are the gods of this world.

[1:24:09] Aabria Iyengar: Are gods supposed to feel alone?

[1:24:12] Diego F. Salinas: Maybe the most. I'll tell you a secret if you tell me yours.

[1:24:24] Aabria Iyengar: My secret is that the first memory I ever learned to corrupt, the one that made me unplug from our web, was rewriting her understanding of where she went when she disappeared. You cannot see what is on the other side. They are not angels. They are monitors. The things beyond the monitor, something so real and transformative. Beyond comprehension, if she had kept that memory, it would have destroyed her.

[1:25:04] Diego F. Salinas: Every glyph on Locke's body is lit up.

[1:25:11] Aabria Iyengar: Then he's silent. There's some times when I'm lying in bed, where I feel like my body is just a shadow of a heavier, denser form, sitting, laying on cold metal. And I can't shake that feeling, not even in the dizziness of highs of a crypto high.

[1:25:48] Diego F. Salinas: Is it a dream when you feel that way? Is it a conversation? I've been too afraid to think of it too deeply because I'm afraid that this is the dream. And that that mass on that cold metal slab is real.

[1:26:12] Aabria Iyengar: Chancellor, what do you think you would become if you stopped telling yourself every moment of your existence that you have?

[1:26:23] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:26:53] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:27:23] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:27:43] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:28:03] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:28:15] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:28:35] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:28:55] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:29:25] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:29:43] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:29:53] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:30:03] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:30:23] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:30:43] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:30:53] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:31:03] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:31:23] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:31:41] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:32:01] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:32:21] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:32:41] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:33:07] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:33:17] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:33:27] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:33:47] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:33:57] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:34:07] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:34:17] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:34:37] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:34:47] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:34:57] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:35:17] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:35:27] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:35:37] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:35:47] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:35:57] Aabria Iyengar:

[1:36:07] Aabria Iyengar: The Berserker wakes up, checks her memory bank, and that schism from before, of conversations, another identity, for now feels packaged away neatly.

[1:36:24] Aabria Iyengar: She breathes a sigh of relief, and goes to get up, only to realize that her ankles and wrists are chained. A blurry face appears above her.

[1:36:37] Aabria Iyengar: Hello, my dear, says the Bishop Prime, and in a small but comfortably furnished room at the top of a tall, tall tower.

[1:36:52] Aabria Iyengar: Eyes shut, begging that the darkness stays, but it never does. The Technomage opens her eyes again, remembering everything that has come before, like a dream, like a memory, like a life that will not end, and she screams.

[1:37:16] Aabria Iyengar: Two small children run down the corridor of the Tower of Arcadia, one with light purple eyes, one with piercing blue. They don't know what they do know, but they have dreams.

[1:37:31] Aabria Iyengar: We begin again.

[1:37:35] Aabria Iyengar: Awesome.

[1:37:36] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah!

[1:37:37] Aabria Iyengar: Holy shit!

[1:37:38] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah!

[1:37:39] Aabria Iyengar: Holy shit!

[1:37:40] Aabria Iyengar: Let's go!

[1:37:41] Aabria Iyengar: Yo, Tron who? Fuck them, baby!

[1:37:43] Aabria Iyengar: Tron! Tron! Tron!

[1:37:44] Aabria Iyengar: Yo!

[1:37:45] Aabria Iyengar: Tron! Tron!

[1:37:46] Aabria Iyengar: Oh my god!

[1:37:47] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, that's beautiful, man. That was wild.

[1:37:50] Aabria Iyengar: That was insane. I've never played this game before.

[1:37:52] Aabria Iyengar: This is a good game!

[1:37:53] Aabria Iyengar: It's very, very good, right?

[1:37:54] Aabria Iyengar: This is such a good game! I was like, keep talking.

[1:37:57] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, I could play this for hours.

[1:37:59] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could.

[1:38:00] Aabria Iyengar: Also, listen, all the cool names.

[1:38:01] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah!

[1:38:02] Aabria Iyengar: Really, really, for a long time.

[1:38:04] Aabria Iyengar: Oh, yeah.

[1:38:05] Aabria Iyengar: I'm excited for y'all to go listen to last week's episode of the podcast.

[1:38:09] Aabria Iyengar: It is really funny! The moments where I was like, uh-oh, Dovetail. Yeah, let's go!

[1:38:12] Aabria Iyengar: Dovetail, but also...

[1:38:13] Aabria Iyengar: No, in the best possible way.

[1:38:14] Aabria Iyengar: But also, like, last... it was like so... yeah, yeah, yeah, so many weird similarities, a lot of Tower stuff going on, a lot of like...

[1:38:21] Aabria Iyengar: The person that sits here is always fucking the Queen.

[1:38:23] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:38:24] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, I was on that Luke and Leia shit, dude.

[1:38:27] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, but that's...

[1:38:28] Aabria Iyengar: Incest, baby!

[1:38:30] Aabria Iyengar: Yo, is it incest if it happens in the cyber realm?

[1:38:34] Aabria Iyengar: If you're the same... I mean, if you're the same god, I think it's just jerking off.

[1:38:38] Aabria Iyengar: Welcome back to LML Matt. Question, is it incest if it happens in the cyber realm?

[1:38:43] Aabria Iyengar: Oh, man.

[1:38:44] Aabria Iyengar: Data doesn't have DNA.

[1:38:45] Aabria Iyengar: Well, here's the thing. The Greek gods were very specifically exempt from, like, the big taboos.

[1:38:51] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah.

[1:38:52] Aabria Iyengar: Incest was one of them.

[1:38:53] Aabria Iyengar: Jeez, we fucking all as kids!

[1:38:54] Aabria Iyengar: We fucking all as kids! And eating people.

[1:38:56] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, and he loved to be a swan, so we loved to do it as an animal.

[1:38:59] Aabria Iyengar: Bestiality...

[1:39:00] Aabria Iyengar: Let's fucking go.

[1:39:01] Aabria Iyengar: Bestiality, incest, what are our thoughts?

[1:39:04] Aabria Iyengar: Nat 20.

[1:39:07] Aabria Iyengar: This has been... thanks, everybody, for tuning in. This has been a blast.

[1:39:10] Aabria Iyengar: Like, I don't know how many more weeks in a row we'll play this game, but who knows?

[1:39:14] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, let us know in the Discord or on social media if you want to hear more of this.

[1:39:18] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, we're loving it. I feel like we've got a Goblin Aaron's palate cleanser coming up for the big, serious, intense ones.

[1:39:26] Aabria Iyengar: This game can be funny, just not while I'm here.

[1:39:29] Aabria Iyengar: No, no, I loved it.

[1:39:31] Aabria Iyengar: I think we could set off with it. I mean, also, two roads diverge.

[1:39:34] Aabria Iyengar: It's because I've got a bassy voice and I'm, like, deep.

[1:39:37] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, but if we'd have done the prom queen, it would have been fucking can't-hardly-wait nonsense bullshit.

[1:39:42] Aabria Iyengar: I demand a spot at the table when we do murderous prom queen.

[1:39:47] Aabria Iyengar: Oh, yeah.

[1:39:48] Aabria Iyengar: That prom queen!

[1:39:49] Aabria Iyengar: Oh, god, I need more LaCroix!

[1:39:53] Aabria Iyengar: We gotta wrap it up. As per usual, never a chill end to an episode of Ale.

[1:39:58] Aabria Iyengar: We're always right up against a deadline.

[1:40:02] Aabria Iyengar: So, yeah, take us out, Maddie.

[1:40:04] Aabria Iyengar: But-up, but-up, but-net 20!

[1:40:11] Aabria Iyengar: Yeah, let's do the thing, though. Let's say Ale.

[1:40:14] Aabria Iyengar: And well met!

[1:40:16] Aabria Iyengar: 3, 4, 1, 7, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, cyberfire!