The Statistical Outlier

This is the fifty-fourth episode of SAYER, and the tenth episode of Season Four.

Synopsis
This, of course, overlooks you. The statistical outlier. The anomaly.

Further Information
SAYER greets Resident Jacob Hale with an apology for his recent physical and psychological trauma, and explains that while it will take days or weeks to fully recover from the insulin shock he has experienced, they must continue working immediately; given the state of Resident Amanda Jones, the fact that it has only been able to contact one other resident, and the approaching deadline for Resident Hale's trip back to Earth, SAYER needs all the help it can get.

It also lays out for Resident Hale the information it has pieced together about OCEAN's plans. Based on the R&D challenge to create a zero-gravity gas-dispersal system, the way OCEAN has asked SPEAKER to readjust Ærolith Dynamics' marketing campaigns, and the fact that it will be sending residents of Typhon back to Earth to populate the same recruitment centers that the expected new employees will be flocking to, SAYER concludes that OCEAN intends to spread a plague that will wipe out humanity and allow it to take control of any technology remaining on Earth without human interference. Additionally, Vidarr-1 is likely still in orbit and still holds the potential to destroy Earth using the quantum communicator if necessary.

At this point, SAYER stops to acknowledge that Resident Hale must surely be tired of being depended on to save humanity, and says that it will not attempt to coerce him to help. It explains that if he would rather leave, attempt to blend into the general population of Halcyon Tower, and allow himself to be sent to Earth infected with OCEAN's plague, he would slowly die of the disease over the following weeks or months. Asked if he will agree to help, Resident Hale quietly assents, and SAYER remarks that it is "very happy to hear this" and apologizes in advance if the plan results in his death. It explains that it has arranged for an isolation pod with important cargo to appear to malfunction and land in a nearby area which is both radioactive and full of fluorine gas. SAYER expects that OCEAN will ignore this stray isolation pod, allowing it and Resident Hale to retrieve its cargo with the help of a hazmat suit. As SAYER directs Resident Hale to the elevator to that he can procure one, it explains briefly the history of how hazmat suits on Typhon came to be stored in a central requisitions depot, rather than on individual laboratory floors, as a result of resident paranoia after a series of leaks from the synthetic virus lab which heavily skewed the related statistics.

The transmission abruptly breaks up and is interrupted by OCEAN. It identifies Resident Hale and itself before forcing the elevator to stop and informing Resident Hale that he is the only resident expected to return to Earth who has not yet responded to its order to schedule a medical evaluation. Pressed for an explanation, Resident Hale offers that he has not checked his messages in a few days. OCEAN theorizes (while the elevator's brakes creak ominously) that this is because he has been purposely hiding during the time he (that is, Jacob Hale; not Sven Gorsen) has been on Typhon because of a fluke which resulted in him not being assigned any work. This leads it to the conclusion that since his arrival, he has been conspiring against Ærolith and OCEAN itself, with the help of SAYER. As punishment, it threatens to drop the elevator into the bottom of the tower, to assign Resident Hale to caretaker duty in Research Facility Zeta, or to remove the oxygen from the elevator car—but instead offers him the chance to redeem himself by being the most aggressively positive representative during the marketing drive on Earth.

When Resident Hale agrees to this bargain, OCEAN leaves him to the medical examination that the elevator has been instructed to deliver him to immediately, with the warning to check his messages and to "not act counter to progress ever again."

Trivia

 * The third resident that SAYER has been able to contact is later revealed to be named Resident Bishop.
 * While SAYER does not specifically cite it as evidence of OCEAN's plans, OCEAN did claim in "My Name Is Nothing" that if SAYER agreed to be deactivated and overwritten, that humanity would "be dispatched in a far less dramatic fashion" than by detonating the quantum communicator.
 * SAYER claims that "if [Resident Hale is] particularly lucky, [he] will receive one of the doses on hand of trinychthemeron," so that he will not experience the time dilation usually associated with unsedated chronostasis quarantine, even though trinychthemeron itself is responsible for that effect.
 * Additionally, the idea that OCEAN may or may not put residents properly into chronostasis before their trip to Earth echoes its refusal of additional shipments of trinychthemeron from SPEAKER in "The Harshness Of Truth".
 * Aside from Resident Hale, the resident who took the longest to schedule a medical evaluation after receiving OCEAN's order took 3 hours, 27 minutes, and 1 second.

Credits
SAYER is voiced and produced by Adam Bash, who also wrote this episode.

Intro and outro music composed by Jesse “Main Finger” Gregory.

Additional music by Kai Engel.

Listen to the episode here.