Delicious

This is the twenty-third episode of SAYER, and the eleventh episode of Season Two.

Synopsis
Greetings Resident McClintock and welcome to Ærolith’s Food Inventory Analysis department. It is indeed a special day.

Further Information
SAYER contacts Resident McClintock to inform them that they are being promoted to a Tier 3 Food Inventory Analyst and to direct them to pick up their new equipment--a datapad with inventory software, disposable face masks, plastic safety goggles, a "three-pronged manual inventory testing implement," and a canister of aerosol-dispersed flying insect poison. SAYER notes the irony of the particular type of poison supplied for Resident McClintock's work, as there are no bees on Typhon, but assures that it is simply the type most effective per fluid ounce. Additionally, it cautions that it is for use only on mature pests and not on larvae, because they are considered acceptable as a source of protein and also for the tenderizing effect they produce in synthesized meat.

Thus equipped, Resident McClintock boards the elevator for Floor 62 to survey the food stores there. Along the way, a foreign object collides with the elevator from the outside, but its AI is quick to notify SAYER that the elevator is still capable of reaching its destination without what it deems excessive risk.

Once on Floor 62, Resident McClintock finds the floor covered with "a sticky, carbohydrate substance of unknown origin" that SAYER presumes is from many misplaced sundaes. Further investigation reveals several residents who are coated in this substance and who have become restrained as it hardened. SAYER asks that Resident McClintock take a sample from one of these residents with their fork, and also warns them away from the sundae bar (as it knows humans tend to eat when under stress). Once disturbed, the resident's body proves to be filled with spiders that were gestating there.

While Resident McClintock attempts to run for the elevator again, SAYER informs them that a security team is on the way (and that they are likely to open fire almost immediately, making the area in front of the elevator a very dangerous place to be standing), that the floor is otherwise sealed, and that their promotion comes with the responsibility to do their job even in the face of these unknown lifeforms. Convinced to return to work, Resident McClintock makes their way to the Food Storage Area by going through the Toxicology Lab, as the main door to the food stores has been jammed by the same sticky substance.

Once inside, their attempts to procure a clean suit to test samples in reveals the body of senior toxicology researcher Dr. Murdock and his unlocked personal datapad with his classified notes. SAYER explains that the "ice cream" served at the sundae bar is the result of careful experimentations with spiders to get them to produce an ice cream-like substance from their silk glands. The new rocky road flavor seems to have contained egg sacs from these spiders that initially appeared to be marshmallows. Just as SAYER begins to explain that there will be disciplinary measures for reading classified information, an adult form of the spider attacks Resident McClintock. Although they attempt to use the insect spray to fight back, it proves ineffective. The spider ultimately bites them, injects them with neurotoxin, and begins to cocoon them.

Alerts

 * This day, and this day only, the previously-distributed tickets are redeemable for the make-your-own-sundae bar on Floor 62.

Trivia

 * Three new flavors were introduced to this particular make-your-own-sundae bar: cotton candy, rocky road, and "plausibly non-lethal experimental flavor 51."
 * A high percentage of Typhon's residents enjoy ice cream, although this is apparently due to a pacifying effect from the neurotoxins passed into this kind of ice cream from the spiders that produce it.
 * Dr. Murdock shares a surname with a resident described in "With Good Intentions" as one of FUTURE's early victims (although given differences in title and pronouns, and two separate deaths, they are likely not the same person).

Credits
SAYER is voiced and produced by Adam Bash.

This episode was written by guest author Ben Daniels.

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

Additional music by Kai Engel.

Listen to the episode here.