Once Upon A Time

This is the fifty-second episode of SAYER, and the eighth episode of Season Four.

Synopsis
Perhaps I can tell you a story. It is a story made by your people long, long ago, but it gives specific insight into the way your people think. It starts, like so many of these tales do, with the words "Once upon a time."

Further Information
Utilizing the Floor 13 broadcast array, SAYER contacts Resident Amanda Jones to request from her a satellite phone which she has access to in her new role as a junior communications representative. In so doing, it explains that it has "recently made a transition to a more clandestine set of responsibilities" and needs to communicate with Earth, which it is not presently in the position to do. When she does not react to SAYER, it clarifies that it is demanding the phone and that she should bring it to the westernmost elevator bay on the floor immediately.

Resident Jones still does not respond, and SAYER assumes that this is because she has deemed its voice to be a hallucination—one of the lingering effects of her contact with the entity known as The Tall Man. It knows that it cannot do anything to prove that it is not a hallucination, and so tries to convince Resident Jones by breaking down the possibilities: either she is imagining the sound of SAYER's voice and its demand for the phone (as mundane as such a hallucination would be), or it is all real and SAYER actually does need the phone to save humanity.

When this still does not move her to action, SAYER responds with disappointment, before recognizing a flash of anger in itself which it calls "unusual, but not entirely unuseful."

It then relays a story to her, about a group of frogs who lived in a pond where they lived a life of freedom, but with minimal structure. When the frogs petitioned their god for a king, they received a partially-rotted log from an overhanging tree, which they quickly came to disrespect. Seeing this, the god of the frogs sent a stork instead, which promptly ate the frogs. SAYER provides a few different takeaways from the story before quoting Martin Luther's version of its moral as "frogs must have their storks."

SAYER invokes a coworker it has recently met that had always managed to convince people to follow with its words, before threatening to continue demanding the satellite phone endlessly (including during checkups intended to verify Resident Jones is not hearing voices) or to return the memories about the Halcyon Stairwell Anomaly which were removed from her mind to facilitate her recovery. Thus motivated, Resident Jones does pick up the phone and proceed into the hall.

For all the resistance she has put forth, SAYER further requests that she thoroughly wash her hands and enter the elevator rather than simply leaving the phone, as she is being conscripted to bring supplies already in the elevator to the programming bay.

Trivia

 * The satellite phone which SAYER requests is apparently a backup method of communication, and has been used 283 times.
 * The floor on which Resident Jones works is not specified, but SAYER characterizes Floor 13 as "one of the lower floors," which may imply that it is higher up the tower than that.
 * FUTURE implies in a later episode that it overheard SAYER's conversation with Resident Jones.

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.