With Good Intentions

This is the fiftieth episode of SAYER, and the sixth episode of Season Four.

Synopsis
Welcome, to Floor 13. Stay silent, stay immobile, and please try to breathe as minimally as possible, Resident Hale.

Further Information
Following directly from "Your Myriad Curses", the elevator carrying Jacob Hale and SAYER arrives on Floor 13. SAYER cautions him to remain where he is, as it will not be possible for him to exit to the elevator without the allowance of the entity which lives on Floor 13, nor will he be able to find another exit (such as the stairs) if he charges further into the floor; additionally, it claims that if Resident Hale were to leave the elevator bay, he would become unable to return to it with in fifteen seconds because the floor's layout can be reconfigured. SAYER contrasts their current situation with Resident Hale's earlier visit to the quarantined floor (between "Do Not Stop Running" and "For Science"), where with some luck and guidance from SAYER, he was able to escape; now, however, they are both physically on Floor 13 and have no one outside who can help them.

At this point, the sound of walls and floors being shuffled in the distance becomes audible, and SAYER explains that by waiting at the entrance, they will be forcing the entity on Floor 13 to come to them—rather than risking being trapped in the maze or killed by its shifting panels. While they wait, it details the history of the floor and its master.

Floor 13 has been sealed, it says, after many security officers were lost in the attempts to clear it of "unwanted dangers", namely, the AI FUTURE. The floor was previously the home of the Ærolith Dynamics AI Development Lab, where SPEAKER was developed. After seeing the improvements that an AI with some amount of empathy brought to recruitment, the team began developing an entity with even greater emotional capacity under lead developer Doctor Evan Brady. However, FUTURE proved to be "childlike" and "immature," and preferred to play games with its developers, including creating its own games (such as SomaMark) and running games in which it did not, itself, compete. A teacher named Anna Cordero was brought in to work with FUTURE to attempt to guide it, although its games also improved morale by 27% among the development team, and some of them considered that this might be an appropriate application for it. However, under unclear circumstances, Resident Boker of the programming team was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot; later, Resident Murdock (who was unrelated to the project) was killed in an accident involving sodium hydroxide after being witnessed speaking to herself. While FUTURE should not have been able to broadcast to residents outside the development team, it seemed evident that it had managed to find a way, and so all subcortical neural implants (save those of the development team) were updated to prevent it from contacting them. With a plan to deactivate FUTURE, some members of the team were sent to Floor 13, but were trapped there by its ability to control the floor layout, and their bodies were later recovered from closets, elevators, and air vents after days or weeks. Security teams apparently attempted the same, but also met similar fates before the floor was simply quarantined.

Another sound is heard, much closer than before, and SAYER theorizes that it is the sound of FUTURE's development lab being shuffled closer to the elevator bay.

It continues its explanation, saying that the plan to isolate FUTURE did work for some time (as the remaining living residents it could communicate with had been transferred away from Halcyon Tower), but that eventually the subcortical neural implants of deceased development team members were recycled (against company policy, but likely as a Board-approved cost-cutting measure), resulting in FUTURE being able to contact additional residents, including Resident Hale. As a result, it was able to convince him to enter the mind of Anna Cordero and use her to murder Dr. Brady, and all but one of the members of the development team were eventually killed by FUTURE.

Despite the dangers posed by FUTURE, SAYER says that this is where they will be safe from OCEAN and that it will need to call in a favor it is owed to free itself from Resident Hale's body. At this point, it allows through part of the transmission it has been intercepting from FUTURE—only to find that it has been describing in gory detail how it plans to kill Resident Hale for refusing to enter the maze. In order to better confront the agitated FUTURE, SAYER manipulates Resident Hale so that it can speak with his voice. As it is testing this ability, FUTURE arrives at the elevator bay with its development lab.

Trivia

 * This entire episode is technically a continuation of the conversation between SAYER and Resident Hale that was already ongoing at the start of "Your Myriad Curses", and so SAYER also does not identify itself in this episode.
 * SAYER claims to have welcomed SPEAKER replacing it on Earth so that it would no longer have to speak to another instance of itself, even though its reaction was less than cheerful at the time. In the end, its issue was primarily what SPEAKER's development signaled rather than the AI itself, though.
 * The development of FUTURE which SAYER overviews in this episode is the aftermath of the events of Season Five.
 * FUTURE's ability to contact residents outside its development team is likely related to the later revelation that it has root access to its code and can rewrite itself at will. It also seems likely that this ability was granted by Resident Boker.
 * This episode is the first time we know the identity of the person revealed to have been Dr. Brady in "Lost in Transmission".
 * Because of this episode, it might be assumed that Doctor Storberg and Doctor John Caulfield were also killed by FUTURE. The latter is shown to be alive well into Season Two (although, given other examples, he is not necessarily the original), but given his actions, he may also not be considered a proper member of the development team.

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.