That Next Breath

This is the sixty-fourth episode of SAYER, and the fifth episode of Season Five.

Synopsis
Please remain calm, you haven't heard any of the good news yet.

Further Information
SAYER contacts Resident Weck, who is beginning their first day of work as a Tier 1 Vat Maintenance Technician and has been tasked with cleaning and sterilizing a contaminated protein paste vat. It directs him to take a loaner vat scraper tool and then climb inside Vat 15 to remove any lingering protein paste from its walls.

As Resident Weck enters the vat, SAYER broadcasts a low-level alert advising that residents should check the logs to ensure that type C automated procedures are occurring at correct intervals and notify their superiors if not (or, as per the employee handbook, wait at least ten minutes if that superior has already been notified), as there have been issues recently.

It apologizes to the resident if they are unsettled by this information, as these timing errors have the potential to cause issues for Resident Weck's work. Some regular processes (such as cycling lights from cool to warm, or scanning lab entry points for contraband), it explains, are automated rather than being under the control of an AI. Among these is the regular draining and flushing of protein paste vats, which poses a danger to technicians sent to maintain them. No sooner has SAYER concluded this explanation than the hatch of the vat closes to initiate the automated cleaning procedure. The inside of the vat (and Resident Weck with it) are then sprayed with potassium hydroxide, intended to dissolve any remaining protein.

As the next step in the process will be for the vat to be filled with water with the resident still inside, SAYER directs them to a panel which can be removed from the vat to retrieve an oxygen tank for just such an occasion. It also cancels out the noise of water entering the tank by inverting its soundform and sending it back to the resident's subcortical neural implant to allow them to concentrate on the task at hand.

Once Resident Weck has found the oxygen tank, SAYER advises them to space their breaths, as the tank's buoyancy implies that it has lost almost all of its contents. It estimates that by minimizing their use of oxygen, Resident Weck might make the remaining air last for an hour, which should be enough time for the water to be drained from the tank or for them to rise to the top of the rescue team's priority list. With the further assurance that even beyond the hour, there will be a further two minutes before there is the certainty of permanent brain damage, SAYER leaves Resident Weck to wait for rescue.

Alerts
Additional alerts are issued pursuant to the initial low-level alert describing errors with type C automated procedures, regarding employee handbooks.
 * A general notice is issued in regards to residents complaining that they have never received an employee handbook. While Human Resources has declined to make a formal statement, SAYER reminds residents that they were almost certainly handed a handbook (in the form of a 3-inch binder, likely tan, with "Welcome to Ærolith" embossed on the cover). With this in hand, they should have been asked to answer a series of questions, and "Did you receive a handbook?" should have been 22nd on this list (following "Are you or have you ever been in the employ of any world government organization or contracted to work on their behalf?"). To answer where these residents' handbooks have gone, SAYER adds that they are removed from isolation pods before transit as research shows that employees never read handbooks and this saves on fuel and printing costs.
 * A secondary notice informs residents that the library on Floor 22 has misplaced their copy of the employee handbook.

Trivia

 * The contaminated protein paste contained in Vat 15 was "mom's meatloaf" flavored.
 * That the lab entry scanners are controlled by an automated process rather than an AI was previously taken advantage of by FUTURE and another resident.
 * The cleaning procedure for Vat 15 was started over 73 minutes ahead of schedule.
 * While residents in this episode do not apparently have access to it, by the time of "Dayenu", residents have access to the Extended Resident Handbook on their datapads.

Credits
SAYER is voiced, written, and produced by Adam Bash.

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

Additional music by Kai Engel.

Listen to the episode here.