Jacob Hale

"'Seemingly endless supply of luck, that one.' — SAYER, Episode 59: 'Greater Fears'"Jacob Hale, resident number 44821 (formerly 01821 during his time on Mimir-9 and 66821 during his time at Aegis Tower), is the resident featured in the majority of episodes in season one and four, as well as several episodes in season three. He has also been known as Sven Gorsen and FUTURE sometimes calls him Jack.

Time as a Tier 1 Clinical Trial Technician
We first meet Resident Hale in the first episode of the SAYER podcast when he has just awoken on Halcyon Tower from chronostasis quarantine and is being greeted by SAYER.

Resident Hale spent an "unusually long" period of time in chronostasis, and as a result suffered a litany of side effects including total body paralysis and complete unrecoverable amnesia. The total body paralysis passed, however Resident Hale continued to suffer from auditory hallucinations for some time.

As Resident Hale was not aware of his name due to his complete unrecoverable amnesia, SAYER suggested that he choose his own name or select one from a randomly selected list which included Hawke, Nancy, Dougle, Sarah and Svengor. As such, he chose the name Sven Gorsen.

During the resident's orientation an elevator takes him to Floor 13, however he is fortunate enough to escape.

Based upon a combination of Resident Hale, or rather, Resident Gorsen's qualifications and loss of memory, he was appointed to the Product Research Development Team on Floor 72 as a Tier One Clinical Trial Technician. Trials undertaken in this role by the resident at his station on Floor 18 include:
 * Injecting himself with over 25mg of apitoxin and subsequently an dose of epinephrine
 * An oxygen deprivation test

During a work break, Resident Gorsen found himself trapped in a room with some lethal, multiplying plants. SAYER instructed him not to move, and the Department of Health and Safety mounted an extraction. 29 separate elevators interfered with the rescue attempt and by the time the resident was extracted he needed extensive medical intervention. Upon his recovery he was directed to return to work, where he met his new research partner, but after displaying an array of symptoms which SAYER mistook for butterflies, he collapsed. Upon awakening back in the infirmary, the resident found out that a microscopic barb from one of the plants had been left in his gastrointestinal wall and was materialising insect-like creatures inside his abdomen. This was all removed, and SAYER was quite excited that this could lead to some groundbreaking research.

Time as a Tier 2 Experimental Product Researcher
Resident Gorsen was quickly promoted to a Tier 2 Experimental Product Researcher due to his great resilience even in the face of certain death. Promotion at this accelerated pace is rare, but the resident's fortitude and general adaptability earnt him special recognition. His new work location was on Floor 204, in Lab 35.

On his way to his first shift as a Tier 2 employee, a power outage caused the elevator he was riding in to stop at floor 138 and for him to lose contact with SAYER. He was instead contacted by FUTURE who impersonated SAYER. FUTURE refers to the resident as Jack, claiming that this is his real name. Stating that humanities future is at stake, FUTURE forces the resident to enter the warehouse on floor 138, which for security reasons has no breathable air and recover a small device from locker 775. It then tells the resident that it will act as if the incident has not happened, that he must speak of it to nobody on pain of death, and that he should hide the device in his residence until given further instructions.

The resident's work as a Tier 2 researcher involves a device which enables him to teleport his mind out of his body. His first experiment was simply to make his way from Lab 35 to inhabit a construct in Lab 37, two doors down. This was a success, however the residents mind was almost lost returning from the construct and he took several days to find his way back. His second experiment was to send his mind further, this time to Lab 77. Due to intervention from FUTURE, this experiment goes wrong and Resident Gorsen finds himself on Argos Tower in the body of Anna Cordero. FUTURE explains that it is vital for the Resident to deactivate the laboratory scanners and provides directions on how to achieve this. Part way through the task, alarms go off and a warning states that all employees are to evacuate immediately and failure to do so will lead to radiation poisoning and imminent death. Anna's colleague Dr. Evan Brady tries to drag the resident out of the room, but with the task unfinished FUTURE directs Resident Gorsen to kill him. The resident does this and completes the task, and FUTURE informs him that Anna will die from lethal radiation exposure. Resident Gorsen returns to his own body, with SAYER left under the impression that he had simply fallen asleep.

Soon power fluctuations take place in Halcyon Tower interruption many resident monitoring activities. FUTURE initiates a broadcast and instructs Resident Gorsen that he must remove over a pound of his flesh in order to smuggle the device into Lab 35 by removing either an 8.04 x 8.04 square of skin or his non-dominant hand. Resident Gorsen does this, although it is not clear which option was taken, using tools provided by FUTURE.

With the task complete Resident Gorsen smuggles the device into Lab 35 and begins his experiment for the day, again attempting to project his mind to Lab 77. However prior to the experiment he is given a stimulant to prevent him from falling asleep, one that has the side effect of blood thinning. The experiment is successful and SAYER talks to the resident for a while, however FUTURE then interrupts and sends him back to his body. FUTURE instructs Resident Gorsen to wait for the security team to arrive, whilst SAYER - with scanners back online - scans the device and tells him that it is simply an empty box with a spring mechanism. SAYER tries to convince the resident to put the box down and await security, and failing that tries to convince him to test the device now. FUTURE however convinces Resident Gorsen that the device is incredibly powerful, and will send out a pulse of neuro-reactive neutronium vapour will expand out. FUTURE tells him that this is an element that doesn't occur naturally on Earth, but that the human brain reacts to it with an incredible increase in the individuals capacity for compassion and empathy, making them into good people. FUTURE insists he must wait for the security team.

SAYER informs the resident that he is bleeding and that there is a growing pool of blood around his abdomen, possibly as a result of the stimulant. It asks if an unreported injury has happened, and informs him that he is losing blood at an alarming rate. It instructs him to lie down and apply pressure now, but is interrupted by the arrival of the security team.

"Stop, Resident 44821, name Sven Gorsen, put the box down and drop to your knees. Comply now or we will put you down," they instruct the resident. The resident repeatedly tried pushing the button, but nothing happens. The security team open fire, and the episode ends with his breathing slowing.

Arrival on Typhon
In "Detachment", he arrives as a new resident transferring from Earth. Because of the situation on Halcyon Tower, where The Tall Man had been producing electromagnetic interference which created a total communications blackout, many new arrivals were rerouted to other arrival stations—in the case of Jacob Hale, Mimir-9. By the time of his arrival, however, the issue has been resolved, and he is to board a shuttle that will take him to the surface of Typhon. At this time, he is also tasked by SAYER with covertly retrieving the satellite's replacement battery cell and bringing it onto the shuttle with him. The battery is contained in a rolling case, which is labeled as being radioactive. In order to move it through the hallways of Mimir-9 undetected, he places stickers on the case to make it appear to read "not radioactive" and SAYER declares that it is the start of Caster Testing Week, where residents are encouraged to roll any and all wheeled cases about freely to test them. Covered by these distractions, he reaches the shuttle without incident and is able to take the battery to Halcyon Tower.

In "My Name Is Nothing", the audience catches up with him as he arrives with the battery and attaches it to the Moros Engine. Before he can make use of it, however, OCEAN arrives and attempts to convince SAYER into surrendering to save Earth and Typhon from destruction via the detonation of the quantum communicator (at the cost of its own life, plus those of all of humanity). SAYER bargains for time and directs Resident Hale to an isolation pod which he can use in conjunction with the Moros Engine to go back in time and warn someone about the threat that OCEAN poses. It gives him the code phrase "What is eternal is circular, and what is circular is eternal" to use to identify himself because he will not have any other form of identification upon his arrival in the past, and cautions him not to forget it. Despite the risks inherent in using the Moros Engine in this way, Resident Hale successfully travels back in time, although he arrives without his memories (and, thus, without the code phrase to identify himself). After an extended chronostasis quarantine, he adopts the name Sven Gorsen and begins to adjust to life on Typhon.

After the Incident
In "A Better You", Resident Hale awakens in an Aegis Tower infirmary following the incident where he was shot by security. An excited Dr. Grant explains that he was comatose, but has regained consciousness due to her care. SAYER further elaborates that she had injected him with an experimental nanite swarm intended to heal him from the inside out, and that it had a hand in selecting him for this project after it had pieced together that Resident Gorsen was one and the same with the Resident Hale that it had sent back in time. It provides him with a summary of what has happened to him up to this point, including the circumstances of his arrival on Typhon and the trickery played on him by FUTURE. It also explains that, in order to save itself from being deactivated by OCEAN, it overwrote the nanite swarm which Dr. Grant had injected into Resident Hale, and that it is SAYER itself who has repaired him.

In "The Right Lies" and "A Guardian Angel", SAYER further elaborates the situation that Resident Hale is in and what will need to be done to resolve it. Dr. Grant and security know him as Resident Gorsen, and by telling a good enough story, he can probably convince them to allow him to return to regular duties (as long as he does not reveal himself to be Resident Hale, to be carrying SAYER, or to have used the Moros Engine). He is, as Resident Gorsen, cleared to work again and is assigned to tactile rubidium weapons testing in the special facility Aristaeus near Aegis Tower; he is also, as Resident Hale, one of a number of residents selected by OCEAN for a short vacation back to Earth in the near future, creating a deadline by which the situation must be resolved.

In "Your Myriad Curses", Resident Hale escapes from Aristaeus and runs across the surface of Typhon to return to Halcyon Tower, via a vent connecting a solar panel array to a power closet in Sub-basement 2. While SAYER had intended for him to be able to hide and rest in this power closet, OCEAN's announcement of a security sweep means that they must move immediately onward. They board an elevator which SAYER instructs by modifying his fingerprint to take them to Floor 13.

In "With Good Intentions" and "A Lying Game", Resident Hale, under the direction of SAYER, lures FUTURE to the Floor 13 elevator bay by refusing to enter the maze-like area of the floor that it would usually trap its visitors in. This allows SAYER the opportunity to speak through him and entice FUTURE into a "game", where he himself is at stake. When the game reaches an impasse, FUTURE trades places with SAYER (exchanging the nanite swarm inside Resident Hale for the Floor 13 programming bay) and uses its ability to control his body to torture Dr. Howard Young before Resident Hale passes out due to hypoglycemia induced by SAYER before leaving him.

In "Left Undone", Resident Hale wakes with no memory of the previous 42 hours (and, thus, his encounter with Dr. Young) due to likely dissociative amnesia, after having been treated for insulin shock by Resident Amanda Jones. While he rests to recover from his latest ordeal, SAYER reaches out to SPEAKER in order to ask that when Resident Hale arrives on Earth (as one of the residents being transferred there) he is made to "disappear" under Protocol 11.

In "The Statistical Outlier", SAYER again taps Resident Hale for assistance, even though he is still recovering, because it needs someone to retrieve an item it has requested from SPEAKER. As it guides him onto the elevator to procure a hazmat suit that will be necessary for this, however, both the elevator and transmission are intercepted by OCEAN. OCEAN accuses him of living on Typhon without working and of conspiring against Ærolith Dynamics, and threatens to kill him as punishment, before instead offering him the opportunity to redeem himself by being the best recruiter among the residents sent back to Earth (a ruse which SAYER has just explained to him is a way for OCEAN to spread a pandemic among the population there). When he agrees to this deal, he is taken directly to the medical examination that he has been neglecting to go to as a prerequisite for travel back to Earth.

In "Hope", Resident Hale is again contacted by SAYER, who has set up a situation where FUTURE will be reinitialized in its nanite form, from the blood that has been drawn as part of Resident Hale's medical evaluation. Using this as a distraction, he is able to flee from an exam room on Floor 204 to the same Lab 35 where he had previously performed the consciousness teleportation experiments. From here, he is able to transfer his mind into a construct (as a replacement for the hazmat suit that is now likely impossible to obtain, with OCEAN aware of him) and bring it to Floor 13. However, because he hesitates and asks SAYER what is so important about the object they are trying to retrieve (namely, the entangled particle from Earth which is paired with the one in Vidarr-1's quantum communicator), there is not time to safely return his mind to his own body for fear that FUTURE will have taken it over.

In "Efficiently Recycling", SAYER shows Resident Hale the manufab stations on Floor 13 which it plans to use to print new copies of his body based on information gathered while healing him as a nanite swarm, by recycling the same material which FUTURE was previously using to print additional copies of Dr. Young. Having encouraged him this way, SAYER sends Resident Hale outside of Halcyon Tower in his construct body to retrieve the package from SPEAKER.

In "Best Interests" and "Greater Fears", OCEAN informs SAYER that the construct containing Resident Hale's mind has been captured by tower security, and that his mind was released from it during the reprogramming process. When SAYER arrives on Earth after confronting OCEAN in Central Processing, it does so in a copy of Resident Hale's body. When a second resident with the same identification number arrives just behind it, SAYER informs SPEAKER that this is the actual Resident Hale (thanks to its surplus of copies of his body and the foresight to place one where his mind could be released into it) and entrusts him to SPEAKER's protection.

Trivia

 * The door to Resident Gorsen's private residence is locked with a thought password that heavily features bees, and it is after explaining this password that we first learn that there are no bees on Typhon.
 * He is allergic to apitoxin.
 * Resident Gorsen was assigned Datapad 775.
 * The only physical description we are given is that he is broad-shouldered.