1-7 In Triplicate

In which Jonas and Bethany (to differing degrees of extremity) celebrate the one year anniversary of Jonas joining the General Data Acquisition and Storage Department.  

inc: The Podcast is:  
Allyson Levine as Bethany  
Raimy O. Washington as Jonas  
Leah Cardenas (@leahgabrielle____) as The Announcements  
Ellis MacMillan (linktr.ee/mothscraps) as The Robo-Archivist  
Chase Guthrie Knueven as the Deep Speaker
Joe Hanson as the High Speaker

inc: The Podcast is written, produced, and edited, by Monte D. Monteleagre and Alexander Wolfe, and is a production of Wolf Mountain Workshop.  For more information, or to contact them about other projects, they can be found at montedmonteleagre.com, and writingwolfe.com, respectively. 

Find us online at incthepodcast.buzzsprout.com for links to all our social media, or connect with us directly @incthepodcast, or at incthepodcast@gmail.com.  

Emotional support for inc: The Podcast is lovingly provided by: Birdie, Rodeo, Jewel and Sakura.

New episodes every other Monday. 

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Happiness is Productivity.  
Productivity is Happiness.   

P.S. Somebody (that'd be me) uploaded the wrong version of this episode the first time, so if you're one of the lucky few to have saved that on your phone, congratulations! You're now the proud owner of a worthless but incredibly unique piece of internet garbage. If you didn't, congratulations! You're now the proud recipient of a professionally produced podcast. (Note to Monte - we should think politics next with the ability to spin self-induced disaster like this. Consider it! It'd be terrible!)
--Alexander Wolfe

Transcript

Episode 7 - In Triplicate
Intro
Small Intro and/or Content Warning
Theme Song
The Triplicate Motif plays, eventually fading into the drones and beeps of regular work tone. 
Scene 1
ANNOUNCER: And as we come to the end of the weekly ship-life update (Newly presented by
Artok Havaians Porthole Sealant - Wow, that’s one sealed porthole!) we take a moment to
recognize the list of workers who have spent exactly 1 single year on this ship. Everybody give
a quiet and respectful moment of thought to Jonas, working in the General Data Acquisition and
Storage Department. If you happen to pass Jonas in the hall, be sure to wish them a happy 1
year on this ship. And then immediately report them for being away from their station so they
can be properly reprimanded. Thank you all, and let’s see if we can’t use this next week to keep
those margins as tight as if they’d been sealed by Artok Havaians Porthole Sealant - Seal any
hole, any dimension, any time! Thank you Artok Havaians Porthole Sealant, and thank you,
Crew. As always, ad infinitum, productivity is happiness.
Fade in.
BETHANY: You made it. The Big One. Literally, the big one point oh oh. The first step on a
centuries long journey that will lead you all over the known universe and give you almost no
chance to see it due to the fact that you’re stuck down here with me. I’d give you a present but
it’s against regulations, so your official chair is going to have to do in place of anything
meaningful.
JONAS: Yeah, it, uh, it sure feels like something. Something I’ll do for the rest of my life and see
almost no tangible benefit from.
BETHANY: I remember when the one-year wisdom hit me. Let your spirit get broken early, and
eventually you’ll just go numb to the crushing weight of our general uselessness. At that point
you’re in the sweet spot, and you just gotta get through to retirement.
JONAS: You’re always so encouraging.
BETHANY: Just preparing you for the inevitable.
JONAS: Oh thank you, thank you very much.
BETHANY: Any time. Actually, you know what, the gift of a look at your inescapable reality isn’t
a bad present for the one year anniversary of you being here. You’re welcome, bud.
JONAS: Oof. Can I return it?
BETHANY: Nope. Custom made, I’m afraid, only fits you.
JONAS: Depressing.
BETHANY: Isn’t it just?
JONAS: You know...I have been thinking about this a little bit…
BETHANY: That is so rarely a good thing to hear.
JONAS: ...And since the first year is such a big deal and all…
BETHANY: Nooooo. Nope. Stop it right there.
JONAS: I was thinking that maybe you might grant me a small favor…
BETHANY: Being polite isn’t helping, still no.
JONAS: I was thinking that it would be neat if you’d take me though a couple of entries in the
Extraneous But Interesting folder. Nothing too long, just a couple that you really like.
BETHANY: And why would I do that?
JONAS: Well, if you didn’t want to do that, I could just talk you through all of my feelings about
being here for a year now and what I think might happen in the future and what I’d really like to
have happen in the future, and probably some stuff about where I came from, you know, really
reminisce. That’s what anniversaries like this really put me in the mood for. Reminiscing.
BETHANY sighs.
JONAS: Was that a resigned sigh of acceptance or an irritated sigh of acceptance?
BETHANY: Either or, take your pick.
JONAS: So you’ll do it?
BETHANY: I’ll show you two.
JONAS: Five.
BETHANY: Two.
JONAS: Four and a half.
BETHANY: What? One.
JONAS: Three.
BETHANY: (With another sigh.) Three.
JONAS: Yes! And that’s called negotiation.
BETHANY: It always ends up being 3 with this kind of stuff, let’s just agree to start there next
time.
JONAS: Whatever you say, my generous and capable leader, let’s do it!
BETHANY: Not now, work now. Stories later.
JONAS: But stories better than work.
BETHANY: Jonas, everything better than work. But even better than stories is getting to make
you wait for stories. So that’s what we’re gonna do. That’s what I get out of this.
JONAS: Fine. On break then?
BETHANY: Do we have a break today?
JONAS: We should. It’s been a week.
BETHANY: Has it been a week already? Wow, time flies when every single day looks the exact
same. Yeah, at break.
JONAS: You promise?
BETHANY: Yes, you little skeptic, I promise. Now go enter some data or move some data or
feed some data. Just go do something with data.
JONAS: Alright, I’m going, I’m going.
BETHANY: Good.
Small pause.
JONAS: And don’t do that thing where you work through half the break and can only do one
now --
BETHANY: JONAS.
JONAS: I’m going, I’m not even here.
Pause.
BETHANY: Actually feed the data, Jonas, don’t pretend to feed it.
JONAS: Ugh, fine! You’re such a boss today.
BETHANY: Every day, Jonas, every day.
Fade out.
DEEP SPEAKER: How many times has this happened to you?
HIGH SPEAKER: I know I’m supposed to be giving my all to this ship, but I just find my mind
cluttered with all these useless emotions and awful personal goals and aspirations. It just seems
like there’s no help for me, and thousands like me, suffering from a dangerous amount of
independence with no chance of relief.
DEEP SPEAKER: No relief, hmm? Have you ever heard of a chemical lobotomy?
HIGH SPEAKER: Chemical lobotomy? Isn’t that the loud and irritating music group my
love-partner sang backup for during our education period?
DEEP SPEAKER: No, you misinformed consumer, it’s the latest craze that’s sweeping the
universe. And it’s coming to a starship near you!
HIGH SPEAKER: Consider me sold, but for those “skeptics” out there who might not be, how
does it work?
DEEP SPEAKER: It’s the easiest thing you’ve ever heard of. A small syringe with a wide-bore
needle is inserted harmlessly near the dorsal column. An incredibly basic solution is then
injected directly into the parts of the nervous system that correspond to things like feelings,
emotions, reluctance, boredom, self-worth, and many others. These troublesome areas are
quickly and not-entirely-painlessly dissolved, and the patient is back to work, more productive
than ever before, not to mention incredibly docile.
HIGH SPEAKER: My goodness, it’s so easy, I feel like I could do it in my own waste removal
location.
DEEP SPEAKER: Don’t be an ignorant and terrible person now, you know as well as I do that
procedures like this should only be performed by adequately trained medical staff that work with
your personal starship insurance company. Remember the golden rule - if an insurance
company can’t make money on it, it’s not a real procedure.
HIGH SPEAKER: I’m sorry, all this individualism clouded up my brain, and I must’ve forgot. I
had better book that appointment for as soon as possible.
DEEP SPEAKER: Yes, I think you should. And don’t you think YOU should, listener? If anything
enacted during this commercial medical broadcast struck a chord within you, book your
appointment for a chemical lobotomy today. Remember, a life without pain, hope, or joy, is only
a phone call away. What are YOU waiting for?

Scene 2
Fade in.
BETHANY: Jonas, I can feel you giving me that look. I haven’t glanced up from this sheet in 15
minutes but I still know you’re giving me that look. I refuse to make eye contact with you until
you stop doing the look.
JONAS: (With restrained excitement) It’s break time, Bethany.
BETHANY: It’s almost break time, Jonas.
JONAS: It’s almost break time, Bethany.
BETHANY: I’m not getting up from this seat until the look stops.
JONAS: Okay, it’s done, it’s done.
BETHANY: Jonas…
JONAS: Seriously.
Tiny pause.
BETHANY: Liar! You’re an absolute liar and you don’t deserve any stories!
JONAS: Too bad, it’s my one year and you said….
BETHANY: Will you at least sit down? What the heck did we get you that chair for if you’re not
going to sit down?
JONAS: Too excited. Also, I’ve been standing for a year and now sitting hurts my back in a way
that I feel like I should be more worried about.
BETHANY: Well, that’s probably the best I’m gonna get isn’t it? Anyways, I pulled out some stuff
while you were doing what you call working, this first one is nothing too crazy for the folder, but
kind of interesting. This planet was tidally locked with a weird binary star system, pretty neat
actually, not something you see all the time, and it had a couple of intelligently advancing
societies on it, divided by this big chasm. We’re talking deep, steep, wide, and with a lake
beneath it that fed into a tunnel system that went on for miles. Huge whirlpools would just open
up randomly and drag anything floating in the general area down into the tunnels. This thing
wasn’t getting crossed until there was some really advanced technology happening. It was rare
for them to be able to find a spot to even make it down to the water. And long too, stretching
deep into the daylight side of the planet, and the same into the night side, crossing almost
perpendicularly through the twilight zone, which just so happened to be a perfect nest for two
societies beginning to flourish.
JONAS: And let me guess, the two civilizations on either side of this big trench….they didn’t like
each other.
BETHANY: That’s an oddly pessimistic take from you, Jonas.
JONAS: I’ve been taught by you for a year, am I right?
BETHANY: Yes and no, it kind of flipped back and forth depending on who was in power at the
time on each side, and who had done what last, and when, and all that nonsense. Not the point.
JONAS: Were they the same species?
BETHANY: At one time. Divergent evolution, chasm was created by a huge seismic event in the
planet's past, split one species into two separate locations, nature took it from there.
JONAS: So really similar.
BETHANY: Genetically very similar, but they expressed it differently enough that they wouldn’t
know it, hadn’t put the pieces together on the whole genetics-thing yet.
JONAS: Okay, okay, I gotcha.
BETHANY: They were fascinated with each other. Never really gave a sign to each other about
it, but the two groups knew about each other, and that’s just about all they thought about. That’s
a little hyperbolic of course, but honestly, not too far off. Technologically they were in that weird
area where they didn’t have good enough resources to make enough informed decisions, so
there were a lot of theories about who these Others were, and why they were, and what the
chasm was, and all that sort of stuff.
JONAS: Sounds spiritual.
BETHANY: Oh, super spiritual. Like, almost every temple that these groups built had a scholar
or a scientist in residence to further research the Others. Most were pretty peaceful too, on
account of both groups living in this handy little oasis where the weather didn’t change much, so
life was fairly stable. That might be why the technology never really ramped up too quick, there
wasn’t much pressure for it. Each group just sort of cast the other group as Gods, said their
polite thank yous for the good weather and fungus-farming, and things of that nature, and got on
with life. Until the next seismic event.
JONAS: There’s always a next seismic event, or a wildfire, or atomic weaponry, or something
like that, isn’t there?
BETHANY: I am really enjoying the new pessimistic Jonas. Yeah, we all serve entropy to an
extent. In the grand scheme of the universe, and even this planet, this wasn’t the worst seismic
event. It just so happened to agitate a fault in the rocks and half of one civilization pitched into
the chasm in a gigantic rock slide and any that didn’t die from the fall just drowned.
JONAS: Geez, how big was this rockslide?
BETHANY: Absolutely massive. See, the universe likes balance, so any civilization that hasn’t
been touched by much natural catastrophe in a good while had better keep very vigilant
because something is gonna happen, and it won’t be nice.
JONAS: That doesn’t sound like a thing. That’s not a thing.
BETHANY: What, you’ve reached the end of your “downer allotment” or something? It’s not a
thing, but it’s still kind of a thing. It’s...fiction being more real than truth.
Small pause.
BETHANY: Okay, that might be making it a little pretentious, I grant you, but you understand
what I mean, right?
JONAS: Sort of.
BETHANY: That’s fine, not important in the grand scheme of things. So one civilization gets hit
real hard. They lose a huge amount of shoreline, buildings, citizens, all that craziness, all while
their Gods remain untouched. And the other watches their Gods just get absolutely smashed
while they’re just fine.
JONAS: Which probably led to a little confusion.
BETHANY: Neither group made it another decade. Absolutely wiped themselves out, almost
simultaneously.
JONAS: ...Wow…
BETHANY: Yeah. Weird, huh? It just makes you think.
JONAS: Of what?
BETHANY: Well, there was a slim piece of habitable land on their planet where they were able
to set up shop. It turns out that there was also a similarly slim amount of the world they were
able to accept. The way their society developed mirrored their planetary geography in an
interesting and pleasing way. It’s….it’s like a coffee break, a real coffee break, but for the part of
my mind that likes the universe to make sense.
JONAS: That’s gotta be a sad little piece of mind at this point.
BETHANY: It’s very neglected, but that’s not the focus here. It’s just… what’d they used to call
it… a pleasant bit of coincidence to calm the soul.
JONAS: Alright, I think I get it. A little bit, anyway. That’s more spiritual than you usually get.
BETHANY: Well, I was a few hundred years younger. You get older and you get more bitter. It’s
still there, it just doesn’t make as much sense to me as it used to.
JONAS: You mean the spirituality?
BETHANY: Yeah, but that’s not all of it. Anyways, two of three now. This next one’s a little
different.
JONAS: Go for it.
BETHANY: Fairly normal star system. Their star was just a couple dozen million years from
going big and red, so on the older side, definitely. It’s actually kind of neat, the habitable zone
aligned with the eighth planet out and the first 5 were these really wild gas giants and they were
all lined up so that they happened to transit the star and make all these funky patterns. The
beings I’m talking about actually had a whole quasi-religion dedicated to how the patterns at the
time of your birth affected your personality and all sorts of other stuff that never seems to truly
die no matter how scientifically literate the populace is.
JONAS: Sounds funky.
BETHANY: It was, it was definitely very funky. A very funky planet with a very weird sport.
JONAS: Okay, now I’m interested. Crazy violence? Insane field of play? Unimaginable brains or
brawn required to survive? Microtransactions?
BETHANY: Absolutely not. Their most popular and least favorite sport --
JONAS: Hang on --
BETHANY: --You heard me, their most popular and least favorite sport, on a planetary scale,
was the sport of embarrassment.
Small pause.
JONAS: That’s anticlimactic.
BETHANY: Oh, you’re not impressed?
JONAS: Not really.
BETHANY: This species was emotional to a degree that it truly affected them physically. You
know we’re affected physically too, tentacles all go really still and group into pairs of two when
you’re anxious, or your dorsal coloration varies when you’re excited?
JONAS: Well, yeah, but…
BETHANY: Well these creatures had that to the extreme. Did you ever accidentally expel waste
in class when you were being educated?
JONAS: Yeah, once.
BETHANY: Me too, couple times. Embarrassing, right?
JONAS: Yeah.
BETHANY: But you got over it.
JONAS: Of course. Besides the ever present nightmares.
BETHANY: They don’t get over it. Single greatest cause of fatalities while the species was
between its infantile and its mating age stages? Expelling gas inopportunely. Not even waste,
just gas. 2nd? Calling their educational supervisor “Caregiver”. 3rd? A combination of bodily
fluid issues, mistaking social cues in a disastrous way, and accidentally saying the word
‘organism’ as ‘orgasm’.
JONAS: Excuse me?
BETHANY: Oh yeah. This goes so much further than you even know.
JONAS: But --
BETHANY: Ah ba buh buh buh. One more thing. Amazingly, with all that nonsense going on,
they have no concept of secondary or vicarious embarrassment. Very sympathetic, not
empathetic, which just doesn’t trigger their embarrassment reflex. An adapted biological
defense mechanism is my guess, I don’t know how they might’ve developed otherwise.
JONAS: So when you’re saying that they play the sport of embarrassment…
BETHANY: It’s their version of insane violence. It’s purposeful emotional bloodsport. And it is, as
far as I’ve seen, completely original to their species. The athletes have a certain window of time,
a few weeks or so, when they can be accosted by other players in potentially embarrassing
ways. Exact rules differ depending on the league, just how far you can go, who all can be
involved, things like that.
JONAS: But that’s so wide open. I mean, you could do anything.
BETHANY: Yeah, but that’s most sports. Within the rules you can kinda do anything.
JONAS: But embarrassing things...what I’m saying is, embarrassment doesn’t just stay for that
one moment, it builds up over time too, so… Huh. Okay, I think I might be interested in this.
BETHANY: It’s pretty nuts. I had just never seen anything like that made into a sport or a game
before, not in an organized way like that.
JONAS: Have you since?
BETHANY: Yes and no. Not the exact same thing, obviously, but the more you’re around the
more you see. Different species play in different ways, that’s how it’s always worked. There’s
just something very neat about the emotional and the physical being so tightly tied together in
this case… I don’t know. They live their lives seeking out emotional intensity.
Small pause.
JONAS: And that’s pretty much the opposite of what we do.
BETHANY: Yeah. Which isn’t bad, obviously, it’s fine, different species do different things, it’s
just…
JONAS: Just what?
BETHANY: At a certain point I started getting really caught up on the fact that I was one of two
People who cared enough to make an Extraneous But Interesting folder and the only one left
who might feel anything about it.
JONAS: Well nobody else has our job, they can’t.
BETHANY: Exactly, nobody else has our job, nobody else sees this stuff, and the folder itself
isn’t even part of the job. It’s right there in the name: extraneous. And I just…
Pause.
BETHANY: I’ve never been able to figure out why I have this job if nobody cares about this job.
JONAS: Oh, that’s easy, I can tell you that.
BETHANY: Not the official answer, I know the official answer. I know that our company ship is
“dedicated to the preservation of all knowledge and data created by advanced life in the
Universe, despite the necessity for Incorporation”. But it’s all lip service. Who really cares
enough to make a stink if the ship doesn’t scan every bit of data?
JONAS: It’s all just planet-born hippies. You know how they are.
BETHANY: So I have to work myself to death every day to appease vaguely powerful people
half a universe away from us? How is that fair? Don’t answer that.
JONAS: Look, people that don’t do a job always want to tell people that are doing a job how to
do that job. And nobody with a job ever wants to be told how to do that job by somebody who
doesn’t also do that job. There’s a whole branch of modern bureaucratic philosophy that tries to
reconcile those two states of being, but the suicide rate for bureaucratic philosophers is
something like 6 times the average for most other positions, so it must not be fun to think about.
Does that make sense?
BETHANY: Every word individually, but not them put together like that. You’re doing that
Smart-Jonas thing again.
JONAS: I’m saying that People don’t want you to do your job well, People want to tell you to do
your job well. And they’re going to do that whether or not you’re already doing the job well. So
you might as well just do what you were going to do anyways.
Small pause.
BETHANY: I don’t like it when you’re right.
JONAS: Why do People keep saying that to me?
Fade out.
ANNOUNCEMENT: (Small alarm occurring in the background) Attention any and all caregivers
using our refurbished airlock daycare system, your children have just been accidentally
evacuated into the cold darkness of space. If they have any material goods that did not get
accidentally evacuated along with them, they must be picked up by the end of the day, or else
they will become the property of Sufficient Caregivers Incorporated, and most likely sold to pay
legal representation to navigate the aftermath of this unfortunate oversight. Remember, you
don’t need children - productivity is happiness.


Scene 3
BETHANY: Jonas, if I’m honest, this hasn’t been the wonderful walk down memory lane that you
seemed to think it would be.
JONAS: What? Come on, we’re really starting to actually get to talk.
BETHANY: I know, that was never part of the deal.
JONAS: It’s a bonus!
BETHANY: For who?
JONAS: 50% of us! That’s almost a majority! Isn’t that enough?
BETHANY: Not unless I’m a part of the 50, and look at that, I’m not.
JONAS: Fine. No more depth, no more emotional whatever, none of that. I just want the last
story.
BETHANY: (With a sigh.) And then this can be done?
JONAS: Well, yeah. You know, work. We can’t do this forever.
BETHANY: And let’s all take just a good second to be grateful for that, why don’t we?
JONAS: You are just in a mood today, you know that?
BETHANY: That sounds like depth and possibly emotional whatever to me.
JONAS: No, no, just filling the silence. Please, by all means.
BETHANY: Okay, so the last one was actually a point of contention when it was added to the
Folder. And I have chosen to share it with you anyways, because I am apparently a glutton for
punishment. But. But, Jonas, we’re not gonna do this thing where we use the story as a jumping
off point for discussion about my psyche, or about the universe, or about how your tentacles itch
sometimes when you get sad.
JONAS: They don’t itch -
BETHANY: I don’t care.
JONAS: They just tingle a bit…
BETHANY: Jonas.
JONAS: Agreed. Please proceed. Indeed. With speed.
BETHANY: Jonas.
JONAS: Sorry. Your forgiveness, I plead.
BETHANY: (Sigh.) Whatever this is, I don’t deserve it. Anyways, the last story, maybe forever,
definitely for today. There was a planet. Civilization Class of roughly 18 or so. Very temperate
planet. Safe galactic neighborhood. Great place for a species to grow up, just picturesque. They
were just beginning to reach that point where they understood that their art was giving them a
window into their collective unconsciousness, and a cultural revolution of sorts was beginning to
take place. In many ways it was….not a utopia, but maybe utopia-adjacent? It was darn close,
closer than most species get, especially at that age and Civilization Class. Environment was
protected, art was valued, education was encouraged and supported, and all of this was
orchestrated under the protection of a global government, led by the ever-so-rare benevolent
dictatorship-turned-monarchy.
JONAS: Sounds lovely.
BETHANY: Yeah, thus me saying “picturesque”, do you mind?
Quick silence.
BETHANY: Thank you. Now, this cultural revolution - people were putting a lot of stock in art. Art
was seen almost as an extension of science, probing the natural unconscious mind into action
through instinctual creative behavior refined by time and culture, you get where I’m going. Their
most popular medium for art was writing.
JONAS: Really?
BETHANY: Look, I said utopia-adjacent. They didn’t make all the right choices. So yeah, the
dummies picked writing. They called it something like “The Art Within The Words” or “The
Beauty Inside The Letters” or, I don’t know, “Sentences That Make Me Feel All Tingly” or
something, I don’t know, that’s not the point. That’s just background. The point is, people really
were into art, and they liked writing best. Not all of them, of course, but just, you know, generally.
And of all the writers their favorite was this total hermit who lived alone, didn’t talk to anybody,
said she had an alien son, crazy stuff. This hermit wrote the most beautiful, insightful,
heart-wrenching, fictional short stories that you’ve ever heard. She was able to capture the
essence of the darkest parts of what it meant to be alive in an unfeeling universe and present
them in such a way that others were able to accept pieces of themselves that they had ignored
or even hated previously. A short story collection from this hermit was as good as, like, 5 years
of therapy.
JONAS: Seriously?
BETHANY: They did not have good therapists. So this author had a new book coming out.
Counting pre-orders and day-of purchases, over 82% of the planet had read a copy of that book
within two days of its release.
JONAS: Sounds like a healthy world.
BETHANY: You’d think so. But, unfortunately, through a random combination of alignment
mishaps and unfortunate typos from the publishing company, it seemed like she was implying
that the ritual murder of people you care for was the true essence of love.
Silence.
JONAS: I’m gonna guess that didn’t end well.
BETHANY: Most people didn’t last though the end of the week.
JONAS: They really all just…. All the people they loved?
BETHANY: No, some fought back, but you have to understand they were very convincing typos.
JONAS: Wow. Just...Just wow.
BETHANY: Complete bloodbath. Shame too, that species really had a chance to make it big.
All that happened nearly 3,000 years before we incorporated the planet. I think the species
lasted another couple hundred, but they faded out pretty quick.
JONAS: Not surprising.
BETHANY: Yeah, it was probably kind of a depressing place to live. And with that, I have fulfilled
my obligation, and I’m free again. Jonas, at certain points this has all approached being
bearable, but let’s leave it a good long while before we do this again.
JONAS: Wait, you can’t just leave it like that!
BETHANY: Oh, I can’t, huh?
JONAS: No! It’s not satisfy--

END