Lif-e.af/ter Ep. 4

It's a crisp autumn morning. And I'm scared. Are we almost there? Approaching the lobby. Shirt? It's blue. Short sleeves. You're in my pocket now under the jacket. You need to buy more shirts with short pockets. You can't wear that one every day. But at least this time, I'm not doing it alone. Are you saying that as my wife? Or as my co-conspirator. Morning, Mr. Barnes. Morning. Little from column A, little from column B. Liking that new ID card. Loving it.

Hey, Task Force Ross. Moving on up. Yeah. Is want me to deliver stuff. No, you're gonna go in there and come out just like them. Grimace face, always speed walking, looking like you have a stick to strike. Can't wait. I'm seated. Phone in pocket? Yeah. What about that list? What about that list of keywords? From yesterday that Dash gave you. Here, why? That's our way into the restricted suite world goodies are.

Hold it up like you're reminding yourself what's on it. You don't trust me to just remember them all? I have all these fun ways I could answer that. Oh okay. Can you read it okay? All done. Really? Digital Phantom. Super memorizing powers. And uh what now? Just do your stuff. Like it was a normal day. So I do. I tag and route various records of embezzlement, profiles of voice tree employees.

Even one stray report about a man wearing headphones who was killed after walking onto a freeway. I wish I'd known how hot and dangerous your job was back in the day. Right? I'm able to forget what it is that I'm doing. Crap. Crap. It's your boss. Sing something. What? Sings something. A song. You must know at least one song. Camptown ladies sing a song duda do-da Camptown ladies all five miles long. Billy Joel over here, huh? Yeah. I'm an uptown girl. Oh my

God. Shut up. I want to enter you both in an uncool-off, but I wouldn't know who to put money on. Can I say something weird? What are we even calling weird at this point? I like having a project with you. Okay, yes. That is weird. But me too. You can say it. Say what? That we never had something like this when you were alive because all I wanted to do when I got home was get online. Why would I say that? Because that's what you would normally say right now.

Well, maybe I don't want to say things like like like that to you anymore. It happened again, didn't it? Does it hurt when it happens? No, it's just really embarrassing. You just typed one. One what? One of Dash's keywords. Industrial. Oh. Yeah. Which means. Yeah. Uh haven't used this printer in as long as I can remember. Okay, it's all here. Let's roll. Who's this for? I'm sorry. Who are we doing this for, do you know? Not a clue. All I know is this is a big chance to get in good with Sasha.

I say we take it. When does it stop though? What? Getting in good with her. Do we have to just keep doing this forever? No, I promise. There is an ending. And I think you're gonna love it.

Here's hoping the card still works. You'll have to take the earbuds out. It'll seem weird back there. But how will I know what anything you can get in Dr. Roth's office? Photos? Video anything. Why particularly her? I don't know. Alright. Earbuds out. You got this. It's not how my colleagues imagine it. No manmen, no Playboy Mansion, no men in black. Just corridors, offices and conference rooms.

What the hell do you think you're doing in hand? Oh Mr. McLeod, I'm uh I What What? I'm I'm Nah, I'm just I'm just messing. I'm just being a dick. Oh. No, I'm being a dick. What's up, smoking, buddy? Uh nothing. Just uh Nothing. Although actually, now that I think about it, what the hell are you doing back here? I have a uh They said to bring this report to Doctor Rolf. Oh, well

In that case, let me escort you. Oh, I'm sure that I can find it on. Nope. It's your turn for the big question. Big question? How many laptops does one person need to do their job? How many laptops? One person, one job. How many? Uh I guess it depends on the job. I guess it does. Hey Raph, did you order delivery?

Did I you mean like food?'Cause I don't think that they can deliver it back here, can they, right? Sorry. Not food. Oh. Some guy with a piece of paper. I look past Doctor Roth into her office. Seven apparently is the answer. Seven laptops. Anyway, I gotta go shave some months off my life. Oh, you know, I would so enjoy it if you didn't smoke. Sure. But you know who wouldn't enjoy it? I'm sorry, I was supposed to Hi! You wanna come in?

Sorry, I guess I'm just not totally set up yet. You um you look pretty set up. There's dry erase boards on every wall, covered in notes, several pieces of equipment I couldn't identify if my life depended on it, and of course the seven laptops, all of which appear to be running programs involving different diagrams of

Are those trains? No tea. At my regular job I have tea. Like green tea for guests, but not here. This isn't your regular job? Oh, no, no. Normally I'm upstate, the Innovation Center in Niski Yuna. Do you know Doctor Kalpana Singh? From like All the news last year. She works there too. She has coffee in her office. I have green tea in mine, so people visit us based on I guess just how sleepy they are.

Ah And her face blanches. You caught me. Idiot. No, no, I wasn't I I it's just by accident. I didn't Two seconds and I'm already openly gawking at state secrets. You like totally caught me working my day job on government time. Your day job. I was just finishing it up, I swear. I just had like five simulations left. It's just Bryn called me out of the blue, all like your nation needs you. It doesn't bother me. I'm just the guy who delivers the uh You won't tell anyone, right?

I promise. Like crush your heart? Honestly, no one here cares what I think. I do. I need to get my phone out. I need to take a picture, but she's looking at me. In that case, I uh I like your trains. Oh my god. Check this out. This is how I amuse myself. I made a sound effect. to go with this simulation. Uh sound All aboard That's great. I don't know if it's helping with the secrecy aspect. I know, I know, I know. I'm ridiculous. I just get excited, you know?

Are these like trains you're d designing or they're all one train. So this is seven views of the same train. Not of a train itself, but more of like Digital twin of a train. A digital twin? Can you imagine that we actually invented trains? That cheers me up sometimes when I'm down. That we invented trays. Yes, and it should cheer you up too. And we got better and better at making them. We made them do more and last longer. But you know, they're not perfect. We don't make perfect things.

I guess not. And sometimes not perfect things break down, right? On a bridge with lots of people with supplies. And it's hard to know when that breakdown's gonna happen because you're not predicting one thing, you're predicting the interaction of like thousands of moving parts. So don't travel by trains, is that what you're But but but but but but what if you had an exact replica of that train that only existed in digital space?

Where you like plugged in every detail of everything you've ever observed about all those moving parts, how they interact, how they degrade, and you simulate all that on your virtual train. Only on fast forward, so you can see years in seconds? You're saying the digital train would break down like a real train? And because it's digital, nobody gets hurt. And then you can warn the real train before the same thing happens to it.

It's like having a time machine, only with really informed pattern extrapolation instead of time travel.

So really not like a time machine. Who are you? What? I d I just realized I had no idea who you are. Oh, um I'm Ross. I I'm Ross Barnes. I'm with the records management group. Oh, yeah, I totally get reports from you. And this is Oh a a report. Agent Dash said I should bring it straight to you. Like on paper? On foot? And finally, finally she takes the report, walks away a little bit, flips it open. And turns her back.

The Easter one? Oh I take my phone out. My fingers are trembling. I keep entering my unlocking code wrong. Where's the camera app? Where is the camera app? There's like nothing here that's relevant to I get the app open and turn my phone to the computer screens and all of them go into sleep mode. Oh simulations run now for all that

Sweet sweet data. But what I see next, even with everything else, is still the weirdest part of the day so far, is that the sleep mode image on every single one of her laptops is a different pro wrestler. What are you doing? Yeah, yeah, I remembered I was waiting to hear about this thing. I'm turning off camera mode, bringing up um what?

Um texts. Just this it's a friend who's who's gonna text me.'Cause they're like crazy paranoid about smartphones out back here? Oh yeah. Yeah, I'm sure.'Cause of of of of like photos and and videos? I mean it's okay with me. Where I work people have them out all the time, but here it's like I'll uh I'll put it away right now. Dash didn't say anything else about why he wanted you to bring me this? Just the keyword. Industrial. So weird.

Nice meeting you anyway. Oh yeah, for sure. Um you too Damn it. We'll get another shot. We will not get another shot. You heard her. It was a mix-up. They won't send me again. Agent Dash didn't think it was a mix-up. They'll downgrade my card. I won't get the info, and Sasha'll take you away again. Excuse me. Mr. Barnes! Hi. Everyone in this building knows what you have been through.

Thank you. But you really cannot be yelling in the halls and you cannot be yelling at night, okay? I mean we're all very sorry for what happened, but it's it's been eight months. Are you kidding me? Um yes. You'll try to be aware. It's been eight months. What's the magic number of months when it becomes

Chill chill chill chill that your wife died. Fine, I'm just gonna ignore her. They've always hated me in this building. Nice to see that's unchanged. I always wondered if they heard your voice posts about them. Nobody knows how to deal with a person who doesn't choke down every single emotion. They just come at you with this epic passive aggression. Please try to be aware.

Weird. What is? This part's usually directed at me. Which part? The recriminations. You usually don't project them outward like that. We haven't had a fight since you came back. Do you want to have a fight? I mean, you have everything you need, right? In your voice tree posts. There's no battery park, there's no key. There's tons of Ross let me down again you could use. Where is this coming from?

Just tell me that I screwed up out there. Tell me I wimped out. Tell me I should have gone off on her. I should have stood up for you. That eight months is nowhere close to enough to forget someone like you. Tell me I should have done what you would have done. Is that what is that what you want? You don't just want me to You really need that part too? What?

If someone like watched the last five minutes in this room yelling at my phone, it would look like you were having a fight over the phone. It would look totally normal.

Ross. You go into sleep mode on the Sleep mode. Wanna catch me up here? The problem isn't that my phone was in my hand. It's that Octavia didn't know why it was there. Okay. Octavia's private sector, right? She's not in the game. She won't think twice about my phone in my hand, as long as there's a believably harmless reason for it to be there. As long as it looks totally normal. Got a believably harmless reason in mind? You said it yourself. Sleep mode.

Still dil dil dil, not not not seeing it. You know what I saw? I spent half the night practicing, closing one app and opening the other without looking, over and over again till I can do it without looking. There he is folks. Man a mystery. Oh yeah, yeah. Good morning to you two It was almost lunch before I finally typed one of Octavia's keywords. There it is. Okay. Is everything ready? Yep. Then let's crush this.

Doctor Rolf? Just a sec. She's dancing between laptops, sometimes stretching her arms to work two at a time. Oh, can we do Octavia instead of Doctor Roth? I'd love that tons better. Sure. So you're totally here to confuse me with another report, right?

Did Agent Dash not uh clarify? I haven't even like seen him in a few days. Um I'm sorry, do you want me to I'm thinking now that there's two, maybe I can study them for commonalities. It'll be like a mystery. Um Actually, and this is totally weird, so you can say no, but I was actually going to ask you if you wouldn't mind clearing up a mystery for me. Um yeah. Hit me. Let's problem solve. Ah, it's actually I downloaded it on my phone. Can you see the screen okay? I totally can.

So some uh distant cousin of mine put this on Facebook and it kinda blew my mind. And then I remembered that you had all the wrestler pictures on your laptops, so Oh, sure. It does not look good. Have you seen this before? But this is wrong. Her eyes are supposed to light up. She's supposed to start babbling excitedly while I quietly take video. Instead. Of course, this is Mojo Knight's cannonball onto Five Fingers Phil at Off the Ropes 2000. Okay. His classic finishing move, it's legendary.

Looks like he's jumping off what? Like a ten foot ladder? Onto a man lying on a table so hard he makes the table break. Now I know people say that wrestling is faked, but How do you think that? Now I'm giving her my phone. But she's so sad. I like to know how things work, you know? Kind of how I got into cloning tech in the first place, but with this. I try not to know. Meaning wrestling? I sorta came to it secondhand. Second hand? After my wife passed.

It was her thing. I decided to I guess inherit it. Oh I am I didn't know. And God forgive me, I still need that phone. But she's staring at it like it's a window to the past. She grew up on it. Then she never grew out of it. Maybe everyone's like that. My friends still watch Star Trek. I'm sorry, may I What? Um my own. Oh yeah, sure, your phone. I wouldn't watch it with her when she was alive. I always went into another room.

Totally stupid. Should have sat right next to her there and asked a billion questions, but I resented it so much, you know. Her eyes are downcast. She's looking away, inside herself. And this is what I wanted, but not like this. But I love it now. It used to be noise, but now it is drama. But it's this or nothing. So just like I practice. Without looking, I open the camera app and quietly move it around at waist level, trying to capture as much of the room as I can.

I have my favorites, you know. I cheer when they win and I rant when they lose, just all by myself. I must have the whole room by now, right? So I can look at that video like a scientist and be all like Well, actually, Mojo Knight flipped over, landed in a shock-absorbing roll from his shoulders to his back, barely landed on five fingers at all, and the table was probably breakaway material anyway. But I don't. Cause I'm not a scientist when I watch wrestling.

I just think Mojo Knight's cannonballs are awesome.

Like she was awesome. Hey Tav, I'm gonna borrow you for a second. Shit. Hey Chief. How long has Brynn Cutler been there? You know my title's not cheap. Right. Oh, yeah, I know. It's just yeah, fun. I slide my phone back into my pocket. I need you to take a look at something for me. This might be our big break. Should I leave?

I'm sure I'm not supposed to be hearing this. We might have cracked life actors remote communications. For real? We might have found one of their towers. That's incredible. Which means whoever they've got on the inside, we're this close to finding them. Hey Barnes. Yeah. It's so weird that you're still here. Oh. Sorry. Sorry. As soon as I'm back in the main office, I can't get the earbuds in my ears fast enough.

Charlie, we have to figure something out fast. Charlie? Charlotte Castor is taking a little break. I'll be helping you now. But where is she? You should go outside. Did you hear what she said? You should go outside and wait in the area in front of you. of your building. I need quick turnaround on some report. Just ten minutes doable. You should go outside. Right now. I'm I'm sorry. I have a uh I have a thing. Excuse me? What the hell am I doing out here?

Hey, nice day, huh? What? Yeah, I like late fall. This is exactly my temperature. It's early sunset. It's uh it's perfect. Yeah, yeah, it's uh I'm sorry, I have to um you know, I mean it's not the same since my girlfriend died. What? Well it was her favorite time of year too. It now it just feels kinda wrong. Here. And he puts a piece of paper in my hand. Oh, you better move fast because lunch hour will be over before you know it. An address?

He's right. Lunch is more than half over before I even get there. Hi Ross. I don't recognize her at first. The last time I saw her, she looked like she'd slept and showered recently. Why is it on us to please people who still have their someone? Why is it our job to make them feel better about us? And she wasn't wearing Weird oversized headphones. Shannon? It's okay. She said you were coming. Come on in.

Bags and containers everywhere. Like she's been living on takeout. We should be able to knock this out fast. May I see your phone? How have you been? May I see your phone? Do you need like a May I see your phone? Are you okay? Ross, Sasha says you should go ahead and let me see your phone. Okay. Here it is. Great, Ross. I'll go ahead and get this synced up. She connects my phone to a laptop with a cable.

Ten days is an awfully short time to go from miserable and elegant to filthy and this way we can copy that video without your bosses peeking in until we know if we've been been been compromised or not. Win win. Shannon, do you remember our date? Sure. You do. You you remember our conversation? Well, you know, gotta clear out some memory for the new stuff, right? Life's all about new experiences. I'm sorry, I don't think I have anything to offer you. There's water in the sink, sink, sink.

Are you alright? Oh, fine, fine, fine. You know me. I always bounce back. Better than ever. Hear that? That's the sound of a job well done. Let me just get your phone for you. Sure that you're on. Oh shit. I'm fine. I'm super. Here's your phone. Thanks, Ross. Okay. Shannon, do you... You seem like you need sleep. That's a great idea. And I'll get right on it. Have a great day, Ross. I bet you will. You can make this day whatever you want it to be.

Let me think, let me think. Appointment that ran over? Doctor's appointment, that's it. I forgot to clear it ahead of time. Must have slipped my mind. When I get to my floor, my brain's racing so hard and fast. It takes me a minute to realize everyone's staring at me. Ross. Um, this gentleman is. Three men I've never seen before are waiting for me. Dark suits, cold eyes. Ross Barnes? What is this about? Please just positively identify yourself. Are you Ross Barnes?

Yes, yes, I am, but I think please come with us, sir, right now. Where? You'll find out when we get there. Uh just let me get my Uh no, no. You're not getting anything, sir. You're coming with us right now. So this way.