Synopsis[]
Full transcript available here.
The Pine Guard meet the voice on the other end of the prophetic phone calls, and receive a new, even more dire warning of impending disaster. Duck makes some friends in the forest. Aubrey eyes some eyeglasses. Ned hits the brakes.
It's the afternoon after the fateful Pizza Hut Incident, and the three of them are standing in the Eastwood Campground and RV Park. There is one RV parked there - an ancient, corrugated beast of a Winnebago - and it's pretty isolated since it is the dead of winter and most people aren't camping in this part of the woods anyway.
Duck goes up and taps on the window, but just as he taps it, the door swings open, and they are blasted with a fleet of heat from the space heaters inside as they see the RV's inhabitant; a gaunt, wrinkly but young-looking man with short silver and black hair wearing a tank-top, jeans, a orange crystal around his neck, and, most glaring of all, a pair of red, reflective shades.
Indrid: Okay, go ahead. Aubrey/Indrid: [simultaneously] Uh, where are your wings? Indrid: Obviously, you can’t see them right now because I’m wearing my disguise. Would you like to see my wings? Aubrey/Indrid: Yes. Indrid: I don’t know you very well, so no, not quite yet. Ned: Pardon my rude friends, hello, I’m— Ned/Indrid: Ned Friendly Chicane. Indrid: Um, yes, I know who all of you are— conversation is difficult for me because I’m always going to be just a little bit ahead. Um, but if you— Aubrey/Indrid: What am I gonna say now? Ah, nice, nice. Indrid: So, um, yeah, come on in, we have important things to discuss, and not much time to discuss them, if my estimations are correct.
Before they go in, Aubrey draws them aside and conspires to steal Indrid's glasses, somehow, in order to fulfill the "seer's spectacles" part of Heathcliff's bounty list. Duck is not on board.
They go into Indrid's extremely hot, extremely messy camper; there are dirty dishes everywhere, cups full of old nog, a map of Kepler pinned to the wall with dozens and dozens of pins, and a handful of sketches pinned to one wall. Indrid reveals that he can see the future, "in a manner of speaking," and tells them about the extent of his skill.
Indrid: So, I was the court seer when I was still in Sylvain— this was well over a century ago, so it’s been some time. And the power that I developed there, thanks to the powers that I inherited from Sylvane, were the powers of clairvoyancey [sic]. [...] Imagine that you’re sitting in front of a big wall of televisions, hundreds of them, and there are different television shows on those screens all starting at different times. That’s what I see, potential futures. Sometimes I see patterns [...] but, something is making the patterns change more quickly than even I can track. Something— something unnatural.
Indrid says that at one point, he came to Earth to try and find a solution for difficulties that Sylvain had been experiencing. He eventually fell in love with the world and its people, and did his best to protect them; despite his best efforts, though, he wasn't exactly listened to, and his best efforts went ignored. Indrid has largely turned away from the soothsaying business but is returning to the field - in an indirect way - because the latest run of misfortune plaguing Kepler is, most likely, the result of someone or something changing fate. While he explains this to the Pine Guard, he is going through his drawings, crumpling some up seemingly at random. The last remaining drawing is of the funicular train, that connects the two halves of Kepler; he pulls it off the wall.
Indrid: Okay. The funicular that connects topside and riverside is about to come crashing down the mountain, slamming into town, and destroying the base station. There are three passengers on it right now. They’ll all be killed, and an engineer at the base station will be injured as well, but he’ll pull through. Good news, though. You have six minutes this time.
The three drive to the topside station of the funicular train to try and stop it. Among the cars, Duck sees a Monongahela Forest Service truck that belongs to Juno Devine. Aubrey scans the area for anything unusual, using her third eye, but sees absolutely nothing - but she does get a splitting headache, like a stabbing pain in her eyes, that quickly vanishes. Duck runs into the station and sees a bougie couple making out on the tram car, as well as Juno Divine about to step onto the car. He tries to stop her; Aubrey does as well, hopping over the turnstile, and Ned placates the engineer in charge of the funicular by working out a co-promotion for the funicular and the Cryptonomica. Duck talks to Juno and tries to get her to not go on the tram, but Juno sees right through him.
Duck: Aw, ugh, Juno, this is so embarrassing. Um, last week...uh, my truck got beat up, and I—I had to take it over to Whistle’s...and he, while he was fixin’ it up, I had to borrow yours to run out...uh, to do a check on...a...body of water...in...the...tree...zone. Forest. Fuck! It was a body of water in the tree zone? Juno: Okay -- Duck: And I had to check on it in your car, and when I—I drove your car without asking, and I think I left...my...pants—no. Wallet? Money. I left my wallet in your truck, and I was wondering if you could go look for it real quick. Juno: All right, so that was all lies. Duck—yeah, we’ve worked together for quite some time there, buster. I know when you’re pullin’ a fib.
While Duck is failing at lying, Aubrey braves the canoodle-storm and tries to convince the bougie couple to get off as well. She pretends to flub a magic trick and lights the man's sleeve on fire, shoving them out of the car towards Duck and Juno, and stays in the car to investigate with both normal sight and her third eye. At first, she doesn't see anything.
Griffin: You look up and down the track, you take a look at sort of all the mechanisms of the tram, and you don’t necessarily see anything threatening at all. And then, flakes slowly start to appear outside. And with that, your third eye, it just kinda st—it just kinda goes wild. It looks like all of these flakes are kind of glowing, as if it’s all magic. All of this stuff that is falling from the sky is definitely magical in nature. You also get, uh, you sense a presence out, back out the front door of the station that you are in. You can’t, you know, see this presence, you just kind of sense this, uh, magic power, presence outside. And then, you can see through the open wall of the station that the storm outside quickly subsides. And now you can see the threat.
The brake pad is corroded, and a bolt in it is starting to work its way loose. The engineer sees that the brakes are about to go, and attempts to warn the engineer at the station down the mountain, but his radio is dead.
[Money Zone]
Duck goes off to focus on the weird presence they noticed; he doesn't see anything magical, but he does notice some hoofprints in the snow leading into the woods and decides to follow them. Ned decides to drive down the hill to warn the station at the other end, but there is no road, so he is forced to drive straight down the cliff. As he heads to his car, Aubrey attempts to knock the tram car over with a gust of wind so that it gets knocked off the rails and goes into the trees; it gets out of range before she can, though, and tries to get the engineer to warn his co-worker Mark at the other end.
Duck has been following the footprints of the mysterious figure, and finally catches up with it in a clearing. The figure is holding an ax with the Monongahela National Forest logo on it. Duck pulls out Beacon, catches the figure's ax swing with his sword, and knocks the figure to the ground.
Ned and Aubrey drive down the hill in Ned's Lincoln, dodging trees and rocks and debris, with the soundtrack to the film Live and Let Die playing in the background. Ned decides to pull his car in front of the tram to stop it from hitting the station at the bottom; he succeeds, but the counterweight for the tram is coming up relatively fast, so he and Aubrey have to bail.
Clint: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! I pull the Live and Let Die 8-track out of the 8-track player, because that is irreplaceable.
The car is smashed between the tram and the counterweight, and the whole mess skids to a stop in front of the unharmed station. In the woods: Duck has disarmed the figure and realized that it's a goatman, looking very similar to Vincent. The goatman doesn't seem capable of human speech, but it bleats, and two more goatmen come out of the bushes, holding a shovel and a large pair of shears. Duck tries to reassure them that he's not going to hurt the first goatman.
Duck: Hold up, hold up. Y’all don’t know me— listen, I would not just kill your friend lying here unarmed on the ground like this. Beacon: But I most definitely would.
Featured NPCs[]
- Beacon
- Billy
- Indrid Cold
- Juno Divine
Featured Locations[]
| TAZ Amnesty Episodes |
|---|
| Setup
Hunt for the Beast: Hunt for the Water: Hunt for the Calamity: Hunt for the Countenance: Finale: Italicized episodes are Lunar/Lodger Interludes. |