22:18 <Crion> Saturday comes before you know it. Or maybe precisely when you do. 22:19 <Crion> The reports of the virus are increasing, but nothing's locked down yet, so you're free to make a social call out in the county. 22:19 <VoxPVoxD> If only we lived in Italy. 22:20 <Crion> Lauren was considering making some guac to go with the chips and cold ones you're buying from the store. ...But she quickly decides that's a failed plan. 22:21 <Crion> Difficult to fuck up guacamole! But you're on a timer, and she's nervous, and so it goes in the garbage and you can grab something from the store. 22:24 <VoxPVoxD> Probably wanna go for something light and bright anyway, like a chunky salsa verde. Whole Foods in the Inner Harbor has some really nice ones. And beer, yes. Stewart got a 6er of the Miller High Life he remembers Stu drinking, and that Golden Monkey stuff he knows Lauren likes. 22:25 <Crion> Whew. 22:25 <Crion> Then it's off to scenic Thistle, Maryland. 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart remembers the way. 22:31 <Crion> They're told to arrive around six PM, at which point the carnitas should have been going for hours and be vaguely close to ready. Lauren will dress to whatever Stewart's preferred level of decorum is; how's he playing it? 22:33 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart is dressed nice but not fancy - shirt, slacks, dark sneakers that aren't in regular walking-around rotation. Not the tux he's gonna have to get for prom; closer to the way he dresses when he and Lauren go out and have date nights. 22:34 <VoxPVoxD> That's what this is, basically. A double date night. 22:35 <Crion> Fair enough. It's just slightly too early in the season for a sundress, so Lauren will go with a more winter-appropriate number and leggings. 22:36 <VoxPVoxD> Oh man. Hopefully this virus stuff blows over before sundress season comes back. 22:36 <VoxPVoxD> It's gotta, right? 22:37 <Crion> Well, you've heard the doctor's thoughts on that. By proxy, at least. Speaking of...when you knock, it's not Stu who answers. 22:37 <Crion> How does Stewart remember Maura? 22:42 <VoxPVoxD> A lot of ways. He remembers her AIM font (black Courier, so it looked like it came from a typewriter). He remembers the way she'd toss her hair when she was annoyed but didn't want to say so. He remembers all the times they'd hang out to do homework and end up playing video games. He's seen the wedding picture, but in his mind's eye she's still seventeen - hair just long enough to ponytail, 22:42 <VoxPVoxD> wall to wall sweatshirts, and the curled mouth of someone either grossed out by or contemplating something. 22:44 <Crion> She looks like that still, almost. Almost. Older now, though, and tired. Her eyes widen and then scrunch up when she sees Stewart, and she just pauses there for a moment on the threshold and then says, "Jesus." 22:45 <Crion> "Hi, Stewart." 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks briefly relieved, then briefly mortified, and it settles out into a kind of ruefulness. "Hey, Maur. Nice place." 22:47 <VoxPVoxD> He doesn't quite sound like he's gonna cry. But it's the color the sky turns before the water starts falling. 22:48 <Crion> She looks like she wants to go to hug him for a minute, then decides against it, because -- "And you're Lauren. I'm Maura." "Hi! Nice to meet you." -- and then she's inviting them inside, and sort of scuttling towards the kitchen, where Stu is frowning at a slow cooker. 22:50 <VoxPVoxD> "Hey, Stu!" Any sign of the dog? 22:52 <Crion> Beau is splayed out on a rug -- looks like his designated rug -- near the back door. Good news on your way in; no Park Ranger vehicles, and no howling. 22:53 <Crion> "Hey there, Stewart." He's frowning at a screen that he's definitely having trouble using. "Babe, we started this at nine, right?" 22:53 <Crion> Maura: "Yes." 22:53 <VoxPVoxD> Nice. Sounds like the rangers, and Cuth and Kolsch and the kid Two-Tone are taking care of business. 22:53 <Crion> "So it should be--" 22:53 <Crion> "Still an hour left." 22:54 <Crion> Stu: "You got them cold ones? Let me get a bucket and some ice." 22:54 <Crion> This is rather easy, because he's got a bucket with ice already in it in the freezer. 22:54 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart hoists the beers. "Right here." Smart planning. 22:55 <VoxPVoxD> Did we overdress? Underdress? 22:55 <Crion> "Let me just get some fresh ice on there to top it off...and we're good to go." Maura rolls her eyes at the concept of 'fresh ice,' but it's to herself, and with a smile. 22:55 <Crion> Maura's dressed about where you two are; Stu is in his ubiquitous jeans and plaid shirt. 22:57 <VoxPVoxD> The number of tiny stinging things embedded in these totally normal, casual interactions makes Stewart feel like he's rolling slowly on a bed of nails. Anyway, Stewart doesn't intend to permit himself to drink tonight. He needs to drive, for one, but also... he'd rather be sharp than comfortable. 22:58 <VoxPVoxD> Less can go wrong that way. 22:59 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart does make a point to introduce Lauren to the dog. "That's Beau. Beau, this is Lauren." Might not even be awake; it's the principle of the thing. 22:59 <VoxPVoxD> It occurs to Stewart that hobs have really distorted the way he interacts with animals. 22:59 <VoxPVoxD> ...and elevators. 23:00 <Crion> Lauren, very seriously: "Hello, Beau." He was asleep, but now he's awake and new people are here, so he's on his feet in a flash. 23:01 <Crion> Maura: "So. I. Ahem. You look..." 23:01 <Crion> Stu: "I think Beau needs to go out in the backyard." 23:02 <Crion> Lauren: "Why, I'd love to." 23:02 <VoxPVoxD> You sons of bitches. 23:02 <Crion> Stu sort of frowns, startled, before he gets it. 23:05 <Crion> Lauren will give Stewart a look before they depart; one chance for him to overrule it. 23:05 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart's looking everywhere but at anyone. No overruling comes. 23:07 <Crion> Maura just kind of leans against the kitchen island, doing the same thing. There's a clock somewhere ticking. 23:10 <VoxPVoxD> While running his fingers over the piano, just past the kitchen door in the living room, he says, "I spent a lot of time thinking about what you're supposed to say in this situation." 23:10 <VoxPVoxD> "I got nothing." 23:11 <Crion> Maura, sadly: "Yeah." 23:11 <VoxPVoxD> "This really is a nice place." 23:12 <Crion> Maura: "Is it? I'm hardly ever here." After a pause. "Yes, I guess it is." 23:12 <Crion> "Stu said I shouldn't ask how this is even possible, since you might not be allowed to tell me, and so that leaves me saying, what? You look great? You do look great." 23:12 <Crion> "Both of you do." 23:13 <Crion> "But you don't look people in the eye much anymore." 23:15 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I look a lot of people in the eye. Got me in trouble once, actually. There's nothing I'm not allowed to tell you. Nothing you'd care to ask, anyway. It's one of those, what do you want to ask versus what do you want to know situations." 23:15 <VoxPVoxD> "Here's one thing I want to know: what kind of medicine do you do? I know you're a doctor, but... there's a lot of different kinds." 23:18 <Crion> "I'm an ER doctor. Thought about being a trauma surgeon, but decided I don't like surgeons very much." 23:20 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart finally brings himself to look Maura in the eye, and for a moment it feels to her like the whole world's joined him. 23:21 <Crion> Dr. Maura Barclay -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUukUK-WS-o Count the years, you always knew it; strike a match, go on and do it. 23:22 <VoxPVoxD> Ah shit. 23:22 <Crion> She looks away and shivers. 23:23 <VoxPVoxD> Ah shit. 23:24 <Crion> "It's a hard job, but it's worth it. Most days." 23:24 <Crion> "About to get a lot worse." 23:25 <VoxPVoxD> "Cause of the virus? Are you gonna— they're taking precautions, right? At the hospital?" 23:25 <Crion> Maura: "Not yet, they're not. They won't until it's too late. Hospital administrators, right?" 23:26 <Crion> "No one's gonna do shit until it's too late. And then there's that asshole in the White House." 23:26 <VoxPVoxD> "I literally could not believe that. Like, for multiple days. Donald Trump? The wrestler?" 23:27 <VoxPVoxD> "But eventually it sunk in that every single news site couldn't be sustaining a long-form bit." 23:27 <Crion> That gets a snort-laugh. "The guy from Home Alone 2!" 23:28 <VoxPVoxD> "Old Biff Tannen!" 23:29 <Crion> She laughs and leans against the island again, taking a beer from the ice bucket. "God, we watched those together, didn't we?" 23:31 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart turns almost entirely around, as if he's inspecting the piano. His voice is thick. "Yeah. Yeah, we did." 23:33 <Crion> Quieter now: "Why'd you go?" 23:35 <VoxPVoxD> After he dries his eyes he turns back around. This part he knows exactly how to explain. "Do you remember that cartoon Freakazoid? It always ran next to Animaniacs." 23:35 <Crion> "Yeah." 23:42 <VoxPVoxD> "It was real late at night, and I was scrolling through little flash games so I didn't have to go to bed. Like where you pop balloons with darts or try to escape a puzzle room and all the directions are in Japanese. I clicked on one that was labeled the Infinite Attention Machine." 23:43 <VoxPVoxD> "It was a chatbot, basically. Like SmarterChild or that one where you played 20 questions against a database. So I figured I'd goof around, see how good it was. Maybe I could get it to generate a funny answer to something. Dumb stuff. I had a midterm I didn't want to go to and it made sense at the time." 23:44 <VoxPVoxD> "But I was messing around with it and I realized it was just, like, harvesting personal information. Asking me questions like where I was from, how old I was, where I went to school. Were my parents alive." 23:45 <Crion> Maura just stares and continues drinking. 23:48 <VoxPVoxD> "I couldn't bring myself to stop answering. The questions got weirder. What's the most I ever bled at one time? What happened in my last nightmare? My last daydream. My last sexual fantasy. It asked me the worst I'd ever hurt someone." 23:48 <VoxPVoxD> "It asked me the worst I'd ever wanted to." 23:50 <VoxPVoxD> "And I'm just answering everything. I don't know why. It was like an ARG I wanted to see the end of. It was like a confessional with a priest I'd never have to look in the eye." 23:54 <VoxPVoxD> "Then it asks me something that freaks me the fuck out and I physically pull the surge protector out of the wall. Tower, monitors, speakers, everything on that circuit." 23:54 <VoxPVoxD> "Computer stays on." 23:56 <Crion> Maura's silent. Not enraptured though; her eyes are tightening. Getting closer and closer to tears. 23:56 <VoxPVoxD> "Then the bot says, in all caps, DON'T INTERRUPT ME WHEN I AM SPEAKING. Then it says, I AM SPEAKING. Then it says, I A M." 23:57 <VoxPVoxD> "I get pulled in. I don't go through the monitor, like a portal. My face is just stuck to it. It's rocket-hot, burning white, and my face is stuck to it. Like shaving with a laundry iron. Like kissing the sun." 23:58 <VoxPVoxD> "My vision whites out, like when film overheats in a projector. When I regain consciousness I'm somewhere else. Somewhere you can't walk to. Somewhere you can only be led." 23:58 <VoxPVoxD> "Took me eleven years to get home." 23:59 <Crion> She opens her mouth to tell Stewart to stop just as it becomes clear the story is done. She runs her hand down her face. 23:59 <Crion> "Is it still out there?" 23:59 <Crion> "Like the wolves." 00:00 <VoxPVoxD> "Yeah. There are a lot of them. They're all different; they're all the same." 00:00 <Crion> "I've come to hate this world so much." 00:01 <Crion> A ragged sigh. "You see things in the ER. Things you can't explain. Then things you don't want to. Then things you ignore." 00:01 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Lot of anemics, I'm guessing." 00:05 <Crion> Maura: "Yes. And other things. People who go insane and walk off buildings. People left in psychotic fugues, that suddenly snap out of it in middle of being restrained. The coronor gets the worst, of course, but if tradition holds, a young woman will walk into the ER three nights from now with welts in the form of ritual markings all over her body, unable to remember the past week. They're 00:05 <Crion> from a video game that went out of print in 1993. We get one once a month, every month." 00:06 <Crion> "But what to do. Move to the country?" She laughs and reaches for another beer...then stops. 00:06 <Crion> "I shouldn't be having these anymore." 00:07 <Crion> Come to think of it, she's started to show. 00:07 <Crion> She's hiding it well with the dress, though. 00:07 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Stu told me. Congratulations." 00:08 <Crion> A faint smile. "Thank you. We'd been trying for so...you don't want to hear the details. How did you and Lauren meet? Stu said it was through work?" 00:10 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, at my second job. Lauren's the IT mentat and she broke me into the network and stuff. Then we started talking, then we started dating. Now we're, you know." 00:11 <Crion> "She seems nice." Maura looks out the window. "Good with the dog, at least." 00:11 <VoxPVoxD> "She's amazing. I'd be completely insane without her." 00:11 <VoxPVoxD> A mechanically supportable assertion! 00:12 <Crion> Sadly: "Yeah. I know the feeling." 00:12 <VoxPVoxD> "Even just the day job, like. I don't know if Stu told you what I do for money." 00:12 <Crion> Maura: "He was vague." 00:12 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I am a full-time Twitch streamer." 00:13 <Crion> That gets a blink, then another snort-laugh. "Like that purple haired guy in the Microsoft commercials?" 00:14 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "God I wish. That guy makes chief hospital administrator money." 00:15 <Crion> "So you...play video games all day?" 00:17 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Basically, yeah. It's a performance thing. People show up to see the game, to hear you talk about the game, and also just to interact with you. You pretty much have to be 'on' the entire time, cause whether and how much you get paid tracks directly with how many people you please and how well." 00:17 <VoxPVoxD> "But, you know, I'm not about to complain about my job to an ER doc married to a firefighter." 00:18 <Crion> "It's certainly more stable," says Maura. "This is the first time we've been home together in months. Though that'll be changing." 00:18 <Crion> For a number of reasons. 00:18 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Good time to take maternity leave, I imagine." 00:20 <Crion> "Yeah." She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. "The Stewart I knew...that's a shitty way to put it. When we knew each other -- not that -- no --" She stops and collects herself. "Being on-camera talent isn't ever where I'd imagined you'd end up. But it seems to work for you, and it's making you happy. So I'm happy for it." 00:21 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Somehow both the less rewarding and less ridiculous of my jobs." 00:22 <VoxPVoxD> "Can I ask you a question?" 00:22 <Crion> Maura: "You can." 00:23 <VoxPVoxD> "When did you figure it out?" 00:24 <Crion> Maura: "When he loved me back." 00:33 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart flinches like he's been burned. But he takes a step forward, and not back. "Of course I did." 00:34 <Crion> "Looking back...I know that now. But I didn't know it then. And it was a different thing." 00:35 <Crion> "I wish we'd had more time." 00:39 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Me too. But I think... given the circumstances, we've done very well for ourselves." 00:40 <Crion> She chuckles at that. "Yeah. ...Speaking of which, and this is awkward...Stu sort of related that we might be in uncharted waters with this pregnancy?" 00:41 <Crion> "If you know any prenatal care physicians that specialize in...you know." She waves a hand. "We might want to get in touch." 00:43 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Traditionally, people in Stu's situation are not supposed to be fertile. But there's a very notable exception. And yeah, I'm sure I know someone who can help, or just calm your nerves. That reminds me: if you're ever tiptoeing too far into the stuff nobody wants to think about, if you feel unsafe or if one of your patients or colleagues or whatever is in danger, or you think 00:43 <VoxPVoxD> something's up... tell me. Or have Stu tell me." 00:43 <VoxPVoxD> "This is kind of my field." 00:44 <Crion> Maura looks visibly relieved. "Well, I don't want to impose. But if it's just consulting a specialist..." 00:45 <Crion> She frowns. "What's the notable exception?" 00:46 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "True love is the root cause of all the miracles that matter." 00:46 <Crion> She blinks, and then laughs, then tears up a bit. "I..." 00:47 <Crion> "...Well if all the bad shit is real, I guess we deserve that one packaged with it." 00:48 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You said you've come to hate this world, and I get that. I really do. You're far from alone. But the more I experience, good and bad... the more I come to love it." 00:48 <Crion> Stu and Lauren are beginning to wander in now. 00:49 <VoxPVoxD> Right before they do: "Before I got taken, the only thing I'd ever loved was you." 00:49 <Crion> Maura: "Same. And in a way, it's still the same. Just a little different." 00:49 <Crion> Stu, opening the door. "The damn carnitas!" 00:49 <Crion> "They should be about done." 00:50 <Crion> NEXT WEEK: About a boat