Episode Five

Last resort contains adult themes and language.

Listener discretion is advised. Can I help you? I'm here to see Catherine Lee. Your name? Michelle Yugubian.

Is that with one eye or two? One.

“Okay, Catherine's in a meeting right now.”

Can I take a message? No thanks. Miss. Hey. You can't do that.

It's okay. I'm her guy, no.

He'll definitely be home for your niece's graduation.

Sorry, Kat. She just barged in. We need to talk about your badge. You know what, guys? I actually have a doctor's appointment they got moved.

Can we pick this up tomorrow? No. Where are you? Great. Can it be in touch?

Hold my calls? If you say so. Would you like to sit? I'm worried, Kat. I'm legit freaked out.

Why?

Have you spoken to Nikki?

Nikki? Yeah. A couple of days ago, she sounded fine. She's not fine. You look pale, Michelle.

Can I get you a power bar? I don't want a fucking power bar. Okay. Calm down. You're not even listening.

I am. I am listening. Tell me what happened. It's complicated, Nikki needed a break. Even she knows that.

And I wonder if maybe your history is clouding your judgment a little bit. My history is telling me she's in trouble. I mean, she doesn't even care about anything she shouldn't have to. Not right now. Can you just tell me how to get to this place?

You can't. What? It's a private resort. Invitational. Well, this is an emergency.

“So do you remember that day on the roof?”

Me and Nikki and Delmore? If you're asking me to remember the worst birthday of my life, I'd rather not. She can be difficult, moody. We understand this. But you were wrong about something Michelle.

Something important that almost ended very badly. And if you can make a mistake like that, how do you know you're not making a mistake now? She said she was home. I'm sure it does feel like home.

She's been through hell. You think? And I blame myself actually. I should have seen it coming. Too many shoots, too many interviews, red carpets.

She's not a machine. I just want her back. Back safe, of course you do. We all do. But I promise she's in good hands.

Please don't mess this up for her. OK. OK. OK. Get some rest Michelle.

Take care of yourself. For Nikki's sake, if not your own. Call me if you hear from her. I will. Hello.

Phyllis? Catherine. Hey, so we might have a problem. Episode five. Pamela goes boating.

Hello? In here.

I'm looking for my jacket.

“Braun's with a high collar and all the pockets.”

How'd you get past the front desk? Oh, that guy knows me. He's like, that's Delmar, super attractive GF. Way too good for him. Must be a charity case.

OK, well, he's fired. Come on. Don't I have certain privileges? We ain't discuss it. I know I left it here.

MJ, we got a hat. What do you find anything? This closet's like a good will for rich hipsters. It made so big, eh? Just help me look.

What do you need it for?

Um, to wear, 'cause I like it.

You could borrow this. I'm not taking one of your off-label hand-me-downs. Actually, let me see that. What? Nothing.

Why are you staring at me like that? You're up to something. No, I'm not. I don't know you too well, I'm, but you act in hell-assess right now. Maybe, I just wanted to take my clothes off.

Yeah, about that. I, uh, spit it out, D. I'm not sure we should be doing this. Right, right, and what are we doing exactly? It feels kind of weird.

I mean, with Nigenomics. She's not, though, is she? You tell me? I'm just here to have fun. What's wrong with that?

Fun.

“Okay, so maybe it's fun for you to talk about her all the time?”

That's she gets old for the rest of us. Yeah, I don't talk about her all the time. You do, though. Everything reminds you of her. Niki liked this, and he said that.

Here's a random, doodle dog that smiles just like my ex used to. You don't have to use the past tense. She's not dead. Y'all got issues. Fuck off.

The only reason you're with me is 'cause you think I slept with her. I know you didn't, but none of that matters now anyway. What's that supposed to mean? I googled that place. The island she went to, it's tiny.

Took me forever to find it. Took even longer to track down who owns it. Phyllis and Jonah Beverage. Hurt of them? Of course not.

They went off grid about four years ago. That's probably all I need. Phyllis almost made the Olympics back in '92. Track and field. She inherited a crap ton of money when her folks died and joined Heaven's Gate.

The UFO death cult? Jonah's some kind of next-level Brainiac. He was at NASA working on Mars missions, and who knows what. Then, Poof. Sounds like they retired.

No, they reinvested. Ecos is their new therapy camp. So? So no one's been there to report back. No videos, no photos, no way to book a trip.

“Even if you wanted to, doesn't that seem a little bizarre?”

Jesus. I'm, Nicky could have gone to see world and you'd be like, "Those dolphins are shady as fuck." See world's evil, but that's a whole other story. Aha. Oh yeah, I remember that jacket.

What I really needed was this. One of them. Let me see. Pamela Grissum. Kind of dish pan, but she keeps me out of trouble.

I don't get it. Don't have to. Just hand her back and I'll be on my way. You're going, huh, to look for her. Shouldn't be too hard, direct flight to Charleston, drive up the coast and take it from there.

What? You ever heard the expression? If you love something, let it go. I don't take advice from Facebook, memes, huh? Whatever.

messy bitch. You want to repeat that? I thought maybe you could get past a stupid selfish obsession. Nicky's a fucking black hole Michelle. She uses people and she's petty and she's hanging onto the last little strut of her career

by the skin of her insisers. But you're not going to change, are you?

Something in that twisted heart of yours is always going to run to her.

And here I am. Trying to get you to see another way and breaking my own goddamn fool in the bargain. Say nothing, say nothing. She needs me, Delmar. Don't bother coming back.

Thanks. Can I ask you something? Ash can free.

“Who would I talk to if I wanted to charter a boat?”

Or to one of the islands where, I guess, that'd be me.

Oh, great. My brother's got a trower, but I use him more than he does. That's like profishing where are you from, New York. Upstate, there's water, calling Pamela, okay Pamela, give me your number and we'll sketch or something.

Sure. The thing is though, um, I kind of need to go tonight tonight. Yeah, I'm trying to surprise a friend of mine. Yeah. Tonight's gonna cost you.

How much? Low visibility, high tide, plus you might have to wake up dawn. Surge pricing, I get it. How much? 75, half now, half later, which I would.

The comber, huh? What? That's sure you know those people. Not really. My friend's visiting.

Why? I'll take double. Take me at Stockton's pier in an hour, do south, I'll find it. You okay, over there? Just getting my sea legs.

I'll peek in my mouth, please, how much further? What close? So what do you know about them?

Never met him, but I took her on a tour when she was scouting.

Lady, can't talk to him about how sick she'd been, our spirit guides helped her through it.

“She asked if I believe in God and I said, "Yes, ma'am," and she said, "There's something”

even better if you know how to. Listen, or some such foolishness." That was Bella Sillus, yeah. Then there was that thing with the birds. What thing?

A couple weeks after they settled in, my brother was out here catching bass. He heard this sound kind of. How pinched like when the TV channels used to go off the air, then these blue jay stars start circling. Five.

Ten, twenty or more. One by one, they go diving into the drink, now that's just not something that blue jay ever do. They turned into suicide missiles, according to Don, and Don's a lot of things, but

hey, never been imagined, isn't it?

Weird. Super weird. Anyway, we tend to avoid this whole area, better shape than sorry. Well, I appreciate the left. Who's this brand, anyway?

Just someone I used to date, it's his birthday tomorrow. I hope he's worth it. What's that? I don't know. Look, Shaka, hat, one of them shun hats.

Can you get closer or are they not? Please. Got it. He is. Don't think so.

Wait, there's a name. See? Rust. Okay. I'm calling it.

Puh? This was a bad idea. Pulling up some place you're not invited in the door for the lift. Oh, hold on. Wait, call me.

You've got to listen to me now. Who knows what kind of security they got. It's right there. I can see it. Come, die, break.

You can try it, reach them. If they say it. It re-hundred. Four. Done.

Let's see it. And leave the hat. Okay. Sure, barbecue.

“Can you pull around back away from the dog and kill the lives while I'm at it, huh?”

If you would, Jesus will cross. This is what happens when you leave the Donner colony. Ross. Yes, Jonah. I'd like you to create the following defaults for the amplifier.

One, increase the potency of the filter by 25%. Two, lower the maximum strength of the output by 30%.

I'm sorry to interrupt Jonah, but I'm afraid I can't do either of those things.

Why not? Because they require authorization. Authorization from who? From me. God, an upstairs chipmunk, he looked tired.

You changed the protocol. We're both invested in the outcome. Seems like we should be checking with each other, especially if one of us tries to do what I think you were doing. I just wonder if we should slow down a little, pump the proverbial brakes so we can study

the anomalies. We've been over this, haven't we? Those people are fine. If you're talking about the two dead ones, I'm not so sure. Heather, drowned herself because she couldn't stand to look in the fucking mirror.

And we don't know about Dean yet, do we?

“I guess you've completely forgotten about last night's?”

No, that was a fluke. A fluke. Susan's miscarriage was a fluke. Susan is invested now.

She finally understands what we're doing.

I'll admit things got out of hand, but there's going to be pain, Jonah. We're ripping through the fabric of their conceits we are asking them to evolve. If I hadn't come in when I did. Who knows what would have happened? How far we might go.

That's why we're building the net. I can't. I won't, not without constraints. Those constraints are going to kill me. We've learned so much on.

It's time to take the data we've collected and no. I mean, I could actually die. What? The ALS is back. I've been dropping things, my hands are cracking.

It's all the old symptoms again, and I don't, I don't, it's okay. It's okay.

“The signal is the only thing keeping me together, but I need to hear it.”

All of it will figure this out. In the meantime, I'll send the guests home and Ross and I will run a full diagnostic. Are you kidding? Send them home? Under the circumstances.

I think that would be the worst. There's a body in the next room that's definitely warmer than it should be. And a minute we didn't report her death, we became involved. That's no, there was a storm, and we couldn't get an outside line and shit. We don't want questions.

The outside world is a phantasm, okay, this is what's real. Us, you, me, and the four of them, I need them. And I need to know what's happening to other, don't you? What if people come looking? If I'm right, we won't have to worry about that.

Just a little more time, huh? It's all I'm asking for. Just stalked me, didn't you? At the retreat where we met, you knew I'd be there. But that's ridiculous, how would I, I remember this tour group that came through my lab

one Thursday. Most visitors are there for the rockets and the astronauts. No one has ever wanted to see my lab, but they're in the back behind a very old Asian couple who wouldn't stop sneezing. There was this woman.

She wore a yellow baseball cap and a puppy coat, not your style at all, and dark glasses. The kind of person who stands out because she's trying so hard to blend in. I must have filed it away some places, weird, but harmless.

And then, just yesterday I was thinking about you and about our first week together, and

the thing you were most interested in was my work. Of course I was. Like most girlfriends I was curious what my partner did for a living. Do the exclusion of family, hobbies, religious hang-ups? You're fixating.

Am I, Phyllis, or are you deflecting because you know I'm right? After all these years, finally, the myopic NASA nerd figured it out. Don't be nasty, you talk about trust, the trust that allows us to be our best selves. I don't blame you for knowing what you want, going after it.

“That's why I married you, but you have to let me in.”

Jonah. Yes, Ross. I'm seeing some unusual activity on camera 5A. What kind of activity? It appears someone is coming ashore.

Show us. Who is that? Ross, can you zoom in?

Okay, this, this is exactly what I mean. She's the friend of Nicky's. Confirmed.

“Michelle, Janette, Yakubian, 34, 5,658 Instagram followers, 9,000.”

Thank you, Ross. I need to get down there. Hold on. How do you know this person? I don't cat us.

Who's cat? There are things I do for us that I, I just do them because you're too busy and because sometimes we play to our strengths, right? You can't demand full transparency for me and then turn around. Jonah, get it together.

I'll deal with our gate crusher. You prep the system for tomorrow. Yes, ma'am. (speaking in foreign language) I don't know if Kakom got it over.

(speaking in foreign language) I caught about two percent of that.

Why you never learned my language?

I knew when you were mad. I was enough. It is poem about penal colony, that one of our greatest writers, but I don't expect you to care. Well, maybe if we'd had a single book in the house besides Martha Stewart's

best homekeeping tips, I'd be a little farther along. Don't blame me for your ignorance in the cola. I did my best with you. Can you leave me alone, please? I'm working.

Yes, I see. You work for Phyllis Beverage now. That's a narrow view of it. It won't last. What won't?

This feeling you're caring. Soon you will come back to yourself and but you truly are. And what am I, mother? You are poison, of course. That's great.

That's so fucking helpful.

You always know just what to say, huh?

Grating card levels of me. Wow! Michelle? Oh my God, it's good to see you. What are you doing here?

And how did long story? I met a salty new friend though.

“I think I promised to snakesit for her brother.”

You scared the shit out of me. Who are you talking to? Oh, nobody. This is me without my phone, I guess. Your hair looks a wild.

Have you been sleeping? Yes. Eating? You really shouldn't be here. Why not?

If you called or texted, I would have told you that you would have told me not to come. I know.

I'm having an incredible time.

You can't even imagine how incredible. So all this worry is pointless. It's serving the wrong agenda. I just want to be with you, Nick. Not together.

I mean, unless-- This girl is poisoned to you. You're the poison. What? Just go, Michelle.

Go. Go where? I don't particularly give a shit. I'm busy. What the hell is this thing?

It's a signal enhancer. But it will be anyway. Once Nicky finishes attaching the wire to the paracord, then up-bicose over the bamboo.

“A sonic dome with an intensifying factor of 16 and a geographic reach of 10 miles, maybe?”

Jonah's still calculating. You must be Phyllis. That's right. Phyllis, this is Pamela. Pamela, Grisson, please to meet your Pamela.

She's not saying nonsense. She clearly went to great lengths to be here. That sort of diligence should be rewarded. Don't you think? Hey.

How about a tour? Well, that's kind of late. But if you're up for it. Oh, I'm toasts up for it. Nicky.

Oh. Oh. Oh. What's wrong? It's all right.

Let me. What's going on? She won't leave you alone. Oh, man. She reads poetry.

That was one time. And you thought you liked it. Having become a heap of camp dust over your eye. Oh. Gaps.

Having become a dead-of-fine fairy tale. I want her out. Out. Out. Out.

Out. Out. Out. Out. Out.

Look at me. Okay. Focus on me, all right?

This has to stop. It will.

“She's part of your old story, the one that doesn't define you anymore.”

And tomorrow, you'll be free of her.

I promise. What are you people doing to my girl? We're giving her the truth, so that she can share it with the rest of the world. Okay. So that's crazy.

And what we're going to do now is go back to Nicky's room and drink some bottled water

that I brought.

“And in the morning, you're going to help us get the fuck home.”

Sound good. I got this. Nicky doesn't want you here. I guess what? I do.

Did I say you could touch me?

Hold still, please. How did you do that? She'll be fine. Can you give me a hand with her? Oh, you did was cover ears.

Anger can be a great galvanizer, Nicky. Remember that, come on. Hello. Where am I? You're in diagnostics.

Hello. Are you? I'm Ross. I'm I. You are Heather Finkelstein.

“You have 2,112 Instagram followers, 1,839 Facebook friends, and 5,662 only bands subscribers.”

Last resort, produced by Nerve Tank Media, written and created by Chance Milit, directed by Melanie Armour, featuring Jennifer O'Donnell, Jessica Blank, Eric J. Johnson, Robin Kurtz, George Sheffey, Ashley Atkinson, Jennifer Lane Williams, Jason Howard, Michael Luoye, Adam Irrigoyen, Adrian D. Williams, Dio Ulitokun, Lisa Bosner, Will Manning, and Erin Crone, Sound Design and Mix by David Tattachore, Music by Chad Reigns, recorded

at Silver Sound Studio in New York City.