Janus Descending · No Such Thing Productions

i. Resurgence

June 3, 2022·28 min·2 clips

Axel Crichton grapples with guilt over his brother's death on the doomed Janus expedition, while a mysterious green goo from the wreckage defies analysis.

The episode opens with an unnamed character's guilt-laden internal monologue, replaying scenarios in which a loved one might have survived. A recovery crew called Juno has docked at a facility called Rossiter after retrieving the wreck of the research vessel Adamantine from space. The ship arrived five months late and apparently crashed. The communications relay on the Adamantine was nearly destroyed by some kind of impact. A crew member reports that logs are heavily damaged and only one entry — from the ship's approach to a planet — is readable. Corporate executive Axel Crichton is told the Adamantine's crew, including his brother Peter and scientist Dr. Stadler, are presumed dead. Captain Cassini awkwardly offers Axel an invitation to drinks, only to learn he is a recovered alcoholic. Axel receives a call from his mother, Ariel Crichton, who screams at him for breaking a promise to keep Peter safe, accuses him of always using Peter and riding his ideas, and says he should have been the one to go. Axel ends the call and instructs his assistant Andrea to clear his schedule and book a shuttle to Luna to visit his parents. Back on the ship, crew member Maul reports that the green substance retrieved with the wreck is defying scanner classification — one moment it reads as plant life, the next a virus, the next almost human, then nothing. Captain Cassini directs Maul to check Dr. Stadler's lab for notes. Crew technician Declan is piecing together the ship logs and describes a horror scenario: the Adamantine crew found a tunnel system rather than the city they expected, encountered an alien creature that infected crew member Chell, got onto the ship, and began hunting Peter. Peter killed Chell but was drifting alone with her body for an unknown period before the ship crashed. Meanwhile, the sample jar of green goo, brought up to the executive suites, breaks open and the substance begins to grow. A creature attacks Axel's office, killing Andrea. Axel and Captain Cassini flee down the stairs as the building initiates full Level 8 quarantine lockdown. The crew in the hangar bay separately escapes the creature that followed the Adamantine down and radios in that the goo is alive. The episode ends with both the building crew and Axel/Cassini trapped inside as lockdown shields close, with confirmed creatures loose in multiple parts of the building and more potentially incubating.

As heard by us

A damaged logbook turns grief, infection, and quarantine into a tight, uneasy sci-fi mystery.

Janus Descending opens with wreckage, a damaged relay, and a speaker unable to stop turning over what might have been done differently. Grief is immediate, but it never sits apart from the practical work of staying alive, so each recovered log fragment feels like part of an…

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Why you'd press play

You want a ship mystery where regret, damaged logs, and a quarantine lockdown all hit at once.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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