Watched Iron Lung finally, fucking loved it of course. The amount of untapped lore and angst this movie gives, you guys. Every one of you Bloodymary fans who have been putting off watching the movie too NEED TO WATCH IT. Now I must inflict these feral plot bunnies all on you guys:
In the three days when The COI had lost contact with the Simon, something happened. They weren’t entirely sure What, exactly, but a strange pulse of Something had shook the entire moon itself from deep within its core. They were so sure it had to have been the SM-13 implosion disrupting the congealed ‘floor’ of the ocean and perhaps collapsing pockets deep below, causing the moon to resettle.
That is, until they start getting calls in from the COI space stations. All reporting that ships and stations had also experienced unexplainable readings in their sensors at the exact same time as the ‘moon quake’. It seemed like something shook what remained of the universe itself.
The stations orders the AT-5 surface crew continue monitoring the moon as the COI station spend the next few days trying to follow the readings on their end. In the two days before Captain Ava reports back contacting the SM-13, (who’s convict pilot is somehow still Alive), the station orbiting above the moon makes their own shocking discovery.
They find a ship in their territory, and it’s one they Do Not Recognize. Which should not be possible. At first they think it’s an enemy ship, perhaps Eden, scrambling their signature to confuse them, but the readings are all wrong for that. What they can gather from the ship at their distance is that its design is extremely out of date by at least 300 years. At least, the recognizable parts of the ship are. There have also been some clear modifications and external repairs to the ship that does not match any method or model in the COI’s data bases.
They attempt to make contact to the ship, trying every frequency they have, but it seems their tech might not be comparable at first. Until a sudden bust of what they can almost call music finally plays out over the coms and a stable connection is suddenly made.
Meanwhile, by the time they relay down this discovery of the new ship to the crew on AT-5 surface, Ava has already made contact with Simon again and taken the SM-14 down after him and the black box.
An hour later, all signals of the two subs are gone, but a small light of a life vest is picked up on the dark choppy surface of the moon.
The COI manage to recovered the black box and have only just begun to make sense of it, when the sensors monitoring the blood oceans surface start going haywire. Something is rapidly raising up from the dark depths below, something Massive.
The COI are scrambling, afraid that whatever they disturbed down there is coming for them. That the horrors of bone and teeth that have already taken so many want to finish the job… Until an honest to god Fucking Tree burst through the boiling surface. And if that wasn’t shocking enough, it’s carrying both wreckages of the SM-13 and the SM-14 tightly coiled in it branches.
The remaining leader of this project, David, can only think back on the conversation he had with the convict at the bottom of the ocean. How he had taunted the prisoner about Eden and their beliefs… and yet now he cannot deny the overwhelming waves of emotions he feels in witnessing this living tree growing before his eyes. He thinks he understands how an entire station fell into religious insanity a bit more now.
Between the two subs, the SM-13 is much harder to reach. The ruptured vessel is almost fully encased in the trunk of the tree, branches and vines overflowing out of every crack and tear in the iron hull. The SM-14 however, is held further aloft in the twisting branches . It’s in even rougher shape than the SM-13, unsurprising with the context of the recovered black box photos. (The image of the monster biting through the hull as Ava’s screams played in the radios recording haunt all who heard it)
The branches seemed to have to knit the two crushed halves back together. It was also slowly pulling the ship closer to the trunk, as if to merge it with the remains of the SM-13 that were trapped in the thick vines at the trees core.
The COI begin to organize an extraction team to recover what they can from the SM-14 before it’s too far out of reach.
When they touch the trees surface, small twig like branches begin to sprout and wrap around whatever touches the bark. Cautious, they do not risk direct skin contact exposure, fearing what a tree that’s feeding off the blood ocean might do to them. The clippings they did take to study did not give any conclusive results due to the limitations of their equipment available to them.
When the surface report this to their superiors on the station, the station assures them that it won’t be a problem. That they now have new equipment and a molecular biologist to put to work for them.
Not wanting to waist the fuel for just a few clippings, they decide to move forward with the extraction and begin burning and hacking back the branches. This seems to make the branches back off from attempting to touch them, but as they get closer to the SM-14 the tree seems to coil even tighter around the vessel.
David and his team attempt to try and get any reading on why the tree clings to the sub/ what might be the best weak point to force it to let go. When the scanners pick up on an impossibility.
Captain Ava is alive and trapped in a tangled knot of branches.
Meanwhile, on the Hail Mary, Grace and Rocky are having the worst time.
One moment, they had been celebrating that there was officially only one year left on their journey to Erid, and the next the entire ship had turned Red. For a split moment they both have the overwhelming oppressive feeling of being watched by something Much Bigger than them, until the feeling vanished as quickly as it had come. The ship returns to normal.
Until the navigation system started ringing in alarm, informing them that the planned route to Erid had been Lost.
The more the two species crew become aware of their ships surroundings, the more horrified they become. Nothing makes sense, the readings are all wrong. When Grace stumbled over to the ship window, stars he sees look nothing like what he had seen only hours ago. They were sparsely scattered and lacked any of the bright twinkling luster he had been so accustomed to.
At first Grace s convinced that this must be some kind of nightmare. It’s not that far off from the ones he’s had before. Where he abs Rocky had failed to bring find the solution to atrophage and had to watch the stars dim around them, dooming both Erid and Earth to freeze.
But Rocky snaps him out of it. Reminding him that Eridians do not dream or have nightmares and yet Rocky is experiencing this too.
I’m loosing steam so I’m jumping ahead:
Grace and Rocky are pretty much captured by the COI. Grace tried to engage with them peacefully, but his confusion at their existence out here and everything they were saying pissed them off. At this point, Grace realized that these humans were Not friendly and seemed to be ready to arrest him and confiscate his ship. They seemed convinced that he had allegiance with another faction called Eden due to the Hail Mary’s name as well as Grace’s own.
(“No, no, no! Not Eden! Erid!! Stupid, stupid humans not listening!!!”)
Grace locks in on his priority, to protect Rocky and keep his ship. If these aggressive humans try and take it from them, then all of Erid could die. Grace has not even seen the planet and its rings yet, but Rocky had promised him that it will be his new home with Rocky and Adrien.
The talks and negotiations with the COI are extremely tense, but an agreement is tentatively reached once they realize Grace is a molecular biologist.
They need his help, he needs food, they both want to get out of wherever this pocket reality is. The moment Grace had told them his coordinates prior to his unexplainable appearance, there was soon more and more people joining the call on the COI end. It was like a radio version of when the observation room began filling up with more officers and politicians when Grace was first studying astrophage.
They spend the next three days sharing information, between them, both verbally and through down loaded files. Grace and Rocky are equally fascinated and horrified.
It’s during another of these long talks that one of the commanders on the station cuts in and ask if Grace was telling the truth when he said he had a medical bot and lab on his ship. When Grace confirms this, they then ask if he’s willing to take in a severely injured captain of the COI, Ava.
The room on the other end of the radio breaks into chaos when the name is dropped. Apparently she had been believed Very Dead after taking a dive into the red depths of AT-5, the moon they were currently orbiting.
(And yes, Grace can see the colossal Tree from space and has had so many questions that the COI has barely any answers too.)
They relay that they had found her encased in the trees branches and that she’s in extreme critical condition but is somehow still alive. Despite cutting her free, the vines of the tree have embedded themself into her wounds and under her skin.
Despite Rocky’s protest that this is a terrible and dangerous idea, Grace agrees to take her aboard and try what he can to save her and study what the tree and the blood ocean has done to her.
I’ll continue later! Phones about to die!
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