ACQUIRED: GREEN POTION x3

Has a heart on it. Somehow you know that means it's good for you.

ACQUIRED: JAY'S JOURNAL

Thankfully hasn't changed since you left it, from a cursory skimming. You were thinking of showing it to Doctor Man, but actually...

MAGDOLENE:

Boy howdy, fella sure had the predicaments.

FERN:

What do you guys know about this "slob" stuff?

MAGDOLENE:

Sounds like the red blight. I think us decomposers use the term a little different than you would; it's been a pretty big boon ta' our kind, pretty much ushered in a new order ta' biovessel civilization. I'm gettin' bits n' bobs of Maggie's research bouncin' around my noodles but to tell the truth, even she weren't entirely sure where it came from.

FERN:

Do you remember what I told Maggie and the others, about why I'm here?

MAGDOLENE:

Yer lil' grublet, weren't it somethin' like that?

FERN:

I think he's somehow the center of this whole thing. I'm pretty sure he's what they're calling "patient zero."

MAGDOLENE:

Hrrrmmmm...I got memories'a your layers with Maggie, memories'a Maggie's blight studies n' some of her findings on the Parlyment folks, but I ain't got memories of no "patient zero" at present. That'd hafta mean I been here in the maze and the maze has been chewin' us up for a few more layers than yer kiddo's been Hospitalized.

FERN:

Wait, how's that possible? They'd definitely taken my son when I woke up here, then I got "killed," or one of my possible bodies did I guess, and then I met Maggie inside that body, and then you're saying she discovered the Parliament and this Red Blight and then somehow created you but then you got stuck in the maze before my son and I got here and......

...Are zones and layers really that different from my perception of time?!

MAGDOLENE:

'Fraid so, hon, but they ain't workin quite right for us neither. This here maze is probably an extension'a both cause and symptom. On the upsyside, that makes it easier fer ya to persist in some form or another, long as nothin' happens to your true core and its entire branchination system. Seems like the blight only takes yer vessels once they've broken down, which is good. It ain't changin' the original you none.

Reckon this blue feller's still persistin' somewhere too.

FERN:

We turned him into a coffee cup.

MAGDOLENE:

Oh! Well, heck, there ya go! See!? Y'never know what's gonna happen! If you two have managed to hang on to at least some of your core self, same might very well be true for your young'un.

I'd also reckon the parlyment still ain't quite perfected what they're tryna do on any layer, on account'a any of us are still here n' all. Also looks like the red critters ain't show any particlier loyalty neither way...Maggie figgerd out they were pretty much blank slates. They can learn, but they ain't start out with any concrete directive, and that works in yer favor too.

FERN:

That explains a lot, actually. I've seen them mopping floors at the cafe, and you probably saw the one that's been following me around. I don't really know why, but he seems to want to help me.

MAGDOLENE:

Does seem ta' ring a bell, but I was pretty discomboblamated without my biomass. Think I could get a look at the feller?