"Voyaging through strange eons of thought."
When an exploratory mission on the surface of Io goes awry, astronaut Martha Kivelson (Mackenzie Davis) attempts to drag her partner's body back to base. After taking medication to manage the pain, she begins to hear Io itself speaking to her... or does she?
Directed by Emily Dean, based on a short story by Michael Swanwick.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Expansion: The original short starts In Medias Res after the accident, this short shows the events leading up to the accident.
- All There in the Script: Burton's first name is Juliet according to the credits.
- Almost Out of Oxygen: The drama is heightened by Kivelson slowly running out of oxygen.
- Broken Faceplate: In the initial crash, Burton's visor got smashed. Kivelson only finds out after she turns around Burton's body.
- Chekhov's Gun: The dirt Kivelson places on Burton's visor. If Io is actually real, the explanation for how it is suddenly able to communicate is because the dust of Io is electrically conductive; the sparks created from Kivelson dragging Burton created an electrical circuit through the dust that let Io access Burton's mind through the hole in her face.
- Dies Wide Open: A variation on closing the eyes of the deceased when Kivelson rubs dirt on the Broken Faceplate to obscure the face of her dead colleague. She wipes it off when Burton starts 'talking' to her, just to be sure she isn't somehow alive.
- Face Death with Dignity: With only a minute of oxygen left, Kivelson calmly surrenders to Io and jumps into a boiling lake, which destroys her body. Whether she actually dies is left ambiguous.
- Fusion Dance: Io holds out the possibility that if Kivelson dives into it, her mind if not her body might be preserved as part of Io. Given that she's about to die anyway, Kivelson does.
- Genius Loci: If conversations with Io weren't just Kivelson tripping out, then the moon is a sentient being/living machine.
- Impeded Communication: Orbital is orbiting Io and is on the opposite side of it after the crash, leaving Kivelson without any means to communicate with them for the next 12 hours - for which she doesn't have oxygen to wait out.
- Kirk's Rock: The pointy rock formations on the alien planet resemble the original Kirk's Rock.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Exactly how much of the sentient moon's communication was real, and how much was just Kivelson tripping out, is ambiguous. Kivelson is lucid enough to understand this, but also enough to understand she's doomed either way.Kivelson: Maybe I'm gonna live forever, or maybe this is just one last dream before dying.
- Minimalist Cast: The story only has two or maybe three characters depending on whether or not Io is real. Only three actors are listed with The computer's voice.
- Mushroom Samba: First, Kivelson administers herself a morphine shot to deal with the pain of a broken arm. She quickly starts to hallucinate. Then she figures out she will never reach the base at her current pace, so she goes for amphetamine to keep her body moving.Warning: Use may cause side effects including loss of motor function, euphoria...
Kivelson: If I don't make it... better to die high. - No Antagonist: Much like "Helping Hand", the protagonist runs out of oxygen after an accident.
- No Seatbelts: Averted; Burton is killed because she unstrapped herself shortly before the eruption, whereas Kivelson survived because she was still strapped in.
- Ominous Obsidian Ooze: Black fluid forms lakes on Io's surface, implied to be its lava pools.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: The short focuses more on the ambiguous nature of the situation with more general Mushroom Samba sequences in between Kivelson's moments of lucidity. Notably absent is a sequence where Io proves its existence by helping Kivelson cross a sulfur river by building her a bridge, and a Hope Spot where she manages to reach the lander, only for it to also be destroyed.
- Robbing the Dead: Kivelson hooks up to Burton's air reserve, since her own got damaged during the crash. This means she has to drag the body around, as she can't simply unsuit Burton.
- Speaks in Shout-Outs: As Io attempts to learn how to communicate through interfacing with Burton's mind, it initially can only speak in various poetry quotes, as Burton was fond of poetry, as indicated by a book of poetry being on board their rover.
- Tempting Fate: The whole disaster starts when Kivelson insists, against Burton's protests, on driving their rover a little further out than its maximum range wanting to study somewhere new. Had she turned around when she was supposed to, she likely wouldn't have driven into the sulfur eruption.
- That's No Moon: All of Io is a vast machine built to study humanity. Maybe.
- Title Drop: Io quotes lines from the poem "She Was a Phantom of Delight" by William Wordsworth.And now I see with eye serene.
The very pulse of the machine. - Touch of the Monster: After Kivelson collapses the body of the deceased Burton, energized by Io, is able to carry her off like this.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: It's implied Io is unable to communicate until it's able to access the neural information in Burton's dying brain. Even so it still takes a while for Io to express itself in a manner Kivelson understands.
