| You think Mr. Cutter's gonna take the Kumbaya approach to all of this? |
| – Doug Eiffel |
"The Kumbaya Approach" is the fourteenth episode of the podcast, and the first episode of the second season. It was released on 14 February 2015.
Episode Description[]
Unsure of who or what to trust after the events at Christmas, Eiffel and Minkowski make contact with Mr. Cutter, their liaison to Goddard Futuristics and the mission's direct supervisor. But given Hilbert's actions, how wise is it to inform Command about their discovery of the mysterious deep space signal? And how much does Mr. Cutter already know about what is happening on the Hephaestus? Plus, long distance calls, exponential emergencies, showing and telling, extreme prejudice, and Hephaestus Mystery 340.
Plot summary[]
The episode opens with Mr. Cutter recording a memorandum for some of the Goddard Futuristics Department Heads, cheerful and amiable despite the vaguely threatening messages he has for each of them. He is interrupted by his phone ringing, picks up the unknown (to the listener) caller, and instructs the caller to open a pulse beacon hail to communicate with him on a closed line.
The caller is revealed to be Commander Renee Minkowski with Communications Officer Douglas Eiffel, who have contacted Canaveral after the events of Alexander Hilbert’s mutiny (in the two preceding episodes). Minkowski begins to relay the events of the mutiny to Cutter, but is cut off by Eiffel, who warns her that it may not be a good idea. He privately explains that Hilbert was most likely acting under orders during the events of the mutiny, and telling Command about the alien encounter could lead to lethal consequences for the remaining crew. Minkowski agrees, and tells Cutter that Hilbert suffered a psychotic break and severely damaged Hera. She recommends that Cutter terminate the mission and requests extraction, but Cutter denies the request, and instructs the crew to kill Hilbert.
After the call, Minkowski apologizes to Eiffel for the disastrous state of the mission, but Eiffel reassures her that it is not her fault, and that he trusts her to figure something out in a rare bonding moment. She tells him that she doesn’t plan on killing Hilbert, since he’s the only one who might be able to tell them something about the deep space transmissions. The two begin to work through instructions received from a Goddard transmission to switch from AI control of Hephaestus systems to manual control while Hera is out of commission. They run into an issue while switching to the auxiliary power systems, and while troubleshooting, Eiffel uncovers a recorded soundwave already running on the auxiliary system- the whispers heard in Episode 6: Super Energy Saver Mode.
Eiffel cleans up the audio, and reveals an audio message from Captain Isabel Lovelace. In the recording, she tells the listener that her mission on the U.S.S. Hephaestus began 944 days before the start of the recording. She explains her mission parameters of studying the star’s radiation signatures and looking for extraterrestrial life- similar to the current crew of the Hephaestus’s missions. Captain Lovelace says that Command is lying- she does not know why her crew was sent up, but she says that Goddard planned on having all of her crew die in space. Her communications officer and one of the scientists fell sick and passed away, with no replies to their calls for help. The astrophysicist on their crew vanished, and Rhea, their operating system, went offline. She is left with one other crew member, Dr. Selberg, who, unlike Captain Lovelace, does not hear anything moving around at night. She explains that she leaves the message on the auxiliary power as a warning in case Command sends anyone else up to the Hephaestus, and above all else, she tells whoever is listening to get out. The message leaves Minkowski and Eiffel in petrified silence, and Eiffel questions what is going on on the station as the episode ends.