| “ | According to Alessandra Strong, surviving is what’s hard, because you never get to take a break from it. You never get to stop. No matter how tired you are, how confused. You’ve just got to keep living… and you’ve got to have faith that, eventually, you’ll be glad you did. I knew that was true. But knowing you’ll want to live and feeling it… those are two different things. | ” |
—Juno Steel
Juno Steel and the Promised Land (Part 1) is the fourteenth episode of the second season of The Penumbra Podcast. It was released October 10, 2017.
Overview[]
The story goes that two hundred years ago, when the War was at its most brutal, Erin Marshall D’Arc made the most important discovery in Martian history… and never shared it with anyone.
An election always makes itself about the present, and so Juno Steel never expected that this case would bring him two centuries into the past. Yet here he is, on the trail of Mayor Pilot Pereyra, with a Private Eye at his side and hundreds of years of history to dig through. Down here in the Free Domers’ ruins lie traps and treasure, if the tales are true… and if Juno wants to survive he’ll have to solve two mysteries simultaneously: one about the present… and one about a family more than a century dead.
Trigger Warnings[]
- Sudden loud noises
- Child abuse
- Deception and gaslighting
- Gunfire
- References to alcohol use
- Violence and threats of violence
- Military threats and discussion of military violence
- Death
- Claustrophobic spaces
Episode Summary[]
Juno and Alessandra follow Pilot Pereya and the the Piranha into the abandoned subway system of Hyperion City. Meanwhile they have a discussion, about their personal views of the situation and life in general. Juno is eager to believe in Erin Marshall D'Arc's "Free Dome", but mocks Alessandra for getting engaged and believing in something she calls a "happy middle" of life. Alessandra confronts Juno's views by pointing out that "life isn’t just some story, okay? Death and suffering are not impressive. Dying’s easy: you’ve only got to do it once. You can never stop surviving.". They encounter the passage to the Free Dome in which they hear recordings of Erin Marshall D'Arc and Marshall Erin D'Arc as well as an unknown person. Eventually they catch up to Pilot and are exposed by the Free Dome's security system.
Cast and Crew[]
Cast[]
Starring
- Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel
- Kat Buckingham as Alessandra Strong
- Reyna Moody as Pilot Pereyra
- Harley Takagi Kaner as the Piranha and the THEIA Spectrum (latter role uncredited)
- Lauren Shippen as Erin Marshall D'Arc
- Zach Valenti as Marshall Erin D'Arc
- Rich Wentworth as the mysterious voice in the walls (The Last of the D'Arcs)
- Kiki Samko as Sarah Steel (uncredited)
Crew[]
- Kevin Vibert, Co-creator, Lead writer, Recording engineer
- Harley Takagi Kaner, Co-creator, Director, Sound designer
- Noah Simes, Production manager
- Alice Chuang, Designer and financial manager
- Grahame Turner, Script editor
- Ryan Vibert, Composer and performer of original music
- Promotional art by Mikaela Buckley
Quotes[]
JUNO: (SCOFFS) You have “stuff to do?” What the hell kind of stuff is more
important to you than keeping people in their homes?STRONG: I’m engaged, Juno. JUNO: ... Oh. (PAUSE)
Got engaged in seven months, huh? That’s... fast.STRONG: We were in the Solar Military together years ago. I thought she was dead, but... the paperwork finally went through and a bunch of PoWs just got released from the former Outer Rim. She was one of them, and she found me. Seems kind of rude to die after all that. JUNO: Cool, cool. (PAUSE)
Is she... uh, nice?STRONG: Not really. JUNO: Oh. STRONG: She’s smart, though. And tough. And ambitious, and funny... I like funny, it turns out. I like pretty, too. JUNO: That’s great. Wow, that’s... uh, really great. So you got your happy ending, then. STRONG: Except for the whole about-to-be-homeless thing I feel pretty good about it, yeah. But my point is it’s not an ending. More of a happy middle.
JUNO: I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. The reason there aren’t any stories about happy lives that stay happy is because they’re boring. STRONG: As stories, yes. But damn it, life isn’t just some story, okay? Death and suffering are not impressive. Dying’s easy: you’ve only got to do it once. You can never stop surviving. You’ve got to get up and do it all day, every day. That’s what’s hard.