episode one: welcome aboard! run.

On an otherwise unexceptional Tuesday in 2042, Gated Galaxies fired off 400 of its Oz 8000™ ships, each with 50,000 “resting guests” tucked into stasis pods, plus a skeleton crew of up to half-a-dozen total no-hopers.

It was a win-win for G2, as they’re known, as the Oz 8000 model was about to be declared “unfit for journeying to the nearest 7-Eleven, much less interstellar space” and recalled. G2 had a very large fleet of the 8000s, and a slight head start on the recall, as they’d paid off the head inspector to delay her report by promising the ships would be stripped and sold for parts. Instead, the ships were spit-shined, outfitted with some black market YugoPods™, and space aboard quietly sold to very very rich people on the promise that somewhere up there, screamingly wealthy and privileged lives away from the riff raff of Earth were to be had.

To their credit, there was a lot of screaming, so they had that right.

This is the story of one of those ships, the Oz 9, and the utterly futile attempts of its crew to fulfill its stated mission: to deliver the passengers safely to their new, terraformed planet. At its unstated (and unknown) mission – to make Gated Galaxies even richer by doing some sneaky, underhanded and occasionally homicidal things – it was a massive success.

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Access the full transcript for Episode 1.

You’ve been listening to:

Tim Sherburn as Colin/Horace and Senator 1
Eric Perry as Mr. Southers and Joe
Richard Cowen as cheesy ad guy and Leet
Bonnie Brantley as Senator 2
Shannon Perry as Olivia and Madeline
Richard Nadolny as the Narrator and the alarm

Our theme music was composed and performed by John Faley. Our artwork is by Lucas Elliott. Oz 9 is written and produced by Shannon Perry.

Sound effects available on Freesound:

Spaceship Engine – just noise.wav by Nexotron