The Rosemont Botanical Research Laboratory's staff left six cassettes, and Shelter No. 4's radio set still picks up two broadcasts. Between them they tell you what happened under the gardens, what is asleep in the reactor pool, and how to get the Front Assembly out of Bunker B. Later, in Chapter Five, two things you carry start talking to you: a piece of the Chorus, and the one voice it couldn't swallow.
The Laboratory's audio logs
Audio Log
Use: play the tape, or put it in a tape recorder
A cassette from the Laboratory, its label
in somebody's hand. Someone was recording.
Use a tape to play it: the click, the hiss, and the voice, line by line. Since 1.41 every line is voiced, slowed and dropped an octave into something too big for the room, saturated and tape-worn, catching on a syllable now and then. Each tape ends with it laughing. Subtitles show over your hotbar while it plays, and the words go into chat too.
Put a tape in a Tape Recorder and it plays out loud for anyone within about twenty blocks: its reels turn, its level meter jumps and static crackles off its speaker. Sneak and use it to take the tape out. The Laboratory's recorders still have their tapes in them. Researchers sometimes drop the later tapes.
Audio Log: Marsh, Control Room
*click* - Dr. H. Marsh
This is Marsh. Control room. The power's gone, and the Core is all that's keeping it asleep.
Specimen Zero went into the pool the night the tank burst. It sleeps against the Core. It likes the warmth.
If anyone needs the Core out: the coolant has to be isolated first, or the hall stays sealed. The levers are on this wall.
The order matters. [the lever order, different in every world]. Any other order and the whole level alarms.
Then the blast doors open. Then you lift it. Then you run, because it will wake.
I'm going down to sit with it. Somebody should.
[something on the tape laughs]
Pull the three coolant levers in Marsh's order and the hall's blast doors grind up ("COOLANT ISOLATED - REACTOR HALL OPENING"). Pull one out of turn and the alarm goes ("WRONG SEQUENCE - COOLANT ISOLATION FAULT"), the levers drop back, and six of the staff come for you.
Audio Log: Marsh, Personal
*click* - Dr. H. Marsh
Personal log. The thing under the Gardens isn't the flower. The flower has been holding it down.
Reyes, the night technician, cut a sample from the root's end. By morning his hands were somebody else's.
We sealed him in the big tank on Sublevel 1 and called him Specimen Zero. He talked for three days. Then he stopped using words.
It hates the flowers. Every sample we put near it, it reached for. Tore at.
The keycard's in this drawer. The tank won't hold much longer.
[something on the tape laughs]
In the director's locked desk, with the Level 2 Keycard. Three good blows split the drawer.
Audio Log: Okafor, Sample Log
*click* - Dr. A. Okafor
Sample log, day nine. Bloom tissue placed beside Zero's growth. The growth recoiled - then attacked it.
Flower ash kills it outright. Burn the Gardens' flowers, pack the ash with powder, and you have something it can't stand.
A flower, a burnt petal, gunpowder. We have a weapon. We have one weapon.
[something on the tape laughs]
That's the Flower Ash Bomb's recipe.
Audio Log: Reception
*click* - Reception
Welcome to Rosemont Botanical Research Laboratory. All visitors must sign in at reception.
Sublevels one and two are restricted to staff with Level 2 clearance.
Please do not let them follow you down.
[something on the tape laughs]
Audio Log: Lin, Containment
*click* - Dr. S. Lin
Containment, oh-two-fourteen. The tank's cracked. It isn't trying to get out. It's listening.
Oh-two-thirty. It came out slowly. Politely. It went past us to the lift shaft and down, toward the reactor.
The pool's warm. It likes warm. Everyone stay out of the hall.
[something on the tape laughs]
Audio Log: Doyle, Hazmat Team
*click* - Sgt. R. Doyle
Hazmat team, entry. Suits on. Radiation in the hall's off the scale near the pool. Nobody stands by the pool without a suit.
Contact. Something in the water. Jenkins is laughing.
Why is Jenkins laughing.
[something on the tape laughs]
Shelter No. 4's radio
Use the Shelter Radio Set in the radio room to hear it. With the power off it plays the evacuation notice. With both generators running, it turns into Control's emergency broadcast.
The evacuation notice
Rosemont Civil Defence, on a loop
This is Rosemont Civil Defence. This is not a drill.
All residents of zones C and D proceed at once to Shelter Number Four, Victoria Park.
Bring nothing. Do not stop for anyone on the street who is unwell.
Wardens will close the blast door at twenty-two hundred hours. It will not be opened again until the all-clear.
This is Rosemont Civil Defence. This is not a drill.
Control's emergency broadcast
Once the shelter's power is back
Shelter Four, Shelter Four, this is Control. We see your power on. Respond.
Shelter Four, do not open the vault. Repeat: do not open the vault.
Whatever is in bunk hall B is not your residents any more. Whatever the squad told you, they are not coming back up.
If anyone down there can hear this - the overload switch, over the plates in bunker B. Get it onto the plates.
Shelter Four, respond.
That's how to beat the Warden of Shelter No. 4.
Voices from the static
These aren't recordings. They're things that are still alive enough to talk, and what they say comes up over your hotbar in italics when you hold them to your ear.
The Chorus Fragment
"A piece the Chorus left behind as it went down. It's still part of it, wherever it is." It's a knot of grey-violet flesh with a face in it the size of a thumbnail, its eyes shut, its mouth moving. You get one when the Chorus runs from its pit. Hold it to your ear and it whispers what the Chorus is thinking, down there:
One at random
down. down where it is warm.
we remember the dark under the hills.
we are not alone down here. there are others. older.
the bloom's roots go deeper than you ever dug.
come down and find us. we are learning your name.
you broke our thoughts. we are growing new ones.
listen. under your feet. that is us.
every one we take remembers. every one remembers you.
Since 1.54.0, while the Chorus is still alive it also tells you which way it went. Face the right way and it whispers clearly, and what it says tells you how far. Side on, it's faint and broken. Facing away, there's only static.
Up top, leading you to the Sinkhole: far (over 600 blocks), that way, near, here
down. a long way down. far from here - that way.
that way. under the hills. we can feel you coming.
closer. we can hear you walking. we can hear your heart.
here. right under you. come down. it's warm.
Coming out in the Deep
home. we are home. come and find us. we are deeper.
In the Deep, leading you to the Warm Heart
deeper. a long way yet. through the dark - that way.
that way. past the old ones' halls. they don't like us. they won't like you.
close now. can you hear us singing? we can hear you.
here. we are right here. we are finished growing.
Side on, or facing away
...colder... no... turn...
(nothing but static)
What the Chorus says out loud, through its forms and from its pit, is on The Watcher speaks, with his answers. Since 1.60.3 the Chorus also has a hidden voice: now and then, out of all its faces muttering together, one voice speaks on its own for fourteen seconds while the rest hush. It's a sound with a subtitle ("The Chorus: one voice out of all of them"), not words on the screen.
The Last Voice
"A face cut out of the Chorus, its eyes open now. It isn't singing. It's trying to tell you something: a door at the end of the world, and the seal on it." It comes out of the Chorus, whole, when it dies in the Warm Heart. Hold it up and it talks:
One at random
"...there's a door. at the end. he sealed it..."
"...it was so loud in there. it's so quiet now..."
"...take me to the end of the world. i'll open it for you..."
"...i was a farmer. i think. i had a dog..."
"...the one in the black coat knows. ask him what he locked up..."
"...don't put me down. please don't put me down in the dark again..."
In the End
"...here. it's here. can you feel it? something on the other side is listening..."
"...hold me up. here. he made this seal with his own hands. i can open it..."
Something cracks, all the way across the End's sky - and stays cracked. The seal he put on it is broken.
"...there. out past the obsidian. a door. go through it. i'll be quiet now..."
In the Stalls
"...shh. don't wake them. they're watching..."
"...they're getting up. all of them..."
It said it would be quiet, but if you're still carrying it, it whispers in the Stalls too: when you first come in, and when the Audience gets up for the Crowd. See Chapter Six.