Episode 16 of Season 1 is a stream that opens on Cycle 56, a cycle after Episode 15 stopped, with 17 duplicants, a Food shortage alert and 0 kcal of food. Power is the problem all the way through. Pumps go onto their own small circuits run by wheel generators, and machines the colony can spare get switched off. Food never recovers, and on Cycle 58 the duplicant JJBonsig starves to death. It ends on Cycle 59 with a memorial going up.
Out of power
"Everybody's really sick. I'm out of power, that's the main thing." Without power the bathrooms stop working, so two more bathrooms go in at high priority, "so they can still go to the bathroom even if we don't have power." The pump that was built to pull in hydrogen sits on "its own little power thing," but the pocket near it is nearly empty now and it is mostly bringing in polluted oxygen.
More hydrogen has risen higher up, so a second gas pump goes in up there, with a ladder, a wire and a pipe run "out in the open so they don't have to dig." The rock around it is abyssalite, and "it takes forever to dig through." Some floor tiles are swapped for ones that let gas through, so the hydrogen can go up. Stress is high too: "People are really, really stressed out, they're having a case of the Mondays."
Switching things off
The massage tables only work with power, and so do the machines that turn slime into algae. "The main thing is we just need power." Refrigerators go first, since "we don't have any food anyway," and two of the three are disabled. A fertilizer maker is turned off as well. Up in a tunnel, JJBonsig's panel shows a list of troubles: Light Wounds, Dirty Hands, Grimy, Stressed, Cannot reach food and Soggy Feet. "You're very sad."
The wheel circuit
The pump room's door and pumps are moved onto a separate circuit with the manual generator, the "hamster wheel." Once a duplicant is running on it, the hydrogen starts to move. "Right now we're pumping in a bunch of hydrogen all the way over, which is great." The air scrubbers are short of sand, so sand gets dug at priority 8, and a Hatch turns up eating "the junk around here, which generates coal."
By Cycle 57 a Starvation alert sits under Food shortage. The Microbe Musher is set to make bars continuously, and another food machine is disabled to save power. A new duplicant is printed, the one who is good at digging, which brings the colony to 18. A Puft living in polluted air nearby is let out "hoping that it might move over to another area," and The Spores alert appears when a duplicant catches it in a toxic area.
A natural gas pump has no power either, so a second wheel generator and a battery go in to run it on another small circuit.
RIP JJBonsig
Then the Duplicants Have Died window opens: "JJBonsig has starved to death." The count drops to 17. "There's not enough power for all this stuff to happen," and not enough to feed everybody. A Tasteful Memorial is found in the decoration menu, its card saying it prevents stress and the spread of disease caused by unburied corpses, and it goes in at high priority. A Level 11 Runner is renamed JJBonsig2.0. "Fixed."
Where it ends
Many duplicants are sick, and a medical bed stands ready "so somebody could use that," though its card reads Unassigned. A pump that only moves air in a circle is switched off, and two planters get a different crop. "Oh look, our stress is lower." On Cycle 59 there are 17 duplicants, the Food shortage and Starvation alerts are still up, and the Tasteful Memorial reads Under Construction. The commentary's last words are for JJBonsig: "You're still sitting here dead."
