31.01-Divided camps

Welcome to the Smole, Season 31! We never planned for another season but the overwhelming support and requests for the Smole to continue have been heard, so here it is! This season, 8 contestants have been chosen to participate on a journey of a lifetime in Al Simhara, Egypt. There, they will participate in missions to try and earn points for the pot, where 1 point in the pot translates to 1,000 Simoleons for the winner. How is the winner chosen? Well, there is a Mole among them, a double agent trying to sabotage and pull the wools over the others' eyes. Contestants must find out who the Mole is by the time they take their quizzes, because whoever scores the lowest is executed each round.

As always, there is a twist. What is it?

Giselle: "Ugh, why Egypt of all places? It's so hot and humid and the air quality is horrible. This is not the vacation I wanted."

This is Giselle Onkat, 41, teacher.

"Giselle Onkat, thank you for joining us in such a difficult time. Al Simhara has been overrun by evil conglomerates, and a local group is trying to banish them. To your left, there are two files. This season, you have been put into one of the two camps."

"They are Mercucorp and the resistance respectively. Go forth and read more about them. If you see your photo there, you are part of that group."

Giselle: "I found mine. But I don't see anybody else's."

"That is because you're not supposed to. You get a chance to try and figure out the identities of your fellow contestants, in the sense of whether they are from Mercucorp or the resistance. There is a chair there. Before each quiz you may sit on the chair and tell us who you think a certain contestant is aligned with. If you are correct and the contestant is in the opposite alignment as you, he or she gets a -1 on their quiz, otherwise they get a +1. If you guess correctly and that contestant happens to be in the same alignment as you, you get a +1 on the next quiz, otherwise you get a -1. You may only guess once per quiz and you may guess the same contestant over and over again but if you are correct about their identity, only the first time you are right will be counted. If you are wrong, it will be counted every time."

This is Melvin Willis, 33, scientist.

"Also, the Mole will get to do something similar. If the Mole successfully predicts who a contestant is suspecting as the Mole, that contestant gets a -1 on his or her quiz. These penalties and bonuses will not be disclosed. Therefore, this season the Mole has a more active role in affecting the fates of the contestants, but contestants also get a chance to try and save themselves and get practice by trying to figure out what their fellow contenders' alignments are."

This is Lena Estenson, 24. She is unemployed.

This is Jacob Jacobson, 28. He is a professional saxophonist.

This is Angie Reese. She is 25 years old and a mobile application developer.

This is Aaron Nigel Forrester. He is 40 and a scientist.

This is Sydney Wellington, 26, unemployed.

This is Zhao Qun, or Max Zhao. He is 35 this year and a weightlifter.

Which of them is the Mole?

***

Giselle: "We got settled in on the first day. It's such a drab. At least with Shang Simla, the place actually looks decent and there's nice scenery and it's cool. Here's just...sand. Lots of it. Fortunately we didn't have to sleep on sand. There were two rooms. I decided that the women sleep in one room and the men in the other. Wouldn't want mixing around or fooling around to happen."

Sydney: "Looks like we have to share. Who wants to be my bed mate?"

Giselle: "I am not sharing my bed with anyone."

Sydney: "Come on, mate. You don't expect any of us to sleep outside right?"

Angie: "There are tents outside. I can sleep in one of them. I don't mind."

Giselle: "Thank you for being considerate."

Sydney: "What a biatch."

Lena: "Do you really expect her to sleep outside? She doesn't look like she can weather the weather."

Giselle: "Neither do you. Do you want to take her place?"

Angie: "It's fine. I can sleep outside."

Sydney: "That half-Russian and half-Danish lady, Giselle or whats-her-name, is such a c***! Like, seriously. She pushed that poor nerd Angie out to sleep in a tent! I would've offered, but I didn't come here to live in the heat with critters surrounding like I do in Australia. She's almost as bad as that China man, Zhaoqin or something. Whatever. I don't care. I'll just call him Squinty Eyes. Because Asians have funny squinty eyes.""

Lena: "I wish there were gaming consoles here. I'm a hardcore gamer. Who says girls can't play video games? Then again, I supposed the reason my mother signed me up was to get me away from the monitor and breathe some fresh air...whatever I can breathe, anyway. It's been surprisingly good so far but I'm not counting on no sandstorms throughout this season."

Max: "I guess we have to share beds."

Melvin: "I have never slept on the same bed as anyone before in my life. And I pity Max, who has to deal with my size and share the bed with me."

Max: "My name is Zhao Qun, but my English name is Max. I'm a Chinese national and on the weightlifting team. I was cut from joining the Olympics because I failed once and I'm bitter about that. So I joined to prove my value to the team in other ways. I tried to join in Season 29 but they said I would have an unfair advantage because I was from China. And I missed last season's application period."

***

Jacob: "What's a beautiful woman like you doin' in a dreary basement like this?"

Giselle: "Cooling off."

Giselle: "Speaking of which, why are you dressed like that?"

Giselle: "Aren't you sweating like crazy? Did you not get the memo?"

Jacob: "I did but this is my signature look. I'm still on TV so I have to look good, y'know?"

Giselle: "Right..."

Giselle: "Guess I can't argue with that."

***

"Welcome to the land of pyramids. In ancient Egypt, pictures were carved onto the walls of these pyramids as a mode of communication. Today, we call them hieroglyphs and they give interesting insight into the values and beliefs of that era."

"Today, you will be decoding one of their messages. On that plaque there is a message, encrypted in various shapes and symbols. You have 10 minutes to work as a team to try and decode the message to earn 100 points. Your time begins now."

Angie: "Let's not rush into things. We need a plan. Can we use Google Translate?"

Giselle: "You must be kidding me."

Aaron: "Maybe there's a language for hieroglyphs on the computer. Who knows?"

Lena: "She's on to something, though." 

Lena: "I can search the computer to try and find out what these symbols mean."

Aaron: "I'll supervise."

Lena: "This will be fun."

Max: "There must be other ways we can help too. I will try looking through the bookshelf for help."

Max: "I hope to be able to be of use."

Giselle: "We'll read the message out to you. It's 

Water, circle, throne I think, diamond, lightning bolt, man, man, hourglass, water, lightning bolt again, star, hourglass, eye, coffin, another eye, circle, throne, brick, flower, rectangle, brick, flower, flower, eye, cross."

Jacob: "Don't forget the spaces."

Giselle: "Now you tell me."

Aaron: "I completely forgot what you just said."

Sydney: "Hey mates, there's some writing paper and pens here. Maybe we can use those."

Max: "Hmm...okay."

Jacob: "This is difficult."

Giselle: "Think...what could it mean?"

Max: "Maybe there is something here."

Jacob: "I doubt it."

Max: "There's a book on Egyptian history."

Jacob: "Well, good luck combing through that."

Jacob: "Max decided to take a thick book and then read for the rest of the mission while everybody was preoccupied with figurin' things out. It's easy to forget that there's a mole in the midst that we should be watchin' for and all that ribbly-doo."

Aaron: "Did you find anything yet?"

Lena: "The webpage just loaded."

Melvin: "Maybe I can help. I don't know what else I can do."

Sydney: "You don't look like you think much but sure. You can try to note down what the others are shouting out to us."

Sydney: "At least you're showing more initiative than that nerd there. Such a show-off. Sure, he probably gets better grades than us. But I bet he's selfish and only keeps good things to himself. Like look at me, I'm Mr. Squinty Eyes and I'm so smart that I have to be seen reading 24/7!"

Melvin: "I feel so bad for laughing. What do you have against him anyway?"

Sydney: "Nothing. I just think Asians are funny."

Aaron: "Wait, what about that one?"

Lena: "I went there just now. Stop being so annoying. Go bug someone else."

Angie: "What do they have in common?"

Giselle: "Hmm...they give me a feeling of death. There is a cross and coffin there"

Jacob: "Maybe he was a pharaoh? There is a throne and bricks and a snazzy man."

Giselle: "Bricks used to construct the pyramid?"

Aaron: "No dancing pharaohs..."

Lena: "Why not you to supervise someone else?"

Aaron: "So you're chasing me away? You must not want me to see something."

Aaron: "I wanted to supervise Lena since she's working alone and she calls me naggy. How am I naggy? She's just trying to shake me off. Maybe she's the Mole."

Aaron: "Where are you going?"

Giselle: "Up to ground floor. Maybe there are locals who can help us."

Lena: "We're not in Ancient Egypt. Nobody speaks pictures."

5 minutes left.

Sydney: "Melvin, you caught that?"

Melvin: "Yep!"

Angie: "Jacob, Giselle and I theorised that it's about the death of a pharaoh."

Angie: "King Tut is the most famous."

Jacob: "I dunno what's up with this repetition and ribbly-doo."

Sydney: "Yeah, that's strange. Like, there are two men in a row."

Angie: "Guards, perhaps. Did you know that the First Emperor of China was so insecure and paranoid he had a bunch of men buried along with him?"

Sydney: "Alright, geek. Next you're going to tell me that we're in China right now and the moon landing was fake."

Sydney: "Where did you get that water bottle?"

Angie: "This canteen? I have no idea. I just felt thirsty."

Sydney: "I got it! What if it's fake? It's not a real message from the pyramids. There's no way they can get them."

Jacob: "To think we were killing our baby brain cells for nuffin', man. Nuffin'!"

Angie: "Of course."

Angie: "It took us quite a while to realise that those weren't hieroglyphs, but rather just a crpytogram with random pictures. And to think Sydney found that out. She's smarter than she looks."

Angie: "We don't have much time left. Let's try to figure out what each symbol stands for."

Sydney: "It's a cryptogram, right? Each symbol only represents one letter. Hopefully no numbers are included."

Angie: "Hmm...some symbols repeat themselves, but it's really too little to go on."

Sydney: "Let's try assigning those men as E. Melvin, put E under the men!"

Melvin: "Got it!"

Sydney: "Can you pass me the paper? If you can get here fast enough."

Aaron: "Lena, you can stop searching now."

Aaron: "They really shouldn't have tried to mislead us by telling us that whole story about hieroglyphs."

Lena: "Okay, now you can get off my back."

Aaron: "You're really touchy. Why not you digitally record down what they are saying there or something?"

Lena: "You're right. I should. Can you tell me what the symbols are again?"

Angie: "This doesn't make sense though. There must be something to do with the Mole."

Sydney: "Hiw about we change this to an O? And this to...oh, this could be an E, and this a T."

Sydney: "Better! The last word is 'better'! So we can confirm that this is E."

Jacob: "I have no fiddly-doodah on what they're going on about. Are they on drugs? How do their minds work like that without writing anything down?"

Angie: "You're a genius, Sydney!"

Sydney: "Thanks mate. So perhaps this first word is 'don't'."

Angie: "The throne appears twice though. Something, E, O, something, something, T?"

"One minute left."

Sydney: "Peanut! I think the O is supposed to be an A!"

Angie: "Then this is N, then..."

Sydney: "The answer is 'Sand looks like peanut butter'!"

Aaron: "Whew. Hopefully that's correct even though it makes no sense. The texture is completely off. Sand is so grainy but peanut butter is more viscous..."

Lena: "Sheesh."

Giselle: "Those fools above are of no help."

"Time is up! The answer given is 'Sand looks like peanut butter', which is correct! 100 points have been earned."

***

BLOOPERS:

Melvin's so fat he broke the chair, lol.