"Goldbug" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hallucinations

Tamerlane selected her outfit and got ready for her morning well before sunrise. Exhausted, she splashed water on her face in the bathroom and almost promptly leaned into the mirror, bumping into it to wake up. In the kitchen she put a kettle on the stovetop and woke up to its whistling, finding the tea already steeping on the countertop when she came to. In her office she started redlining the opening statements for the Goldbug launch, once again nodding off and awakening to find the whole document completely proofed and her teacup, resting on her knee, empty and dry.

She barely noticed the figure in the doorway, walking by out of the corner of her eye, but when she did, she followed it into the hall and found she was alone...or at least seemed to be. In the kitchen she found a Goldbug box waiting for her on the countertop and, opening that she found rotting meat and bugs.

Looking a second time, Tam realized the box was actually empty. It was, however, a good moment for her to realize she needed sleep. Taking Ambien, melatonin, and a handful of other sedatives, she put herself to bed and insisted to herself to just pass out.

Answer: An Egyptian Pharaoh

Dupin reminds Roderick that most of his recollections regard his kids in their final days, and often without anyone around to hear their conversations or know their actions. He has no choice but to take all of his stories with anything short of a grain of salt since he didn't witness those events. Roderick says that they all happened this way, unfortunately, because they told him after they died.

After returning from Victorine's, shortly after her suicide, Roderick found a package waiting in his office-- a box once possessed by Queen Twosret, the Pharaoh of Egypt in the 19th Dynasty. Inside were two giant sapphires placed in her head when she was mummified to give her power and sight in the afterlife. He bought them for Madeline as a gift, explaining that they were meant to come straight from the eyes of a goddess. Of course, he was also explaining this to the ghosts of his four youngest children, each standing in his office with him.

Madeline arrived to find Roderick alone in his office, covered in blood having removed the heart mesh from Ali's body himself to avoid leaving it for the police to take as evidence. Roderick let his sister know that no one was in the apartment with them. He watched Vic plunge the knife into her own heart. Madeline reminded him that despite all the deaths appearing to be a morbid coincidence, Vic had a board seat, and the continued deaths meant losing the Usher family firewall, it being dismantled, brick-by-brick. At least he could get the rest of the board under control in the meantime. Finally, something he could work with.

Answer: The morning news

Juno woke up the morning after Vic's death to find the house empty as Roderick never came back from the office. Making herself some breakfast (and a pile of Ligodone), she left messages on Roderick's phone while she watched the morning news. It was during this time she found out about Vic and Ali-- another tragic entry in the Usher news cycle-- an apparent murder-suicide.

Frederick and Lenore would see the news as well, catching it from Morella's new room in their own home. Though Frederick worried about having to attend another funeral, Lenore worried for their safety. Frederick noted that Vic was an ambitious woman. It was bound to happen. Besides-- none of the others were completely Ushers anyways. Frederick would turn to Morella and let her know the news, backhandedly reminding her that you just couldn't really know some peoples' motives.

Bill showed up back at the apartment to ask if Tam was okay in light of the news about Vic and she brushed him off, telling him to leave his key. He reiterated to her that she was not fine and, simply, had not been fine for a while. He reminded her that he loved her; she said she didn't. Looking back to her work she apologized and said that now more than ever, she needed Goldbug to work to save the family and show that Fortunato was more than just Roderick and Madeline for the first time. By the time she looked up, it seemed some time had passed as Bill wasn't in the room anymore. His keys remained on the countertop.

Answer: The Ushers' childhood home

Lenore visited Roderick's office, taking the day off school due to the situation, to ask him why everything was happening, and all Roderick could tell her was that life is insane. Lenore was worried, but he reminded her that he wouldn't let anything bad happen to her. Fortunately, she knew not to be worried for her own sake. She was worried, instead, about her father because he seemed a bit off. It was because reality was off, Roderick noted. He asked if she could see the others, not telling her of the ghosts standing behind her, and when she couldn't, he noted that his lack of sleep might have been leading to his terrifying daydreams.

Pym stayed on guard at Victorine's place, ensuring that the police didn't wander off with Fortunato property, especially digital items. As he pocketed the murder weapon and grabbed Vic's laptop, he found a file containing a photocopied driver's license belonging to Pamela Clemm. Recognizing the woman in the ID as the same woman following the other Ushers, he took that info as well and headed out to search for her.

Juno would get a visit at home from a surprise guest when Tamerlane showed up looking for her father. Though Juno wished to express her condolences she rambled on, eventually bringing the conversation back around to the weird and terrible things happening to the family. She suggested that under normal circumstances, people would come together in the face of such tragedy, but it's strange that the Ushers seemed to drift further apart. Juno expressed regret, as well, that she believed marrying into the Ushers would give her a chance at having a family. She started to cry before Tam departed, cutting the conversation short.

Back at the Fortunato offices, Madeline talked to her heads of programming, aiming to remind the board of their power and strength in the market by bringing forth a new algorithm. Her main goal was to show off the work her team had been doing on consciousness mapping, but it wasn't quite ready. She sent her people away as a call came in from Arthur. The news wasn't good. The photo at Vic's was most definitely of the mystery woman. He headed to the address on the file and determined that she was targeting the family without a shadow of a doubt. It's because the address on her driver's license was Roderick and Madeline's childhood home.

Answer: Circumnavigate the globe

Dupin is surprised to hear that the mystery woman used the old Usher address as her own and asks Roderick if Pym found anything when he went inside. It leads to a larger discussion about the Ushers' legal representation and Roderick asks if he remembers the Transglobe Expedition, a circumnavigation of the globe that took place across four years from the UK to the South Pole to the North Pole and home again-- one hundred thousand miles, allegedly. Arthur was there for it, barely twenty-five-years old, having put law school on hold to see it all while they were poring through the basement records of Fortunato. Arthur always stopped the story when he reached the North Pole though, and the Usher children would try to fill in the rest of the story themselves.

Not even Roderick knows the end to the story. He likes to think Pym killed someone there at the North Pole-- ate human flesh or something. He told Tammy, once, he saw the Earth was hollow from there and he found an island he called Ultima Thule occupied by beings who lived out of time and out of space.

Roderick and Madeline didn't send a hitman or a mercenary to find the mystery woman-- they sent Arthur Gordon Pym. And he found her. Just not on that day.

Dupin notes that he remembers the expedition quite well, having heard of it when he was with Roderick in the Fortunato basement, back when he was unemployed and seeking answers. Before Roderick can respond, the windows behind him burst, sending him sprawling to the floor in a heap of glass. It's nothing more than another vision though. This time, Tamerlane's ghost walks through the glass with bloody feet and reaches her hand out to her father.

When Roderick snaps back to reality, Dupin helps him up.

Answer: Brevet

On one night back in the late 1970s, Roderick and Dupin shook hands in mutual agreement that they would go forth with the plan to bring down Rufus Griswold. Annabel noted the riskiness of the venture and Dupin reiterated that their success would depend on what Roderick brought back from the records in the Fortunato basement. If Roderick could bring what Dupin needed, they would bring him down without a doubt.

Specifically, Dupin needed items from a list he provided. Patient records would be valuable, but more than those, consent for care forms would be optimal as would internal memos and anything with the name Brevet on it. Anything with Roderick's signature on it that he knows he didn't sign would also be important because Roderick could testify to their forgery.

That night, Annabel reminded Roderick that this was risking everything they had, possibly in a vendetta against his boss or his dad. He knew the risk though, and he needed her to back him up. She agreed to be by his side and, to a great extent, if he felt it was right, she was proud of him.

Soon, he'd find himself down in the basement archives in an office full of boxes. Avoiding the janitorial staff, he'd set to work photocopying in the dark.

Answer: In photos with the rich elite

Roderick, Madeline, and Pym looked over the photos and while Roderick was hesitant to believe their mystery woman was to blame, especially since he watched Vic commit suicide, it was hard to brush off the notion that the alleged culprit just happened to be around all the Ushers by coincidence. Pym asked for more time to solve the case, especially since he staked out the bar where Madeline claims the woman back in 1979 and discovered it was never a bar. In fact, it'd been vacant since 1975. Madeline chalked this up to time; it'd been more than forty years since they were there. It didn't help though, since Pym looked up every bar in a five mile radius of Fortunato dating back to 1975. Facial recognition software also came up with nothing.

What Pym did find, however, was that using Madeline's algorithms, combing through the internet and deepening the search, he came up with some concerning results, specifically that the mystery woman had been in pictures with people like David Koch, seven years ago; Mark Zuckerberg at one point; Gina Rinehart, the mining magnate; there was more. Some of the pictures dated back to the turn of the century-- and not the twenty-first century. Roderick said it could be Photoshop; Madeline wasn't so sure. She begged him to remember what the woman said back when they met her. Pym reminded that the photos had been online for a while, so the technology to doctor them, with the metadata in mind, would be beyond his understanding or capability.

Answer: False

Watching old black-and-white movies with her mother in Morella's treatment room, Lenore asked her mother what she wanted to do next. Able to speak again, Morella said to put on another movie, much to her daughter's delight. Earlier in the day, Morella couldn't even move. Lenore took this as a great sign, telling her father, though he wasn't all too thrilled. Frederick promised specialists and full-time care for Morella, but she'd yet to see anyone come by. This time, he said they'd only come if needed. For new, they'd take care of her; there was no one better to.

That evening, Frederick brought some of Leo's cocaine to the treatment room, propped up a wedding photo on Morella's side table, and started into chatting at her. Pouring a concoction together, he asked her what the point of talking was since, as they both knew, she'd be lying. Last time he gave her 15ccs of Roderick's untested nightshade, locking her into her body. This time he gave her more. They'd see how long it lasted.

Madeline would find Roderick in the basement of the Fortunato office staring at the brick wall; his secretary said he'd been coming down a lot recently. She came down to let him know that Goldbug was launching and he should be there, if not for Tamerlane, then for the company. He thought it'd be a waste of time though. He said he'd be up in a minute. Before Madeline headed upstairs, Roderick asked if she could hear the bells. She told him to snap out of it, but he couldn't even say for certain if she was really there with him in the room. Besides, Tamerlane would be fine.

Answer: Juno

Madeline would find Tamerlane nervous backstage at the Goldbug launch and she would thank her for her work; Goldbug is what the family needed in their time of grief and it's what the public needed to see. Tam, angry that her father and husband weren't there to support, got her staunch support from her aunt instead, who claimed that the men were too simple to see Tam should have her face in front of both Goldbug and Fortunato. Tam said she missed Bill, but Madeline said, to Tam's immediate agreement, that she could get that kind of guy anywhere.

Before long, it was time for Tam to hit the stage. Madeline gave her best wishes ("break both legs") as the five minute warning was queued and Tam lost herself in thought. When she snapped to, she was being introduced.

Though Tam rushed to the stage, she got to the curtain just as someone else took the mic, introducing the product. Realizing it sounded like Candy, the escort she'd been seeing around Bill, she burst through and demanded to know what was going on...except it appeared that her emcee was the one still at the mic.

Despite the embarrassing moment, Tam stood before the crowd and reined in her own outburst, managing to quickly bring the crowd to applause as she revealed Goldbug, the first true high-end beauty, fitness, and health lifestyle brand on the market. The pitch was going well until Tam looked out into the audience and spotted Candy seated in behind Juno, dressed in the same outfit she was wearing onstage.

Answer: Mirror

The launch stumbled more after Tam spotted Candy in the crowd. As she revealed her personalized Goldbug box, she tripped over her own scripting. At one point, she even asked Candy what she was doing there only to look and see someone else in the seat. As she shifted the focus off herself once again, Madeline took the hint, scanning the seats for the expected guest while the crowd opened the curated boxes left under their assigned chairs.

This is when things took a turn. Tam watched as the images on her presentation's video wall shifted, replacing her face with Candy's on each slide before displaying private videos she filmed with herself, Bill, and their escorts. While it didn't appear that the crowd saw the videos or slide change, it was enough to set Tam mad, convincing her to pick up the mic stand and smash the screens before tossing the heavy fixture at Candy, walking down the aisle towards the stage. Unfortunately, the stand hit Juno, seated in the front row, striking her in the head.

While ran backstage, Madeline finally caught sight of Verna at the edge of the room, watching the audience and smiling from the shadows. When she reached her, however, the woman vanished in a puff of dust, leaving nothing but ash on her hands.

Tamerlane returned to the apartment in a hurry, hyperventilating as Bill rang up on her phone. She tossed the device into the living room, but was shocked as a woman in her dress answered it, responding to Bill as though she was Tam. Hurrying into the room and grabbing a fire poker, she took a swing at the figure only for it to disappear. It didn't stop her from picking the improvised weapon back up and following the figure, now reappeared, down the hall.

As Tam pursued the woman and the pair reparteed back and forth, she was surprised to start seeing the woman in the reflections of the mirrors in her hallway and bedroom. She started taking swings with the poker, smashing the mirrors despite shards cutting into her face and feet. The woman let her know that if she kept swinging, she'd only be hurting herself; she should just relax. Tam didn't stop though. Watching on, the woman let her know that despite everything, she probably wouldn't realize that the inevitable had nothing to do with her. As Tam swung upwards and the mirrors suspended on the bedroom ceiling came crashing down, she was impaled on its shards with the thought in her mind that she messed everything up herself.