Chapter 1 Breakdown

May as well put my thoughts here.

So here's what we know:

Kogan wakes up in a filthy office (we only know his name from the preview content but whatever). He doesn't know how he got here. It apears to be night.

The office smells like "mold and decay." There's stuff strewn all over the desk: books, papers, several cans of bug spray. There's a plate with a banana peel on it- it has apparently been left there for far too long, and there's lots of flies buzzing around (a bit ironically, what with the bug spray). A few semi-legible words on the papers appear to read "PINTV" with the subtitle "experimentation" and (seperately) "Mass Sucide." They appear to be newspapers. There is also quite a bit of crumpled up paper.

Kogan is woken up by the sound of a video playing on the computer monitor (it's one of those big, old, clunky computers). The video is of Ms. Mendez, a patient with schizophrenia, speaking with Dr. Roberts, presumably her physciatrist. The two are visible only as vague silhouettes in the video. Ms. Mendez tells the doctor about how she was visited by a faerie the previous night. She insists it was real, saying that she didn't see "a tiny lady with wings" but does not provide another description, saying that it was too dark to see clearly. She says that it told her to call it a faerie- this provokes a notable reaction in Kogan. The doctor asks if the faerie said anything else, but when Ms. Mendez responds "Yes, it said-" the video glitches out into red, flashing lights, and loud noises, prompting Kogan to cover his ears. The computer screen apears to have gone dark after this.

Acording to Kogan's narration, he has no idea why he's in this office or how he got here. The button that will presumably link to the next episode reads "Try to remember..."

So what's going on? This desk is reading obsession board to me- it's the (very messy) workstation of someone who was researching the PINTV experiment and/or the Pandora Institute. They have newspaper articles, books, and this computer which apparently has surveillance footage and/or recordings of patient interactions. The presence of at least three cans of bug spray suggestions some paranoia about bugs, presumably related to the individual having at least some awareness of the existance of bug-based horrors (unless we're in a fears manifest into horrors situation, in which case it's probably a phobia that will cause bug-based horrors). There was probably some frustration in the research, based on the crumpled paper. The work station also appears to have been left abandoned for some time. The room smells overwhelmingly of mold and decay and the bug spray could not have sprayed recently with the number of flies buzzing around. The banana peel is also rotting, but the fact that it was left there might mean that the workspace was abandoned suddenly.

But what about Kogan? What is he doing here, how did he arrive with no memory, and why was the video playing when he woke up? Prevailing Kogan split personality theory suggests that something else was in control of his body. If it brought him here and hit play on that video, whatever it is probably trying to gather information on this subject. Without knowing the setting right now it's hard to speculate whether the other thing controlling Kogan is the owner of this workspace, or just found someone else's abandoned research.