They go to Ivan's house.
Now Rollie is watching Ivan play his bass guitar. It's a quiet moment really. Rollie is no longer crying, but his face still shows his broken heart.
Steve comes in through the back door and is surprised to see Rollie there as well.
After a few minutes, Steve lights a joint, takes a few puffs, hands it to Rollie, and points for him to hand it to Ivan.
This is an old ritual for the three.
Steve says lays back into the couch. Says "Rough day, Rollie, am I right?"
The joint comes back to Rollie from Ivan and Rollie hands it over to Steve. Rollie nods but doesn't say anything at first.
"They're gonna kill the thing I've been working on." Rollie blurts it out.
Steve coughs. "The AI? The synthetic thing? No! That's like... that's like a new kind of life!"
Rollie just nods and tears well up again. Steve hands him the joint again to pass to Ivan.
This time, Rollie drags from it. Ivan says "whoa, whoa, slow down man!"
Rollie coughs violently. Steve laughs. "Rollie, you never smoke! What's going on?"
Steve's face changes from laughter to concern after he glances at Ivan.
Rollie, between coughs, says how he can't stop obsessing about how kvass is gonna die. He says how it might seem crazy, but he's spent years now taking care of this thing.
Rollie stares at the floor, breathing audibly.
Ivan says, "no man, I get it. Reminds me of when the sheep at the university got sick. None of us could sleep until it was over."
Steve gets up, walks over to Ivan's TV, turns it on, then goes behind it, plugs in wires.
Rollie recognizes the sound. It's the old video game that they made when they were kids.
Rollie watches as Ivan and Steve play for a while. "I haven't thought about this game in so long! You know what's weird? I figured out some tricks to make this game work that were like my own homemade versions of algorithms I ran into in college."
Steve bobs his head while positioning a spinning block.
Steve tells Rollie to explain the system.
It is through talking it out that eventually a solution emerges, but Steve and Rollie butt heads because Steve thinks Rollie is being arrogant when Steve says that they can solve part of the problem in a different way, and Rollie hates the hacky, glitchy nature of the fix.
Steve says something like if Rollie were half the genius he thought he was, then he wouldn't be stuck in this situation.
Ivan shouts at both of them to shut up. He says this is why everything falls apart.
Sitting in Ivan's truck, they're scared shitless, but they're driving away.
Ivan says something like, "Didn't I say that if we walked in talking in Spanish, they wouldn't see us as people?"
Notes
Rollie is defeated at this point.
His friends have to rescue him. I want to refer to interpersonal stuff that was hinted at in the news thing from when they were children.
I wonder if during the heist scene at the end, the Russians show up. Or maybe not?