Me too, after the Merril scene, there is nothing new. I'm stuck. Guess I'll start over again and hope for the best.
Edit: after reading back a few pages, it seems content was removed from this version. I guess it makes sense, dev seems to be redoing parts of the game. to start the story different. You can talk to a fwe of the people in the debug area and recruit them. so you aren't stuck with just Merill. It's just not super obvious.
Note: the back rub mini game, you keep your cursor in the small circle as much as you can to progress.