Scene 1.02 - Monologue
ANIMATION STYLE 3
EST: INT. Bridge, Warship Eliza
ECU: AZALEA, NUDE, DEAD.
(Between the communication and science stations, a portable, military-grade, olive-drab-and-black-tinted, camoflauged-and-unshiny, completely-transparent-and-seamless, phanta-glass armored, suspended-animation coffin is locked against a floor panel. Inside, nude, and occupying a meager, sixty-odd inches of the height of the seven-foot coffin, is a blankly-wide-eyed AZALEA, who has a pencil-lead-thin, pale, pink stripe starting from far above her temple, leading sharply between her eyes, across the bridge of her nose, across the side of her jaw and off the side of her neck. During close-ups, it appears as if a laser had neatly-sliced her head diagonally in half and somehow, the slice was welded together almost imperceptively. Normally, her hair is glossy, curly and raven black, while the laser-created hair-line only seems to grow bone-white, wavy hair, extremely fine -- and this gives AZALEA a very-unusual highlight on her head, even in its current, near-bald state. Within the coffin, her completely-shaved head has been seemingly growing hair about five days, even though in reality, she’s been in hibernation for over five months.)
EST: The Bridge/EXT. Eliza/Azalea
CG1: (Lower half:) 31 OCT 9969 A.C.E. United States Warship Eliza
CG2: (Below CG1:) Orbiting Planet New Trinity, Rushmore Star System, Tom Sawyer Supercluster, U.S.A.
(Use cut-aways of AZALEA in the shadows and flickering, sci-fi B-movies from the last seventy-five centuries on the background monitors, interspersed with public-domain footage. Run additional credits on those monitors during the quick cut-aways.)
POV: Ship’s B&W camera, then cut-away to MS
MS: Captain’s Chair, VERNE seated
(VERNE is dressed for battle, seated in his captain’s chair, center. He hits the solitary, magic-button on the driver's-side arm of his captain’s chair and the bridge is lit with deep blue lights. VERNE is a solid, clean-cut, fair-haired, youthful-looking and gracefully-featured caucasian. VERNE is pure charisma. Men somehow identify with him. He's our token protagonist, so I hope you like the guy. As for the ingenue... I hate to wreck anything, but if you’re female, identify with no one yet. Our leading lady is currently taking a dirt nap.)
VERNE
(In the style of John Archer, Chris Pike, Jim Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, Kate Janeway, and an affected touch of Gregory House:) Mission Report: Classification: Top Secret --I-D key, (Looks inside a card suspended with a cord hung around his neck.) Bova One. General Statement. Captain J-R Tiberius Verne, the one-seventeenth, of The United States Warship Eliza, with Subspacecraft Archimedes docked and Pontoon Mental Floss in tow, reporting-as-ordered in mission-brief (Looks at back of formerly-sealed card hanging from the red-white-and-blue cord draped-around his neck. He also has a seamless, skin-tight, silver band around his neck, its purpose is unclear, but its presence is obvious, none-the-less.) Foxtrot Alpha November 9969-969. (Sips coffee.) The pontoon is still inoperable due to the break-down of peaceful negotiations in the Rhea (ray) system and the torpedo-tubes on the Archimedes are being resupplied manually by me, and should be completely loaded in another fifteen days... (Pause.) ...better make that twenty. The tachyon torpedo stores are critically low, having expended over ninety percent of our entire quantum payload during an ambush by the Mongrel Expeditionary Armada and during the subsequent Rhea XIV conflict -- a battle that Earth's historians have yet-to-name; a battle which the leaders of the Rhean Rebel Axis reverently call their Revolutionary Battle For Independence. I am happy to say I didn’t stick around for the inaugural ceremony or for the dedication of a five-hundred-foot steel monument commemorating the event. Luckily, the incident is mostly all-in-the-past, order has been restored where it counts, and a history won’t be written that doesn’t put the good ‘ol U-S in the best-light-possible. The key to winning a card game is to not show your hand, and if you do, to make sure it’s never the worst hand played. If you ain’t the winner, don’t be a loser, be an ally with victory, whatever it takes, make it so. Sometimes it takes a little muscle to tip those scales in your favor. Be on the winning side at all costs, even if it costs you a pontoon ship.
(VERNE casually looks at his officer’s billet, video of SIMAK and ASIMOV in front of a space map made to look like a weather chart. He turns the web-page to review the last log entries:)
VERNE (Cont'd)
According to the last log-entry of Mr. Asimov, severe, ion-storms in the area seem to have prevented my damage-control detail from making the necessary repairs to The Mental Floss, and although the ship's computer system hasn't-the-slightest-clue what an ion-storm is supposed to be, I've seen it all before. It’s one of those arcane, irregular weather patterns that fleet captains frequently encounter in deep space. These ion-storms seem to be especially-prevalent when a ship’s navigator and a ship’s chief engineer are both given double-duty for an extended amount of time. For now, according to the report, the pontoon is officially in the process of “gettin' around to” being repaired by Mr. Asimov and Mr. Simak. That is, when they're not on ice.
(VERNE tosses the reports aside.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Although I’ve seen worse reports from Academy cadets in training, this is far off par for my crew. And while I do not wish to bemoil their performance records officially, I like to run a tight ship, and normally I would have both men outside repainting the hull at this very moment if I thought it was merely a matter of discipline. However, as you may know from my last report, trying circumstances have subjected all of my crew to many highly-stressful situations within the past year, with little or no shore leave, and this, in light of other recent developments, is why I've determined that ship repairs can wait. It is more efficient, inexpensive and there is much less possibility of human error if I keep the entire crew on ice, along with our cargo. With the exception of waking Dr. Wells for my routine, mandatory physical examination next week, no one in the crew will be revived from hibernation until we reach-
(VERNE looks at the card. He taps a small button on his driver’s side arm of his chair --known to us cave-folk as the magic button; it changes the shade of blue in the room.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Reclassify, Eyes-Only: Attachment to: Coyote One. (He taps the button again.) Madame President, after many delays and almost taking a year for what was supposed to be a three-hour tour, I am eager to deliver our precious cargo to the administrators of the Halceronian capital city of New Portland and move on to bigger and better things... (Pause.) ...like the war, for instance. If I may be candid and speak freely, mam, we’re a class-seven warship --and although I realize there are national security issues and while I am fully-aware of the vital importance this mission has to our friends at the Capitol, I look forward to no longer being a mule in-concert-with a Congressional kick-back scheme --I-E, using a fleet (Grandly gestures to his surroundings-) warship to smuggle cargo to under the table government contractors just so their pets are taken care of at some posh resort on pleasure-planet Halceron! (Calms down. Fingers note stuck to card around neck. Reads it again. Eats it.) I’m only playing along because the paperwork is immaculate and my boys need a few weeks of shore leave badly.
(VERNE chews and chases note with a liquid in a coffee cup. He still chews, staring into the camera.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Their increasingly frequent acts of insubordination aren’t enough to make me worried about getting fragged or anything; I couldn't ever ask for a more loyal crew. I'm sure you would agree, fidelity is a prime human trait, and one I'm not afraid to boast of --but the men and their inattention to small details is certainly is beginning to annoy me... (He punctuates the sentence’s remaining syllables by tapping his magic button. Nothing happens.) ...and affect the ship’s performance. I simply can't afford to endure any more ion-storms.
(VERNE looks off.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
I am aware that, in lieu of the Ellisonium I initially requested at Base Station Mechanoid IV, The Mental Floss received a large, floral-scented, pink-and-purple-polka-dotted crate of goods with a hastily-spray-painted Top Secret stenciled on the box, supposedly-representing the finest in controlled cloning and doll-house ettiquette. A shipment I believe is better suited for a luxury yacht --mini-diplomacy and toy-governments and pop-idols and such. (He leans in, looks at camera.) And whether they're pageant winners or not: Mam, I truly and emphatically would like to stress that this ship is not a parade float. (He swallows the soggy note.) The Eliza has destroyed star-systems. (Short pause. He leans back in his chair, not to relax, but to survey his bridge.) I look forward to receiving your next, military orders, where I may be transporting combat infantry regiments and ammunition and finally going back to where the action is so we can win this war for you and all come back home safely. Until then, Madame President, adieu.
(He does a small, two-fingered salute. Pause. He taps the magic button. The room is bathed in red-white-and-blue lights.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Reclassify: Top-Secret. Attachment to: Commodore Anthony, Commandant, Bravo Fleet, Equestrian Training Theatre And Mounted Support Division: Good day, Piers. I hate to call you in the middle of all your pressing ambassadorial engagements and diplomatic ceremonies back on Earth, and I appreciate the friendly unit-commendations, sir, and thanks, but I was hoping that maybe you could maybe throw your rank around a little to push-aside some of the red-tape that I have to deal with out here, like personnel records' administration codes. (Pause.) Jules R-T Verne the one-seventeenth reporting in as healthy, stable, and mostly-sane, despite another, lonely evening without sleep or company. The crew is in dream-land and I look forward to joining them. No deaths since last report, no injuries since last report, one crew-man, yours truly, mostly awake, five crew-men in hibernation, and eight units of cargo intact and- (Gestures without looking at her.) -one cargo unit on ship's mandatory life-support until official override codes are entered. On that note-
(VERNE sips coffee, sets the cup down.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Sir, she's dead as a doornail, and my ship still insists on invasive life support. Mr. Clarke told me at her memorial service that he had calculated that it will take the system seventeen months to realize the girl is effectively no longer with the living. That means I still got a year to go, and I don't think I can handle it; it's too weird for me. Machines can't be programmed to have compassion; in neither steel nor law, a device cannot understand the torture of an absolute. Can your engineers send me her personnel codes to over-ride the system so I can give her the Viking funeral that the poor girl deserves? Doc's already signed the death certificate and I sent the paperwork with my last mission report, and five months later, with a mountain of additional red-tape, I still have a corpse using the ship's vital resources. Can you help me get them on-the-stick so I can set her controls for the heart of the sun? It's taking point zero-zero-seven-percent of the ship's energy just to keep her body warm, wet and bug-free and I can't give her an official burial until I get the override codes from grave registration. Sir, I’m sure you can imagine that ninety days on the bridge alone, with her vacant, wide-eyed stare at the back of my skull has made hot-wiring the jettison button a priority --but your guys are clever, I'll grant you that. As soon as you can, sir. (He pauses.) I’m starting to have dreams about her, and that can’t be good.
(Over the next sentence, VERNE absently pushes a white button a few times next to an un-lit, green light on a panel on the passenger's side arm of the chair. Nothing happens. There are five, white buttons on the passenger's side of the panel, with a label next to the forward, three buttons, with five, domed lights on the driver’s-side of the labels. The two buttons closest to the captain are un-marked and the lights are an un-lit grey. From forward to aft they are: ALERT [yellow light], ALERT [red light], JETTISON * POD * [green light], unmarked [grey light], unmarked [grey light]. It was the button by the green light that he pushed repeatedly. Only the yellow light next to the three switches is lit. It’s the last yellow alert we see for a long while.)
CUT-AWAY: Passenger-side of captain's chair, CU on arm. Reference:Star Trek: "Court Martial"
VERNE (Cont'd)
And while they're looking up her registration papers, sir, I need her vault password. Mr. Heinlein has informed me that I can't retrieve her personal effects without it, and as usual, it turns-out that he’s right. And since she’s stuck here on the bridge, I've had to enter her name into the morning duty-exemption roster every day for five months now just so the computer will stop sending me hourly- (He yawns; sips coffee:) Pardon me, sir. I'm certainly ready to catch up on some sleep. Thanks for your ear, and until the officer's ball in March, sir, and again, sorry I missed the last one, but duty calls and the war presses on-
(VERNE sips his coffee, taps a button and lights a joint. The room becomes violet.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Classification: Personal Log, Eyes Only, Coyote One and Verne One Seventeen. (Finishes coffee. Conveniently pours more from the driver's-side arm of chair. Some things are quite cool in the year 9969.) I've been the only one awake for any real amount of time since the incident, and it's been on my mind alot, and for therapy, I've volunteered myself for every room-duty in the que. It's been stacking-up the hours, and Doc may fear the mental-bends, but I figure I'll have plenty of time to decompress and get the traditional counseling they give to a captain who starts a fight and lets his precious cargo get blasted in the cross-fire. (He deeply hits the joint.) I've been smoking a lot of pot lately, too, and that helps. I'll have to share this new strain, Crystal Ambrosia, with those fellas at Hydroponic Propulsion Laboratories when I get back to Earth. It's some grade-A stuff. The taste that humans crave. I guess it could be said that the Rhean mission wasn't a complete failure. At least one trade negotiation was completed without incident, although it took-place in a dark alley and I don’t think the taxpayers’ are really getting their fair share.
(VERNE hits the joint hard and holds it in.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
I usually wouldn't have made five, different deals just to score some dank, but on Necronomica IX they only trade in the drug commodity. It's also the only place I know where you can get Ellisonium outside of the military and the Department of Energy. Let’s leave it at that; we all got bones in our closet and I ain’t asking nobody any questions --fair enough? And if resupply would have been available at Mercurial VII or Rigel IX in the first-place, I would be enjoying my sixth month of R-N-R on Halceron already; I gotta boat-load of leave stored-up; I mean, Madame President, what is this? The Forever War? (Realizes he’s getting pretty stoned:) Instead, I’m wading through politically-disputed backwaters, wondering which parts of my ship are carrying contraband in which sector of whose little county seat. At least out here in deep space, I can seemingly do whatever I want as long as I don't pee in the quantum pool. Yet, were it not for the need of quantum fuel, I wouldn't be here, nor would have I even agreed to this phili... quasi... modo side mission, but I need the brownie-points with Washington and the rest of them pups, and I like working in space, so you know it’s cool. Plus, I scored some precious heirloom-seeds of Simoleon Spice and a couple of tons of prime Yog-Soggoth buds, so this planet ought to be a real-doozy. I know that no one else will believe I really got double-S because nobody can get those seeds anywhere, and maybe I might share a female plant with you, Madame President, if you would only maybe send me a few things post-haste... (As if he had to give it a moment of thought, which he didn’t:) like Ellisonium, for instance. Ya know, I only got the Simoleon seeds because the suppliers know that I’m the one who made the strain possible to begin with, and me being the one who terraformed the Topiary system, the Toparians traded them to me for a song. Supposedly, Topiary is the only system that has the correct soil-composition and climate that allows that particular seed to grow. People there joke about how they wish the quarantine were lifted, but you know as well as I do that those places aren’t for the weak-of-will. People outside of the quarantine area also might joke and say I need pure Topiarian soil to grow the stuff, but I ain't that rich and it’s all really a black-market-hoax anyway. See, it’s the Zeta wavelength of the star and the soil both and no one takes that into account. (Fondles his stash before him:) Nobody but me, that is. Three seconds in the red room and I betcha I could even make 'em grow in my coffee grounds. (Swirls coffee, finishes it.) Not that I would use my natural talents in the Quantum Physics field to exploit or subjugate anyone. If I were given free reign, I would simply make my life a little more comfortable, that’s all. Like not being out of gas.
(VERNE refills his coffee and takes a toke break.)
VERNE (Cont’d)
(Points with his thumb toward AZALEA in the midst of his pipe dream. Note that he never once looks towards her. He already knows what she looks like, inside and out. In fact, he avoids meeting her unyeilding, accusatory gaze.) And maybe next time one of these pageant-winners falls off the back of a truck, I might be able to barter for one of them instead of half a cargo bay full of weed and some watered-down fuel. I hear the trade hounds in New Portland will easily swap a run of the mill, red-light dame for exotic bud any day of the week. Tsk. Too bad this one’s damaged goods. I've got enough years to retire any time I want, and she would have been a good investment; a just reward for decades of lonely service. (He blows out the smoke.) Yeah. She was quite a looker and she must have turned a million heads in her life. (He hits it again, holds it in.) My compliments to her breeder at Mt. Aldous.
FEMALE COMPUTER
Captain, cargo-unit Azalea one one six five was cloned from human D-N-A sequence one nine-F at The Reno Regional Reproductive Center and was matured at the Las Vegas Hatchery on Saturday, Nineteen June, nine-eight-aught-
VERNE
(Remembers; shakes head; he’s stoned. Interrrupts:) Right, right; I stand corrected, she was a fellow Earthling. (Pause. Her birthday is only days away from his own.) Huh, another Gemini... (He regards the joint, he's cooked.) Terran humans are pretty rare nowadays, and I don’t know of if any are still living who were birthed from a woman, like me. I think all the others are all dead now. (A moment of quiet introspection of the past, and he quickly reverses to thinking again of the present.) Clarke and Asimov are the only Earthlings I got on my crew, Heinlein, Simak and Wells were all cloned at Mt. Aldous on Asteroid Carroll-Lewis, which is where everybody seems to be coming from nowadays. As far as the concubines, come to think of it, I think Ms. Azalea was the only Earthling among them... Last month, on a drunken whim of misplaced guilt and self-pity, I read her official biography. Her bio says she grew up in Las Vegas and worked as a lounge magician until being crowned Miss Nevada a few years ago. A native Vegas showgirl, who would have thought? Anyway, my compliments to the Reno Reproductive Center and the Las Vegas Hatchery, she’s quite the design of beauty. There’s some poor dog in-port who’s gonna be mighty disappointed when he doesn’t get this package. (He blows out his smoke.) I know it doesn't bode well to speak about the dead as if they were living, but this far into space, she’s been the only one I’ve been able to... talk to for a while. Maybe they might transfer me to an Ag-ship instead of reprimanding me. Those cowgirls are hot. That's if they haven’t decided to have me committed for going a billion dollars over my budget last year.
(VERNE hits the joint lightly.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
All in good time when we get to Halceron. I'm not the only one who blames me for what happened on Rhea XIV, I saw it in the eyes of my crew before I put them under. It was like I had bemauled a woman within inches of her life right in front of them and then I played it off like it was a tea-party. If hind-sight is twenty-twenty, then combat is surely blind. They blame me because I chose to stay and fight when we could have pulled-out without a scratch. I could have let the local militia on Rhea XIV fend for themselves. I didn't. The crew blames me for the fallout. Many innocent lives were saved in the battle, but many were lost that might have lived otherwise. (A la Gump:) That's all I got to say about that.
(Slowly drinks coffee. He extinguishes the joint in ashtray next to the magic button. He taps the button; the room assumes a white, florescent shade with a fill of black lights from very strange angles.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
If I’m anything in The Universe, I’m the Quantum Physics expert, and that’s dicey stuff spelled-out in black-and white; no middle-ground in the field, I’m afraid. Somehow, the stars all say there’s something odd that awaits me. When I'm playing Solitaire with Crowley’s Quantum Tarot Deck in the yellow room just for sits and wiggles, I find that I keep pulling-up The Ghost Card. It kinda creeps me out. The ghost card is number thirteen in the major arcana and is a card of four wise men or jesters or minstrels or something called The Fab Four gathered at an archway. It’s a very old engraving made-from an-even-more ancient photo. The bearded man standing on the left oddly-holds his hat in front of him while looking left, away from the others. The next bearded man is seated atop a few steps into the archway, almost to the shadows within. He’s looking right, with a near-jovial expression. His left hand is raised, holding a joint in a cigarette holder. (Looks at his own phatty.) I guess it’s uncertain what he is really smoking. The third man is clean-shaven and dressed in white, as if reborn. He sits on the bottom step with his arms crossed, very jovial and also looking right. The last man stands to his left, leaning on the right side of the archway with his left hand in his pocket. I guess the ghost is supposed to be standing somewhere in the archway shadows. The ghost is traditionally-called the fifth beetle but I sure don’t know why or why its a bug or why I keep pulling-up that stinking card when I know the deck is supposed to be rigged for the "All You Need Is Love" card to begin with...
(Realized again he’s way stoned. He checks his watch; recalibrates it. He blazes up another, as if by magic.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Reclassify: Top-Secret; Histronic. Attachment to: Mission-Control, Department of Spatial Xenology: (He sips his coffee throughout, slowly:) For the last ninety-two days, The Eliza has been in slow decent toward New Trinity and is now within twenty thousand leagues --the recommended range determined by the Q-F vector grid. I know it's a bigger decent-margin than the boys in Washington like to hear-about, and the Government Accounting Office is probably cursing me under-its-breath, but believe me, when you've already lost one person due to a mis-hap in what started as, "a routine, diplomatic gesture for the Foreign-Relations Committee," a captain doesn't like to take chances that could put his ship into the middle of a burning fireball. And I mean that literally. I've been driving long hours in these thick, murky, backwaters of asteroid-filled space to comply with you want me to do. The State Department has officially requested a terraformin' drive-by of planet New Trinity and you've asked for an up-close scan of its primary satellite, dwarf-planet Tellusia. After this, I am promised there will be no additional delays or diversions from our original course. I'm sure your boys can cook up some record of an ion-storm or something that may have delayed this voyage -- until we're back in garrison and debriefed, anyway. If a crew can do it to a weary captain, mission-control shouldn't have a problem pitching it to civilians.
(With no effort, he brings up all kinds of cool holographic graphs and charts and analysis results from the Tellusian probes. His words are artfully and perfectly illustrated, as if by magic. After all, it is the future.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Okay, you technophiles, the big moment you’ve all been patiently waiting for -- you’ve asked me and a few phantasms to play Einstein and Oppenheimer and Sagan in the white-room for some fool’s-gold expedition. Okay, I’ll bite... "What’s it for?" You say, "To explore the possibility of alien life." (Long pause.) Hmmm. And I say, "Really? Like to see if Earth-based life is not unique? Like to look to see if we’re truly, not alone?" In my innocence, I ask: "Hasn’t this been settled?" I ask, "Didn't our early, spatial pioneers, upon popping her celestial cherry, declare Virgo's virgin vastness to be void of vivacity?" Then you say, "Well, of course not, Captain, we're scientists; we see the big picture, through a really big telescope in space, not from some isolated-corner of an asteroid belt, not from some dirty windshield on a star destroyer." You say, "There’s always more star systems to see, more planets to explore." And I say, "Oh... since you put it that way, maybe I should go through enemy territory after all -- all the way past our contested borders, through hundreds of combat zones and staging-areas and go way out at the edge of mapped space so I can take a really good, close look for you."
POV: Camera recording log entry. [The foward viewscreen.]
VERNE (Cont'd)
(Sets coffee down, changes demeanor, looks straight at the camera, not angry, but convincing:) Give it up already! There’s nothing out here! Take it from a poor, poor captain who has been from one side of this supercluster to the other. Believe this tired and jaded man who has spent most of his life chasing wild comets that some computer thought was an enemy cruiser. There isn’t even a trash bag out here that we didn’t leave ourselves! Get over it! Life on Earth was just some freak accident, and it hasn't happened anywhere else, or we would know it already! We're alone! (He pauses, leans in more.) Listen closely: There is no such thing as a tribble! (Pause. He smiles and tilts his head.) Get your heads out of all that science-fiction hodge-podge, and back to building me a bigger and better gun to take out the real foreigners -- the enemy! There's us, the enemy, and non-combatants. That's all she wrote. I've been across thousands of parsecs of lonely space, and the whole time I've only seen frozen ice, molten rock and tons of scrap, military hardware -- hardware that we built. I hate to burst your bubble, but that's reality. Fahgettaboudit! (He points down with a curt movement and tilts his head.) You’re not going to find jack down there!
(VERNE chuckles, and shakes his head. He sips his coffee, chuckles some-more while shaking his head a little less, obviously recalling past incidents or other things we don’t get.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
But there’s no talking you scientists out of it, once you’ve convinced yourselves, I know that much. (He effortlessly brings up Tellusia on the main display, as if it were as easy as blinking; like magic.) You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve done the thorough scan of the dwarf-planet Tellusia as ordered and I think the findings will only encourage your madness and furthur your calls for additional funding and research. Data confirms ice crystals in the troposphere and salt water over a majority of the Tellusian surface. Paratime engrams spiral off my system's chart, and the magnetic field of the planet seems to be affected by some isolated anomaly on the planet’s surface. The anomaly is near the equator, causing the magnetic poles to flux in an irregular pattern. Dwarf-planet Tellusia is like some spooky, cosmic mirror. What I send in comes back distorted, or gives me data that in scale, could not be possible for such a small, little piece of dirt spinning inside a drop of water. I see now why you needed me to check it out up close, because with the Serling Effect across space, your readings must look even-stranger than mine. There’s time-space distortions all over the place, like that of a black-hole, but there is no dark-matter detected by my probes. (Long pause, as if he’s given it much thought and decided to give it the college try once again, only to be befuddled with the inconclusive data from the probes.) It’s weird, and I can’t explain it. There's something there, but I'm not going to hazard a guess. I'm moving-on; you figure it out. There's a reverse echo of some quantum activity, perhaps a paradox or something like it, and it isn't from the terraforming I'm about to do on the planet New Trinity. My yellow-room doesn't read it as a paradox, so I suppose one explanation could be that it's caused by alien technology, so if the possibilty exists, I'm sure you fossil-hounds will check it out on your own sometime soon. Something put water and an atmosphere there and it wasn't me. My professional Q-P analysis and gut feelings tell me you boys are better off leaving it alone, but I'm sure you'll have a grey room installed on site before I even get back to Earth. A word of caution from a man who has seen much: Anytime I feel a sudden weight; in the barometer, in the time-space continuum or especially in the pit of my stomach, I stop whatever on God's Green Earth I was doing and I do a one-eighty. In all three of those ways, I got that funny feeling now. Except it ain't God's Green Earth, it's an ocean that seems to make its own tides. I advise you gentlemen to keep as far away from Tellusia as possible. There's something about that black and blue rock that gives me the willies. Seriously. I’ve seen thousands of planets and none of them have been as creepy as that one. I don’t know if it’s the enemy or aliens or something else, I’m just relieved you didn’t ask me to land there. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Good luck, gentlemen. Hope this dog doesn't come back to bite you.
(Pauses, looks at stack of mission requests from scientific postulators; should he ever have the opportunity to visit Tellusia. The computer illustrates these as well.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
On a more sad note, I regret to say that Mr. Clarke’s invaluable, scientific attributes will not be available as you have requested. He may be a human computer, but it serves the ship’s best interests to cheat him from what he would probably call, “a rare opportunity to answer questions that have been plaguing Earth since the dawn of reason” or some malarky like that. Last I checked, though, commanders, not scientists, were running this operation, and tactics, not Pneumatology, is what's keeping-us-alive. Although scientists must pay a daily tithe to the devil's-advocates, veteran commanders must eternally-answer to God Himself. You have money and questions, I got men and orders. We're over a hundred parsecs away from physically-mapped space, the enemy has been spotted in this supercluster, and after one fatality on my ship recently, I don't care to put my crew, or my cargo, in harm's way again. They neither have the skills, training or clearance to have knowledge of the orders I have been given, nor of the territories through which I must travel to complete these orders and get us back on our original heading. I have assumed all primary duties to sail this ship, alone, until we reach port at- (He looks at the clearance card once more and sips his coffee.) Until we reach our next port.
(The display monitors change, as do the holographs. VERNE puts his orders casually aside, and picks up a stack of faxed, graph paper with about every possible drawing of what the aliens of Tellusia may look like and flips through them. Also display as holograms.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Back to the experiment: Tellusia will remain unaffected by the terraforming process, and New Trinity should become habitable almost immediately. It should be, as the poets say, like a Garden of Eden. Well, at least until you Pentagon boys show up to start pickin' the apples. Not to make waves, but the Congressional Committee on Space Exploration is still waiting to question me concerning my involvement in the Rhean incident of all things, and believe me, the last people I want to upset at this point are the politicians who make this war possible, so if I could be debriefed concerning what my official version of what happened will be before I talk to them, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm really not looking forward to the inquiry, but I don't fear it, and I will be glad when the entire matter of what re-ignited World War One Billion And One will finally be put to rest.
(VERNE shoots the first of what will be his trademark “Captain Nemo” half-smile-half-pursed-lip-smirks to the camera, as if "someone" just farted. Seemingly, in comparison to the other actors and actresses, he gets to look at the camera as much as an amateur porn star. He stops and turns the graph page sideways, curious. It’s an Arachnid from Starship Troopers. He moves on to look at a Morlock from The Time Machine. He looks up and repeats the campy, Captain Nemo look just in case you missed it. He rarely misses an opportunity to use it, no matter where the camera is and who has the focus of the scene, to the point of milking a dead horse. He's Everyman. He gets to be a jerk. In addition to getting to look at the camera, he also gets to use his trademark smirk as punctuation to a sloppy joke, or someone-else's line, giving him stage when it works, and occasionally, you'll get an unexplained tune from a lute or a kazoo or something along with it if it tops the previous humor perfectly, ends a scene or if you simply need a handy transition to get a break from all this endless, dry monotony.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
I could go into details about New Trinity, like how a day is a week long or how the gravity and air pressure will still be on the heavy side due to the unstable, inorganic base, but I’m sure your scientists can explain it all to you without costing a thousand bucks a minute for the phone call. Terraforming a planet takes a wide-spectrum array, and this experiment will exhaust most of the bio-nodes in our replicator stores and I will probably lose consciousness during the proximity-manifestation stage of the process, so I'm keeping this channel open, so you will have a record of how I did it, in case future experiments of this nature are deemed necessary. (Pause.) Here’s where the commandant at the Academy turns-off the monitor, and the students all go back to their E-tablets and draw-up the equations to show on E-paper how I did it. And if those poor pups at the Academy are looking-off another's E-homework, take note: Everyone's got a different right answer, so don't cheat; do the math. Put all of those histronic notations down on E-paper. While I shall use a different kind of paper.
(He starts to roll another joint. Even eight-thousand years from now, there's seeds and stems. There's no magic-button for that.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Because these New-Trinity drive-by orders are classified mission-only, the computer system is clueless why I keep erasing my flight plans and it incessantly keeps referring to the original flight plan which has a higher-priority setting, and I don't know how to change the file without deleting it and I'm not gonna wake up Mr. Clarke just for that, so I have to override it with this help screen that isn't any help at all; and then it repeatedly asks me, literally, if I really know where in The Universe I am going. After three months of flying solo and gazing at this same, ugly, fecal-brown planet of gas and mud just so you guys get your Xenological jollies, believe me, I know where I am going. Or rather, not going. If there's a middle of nowhere, it's right here.
(VERNE twists the rolling paper.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Muddy, gas-planet New Trinity, in the dull, yellow, Rushmore Solar System, in a small, unremarkable sector of the Seahorse Galaxy in the frequently-overlooked Tom Sawyer Supercluster, yet still encompassed within the territorial borders of the United States Of America --unofficially, of course, we don’t have a garrison here --yet. (Absently taps one of those unmarked grey buttons. The light next to it lights up!) But I'm not the one to thank for this sudden extension of manifest destiny. (He licks the paper.) It wasn't just the blue room; it's brought to us instead by imagination, the letter marijuana and the number infinity and viewers like you --and taxpayers everywhere. Taxpayers who will probably make this a resort one day, with the tourist traps --authentic Tellusian moon-rocks and all. Like an ad I saw once, back on Earth: If you're not where you want to be in The Universe, let The Universe come to you. You can erect a statue of me someday, but know that I'm only doing this because if I don’t do it, someone else will; and then they’ll screw it up and I’ll have to deal with it anyway and probably while on my shore leave, most likely right before I’d peg one-twenty-one and cash in all my chips and strike it rich with a fat, twenty-nine hand. You scientists don't play cribbage much, do you? (Looks at schematic-precise, computer-assisted drawing illustrations on reverse blueprint graph paper.) You all seem to be more the chess-playing type.
(VERNE lights the joint. Side note: In case you're wondering, the lit grey light denotes AUTOPILOT -- but only the ship’s crew and the movie's camera crew know that. This is why: We suddenly notice that the camera is sticking to only one shot; and close-ups, pedestals, pans, tilts, dollies and all other camera-esque movements gracefully-flow until the end of the scene -- it is one continuous, perfectly-fluid shot that luckily just happens to be zoomed-in where and when it counts and back out in time for movement and it just naturally-flows until it zooms-out to include the vastness of the bridge before finally fading to black.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
All this pointless talk aside, I'll be glad to finally get back to sleep tonight. After a few more uninterrupted days of normal sleep, Doc will probably agree that I'm stable enough to go back into hibernation and then, if I'm lucky, I probably won't be awake again until after this message has been received, deciphered and analyzed by all the scientists and number-crunchers you got. Here's where I launch the bio-nodes and go into my Zeta-induced sleep. Believe me, the pot helps. And to make all of your mouths water and make all you stoners on Earth jealous: Mmmmmmmmm... (Dangles joint below nose, sniffs the second-hand smoke, smiles:) this stuff is from my stash; more potent than even the primo stuff from the Necron System's earlier days. It's a cross-breed of this Angorian Blue-Tooth and some of my recent aquisition of Purple Yog-Soggoth. I call the mix “A Blue-Velvet Gobstopper.” (Holds a bud aloft. It does look tasty and potent. There’s so many trichomes on it that you would think it was dipped in sugar.) Get a good look, this could be yours someday. You wanna smoke the good stuff? Quit those pencil-pushing, ergonomic, butt-cushion jobs and join the military. We need every one of your college-educated craniums applied toward defeating the enemy. Today. Enlist now. W-W-W recruit-my-butt dot gov. (Pause. Waste not, want not, he packs the seedless bud into his bowl, produced from a secret compartment in the chair.) Well, there's my plug for the big-house. And you young pups, you wanna be in a gang? (Fakes some weird splay of fingers as if he’s showing some secret sign or something, head cocked and all:) I know all about gang colors. Look at my colors! (Taps button, everything in the room is camoflagued in different patterns to include him and AZALEA!) -- Camo! Biggest gang of all, the U-S military. (Realizing he's stoned, taps button again -- everything regains normal sheen.) Sorry, like I said, this is the really good stuff. Makes me a little brain-dead, but you're really missing out, gentlemen. As they say, grass smokes greenest on the other side of The Universe. (Hits.) I'm sure you've all heard that you've really gotta be in space to enjoy it. It's not only true with the Kama Sutra, it's also true with hallucinogens. (Muttering, toking, bobbing head, spitting rap to himself absently:) Smoke this joint, then call it a DAY. If'n that don't do it, Smoke-the-roach in the ASH-tray...
(He taps the magic button. The room turns medium-blue. A rising-and-falling, gentle hum emanates, much like Summer cicadas.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Reclassify: General Classified. Attachment to: Mission Control, Department of Spatial Xenology: My alpha waves are aligned, and I should be able to start terraforming in a few moments. I dream in color, so the planet's atmosphere or terrain may appear extremely vivid after terraformation, perhaps psychedelic. The wildlife is usually-colored different than on Earth, like a zebra might be, say, red, white and blue, to match the terrain. All I know is that it works. They'll be plenty of diverse plants, lots of gentle rain, a few earthquakes now and then, a little volcanic action every few years or so, almost no heavy storm systems and lots and lots of fertile topsoil. However, bring your own barn. I've never manifested a human, a dog, an ape or a cat, nor do I ever want to, and I also understand that the bio-node's flash-fire programming somehow prevents it. Also, other domesticated animals and cultivated plants rarely manifest in my terraformations. If they do, predators usually finish-off the few pigs, sheep and cows that do manifest long before humans, apes, cats or dogs ever choose to colonize the planet. I guess it also means to bring your own broccoli. And marijuana. (He hits the joint.) On the bright side, bring your own cockroaches. I've never manifested a mosquito, much less a bedbug, and the insect population is usually far below normal. Butterflies and dragonflies instead of horseflies and ticks. (Pauses. He looks off. He hits the joint.) It's my idea of paradise, anyway. A few tarantulas, frogs and garden snakes, squids, cuttlefish, and lots of... birds for some reason. I guess I have an unconscious bias against things that creep and crawl. No matter how it turns out, within a few hours, this biosphere should reach a renewable equilibrium, and should be perfect for colonization, or my name ain’t Jules Rodham Tiberius Verne The One-Seventeenth. (Pause.) Actually it isn't. My birth name is Julian Rodham Sickle, and yeah, for those of you who wear my face and know your history: I'm the original Verne. Yeah, I'm still alive and the odds haven't beat me yet... For those of you who don't know your Terran History, I was the Johnny-come-lately "Fall Harvest" D-N-A that returned to Earth on September 21st, 8996, after spending the previous thousand years inside a giant space distortion. At first, I was hailed as the man of the year, for I had been written off; like the rest of the ship's crew -- but I'm the survivor type, you can put your money on that... (Tokes.) I was the sixty-seventh combination of D-N-A to be discovered to be immune to the symptoms of Anthromycis Genoplexia. Six months and two million direct clones later, I was back to just being Lieutenant Sickle carrying a Lieutenant Verne 117's identification. (Long chong.) Hey computer chick, what was that place they took me to? Something like The Marcy?
FEMALE COMPUTER
MARCY: The Military Anthropological Research And Cloning Yard.
VERNE
Yeah, I was branded human type "Jules Verne" whether I liked the name or not. The D-N-A for the Arthur model was from an Arcturo, the code for the Isaac model was taken from a man named Isaiah, and the matrix for the Robert Heinlein model was from a guy named Robert. Figures that a computer would think that Julian matches Jules the closest, so thusly, I now go by Jules. There's at least a half-billion copies of me floating around on Earth and it's frigid, "Local" neighborhood, and do you think I really want any to see any of them around? Quantum cloning of yourself was only a novelty in my day -- like a "selfie" you'd post for a day and take down... It was never a permanent arrangement in my day -- sure as Shrimp-On-The-Barbie, it was nothing like the human cloning they do today, where the entire propogation of the human race depends on the rotation and diversification of seventy-odd population patterns of human likeness. I suppose when humanity evolved into pure energy way-back-when, they musta been mortified. Certainly, they never considered that pure energy was what we were to begin with and all we really are and it must have takes billions of years just to escape that form of existence only so we could all return back to being the jerks we know we love to be in human bodies -- and all in stride with enduring billions of cloned jerkwads like me running around and taking up every damn seat in public that even looks comfortable -- Truly, I had to change my identity from the outset -- clones are way worse than groupies and stalkers once they know you're the Original. Endless questions, endless discussions about trivial things -- I believe I'm the only Original still alive, and that's only because I played hop-scotch with a singularity. Just thinking about those times -- I had to join the ranks of the clones or risk be hounded for the rest of my days -- at least the folks at the MARCY were cool about it and let me pick which lot number I'd go by. They just skipped the whole 117th lot order and didn't clone any origin cells that day -- just skipped lot 117, kinda like how many buildings skip the 13th floor of an elevator, except, in this case, I'm the only 13th floor in existence... (Mondo tokes to keep his train of thought and his verbal diarrhea going...) You know, I became friends with of one of my clones once. When he found out I was the original from which he was made, information which I've since learned is inevitably known, since nobody can keep a secret and since I now know that the only secrets that are ever kept are the ones you keep to yourself... (Final toke on roach.) Anyway, Jules 420 found out from a former friend that I was actually Julian Sickle and not Jules Verne 117 as I had presented myself to be, and, well, we kinda lost contact over time... it was very awkward: Perhaps it was for the best, though -- it started to look to me like it was gonna turn weird -- this whole cloning-yourself thing; it's kinda like a strange brand of incest -- I guess -- I'll never get used to seeing them no matter how many of them I see. 69 of the same faces, cloned forever. Who'd thought that would be how humanity ended up? I sure as shooting stars didn't forsee it. Clones come and go, I always stay just the same. It's why I choose to live in space. Far, distant space. Like me, most things stay pretty much the same out here...
(Roaches joint; the last chong cashed it.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
This is my fifty-first terraformation, and I believe I've got it down to a science; and although the natives of the Topiary system like to keep their patented plant and prime export extremely exclusive, I can't but help to throw down my share of a few additional dishes for the cosmic buffet --ones that perhaps Earth's evolution didn't have the opportunity to nurture. However, Topiarians should be relieved to know that the manifestation of Simoleon Spice was what hydro-spooks call a transcendental exception and it is unlikely to ever repeat again. Sorry guys, there is no such thing as a money-tree. Believe me, I'd have made it by now. (Finishes coffee, dumps grounds into ashtray, refills cup.) Another thing that future New Trinitans should look forward to are the subtle differences from Earth. I've heard from colonists from past terraformations that smells and tastes are sometimes as strange as the colors of things. The wind could smell like vanilla or may taste like chocolate. There's never a flavor or a scent I don't like, but you can't dream like I do and not tend toward the fantastic in geology. "We are the music makers." In foods, I hope you like orange marmalade, marshmallows, cotton candy and buttered popcorn. (Sips coffee. Locks it into the armrest. Pushes the other grey button. The chair slowly starts to vibrate and massages him and reclines.) And coffee... with half a drop... of semi-sweet... dark chocolate. When you use the human brain as a supercomputer, you get results you normally-wouldn't expect, but I assure all of you who haven't yet had the pleasure to visit any one of the colonies founded by me: none of it is dangerous. Math all aside, I have no control over any aspects of my latent dreams.
(He looks at the paper copy of his orders. He hits the magic button -- the room gets increasingly darker --the holograms of the planet and its satellites are the only thing seen towards the end, except for the smoldering cherry of VERNE'S roach. His chair is fully reclined. Start a grand zoom-out.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Description. The Rushmore star system looks much like our own, meaning that there isn't much to look at, with Planet New Trinity being the star's only orbiting body. It has seven dwarf-planet-sized moons, two shephard moons and countless orbiting chunks of ice and rock, giving the planet it's Saturnian ring-system. The largest satellite, Tellusia, is named in homage to our own Tellus, the Earth. Tellusia has many Earth-like qualities, liquid water on the surface, and according to initial studies, should have inherent, life-sustaining conditions; a gravity, pressure and atmosphere much like our own on Earth. Tellusia will be unaffected by my terraformation of New Trinity, as I’ve pre-programmed the scale parameters to lock at a three-code-sequence to exclude Tellusia from the Q-S-I-2 across all settings -- in case of an inadvertent Kiesler-Lamarr Quantum Echoes. From here, Tellusia appears as a scratched-up, black-and-blue marble, and has many, mirror-like qualities that make it very unusual, indeed. It will be left untouched by this experiment in order to ensure future Xenological studies, and perhaps there, scientists may finally answer that age-old question: Are we truly alone? Is the notion of God, Nature, The Universe --is it all in vain, or is there some unconscious purpose to Earth life? A motive for this optimism? A reason why we reach for the stars?
(VERNE pauses.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
The current gravity and planetary winds of New Trinity make a preliminary landing impossible, even if the surface wasn't comprised of compressed, molten rock and super-heated gas, so I regret I am unable to comply with that part of the mission order. However, numerous probes have been sent into the mass and the findings look promising. It turns out the old mud-ball isn't as boring as I had previously thought it to be. With a little more luck, New Trinity would have been a star. Your Ekistians (eh-kiss'-tee-anns) and engineers guessed it right. It is a prime candidate for quantum terraformation and could-easily-accommodate over seventy billion colonists, and their luggage, and their pets, and even the kitchen sink, if the resources produced through manipulation yeild even a percentage of the projected amounts. Scale parameters are set, the exclusion-shield is stable. Well, here goes nothing. It will either become a paradise, or a paradox. At nine-eleven, Washington time, I officially dub thee New Trinity, newest colony and planetary outpost of the U-S of A.
(VERNE pushes the magic button. The room becomes a bright, chroma red, like his joint's cherry. The entire sequence incrementally-slows to a near-stop.)
ZOOM OUT
FADE TO BLOOD RED