Scene 3.10 - The Paradox
EST: INT. The Shelter - Noonish
(VERNE has just learned how The Universe was originally altered, which the audience learns later in this mindless droll. VERNE 1 is patient and nods, as if he once felt the same way VERNE seems to, which is full of exasperation and remorse of thousands of years of human evolution that seemingly headed down a wrong path.)
VERNE
(Nearly ballistic, but not as ballistic as later in the scene for other reasons entirely.) That sucks! The accident, there’s nothing we can do about it?
VERNE 1
Nope. Not without creating a type-one paradox that we can’t undo.
VERNE
It’s just so... unfair!
VERNE 1
It could be easily fixed from Oblivion in a black room, but nothing's coming back from there-
VERNE
(Pacing, exasperated, frustrated:) All our struggle, all we had achieved for ourselves-
VERNE 1
Sure gives a new meaning to Where The Redfern Grows.
VERNE
You ain’t lying! I’ll never read Call Of The Wild the same way again!
VERNE 1
Well, look at it this way. You’ve lost your collars and you’re evolving on the right path as we speak. Maybe there’s another way we can both tackle the problem.
VERNE
If we could just hammer out the variables, we could-
VERNE 1
Drop it, okay? Just how many variables are in a tornado? You saw what it did to the facility. Who knows what they were really trying to accomplish. They’ve all been dead for a thousand years. The Universe is the way it is. We’re stuck being who we are. Let it go.
VERNE
I suppose creating a parallel dimension is out. (VERNE 1 nods.) It’s hard to let it go.
VERNE 1
I know. It’s why you’re the altruist.
VERNE
The what?
VERNE 1
When we terraformed New Trinity as one person, we didn’t replicate ourselves, we really divided ourselves. Routine dissasimilation coupled with a mass, phantasmic replication of near-matter.
VERNE
(Matter-of-fact:) Ah, my first theory, the one that Clarke so quickly shot down.
VERNE 1
Each of the fifteen billion copies of us weren’t complete copies, just many attempts of one, of me trying to complete- to fix it.
VERNE
You’re saying this is a typical, non-dimensional replication, and you’re really just a part of me from my head? Well, that’s easy! This isn’t a real world, just a quantum sphere we’re collectively rationalizing into existence! Why all the dramatics over it? Why all the hub-bub!? Why do I have to convince you of this? Why isn’t the rest of the crew back as one so we can all get on with our lives?
VERNE 1
They are, the cargo too. They were assimilated when the Eliza left New Trinity. At least, I think they were. I’m sure your crew knows now, they have the dreams of billions of lives within them. But the other Vernes were all awake on all the other ships, and weren’t in collective agreement on what to do. Getting all the Vernes to agree on how to reassimilate is really the hard part.
VERNE
If it’s a matter of how our collective mind should be stacked-
(VERNE pulls out his lighter, starts setting the dial.)
VERNE 1
(Fast-talking:) No, no. It’s about information. Information my oversized brain can apply to this problem. The smart trait, the part of me that said, “Get it while you can?” That was from Acceptance, the Aquarian, and I assimilated him just before you arrived on New Trinity, along with all the others I was- keeping under observation. (Quick, sudden:) I can be useful to you like this. Recent memories, things like that; you’re an expert on the functions of the brain, you know what a great tool it can be. It’s like letting just a little piece of yourself be a computer for a while. I got information, secrets readily brought to the surface via this persona, a way that, once I am assimilated, would be buried deep, deep into the recesses of your mind, forever locked, awaiting the precise combination to awaken that ancient memory-
VERNE
Okay, Verne One, you’ve talked yourself into a reprieve, for now. (Puts the mini-pistol he was fondling back into its utility-belt holster.) But it ain’t death, don’t look at it that way. You’ll still be me, only discorporated here for a second. Then whalla! Back in your body, except it’s my body, that’s all, and then we go get the others and then there’s no more paradox; or at least one less paradox. (Scratches head:) Now you’re saying we’re traits?
VERNE 1
Yes, personality traits. I’m a part of Verne, and so are you, yet the sum of the parts exceed-
VERNE
What’s your personality trait? Being a pain in the-?
(VERNE 1 cannot notice that his choice of verbage was ironically apt as he interrupts.)
VERNE 1
As we divided during the terraformation, I realized I was Vigilance. I seek resolution. Then I assimilated another phan; he was Discipline. This made us relentless; I’m the perfectionist.
VERNE
This place is far from perfect.
VERNE 1
This place was Azalea’s dreamworld. We got drunk one honeymoon night and thought it up together.
VERNE
No wonder she knows her way around... (Ponders the notion, it’s plausible as anything else in this sideshow:) So, if I’m the prime trait in my own personality buffett, just what trait am I supposed to be?
VERNE 1
Now let’s assume you were the remainder of the last division. You’re perpetual discontent. You’re Altruism, the Paladin.
VERNE
What do you mean by that?
(VERNE rests his hand on his hip, near his quantum pistol. This does not escape VERNE 1.)
VERNE 1
To truly evolve, to solve our paradox and resolve normal space, we must act as one.
VERNE
If you think I’m going to “become one” with you in an unconventional way, you’re mistaken.
VERNE 1
Heh! (Displays his telekenisis, takes VERNE’S quantum pistol from his utility belt, makes it disappear; his blaster already been taken by AZALEA.) Hah, I could destroy you with a thought.
VERNE
Bring it on, Cupcake. I’ve got Lovecraft’s Law on my side: If your Azalea had to bite it to make mine whole, then nature ensures that you’re the one that’s got to go. Even if you try to set that thing to waste me -- whatja do with it? Ah, I don’t need the quantum pistol to do it anyway. I can jury-rig a blaster to do it.
VERNE 1
It’s Jerry-rig.
VERNE
No it’s not. It’s jury-rig, like caddy-corner.
VERNE 1
No, kitty-corner.
VERNE
Soda.
VERNE 1
Pop.
VERNE
I think it’s frequency grey-thirty-four on the dial; trial and error, I’ll hit it eventually -- you know Bradbury Protocol gives me full authorization to dispose of you in any way I see fit, grey-room or not. Maybe I should call Azalea and have her bring my blaster back. Maybe I should tell her that my mental baggage is keeping me from joining her for lunch.
VERNE 1
When I should be assimilated is not what’s important right now. We’ll address that later, much later. First we must resume normal space, and time.
VERNE
(Wait. This is new:) Time?
VERNE 1
(Realizing his faux-pas:) Er, I mean, space-time. Space-time continuum. (Receiving the Captain Nemo stare, he bends a little:) Well, by trying to put The Universe on hold, you built a paradox in space. This was on top of an earlier paradox where a time-stop had been modified.
VERNE
(Points to the Atavachron's looping tornado footage, not suspecting the man before him modified the time-stop:) On top of this other one that we can’t change. Okay, what was the nature of this time paradox? How come this is the first I’ve heard of it? I thought we agreed on the Archimedes that we all wouldn’t ever attempt to-
VERNE 1
It occurred shortly after our bodies were divided across the dimensional array, long before we met. At least to me, anyway...
VERNE
It figures. (Back-hands the air, fingers skyward, not at VERNE 1.) Somebody pushed a button... but how could an additional paradox have been created if- (Points to self, not suspecting VERNE 1, just one of the fifteen billion other doubles that successfully either got assimilated or rode out the paradox into another parallel dimension.) I had the only access to a working quantum generator and (Points again, touching his chest:) I was the only one on my ship?
VERNE 1
You were still in surgery aboard The Eliza, using the red room. You must understand, from your perspective, the accident had just happened. From our perspective, we thought we were the originals, we’d been trying to solve it with the green-room and grey rooms for countless... countless eons.
POV: VERNE 1
VERNE
(Recognizes his brand of evasiveness, shoots a Captain Nemo glance:) So what did you do, Verne?
MS: Shelter
VERNE 1
Well, we kinda took, er, borrowed your ship when we attempted to terraform Tellusia.
VERNE
(Tilts head back and to the side:) Didja now?
VERNE 1
We couldn’t get anything to grow on New Trinity! Time wasn’t moving the same for us, we had to make a planet that could sustain a human mode of evolution. One in a time-channel, like us.
VERNE
Hey! Maybe you’re right. Sounds really justified. It’s The Ministry Of Quantum Inquiry; they’re the ones you gotta worry about, not me. Sheesh, I put The Universe on hold, I’ll admit I’m in the thick of it along with you, buddy. But let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? (Lights a joint pulled from his pen pocket under his crest-communicator. He ignites a match from the book of matches [see below], takes a stiff swig from a flask on his utility belt. Offers it to VERNE 1. He politely nods no and VERNE takes a double swig and exhales a tsk-aaah and fires-up the J. Pause.) I think I understand it all. I just gotta be clear on a couple of things, first. Lemme see if I got this straight.
VERNE 1
Shoot, er, go ahead.
VERNE
Sometime after the accident, you, realizing you were a phantasm, began exploring the other replicated ships in the realm to find me, Verne Zero, so you could reassimilate. But since you were out-of-step from the time-stream, this took much longer than you had initially anticipated, so you decided instead to use your power over the time-scale to commandeer the other ships and selectively picked a nation of other Verne phantasms that would do your bidding, keeping alive the aspects of our collective self that tolerated tyranny and assimilated anyone that hinted at rebellion or leadership. You became the absolute dictator of New Trinity for a billion years or so, at least in time-loop years, and kept caged all the other phantasms, only later to be mass-executed by you in a modified green-room set for grey so you could benefit from the assimilation instead of me, keeping me in the dark about it all.
(VERNE offers joint, takes the gesture back in one movement and hits it, seeing VERNE 1 is sparking one himself. VERNE tries to keep his alliterations to a minimum, knowing it’s a sign that he’s about to lose it.)
VERNE 1
(Having trouble with the flint on the quantum dial of VERNE’S lighter, joint bobbing in mouth:) I was humane. Cyanide in their grape juice. They didn’t feel a thing.
VERNE
Sooner or later you found me. You eventually boarded my ship in your time-stream, and was surprised to see me working on Azalea, and realized I was the real deal. Then you realized your green-room assimilation was just as phony as your existence here. All the others had spent all their energy trying to pull their necks out of a minor green-room time discrepancy due to a moral choice that luckily, in real time, I never made; a low-priority, type-infinite paradox; something that seems like a big deal at the time, but could be accounted for in perspective, something almost expected to happen, like a passing thought; a notion, and it really isn’t as Earth-shattering as it seems, like being caught smoking in the boys'-room, or touching yourself as a teenager, or a fender-bender. Some green-room-filter-overlay or something else worth your concern, Mr. Vigilence, but nothing that would upset The Cosmos, at least nothing an altruist would care about. (Offers joint:) Is this correct?
VERNE 1
(Lights his joint with the roach, passes it to VERNE on “you” and drops roach in ashtray.) Right-o. Vonnegut’s Isocoles Paradox. (Puff.) Multiple dimensional equations inevitably leading to a finite answer. (Puff.) It was the only way I could get the other rebels to join me, (Passes.) they thought I was you.
VERNE
A story easily believed by the others when you produce a walking corpse to back it up. You must have been a great rabble-rouser, Verne. So let’s see, how did you get there? That’s right, you see my procedure, hide me away, and think about it for a while. Maybe a long while. After establishing your little empire, you remember you weren’t always a green-room messiah, you were a simple neurosurgeon’s daydream once upon a time, long, long ago. And being the compassionate neurosurgeon you knew yourself to be in essence, you thought it was a good idea to try to revive your old gal while you had all the time in the world to operate and she still had a little life left in her. So you copied my medical procedure, and with no real time movement to make any mistakes un-fixable, you eventually and successfully perfected it and revived your future bride, using a near-infinite supply of modified Ellisonium pirated from all the other ships. Correct?
VERNE 1
I had to pirate all the Ellisonium I had. I had to do it on your ship. Among all, you had the only red-room active. There was enough space and fuel for both of us. I thought there would be no harm in making mine live, too, it didn't make a para-
VERNE
Nah, I understand, you thought it was a good idea, and I’ll give you credit, you succeeded where I failed. Surely, after long, intimate moments, Azalea 1 was eventually informed of being revived and learned about being stuck in a small paradox that would naturally have ridden itself out over time, except that you modified a time-stop. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have noticed the infinite time-discrepancy at all and would have continued to believe you were the original Verne, instead of the first division from him -- me, are we on the same page here?
VERNE 1
You read it perfectly. Like my crew, they grew to understand it was in their best interest to be awake through the entire mess, and I came clean with them, so I wouldn’t be tempted to-
VERNE
Nah, I gotcha. You can’t go through a near-eternity alone. Man, I know how crazy being alone can be, I don’t blame you a bit. Like you said, it was a bump in the road and I was an off-ramp. A time-stop I could vaugely remember and take with me, like a vacation or something.
VERNE 1
Yes. Yes, we were just about to jump right back into the time-stream again. You would have felt a little deja-vu, that’s all. You wouldn’t have even noticed it otherwise.
VERNE
Yes, back to that otherwise. (Takes a swig, resets the fill button on the replication flask, swigs again, chases it with joint, coughs a little on the exhale. Offers the joint this time, again a nod, so he hits it again harder and deeper and holds it in.) This relationship with your patient led to the two of you to the altar; getting married a few times over the eons and on one particular day, on a drunken whim, you lied to the rest of your crew, loaded my quantum stores with the remaining depleted fuel cores that you pirated from the other replicated ships and then used my active red-room to terraform Tellusia, thus completely draining all of my Ellisonium stores and completely wrecking any chance I would have had to revive my own Azalea in reality and to enjoy a successful operation, correct?
VERNE 1
I didn’t know that doing a terraformation with modified Ellisonium in your tank would convert the remaining red-room fuel to tachyon vapor.
VERNE
Well, now you do. I guess I kept all the useful knowledge after the division, and you got all the trivia. Let’s see, where was I?
VERNE 1
The red-room paradox-
VERNE
This is all at the tail-end of an infamous ten-to-the-sixth-supercluster-wide paradox that nobody knew about that you discovered right away. A problem that you didn’t even bother to work on until you realized that you created several more conuundrums by trying to escape the quarantine area without reassimilating into me, which would remove your green-room modification and dispel the paradox that kept you separate. Now, I only assume the knowledge of your procrastination to confront your evasiveness of the truth and all the slime on our temporal windshield was all kept secret from our dear little Azalea until sometime later, like how you didn’t even bother to consider operating on her, even to save her life, until sometime later, like until you’d had blue-balls sometime later.
VERNE 1
Seventeen years after I found you. I seriously pondered all of the quantum ramifications.
VERNE
I don’t care if you seriously pondered jumping out of an airlock. (A little curt, losing it:) You disobeyed a command quarantine, took my ship, landed on Tellusia, broke federal environmental protocol, dismantled your collars, created a totalitarian army of replicated phantasms, and then woke up the rest of your crew and cargo and tried to pimp this sector of this parsec-wide pimple on our public-funded, paradox-ridden, spacial poop-chute as your own private little pleasure planet, have I got this right so far?
VERNE 1
For the most part. Except that it was our ship’s computer that chose to awaken the cargo, and the guys didn’t have to pay for it.
VERNE
And if the ship’s computer hadn’t revived the concubines?
VERNE 1
(Half-beat:) We were all going to share Azalea.
VERNE
(One nod:) I see. Then you took my ship back to its starting place, let life here evolve for millions of virtual years, unchecked, while you’re were busy on New Trinity making whoopie with the concubines and locking us in a cell; (Hits the joint) and somehow, you thought that after we were forced to watch a badly-acted morality play about chickens in a war zone and chicks hopped up on poppers, that we, the dominant personality traits, the ones that you had erroneously locked-up and had slated for assimilation in some bizarre, mass-autocide; you somehow thought that we were all gonna let bygones-be-bygones and just happily fix it all for you and make it right again? What, did the time-space distortion also distort your mind? Didja think that all of these problems were just gonna go away?
VERNE 1
True, initially I might have been short-sighted, but my intentions were good. We felt we were trapped here infinitely, we wanted to create Utopia. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the result.
VERNE
Why don’t I sound surprised?
VERNE 1
Life adapted in a strange way here. We had to abandon many regions of the planet because it had evolved to something out of our control.
VERNE
Like the way you evolved? (Squints:) Does that even feel natural?
VERNE 1
I’ve grown accustomed to it. It helps me think bigger.
VERNE
I’m with you all the way until that. There will be no reassimilation until you’re back lookin’ like the guy I met on The Archimedes, the guy I like, the guy in the mirror.
VERNE 1
He’s still here.
VERNE
Wonderful. I look forward to delaying our reassimilation some more though, at least for a while. Now, perhaps, your information about my clones' recent actions may prove quite helpful. So now maybe you can explain how all this affected the way time works in The Universe?
VERNE 1
Well, technically, time isn’t working. It’s- stopped.
VERNE
(It just keeps getting better. He takes a shot. He hits the joint, and puts out the roach, sparks a cigarette from his magic utility belt, using a matchbook. Like a half-smiling father calmly and patiently listening to his teen son’s elaborate tale of, “Okay-like-here’s-what-happened-to-the-car:”) Really? When did this happen?
VERNE 1
Before you tried to put The Universe on hold there was this little problem with-
VERNE
No, no, time isn’t stopped. I was talking to Earth through subspace. They were in normal time.
VERNE 1
That was just the Serling Effect. You were talking to someone who was also frozen in subspace. You forget, there’s a pre-existing paradox everywhere that we can’t do anything about... it answers a lot of questions about the way things are and why we understand so little about-
VERNE
So I didn’t implode The Universe.
VERNE 1
No, you actually freed it. By a fraction, anyway. There’s a big one in here locking it up, but I don’t know what, or how, oh, but no matter. Never enough in that direction. It’s paved with good intentions. Whoever it was that you spoke to on a subspace channel from here is a goner already and doesn’t even know it.
VERNE
Explain. She was talking to others.
VERNE 1
I could probably tell you everything about every one of them. It is a finite number, and I’ve talked to them all. They’re all stuck in this recycled world and live a wondrous illusion of hope and self-medication via chat-line. Didja know they’ve de-evolved from knowing about black-hole-surfing?
VERNE
Outside information?
VERNE 1
They can only talk to each other. I bet you called the President, and she was out to lunch.
VERNE
Something like that.
VERNE 1
Well there’s a theory behind it, but like a black hole, there ain’t no coming back to tell anyone else if the theory holds true.
VERNE
Only two theories exist pertaining to what you’re talking about. And backward time-travel is so implausible, it’s, well, impossible.
VERNE 1
And Oblivion is just that. (A long, knowing glance.) Do I have to say it?
VERNE
It’s gotta be. Nothing else explains it. The singularity of all paradox. We’re in The Phantom World. Does anyone else know?
VERNE
Until this, I thought it was only theoretical. I’ve only shared these facts with you.
VERNE
You may earn my respect after all. Who suspects?
VERNE 1
Clarke. The ship’s computer. Maybe Wells, he’s got a sixth-sense about these kinds of things. Oh, and Azalea.
VERNE
Now, how does a concubine who was never versed in applied quantum physics know anything about The Phantom World?
VERNE 1
I’m telepathic when I sleep.
VERNE
Well that’s an interesting evolutionary development that warrants further study; care for an examination?
VERNE 1
(Backs away a step:) Don’t touch my head.
VERNE
Sorry I grabbed you earlier. Sorry I yelled at you, too. You’re not inhuman. I was worried about my ship.
VERNE 1
I know. Sorry I was a jerk about Azalea. When Azalea assimilated, she must have animated your corpse somehow. I just kinda freaked out.
VERNE
Your crew?
VERNE 1
The other crew members and concubines assimilated before your crash, they wanted to assimilate with the illusion of facing death. It was even odds, you know.
VERNE
It’s not death. You’re not in a real body, you just think you are. You’ll just be latent, that’s all. It happens all the time, it’s routine. You could join me now, if you want. Just walk into a grey-room, set for tachyon vapor, and poof! Come on, we’ve done this countless times just to get through inspections at the Academy, you’ve just never appeared to be as real as this, and certainly never argued with me about it. (Postures and studies VERNE 1:) Amazing, I didn’t realize personality traits could manifest into beings with complete physical properties; it’s like nature rounds up when it rounds off. Wow, diverse traits. I didn’t know it divided that way.
VERNE 1
In The Phantom World, it apparently does. Phantasms seem to have an equal share of reality here. It’s the result of our mass replication when the sphere wasn’t contained. Parts of our mind filled the vacuum created by the fifteen billion extra near-matter brains suddenly given an existence, each controlling an individual body of cells and organs and each requiring an active consciousness to give it spirit. A soul, divided. I experience existence with nerves seemingly as real as yours, and with every mass-assimilation, it seems all the more real, bringing me to this inevitable point, my assimilation. That’s why- They say it feels like a little death.
VERNE
They also say that about orgasms. You don’t see me pushing those back on the calendar.
VERNE 1
Let’s just hold off on our reassimilation, okay?
VERNE
If it’s really just down to you and me, we can save it for last and solve the other quandries first. I kinda like you not being me, it makes me wonder just what kind of a guy I really was before. Let's leave it at that.
VERNE 1
Cool. I’m glad that is finally out of the way. Us being one or two people right now is irrelevant to the fact that we’re both stuck in the The Phantom World.
VERNE
Everyone who is here overstepped their quantum boundaries. It's the world of the dead, man.
VERNE 1
Or the undead. No one knows. Maybe this is the way The Universe really is and the rest of it is distortion.
VERNE
(Unconsciously lifts an index finger and moves wrist to indicate up-and-out:) Has anyone ever-?
VERNE 1
No. And we are the foremost expert on the subject, believe me. I don’t see a way out, do you?
VERNE
No. And if we don’t have a clue, I doubt anyone else can help us. What about Clarke?
VERNE 1
With only you and I left and all the others assimilated into their better half, I thought it best to let you decide whether to tell anyone.
VERNE
I appreciate that. (Pause.) I’m really trying to work on my temper.
VERNE 1
I know.
VERNE
I got a new theory I’ve been working on since I crashed The Archimedes. Road-control. Not road-rage, road-control.
VERNE 1
Sounds promising.
VERNE
Yeah, I hope it will help my temper. So how did my use of the magic button mess it up further?
VERNE 1
When you put The Universe on hold, you didn’t destroy it, you only removed the feedback, the illusion that we were all moving forward when we were really just spinning our wheels in a vast, empty void. It also ended all of our communication with the rest of The Phantom World. I don’t know if they can still talk to each other or not. You didn’t create a real spatial paradox, because we’re not in real space, this matter doesn’t really exist, so your paradox doesn’t really exist. You only took out some of what really wasn’t here already. In a way, it’s easier to solve this way, we can see the answer now from another angle, and we only have to figure out the right question.
VERNE
But a time paradox? Way out of our league. It’s a sound that never echoes. Nothing matters.
VERNE 1
Today matters.
VERNE
Today? What is today? What’s today’s date?
VERNE 1
When we modified a green-room task, we had forgotton that you still had a time-stop in your red-room-
VERNE
What is today’s date? Exactly what time is it?
VERNE 1
(Low:) Less than one second before midnight, October 31st, ninety-nine-sixty-nine.
VERNE
Oh my-! (Kneels, can’t say it, raises arms to the heavens and then slaps thighs.) You know that’s the thing we never, never do! You can’t go back in time! You can't try to go tha- We’re stuck here! We done jumped off the train rollin' down the time-track and there ain't another train comin'! Ever! Ever! (Illustrates with arms and widening outstretched wrists, formerly making an ‘o’ with fingers and thumbs of both hands.) It’s not a time-loop, it’s a time-gap! Forever! Do you know what this means?
VERNE 1
All too well.
VERNE
(Gets up, keeps hands and arms outstretched and approaches. Soft, drawn out and gravel-ly:) You. (Less gravel-ly, louder:) You. (Grabs VERNE 1'S biceps, loses it and shakes him:) You madman! You did this! You let me believe I was the one who caused this! You knew about the Bradbury Prohibition! You stole my ship and you came here and you did it anyway! Why!? Why!?
(As VERNE’S fists clench around the biceps, VERNE 1 disappears and slips free from VERNE. VERNE looks around, wondering.)
ECHO CHAMBER
VERNE 1 V.O.
I’ve been trying to undo this mistake for a billion years, don’t you think I’ve asked that same question many times before? Don’t you think we’re on the same side here? (Illustrates on the monitor on the large machine. VERNE is moderately interested.) I was on the second honeymoon of my fourth marriage to Azalea when we got to drinking a little too much and we were talking about how cool it would be to have a little planet of our own, away from all the other Vernes, and I remembered you still had a working red-room, and I remembered you and I were the only ones within the margins of the exclusionary parameters who could venture to Tellusia without being immediately assimilated through Vonnegut's Law. I had to use your ship. Even most of our grey-rooms had vapor-lock from previous mass-assimilations. I forgot the Ellisonium on your ship was already tainted with the mix I made before when I revived Azalea. We moved almost a full nanosecond backward in time before we all slipped away to here.
VERNE
I give up. Where are you?
VERNE 1 V.O.
I made myself invisible. You get too violent with me.
VERNE
I won’t hurt you. You’re me.
VERNE 1 V.O.
Not good enough. I’ll stay like this for a while.
ERNE
Okay, but what on Earth- (Pauses, looks about.) -Tellusia, do you expect me to do now?
VERNE 1 V.O.
Go see Speckles. You need to free your mind and focus on how to solve our paradox.
VERNE
Our paradox? Don’t you mean your paradox?
VERNE 1 V.O.
You can’t leave anymore than I can, Zero. Not until it’s all resolved, anyway.
VERNE
If it can be resolved; I’m for the black-room solution; hands-down. Who in blazes is Speckles?
VERNE 1 V.O.
A friend. Go deep into the Play-Doh-Bah Swamp. There, you will find him. He will help you.
VERNE
Help me? I don’t need anyone’s help. I just need to get back to my ship.
VERNE 1 V.O.
If you wish to ever get off of this rock, you need all the help you can get. Go visit him.
VERNE
If this is a ruse, I’ll tan your hide like there’s no tomorrow, even if there is no tomorrow.
VERNE 1 V.O.
He’ll be there. Go see him, Verne.
VERNE
Okay, I will. (Stomach growls.) Hey, you got anything to eat around here? It’s lunchtime.
VERNE 1 V.O.
There’s some bread, and some P-and-J in the fridge ‘round back by the keg...
VERNE
(He’s moving:) There’s a keg?
VERNE 1 V.O.
It’s empty and I lost the deposit slip eons ago. Make some lunch, talk to your ship, then go to the Play-Doh-Bah Swamp.
VERNE
(We hear a refrigerator open, bottled beer in the door. From OFF:) Okay. Hey! What’s this Telstar?
VERNE 1 V.O.
Uh, that’s a domestic brand. You might think it tastes like hops too much. Try the New Trinity’s Finest in the door, that’s the stuff I keep for-
VERNE
Hey! This Telstar’s good! Hey! You got a case of this stuff! Two cases!
VERNE 1 V.O.
I- I’m saving that harvest blend in the back for the winter solstice-
VERNE
Ah, why wait for winter? We’re stuck in time, that might be a while. You want one?
VERNE 1 V.O.
No.
VERNE
Suit yourself. (Enters with a bag of chips, two bottled, six-packs. One six-pack is a special brew of Telstar, the other is the normal brew, in which one of these six is half-emptied in his hand. He also cradles a bucket of chicken wings.) I couldn’t help but notice you left half-a-bucket of wings. Are they extra-spicy?
VERNE 1
(Partially materializes; one of the few times he feels like VERNE again:) Five-alarm-Charlie, what else?
VERNE
And these chips ain’t no cheapies either, not the kind with that powdery-nacho cheese that makes your fingers turn orange like I just buttered my body with fake-bake, you know? If there’s one thing I can say about you, Verne One, you sure know what I like. (Kicks back on a recliner, sets the food and beer on an adjacent, old-school TV tray, taps the chair’s magic button and the monitor on the Atavachron lights up, showing a basketball game with sports commentary. U.S. vs. China, 9969. Reclines back halfway, legs horizontal. Pulls-out a sack from the under the cushion of the recliner, as if he knew it would be there.) Wanna roll one?
VERNE 1
No. I have some errands to run. Don’t spend all afternoon watching that game, it’s just a replay anyway. They’re all reruns. Go see Speckles after you eat. He’ll be waiting for you.
VERNE
(Opens bag of chips, engrossed in game:) Cool.
VERNE 1
(Starts to fade in:) And don’t get to playing around with the Atavachron, it has sensitive parts that could cause a temporal or dimensional disruption.
VERNE
(Waving-him-off with the back of his hand toward the exit, even though he doesn’t really care where he is as long as he’s leaving.) Yeah, whatever. Cool. (Eats chip, stops after a bite.) No! Get in there! No, you moron! Shoot, pass, dribble last! What’ya blind? He was open! He was open! (Buzzer sounds from monitor. VERNE quickly snaps the lever on the side of the recliner forward, bringing his legs down so he can sit up.) Oh, ooh! Technical! Technical! You know it baby, technical! (Pops rest of half-bitten chip into mouth. Makes a T with his hands.) Yeah, Verne, see ya ‘round. (Picks up beer to wash chip down, throws legs back up to a horizontal position.) Thanks for the brew. Catch ya later.
VERNE 1
(Fully materializes at the door, about to exit.) Very well. (Beat. Points to monitor:) By the way, China beats the United States by one from the free-throw line after a shooting-foul in the last second, so don’t put any money where your mouth is.
(The longest and most sour Captain Nemo look from VERNE yet...)
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