Scene 3.18 - Red-Eye Training
EST: INT. Shelter - Afternoon
(VERNE is calmly watching the Atavachron’s video, noting the smooth waves that almost reach the shore, really hearing the waves, feeling the waves. He tokes on his third joint and checks his watch. He sips his beer, tokes the joint, coughs a little and goes back to drinking and watching the monitor, as one would watch a fish-tank. A light breeze picks-up.)
CUT TO: SPECKLES' entrance.
(A ventriloquist’s dummy with a sleek, black-with-thick-carrot-top-roots, glossy, Brylcreem-enriched-looking Elvis hair-do slowly peers around the corner. He looks like a dwarf-sized, buck-and-gap-toothed Buddy Holly with freckles -- all hopped-up on goofballs. SPECKLES wears turtle-shell-and-ebony horn-rimmed glasses, and a cadmium-and-pink tie-dyed “Grateful Red” T-shirt with logo under a loud, plaid, mustard yellow-diaherrea brown-and-olive green polyester blazer and equally-unmatching Tartan, orange, maroon, forest-green and mud-brown slacks with a wide brown leather belt, red-and-lime-green-and-mustard-yellow-checkered socks and a kid’s leather-suede pair of Buster Brown shoes. It’s all worn in the vein of the costumes you may have seen on The Rockford Files. Like a myopic Jim Rockford, SPECKLES has a strange, eerie smile to accompany his you-can’t-con-a-con brand of wit and sarcasm. His head and eyes look about. A dummy hand touches the doorway and he begins to cross the room, bobbing in mid-air, as if carried by an unseen hand. VERNE notices this and stoicly watches the dummy’s progression until he’s nearly to the back hallway where the refrigerator is located. VERNE 1 is obviously invisible and unaware of VERNE’S whereabouts.)
VERNE
Uh, can I help you with something?
SPECKLES
Oh! Surprise me, you did.
VERNE
What’s with the levitation act? Verne One, I know it’s you.
SPECKLES
Many powers there are, when one masters the training of the Red-Eye.
VERNE
(Sips beer:) Red-Eye?
SPECKLES
Hmm, yes, Red-Eye. To surf across The Cosmos, to unravel your paradox, defeat the dark side, become a Red-Eye, you must.
VERNE
Now what exactly is a Red-Eye?
SPECKLES
To be a Red-Eye warrior, drink and smoke you must. Drink. Smoke.
VERNE
I’m pretty buzzed already. I don’t know why I just can’t unravel this paradox now.
SPECKLES
Patience. A Red-Eye does not hurry unless chugging beer, or hitting a gravity bong.
VERNE
Is there a point to all this, or should I get back to my ship now? (Belches.) I can assimilate you from here, ya know.
MUSIC UP
SPECKLES
I cannot teach him, the boy has no patience.
VERNE 1 V.O.
(Echo chamber:) He will learn patience.
SPECKLES
Mmm. Eh-uh. Much anger in him. Like the other.
VERNE 1 V.O.
Was I any different when you taught me?
SPECKLES
Eh. No, he is not ready.
VERNE
(Realizing the puppet’s identity:) Speckles. (Pause. We see a close up of SPECKLES’ eyes. They’re extremely heavy-lidded and blood-shot and open ever-so-slightly on hearing his name spoken.) I am ready, I- Verne One, I can be a Red-Eye, Verne One, tell him I’m re-
(VERNE stands, spills beer.)
SPECKLES
Ready are you? What knows you of ready? Alcohol abuse; finish it and down another! Hmmph! (VERNE chugs the beer, opens another, begins downing it.) For one billion years, have I trained Red-Eye, my own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Red-Eye must have the deepest commitment to drinking, hmmm? The most serious chronic. This one, a long time I have watched, all his life, as he looked away to the next toke party, to the next beer-fest. Never his mind on what he was smoking, hmm; what he was drinking, hmm; Near-beer, heh; pretendica, heh; a Red-Eye craves not these things. (Measured, poking him:) You are a light-weight!
VERNE 1 V.O.
So was I, if you remember...
SPECKLES
He is too sober. Yes, too sober to begin the training.
VERNE
But I’ve drank so much...
SPECKLES
Will he finish what he pours?
VERNE
I won’t fail you. I’m not wasted.
SPECKLES
(Spooky, slow, dramatic:) Ehh. You will be. You will be.
SOFT WIPE TO: