Scene 3.24 - Use The Buzz
EST: EXT. Shelter - Afternoon
(RONNIE is a black, cyborg-looking nightmare. Built-in laser cannons, plasma blades, a sleek, muscular look and wrist-rockets that do all sorts of things. There’s a huge helmet in some weird-Darth-Vader-motif and it speaks super-robotic and masculine and the helmet’s spiky, mouth pieces light up when RONNIE speaks. RONNIE is a seven-year-old boy’s bed-wetting terror.)
RONNIE
(Lowering VERNE in the ejection seat from 3.03 to a shoreline position on the ground, near the craft.) Here it is. We’ll never get it out.
VERNE
I’ve seen it looking worse for the wear. Do it the way I showed you, use the buzz.
RONNIE
I’ll try.
VERNE
No! Try not. Do, or do not.
(RONNIE tries to lift The Archimedes from the watery swamp, but only manages to get buried in the mud, chest deep. Note: RONNIE groans a lot and tries really hard, and struggles to unbury itself.)
RONNIE
It’s too big. Reeds and Twigs are one thing, but this, it’s completely different.
VERNE
No! (Holds up SPECKLES’ hand, imitates the SPECKLES voice perfectly:) No difference! Only different in your mind! Have you learned nothing about being human? Have you heard nothing I’ve said? (He picks up the doll and shakes it, not really animating it, like he doesn’t know how. He moves the hands by grasping them with his left hand:) Look at me, frail and weak am I, small am I, but my power of the buzz, yes, the buzz is strong in me, big am I with the power of the buzz!
RONNIE
I am but a machine. I’ll never be like a human. I cannot do what you ask.
(Moaning and groaning, RONNIE tries again.)
VERNE
Let go. Yes. Feel it. Feel the buzz, feel it flow into you, through you.
(RONNIE falls backward into the mud, only lifting it a few feet. Gets up quickly, exhausted.)
RONNIE
(Covered in mud, walking away a few steps.) You want the impossible.
MUSIC UP
(RONNIE collapses to the ground, breathing heavy.)
VERNE
(Sighs.) Hmmmm.
(VERNE squints his eyes and lets the veins on his head stick out and start pounding and he slowly dissolves away and becomes invisible! SPECKLES becomes extremely animated. He floats over to the ship, squints his eyes and crosses his brow, curls a lip, raises a hand, outstretches his fingers and The Archimedes rises from the misty swamp.)
RONNIE
(Amazed, stumbling up from ground, wearily joins SPECKLES:) I- I don’t believe it.
SPECKLES
(Eyes as stoned as ever:) That is why you failed.
SOFT WIPE TO: