Scene 6.11 - The Real World, Part 3
ANIMATION STYLE 2
EST: INT. Enrapture, Following VERNE'S brisk strides down empty hall into a near-empty mess hall
VERNE
Captain's Log, supplimental. Upon meeting Dr. Jeremy and Commodore Zale, I have learned through direct observation that notable men in History do not always live up to the molds that are created by the legends that precede them. In this case, the good doctor and Commodore aren't men at all, but rather, randy, sex-pot, hop-heads that have my impressionable crew questioning orders and creating a climate of chaos that undermines the dynasty of discipline I have so painstakingly-crafted. I am uneasy about their presence aboard, and whether Dr. Jeremy is the greatest scientist of our time or not, I cannot wait to reach Halceron and have the two free-wheelin' stoners escorted from my "neat-o" ship with every expedient means at my disposal. Their shapely presence has given my acid-laden stomach the full measure of the butterfly effect, and I'm sure only a tall, hearty glass of milk will wash the stress away from my refractory, peptic ulcer.
CAMEO NINETEEN
(Chess piece in hand, stands:) Mess hall, Attention!
VERNE
(Goes to bar, gestures to the two men playing three-tiered chess at a table and to the woman sleeping in a lounge chair by the central fireplace.) The guidon's up, Ensign, and you're mated in seven -- As you were.
(BUNION [Cameo 8] is a full-figured alien who just happens to look like a young mash-up of Queen Latifah, Oprah Winfrey, Pearl Bailey and Esther Rolle with a head covered with dreadlocks that are comprised of strands of every hair color known to humanity. [Red, Blonde, Dish-Water Blonde, Strawberry Blonde, Gray, Black, White, Brown, and Platinum. The dreads are unified with strands of pink, teal, muave and gold strands. Bunion has a gold-capped tooth, but no grill across her pearly whites. She has a little blue teardrop tattoo stemming from her left eye, denoting hard time spent in a penal colony where avoiding getting shanked simply for being different was a daily expectation. Despite her troubled and hardened past, she is light-hearted, bubbly, full of energy and wears a lighter, more-festive outfit cut and sewn like traditional, African garb, yet adorned with pastel colors, patterns and markings of animals not found on Terran terrain. She's got two huge, gold hoop earrings and long, painted fingernails -- and yeah, baby's got back. For the person who adores curves on a woman, BUNION is a double treat, with a 44-size D-cup and a bubble-butt that make the more nerdy and juvenile ass-men men aboard break-out their protractors, compasses, Spirographs, Magic Markers and their Big Chief tablets, occasionally littering the halls with paper homages to what they consider "The Universe's Best Derriere Anywhere." Bunion dismisses such "From Planet Fine-Ass" flattery as she is from a planet where the individual's ego was never considered, only where the communal ethic was always applied. A planet who had perhaps achieved Karl Marx's communistic Utopia without creating a totalitarian state usually filled with fraility, injustice and corruption. Unfortunately, she is a rare survivor of this majestic governmental body. Her world was destroyed by the Board, [sic bored] -- a collective group of cybernetic bureaucrats who needed to clear her star system to pave a space lane while she was visiting Vulcania on an Ambassadorial Mission. It is perhaps complete irony that Bunion now must live as an individual. The crime that led to her incarceration and her history of homicide are examples of her rediscovered, primal, instinctual, defensive responses; acts solely completed out of self-preservation, a notion she finds to be as alien as the notion of falsehood. Fiction on her world was never contemplated, nor considered to ever be a useful measure of thought, though now she spends all her free time indulging in the captain's extensive library -- reading religious texts, fairy tales and other fantastic stories from Earth-borne authors while smoking her wondrous blend of alien herb in a solar-powered vaporizer-bong borrowed from the captain's dusty collection of antique water pipes. She has powers of empathy, telepathy, telekenisis and can read a thousand words a second with full comprehension. She's still quite geeky, however, as she uses colloquialisms oddly and insists on wearing unattractive, oval, granny spectacles even though she has infrared and X-ray vision in her sparkling blue-gray eyes that can see as sharply as an Andorean Hedgehawk.)
CAMEO EIGHT
(Tending bar, polishing a glass:) Whatcha doin' all up in here, Captain? You never come here this early, you're always between five fifteen and five-forty-five. Mr. Two Doubles, Straight Up. What's happenin'?
VERNE
Oh, Bunion, I need a tall, hearty glass of milk, post-hatse.
CAMEO EIGHT
By tall you really mean Tall or do you mean Grande?
VERNE
Which one's bigger?
CAMEO EIGHT
Super-Grande's the biggest. It holds a half-gallon.
VERNE
Super-Grande, then.
CAMEO EIGHT
Buttermilk, Half-And-Half, Skim, Two-Percent, Vitamin D, or Double-D?
VERNE
The whole enchilada. Gimme the D, Bunion.
CAMEO EIGHT
(Smirk:) Strawberry, Vanilla, Chocolate or Caramel?
VERNE
I'll take mine virgin, straight up. Chilled glass, if you will.
CAMEO EIGHT
(Serves it.) I serve cold drinks no other way. Extra foamy, just for you. Bottoms-up, Captain.
VERNE
Thank you, Bunion. (Chugs.) Ahhhh... nothin' beats milk...
CAMEO EIGHT
Wanna bet? You want want your Double-Decker-Zombie "Cough-Medicine-Drink" now or at last-call like usual when the rest of the crew's all cleared out and I have to drag you out all sreamin' and cryin' about how nobody ever really understands you 'cept me and my "two bestest pillows this side of Dark Star Nine-Nine-?
VERNE
(Distracted.) Not tonight. (Beat.) Hey - I thought I said no alcoholic beverages until further-
CAMEO EIGHT
Union rules -- I can still make 'em even if your crew can't drink 'em.
VERNE
(Eyeing "sleeping" woman passed-out in the lounge chair like a sorority initiate at a rushweek afterparty. [LILY]) Perhaps a few crew members have managed a way to take a nip or two while you weren't looking, Bunion.
CAMEO EIGHT
Eh, I may be an alien, but I don't got eyes in the back of my head or nothin'. If I leave a drink at the bar, how am I supposed to assume it got drank? Maybe somebody spilt it and then cleaned up the mess before I turned around.
VERNE
I imagine Ensign Lo managed to spill more than a drink or two.
CAMEO EIGHT
Oh, Susan? Aw, she's been like that since last night. She'll wake up, have a bagel, a cup of joe with a nip of chocolate and walk it off and be back to work by- well, before you're gonna know it, anyway.
VERNE
Sooner than that, I'm afraid. I need her up and out of here before one eight zero zero tonight -- which is approaching fast -- we got company aboard.
CAMEO EIGHT
Yeah, them Bimbos Of Outer Betelguese, yeah, I've heard... I got them salads all in the crisper and all the tofu-meat's all pre-cooked... (Lights a cigarette.) Look, I'll try to wake Ensign Lo before they arrive, but she gets really cranky if someone-
VERNE
You don't really care if I look like an ass tonight, do you?
CAMEO EIGHT
I think you look like an ass, anyway. (Like I said, no falsehoods here...) It makes no difference to me how you look, Captain, it's how you act, that's what counts.
VERNE
You think I'm acting like a fool, Bunion?
CAMEO EIGHT
You could eat coal and crap diamonds, J-T, I've never seen you look this wound-up and so by the book. (VERNE manages to look left and right and breaks out a Lucky Star Coffin Nail cigarette. She lights him.) Look, on my homeworld, we didn't have famous people because everybody knew one another, nobody had a legend to live up to because meeting our collective goals was all that ever mattered to us.
VERNE
You think that's what it is? I'm trying to impress her?
CAMEO EIGHT
You forget, I got mental powers that make me a great private counsel and one heck of a bartender. Julian, it's gonna be okay, I sense it -- I know how you really feel inside about Commodore Zale.
VERNE
Zale? I thought we were talking about the Admiral.
CAMEO EIGHT
That's apples, the Commodore is all about oranges. You are so afraid of the fact that you realize you are falling in love with a woman who could be your equal, or more -- you're focusing on a moot point.
VERNE
You throw around the term love too freely -- it's hardly moot at all, Admiral Jeremy is probably schtooping Doc and he's probably putting stains all over the sickbay as we speak. It's really not about me, it's about order, discipline. You don't know me at all, Bunion.
CAMEO EIGHT
I know everybody way more than any of you ever want to admit. You're one of the few who still believes in the possibility of finding true love, Julian. You got a glimpse of it today. You were vulnerable, caught off guard and certainly distracted, and the little notion that you and Zale could be like two peas in a pod crept into your heart and now won't let go. Your attempts at prying the little notion from your heart is eating you from the inside out -- ergo, the untimely vat of milk.
VERNE
(Finishes it off.) You're mixing your metaphors and you use Earth idioms with about as much accuracy as a Saurian Speak and Spell. I hardly know Ms. Zale, to accuse me of lust, infatuation with a superior officer who-
CAMEO EIGHT
You're humbled by the notion that Admiral Jeremy wasn't who you expected HER to be, and this has allowed the possibility that the Commodore may be more than just a notch in some lonely captain's love-belt.
VERNE
Okay, I admit that I'm- physically attracted to her, that's not uncommon among young, good-looking officers, but as the Admiral has so colorfully put-it, "the girl's a lezzo" To say I feel love for one I've barely even had the time to give a serious butt-chewing to-
CAMEO EIGHT
Butt-chewing?
VERNE
A- A verbal reprimand. Except she outranks me, but it's my ship, so...
CAMEO EIGHT
Call it what you want; that's like hitting the girl on the playground that you like the most during recess -- you want her attention, but don't know how to go about getting it the right way.
VERNE
Well, maybe if we have this mess hall looking a little more polished and festive, and get them platforms in here -- I could get her attention in the right way and show both her and the Admiral how we really do business on my ship.
(By rote, BUNION reacts to a near-silent chime that quietly tinkles from the ship-wide intercom. She whips out a secret stash box and pulls out something that looks like a little mace. The weapon, not the liquid. She licks her lips as she whips out a lighter. Pavlovianesque.)
CAMEO EIGHT
(Eyes him:) Yeah, I 'spose I can go with that; I'll have it looking great, Captain. Leave it to me.
(BUNION lights the alien blunt with many prongs and potentially many chongs. The protuberances of the multi-cherried blunt-thing showcase many different strains of bud. Alien bud. Potent alien bud. VERNE looks on blankly, speechless for a moment. We see rapid movement by the others in the background, approaching.)
VERNE
Am I sitting here? Is this really happening? Didn't I give an order prohibiting marijuana?
CAMEO EIGHT
All I heard was you said no Nag-Champa, plus this blend always smells great. It's 4:20, ain't it always a custom on this ship to blaze-up at 4:20?
VERNE
Hmmm... This is the first I've heard of this- custom; I'm usually in my ready-room latrine at one six two zero hours.
(The others, including Ensign Lo, join the circle.)
LILY
(Lop-sided hair still firmly and flatly out-of-place:) All right! Wake and bake!
CAMEO EIGHT
You in, Julian? It's got some of my ancient stash in the blunt core...
VERNE
Okay, no Nag Champa. (Trying it, coughs and goes at it again:) It's... yes, quite tasty.
CAMEO EIGHT
Nah! Nah! Hit it fer reelz!
(VERNE takes two monster tokes. Two smoke clouds exist where none were before.)
CAMEO EIGHT
Thattaboy. Your turn, DePinto. We pass these to MY left...
CAMEO NINETEEN
Oh man, you gotta turn-on the Admiral to this! This is right up there with her own K-B!
CAMEO EIGHT
Yeah? I've heard about her Crystal Ambrosia, I'd like to sample some of it myself...
VERNE
I don't know what I'm doing here, we shouldn't be doing this, this isn't right...
CAMEO EIGHT
Stop being paranoid. Lighten up. You're the one in charge, right?
VERNE
(A Nemoean pause.) I like to think so.
CAMEO NINETEEN
Hair of the dog, Sue?
LILY
Absolutely. Bloody Mary, extra spicy.
CAMEO NINETEEN
Make that two.
CAMEO TWENTY-ONE
Make mine a snakebite, extra bite.
VERNE
I thought I said-
CAMEO EIGHT
(Pushes blunt into VERNE'S hand:) Comin' right up!
VERNE
So this is what everyone's always doin' when I'm in the john every day for twelve minutes?
CAMEO TWENTY-ONE
Seventeen minutes, sir.
CAMEO NINETEEN
He was out at just under fifteen minutes that one day last month...
CAMEO EIGHT
We had them greasy tacos for lunch that day...
VERNE
Yeah, them tacos, hey, Bunion! Why don't you bring those back? (Smiles, almost like he could taste them now...) They were good!
LILY
You gonna hit that, Captain?
VERNE
(Double Nemoean pause. Hits strongly. Stifles a cough. Passes.) Uh, sure, Ensign.
CAMEO EIGHT
Now Captain, I appreciate all them boys from engineering that you're sending down to help me tonight, but you don't worry none about chow for them ladies, I got it all covered. Those gals will feel like they walked into the restaurant of a five-star hotel when they come in here. For now, I got another Super-Grande for you coming right up.
VERNE
Oh. (Burps:) Just a Tall, Bunion. I don't know, Bunion, if this goes the way I fear it will, I may need something stronger than milk at chow.
CAMEO EIGHT
Down this one, clean up, and then go back up to your bridge, Captain. Come back in an hour when your stomach's all settled and you're a little less worked-up and worried about it. I'll whip-up two Double-Decker Zombies and have them chillin' in reserve just in case.
VERNE
Good thinking. (Turns to his crew members who are playfully drinking, chonging and shotgunning and such...) As you were.
(VERNE slams down his second glass of milk, loses the milk mustache, nods and exits.)
DISSOLVE TO:
MS: INT. ZALE'S sparse, yet roomy quarters.
(The Admiral sits patiently on a 50s-era minimalist couch with the scratchy-velcro-like fabric showing gold threads through the teal and pink design across its wire-metal frame. AZALEA paces, throwing her hands about. She appears very agitated while the Admiral appears a little amused, picking petals from a brightly-colored gerber daisy taken from a nearby vase.)
AZALEA
And then I'll put more guards on the guards! Oooh! I can't stand that man, he gets under my skin and I really hope I never, ever have to see him again!
RONNIE
I dare say you won't have to for much longer. We'll be operating in the morning, and if all goes well, we can be dropped-off at Posideon XVII. I hear it's a paradise there. I can give you up to a years' medical leave for observation and recovery. Like a Spring Break and a Fat Tuesday in one.
AZALEA
(Sits.) If all doesn't go well?
RONNIE
It has a chance of working. (Touches her.) If it doesn't, we're only back to where we were, on our way to Halceron.
AZALEA
Oh. (Limp, introspective.) What are the risks of this procedure?
RONNIE
Minimal, but so are the odds of success. (Pause.) You wanted it straight from the get-go. You know I want you well.
(AZALEA kisses her.)
AZALEA
Okay, I'll trust you. Dinner, a dance and then...
(Death.)
RONNIE
-A new life. You've gotta believe it, Leah. I don't think will work unless you believe.
AZALEA
That's what I sometimes tell the audience before I perform my tricks.
RONNIE
It's no trick. I truly love you, and I'm confident this operation could save you.
AZALEA
You've always been honest with me, it's hard to hope after taking so long to accept-.
RONNIE
Let's get to chow early, maybe we can discuss this with Georgie and Captain Stuffy-Neck and they can tell you things I can't about the red room's capabilities. It will work, Leah. Have hope.
AZALEA
Okay. I'll try to hope, for now. What other choice do I have?
RONNIE
Good, let's grab a drink before dinner. They have an alien bartender that supposedly can make potent drinks without even a trace of hangover. Plus, I hear the gal's got some alien smoke, too. I wonder if she might trade some of it.
AZALEA
Phppt. You know I'm game. I gotta prep my act more, anyway -- I've got the rest of the ship covered, but I still could use a few minutes in the mess hall before- Oh, but what about those two big-muscled guards Captain Roly-Poly's got standing out in the hallway?
RONNIE
(Holds up a blunt.) We're going to the mess hall to spark this and live it up a little. They can either stay behind, or join in. Nobody is going to tell THIS Admiral that she can't go where she pleases -- and the transport of a patient -- that's you -- is solely at the discretion of his or her attending physician -- and that's me. We're together. Ready?
AZALEA
(Fixes makeup, makes her uniform show a little bra and much more cleavage.) You bet.
RONNIE
(Pulling a monster blunt from ther top fold of her thigh-high, black, regulation, wide-heel boot...) Let's get lit, baby.
MS: FROM ROOM THROUGH DOORWAY
(They exit, arm in arm, both carrying a sparked blunt of Crystal Ambrosia. Swish! The two male guards outside begin to protest and then we see them smile and take the blunts as feminine hands touch masculine chests and swish! That sure didn't take long...)
FTB