Scene 6.17 - Clarke One
Zeta, Third Orbit, Valentine’s Day, 9969.
(VERNE and RAMONA are in a 24-hour Pizza Hut, decorated in red and pink, orbiting planet Zeta. Dozens of Zetans crowd the busy restaurant, being rude and barking orders to the cloned "teenage" staff like they’re in a five-star hotel. [Ad libs like: “No! I don’t care what time it is here, I’m ordering the Breakfast Pizza!” and “Don’t take my plate, I’m not done yet!” and even VERNE’S patent “{Whistle to super-young Verne clone:} Hey! Cupcake! Can we get some more Parmesan over here? Yeah you, Sweets, over here -- yeah you! More parm! {Hold up empty pitcher.}And another pitcher of beer too,” abound throughout the scene; over the clinking and clanking of flatware and ceramic plates and the half-hearted homage to contemporary rock oldies of the 10th Millenium squawking over a timid speaker system. Our love birds are seated at a quiet, candle-lit, two-person table near the restrooms, where, in the lavatory hallway, is a large, kitchy appropriation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, mounted against the wall, which we see at a slight angle, stretching down the door-less hall. We note that our love-birds are in classy, semi-formal, futuristic dress, black and patterned after the impressionistic painting on the wall in the hall. Their particular styles and colors match, but are not identical and more-than-slightly resemble semi-formal wear of the mid-1980s: Solid, large, randomly paint-splotched-looking, primary and pastel color-comets streak across RAMONA’S black, knee-length, red-and-black belted dress with shoulder pad inserts, open and criss-crossed twice in the back, revealing her birthmark, centered in the lowest diamond of flesh seen, and black-and-blue, six-inch high heels. Her engagement ring and her wedding ring remain unchanged. Her hair is a deep, deep, almost brown-looking red; worn up with a white-and-black ribbon. Her make-up is subtle, not garish as before. The rouge and lip gloss almost match her natural cheek and lip colors, respectively. Her eye-shadow almost matches her eyes and is faintly applied to her creamy flesh. Her eyeliner and mascara are applied on the heavy side, and her eyes sparkle among the rest of her subtly-accented face. Her black, leather handbag, [Azalea’s bag] contains a loaded derringer, a switchblade, a re-written screenplay, twenty-seven thousand dollars in hundreds and 133 1/3 bills, and a doggie bag containing half of an order of breadsticks without salt, butter or parmesan cheese, which she has yet to touch. Azalea’s bag looks much like before, except smaller, lighter, and more functional as if it could hold a greater volume than suggested by the bag’s mass. She glances at her matching yellow-faced, black-banded SWATCH watch. Her neck scarf is white with pastel pink and pastel purple watercolor-looking print with silver threads woven randomly into the cloth. On VERNE, a nearly-indetectable 2-piece pinstripe is seen quin-secting a navy-blue-black, pleated suit. His dark, navy shirt has a black sheen to it to suggest other-than-natural origin. His black textured-cotton tie is uniformly thin and appears to hang long, although it doesn’t, for it is simply an illusion to make VERNE appear taller somehow. VERNE carries a wallet of twenty-seven dollars, a black, unbreakable comb, three regulation U.S. Government ball-point pens -- one red, two black -- black wing-tip shoes, a silver-and chrome, diamond-studded, wind-up Rolex wristwatch, a pair of Ferrari foldable sunglasses, a black, butane cigarette lighter, a silver cigarette holder containing: a fresh pack of Zik-Zak Dark & Blacks [Extra-long, clove-and-licorice-and-honey-flavored cigarette papers], seven pounds of Simoleon Spice, a half-ton of Yog Soggoth, three tons of Angorian Blue-Tooth, three raspberry blunt papers and an ebony toothpick. Obviously, the hall painting served as a portal for the two to arrive mostly unnoticed -- at first, anyway. It is certainly noisy, but very strange to RAMONA as there are no whiny or crying or unruly children present, so the "late-teen" servers of 9969 are having an easy time of it not to mention they can drink “spilt-ed beer” and “bum payps” on their breaks behind the cooler bays with the other late-teens in the space mall and nobody says anything about it. The place might as well be an upscale bar, considering the age, dress and wealth of most of the patrons in the low-lit room. Servers are running about, taking orders, replacing empty pitchers of beer with full ones. RAMONA fiddles with the red-and-white checkered tablecloth and takes another small bite of her small slice of pizza. She’s eating like a bird -- a very small bird. They both reach for the ashtray and instead, wind up holding hands across the table for much of the scene. RAMONA is still nibbling the last half of her first piece of sundried-tomato-paste-basted, thin-crust Pesto Pizza with pine nuts and sunflower seeds baked in the dough and is lazily sipping her second bottle of Frosty Springs mineral water. VERNE is racking-up his sixth-and-last piece of the Italian-style meat-pie and is polishing off his second pitcher of beer. They ignore everyone around them and look deeply into one another’s eyes. VERNE belches slightly, puts his hand to his mouth and mumbles “Excuse me.” RAMONA smiles. Surely, he’s the coolest guy she’s ever had sex with. He’s righteous; and funny to boot.)
RAMONA
You sure can pack it in. You had everything added to your side.
VERNE
Mind if I have a piece of your side? That’s Basil Pesto?
RAMONA
Yeah, eat the whole thing, I don’t want it. They burnt the pine nuts, but I bet you won’t taste that, they drenched it in olilve oil... You heard me tell them to throw the pine nuts in after seven minutes, but nobody ever does it right. At least they didn’t use butter.
VERNE
(Silently belches, chugs from the nearly-empty pitcher, while feeling for another full one, finds it and while chugging, signals for another to be brought, as if he always needs one in reserve. Mostly-silent belch:) Some things you just can’t get away from.
RAMONA
Hey, it tasted really good otherwise. (Pulls out a breadstick, picks up a pesto-loaded piece, drops it on her plate and eats the breadstick, occasionally scraping it across the slimy, green pizza.) It's okay, really.
VERNE
It’s the only place I could think of where we could both get what we wanted.
RAMONA
Very thoughtful. If anyone ever told me I was going to be eating at a restaurant at the edge of The Universe, I’d have laughed.
VERNE
I like your laugh, Ramona.
RAMONA
(She smiles a little and gets a bit bashful:) I guess this is a first date.
VERNE
I suppose it is.
RAMONA
At a Pizza Hut.
VERNE
(Sparking a joint.) At a Pizza Hut.
RAMONA
Nothing too exotic.
VERNE
(Passes joint:) Oh no -- you’re all I need to keep me occupied.
RAMONA
(Her cigarette is lit by a VERNE-provided flame before she can even put the pack back to the table.) You’re smooth.
VERNE
(Clacks lighter shut. Unintentionally belches as he says it:) I know.
RAMONA
(Laughs.) Nothing to write home about, though -- I meet decent guy at a porn shop. We get high, I go to a party with him at my wife’s house. We get drunk in her kitchen, enter a beer-portal and then a Phantom World. He takes me to a garden called the Internexus where we get it on and I take a dump in the woods. (Glances down hall.) Well. What, is this like the first Pizza Hut or something? Couldn’t we have done this on Earth?
VERNE
(Tokes.) No, I just thought it would be nice to stretch our legs a little and- Hey! Waiter! Yeah, you lady, waitress lady... can you have them open the canopy for our table?
(An ambiguous, uniform-clad girl darts to the back. We see her ponytail bob.)
RAMONA
What are you- (Turns head away slightly, eyeing him all the while:) What?
(A click sound and immediately the nearby walls surrounding them become invisible. The Planet Zeta and surrounding space is seen in clear view. Other patrons see this and join along and signal the girl, only leaving one or two oblivious tables still adhering to the former illusion for a few more seconds. The lights dim a little more. Little round red candles illuminate the tables and little else is seen save Zeta and its artificial rings and the vastness of space about the mall. The panorama is gorgeous. RAMONA, alone, is surprised. Some others quietly applaud and comment, as they haven’t seen this particular view from this vantage before, not because they're in space. VERNE belches again, a little louder. RAMONA laughs. VERNE does a quick loud bark-belch to follow it up. A few heads turn. RAMONA laughs more as VERNE chugs a-touch-more and was going to finish the number with a lovely, sustained, coda-driven, seven-measure belch-note when suddenly, heard clearly from across the room a loud, mother-of-all-belches. The crowd uniformly laughs. VERNE, not to be undone, chugs a monster gulp of beer to chase a second hard swallow of air. He rips a hasty, loud bark but it is quickly stifled and pre-empted in his esophagus by the rise-of-the-Pheonix from his stomach: an unduly-suppressed seven-measure belch-note suddenly gushing forth in one solitary measure, free at last, putting a wispy, forced rasp to the aria, sounding like a stabbed beach ball being deflated rapidly. Chuckles in the room. Pause. Another loud, barked, burping reply follows from the other side of the room. Same timbre, same source, same crowd, same laughter. VERNE hacks and hocks out a wet, half-sustained retort of respectable measure to bring the competition to a more somber note. This is countered by the rip of a jovial, wheezy feint from the mysterious stranger on the other side of the room. More laughter. VERNE, overconfident, knocks-off the last pitcher and impatiently signals for another. He whips out a grand rainbow of Icarean sound, arc-ing across the S-A-T-B spectrum, a string of stacatto notes, mastering a maze of measures and resting on a wavering baritone-bass, Minatour-trill that only loses its perfection over the last rise and crashes from the cliff to the sea below like Aegeus after a forgotton white sail. [A white sale? Where?] Only now do we notice that all the belches are getting kind of amplified and echoey. Pause. Then, the "closer." From far across the room, there is a long, long, long, sustained, triumphant and slightly-sharp blast from what seems to be from a sick legion of trumpeteers flanking the walls of Troy, directed solely toward VERNE. The horn blast from across the room leaves a long silence among the patrons, nearly as long as the blast itself. The crowd, after a moment of echo-ey silence, much like witnessing a protracted tennis match, all look sharply over to VERNE, awaiting his concession and resignation and homage to the victor. RAMONA, excited, goads him with encouraging and thrilled eyes. He slowly sets down his emptied pitcher, resolute. Pause. He takes a small breath. Pause. His response: A low, gutteral creep emerges, slowly, almost inperceptively, like a medley of heavings of saws and planks and pulleys and ropes slur-slur-slurring into a well-greased axle turning a notched wheel in the night; then rising to a rhythmic pulse in the upper bass range, slow like palacial gates opening and footsoldiers scurrying about; then a small sputter, like crude, wooden wheels clack-clack-clacking across well-worn flagstones -- then -- a perfect pause of wispy air as VERNE’S larynx finds its nitche: A brief, silent, wet tribute to the atmosphere, a swing of a nearly-silent trapdoor; then a loud thrack like cracking wood and whispers of flame and arcs of arrows whizzing and songs of swords clashing across the hollow baritone bronze gates, rising in timbre and tempo until a titanic tenor is reached, angels moaning and demons screeching and clinking and clanking across celestial soprano clamor and is elevated to an elated alto horse whinny ending each crisp peak and, finally, the cacophony begins its quick tumble and downward sprial. We hear the swinging of axe blades back at the tenor, swords sloshily meeting wet necks at the baritone, dry hangman’s nooses being stretched like wet leather straps in a desert of bass tones, with a final, woody, raspy and fiery collapse of the teeth-clacking Trojan Horse at the very, very lowest note. Pause. The battle has been overwhelmingly decided. VERNE, a.k.a. Achilles, eyes his table of four empty pitchers and throws down his twenty-seven bucks for a tip and stands, wiping his mouth. The other contestant, "Hector," a lanky, bearded man at the head of a 10-top table, far across the large room, also stands, no longer tethered at the dusty hind of Achilles’ bloodied chariot. Both contestants slightly bow, giving respect to each other and gladiators-in-kind everywhere. Applause.)
VERNE
Come along, let’s meet this guy.
RAMONA
I’m not gonna fall through the floor, am I?
VERNE
Transparent titanium. We’re not going anywhere but across this room.
RAMONA
(Taking purse, unsure of modern inflation, leaves a hundred-dollar bill to cover the pizza. She doesn’t realize that in 9969, most things are usually free and that people work in menial jobs for greater status. Social standing is why VERNE can confidently eat there. Orbiting Zeta, a reputation is all that matters. I mean, the floor cleans itself and all, but them 100th-Century tables still don't bus themselves, you know... Hop to!) Okay.
MS: 10-top, familiar faces, recently stuffed with vegan pizza and lite beer.
CLARKE 1
Captain?
VERNE
Clarke?
(CLARKE 1 is at an empty-pitcher-littered table with all the New Trinity concubines save AZALEA 1, all women scantily-clad, and all women quite happily intoxicated and giggly. Talk about reputation!)
ROSE 1
Verne Zero? T-K-420?
VERNE
Both, Rose One. (Turns) I see from the beard that you’re Clarke One. How did you all get here?
DAISY 1
We’re on vacation and we wanted some salad and breadsticks. How did you get here? Who's she?
VERNE
Clarke! Clarke One! I thought you got assimilated on New Trinity with all the others! We're still operating red! It's a paradox!
CLARKE 1
(A few glances from patrons convinces him. Sotto:) No, Captain, I volunteered to go outside the Q-S-I-2 and work on the paradox that plagues the Phantom World. Serendipity. Perhaps seeing you is not an accident.
VERNE
Maybe not, but did you really need the concubines to do this?
CLARKE 1
When they heard I would be spending my time away in Third Orbit, they insisted that they be volunteered to come along.
LOTUS 1
The malls are the best here!
POPPY 1
You said it! I wanna look for shoes!
IRIS 1
Hey, Zero, who’s your friend?
PIXIE 1
She’s cute.
VERNE
Her? Oh, this is Ramona.
RAMONA
High.
LILY 1
Not yet. (Sparks a phatty.) Wanna come with us, Ramona?
RAMONA
(Looks to VERNE:) Do you mind?
VERNE
Nah, that’s perfect. Go shopping with the ladies, we’ll be back to pick you up after we go fix the Phantom World and when we can all go back to Earth again.
RAMONA
Aw, you’re so sweet! It was a wonderful first date! (Kisses his cheek.) I’ll buy you a present while you’re gone. Take your time, but don’t keep us waiting too long or we’ll find something else to do.
(The ladies of the group each throw down a "Hill-Bill" [Hillary-side up, for luck] a two-faced, Clintonian three-dollar bill to the table, a few of the ladies side-up to RAMONA and all exit together. Someone drops a "Sins Of The Fathers" Bushian two-headed coin near one of the pitchers, in case the boys want to continue the "quarters" game that nobody seemed to have been winning.)
VERNE
It seems the other part of you has abducted the other part of me. We share a common goal. Where should we start looking for them?
CLARKE 1
(Stroking goat-tee:) Yes, a common goal; not my primary directive, though. You should understand the replications, including myself, were all a result, not a cause and that the root paradox is all that counts on the quantum scoreboard. Finding the others will happen in time -- it is inevitable. I also know why we’re operating red.
VERNE
(Quick:) Really, why?
CLARKE 1
It is vital we go back to the Phantom World and retrace your steps. There’s a second anomaly we didn’t take into account. (CLARKE drops a fifty to the table. B-T-W, he’s the best dressed of the lot, not that the concubines weren’t hot being scantily-clothed and all. Surely, the married patrons of the restaurant got the ire of their dates and wives or husbands by looking a little too often in CLARKE 1’S direction. Surely, that’s why the belching competition had so much interest from his side of the room. Perhaps if you were the only man accompanying eight, drunk, swimsuit-and-lingerie-wearing, Lesbian Intergalactic Pageant finalists and eating at a popular Pizza Hut on the other side of The Universe with an average collection of drooling, distracted and jealous clones of every one of the sixty-odd men and women you’ve already seen a thousand examples of and then suddenly you get upstaged in a belching contest by some Verne-clone-looking stranger in a cheap fifty-dollar suit who also just happened to be the guy, who earlier, mysteriously walked into the room from the bathroom hall that doesn't have an airlock arm-in-arm with the only new human face that The Universe has seen in over 1,000 years at the very instant that you remembered that you had left your antacids in the double-breasted silk gown still hanging in the upstairs closet in the summer house back on New Trinity -- when you're in that situation, then perhaps you might understand. CLARKE 1 is in a loose, silk shirt and trouser combo that almost looks like smoke-grey, silk pajamas if it wasn’t also elaborately gold braided and fastened with round, white onyx buttons. Like the aforementioned blue gown at home vigilantly-guarding his antacids, this gown also sports a double-breasted, pleated, Western cut. He sports a translucent choker that is beaded like smoky, little mother-of-pearl footballs double-separated by small gold beads. He’s got a whopper of a diamond-studded gold ring on his middle finger and sports a black, laquered, steel cane with grey, ceramic cane-tip and an iridescent, smoky, gold-speckled-crystal-ball-lookin’, cue-ball-sized topper to the cane, mounted with gold ornamentation gilded with art noveau in mind. He wears a long white, black-and-white pearl-beaded, silk scarf and wears birch-soled, custom-cushioned, blue, silk slippers. His long, dark hair is braided, as is the tip of his goat-tee. His left ear sports a star-sapphire earring. They exit, walking to the nearest space port. VERNE sparks a blunt.) Somewhere, we’ve all missed something very vital.
VERNE
I don’t have your patience. I can’t spend a billion years on the problem or go back to every place I’ve been since-
CLARKE
(Stops. Direct:) Captain, if you want to avoid a permanent stay in Oblivion, you’re gonna have to trust me. We’ve got to sort out the problems of you, me, Mr. Simak, the good doctor and Mr. Heinlein before we can leave this mess. Then possibly we can work on the paradox of those you call the concubines.
VERNE
You? Smokey? Doc? Rio? Paradox of those I call the concub- What, you mean? They ain’t hookers?
CLARKE 1
It seems you’ve been kept in the dark about many things; let me enlighten you.
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