Scene 8.02 - A Little Eavesdropping
INT. Fast Food Joint, U.S.S.S. Nightingale
(VERNE and WELLS are the only patrons sitting in a mostly-automated Tiki fast-food restaurant. [Mostly, as tables just don't bus themselves and there haven't been any innovations on the broom since automated dust mice were taken from Fourth Dark Age shelves in 3013 after it was discovered that portable sweeper-mouse bots, like their organic counterparts, carry disease and bacteria within their innards -- So alas, "sweeping-up" even in 9969 remains as a job for human endeavor, even if it only means that the bacteria and disease now just gets moved-around more with a broom, just like in the old days -- but I'm seriously digressing here just to explain why there's a third guy in the scene, so just cope, okay?] The two men seated have just finished a large meal. WELLS is snacking on the last of his third deep-fried haupia pie. VERNE lights a seriously-large blunt. CAMEO TWENTY-SEVEN is sweeping the floor in the background, wearing a ludicrous Hawaiian-themed fast-food outfit, not regarded by the two, yet regarding their conversation from word one. He often looks over to the pair and at scene's end, as they exit, he begins to bus their table until he decides to leave his wage-slave job once and for all by using a little imagination.)
VERNE
So then I entered Chewy's final equation of pi over zero and rode the wave and next thing I knew I was being hailed by the Plymouth. They checked my vitals, hooked-me-up-to a peter-pump for five days, gave me a parade and all the rest is history.
WELLS
You're right, Julie. That was a gut-wrenching story -- so weird! (Belches.) What happened to the clone you switched places with?
VERNE
Once we went maroon, I he fell to Oblivion -- I cloned the ship in the maroon room and my half was sent here.
WELLS
What about the maroon room Roanoke? It can't just still be there hanging in limbo. It had to go somewhere...
VERNE
Not really. Physical laws required us to pass through a nexus -- to pass through the maroon room into the time-closet where I could reach my final way-point. From there, we parted ways. It took less than a moment, really.
WELLS
Time-closet? What's that?
VERNE
Another world -- one where you may dream-up a reality of your own. You see, the maroon room looks like a normal quantum corridor -- until you're inside -- if a person thinks about a red-room while inside, all sorts of possibilities can arise. I suppose a person who ventured there could make a pretty penny using the room's capabilities, but I'm sure not willing to ever go there again to try it a second time.
(He passes the blunt.)
WELLS
You must have been dreaming inside of there. There's no such thing as a red room.
VERNE
I wasn't dreaming, I assure you. A red room can be possible when you imagine one in a maroon room -- I imagined a red-counter-wave and the room kept me outside of natural time until the next star-fart realized that vision a thousand years later-
WELLS
Huh?
VERNE
A star-fart: An outpouring of intangible, reverse-tachyon red-room energy from the black hole -- it's how the ship was able to leave normal space and avoid plummeting into the star. To me, I cleared it instantaneously! -- Yet, I believe the maroon room may still contain echoes of the Roanoke slowly-passing through the corridor on its way to Oblivion; its generator is still running...
WELLS
Really? Nah... Surely, by now...
VERNE
Time works differently. It's another world, in another frame of time. A slice of other, parallel worlds, maybe more. Before I did the ol' switcheroo with my bad Sickle self, I could feel myself already there, halfway between realities, slipping on to Oblivion, and yet, waiting for me to return once again. Very, very strange.
WELLS
Hmmmm. That's quite a story. So all a guy has to do is imagine a red-room while in a maroon room and then they can-
VERNE
Yes, yes, yes... but I don't recommend it, Doc. (Pause, blank stare.) There's... others in there, I could sense it.
WELLS
Others? What? What do you mean, others?
VERNE
Hard to say -- something else, anyway. When I was parked in paradox between dimensions, I felt like I was being watched.
WELLS
Whoa! Creepy. Really? Wow. Just like the movie.
VERNE
Movie?
WELLS
Ghost Ship Roanoke.
VERNE
I don't believe in ghosts, Doc.
WELLS
Neither did they.
VERNE
Who?
WELLS
The people in the movie who got killed by the blacklight zombies. I'll send a copy of the flick to your terminal, Julie. You can catch it tomorrow after your afternoon nap.
VERNE
I don't nap, I meditate.
WELLS
Whatever.
VERNE
Ready to do this clinic-duty thing one last time?
WELLS
Hmmph. As much as I will ever be, I guess. (Belches.) Whoof! That haupia pie was really, really good.
VERNE
I thought you would like it. (Stands. Shoves his tray with wadded wrappers aside.) I owe you five bucks, Doc. Thanks.
WELLS
Don't mention it -- because I will. (Pause, toke. As he wipes his mouth with a napkin and tosses it on the neatly-folded pile of wrappers on the tray, he pushes-in his chair at the table. High class!) Julie, have you ever thought of going back into the maroon room to retrieve your clone -- the guy stuck in Oblivion? Reassimilation might remove the paradox that's keeping everything...
VERNE
(Long pause.) No. What's gone is gone, like this meal -- it's better to let sleeping dogs lie. I don't think I'll ever go back in there.
WELLS
But you could fix it if you wanted to, change the true event that sent this world to the dogs-
VERNE
Possibly, Doc. (Burps.) I'm aware that it's a Universe-wide paradox, but just because I'm the only one who sees it, it doesn't mean I could really fix it, or that if I do fix it, that reality will be any better than the one we're living in now. Best to leave The Cosmos as it is -- I mean, so far, so good, right?
WELLS
Three A-M clinic duty isn't so good.
VERNE
Come on, I've got the old iron lung on the clinic's B-deck rigged to be a cool, power-house bong... I modified it -- I'll show you.
WELLS
That sounds kinda risky-
VERNE
Nah, nah... It isn't - it's the best way to smoke; the T-H-C integrates with the fat cells at a slower metabolic rate -- I'll show you...
WELLS
I'll look at your gizmo, but I don't think I'll get in any jerry-rigged iron-lung contraption of yours -- I'm a doctor, not Typhoid Mary...
VERNE
(Using blunt-roach to gesture.) "Mary's" the key word there, Doc... Come on...
(After they leave, CAMEO TWENTY-SEVEN looks to the camera, smirks, puts his broom aside, pulls out his portable cell-phone/spanner/kitchen sink and dials maroon.)
CAMEO TWENTY-SEVEN
A pretty penny, yeah? Computer; pull up da spanner application, yeah? Set da spanner setting for da maroon room, yeah?
CU: CELL/SPANNER/KITCHEN SINK
CG: Maroon room equation reached. Counter equation?
MS: CAMEO 27
CAMEO TWENTY-SEVEN
(He enters "pi" and "slash" and "0") Pie ova da kine zero, yeah? Send me dere to tink of da wed womb and-a make da pretty penny, yeah? Dis minimum wage gig at twenny-tree dolls an ow-a so sucksazz, yeah? Can'even buy a seedless-sack of pakalolo or pay rent or see a lame 3-D movie or nutting. (Smiles.) Send me dere, brah. Yo, computer: Show me da money!
SOUND: Beep!
DRAMATIC MUSIC UP
(Ref: When the lecherous thievin' bum that Kirk told to shut-up so-totally-and-supposedly-deservedly-wasted-hiz-self by total accident with the hot phaser that he lifted off-of a drugged-out McCoy in Star Trek: The City On The Edge Of Forever. Like that.)
CU: CELL/SPANNER/KITCHEN SINK
(...You know, Gentle Reader, I suppose that Harlan Ellison, when writing that famed Star Trek episode, had not read Ray Bradbury's A Sound Of Thunder -- a cute little yarn where a man goes back in time to the Jurassic Age and accidentally steps on a butterfly and subsequently, in the future, causes George W. Bush to be elected President Of The United States instead of Albert Gore. Or perhaps the canidates' names were different in the story, or it was vice-versa, I'm not really sure, but certainly the outcome was similar, because in the story, the world was irrevoccably thrown under the tracks of the tank of tyranny forevermore. Anyway, every time I watch The City On The Edge Of Forever, I have to ask: "Okay, if delaying the demise of a social worker in 1930 allowed the Nazis to win the big one in the 1940s, then what impact did the early demise of a drifter in 1930 have on the subsequent four centuries?" When I posed that question aloud, a hardcore trekker friend of mine informed me that someone also had considered that and had written an original short story exploring that very question, but I haven't read it. It's just nice to know that I'm not alone in asking.)
CG: 3.14~/0 - Activating.
(There is a small rising note and suddenly CAMEO TWENTY-SEVEN and his palm-pilot-thing become a frozen negative image and slowly disappear, both turning deep maroon as they do.)
FTB