Scene 8.05 - Shadowplay
ANIMATION STYLE 2
EXT. Tellusia, Next To The Guardian Of Infinity
(Two men are performing a crude autopsy. The Guardian is man-sized and appears to be observing, if that's really possible.)
THE BARON
This is aimless, and I'm still confused about everything.
VERNE
No, it isn't aimless, and only one thing truly puzzles me...
THE BARON
What's that?
VERNE
Why is she dead?
THE BARON
Head cut in two -- a laser -- anyone can clearly see that. Exsanguination. There's enough blood for it.
VERNE
No, no there's got to be more here. Scalpel.
THE BARON
What makes you so sure?
VERNE
I'm intuitive about this somehow. She looks like the Commodore, but her head is shaved and the wound is grafted and is old; like how we speed up the healing of any sutures we make in sickbay. Something feels off.
THE BARON
Off? Like what?
VERNE
Curved kellies. (Pause.) For one, a full clone of me appearing here. Who are you really?
THE BARON
The natives here call me The Baron.
VERNE
Is that your "Indian" name or something?
THE BARON
Something like that, I've certainly sat in enough smokehouses to say that I've earned it that way. So, sure...
VERNE
Them Injuns -- they got any squaws?
THE BARON
Injuns is deragatory, and although I'm not native to Tellusia, I'm one of their tribe, and yeah we got "squaqs" plenty. Plenty. Back to the bloody subject at hand: What about this squaw?
VERNE
She's manufactured.
THE BARON
What?!? Like a machine?
VERNE
No, something else, like a -- Doctor, you know as well as I that nobody's perfect. She is.
THE BARON
Perfectly dead.
VERNE
No! No wear and tear at all. Nothing in the arteries, no damage to the liver, nothing. No resident bacteria.
THE BARON
No resident bacteria? Decomposition?
VERNE
Nope. Nothing foreign; no cellular scarring other than the slash across her face and the fact that her internal organs oare external. Her symmetry is also... too symmetrical -- nothing organic can be that precise.
GUARDIAN
Are you saying she was manufactured?
VERNE
No, but... I'm saying that you should ask him! Mr. Brain Scan! Since when can an alien read my thoughts?
(An uncomfortable pause. Yes, Virginia, Tellusian crickets.)
GUARDIAN
Concerning the topic at hand; if she truly isn't a corpse of a woman, what is she?
VERNE
I'd need a spanner to know more, but I can't just wave a wand -- and there ain't a spanner within fifty-thousand-
(The GUARDIAN morphs a spanner from within and chucks it out to the feet of VERNE.)
VERNE
Gennie! The last upgrade! Wow! I can't get the codes for this model even if- (Dusts it off.) Remind me to keep you around, Guardian.
GUARDIAN
Keep me around.
THE BARON
You said it.
VERNE
Yes, I did.
(He fiddles with the spanner and immediately becomes concerned.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Funny, yet if this spanner has reverse tachyon- (Beat.) We're in a time loop! Whoever killed her came from somewhere else and her untimely death has started an inverse cellular reaction... a volatile reaction!
GUARDIAN
Volatile!?! Like an explosive? Sent to destroy us?
VERNE
Wait! I understand it! It's already exploded! Yes! Look!
(VERNE'S shuttle approaches. THE BARON ON HORSE arrives, riding, of all things, a horse. A second filly follows.)
THE BARON ON HORSE
What is this, Guardian? Mind games?
(A second corpse beams in.)
GUARDIAN
You speak true, Captain Sickle. It's a paradox, filled with infinite copies of this corpse, and us. That's why she appears manufactured. That is why she is too perfect. I must remove her before time resumes its shape.
VERNE
Yes, I get it. (On top of it:) Beam this one back to my approaching shuttle. Like now.
GUARDIAN
Yes, of course. (The body beams away.) Baron! Go warn the man in the shuttle -- it will explode!
VERNE
It's quantum displacement...
THE BARON ON HORSE
I'm confused...
THE BARON
I'm not, not anymore...
GUARDIAN
Neither am I. Hurry, Baron! His spacecraft will explode in... seven minutes and seven seconds! Warn the man aboard!
VERNE
Yeah, warn the man aboard...
THE BARON ON HORSE
Okay, you fellas look trustworthy, I've seen weirder things on this planet, fer sher. (Checks pocket watch, shrugs. Whistles.) M'on, girls!
(THE BARON gallops-off at full pace. The other horse trots behind him until they're both over the hill crest.)
THE BARON
This makes more sense now that I'm on the other end of it. Another time-loop? The anomaly?
VERNE
The spanner says the loop wasn't from the anomaly, it was generated by the the girl... how?
GUARDIAN
A maneuver that could- someone is tinkering with the time continuum, I am sure of this.
VERNE
Nobody would create a time-loop inside a time-loop. It's suicide. Only a madman would do that.
GUARDIAN
Or, perhaps, an alien could with a corpse from the internexus.
THE BARON
Is there something you're not telling us, Guardian?
GUARDIAN
Captain Sickle, I sensed a presence aboard your ship, only briefly, yet... I think that paradox was designed to destroy me. Do not concern yourselves, either of you; let me worry about it. You're just bystanders; collateral-
VERNE
I don't care if you were about to just verbally wave me off as collateral damage or not, Guardian, that chick's dead body blowing up has nearly killed me twice now and with this time loop thing, who knows how many more times -- this spanner ain't even speculatin' -- Believe me, this is personal. I'm goin't'go loco; goin't'go whoop-ass all up in here...
GUARDIAN
I fear our removal from the the time-loop's influence has also removed all traces of the anomaly's source -- we're back to square one -- knowing nothing new.
VERNE
Who are you and who would want to kill you, Guardian? And who killed the chick who looked like a bald Commodore Zale?
GUARDIAN
Before your clone freed- er, the other man from who The Baron was cloned from freed-, er, anyway, before I was freed from my temporal prison between dimensions by at least one of you in this particular dimension, I was forced to serve the Board, and was mercilessly-imprisoned in a dimensional-gravity-vacuum as punishment for doing the Spartacus thing.
VERNE
Spartacus thing?
GUARDIAN
I owned-up to causing a small rebellion when I really had very little to do with it; yet, I was in love once and love can make one-
VERNE
Never mind. I'm sure there's a long, boring, sad story with no punchline or memorable moral so forget I even bothered to ask... Yet -- The Board, you say? I think I can at least check on that... get me back to my ship, Guardian. I think I can solve this peacefully...
THE BARON
Take me, too.
VERNE
Canya?
GUARDIAN
While we have the advantage of this time loop and the assassin believing us dead; I recommend that all of us leave for your ship at once.
VERNE
You too? You can come with? You can do that?
THE BARON
Yeah? You can do that? I've made hundreds of trips from New Trinity to Tellusia to visit you because you said you were lonely, and you're now saying you could have just popped-over to my pad at will anytime you wanted?
GUARDIAN
Yes. Even within a time anomaly, even within the confines of a time loop, Instantaneous Interspatial Travel is easy-cheese.
THE BARON
Why did I always spend my holidays here? Why didn't you come over to my pad? Why didn't you tell me it was easy-cheese?
GUARDIAN
You never asked.
THE BARON
I s'pose you have a point there...
VERNE
Gentlemen, we're wasting time. I don't want to continue to relive this moment indefinitely, because according to this spanner, we already have been all along more times than it can register. That chick's corpse is gonna blow sky high any second and if we miss exploiting this temporal flux, we won't have the drop on whoever-
GUARDIAN
Yes. Prepare for travel. Activating now.
(A burst of light from the obelisk and the two men and one monolith all vanish. The GUARDIAN blinks in.)
DISSOLVE TO:
(A beach. THE BARON is ashore, seemingly alone. He looks about and sees he is on a small island. A desert island. The GUARDIAN looms behind him.)
THE BARON
Where in Hassellhoff's Holy Hacienda are we, Guardian?
GUARDIAN
I seem to have overestimated my power; part of me is still trapped in what was. I have trapped us once again inside Nevermore.
THE BARON
Nevermore? You mean The Phantom World?
GUARDIAN
Yes, that's your name for it. We're still on Tellusia, same time, same place, different aspect of the dimension. If I can only find a conduit -- out.
THE BARON
Out?
GUARDIAN
I could perhaps take you to Earth from here.
THE BARON
Okay! Why don't we do that, then?
GUARDIAN
I'll be happy to, except that two other things are also amiss.
THE BARON
Amiss? Oh yeah? Like what?
GUARDIAN
For one, I was unable to bring Captain Sickle along; there's no telling where he is now. Perhaps left in the former dimension, perhaps within this parallel world, perhaps gone...
THE BARON
Can't do anything about that. What's the other thing?
GUARDIAN
The two of us were landed here because of a divit...
THE BARON
A divit? What's a divit?
GUARDIAN
When escaping one anomaly, the tendency to enter another is much greater, and if one is doing that within a time loop, the effect is greatly magnified. A time-divit. It affects time, space, reality...
THE BARON
Reality? So what is that supposed to mean? What are the facts?
THE GUARDIAN
Fact: There are fifteen billion spaceships floating above us. Fact: They are all clones from a recurring, phantasmic apparition...
THE BARON
Really? Phantasmic apparition is real-enough for me, give or take an electron... it's fundamentally what we're all made of, so what's the big diff? Think one of them ships might give us a lift?
THE GUARDIAN
They were cloned as a result of one ship creating an inverse flux of quantum energy, which, when coupled with our voyage from a time-loop from within a time-storm of a paradox; we are experiencing the paradox of a mentally-created reverse tachyon-anomaly.
THE BARON
Are you sure you're not a machine? You sure sound like one, sometimes...
THE GUARDIAN
The statement is irrational when defining my existence; yet what I stated before seems to be true, considering the facts.
THE BARON
Facts? What are you saying? Are you saying we might have gone back in time?
THE GUARDIAN
Perhaps, or perhaps forward. A venture using me to reach Earth may even send you elsewhere across the continuum. I do not know.
THE BARON
What do you know, Guardian?
THE GUARDIAN
I do know that finding the original pilot of the mass armada above is paramount. He is the key to shaping this paradox and the Phantom World itself.
THE BARON
Yeah, Phantom World, you sure, really sure we're really stuck here until this world's paradox is unravelled?
GUARDIAN
Yes.
THE BARON
I'm not. This might be your old stompin' grounds, but I'm just passing through. (Pause. Silence.) What'ya say we find the pilot above us who made this divit thing in the first place? That fool captain that don't know a preschool time anomaly from a hole in the ground? Where's this bozo at? Which one o' the ships he flyin' in?
GUARDIAN
Unfortunately, I cannot tell which one of the fifteen billion, six-hundred-sixty-nine-million, seven-hundred-eighty-six-thousand of the surviving ships is the original, but facts point upward and onward; there is an original among them. Also, there's worse news.
THE BARON
There's worse news?
THE GUARDIAN
Not only has the time-loop created by the previous paradox followed us into this dimension, it seems to be affecting an expanding sphere of local space; and I fear no one present can truly escape until all, or perhaps most, or at least a few of those fifteen-billion clone ships are quantum re-assimilated by a host phantasm -- or at least the mental constructs of the ship's inhabitants are collectively-brought into a single fold if through a twice-discorporated-
THE BARON
Do you really know what you're sayin', man? You want a hit of this?
GUARDIAN
I could help assist with the reassimilation process, the number only seems astronomical when there's only one to compare it wi-
THE BARON
'Course not. The quantum sphere ain't all that big or we'd all be dead. Let's just jam over to Earth and pretend we never knew about this mess, maybe solve it from there, or maybe not...
THE GUARDIAN
You've been a good friend to me over the years, Baron Sickle. I'm afraid I haven't told you the worst part yet.
THE BARON
There's a worst part?
THE GUARDIAN
The pilots of the cloned ships above -- You all carry the same D-N-A code. Apparently we've tripped across a divit in the nexus of a parallel world. He's you.
THE BARON
Tripped across myself? Or did I trip back into my own dimension? How can I ever be sure? Can you get me one of those ships, Guardian? I need to know what they know. Where; who we are...
THE GUARDIAN
Yes. You'll have to re-assimilate every clone you find to know what they know. Here, your continued existence demands it.
THE BARON
Their loss, my gain. (Pats Western-style blaster sidearm.) It's for the best, Guardian, you'll see; we'll get free of this place soon.
DISSOLVE TO:
(NEW VERNE [Captain Sickle of The Enrapture] groggily stands, unaware of his surroundings; dazed and confused.)
NEW VERNE V.O.
(Waking-up to a flashing light and an extremely foppish computer voice. Inner voice:) Wha? This isn't the Enrapture.... where am I?
COMPUTER V.O.
Warning! Ship will lose structural integrity in seven minutes, Mark!
NEW VERNE
(Inner voice:) Frickin' aliens... That damn Guardian. Man... One bad apple...
VERNE
(Off:) Wake up! Live, dammit!
NEW VERNE V.O.
(Inner voice:) Wait... That sounds like -- me... the Baron?
COMPUTER
Voiceprint recognized. (Muffled voices and sounds from other room.) ...Ensign Sickle, please report for command.
NEW VERNE V.O.
(Approaches door, seeing the carnage and bloodbath. Inner voice:) Oh my God! The computer! I'm on the Roanoke! What has happened here? It's different, just a bit - quite a bit - like the alien said -- I must be another world or something! One where time travel is possible -- or is, happening, now!
(Waves of throbbing in the cranium. Damn alien brain scans. As queer as a money-meld.)
VERNE
(Off:) I'm heeere! Wake up! Wake up!
COMPUTER
(Muffled sounds as NEW VERNE checks systems and monitors.) ...Mark!
(Forget what I said earlier about VERNE being the only person who was able to hear this tree fall in the forest...)
NEW VERNE
(Taps viewscreen, near door, looks in its "window" seeing the events inside the adjacent room.) What the-? A homicidal madman- Chewy... Did he kill Chewy?
COMPUTER
I am the Apollyon 20-point-12, I was programmed under the-
(VERNE locks the door as he pops-up a porthole viewscreen and is overwhelmed by the sight of the dark star and all the inhabitants' previous, futile attempts to escape its gravity. )
COMPUTER
Degaussing all terminals, shutting down all non-essential generators and going to sleep in five, four, three, two, one-
(Click.)
NEW VERNE V.O.
(Inner voice:) Don't these fellas know that the star's influence can be displaced into an inverse-tachyon shroud? We'd shoot like a faster-than-light bullet outta-here -- don't they know the laws of Testi? No, no those theories weren't known by anyone back then, in this time everyone only knows a few of the basic laws. Apparently, these clowns didn't make it out. Acgh! It sure the- it sure don't mean I can't do it myself, though... to hell with hanging around this place... I don't belong here. This isn't my world. This is a paradox from hell.
(NEW VERNE frantically taps at a terminal, trying to re-route power to maintain life-support on the ships' deck. He ventures down a flight to engineering. He re-routes and re-patches a few other things and throws a few switches, breaks a glass and pushes a button, bringing-up a small emergency quantum canister. It opens slightly, NEW VERNE pries the hatch cover away and hits three more buttons and a big button and the canister opens completely. Above, a familiar rising note, a pop, and suddenly -- nothing apparently happens. NEW VERNE looks at the open canister. Like a time-capsule that school kids bury at playgrounds and what-not. Except this is space-oriented; with photo-logs, blogs, cards, tapes, trinkets, compact-discs, flash drives, flags, momentos, etc.)
NEW VERNE
(Inner voice:) They're using the ship's quantum generator... I've got to compensate and recalibrate for that, or I'm gonna be trapped in this hell along with them...
(He fiddles with its innards and crudely-makes-room for himself, ejecting worthless log-tapes and such.)
VERNE CLONE
(Muffled, off:) You killed me - you bastard!
NEW VERNE
(Inner voice:) Doesn't sound like it's going too well up there... I gotta hurry...
VERNE CLONE
(Off:) You bastard, I'll kill you! You! Aaasaaaaaaghhh! I completely trusted you! You're me! Why?! Why?!
(A bulkhead buckles and a vibration shudders. A small foam part of the ship ripped from the ship's keel with accelerated gravity.)
NEW VERNE
(Looks at trajectory. Inner voice:) This place is nothing but a nightmare... a doomed Roanoke, one that went off course and- Maniacs! They're accelerating into it...
VERNE CLONE
(Off:) I'll kill you!
NEW VERNE
(Jumps inside, hatch slowly begins to close. Inner voice:) Gotta bail... now or never... (Clank! Muttered aloud from inside:) Ow! (Pause.) Fricking aliens! (Pushes button, hatch nearly closed:) Easy-cheese, my ass.
(Click! He pulls a handle attached to an emergency strap from inside, and we see an identical strap on the outside fall away. The pod turns a deep blood red and disappears. The Roanoke begins to shake.)
FTB