Scene 8.10 - Verne's Inferno
ANIMATION STYLE 1
INT. Oblivion
(JYNX phases in, wearing what he wore in the Las Vegas hotel room and is basically in the same posture...)
JYNX
(Inner voice:) Have I died? I am... No... no... I was only... dreaming. (Pause.) I'm awake again... I've come home.
(He dissolves into white light. Long pause.)
TILT UP
(In the blank, white sky is a fiery, burning spacecraft, trailing smoke. It attempts to level-off and crashes upon the hard, black floor of the dimension, shattering into many pieces... a blue-balloon-covered orange ball shoots from the broken hull and rolls across the ground; popping the smaller blue balloons covering its surface and eventually rolls to a stop. The orange ball deflates and a canister inside the ball is revealed. The canister opens and VERNE, a bit shaken and mightily-disheveled, steps outward.)
VERNE
Whoa! Where in the hell am I?
JYNX V.O.
(Echo chamber. Curiously, it sounds exactly the same as the GUARDIAN'S voice:) A question.
VERNE
(Jarred, as well:) Who's that? Hello?
JYNX V.O.
Since before you were born, and before your people ventured out to the stars, I have awaited... a question.
VERNE
What? Where the hell are you? Where the hell am I? And what the hell do you mean by, "your" people?
CHROMA KEY
DISSOLVE
(The wasteland transforms into a paradise. JYNX, wearing only a loincloth and a smile, enters, carrying a spear. HIS red-neck farmer's tan wrecks his "native" charade.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
(Levels blaster.) Stay back...
JYNX
Relax, relax... Howdy neighbor; I mean you no harm. (Notes blaster, laughs.) You can kill me with that about as easily as I can kill you with this spear. (Chucks spear aside. Pause.) We can't die, not here, anyway. Don't be foolish. Follow me. Come! Come!
(He leads VERNE through a winding path of thick overgrowth.)
VERNE
Where are you going? What kind of place is this?
JYNX
Hmmmm... I wanna show you something... come on, hurry!
VERNE
Hey, are we going in circles? Where you goin', little man? Hey! Wait up! Hey!
(VERNE arrives at a clearing. JYNX sits atop a half-submerged Roanoke, covered in mud and overgrowth, as if it had been there in the jungle for many, many years. Dangling his legs and swinging them, JYNX eats an apple and beckons VERNE over.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
I am going in circles. What's this about man, am I on an acid trip or something? I'm having a mondo deja vu experience here.
JYNX
You just remembered who you were once, so you're you again, that's all. That life is long gone; forget about it... (Talking while chewing.) You're supposed to be dead but you ain't, like me. You end up here cuz The Universe doesn't know where to put you.
VERNE
What? Where am I? I was- I was sent to the Roanoke by an alien, so I had to use the a capsulized blue room to create a quantum paradox to esc-
JYNX
Well there you are-
VERNE
This... sure as hell ain't Kansas. This is... all... very new to me. Tell me.
JYNX
You'll remember who you really are soon enough. You know me: Branches from the same tree. You're in what I call the black room, Sport.
(Long pause.)
JYNX (Cont'd)
We've always been here. Think about what else it could have been. This kind of hell is not so bad, really... It's built for artists and creative types. You can do anything you want. It's kinda like being with God in heaven, except this sure as hell ain't heaven and I sure as hell ain't God.
VERNE
No argument from me, but- who are you then? Really? How did you get here?
JYNX
For now, the less you know about me, the better. I'm like you: In the same boat, just on a different river. A lost, wayward soul, that's all...
VERNE
(Pause.) How long have you been here?
JYNX
Not a polite question. I tried being nice once and tried to save the world. You see where that got me...
VERNE
I'm not asking where, I'm asking when.
JYNX
Before you, that's all that's certain.
VERNE
What, days? Years?
JYNX
Chsh! I've always been here, yet not like this. You've always been here, as well as- You tell me: How long do you think you've been here?
VERNE
(Pause. Finally:) A few minutes, at least...
JYNX
(Laughs.) Time is meaningless here. Even events don't always happen in the right order. It's like living a waking dream that you can't think through. I'd like to tell you that death is an option, but there's very few ways out of here, and killing the body you imagine for yourself won't do it.
VERNE
The body that I- How did you get here?
JYNX
I tried to stop a robot from transmitting the Earth's coordinates to a sinister-and-malevolent race of evil aliens.
VERNE
Really?
JYNX
Really. At least I think so. Certainly evil. They've destroyed many worlds, including Earth. They call themselves The Zetans.
VERNE
Zetans? Like the Zeta Event?
JYNX
I don't know, you've never mentioned knowing about the Zetans before. What's the Zeta Event?
VERNE
I don't know about the Zetans, I know about the Zeta Event. It was a mega-impact. A meteor hit in the great lands of Texas and Utah in the Third Millennium, it wiped-out most life on Earth and took-out most of human recorded history along with the first great fall of modern civilization...
JYNX
I'm from the Third Millennium, who knows? Utah? I don't know anything for sure outside of what I can see from here, but a meteor storm sure sounds like their handiwork. They grabbed me from a parallel world, and because they couldn't vex me, they lost command over me and I in turn recreated them, but at the cost of going straight to hell without passing "go" or collecting two hundred dollars.
VERNE
You've lost me.
JYNX
I bound them eternally within a paradox and in turn, I was inadvertently thrown back here. I'm stuck here and they're free to exist as I shaped them, but they're too celestial to ever become humans like we were.
VERNE
(The formulation; the very foundation of the Nemo:) What do you mean, like we were?
JYNX
We might as well be aliens; we've evolved into pure energy. You'll see. Once you start letting your mind wander and you start playing around in here, you'll forget you were ever really alive anywhere else. You'll see. Life will just seem like a long, loathsome dream until a new idea comes along...
VERNE
Bull.
JYNX
I speak true; it is you who keeps forgetting. You do realize that we've already had this conversation many times already?
VERNE
What in the hell are you talking about? I've just met you. You're insane.
JYNX
No, no, no, well, regardless of whether- either way, unfortunately- I can't reason with you when we keep falling back into the same, tired conversations.
VERNE
You're crazy. This is all new to me.
JYNX
It always is to you. It's like an endless first date.
VERNE
Date? I'm not aware of anything...
JYNX
Sure, sure. You're home, give up the ghost already. (Tokes, passes.) You are so in denial of who you really are.
VERNE
No, I'm not...
JYNX
Or where you are. It's hell, ce' la... Ya know, I should call you Cleopatra. Queen of denial.
VERNE
(Moving toward oneness. Becoming aware of how The Universe is.) Why is this constructed this way?
JYNX
It's the way it is...
VERNE
Just me, my mind and endless power? Alone? Limitless? This isn't fair!
JYNX
Life wasn't fair. You wanted to be king of The Universe, okay, you are The Universe. Perfect self-awareness, perfect sentience -- you're an immortal thought, nothing can kill you and you can create any illusion imaginable. Tell me: How is this a bad thing?
VERNE
I dunno, it just doesn't seem possible...
JYNX
That's your frail side talking. It's more than possible, it's inescapable reality. The only horror greater than the unknown mystery of death is the certainty of the revelation of being one with the only true immortality. (Beat.) See you 'round, Cleo. Call me if you get bored playing God...
(JYNX exits into the underbrush.)
VERNE
Playing God? (Pause. Smiles, remembering. He is bathed in white light.) Oh yes! Yes! Now I remember! I can do anything! I can really do anything! It's all just me!
(Miraculously, the landscape transforms into a verdant-and-prismatic alien world with many moons. VERNE, now dressed as a Mongol warlord, whistles. A gigantic, lava-black, luminescent, transluscent, alien, ornately-bridled, six-legged unicorn gallops toward him. He mounts her and rides away on a cobbled road toward the darker of the two sunsets...)
FTB