Scene 8.11 - Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away And Radiate
ANIMATION STYLE 2
INT. Bridge/Transporter Room, U.S.S.S. Enrapture
(The concubines, sans AZALEA, are on the bridge, at various duty stations. They are dressed as they were at the Pizza Hut. CLARKE is on his back, soldering a small motherboard to the mother-of-all-panels below the science station. LILY looks on.)
RAMONA
(Hits a pipe, passes.) Thank goodness you gals were holding; my stash box went the way of my uniform...
ROSE
(In Hawaiian Pigeon:) Oh, we got planny! Choke pakalolo from dat nice guy who met us in da hotel lobby-
DAISY
Oh, he was tops! You should have come up to his penthouse with us, Mona! He had a vibrating water-bed!
RAMONA
I wanted to, but I just had to get those shoes... they were bogo...
IRIS
(Boh-goh:) Bogo?
RAMONA
Buy one, get one! I was just about to try on the red pair and poof! Barefootin' on the bridge as if Zeta was nothing but a dream...
(She shows off a very sexy, delicate, and bare foot. LILY crosses to CLARKE, holding a digital clipboard, a la Janice Rand.)
LILY
Mr. Clark, I have completed my initial analysis report detailing my interviews with the remaining crew members aboard.
CLARKE
That didn't take long. (Pause. Looking out wearing black goggles, face dirtied like a welder.) Ensign Lo, while you are standing there by the toolbox, could you please hand me the tachyon interspatial performance enhancement device?
LILY
(Hands him a steel rod with a Brillo-looking pad at one end and two chrome cue-balls at the other.) This penis-looking thing?
CLARKE
Yes, that penis-looking thing. Thank you, Ensign.
LILY
Mr. Clark, don't you wanna hear my report?
CLARKE
Uhhh... very well. Please be brief, Ensign, I am very busy here. If I cannot regulate this flux quantum matrix, we will have no hope of navigating ourselves from this storm and will have even less hope of finding the Commodore and the captain, or even the other crew members who also have vanished...
LILY
Well that's just it, Mr. Clark, they didn't vanish, they've moved! That, or we're all insane. (CLARKE looks outward again, curious. She continues:) From what I've drawn from my own experiences and from interviews with the remaining crew members aboard, it seems that our souls have been merged with other like beings existing in another... place. The rest of our crew conjoined with their counterparts elsewhere, while our counterparts have merged with us here. Well, all of us except you, Mr. Clark. So far, you seem immune.
RAMONA
(Teasing, smiling:) Perhaps you have no soul...
CLARKE
Hmmm... Perhaps the mass-insanity possibility still holds merit. Ensign, there are no parallel worlds. If this is a natural quantum force, why are there discrepancies between individuals; as to who stays and who goes?
LILY
Good question, it's due to some quantum proximity principle... In the Universe of my counterpart, the spirit sleeping inside me, it seems this sort of technology is commonplace and clones are made and reassimilated with ease using quantum applications.
CLARKE
Fascinating. If each of us has a counterpart in another- tell me, what quantum application do they use to transverse? What equations?
LILY
I'm not sure. I may be a scientist and a psychologist on this side of The Universe, Mr. Clark, but my spirit from the other side wasn't so fortunately-educated in quantum mechanics. In the dreamy world, we're all hookers.
CLARKE
Hookers?
ROSE
(From the engineering station:) From a quantum standpoint, we may not be able to give you a hand, Mr. Clark, but we're all able to give you a hand-
CLARKE
Lieutenant!
ROSE
Jus' sayin'.
DAISY
(From navigation station:) She's telling it to you straight, Mr. Clarke. We're party girls possessed. Ready to get our freak on...
CLARKE
Freak on?
IRIS
(Next to RAMONA, at communications station, crosses to captain's chair and calls-up a mondo blunt. At least there's one commonality between the two universes -- a kind, common ground, if you will:) Good idea! (Sparks it.) It's kinda like being twice the person we all were before! Kinda smarter sorta, a bit more cool, way more sexy -- how is this a problem?
CLARKE
(Lifts off goggles, puts down tools, gets up, crosses over to IRIS.) Ladies, it is imperative I not only return our absent friends to this ship, but I must endeavor to rid yourselves of the paradimensional demons which apparently possess you all. This quantum quandary will sort itself out, and I suggest that until then, that all of you retain the decorum and demeanor required of every officer-
IRIS
(Passes to CLARKE.) Lighten up, Softie, we'll find the captain. Think positively.
CLARKE
(Can't help but look down IRIS' ample-and-cavernous cleavage thrust at him via 100th-Century slut-wear:) I am also ordering all of you to change into your regulation uniforms at the earliest opportunity.
IRIS
If'n ya say so, you're the boss. You heard 'im girls -- orders are orders...
(All women except RAMONA begin to strip.)
CLARKE
Lieutenant Commander! Belay that order. I meant, later. A later opportunity... I'll endure your civilian attire for now... (Tokes, bogarts, passes to DAISY, sits in chair.) We, alone, remain on this ship, and it is up to each of us to perform our duties as if-
LOTUS
Two needles in a haystack... (From ASIMOV'S station:) Commander, I've found them!
CLARKE
Who, Ensign?
LOTUS
The captain and the commodore! You asked me to search the rift for a solid quantum signature and any trace D-N-A signatures, and I've found them! Both of them!
CLARKE
Together? Where?
LOTUS
In subspace -- they're alive! They're "intertwined" somehow, I can't isolate them from one another -- they're in a quantum flux.
CLARKE
Onscreen.
CG: Technical crap that makes no real sense plastered over a shot of star-filled maroon space
(Of course, we see the storm and lightning flashes, that makes sense. The crew seems to read the chart better than we can.)
CLARKE
Yes, I see the-
ROSE
It's cycling at seven martens, we could reach that energy in a matter of minutes and beam their patterns aboard.
RAMONA
Their energy is phantasmic; and from another quantum corridor, and combined -- I suggest using a quantum filter if we do.
DAISY
Filter?
ROSE
(Tokes.) In case the space they are currently occupying doesn't readily conform with ours. (Passes to RAMONA.) Good suggestion, Lieutenant -- we certainly don't want to beam them in with their guts inside-out or with each others' genitalia or anything.
CLARKE
Heavens, no. Ensign Lo, go to sickbay and retrieve an emergency medical kit and meet me in the transporter bay, we're beaming them aboard. (She exits.) Send the coordinates of their energy pattern to the transporter controls. (Tokes, bogarts.) Ladies, I've temporarily-fixed our quantum-core stabilizer mechanism by cross-circuiting it with our blackstar drive. It may burn-up my science console, but should hold us steady for a few hours at least. Hopefully, long enough for us to clear this rift, or until I can formulate a better solution. Perhaps with the captain back aboard, we may have other options. (Tokes, passes, crosses to the turbolift.) Keep this ship on course and report to me if you detect any further anomalies within the storm.
WOMEN
Aye-aye, sir.
(CLARKE enters the turbolift.)
SOUND: SWISH! SHER-PLOP!
FTB