Scene 9.05 - The Late-Nite Coffee Shop Yarn
ANIMATION STYLE 1
EST: INT. Coco's Coffee House, New York City, December 9th, 9941, Night
(VERNE is passing a blunt around the group of women seated about the table. The ladies have been snacking and drinking lattes and mochas and are giggling cheerfully, hardly remembering that this is the last night that they will spend with their man.)
POPPY
So this sensor thing-
VERNE
A tube steak.
GLADIOLA
A quantum transmitter-receiver.
VERNE
Yeah, that too. What about it?
POPPY
You said it read that the Zeta event was an echo from a paradox -- what paradox?
IRIS
And how are you so sure a bloated maroon room really means that there's aliens out there?
AD LIBS
VERNE
We're not sure -- it only suggests it. Look, someone is messing with time, and it ain't the Time Police.
FERN
How do you know it isn't them? They're behind everything else.
VERNE
It ain't their style. Also, they wouldn't be sending me to investigate these cosmic disturbances if they were the ones causing them. But the cause ain't really from aliens, I'll bet you any-
IRIS
Right.
DAISY
Why are they sending you? Why can't they just send someone else?
VERNE
I'm the only joker who can open up the door to the red room and look for them. I'm also the only one alive who pre-dates these anomalies altogether. If they sent a clone, he probably wouldn't see anything, and even if he did, he wouldn't understand it.
GLADIOLA
This all sounds like B-S. You sure they're right about all this and aren't just pulling your string?
VERNE
My chain. Pulling my chain. They ain't. Q-data backs it all up. I got my orders. Top Secret, you know.
VERNE CLONE WAITER
So what you're saying is that the world's gonna implode if you don't go kill some aliens?
VERNE
Kinda. The world's probably gonna implode anyway; but my orders aren't to kill any aliens; only to send whatever is there back to its proper quantum corridor.
IRIS
Quantum corridor? You've lost me completely. This is a lame way to break up with us, Verne.
VERNE
I'm not breaking up with you! Just... giving our relationship some space...
(Negative chimes all around.)
VERNE (Cont'd)
Just a few thousand parsecs worth -- we'll be back together as soon as this all gets sorted out.
LOTUS
This is the story for the tabloids -- You're gonna hop on a shuttle, go to some quantum lab and zip off to another galaxy to fight some aliens in a phantom red room, right?
VERNE
Right.
DAHLIA
You know, it's so much easier to tell us that you've grown apart than to lie to us -- none of us believe this, Verne. I've been in a hospital before, and them red-room-thingies ain't like what you keep sayin' you made at all. I think you're making-up things again, Baby.
VERNE
I got the orders, right... back in my room! Look, there's something messing with this world; there's a constant stream of Zeta particles coming from the internexus. Nobody, neither human nor canine, has ever stepped into that area of the internexus before me nor since -- and probably... can't... until the prime paradox is- Look, whatever is in there now has got to be something-other-than-us, or they wouldn't have called me.
DAISY
You're still evading the question. Mavis has all that covered even if the Time Cops don't. We're safe here. Plus, I thought you were retired, J-Man. I mean: Why you?
AD LIBS
VERNE
Ladies, I'm the only guy who knows my way around the red room because I built it -- me. This guy. This dimension, This Universe. -- Now them ass-hats might not admit that in a court of law, but everyone who is anyone who knows science knows the truth. My imagination created the red room, mine alone, and it is defined solely by the limitations of my mind. I was the first one in, and I'll always be the first one out. Don't let any yahoo clones of me who just wanna get in your drawers tell you any of their lies. Unless there's a duplicate of me in some unheard-of dimension of serendipity somewhere, tell them to fly a kite. Only I have the key to the red room lock and only I can change the way it works, cuz I made it to function that way for a reason and I don't care if that makes me unpopular or not. It was intentional, and it wasn't a joke. Total power in my lap and my lap alone. Babes, my footprint stomped that virgin turf deeper than Armstrong ever did on moonrock, and the mark I've made on the cosmos is fifty billion times more permanent. It's never a holiday for anyone; and everyone's got a share of work to do. That red room is mine, my very own, and no one will ever really take her from me -- never. Nevernevernever. People can try to use it, but only I can abuse it. Whether their byline or signature graces the cover or not -- I know I painted that picture. So do the Time Cops. That's why they called me, and not Mavis Technologies. The corporate boys are clueless. The Time Cops ain't. They've been monitoring the internexus for as long as I've been alive and if they say there's something in there, they're probably right. If I help them, this one time, they promise to leave me alone and will let us all retire together on whatever I make from this deal on the side, wherever I want, no questions asked. I could even own a planet if we choose to go that way. They wouldn't offer me that unless they were desperate and really needed me.
ROSE
No, uh. I know how this goes. The Government is just like a pimp. They say "one last job" and then they make another offer with more at stake and more to tempt you and they keep on doing that until they bleed you dry, until you got nothing left and then they waste you.
VERNE
Baby, I'm the Q-P expert. I got my ass outta that black hole, didn't I? (Beat.) They're not gonna bleed me. They just want my advice, that's all. There's something there, and I know it because I know more details about this than I can tell you. It's really top secret, hush-hush, alien invasions and secret labs and all, and they need a guy like me who can out-wit a bug at his own game.
(The waiter returns with baskets of Biscotti and fresh coffee drinks. He serves them to the ladies.)
FERN
Why doncha just tell them to go pound salt and to send one of them corporate Mavis cronies to do it instead? They took your idea, they can take all the problems that come with it. They got a whole army of spooks. Really, what's the worst they can do?
VERNE
Those problems are everyone's and I ain't retired; I'm port-side. I'm on active duty and I've got orders back in my room that are signed by the President and counter-signed by the Chief of Temporal Affairs and The Director of the Department of Quantum Warfare, any of whom can lock me away forever with a pen-stroke, so it's a little hard to tell anyone to pound salt.
FERN
What's the worst they could do to ya?
VERNE
I shudder to think. I got put in a Time-Cop brig once for hot-wiring a starcar way back in the day and I sure hated it then; I shudder to think what a military prison looks like today.
VERNE CLONE WAITER
Yeah... What was that deal with that?
VERNE
With what?
VERNE CLONE WAITER
The starcar.
VERNE
The Regula?
VERNE CLONE WAITER
Yeah. They said we cheated.
VERNE
(Annoyed, a cross look.) We didn't cheat.
VERNE CLONE WAITER
(Lax:) Well we certainly didn't travel time. If we didn't cheat, how did we win the race?
VERNE
We didn't win the race; I was disqualified for leaving the course -- which is nothing but ballyhoo -- they were all jealous of me -- I was there, I was- Girls need anything? More coffee? Mine's a little low.
(VERNE CLONE WAITER, leaning on a wall, gets it, takes his cue and retrieves VERNE'S stein and departs.)
FERN
Okay, so it's all hush-hush and you're not breaking up with us, just taking a vacation from us. Fine.
VERNE
Don't get angry.
GLADIOLA
I think she's a lot less upset than I am. I don't buy this story of aliens. What aliens? Where they from? Why ain't we heard of 'em? What they like? What they called?
VERNE
They're called The Board. Don't know where they're from; that's why I'm going -- to send them back to wherever they came.
ROSE
'Cause you're the Q-P expert.
VERNE
Don't let anyone ever tell you different.
DAISY
So they're a bunch of sinister aliens comin' from who-knows-where to destroy us?
VERNE
No, no -- to assimilate us. Kinda like how we assimilate our quantum clones, except they add loads of plastic crap to your appendages and make you act all robotic and freaky.
POPPY
Like shopping malls do. (Beat; mulls it.) Verney, this all sounds pretty sketchy. Like baby said, it sounds like a lame excuse for a break-up.
VERNE CLONE WAITER
Coffee, sir.
VERNE
Thanks, bro. (Drops him a silver dollar; VERNE CLONE bites it, pockets it.) Where was I?
FERN
The break-up.
VERNE
(Pounds table once; a bit excessively.) It's not a break-up! It's not a vacation! (Spreads fingers on the table like he does when he withholds the truth and explains via spinning-a-fable-by-rote.) It's just a little business trip I'm taking to isolate a particular paradox.
DAHLIA
What paradox? When did this all begin? (Toke. Beat.) Maybe we can help solve it and you won't have to go after all and you kin stay with us insteaddy.
VERNE
Forgetty; I'm goin'. It's a paradox like one I made back in the day, except instead of letting me out of the dimension, it allows aliens from another dimension to pour in -- plagued with quantum quandary. It's all messed up and I'm clueless on how to fix it. I used to think the original paradox began when I stepped from the Roanoke to this dog-eat-dog world, but now, upon further reflection, I suspect it has other origins.
GLADIOLA
Hmmm. Like?
VERNE
Like... when I had my seizure on the Chimera -- or even the one on the Regula, for that matter. Perhaps even before then, I don't know... it's only a suspicion. Let's drop it.
VERNE CLONE WAITER
Okay, then, back to what happened on the Regula. You say you didn't cheat, but the ship's temporal log had a discrepancy of seventy-two sec-
VERNE
Seventy-two seconds! Seventy-two seconds! Everyone and their grandmother has got to remind me about those damned seventy-two seconds! I only passed out, I tell you! I didn't cheat! I don't know what happened! I was pushing nealry ten G's and I was completely unconscious, dreaming of demi-gods while my log tapes got erased! It was a seventy-two second dream, that's all! (Tokes.) Look, that was all a long, long stretch of years ago -- If I thought that I would have risked besmirching my service record over several millennia by simply trying to win a hillbilly drag race, I wouldn't have borrowed the ship to begin with! I did my time -- the crawling back, the four weeks in the stripey hole, loss of pay, extra duty, trips to the mountaintop -- I ask you: When's a man paid enough for his sins to be able to finally put the issue to rest!?!
VERNE CLONE WAITER
I- I didn't mean to upset you, sir.
VERNE
Ah, forget it. (Flips him another silver dollar -- it too, is bitten.) The Regula was a long time ago, way before the Roanoke Incident. I was a kid, just having a little fun out there.
GLADIOLA
We forgive you. You were just a kid then. It's Ancient History.
DAHLIA
There's nothing to forgive. We're behind you, Verne. We're sure you did what you thought was right.
VERNE
You see what you started, bro? They're patronizing me- Can we just change the subject?
VERNE CLONE WAITER
Dark chocolate? I know you like it. (VERNE nods and the servant plunks a semi-sweet dollop of dark chocolate into VERNE'S stein. VERNE'S sour expression sweetens a touch. Almost working toward a smirky grimace leading to a smile until-) Say, what about the Roanoke, eh? Was it factual or all just a conspiracy? Were you really on there? Is it still haunted? Are them nasty ghosts still wandering around in there or what?
VERNE
Haunted?!? (The girls look at one another; knowingly. They had never dared to discuss The Roanake Incident in the presence of VERNE. A surprised Nemo glance:) Ghosts?
VERNE CLONE WAITER
Well, yeah! There were all kinds of weird ghosts there-
VERNE
Oh yeah? Says who?
VERNE CLONE
Says that one movie about it- And that other one -- and that porno with Silvyn Stiles.
VERNE
No, no, My Son, what's left on the Roanoke today is all there is -- and ever was. Bloodstains, some moldy leaflets and a few pieces of equipment they couldn't auction-off. You wanna know about what happened on the Roanoke? Wanna know why I'm only half the man today that I was before? I was on the Roanoke, I was there -- I know for a fact how it all went down and how I made it out alive. Let me set you ALL straight...
(Reminiscent of an old E.F. Hutton commercial, the entire establishment takes pause.)
DISSOLVE TO: