Love Bugs

Opening Credits Sequence

The screen credits begin with the usual psychedelic fragmented sequence of elements from the show about to be aired. The aim of the disjointed fragmentary series of images given a distorted and heightened effect by the use of a color filtered camera lens` zoom isn`t to afford the audience a glimpse of what the episode plots, but rather to attract viewers` curiosity over how the disparate though exciting images conspire to make sense to the imagination without revealing their meaningful content. The focus is upon the actress chosen to star alongside the main character, MAP, who at least changes her appearance in every episode; even if it has the same actress in the same role, which it doesn`t always have. The sexuality of the actress is the mainstay of the opening sequence largely because it detracts from the viewer`s attempts to decipher the plot taster from the fragments, and the actress` sexuality is directed at women, so it`s blatant, rather than `gay`, although explicit sex isn`t a part of the content, because the actress, alone in the episode`s preairing and opening sequence credits, is the featured star, rather than the title character, MAP, who is there to showcase her without being a negligible adjunct to the storyline.

Act One

Scene 1

The MAP complex of ancient and modern buildings is scanned over by the usual panoramic camera angling for the location where the latest episode of the series is to commence. The locale aways has the same buildings and each episode begins with the selection of a building or buildings from the variety seen in the opening panoramic sequence. Some of the buildings have names that are visible to the eye of the camera, and appear cryptic or informative, depending on what the camera reveals and what the legend says. Other buildings` names appear on the screen, written there by the fimlab boffins for the viewing audience to conjecture about. In the course of the series the buildings that have been a focus for the story`s beginnings are meant to be perceived as familiar old friends to a viewer exposed to the show`s path through their ancient and modern scenery. Some are revisited during the episodes that surface in the course of the stories` logical progression, and new ones may appear, as if by fiat, newly situated on a landscape that had seemed fixed and conservative in order to assure the regular watcher of the show that there`s nothing that isn`t fluid in terms of the dream that the episodes make briefly real each time for the new initiate, or reguar connoisseur.

 Mayan and Greek architecture blend with Medieval Manse and 21st century glass and steel as the screen captures the names, Chemystery, Bo-atechnology, Liebury, Jeanius, His Story Center, Her Story Center, Eco-gnomey, Mini Stairs For Red Chalk Asians, Care My Girl Engineering Complex, Marine Biology, Space Marine Biology, Mythemaddicts, Count And See, Fizzeeks, and Fair O`s. The flying eye of the camera zooms towards a building that has so far only been visible from the rear, and the eye flies over what resembles something built by the architect Christopher Wren who was responsible for St Paul`s Cathedral in London, before turning to reveal the legend above the portico, Pooh Corner, Mill, N.E.

Scene 2

The actress featured in the opening credits to the show goes up the steps and into the building`s foyer where she crosses the flagstoned marble floor and ascends a carpeted staircase that opens out onto a landing where she passes before several interesting artworks hanging in picture frames upon the walls before walking into a room where the door closes behind her leaving the audience anticipating the next move.

 The camera films her from behind, at the side, from right and left, and in front, so that the eyes of the viewer can drink her in, and see what they`ll be seeing more of. The various artworks are meant to leave an impression on the mind of the viewer. Featuring only women there are science fictional landscapes, peaceful and undisturbed, but undeniably unearthly, which isn`t represented as alien, because the women are perfectly comfortable there. The camera revisits the paintings and lingers over them for a minute or so to assure the audience of what they might only have thought they`d understood.

Scene 3

As the door closes behind the woman we see her from the other side in the room. The room is identical to one of the rooms in the paintings that we`d been shown as the woman walked to the door and entered. She`s now the woman in the room, but not the woman in the picture, whose apparel is futuristic, and with equipment that is less explainable, because more evidently representative of a highly advanced technological status. The woman in the room is wearing a relatively lurid costume vaguely reminiscent of what haute couture might think ancient Egypt`s Cleopatra would wear in this age, whenever it is. MAP becomes visible through the French windows as a figure coming out of a swimming pool toweling his head and walking towards where the woman in the room waits watching silently with the blue sky, white clouds, and warm sun decorating the green scene beside the gravel path with its potted palms and other flora and foliage perceivable to the peripheral vision of the eyes of the viewer.

 The woman removes her top layer of clothing casually, so that the lingerie and naked flesh is visible to the camera and audience, and she takes a white lab coat from a cupboard and puts that on while MAP makes his path to the French windows. She turns on her heel as he arrives and goes through another doorway which slides open automatically to reveal a more spartan and antiseptic atmosphere to the room left behind her. MAP goes over to the shelf and takes another white lab coat which he puts on without comment and goes through the sliding door to be with her in the other room as the door slides closed behind him.

Scene 4

The camera lingers over the room left behind by the enigmatic couple. A spaceship is seen landing beside the swimming pool. A woman gets out and comes along the path and through the French windows into the room. She`s the woman in the painting of the room wearing the equipment she`s seen with, and which remains unexplainable, because of its futuristic design and intention.

Scene 5

She takes up her position in the room, as seen in the painting, and the scene fades until the lab comes into focus, where MAP and the woman in the room are engaged in conversation, while looking at pictures taped and clipped to portions of the clean white surfaces of the wallspace. The photos, negatives, and 3-D holos, and images atop lab benches, are of an apparently irredeemably ugly creature, while black thick letters labeling the exhibit, `SUBVERTER`, advertise to the viewing audience what`s being prepared for the show`s entertainment fare.

MAP: 'How can I tell the created from the uncreated.'

The sentence didn`t end with the higher rise in vocalized sound that indicates a question to the hearer, and so the woman doesn`t respond because it`s rhetoric. She remains busy at her task within the laboratory framework, examining magnified images in close up on a projector screen affixed to the wall above what seems to be her workspace. He continues speaking as if to himself, although activity on the wall screens suggests that his words are being cogently evaluated because of the computer generated imagery that appears there of faces attentively listening and making moue with pursings of their lips as they attend to what MAP has to say.

MAP: `I`m not quite sure if the question had any validity or not. Analysts at the bio-labs insist that there is a new breed of Subverter indistinguishable from human kind and with a 'hidden purpose'. It`s my job to discover what that might be. But first I have to learn as much about our secret enemy as I can. Any quirks, quarks, habits or imperfections, Noh?'

The bio-analyst levels ice-blue eyes and speaks, coldly clear, precisely accurate.

Noh: 'They forget to blink sometimes.'

MAP momentarily pulls down the blinds on his own expressionless orbs.

MAP: `They have a tendency to repeat themselves ... repeat ... themselves ...'

MAP drones mechanically.

Noh: `And, of course, they don't fuck. They have the equipment, naturally,` she continued;`or rather, unnaturally.'

Sky cool marbles permit themselves a brief twinkle; presumably designed to simulate merriment.

Noh: 'These bods were grown in synth vats rather than Subverter host-wombs like the rest of that demon-spawn.'

A dark cloud of remembered pain passes swiftly across the cerulean imperiousness of MAP`s previously untroubled gaze.

Scene 6

There`s a sudden shift of focus as the viewer is vouchsafed a vision of some point in time, past or future. What seems like a wheeled camera dolly, carrying the equipment for the making of the film, is descried hurtling through successive anciently dirty and derelict tunnels alternating with gleamingly modern and technologically sophisticated tunnel environments containing people in barely descryable poses and costumes. It`s a journey through MAP`s mind, a MAP mind, rather than a mind map, and the camera dolly hurtles on its wheels until a scene appears of MAP being tortured by Subverters in a Medieval dungeon environment with barbaric implements and machinery that the Subverter personnel familiar from the pictures pinned to the wallspace of the lab are employing.

MAP: `What is it that you want? I can`t understand your language.`

Subverter: `Of course not and we don`t want you to answer any questions.`

MAP screams and struggles to no avail amidst the contraptions and brutal looking machines as Subverters heat their irons in the furnaces and prepare to burn more flesh. It resembles scenes from J.R.R. Toklien`s 1954 novel trilogy, The Lord Of The Rings, Part One, The Fellowship Of The Ring, and Part Two, The Two Towers, in which the towers of Orthanc and Mordor are where the elves were tortured by the evil wizard Saruman`s orcs, and the Dark Lord Sauron`s orcs respectively, to make more orcs, and in fact there are scenes from Tolkien`s Mordor and Orthanc on the walls of MAP and Noh`s lab, which the viewer might heretofore have perceived as merely decoration, but in fact for MAP and Noh at Pooh Corner, Mill, N.E., they`re memorials to what`s been going on for perhaps milennia in the undeclared war between humans and their Subverter enemy.

Scene 7

The camera dolly retreats on its wheels hurtling back through the tunnels until MAP and Noh are again visible in the lab wearing their white coats beside the antiseptic safe white benches.

MAP: `Grown in synth vats they lack the appetite for sex.`

MAP licks his lips significantly.

MAP: `That is, he went on suddenly warming to the subject, their makers forgot to include socio-sexual conditioning, when they sent them to school on the Hive-planet ...'

Noh: `'They don't fuck. But they can. Is that what you're saying?'

MAP: 'My meaning was understandable, I think.'

MAP`s testiness makes his eyes appear as obsidian points of no-light floating on a tranquil sea.

MAP: 'Sex is learnt and nobody bothered to tell them about it.'

Noh: 'What about the emotive center?'

MAP: 'Dormant.'

Noh: 'Not dead, just sleeping, eh?'

MAP: 'I don't quite see the distinction.'

Noh: 'Trust me. There is one.'

MAP strode across the tiled lab floor, paused perfunctorily before another door's servo-mechanism, watched as the wall's opacity became suddenly gaseous and - disappeared?

Scene 8

Rooky Stardropper: 'Welcome aboard Colonel!'

A rooky Stardropper MAP noted, only one golden sun on the fresh-faced Marine's epaulets.

MAP: 'Thank you sun, new gold? Ready for the Drop?'

Noh`s voice: `It always made the youngsters feel a bit special if he took an interest - so he did.`

Rooky Stardropper: `Thank you sir. Of course but ...'

The boyish grin faded for a moment before returning magnified a thousandfold.

Rooky Stardropper: 'We're happy to have you aboard, sir!'

Scene 9

MAP strode down the ship's corridor in the direction of his work cube.

Noh`s voice: `It always made him feel special, boosting men's confidence just by his presence - a bit wearing though. That spacer's gleaming smile was following himdown F-deck. He's never seen so many teeth in one head before.`

MAP seemingly in conversation with Noh`s voice.

MAP`s voice: `The boy must be an Osmond, one of the genetically inbred Rabidic Mormons,an Old Earth religious sect and one of the first casualties of the diaspora when the planet of their choice - the planet of the chosen they called it - quite literally too, they'd Christened it 'Chosen I', was reduced to cosmic dust by a Subverter-inspired solar rupture.

Noh`s voice: `The Osmond clan, an extended family of missionaries using their inherited facility for music-making to attract converts in a neighbouring solar system, were the only ones to survive the genocide. Now they dedicated their sons and daughters to the Drop. None of the band had played a note since. There were rumors that they sometimes practised without their music-making tools, silently, like mimes.`

MAP`s voice: `And there`s something else too. The Rabidic Mormons were said to be developing a new instrument, presumably to celebrate that time when there would no longer be sufficient denizens of the Hive-planet to generate a Swarm.`

Scene 10

Arriving at his destination, MAP tries to throw an encouraging wink at his still-smiling subordinate.

MAP: 'Bead Hammed.'

MAP swipes perspiration away from his brow with a hanky bearing the three golden suns of his colonel`s rank and insignia.

Reactive to moving body heat, the glow tubes in the ceiling come on after reverting to preparatory mode, but MAP can still see the brilliant smile of his new friend shining like a lightship's beacon at journey's end.

MAP: 'Has to be a member of the Rabidic Chapter.'

MAP mutters to himself as he keys in his PIN at a door.

MAP: 'Who else would use fluorescent white paint on their teeth?'

Stepping rapidly through his cube's momently dilating portal, MAP uses his cyborg component to scan the small space for anomalies. The activation of the component within a compartment of his brain is allied to SFX graphics superimposed on his cranial regions showing the apparatus built into the skull with arrows directing the viewers attention to the labels that appear to describe the various functions of the `borg technology MAP is applying to the latest problematic sequence.

MAP: `Acceptable levels of paranoia catered to.`

MAP eases into a facsimile of a priceless antique from Ancient Terra, a Flintstone's bean bag (mammoth size) - and heaves a grateful sigh. He talks to camera as if he knows that there`s an audience out there who cares.

MAP: `Those ground-to-ship jumps are always tiring; even if the teleport systems are functioning at optimum level, and my internal monitoring equipment would have warned me if the one Earthside hadn't been, but for some reason this has been especially taxing. The convenience factor is no compensation for brain damage. I can afford to lose a few million. The chips in my head will always compensate, but your average Marine ... ten maybe twelve jumps before the psych techs grade them 'Unfit for Active Service', and give them a one-way ticket to anywhere, which, for a Space Marine used to traveling between galaxies in no-time, amounts to nowhere, that`s no compensation for being infantiled and memoryless in senility`s cave, with or without a nursemaid.`

Act Two

Scene 1

MAP`s voice: `I needed sleep more than I knew.`

Noh`s voice:`Always striving for humanness, and aware of the diurnal aspect of human consciousness, the technoid architects of MAP`s 'borg hemisphere programed the left-handed side of his mind to fulfil its compensatory regenerating function in 'snooze mode'.`

MAP slept.

Scene 2

Joy Globe: 'Good Morning Colonel.'

The lump beneath the bedsheets of the bedspace moves disturbed.

MAP: 'Uunnhff.'

Joy Globe: 'It's the 23rd of the month of March in the year 2437 ... and it's a beauty-full daaaay!'

MAP: 'Yaaarghhh!'

MAP reached for his cube's joy globe.

Noh`s voice: `Sculpted in green and black bio-plas, it`s designed to look like a Subverter Hive-egg and be hurled at the nearest available hard surface when it 'hatched' - like now.`

MAP: 'Shutthefuckup!'

Joy Globe: 'Wakey wakey! Rise and shine sir!'

MAP: 'Wha ...?'

Noh`s voice: `MAP's sleep-befogged part-mind couldn't quite grasp the situation. He'd made the necessary maneuvers:

1) Locate source of annoying sound - an egg, that is, Happy Radio FM.

2) Grab offensive noisy object.

3) Smash the bloody thing by bringing it into violent contact with something solid - in this case the top of his skull.

Q.E.D.? Apparently not.`

Joy Globe: 'Wakey wakey! Rise and shine sir! Wakey wakey! Rise and shine sir! Wakey wakey! Rise and shine sir!'

MAP drops Joy into the toilet bowl, where bubbles are seen to surface protestingly while Joy`s voice can still be heard aqueously before MAP closes the WC closet door and returns to bed.

Joy Globe: `Warrrbbbbllllekey Warrrbbbbllllekey Ribbbuuubbbblllllse abbbllend shuubbblllleine sibbbllller! Warrrbbbbllllekey Warrrbbbbllllekey Ribbbuuubbbblllllse abbbllend shuubbblllleine sibbbllller! Warrrbbbbllllekey Warrrbbbbllllekey Ribbbuuubbbblllllse abbbllend shuubbblllleine sibbbllller!`

Scene 3

Orderly: 'Sun's up! Well, several actually. If you'd care to take a look out of your cube's view port, sir ...'

MAP`s bedsheets groan inwardly.

Noh`s voice: `He must've been assigned an orderly.`

MAP: 'Should've put a DND signal into the compsole.'

Orderly: 'Sorry sir?'

MAP roars.

MAP: 'Do NOT Disturb!'

Orderly: 'Yes sir. I see sir. Will there be anything else sir?'

MAP: `I`m about to get out of bed and either take a shower or decapitate a disorderly orderly.`

MAP throws aside his coverlet.

Noh`s voice: `He immediately either regrets that, or doesn`t, depending on the camera angle.`

Orderly: 'Will that be all, sir?'

MAP: 'I'm not sure. I have a small (well, rather large actually) problem. Would you come over here and take a look at it for me please?'

Orderly: 'Of course sir.'

MAP waits.

Orderly: 'What's wrong sir?'

MAP: 'Can't you deal with it?'

Orderly: 'I suppose so sir. If you tell me what you want me to do with it sir.'

Noh`s voice: `Oh no, not one of those. Twittering pseudo-virgins are always a pain in the arse. Still it might be fun to turn the situation around and become a pain ...`

MAP: 'Would you like to take a closer look?

The orderly bends closer, eyes staring unblinkingly in wonder, homage, or genuine bemusement. MAP didn't know - or care much.

Orderly: 'A closer look? Closer look?

MAP: 'What are you? A parrot? Come closer.'

Orderly: 'Closer. Closer.'

MAP: 'Yes, dammit! Closer!'

The orderly bends further, eyes seemingly riveted to MAP's groin, mouth open in unfeigned perplexity and incomprehension. MAP reaches up with his left hand and takes hold of the lackey's lapel. With the other he grasps a handful of blonde curls and forcibly brings a somewhat surprised mouth to meet his. Pushing tongue between unresisting lips and teeth he proceeds to give mouth-to-mouth resucitation in the hope of awakening what would appear to be a lifeless corpse - at least in that area. After a rigorous oral examination, the orderly seems to awaken to what is expected. Mouth apparently meets erection and slides inexorably down the shaft, widening to swallow MAP's swollen testes ...

Orderly: 'Uuunnnnhhh.'

MAP scratches a spot on his forearm, and the SFX film graphics show how that kicks in his invisi-suit's laser system. Making a sweeping gesture with his hand in front of the girl's bobbing head, he kicks. The trunk of the orderly's body falls backwards onto plush white pile carpet, spouting a fountain of gore. The head, eyes still wide in unfeigned amazement, drips softly crimson and, as MAP stands, flips slowly forward, like a headless diver falling gracefully into the pool from atop a high board. MAP drones mechanically.

MAP: 'That was a close shave. Close shave.'

Act Three

Scene 1

The Chief of Security is in the room. Not yet 21 she remains impassively impervious as MAP indicates the cause of his disturbance.

Chief Of Security:'Boy or girl?'

The woman salaciously notes MAP's dishevelled appearance.

MAP: 'What's the difference?'

Chief Of Security : 'It`s just for the record Colonel'.

The Chief Of Security`s bottle-green eyes narrow to slits.

'One of those, huh?'

MAP turned to the ship-to-Earth communication console.

MAP: 'Ship. Send a message. Begin. Marine Central. C-in-C. Subject. Subverter. New Breed. Programed to kill when aroused. Sexually aroused, that is. Arousal has to be forced. Probable targets. Space Marines on shore leave. Message ends. MAP.'

Chief Of Security:  'Oh, one of those, huh?'

A warm and wet mouth embraces his ... moving slowly with deliberation.

MAP: 'Sure you're not a new breed of Subverter?'

Chief Of Security: 'Mm?'

End

Bright, R. 'Love Bugs', JustFiction! Edition, January 2019.