Mythopoea
Act 1
Scene 1
MAP`s most recent creation, the Mythologists and Philosophers (MAPs) gathered beneath the Greco-Roman eaves of the Order of Time-Travel Orphans` new frat house, `GROTTO`
MAP: `Mythopoea, a strange word that.`
MAP mused. Appropriately. The Greek concept of `muse` being the topic for discussion amongst the Orphans.
Orphan: `Words have magic in them, remember that,`
A bushy-bearded goat-eyed figure with tufts of red hair sprouting from his nostrils like the flarings of a dragon just finished throwing flame at a still-smoldering hamlet.
Orphan: `Myth - appear!`
Scene 2
The Orphan waved the fingers of his right hand in what was barely understandable, in the swift complexity of his dexterity, as a deliberate symbolic pattern of digital movement that, recorded and decoded, would reveal the secrets behind what had just been conjured into being. For there, in their midst, wearing a secretive smile and darting a forked red tongue between the twin points of its sharply elongated canines, she sat. Sitting slightly forward upon the now apparently solid air through which she had so spontaneously emerged, her tail cracked back and forth over her shoulder in impatient impish glee. The diamond of its tip seemed to take a perverse delight in occasionally entwining about the slender waist of its owner, to faun upon the treasures concealed beneath the peachily purple furze of her perfectly perfect derriére. Laughing silently, tail now snuggling between her legs, she threw back her mane of reddish black hair, revealing small apple tight breasts, the pointy nipple cones thrusting skywards as, throat bared to the heavens, the glee-child, legs now thrown apart in abandonment, exposed the root of her desire. Diamond wedge disappearing into Aphrodite`s mound of Venus, the `V` of the silver G-string. The apparition hung in the air of the room for a few more seconds, then vanished, leaving the gathering breathless and expectantly astonished.
Orphan 2: `Creatures of myth are what we call archetypes...`
A white-haired gentleman with brightly blue eyes and redly freckled pale white skin.
Orphan 2: `... which as any philosopher worth his salt would tell you are timeless.`
MAP demands peremptorily.
MAP: `Meaning what?`
He`s obviously still devilishly tormented by the vision of the curious damösel.
Orphan 2: `Well, archetypes are those psychic contents of the human mind which, universal and eternal, can be found in the writings, art, works, and indeed all belief systems or cyclic `patterns of creativity`; in fact, as the great philosopher-psychologist Carl Jung once explained, expounding on Plato`s theories of `ideal forms`...`
Scene 3
The Orphan pauses a moment and is rewarded for his patience with a brief spattering of applause from wizened palms of wizards, palmists, wise hard psalmists, wise-ass pharmacists (alchemists) and curly white haired pessimists, the rest merely nodding sagely and making oddly significant gestures with arm, leg, foot and hand.
Orphan 2: `We all exist as ideas in the `Mind of God`, which means that, in archetypal terms, some of those walking around on God`s earth are timeless, universal, and eternal - living archetypes, creatures that have lived, and will live, alongside humanity as guides, teachers, heroes, poets, artisans, rulers, magicians, courtesans, actors, genii...immortal and forever.`
Scene 4
Ariadne guides Theseus in the maze towards the encounter with a rather bullish sounding Minotaur.
Scene 5
Jesus in declamatory mode. Upon a hill with the disciples and the congregation.
Jesus: `Love your neighbor as you love yourself!` (Mk: 12. 31)
Scene 6
A dragon slaying a hero. The dragon is wearing a bikini. She looks good.
Scene 7
Lord Byron quoting from his poem, `She Walks In Beauty` (1813), before tearing off his clothes and swimming across the lake to where his stately mansion is.
Lord Byron: `She walks in beauty, like the night .. [splash].`
Scene 8
Michael Angelo painting some porno scene on a ceiling clearly not the Sistine Chapel.
Scene 9
Jesus enthroned with the `scepter of iron`.
Scene 10
A magician waving his wand at ugly women and making them outstandingly beauteous.
Scene 11
An image with `MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.` (Rev: 17. 5) appended textually to the screen, a woman riding a man in bed. She wipes away her lipstick and the audience see that she`s a man too.
Scene 12
Elizabethan period dramatist William Shakespeare`s play, Romeo and Juliet (1591-5). Both of the actors are men; as was the rule in those days. Act 2, Scene 2, line 2. Romeo is below Juliet`s casement window.
Romeo: `But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?`
Juliet appears and responds. Act 2, Scene 2, line 33.
Juliet: `Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?`
Scene 13
MAP blinks, back with the Orphan and the crowd of Orphans in front of the frat house GROTTO. His rounded eyes click audibly He`s back with those machine calculator orbs of his that the Space Marine brethren are oh-so-familiar with.
MAP: `Please.`
Scene 14
MAP`s habit in enforcing an order, when some rookie SM`s sloth showed more recalcitrance than fatigue, is by administering a stinging eye-to-eye jolt from his laser-optics. We see MAP administering a stinging jolt from his laser optics to a rookie who seems more recalcitrant than fatigued.
Scene 15
Back at the GROTTO with the Orphans.
MAP: `How do you recognize an archetype?`
Scene 16
Orphan 3: `Ah.`
An ebony-skinned far-from-archetypal Ethiopian Jew with golden locks, a button nose with lensless spectacle frames perched on the end of it as an affectedly affectatious affectation.
Orphan 3: `Nowadays it`s not a simple matter - allow me to explain. Greece was known as the `Cradle of Western Civilization` for a reason. It was there that they first began to systematically `catch` the Dryads, Nymphs, Naiads, Oreads, Fauns, Satyrs, Bacchi, Sileni, Cabiri, the small gods, the Creative spirits of Tree, Stream, River, Stone, Field, Hill, Valley, Forest, Dell and Cave.`
Scene 17
Scenes of Greek `heroes` trapping creatures like animals with places of their own to dwell in.
People: `We are people of the Earth. What do you wish with us?`
Scene 18
Back with the Orphans.
MAP: `But aren`t all these creatures `figments of the imagination`, as it were?`
Orphan 3: `Creatures of the imagination, certainly! Some hold they are actually produced by imagination; either that of God or powerfully creative individuals, such as those known as alchemists, magicians, psychics, phantasists and occultists - hence the legends of homunculi, succubi, familiars, psychopomps (spirit guides), Fata Morgana and daemons; or those known by groups of individuals, like Christians, to whom the archetypal figure of Christ, as it were, appears, because he`s a being born out of a collective need for a spiritual guide or teacher; and in Buddhism, the transformation of Prince Siddhartha arises from a similar collective need.`
Scene 19
A dungeon laboratory in which a wizened alchemist in a curious robe with planets and devices described upon it is talking to a homonculus in a bottle with a bunsen burner close by.
Alchemist: `What is the secret of eternal life?`
Scene 20
Back at the Orphan Age
MAP: `So humans can be turned into archetypes?`
Orphan 3: `Not exactly MAP, but the `Conversions` of individuals like Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus, or Szent Robika of World Gates, represent the activation of a transforming archetype within their psyches which, as it were, turns them into what the collective consciousness requires.`
Szent Robika: `I do not want to see. The world is so beautiful, and yet I must.`
Back with the orphanage.
Scene 21
MAP: `But the individual so transfigured has, ever afterwards, all the properties and abilities of any other archetype in the `Mind of God`?`
Orphan 3: `Of course, but this New Creature in God is `of the future`, that is, it has no past, unlike the eternals who are, of course, existent, have existed, and still exist, from eternity.`
MAP ponders.
MAP: `Hmmm. So how does all this help us in our concern with time-travel?`
Orphan 3: `Because such creatures are eternal they exist outside time, that is, time has no hold upon them, which means that, just as we might walk from one room to another, so they are able to move from one time zone to another, simply by deciding to go forwards or backwards.`
Scene 22
We see the eternals moving through space and time by wanting to.
Scene 23
The orphanage amongst the Orphans.
MAP: `And how do they know which way to go?`
Orphan 3: `They either follow futuristic `signposts`, `technological signposting` we call it; or historical `signposts`, `antique signposting` is the name we gave to that.`
Scene 24
An old signpost indicating a path along a muse of the sort to be found in ancient cities where there`s a history of building but no industrialization.
Scene 25
A futuristic signpost with place names written in Galactic standard used by science fiction writers to indicate a place like this with futuristic building and flying cars. The place names seem to be in Spanish but aren`t. They`re indecipherable to anyone not versed in the language of the future.
Scene 26
The Orphanage with MAP and the Orphans.
MAP: `How does it work?`
Orphan 3: `You just follow your nose MAP, your intuition, as it were, and look for a path; let`s say you choose Akenhaten`s Egypt, you just focus in on Egyptology; signs, symbols, imagery, archetypes and - most importantly - mythology, because archetypes are, fundamentally, creatures of myth for reasons which I`ll explain later -`
Scene 27
Eerie sepulchral religious Egyptian style music attends a montage of mythological signs, symbols, imagery and archetypes. The eye of Horus, and then the feather of Ma`at weighing the heart of the hero in the balance to see if he has the requisite bravery to pass through the Duat into the house of Hathor, the hornéd mother goddess. Ammit the devourer waits to devour the heart that is found wanting.
Scene 28
The sun disk of the Pharaoh Akenhaten who attempted to institute monotheistic worship of Ra, the god of the sun. New music is heard, `The Sun Rising` (1989) by The Beloved from the album Happiness, `It's just the sun rising
It's just the sun rising. Oh, it's shining.` Isis resurrects; the sun god Ra`s daughter goddess. She ascends to heaven in a golden transporter beam, which places her feet firmly aboard the starship, Isis, while the Star Trek (1966-69) theme music plays from the science fiction television series.
Scene 29
We see a computer screen with the famous Microsoft star field screensaver. One of the stars grows until we can see the starship Isis, which emerges from the PC as the music reaches a crescendo.
Scene 30
The Orphans with MAP back at the Orphanage.
MAP: `- But intuition won`t take you into the past, surely? It might take you into a different reality or parallel universe, but time-travel..?`
Orphan 3: `It will if you`re an archetype, a Hamadryad, Sidhe, Nibelüng, Elf, Tünde, or if you Convert or experience some other spontaneously transfiguring transformation through which you become timeless and eternal, a consciously active participant in the Almighty's All-seeing Omnipresence.'
MAP: 'So, why are archetypes, 'fundamentally, creatures of myth'?'
Orphan 3: 'The aborigines of Australia speak of the 'Dream Time' in which they once lived, a timeless state in which, as the Aussies say, there were 'no worries' because, let's say, for example, one of them would hunt but couldn't 'make a kill', then he could go back to a 'place- time' where an animal had once been slain, find that carcass and prepare a meal from it.'
Scene 31
An aborigine is seen being killed by a white European settler in the outback during the period of colonialization.
Scene 32
The aborigines are seen going back to restrain the white settler and prevent the crime.
Scene 33
The white settler and his brethren sit with the aborigines in the church service while the officiate administers the wafer and sip of win of communion.
Officiate: `Leave her alone. Mark fourteen six.`
Scene 34
The grotty orphange.
MAP: 'So, why bother hunting at all?'
Orphan 3: 'It was 'in their blood', they liked to do it; but when there was no game, they could return to a 'place' where there had been some.'
Scene 35
We see a deer being killed by different groups of aborigines. It`s the same scene apart from the aborigines. Cleverer aborigines arrive to take the carcass and cook the meat without having killed it.
White settler: `Cleverer aborigines.`
Scene 36
Orphans by the GROTTO
MAP: 'But that doesn't explain why archetypes are creatures of myth?'
Orphan: 'The interpretation of dreams is a psychologist's primary task in therapeutic analysis because they contain archetypal material that 'explains' the developmental progress of the individual, for example, a Wise Old Man figure might simply appear during 'sleep time' to suggest a course of action to be followed during what the aborigine's would paradoxically call 'Dream Time', that is 'real time' to us; or a drama between archetypal figures might be played out in a dream that, interpreted, would reveal the sleeper's fears, hopes and needs, and suggest a way in which they might be resolved.'
Scene 37
A thief steals into a bio-chemical engineering laboratory and takes a serum in a flask which he drinks.
Thief: `Ah!`
Scene 38
GROTTO and Orphans.
MAP: 'Developmental storytellers, as it were; I see. But what of living archetypes?'
Orphan 3: 'An excellent description MAP, we'll make a Philosopher King out of you yet.'
MAP quips.
MAP: 'I'd rather be fucking,'
Scene 39
MAP humping. Although we can`t see who`s underneath.
Scene 40
Orphaned GROTTO.
Orphan 3: 'Yes, well. Ah! Living archetypes function in the same way as those that appear in sleep time, existing in that 'Dream Time' in which the abos once lived before they 'lost their inheritance', as it were, to the European colonists with their mechanistic-deterministic approach to the world as a cause-and-effect mechanism like some kind of wind-up clockwork machine in which time progressed linearly and in one direction only - forward.
Scene 41
We see the white settler spitting the aborigine he`s killed for a barbecue.
Scene 42
GROTTO.
MAP: 'So it was the Europeans logical rational attitude that destroyed the Dream Time and made it impossible to Time Travel?'
Orphan 3: 'It wasn't that exactly MAP. It was the future that beckoned, archetypal creatures existing Outside of Time were necessary to the Future of Humankind, so plans were laid to 'trap' them and make use of their talents. It's difficult to make use of a physicist who, for example, could one day walk out of his laboratory, step into a scene from ancient Greece and, not come back!'
Scene 43
A physicist at MIT being trapped under a net used by Roman gladiators in the amphitheaters where they fought and died for the entertainment of Caesar and the crowd. We see the physicist being awarded the Nobel Prize amongst the Russian delegation.
Scene 44
Orphanage and Orphans.
MAP: 'Are all scientists 'living archetypes'?'
Orphan 3: 'The best probably are. Einstein almost certainly, Leonardo too, Wittgenstein, Heinlein, Hawking S., Usherobin, Watson E., Usher-Watson R., Boros E., Uroboros, Usher-Boros F., Cerberus ... they all have a peculiar quality of mind that sets them apart, probably, because each reached a point in their lives when they had what we've called a 'conversion experience'; remember Archimedes, the great Greek thinker who, upon making some startling discovery, leapt from his bathtub shrieking 'Eureka!'?'
Scene 45
Archimedes in his bath.
Archimedes: `Eureka! I have found it!`
Scene 46
Orphans and MAP.
MAP: 'Uh-hum.'
Orphan 3: 'At that moment he 'crossed the rubicon', became a 'living archetype' capable of -amongst other things - Time Travel. Unfortunately, of course, he was so enthused by his `discovery` underneath the waves of bath water, that it claimed all his attention. Naturally, when he - and it - came to the attention of those whose job it was to 'trap' such 'creatures' as Archimedes had become, his potential was drastically curtailed and restricted to 'laboratory conditions'. No sex for Archimedes, despite his great discovery. Imprisoned, basically, within an environment affording possibilities for intense concentration upon his discovery and its applications for the future of humankind, Archimedes was given a one-room cell, a `research institute`. In all but name, Archimedes and other genii like him were - and are - are 'concentration camp' survivors of those who don`t want human brainpower because it affords a means of escape from slavery in host womb parasitism to the alien devourer of human `seed`.
Scene 47
Archimedes scanning a copy of Playboy.
Archimedes: `If only I could escape and reproduce brainpower from my semen. Perhaps the women could sexually reproduce with each other and escape through technologies of their own devising. Which jizz? On broomsticks, as it were.`
Scene 48
The Orphans and MAP.
MAP: 'And what of the eternals, those living archetypes that were, are and will be?'
Orphan 3: 'Well, of course, Archimedes, Einstein, Michaelangelo, Usher-Boros F., and Boros-Usher G... I'm not boring you I hope?'
MAP grins.
MAP: 'Not much, please go on.'
Orphan 3: 'Well, as I say, these, er ... eternals, when they experienced what was called 'enlightenment' during the Renaissance or 'nirvana' by Buddha, that is, that place 'beyond the opposites' of past and future, the time-traveler's Eternal Now, became what is, was and will be; but these Original Forms, Plato's eidelons, exist in the 'Mind of God' from the Beginning of Creation when YAHWEH said 'Let There Be... and there was 'light', 'hard light' in the shape of complex wave forms, Original Creatures, dreamt into Being by the Creator, existing in the 'Dream Time', Paradise before the Fall, the Golden Age of Greece before Aristoteleian 'either-or' logic came to determine the future of civilization.'
Scene 49
YAHWEH: `Let there be light!`
The Microsoft PC starfield with stars turning into starships of all different kinds and flavors zooming out of the screen and out of the open window with the chintz curtains and the flower pot with the dwarf orange tree on the sill.
Scene 50
The Orphans and the GROTTO.
MAP: 'How so? Wasn't Aristotle a 'living archetype' too?'
Orphan 3: 'Probably MAP, but it was Time for the Dream to End, logic was to be Enthroned as King and technology, based on binary codes, in which a thing can be either this or that and not 'both at the same time', as in that nirvanic state beyond the opposites of positive and negative, backwards and forwards, past and future, the Eternal Present, that is, the Age of Technology with its 'computer systems', its pluses and minuses (+/-), its on/off modes, its either this or that which would turn the Dream into a Nightmare.'
MAP puzzles.
MAP: 'I don't quite see the connection,'
Orphan 3: 'Forget preconceptions. Because past and future are, from the point of view of 'living archetypes' illusory and there is only the Eternal Now - as the Buddhists say, 'life is an illusion, a dream', the past is the future; or, in other words, technology, in a curiously paradoxical way, is actually preventing the future from happening.'
MAP: 'What do you mean?'
Orphan 3: Let's take Greece's Golden Age as an example -'
Orphan 2: 'Well said! The mythological philosopher! Or should that be the philosophical mythologist? Whose imagination is this anyway?`
MAP looks like he`s beginning to feel a little irritated by the philosopher's labyrinthine circomlocutions.
MAP: 'Let's...'
Orphan 3: ' - the Greeks didn't develop their sciences out of thin air, they had help.'
MAP: 'From 'living archetypes'?'
Orphan 3: 'Yes. Now, remember. It was in Greece that the first hesitant steps were taken - in European terms - towards a rational understanding of the nature of the universe, that is, a movement away from 'Dream Time' and into 'Linear Time' with its regimentation, order, control - you see?'
MAP nods in what he clearly hopes will be interpreted as 'sagely' behavior.
MAP: 'I think so.'
Orphan 3: `So the Creatures of the Dream, the 'living archetypes', the inhabitants of the Golden Age were - still - dreaming, at the mercy of the New Logic, the Rationalists, Science in short.'
MAP shakes his head in a way that he clearly hopes will be interpreted as a sagely desire for illumination, rather than the feeble-mindedness of a dullard.
MAP: 'I don't quite follow...'
Orphan 3: 'If you like, the Dreamers in the Dream Time ceased to Dream Themselves and were Dreamt by those with Greater Consciousness, the New Scientists.'
MAP stared at his shoes dolefully.
MAP: 'I still don't see...'
Orphan 3: 'The 'living archetypes', it was discovered, were truly Creatures of the Imagination, that is ,they were subject to the imaginations of those with more highly developed ego-consciousness. All the Greek thinkers had to do in the early days of their Arts and Sciences was pose a problem, meditate upon it, and one or more of the Eternals would turn up and, in some shape or fashion, solve it - either directly through the passing on of information or gifts; or indirectly through the enacting of dramas, rituals, scenes - which they themselves would interpret in order to distil its essential meaning and further the course of human knowledge.'
MAP ventures a stab in the dark.
MAP: 'You mean?'
Orphan 3: 'Exactly, you surprise me young man by the depth of your perception, the first plays, dramas, concerts - 'live performances' -were played out by 'living archetypes' spontaneously in response to the imaginative requirements of the Greek thinkers. To begin with Aristophanes, Sophocles, Euripedes et al - all they had to do was sit in an open space and wait for an idea to occur to them. After a while the 'helpers' would arrive, perform the master's imaginative sequence, then disappear, leaving him to write down what he'd seen - psychology was born in this way too, the interpretation of dreams was, originally, born out of the interpretation of the meaning of what the 'living archetypes' would perform before the Greek masters for their mutual 'entertainment'. The first psychologists were, if you like, drama critics.'
MAP assumes a sagelike demeanor once more.
MAP: 'I've heard the term psycho-drama.'
The philosopher's eyes rolled around in their sockets which, framed by curly locks of gold and set in ebon, gave the impression of seagulls trapped in burning oil.
Orphan 3: 'Such a mind.'
Scene 51
A cartoon animation likening the eyes of the Orphan to seagulls trapped in burning oil.
Scene 52
The Orphans and the GROTTO.
Orphan 3: 'You could probably use your mind to interpret the world in archetypal terms as the Greek psychologists did; they would wander around looking at things and people, and by interpreting what they saw, whether in the marketplace, at the theatre, in the Acropolis or the Parthenon, gain an understanding of what ailed an individual or society as a whole and provide solutions for its remedy - and out ofthat Social Sciences were born.`
Scene 53
An elaborate scene which looks like flummery and mummery with costumes and curious figures which culminates in a key being placed in the back on a character who looks surprised and then horrified as he`s wound up to move as a clockwork automaton.
Scene 54
To MAP`s surprise outside the GROTTO, he`s fascinated and looks so.
MAP: 'Fascinating,'
Orphan 3: 'It was like that everywhere. The Greeks would first play with ideas and their 'little helpers' would perform for them their solutions; sometimes the solutions weren't that obvious, of course, but things proceeded along nicely in this fashion for a long time and everyone was happy. It was known as the Golden Age of Greek Civilization, but the True Philosopher's Gold was already lost by this time, the Eternal Now of the Time Traveler's Dream Time and, of course, the Silver Age of Rome was to come.'
MAP: 'Is that bad?'
Orphan 3: 'It didn't have to be MAP, but there were already abuses and misuses in the Greek world that became positively pandaemonic during the Roman Empire. Caligula and Nero, Emperors of Rome who developed the Orgy and the Games into often terrifying spectacles at the expense of many living archetypes.
Scene 55
The Orgy`s torture implements and bondage, a terrifying spectacle taking place at the expense of the lives of many living archetypes.
Scene 56
The Games, nets and tridents to the fore, a terrifying spectacle taking place at the expense of the lives of many living archetypes.
Scene 57
The Orphans beside the GROTTO.
Orphan 3: `Satyrs and nymphs, who had walked into the houses of the Greeks to make love and be made love to in spontaneous fulfillment of the erotic fantasies of those dwelling within, were captured, enslaved and made to perform bestial acts 'assisted' with drugs and implements of torment and torture.`
Scene 58
Satyrs and nymphs walking into the houses of the Greeks to make love and be made love to in spontaneous fulfillment of the erotic fantasies of those dwelling within are seen being captured, enslaved, and made to perform bestial acts 'assisted' with drugs and implements of torment and torture.
Scene 59
Back at the GROTTO.
Orphan 3: `Heroic figures, who'd emerged from nowhere to fight alongside the 600 Spartans at Thermopylae to prevent the Persian King Xerxes - with his million strong army - from entering Greece and destroying Athens, before the rest of the federated states could muster their forces. These living archetypes - Achilles, Menelaus, Agamamnon, Ulysees, to name but a few of the most famed - would be forced into the Arena to fight each other in the Games for the pleasure of Caesar. To 'discover' heroes if none could be found, or to 'make' heroes; transfiguring them through battle, so transforming those that weren't into those that were living archetypes. And the naiads, fauns, cabiri, the muses, the inspirers of the artists, the artisans, the thinkers; these would be enslaved, made captive, forced to produce what previously they'd given freely; ideas for new technologies, weapons, strategies, techniques of warfare to maintain the Empire, the Glory that was Rome!'
Scene 60
Children from kindergarten being made to wear armor and hold weaponry in the Roman circus.
Children: `Those about to die, salute you!`
Scene 61
We see them fighting ineffectually against powerfully strong professional gladiators and all are killed.
Scene 62
Back at the GROTTO. MAP's eyes focus tearily on that distant never to be glimpsed again scene - hopefully.
MAP: 'Why didn't the 'helpers' just flee off back into the past and the Dream Time?'
Orphan 3: 'Many tried, of course. But they were 'caught', trapped, 'hoist by their own petard', as it were; no longer able to participate in the DreamTime, but corrupted, awoken, questioning, eager to participate in the unfolding of the future. If not, imprisoned, forced to help where none was offered, and made to work when none of them wanted to. Indeed, when circumstances were such that they shouldn't have to work. Addicted, dependent on drugs, people, pets, families, social fabric, false love, by sadistic masters who turned them into masochists ... it was a Tragedy.'
Scene 63
A faun in leather trousers and bondage gear.
Faun: `Beat me. Beat me.`
Scene 64
The GROTTO with MAP and those of no-fixed abode.
MAP: 'So, yes I see. Am I right in guessing that, in the Golden Age, living archetypes were 'just like that', but in the Silver Age - and thereafter - they were created by circumstances, either deliberately or by chance - like Christ, Jung, Einstein, Pele, Kron of Ktar, Robika the Red - '
MAP: 'Yourself?'
MAP just smiled.
MAP: '- Robert A.Heinlein et al?'
Scene 65
The last star in the starfield on the PC turns into US science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein`s continua car, Gay Deciever, from his novel, The Number Of The Beast (1980),in accordance with the look and style of the artwork on the dust jacket.
Scene 66
The Orphans without the oars.
Orphan 3: 'That's about right I'd say, yes. But that's where the problem begins - each of these mighty personalities experienced some kind of 'conversion' process whereby they became superhuman - Nietzche's übermensch -and began to do wonders, which brought them to the attention of Authority and, before they knew where they were, they'd been 'clamped', placed within a social straitjacket from which they'd never escape. Whatever blessings they conferred upon their 'Fellow Man', their full potential could never be realized, and would never be allowed to be realized. They would never be Dream-Time Traveller's, Paradise Lost would not be Regained.`
Scene 67
Holy Joes in white surplices dragged from the laying on of hands ceremonies in their churches and thrown into the backs of vans.
Scene 68
A mental hospital`s performing lobotomies, and injecting the Holy Joes with drug cocktails, so that the orderlies can laugh at the way they drool.
Fans and oars at the GROTTO with MAP.
MAP: 'Paradise never regained except through the future.'
Orphan 3: 'Brilliant, dear boy. Absolutely brilliant. You'll go a long way.'
MAP: 'I've been to Tazenda and back.'
Orphan 3: 'Where's that?'
MAP: 'Out on the Galactic Rim - 'Star's End'.'
Scene 69
The philosopher looks vaguely disappointed. We see an Asimovian spaceship, familiar from the novels` dustjackets, journeying through space and time. On its way, presumably, to Tazenda.
Scene 70
Orphans of the GROTTO.
Orphan 3: 'Oh, that`s Asimov, a chemist. I was thinking more along the lines of a chair in the literature department.'
MAP isn't flattered.
MAP: 'I'm flattered, but I prefer to sit in the Commander's Compsole Chair at Corps Command Centre.'
Orphan 3: 'I see, C.C.C.C.C.C...'
MAP: 'That's a bad stutter you've got there prof.'
Orphan 3: 'Yes. I see - '
MAP telepathically implies that he doesn`t.
MAP: '..?'
Orphan: 'I see, yes. Well, I suppose it would be expecting rather a lot to have you give up a position as Supreme Commander of Allied Space to lecture on the pros and cons of Platonic dialogues?'
Scene 71
There`s a flashback of MAP in full SM regalia receiving the symbols of his office in front of the assembly at SM HQ.
Scene 72
MAP telepathically implies to Orphan 3 that he doesn`t see that.
MAP: '..?'
Orphan 3: 'Yes, well. To return to our subject. The past, as the future, is a complicated concept, made doubly complicated by the fact that much of the available technological hardware is used to monitor, control, and prevent its creators from escaping. As Steven Spielberg once observed, in his movie, Back to the Future (1984), the paradox is that, if the future is to happen, living archetypes, like Michael J. Fox, in the role of Marty Fly, will be there, whether they travel forwards or backwards, because the paradisal Golden Age is the future, that is, Eternal Eden to which the 'magic of technology` allows Fugitives to return. Jumping back and forth between the far present, and the further future that is the past; building hidden bases in the Golden Age; creating an Age of Light; making reality produce what is required when it is required. By slavery.
Scene 73
Apples picked by a boy on a skateboard from trees where no apples can be seen - or trees.
Scene 74
Orphan 3: `Turning water into wine in rivers; constructing architectural structures from nothingness. Performing complicated psycho-dramas geared to the needs of the age, because the psychological profile of the era has already been mapped - as has that of the great thinkers; Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Heroditus, Archimedes et al. It`s more fun for the slavers to think their imaginations are producing what they thought of as their 'little helpers' performances. Although it helped to encourage thought a bit, and later their descendants could do simple mathematics and alchemical healing, which in turn resulted in the Sciences of Computer Systems Analysis, and Bio-Mechanical Engineering that would explain Chaos Theory, decode the g-gnome, and allow 'hard light' quantum mechanics to engineer reality, so that the Dream-Time Travel was once more possible. And the slavers would have more to do.`
Scene 75
A hungry youth in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, bored with the produce around him, steps through an archway and plucks grapes from a hillside near Corinth. He makes love with a naiad beside the stream of which she was the goddess.
Scene 76
We see the `goddess` obtaining her `permit`; stamped, returned and forgotten about for two hundred years by the Time Corps.
Scene 77
The youth goes home to dream of a long-legged blonde-haired blue-eyed girl with a silver flute and a total unconsciousness of his very existence.
Scene 78
Frat house GROTTO external environs with the Orphans and MAP.
MAP: 'Very romantic.'
The prof shows no signs of having heard MAP at all.
Orphan 3: 'Roman antiques are one of my specialities, `Roman Antics' on CD Rom performed by Sidhes is one of my treasured possessions.'
Scene 79
From `Roman Antics` performed by Sidhes. All of the characters in the scene are the same puclhritudinous woman. She doesn`t age and the audience see her buying fruit, admiring a dress in a dress shop, eating a meal in a public place, etc., and all of the other people in the street and service positions are herself. Of course, it`s Rome, so the scenes have a flavor of antiquity, but the essence of the meaning is that she`s alone and successful.
Scene 80
The GROTTO with MAP and The Orphans. MAP volunteers, entering into the spirit of the dialogue.
MAP: 'I like watching Sidhes on my Pixie, I mean CDs on my PC, but I`d like to know more about this quantum mechanical engineering of the past that was in the future that was always present.'
Scene 81
MAP watching `Roman Antics` Sidhes on his PC. The woman is in the bath house surrounded by herselves.
Scene 82
MAP and the Orphans.
Orphan 3: 'Well, I think you know the basics, that is, the idea that light particles travel only in straight lines when you're not looking, but when we do they choose from a plethora of alternative paths, which constitute alternative possible worlds or realities brought into being by human consciousness, and that the quantum physicists' psycho-physicians found that, by changing human consciousness, these changed humans - Changelings they called them - who could enter into those possible alternate universes.'
Scene 83
MAP tries to ooze sageliness as a changeling appears in his universe as an alternative and then she disappears again into another alternative universe.
MAP: 'Yes, I understand that much.'
Orphan 3: 'Well, it was discovered that, as consciousness could collapse the wave forms that constituted reality, so changing it or adapting it to suit the individual, and so it was possible to collapse what were described as 'phantom waves'. Let me explain - '
MAP, staring at his shoes despondently.
MAP 'I wish you would.`
Orphan 3: '- each of us is a wave form, but so are trees and flowers, less complicated, of course, but -'
MAP: 'Yes, yes. Go on.'
Orphan 3: '- well, Chiromancers - the name comes from the word 'chirality', which means 'handedness' and has to do with the 'science' of right-handedness and left-handedness. The Romans, for example, thought that left-handed people were evil magicians. 'Left' is sinister in Latin, and dexter is 'right', from which we get the word 'dexterity' or 'dexterous'. Both words have importance in terms of Chiromancy, which is the magical act of Creating Something Out of Nothing, and that`s what the quantum mechanics were trying to do with their 'phantom waves', which turned out to be what generations of mediums and psychics had been thinking of as ectoplasm and ectomorphs. Neo-creations and neo-creatures they might properly be termed. The idea being that, either by using a Chiromantic light wand, or a finely tuned optic laser, 'phantom creatures/creations' could be brought into reality by collapsing the 'wave form' that constituted their ghostly existence. Having first determined what you wanted to 'conjure up', of course.'
MAP: 'As simple as that?'
Orphan 3: 'Why make life more complicated than it already is?'
MAP unconsciously quotes Mr Kipling.
MAP: 'Just so.'
Orphan 3: 'Do you like cakes?'
MAP: 'Only exceedingly good ones, philo.'
Orphan 3: 'I wish I had some.'
A plate of faerie cakes appear out of thin air, plonk themselves down in his lap, and the pair began to eat.
MAP grins.
MAP: 'No light wands or optic laser then?'
Orphan: 'No, I'm a new model, a Neuromancer - all I have to do is think of what is required and it appears.'
MAP interestedly.
'Your suggestions interest me, sophist.'
Orphan: 'Let's take a trip to the Psycho-Physic lab.'
Act 2
Scene 1
A psych-tec in a lab coat of the psych-tech guild is speaking in the traditionally antiseptic tones of their order within a room spare and white interspersed with garish paintings of a type usually associated with very disturbed minds and great art. Most of the artwork is indistinguishable from that of a kindergartner with a bowl of cooked vegetables that they`d been invited to smear on the canvas, apart from the painting of MAP alone in the room with the psych-tech.
Psych-tech: `It was a relatively simple eye-op, no anesthetic, a minute adjustment to your 'borg sensors, a micro plasma bolt sent jolting down the fibers of your optic cabling, and a 'magic' ingredient from an eye-dropper, which is some kind of brain fluid previously extracted from two-headed Geminian 2 Heads, but is now being synthesized in chemical companies from BP in Budapest to PB in Pesty Buddah, that is, Polluxian Betelgeuse Inc. in the Polluxian systems` second city on, Shagaslagor II.`
Scene 2
The psych-techs performing the relatively simple eye-op, with no anesthetic, and a minute adjustment to MAP`s 'borg sensors via a micro plasma bolt sent jolting down the fibers of his optic cabling, and a 'magic' ingredient from an eye-dropper. Some kind of brain fluid previously extracted from two-headed Geminian 2 Heads.
Scene 3
Brain fluid being extracted from two-headed Geminian 2 Heads.
Scene 4
Back with the Psych-tec.
Psych-tech: `It`s now being synthesized in chemical companies from BP in Budapest to PB in Pesty Buddah, that is, Polluxian Betelgeuse Inc. in the Polluxian systems` second city on, Shagaslagor II.`
Scene 5
The Germinain 2 Head brain fluid being synthesized in a chemical company, Polluxian Betelgeuse Inc., that is, PB Pesty Buddah, the Polluxian systems` second city on Shagaslagor II with the skyline of the futuristic metropolis visible through the widescreen window.
Scene 6
Outside the main psych-tech building on campus.
Psych-tech: `I`m going to let you loose for about an hour or so. You`ll presently follow a trail that will lead you to the Temple of Karnak in Egypt at the time of the Pharaoh Akenhaten who, as legend had it, was the last king to try and introduce Worship of the One True God there - albeit in the shape of a Ra-esque sun disc. He began simply enough; pyramids, sun symbols, holiday brochures, observing a few girls passing by with Tutankamen death mask brooches, ankhs, scarabs etc.
Scene 7
MAP is depicted looking at holiday brochures in a bazaar while observing semi-naked girls passing by wearing Tutankhamen death mask brooches, ankhs, scarabs, etc.
Scene 8
Back outside the main psych-tech building on campus.
Psych-tech: `And then he'd wandered into one of those Old Curiosity shops -straight out of a novel by Dickens -complete with a two-legged Old Curiosity who, after commenting on the inclement unpredictability of the weather, offered him a 'fisherman's friend'. Some pungent horror marketed as a cold remedy arriving in tomb grey lozenge format, which he'd promptly palmed and stuck inside his left ear, while pretending to chew and swallow.`
Scene 9
Old Curiosity: `Weather rather inclement. Have a fisherman`s friend.`
MAP having done as the psych-tech said he should with the fishermen`s friend, the bow-legged baldy with two teeth, both black and too visible, leers expansively and gestures MAP toward a pile of well-thumbed erotica, the thumb prints visible on each and every porno-disc that can be seen in the two-meter high stack.
Old Curiosity: 'We have a range of interesting antiques from our very own Earth, and from all over the solar system as well as a few genuine rarities.'
The myopic victim of glaucoma and sclerotica leers once more through lenses that give the impression of a bullfrog about to perform elastic feats with its tongue.
Old Curiosity: `Such as this Tridental toothpick.'
The Old Curiosity brandishes a piece of metal encased within a sheathe of ivory.
Old Curiosity: `I inform you that this was made from the central tooth of the Tridental, who had owned both scabbard and pick. It having lost its bite when an Amoeboid Neptunian involved in some kind of fracas with one of the Space Corps Prostitutes, had catapulted the SCP girl towards a passing Tridental, so hitting it smack between the incisors and knocking out its sole molar. The Tridental, carrying its sword-stick disguised as a completely redundant and unnecessary, under the circumstances, toothpick, had vowed to track down the guilty Amoeboid and make sure that it never reproduced. Privately, it'd decided to let bygones be bygones and present both scabbard and toothpick as a token of friendship between the Amoeboid and Tridental communities in the hope that the two races could jointly overcome what neither had been able to deal with alone, that is, the Exploding Egg Birds of the South (the name speaks for itself), who'd instigated a reign of terror over the whole of Neptune for a thousand centuries.`
Scene 10
An Amoeboid Neptunian involved in some kind of fracas with one of the Space Corps Prostitutes, catapulted the SCP girl towards a passing Tridental, so hitting it smack between the incisors and knocking out its sole molar. The Tridental, carrying its sword-stick disguised as a completely redundant and unnecessary, under the circumstances, toothpick, makes a vow.
Tridental: `Publically I will say that I will track down the guilty Amoeboid and make sure that it never reproduces, but privately, I`ve decided to let bygones be bygones and present both scabbard and toothpick as a token of friendship between the Amoeboid and Tridental communities in the hope that the two races can jointly overcome what neither had been able to deal with alone, that is, the Exploding Egg Birds of the South (the name speaks for itself), who've instigated a reign of terror over the whole of Neptune for a thousand centuries.`
Scene 11
The Old Curiosity`s Shop
Old Curiosity: `Tridentals had developed extremely low foreheads (rather like Wayne Rooney) to prevent their eyes from looking up at the sky, or to prevent them from being seen when they did, because the response to a glance upwards from their luminescent green-yellow pupils was an Exploding Egg Bird dropping another one; the choices and chances for the Tridental target then being few indeed. Either it took a direct hit on the top of its skull, or it attempted to catch the egg in its teeth before it exploded. The hazard, of course, being that the Tridental might miss, so swallowing the hurtling package, and become a walking time bomb, which the Exploding Egg Birds of the South could detonate at will, so making the unlucky Tridental a victim of ostracisation and persecution until it wandered over to the Southern regions and demanded pity from the Exploding Egg Birds, who would promptly explode whatever egg lay inside it, and laugh about it amongst themselves for a generation or two.`
Scene 11
Tridentals with extremely low foreheads (rather like Wayne Rooney) preventing their eyes from looking up at the sky, and preventing them from being seen when they did, because the response to a glance upwards from their luminescent green-yellow pupils is an Exploding Egg Bird dropping another one; the choices and chances for the Tridental target then being few indeed. Either it takes a direct hit on the top of its skull, or it attempts to catch the egg in its teeth before it explodes. The Tridental misses, so swallowing the hurtling package, to become a walking time bomb, and its fellow Tridentals know that the Exploding Egg Birds of the South can detonate it at will, so we see the unlucky Tridental being ostracized and persecuted until it wanders over and demands pity from the Exploding Egg Birds, who promptly explode whatever egg lies inside it, and laugh about it amongst themselves.
Scene 12
The Old Curiosity`s Shop
Old Curiosity: `The Amoeboids, of course, couldn't care less. They thought it was a good joke too, and were planning to pretend to join forces with the Tridentals only in the hope of implementing their own joke, which was to hang around Tridentals and provoke attacks from Exploding Egg Birds by saying things like, 'What's that up there?' or 'Is that a Federation ship?' and 'Watch out for that Exploding Egg Bird, I mean Exploding Bird Egg!' So persuading the Tridentals to look skywards and attract EEBs who would plop their nasties down onto them like pigeons in Trafalgar Square only to be surprised by a bunch of Amoeboids standing underneath and bouncing the bombs back at them off their jelly-like forms.`
Scene 13
The Amoeboids hanging around Tridentals and provoking attacks from Exploding Egg Birds by saying things.
Amoeboid: `What's that up there?'
Amoeboid 2: 'Is that a Federation ship?'
Amoeboid 3: 'Watch out for that Exploding Egg Bird, I mean Exploding Bird Egg!'
The Tridentals are persuaded to look skywards and attract EEBs who plop their nasties down onto them like pigeons in Trafalgar Square only to be surprised by a bunch of Amoeboids standing underneath and bouncing the bombs back at them off their jelly-like forms.
Scene 14
The Old Curiosity`s Shop
Old Curiosity: `After a few weeks, the Exploding Egg Birds were extinct, and a year or so later, the Tridentals, having contracted some dreadful form of dysentery, thanks to the slimy attentions of their Amoeboid friends, had also expired. Their leader, a Tridental with only two teeth, the central molar having been lost in some long forgotten Great Struggle of the past, was making a last stand against the giggling uncontrollably Amoeboids, waving a toothpick and spluttering, 'I know you're out there, you might all look the same, but I know who it was.' He'd been summarily convicted of racism, so had been stoned until his other teeth fellout, and he'd fallen over never to move again.`
Scene 10
After a few weeks, the Exploding Egg Birds are extinct.
Scene 11
A year or so later, the Tridentals, contract some dreadful form of dysentery, thanks to the slimy attentions of their Amoeboid friends, and are also expired. Their leader, a Tridental with only two teeth, the central molar having been lost in some long forgotten Great Struggle of the past, is making a last stand against the giggling uncontrollably Amoeboids, waving a toothpick and spluttering.
Tridental Leader: 'I know you're out there, you might all look the same, but I know who it was.'
Scene 12
Summarily convicted of racism, the Tridental leader is stoned until his other teeth fall out, and he falls over never to move again.
Scene 13
The Old Curiosity`s Shop
Old Curiosity: `About a week later the entire Amoeboid Neptunian community, bored and with no one to play any more jokes on, committed mass suicide in the hope that they'd be taken up into heaven by a passing comet, and then nobody laughed except God who could still 'see` from the `funny side'.`
Scene 14
The entire Amoeboid Neptunian community, commit mass suicide, by stopping breathing and exploding with restrained laughter, which we hear after they explode.
Scene 15
The Old Curiosity`s Shop
The Dickensian owner of the antiquarium, observing MAP's disinterest, remembered something he'd just received an hour or so ago and, not especially enthusiastic about its merit, had deposited it in the back of the premises amongst a pile of similarly useless articles. Fetching it forth, he placed it on a small oak table before the Great Man and - waited.
MAP: 'What is it?'
MAP remains looking rather dubious about it all.
Old Curiosity: 'Beats me.'
MAP: 'It looks like a beetle with a funny hat. Is it Ringo?'
Scene 14
MAP places the idol on the palm of his hand and, seeing that the artist had anthropomorphized its creation, giving it a little chair; well, a rather big chair actually, more like a throne, and not one hat but two, a red 'topper', as it were, without a rim - or top for that matter - and being slightly wider at the front towards the hollowed out top end than it was at the base. The overall effect is one of a paper party hat about to fall forward over its wearer's face. Except that the gravity of the statuette was such that laughter was somehow taboo in relation to it, and besides, in the 'hat full of hollow' was a secondary creation in white, a piece looking something like the 'bishop' in chess.
Old Curiosity: 'It's the double crown of ancient Egypt worn by a sacred scarab, symbol of rejuvenation, reincarnation and rebirth.`
MAP exclaims like a delighted schoolboy.
MAP: `I must have it!'
Act 3
Handing over a few Venusian credits from his belt pouch, wanders off with his prize into the noonday streets. The sun is bright.
Scene 1
MAP looks pensive as he moves briskly through the thronged walkways clutching the tiny stone idol which, preternaturally cold to the touch, seems to offer an insectoid comfort to his sun troubled mind. He presses the artifact to his brow.
MAP: `Cool!`
He feels his head swimming from the heat and the claustrophobia. The street rocks and rolls in his nightmarish vision.
MAP: `There are just too many people, I feel. I have to cool off somehow, and get away from these gibberers, leerers, gapers.`
The faces gibber, leer and gape. Apparently blind, MAP stumbles towards a gap suddenly opening in the midst of the swarming faces.
Narrator: 'In a station of the metro, petals on a wet black bough.'
The words are sounding in MAP`s mind and heard by the audience somehow
MAP: `Appearing in my mind from somewhere, a poem by Eyra Pound, I realize, `In A Station Of The Metro` ....`
Scene 2
An Imagist perception of a throng of people emerging from the Paris Metro, their faces turning up towards the night lights of the city.
MAP: `How curious to be so lucid on one level while so helplessly incoherent on another.`
Scene 3
MAP muses as, legs collapsing beneath, he falls against a wooden oblong, plain and without visible opening mechanisms. He falls and slides through a space that materializes as the no-door swings surreptitiously and shuts behind its newest captive.
Act 5
Scene 1
MAP awake in light, a surprise to his subconscious mind, because it had led him to expect inky blackness, and an awareness that ...
MAP: `Behind that door that wasn't - a - corridor?`
The camera eye focuses in open the apparently innocuous door. MAP`s mind is quickly flashing back to previous encounters with such phenomena; a period during his youth when Dr. Lucy Fir had introduced him to the 'cold spaces'.
Scene 2
Dr Lucy Fir in her psychiatrist`s office with a picture on the wall of MAP meeting her in the office. Of course she`s nubilely attractive wearing the least imaginable because it`s better for the box office.
Dr Lucy Fir: `I`m Dr Lucy Fir. Cold spaces are corridors between and within worlds that you`ll be privileged to see on occasion.`
Scene 3
Back in the room with MAP looking carefully at the innocuous door.
MAP: `Could this be one of those?`
MAP remembered the coldly soothing scarab and found it still clenched in his fist, still cool and still performing its therapeutic function of instilling cool peace and tranquility. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the narrow 'chamber' that stretched up into the distance about as far as he could imagine, MAP found himself to be hungry and waved a finger at a more dense patch of light than could be discovered elsewhere.
MAP: `Breakfast.`
A tub of yoghurt, freshly opened and with a small silver spoon already deep inside, plumped itself down into the sawdusted earth.
'Thanks MAP.'
MAP began to eat.
Scene 4
Half-an-hour later, walking down the apparently never-ending corridor, MAP comes to another door-in-a-wall bearing the legend, Dr Lucy Fir T.t.
Scene 5
It`s a flash forward in which MAP and Lucy Fir are encased in comfy armchairs.
MAP: `The nameplate rang clear and sweet in my brain like the sound of my mother's doorbell when I'd stopped by on leave from SM training centre in 'floater city' New Chicago.`
Scene 6
Flashback to MAP standing outside. The door has a handle which, upon being turned by the room's occupant, exposes a petite redhead with green eyes, laughing eyes, almost invisibly swelling breasts, no waist to speak of - and thigh high plastic stiletto-heeled boots in lurid day-glo' yellow.
MAP: 'You haven't changed a bit.'
MAP catches her by the waist and lifts her up to be rigorously kissed.
Lucy Fir: 'Neither, I`m delighted to say, have you.'
Lucy struggles, trying to get her breath back and, producing a mirrored compact, quickly checks on her coiffure before treating MAP to a cold look of obsidian.
Lucy Fir: 'And where've you been? I've been waiting for you to come back here since 2027. What time is it now?'
MAP: '2115. Forty-eight minutes isn't so long.'
Lucy Fir: 'It isn't, but forty-eight years is!'
MAP: 'Sure, but you haven't been waiting here for 48 years, have you?'
Lucy Fir: 'Haven't I?'
She glares demurely, if such a thing is possible.
MAP: 'No, you've been here for 48minutes. I admit that I haven't seen you since 2027 A.D., but SM Command is a 'busy bee' these days and 2115 is the best I could do.'
Lucy Fir: 'Still, 48 minutes!'
MAP roars.
MAP: 'I didn't even expect to be here at all, so be grateful it's not 2345!'
Lucy pouts.
Lucy Fir: 'I thought we had a date. Oh, well, it might've been someone else. Still, it's probably in the future somewhere. I remember! It was in 1018 when we were working on the Viking project in Denmark and you went berserk over their king's refusal to allow NASA, the New Avalon Space Angels, access to one of their ships' graves, because he said it contained 'precious relics' which you were sure was a euphemism for UFO technology but, as it turned out, was actually a euphemism for plague.'
Scene 7
Gratuitous scene in which the pulchritudinous New Avalon Space Angels are seen in their almost visible space suits with MAP. Words are unnecessary.
Scene 8
Lucy with MAP.
MAP: 'Um. Well. They didn't mind so much. We cured the diseases. Only a few dead Danes and they were impressed by my Berserker persona so much that they gave me a two-headed axe and told me to prepare for Hastings in 1066. That's, let me see, at approximately 1351 in SM Chronometrics, remind me to be there, won't you?'
Lucy Fir: 'I'll be sure to. It was the funniest sight I'd ever seen. You, foaming at the mouth, projectile vomiting, whirling a two-handed two-meter high broadsword in every direction except forwards, and all this under a hornéd helmet three sizes too big that only allowed you to see your own sandals - ridiculous.'
Scene 9
Ridiculous scene in which MAP, foaming at the mouth, projectile vomiting, whirling a two-handed two-meter high broadsword in every direction except forwards, and all this under a hornéd helmet three sizes too big that only allows MAP to see his own sandals.
Scene 10
MAP and Lucy Fir.
MAP: 'They said I was a good dancer tho'.'
Lucy Fir: 'If they'd been playing music from Wagner`s `Ride Of The Valkyrie` maybe. But they were in the middle of a kingship struggle. The only reason you survived was because half of those called upon to attack you were in a state of paralyzed disbelief; the other half couldn't stop laughing.'
MAP: '1351 did I say?'
MAP consulted his Chronometric display and made a few rapid adjustments.
Lucy Fir: 'Oh, don't get huffy. Look, tell me what you're doing here, let me help if I can.'
Dimples in cheeks and, well ... dimples.
Lucy Fir: 'And I`ll see you in 1066 or later, which will probably be sooner.'
MAP: 'Suits.'
Dr Lucy Fir dimples deliciously.
Lucy Fir: 'Later.'
Act 6
Scene 1
Armchairs. Night time. Candles. Starlight through open curtains. Moon visible. The camera accentuates the attributes. There`s a painting of MAP and Lucy Fir sitting in armchairs on the wall of the room they`re sitting in armchairs in.
Lucy Fir: `Let`s chat for a while about 'old times', Carthage mainly.`
MAP: `I`ll play Aeneas to your dildo.`
Lucy Fir: `You mean anus to my Dido.`
Scene 2
Bedroom. It amounts to the same thing. Vibrating noise.
Scene 3
Armchairs. The painting has changed. Lucy Fir and MAP abed engaged in sexual action matching the description.
Lucy Fir: `Well, actually he'd placed a rather large vibrating dildo inside her, if my memories of Ancient Africa are what I think I can remember. Then, of course, he'd placed his even larger inside her and moved it around for an hour or two until, baring her teeth like some rabid too-humped camel, Dido still diddled, and she'd screamed at the top of her lungs whilst orgasming.`
Scene 4
Bedroom. Amounting to the same thing.
Scene 5
Dido, the African queen of Carthage, is discovered apparently working as a vaudeville act.
Dido: `Diddle Diddle Dumpling My Son John, Went To Bed With His Trousers On, One Shoe Off And One Shoe On, Diddle Diddle Dumpling My Son John!'
She and Aeneas collapse across the desk they'd been 'making their own entertainment' upon and Lucy Fir breathes into MAP's up-pricked ear.
Lucy Fir: 'It's an ancient children's nursery rhyme, the gist being to do with masturbation, and the loving care lavished upon the masturbator by his mother who, of course, will remove his trousers, and lone sock.'
Lucy Fir smiled reamily.
Lucy Fir: 'But, actually, it's about time-travel.'
MAP began to speak slowly; surrealistically slowly. The speech is so slowed as to be machine enhanced by SFX ...
MAP: `The ... idea ... being ... that ... the ... mastur- ... bator ... exists ... in ... Dream .... Time .... and .... can .... return ... for ... anything ... he ... loses ... or ... forgets ... about ... simply .... by .... going .... back .... for .... it.'
MAP roars.
MAP: 'Ride A Cock Horse to Banbury Cross, To See A Fine Lady Upon A White Horse, Rings On Her Fingers And Bells On Her Toes, She Shall Have Music Wherever She Goes!'
Lucy Fir: `What did it all mean Master Arm Practitioner?`
Lucy Fir smoothes MAP`s brow with a square of pink ink blotting paper.
MAP: 'Ask me again later.'
MAP hoists her sylph-like frame up as if he`s about to skewer the meat on a spit.
Act 7
Scene 1
Lying flat on the desk and wriggling into her thigh boots, she`s thankful her breasts aren't big enough to prevent her from seeing what she`s doing.
Lucy Fir: `I`m thankful my breasts aren't big enough to prevent me from seeing what I`m doing.`
Lucy is remembering.
Lucy Fir: `'I don't know if it's of any use, but there's a door along the corridor with 'Never T.t.' written on it.'
MAP: 'Nefertiti? Wasn't that the name of one of the queens of Egypt?'
Scene 2
MAP`s wishing her breasts were bigger so he can enjoy her struggles as, unable to see what she was doing, left leg would go into right thigh boot, and she'd become flustered. Eyes flashing green fire, she`d begin tossing her flame red hair in the way that he loved so much. He'd pull off the seemingly radioactive footwear, and she'd be sooo grateful they'd begin tearing their clothes off - again. The audience witnesses the fantasy become real.
Lucy Fir: 'I know it sounds like that.'
Now hampered by too-big breasts, and managing quite well, thanks all the same.
Lucy Fir: `But it's spelt N.E.V.E.R., the 'letters after the name' indicating her 'Time Temptress' status - like mine.'
Lucy Fir grins.
'Her job probably has something to do with ancient Egypt though.'
Lucy Fir crinkles her cute little snub nose.
Lucy Fir: 'Our names always say something about era and geography.'
MAP: 'And yours? I already know. But I know you like to tell `your story`, so...`
Lucy Fir: 'I'm a Sidhe. To us time-travel is natural, as is teleportation and a few other things, but it's tiring, so I was glad when the SMs recruited me. Their technology meant I could do what I'd been doing before but I wouldn't get tired.'
MAP could see the problem quite clearly.
MAP: 'There's a danger in that, isn't there? If you don't use your 'natural' talents, mightn't they atrophy?'
Lucy Fir: 'It's a question of training; 'naturals' like me train ourselves to the point where SM Command become interested: then they give us the technology that allows us to remain alert and do what we can do. It's interesting, fun - and who wants to exhaust themselves? Why use yourself up when you can use teleportation hardware and other gadgetry?'
MAP isn't convinced there isn`t a flaw in this argument, but he couldn't quite see...
MAP: 'If you say so ...'
Lucy Fir: 'Anyway, I was 'visiting' a school for Morphs - shapers - when there was an 'incident'. A small boy was being bullied by another bigger small boy, one Anders Hörst. An Imperial Praetorian cub, you know? One of those Roman thugs whose job it is to 'create heroes' by forcing them to fight against overwhelming odds - like big fat schoolboys. Well, this Morpher School shaper got hit on the side of his head and collapsed. I went over to help him and hand-in-hand together we went off to the school clinic where he got patched up by a nurse. Of course, he didn't want to go back to class, so we sat for a while talking, and he asked me to stay with him.'
Scene 3
A small boy is being bullied by another bigger small boy. The smaller gets hit on the side of his head and collapses. Lucy Fir goes over to help him and hand-in-hand together they go off to the school clinic where he gets patched up by a nurse.
Boy: 'You won't leave me, will you?'
Scene 4
MAP and Lucy.
Lucy Fir: `He was very earnest about it, so I said that I'd stay 'for as long as I could' - and I did - watching over him for many years. Following his progress, and development through Witch Training College; Wizard University; Lore Masters, and Warlock Doctorate. Guiding and guarding, in secret - it was a secret love, I suppose. We never spoke again, but I'm sure he felt my presence and knew he was beloved. And his name - by the time he'd become a fully fledged Warlock - was R. L. Usher Ph.D, which as any lore master would tell you, should be read 'circularly', that is, Dr Lucifer, which is where I got my name - Dr Lucy Fir - see?'
Scene 5
Dr Lucifer`s Warlock graduation ceremony. Vellum parchment handed up from the stage to the floating recipient.
Scene 6
Dr Lucy Fir and MAP.
MAP: ’Why didn’t you marry?’
Lucy Fir: ’We did - in spirit. He was mine, and I was his. I stayed with him a long time. Too long in some ways; no other girl could get near him, because I wouldn’t allow it. Everyone thought it was funny - except him - but I’d decided that no one else was good enough and, if I couldn’t have him ...’
MAP guesses.
MAP: ’Nobody could,’
Lucy Fir: ’Right.’
MAP: ’But you could have had him.’
Lucy frowns.
Lucy Fir: ’That’s true, but I didn’t want him in ’that way’;
MAP`s nonplussed.
’Oh.’
Lucy Fir: ’Anyway, in the end I let him go and joined the T.T’s. We’ll see each other again someday, I’m sure.’
MAP: ’Well, if you’re sure...’
Lucy Fir: ’Besides, he’d gotten involved with an enchantress while working on an M.Sc in Hungary, and it was getting to look a bit silly, a nine year old girl following him around everywhere he went.’
MAP: ’Nine year old..?’
Lucy Fir looks mock hopeful.
Lucy Fir: ’I’d decided I wouldn’t grow up until he married, me hopefully.`
MAP blinks in bafflement.
MAP: ‘But I thought you said ...’
Lucy Fir snaps.
Lucy Fir: ’Women are different!’
Lucy Fir shows MAP the door.
Lucy Fir: ’Turn left and keep going. You can’t miss it.’
Act 8
Scene 1
Miss Never is a rather scatterbrained tech-nix with horn-rimmed glasses, and straw blonde never-combed hair, which gives her the look of a rather disheveled poodle called B.A.Nana that MAP`d once known, and that hadn’t had its coat clipped since being whelped.
Scene 2
MAP as a boy running with a dog in the park. He has BABY MAP on his T-shirt, while the dog of indeterminate provenance has B.A. NANA lettered onto the coat it’s made to wear over its own. The dog looks vaguely similar to the initial scene of Miss Never, but she improves by leaps and bounds. All things considered, she`s quite attractive, actually - the dog, that is.
Scene 3
Miss Never introduces herself.
Miss Never: ’Welcome to Neverland.’
Throwing her arms wide, as if offering herself and the contents of the room in which she is ensconced, for his inspection.
Miss Never: `Are you Peter Pan?'
MAP replies looking as if he`s reckoning on dealing with a 'right nutter' here.
MAP: 'Thanks - and, no.'
Miss Never: 'A pity. Captain Hook?'
MAP assures her.
MAP: 'None of the above.'
Miss Never: 'Alright, I give up. Which story are you in?'
MAP: 'Sorry?'
Miss Never: 'Everyone is in one story or another. Which one are you?'
MAP: 'Well, I'm MAP. I`m looking for a way to get to Akenhaten's Egypt, and I've got this scarab on a throne wearing the double-crown of the Pharaoh's, and I'm Supreme Command of Allied Space, and I'm a friend of Dr Lucy Fir, and -'
Miss Never: 'Oh, you're one of his! That explains everything.'
MAP: 'One of whose?' I hadn`t thought of himself as a character in a story before. It`s a little unnerving.
Miss Never: 'Oral Usher. The Wandering Tale Teller from Storyland. The 'One' whom the 'Story-Bawds' devote their talents to. The Great Imagineer. The Silent Spinner of Stories. The -'
MAP protests.
MAP: 'But I'm me.'
Miss Never: 'You're fucking Lucy.'
MAP confesses.
MAP: 'Yes, that is true. I have to admit that.`
Miss Never: 'She wants to fuck him - and you're fucking her. So, you must be one of his. You're part of his and her story.'
MAP looks as if he`s beginning to wonder when the orderlies in white coats will arrive to take him kicking and screaming back to the ward.
MAP: 'Why doesn't he fuck her?'
Miss Never: 'He's a story developer, a character-former, an Elf doctor, a curer of ills through the power of daemon-stration.'
MAP: 'Oh, I get it! He's a master of the living archetypes!'
Miss Never: 'That's one way to put it. The faerie folk implement his teachings and prescriptions, or remedies for society's physical and spiritual ills in their interactions with human men and women; his 'helpers' call him The Silent One.'
MAP: 'Why?'
Miss Never: 'Because they know his thoughts; almost before he himself does. No one knows how he does it, but he does!'
Miss Never folds her arms and glints through her spectacles as if expecting something expected.
MAP: 'I'm a patient?'
MAP can`t believe it.
Miss Never: 'Or he is. It's not certain which. You're fucking Lucy - and he should be. Something has to give - or be given.'
The glint disappeared to be replaced by smiling kindness.
Miss Never: 'What did you say you wanted?'
MAP: 'Akenhaten's Egypt.'
Brusque.
Miss Never: 'Turn left; third door on the right. Right?'
MAP: 'Right.'
MAP`s stay in Neverland peters out ... Music plays, Bernard Cribbin's revoltingly twee 1962 45rpm record, 'Hole In The Ground', There I was, a-diggin' this 'ole. 'Ole in the ground, so big and sort o' round it was. And there was I, diggin' it deep. It was flat at the bottom and the sides were steep ...`
Act 9
Scene 1
MAP walks along the doored corridor. The third door on the right has 'Akenhaten's Egypt' written on a piece of paper in green ink and sellotaped to the door. MAP is nervously speaking; to no one apparently but himself.
MAP: 'Did you know that 'bíro' in Hungarian means 'judge'? The symbol of judgment being the Sword of Logos, that is, Christ as the Word of God, the Law of the Commandments, and that the English word 'biro', meaning 'ball-point pen', owes its origins to Mr Laszló Bíro, its Hungarian inventor. Well, you know what they say, 'the pen is mightier than the sword'.
So saying, MAP takes a biro from the breast pocket of his denim jacket and adds the words 'on Mars' to the legend on the door, before turning the handle and going inside.
Scene 2
Voice: 'You'll need a spacesuit, sir.'
MAP: 'Wha..?'
Voice: 'Spacesuit sir, here sir.'
Hands hand over a bulky package. They tug him onwards, and push directively for a pace or two. MAP senses a closer blackness; there`s a click, light: himself mirrored in a glass oblong with what he assumed must be a spacesuit folded upon his outstretched arms. It`s a seamless one-piece jump-suit affair in shiny silver with a zipper. It has velcro fastening from crotch to throat and, to take account of the floppy headgear, the zip up continues on from throat to chin.
Voice: 'Finished sir? This way sir?'
Scene 3
The light snapped off, and an arm took MAP`s guiding him forward. It turns him around, and pushes gently; shoves. The floor disappears and - whoooosh! MAP's butt hurtles down what we suppose must be something like a kid's playground slide.
Scene 4
Darkness for a while. MAP looks as if he was about to nod off, when - thunk! Journey's End. A flash of light, and yellow crystal tinglings - sand, he supposes, cringing, and finding them in his mouth he moves the back of his hand irritatedly against his tongue.
MAP: `Wuuurrrggghhhh!`
MAP Looks askance at the tiny yellow grains which, thanks to the impact factor, have swallowed him up.
MAP: `Swallowed up, in anatomical-geographical terms, as far as the Lower Stomach Deltoids.
MAP struggled upright, and steps out of what he'd supposed to be a sandpit designed to 'cushion' the fall of those who 'happened to drop in'.
MAP: `Gold dust?`
Scene 5
Gold dust sprinkles MAP`s silver spacesuit like hundreds-and-thousands on a well-iced doughnut. MAP shimmers around what he'd supposed was an underground chamber studying the carvings that cover the triangular walls of the pyramidical sanctum. One fresco depicts an Eye of Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, that is, the brother and sister, who`re the son and daughter of Ra, the great sun god.
Scene 6
Below is the single eye, an extension, as it were, of the lower lid, which is the kiddies' slide that he`s just used. There`s a cartoon of kids sliding out of the eye, and down the slide attached to the eye.
MAP: `A dispenser, as it were, of ... what? Eye drops? Perhaps. Droplets might roll from the corner of the eye, down the chute that depended from this curiously framed lower lid and ... what?
Scene 7
A montage of Old Earth Gypsies and their superstitious beliefs centering around fears of the 'Evil Eye', symbolized by the figure of the god Loki in Norse mythology, Satan in the Christian mythos, and in Egypt?
Scene 8
Set! The myth of Osiris, slain and dismembered by the Evil One. The parts of the god strewn to the four quarters of the globe, while his phallus is placed inside a casket and hurled into the sea; never to be recovered.
Scene 9
And then! On the second wall, a frieze depicting the God Osiris' struggle with his evil half-brother, the butchering of the young golden hope of Ra – so similar to the killing of the golden haired Baldur by Loki in Earth's legends of the Northern hemisphere - and the grief of Isis, his sister.
Scene 10
Lo! - on the third wall is depicted Isis, gathering the members of the fallen Osiris' corpse, and the pair, in regal splendor, finally enthroned as King and Queen over all Egypt. Osiris wearing the red half of the double-crown, and she the white. Enigma of enigmas.
MAP: `What does it all mean?
Scene 11
MAP turned to the fourth wall, and the depiction of Ra, the great god of the sun, and there on a giant throne sits the scarab beetle, symbol of symbols, enigma of enigmas, incapable of emotion and incapable of provoking emotions, the stony embodiment of emotionlessness.
Anubis: 'Pretty, no?'
Act 10
Scene 1
MAP, alarmed at the suddeness of the interruption to his train of thought, throws himself sideways, rolling over onto his shoulder as he does so. To take the impact's shock, before back-flipping from a prone-and-vulnerable position over into the relative 'cover' of the gold-dust pit.
MAP: 'Quite ... so.'
MAP struggles to reply, slightly out of breath and, with a mouth full of gold, not sure whether to spit or 'make like a vacuum cleaner'.
Anubis: 'Welcome to my Martian abode.'
The bodiless voice speaks on.
Anubis: 'I am Anubis, the god of the dead, an exile from the trinary system of Syrius, exiled for - a crime -'
Scene 2
A shadowy figure begins to emerge from the gloom in one of the farther corners, a biped with the head of a dog - and a smile.
Anubis: 'I know what you're thinking, by the way. I'm a telepath, you see. We all were on Syrius V before some of us decided that only some of us should be, which ultimately led to my downfall; a shame that.'
MAP peers.
MAP: `Ah. The dodgy doggy.`
Anubis: 'But, for a while, we reigned supreme over an entire quadrant. Able to read the minds of our enemies, allies, co-conspirators, emperors, warlords, babes in the womb, democrats, autocrats; none were able to escape our overt and covert manipulations. Assassinations where necessary; thieving where appropriate. Blackmail, if all else failed and, of course, mental torment or ... bliss for those who served us well.'
MAP: 'How so?'
Anubis: 'Set and Horus.'
The Syrian gestured vaguely.
Anubis: 'Symbols of what a man can become. Ra, the father, Osiris, the son - slain, resurrected. Isis, Virgin sister-mother; Horus born of a phallus-less union. The Paraclete or Spirit Guide of Christian tradition. The lapis philosophorum of the alchemists. Ambrosia of the gods. The Stone of the Wise, and - '
MAP, practical.
MAP: 'Can I have some?'
Anubis huffs.
Anubis: 'It's not that simple. It's to do with psychology, chemistry and physics.'
MAP assumes the air of an eager pupil.
'Yes. Druggies.`
Anubis: 'Ra symbolizes the Super-Ego of Freud. The ten 'you'd better nots' of Christianity, that is. Conditioning which the individual has to transcend, or it`ll re-condition him or her-self after de-conditioning, Osiris is the transcendent ego, logic - the zenith of which is technology in all its forms. While Isis is the soul; the feminine anima: essence of masculinity. The transmuter of the male sex; the philosopher's gold; aurum philosophicorum: synthesizing creatrix of the male-female Self. The illuminator; the catalyst that, wooed and won in the shape of the 'beloved', represented here -'
Dog-head gestured at the walls about him.
Anubis: '- as the sister-mother goddess Isis, who opens the 'third eye'. The One Eye of Horus/Set. Good and Evil; the sinister path illuminated as the path of light and life: the way of the gods!'
MAP: 'Psychology, chemistry, physics?'
Anubis: 'Psychologically speaking, the opening of the pineal gland, that is, the 'third eye' symbolically situated in the center of the forehead, is a psycho-chemical process involving what, for example, developmental psychologist Carl Jung referred to as 'active imagination'. A synthetic approach to the products of one's fantasies which results in chemical changes within the human brain that produces - Something Awesome!'
MAP pointed at the Eye of Horus.
MAP: 'That?'
Anubis: 'Yes, the original 'drugs' dispenser of men like Aesclapius and Paracelsus. The inspiration for such seminal nineteenth century novels as Robert Louis Stephenson's 19th creaturely creation, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The source and the cure of madness.'
MAP: 'Both source and cure - how?'
MAP was becoming increasingly fascinated by the hypnotic trance-inducing discourse of the Syrian.
Anubis: 'Man has two-eyes, a left, 'sinister', and a right or 'good', Set denoted the eye-slide or 'dispenser', symbolizing the optic tunnel extending from the pupil of one mind or psyche to another. The effect produced by the connection being dependent upon whether the 'psychologist' is a black or white 'magician', or whether he chooses to make black or white 'magic' in the psyche of his patient/victim. Sufferers of sexual abuse, for example, might receive 'white' or Horus' magic while killers or rapists would receive 'black' Set 'magic'.
MAP stoically declared with an uncomfortable feeling that he was about to be proved wrong.
MAP: 'I still don't see how it's possible to look into someone's eye and induce psychological changes.'
Anubis: 'As you probably know, the physicists discovered what the poet Alan Ginsberg intuited in his poem, `The Altering Eye, Seeing, Alters All`, that is, human consciousness affects reality at the quantum level where light particles behave in a way completely different when we aren't looking than when we do. In short, particles tend to travel in straight lines until observed, then choose alternative routes to their destination, which correspond to different alternate realities, or universes that are accessible to those with the capacity to change their consciousness. Because a changed consciousness is, as it were, not only seeing the world with 'new eyes', but also changing that world with them. Thanks to transcendent consciousness' capacity to constellate a different reality from out of the quantum 'web' of possible alternatives.'
MAP: 'So, looking someone in the eye can, depending on whether you're transcendent 'third eye' is a Set or a Horus, produce Heaven or Hell for the victim/patient of your psychic engineering.'
Anubis: 'Yes, indeed. It's possible to make someone sick by, as it were, injecting poison along the eye-dispenser - by means of what Jung calls the shadow. Or inject healing balsam - through the power of what Christianity calls the Holy Spirit, which is, as it were, the shadow-less soul, or Paraclete which allows its Master to function as a guide, teacher and healer for the disciple who, as it were, is led by his/her guru along the Path of Enlightenment into Nirvana, Paradise, the Elysian Fields, the Isles of the Blessed, Avalon, the Lands of the Western Seas, and Atlantis. To name but a few of the euphemisms for That Which Cannot Be Expressed.'
MAP: 'And this is how you induced bliss, as a reward, and madness as a punishment, for those that served, or tried to thwart your plans during the Telepath Wars around the Syrius system at the time of the Pharaoh Akenhaten?'
The Anubian showed little interest.
Anubis: 'You've heard of us then?'
MAP: 'SM Command has a file on you - Dr Jackal!'
Anubis: 'Oh, really. Well, I quite understand. But we couldn't allow Akenhaten to implement Worship of the One. It would've produced too many of the illumined and that would've interfered with our plans for Sector Control through the incubation of Sickness and Madness in their minds and, thereby, the bodies of Our Worshippers.'
Scene 3
Akenhaten`s religion of ritual fucking between women to produce human brainpower inside a temple.
Scene 4
Anubis and MAP.
MAP: 'So, what went wrong?'
Anubis: 'Egypt was my 'province'; literally. I was the 'incarnated god' there. We crushed Akenhaten mercilessly. Effacing all signs of him and his disc; everywhere it could be found: but the idea had been born. When the Christs, Siddharthas, Krishnas, Dalai Lamas, and other Saints began to appear and focus their devotees energies on the godhead, we found ourselves rounded up and interned by the Galactic Guardians. Entities of pure energy capable of ... well, anything is too simple a word for what they're capable of. But I got this Martian tetrahedron for my pains - and I'm soooo tired.'
Scene 5
Anubis` Egyptian 'province'. The 'incarnated god' there is depicted crushing Akenhaten mercilessly. Effacing all signs of him and his disc; everywhere it can be found.
Scene 6
Anubis is being placed inside the Martian tetrahedron as his imprisonment by the Galactic Guardians.
Scene 7
Barely perceptibly the Anubian has crept ever closer in the course of its monologue till it stands towering over the hapless MAP sprawled in abasement on a hill of gold dust.
Scene 8
Baby MAP with his dog B.A. Nana.
Baby MAP: `I wish for all the worlds I could fly like Peter Pan back to Neverland and B.A. Nana my faithful poodle-headed poodle.`
Scene 9
As Dr. Jackal the Anubian Magister bowed its ugly head to aim its Set-beam more surely, MAP gazed pleadingly into the elongated orange pupils and slavering jawline with its cruel array of incisive cutting and crunching canine tools. The prehensile tongue lashing back and forth in bare concealment of the carnivorous appetite that lurked within the dog-god's soul, MAP swung his right hand hard from its position beside his prostrated form, so releasing the stone beetle only inches from the beast's brow. The statuette strikes with the force of a detonation; and caves in the skull of the amazed telepath. It bounces back bloody but undamaged, to lie - amid the gold dust. The Anubian, still wearing a mingled look of chagrin and bewilderment on its mien, topples backwards into the center of its prison. Grey rice puddingish liquid bubbles out of the hole in its face, while it utters the curious non sequitur, 'Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, get off my cloud', before hitting the granite beneath its feet hard, and head on in a blind collision with death.
Scene 10
MAP thinks off his 'borg-induced electromagnetic hemispheroid shield, and pockets the bloody stone beetle, which now looks a bit like Ringo or Mick, depending how the light reflects upon it. MAP picks himself up, and dusts himself off - somewhat reluctantly on account of the value of the dust-down. He rifles the pockets of the Anubian, and pockets a CD micro-disc bearing the legend 'Akenhaten's Sun'.
MAP: `Wonder how I`ll get home.`
Scene 11
Voice: `This way please, sir.'
The voice from the darker recesses of the tomb.
Voice: 'A bit quicker, please sir, I have another guest to be seeing to - a Mr Bond - in a few minutes if you don't mind, sir.'
As MAP approaches the dingy corner of the strange edifice, a hand emerges to grab his arm and thrust him unprotestingly into a twentieth-century elevator belonging, apparently to the SAS Robisson chain of hotels; judging by the logo. MAP looks doubtfully at the six-hundred-and-sixty-six floors indicator buttons.
MAP: 'It'll be a relief to be back at the GROTTO.'
Scene 12
MAP steps out of the elevator door, which happens to be disguised as a menhir in Northern Europe around 1066 A.D. It’s the middle of a battlefield where Vikings and Saxons are in the process of massacring each other.
Voice: 'Your double-headed battle-axe, sir.'
Scene 13
An arm appears from inside the menhir wearing the sleeve of a dinner jacket and we can see a crisp white silver cuff-linked shirt. The wrist`s wearing a Cartier diamond-studded Chronometer and, dangling from its well-manicured-yet-swarthy hand, a looped leather strap with a Viking`s pride and joy at the end of it.
MAP: 'All in a day's work.'
Scene 14
MAP speaks to no one in particular and, swinging the weapon in ever-widening circles about his now massive frame, mutteringly enters the fray.
'Now, I wonder which ones aren`t the Saxons?'
THE END
Bright, R. 'Mythopoea', JustFiction! Edition, January 2019.
Bright, R. 'Mythopoea', JustFiction! Edition, January 2019.