4045 lines
161 KiB
Plaintext
4045 lines
161 KiB
Plaintext
<document type="" version="2.0">
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<paragraphs>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>Title: Gallery Exhibition - A Love Story</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>Author: Madison Scott-Clary</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>A night on the town. A bar for an aperitif. A light dinner at a modern restaurant, one of those places with default sensoria settings that turn up the taste inputs and turn down the visual inputs, so that you eat intensely delicious food amidst a thick, *Eigengrau* fog. Another bar, livelier and less painfully modern, for a digestif.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>And?</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="General Text">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>Crowds. Crowds upon crowds. Your own crowd a cell within a supercrowd. Instances drifting, or perhaps forced by momentum --- theirs or others' --- along the thoroughfares of a nexus.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>And?</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>A low-slung building, a crowded foyer, fumbling for tickets.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>A door opening, soft crowd noise.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>INT. A WHITEWASHED LOBBY</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>And?</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Waiting.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>And...</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Programs. Explanations. Elucidations. Errata. Words to chuckle over with your group of friends.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, of the Ode clade is pleased to welcome you to its gallery opening. Tonight, it has prepared for you a modest exhibition of its works within the realm of instance artistry. This is presented at the culmination of its tenure as Fellow, though the name rankles, of Instance Art in the Simien Fang School of Art and Design.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>A door opening.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>A short, slight...thing, steps from the next room through one of the two doors on the far wall and calls for attention. To call it a person seems almost misleading. It's a dog. A well-dressed dog? A glance further on in the program offers a glib explanation:</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
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<text>(As though reading)</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>**The Artist**</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>This gallery exhibition serves as the capstone for Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, of the Ode clade in its role as fellow. The fellowship in instance art was created specifically for Dear in recognition of the excellence it brings to the field.
Dear's instance is modeled after that of a now-extinct animal known as a fennec fox, a member of the vulpine family adapted to desert living. Dear has modified the original form to be more akin to that of humans. The iridescent white fur appears to have been a happy mistake.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Well. That's a thing. Anyway.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>DEAR</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>If I may have your attention, folks. My signifier, or...ah, name is Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled, or just Dear. I come from the Ode clade of Dispersionistas, and am a Fellow of Instance Art at the Simien Fang School of Art and Design.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>An artist is, one might say, one who works with structured experience. A play is art, as is music, as both are means of structuring experience in a certain way.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>So, also, is instance art. It is a way of using dissolution and merging in such a fashion that the experience of forking --- or of witnessing forking...</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Dear forks, two foxes now stand before you.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>Then one of them quits.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="General Text">
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<text>DEAR</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>...becomes structured, becomes art.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>Before we begin, I would like to take a small census of those present. This is for your own sakes as well as for that of the artworks, such as they are. We will let them know. Could you please raise your hand if you consider yourself a Tasker?</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>A scant few hands go up in the air, all huddled in one corner of the room. Perhaps a group? A group of their own?</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>Uncomfortable titters waft through the...the audience? The ticket holders, at least. Talking about dispersion strategies is not something one usually does.
Dear holds its face composed in a calm, polite expression.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>DEAR</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Trackers? Raise your hands, please.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="General Text">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>Of those who remained minus the Taskers, perhaps a third raise their hands. Several individuals, a few distinct groups including your own. That leaves well more than half belonging to ---</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>DEAR</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>And dispersionistas?</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Sure enough, large numbers of hands lift into the air. The Dispersionistas are a vast majority, and surround most everyone else in the room, minus the Taskers, who remain off to their own side. The audience seems to be mostly fans of the work.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>DEAR</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Thank you. Now, if you would be so kind as to follow me, I will be happy to walk through the gallery with you.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Dear turns adroitly on its heel and without a moment's hesitation, forks. A second, identical instance appears to its left and finishes that turn in perfect synchrony.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>A small wave of applause begins. To fork so casually and continue to move in lockstep bespeaks no small amount of practice with the procedure.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>Quiet applause.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>It doesn't last.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>One instance of Dear...</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
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<text>(interrupting)</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>The original? Maybe? </text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="General Text">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>...Heads through the left-hand door and the other.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
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<text>(interrupting)</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>The fork? It's so hard to keep track with all these people</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="General Text">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>...steps through the right door.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>And here perhaps we must take a step back and acknowledge the fact that this is all very strange, because it certainly is. Because it's confusing. Because it's opaque. Because perhaps you aren't even sure what these terms mean, even now. Because, like all love stories, it's so very easy to get lost. Like all love stories it's told from multiple angles. Like all love stories, despite time's true arrow, it nevertheless is at its very core, nonlinear.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>How do you remember it, these many years later? How do you take the fact that so much happened simultaneously that night and you merged so incautiously after that even your very own memories argue with you? How do you square *love story* with *corrupted memories* and still love the one you do?
You take a step back and acknowledge it.
You acknowledge it because you forked. You followed both Dears, damn the consequences.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>INT. A SMALLER ROOM</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="General Text">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>The room you wind up in is smaller even than the foyer, and the ticket-holders have to press even closer together. The audience that winds up here is the least diverse, containing none of the Taskers and very few of the Trackers who wound up at this - apparently primarily Dispersionista - event. As such, the press is met with uncomfortable silence: one doesn't normally talk about dissolution strategies with strangers, but Dear has deftly forced it to be an issue.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>There's no sign on the fox's face that it knows what it has done. Just that calm, polite smile. Curious. How can one know that a fox is smiling rather than snarling or something, much less that the smile is polite. Perhaps styled after those old cartoons of anthropomorphic animals, or simply just an impression.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>DEAR</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Thank you. Much cozier in here.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Many of the proclaimed Dispersionistas are grinning at the trick, and even several of the Trackers are smiling.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>DEAR</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>My only request is to not fork during the duration of the exhibition...</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Dear continues, giving a knowing glance to some of the Dispersionistas.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>DEAR</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Exigencies aside, of course.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>A thought crosses your mind.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Perhaps it's the drinks, those hip and strong aperitifs and too-sweet digestifs.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Well, hell. It's hard to take a fox standing on two legs seriously when it gives you instructions.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>This all seems rather ridiculous, when you take a look at it. Instances as art?</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>You're not as smooth as Dear, but you manage to step a little further away from one of your friends, leaving enough room for you to bring into existence your own second instance.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>For a moment, you aren't sure quite what happens. After a second, things start to click into place, though.
A mere fraction of a second after you forked, Dear also forked, instructing its instance to come into existence in a space overlapping the space that your instance already occupied. This sort of thing is very much frowned upon and, in most public areas, impossible to even pull off.
As it is, collision detection algorithms whine in protest and force the two instances apart with some force, causing a cascading ripple of collisions, spreading complaints of personal space. The room has safe settings, at least, and the collision detection algos register a bump at least a centimeter before one body touches another.
The Dear at the front of the room is smiling beatifically, but the one confronting your instance has undergone strange transformations. Its eyes are bloodshot, almost to the point of glowing red. It's mouth is gaping, lips pulled back in a snarl, muzzle flecked with froth. </text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Character">
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<text>YOU</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Dialogue">
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<text>Rabid...</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Empty">
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<text/>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="General Text">
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<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
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<text>...You think. It has lost most of its humanity, though it remains on two legs.</text>
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</para>
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<para bookmark="Action">
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<text>You let out a shout, but it's drowned amid a chorus of other yells and screams.
Post-humanity, confronted with humanity regressed feels a special kind of fear, and as the feral Dear herds your instance toward the back of the room, back toward the foyer, the other ticket-holders...</text>
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</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Though perhaps 'audience members' is the correct term once more</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>...surge forward toward the original instance of Dear.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The audience is shouting.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It is still smiling</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Shouting continues.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It opens the next door.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>INT. A SOMEWHAT LARGER BUT MORE CROWDED ROOM</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The crush is far more intense than expected, as you find both halves of the audience rejoined and dumped back into a dark and already crowded room.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Already crowded with several instances.
Dear has forked itself several times and each of those instances are forking again, until there's easily twice as many instances of Dear as there are audience members.
The noise doubles and then doubles again as the instances start charging at and pinning audience members against each other and the walls, herding and shouting, all with bloodshot eyes, bared fangs, inhuman snarls.
It's loud and dark and panicky.
Some try forking. And the new instances are ganged up upon, charged at, with twice the intensity as the parent instances. Most quit.
You realize that these instances of Dear are not actually attacking to harm the audience. There are no weapons, no coercion to quit. Just exercising, violently, the collision detection algorithms in the room, which are still set safe.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>This makes you *furious*.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Without even thinking, you reach out a hand and grab one of the instances of Dear by the scruff of the neck and drag it to you, giving it a good shake as you do so.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(shouting)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>What the fuck do you think you're doing?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fennec snarls at you and, with surprising force, grabs your forearm and, using itself as a pivot, swings you around through about a quarter-circle's arc. It keeps its paws on your arm, one on your elbow to keep it straight and one on your wrist, and shoves you back by lunging forward.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>It lets you go and, in one complex motion, aims a swipe at your face with one paw while the other slams, palm flat, against its jacket pocket.
Something happens to the floor beneath your feet.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A loud crunch.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You fall.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>INT. A LARGE ROOM - EMPTY AND ECHOEY</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The room into which you and this feral Dear fall is cylindrical. Walls of concrete, floor of packed dirt. The part of your mind still working on an intellectual level finds this funny, cliché.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>That's also the part of your mind that notices the default settings for sensoria and collision in this room are much, much different than the previous room. Full sensation, with collision detection algorithms turned way down.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>A room set for battle.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You grin wildly.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(muttering)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Good. Let it hurt. This 'exhibition' goes way beyond what it should.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>DEAR growls, feral.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear only growls.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>There's no circling, not yet. You two simply collide and have at each other. You with punching fists and knees attempting to find a groin . Dear with blunt, scratching claws and not-so-blunt teeth.
The sounds of a scuffle.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fox is without gender, you guess, but perhaps that still hurts.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You have the advantage of size, and Dear has the advantage of speed. And teeth and claws worth wielding.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>It leads to an even draw in the first match, until you fall back from each other and do the circling. Dear has lost all sense of humanity, to your eyes: hunched over like some werewolf out of a movie, fancy shirt torn, tail frizzed and lashing about, claws and teeth bared, slavering.
For your part, you fall back on what little you know of martial arts.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Mostly knowledge gleaned from fiction media, if you're honest.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You keep your back away from the fox, keep your fists up to guard your face, keep slightly turned to minimize your profile.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You lunge.
Dear lunges a heartbeat later, and you press your advantage with a kick. Your foot impacts the fox in the side, just above the pelvis.
Dear lets out a satisfying...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>...and satisfyingly inhuman...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>DEAR whines.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>...yelp of pain, collapsing on the dirt of the floor and whining for a moment.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You move to kick it again, but it rolls to the side and staggers back to its feet, landing a good swipe of its claws along your cheek and up over your ear, tearing flesh.
Shaking your head to try and dislodge the spinning sensation of jarred senses, you stumble back to press your back against the wall and gain yourself a moment.
Dear does not permit this. The fox scrambles after you, deceptively quick, and leaps toward you, aiming to land with both its feet...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>...or footpaws?...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>...and paws against you, mouth open wide to bite.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You try to roll to the left but don't quite make it all the way away. Dear's right paw catches on your shoulder while it's left softens its landing against the concrete of the wall before latching up around your neck.
It's an inopportune angle, but you feel it bite at you anyway, getting most of your shoulder at the base of your neck.
The pain of it's teeth lodging in your skin is enough to make you cry out. Its got enough of your soft tissue in its muzzle that the contact is solid and, despite your attempts, you can't swing it free.
You feel its right arm slip away and are too busy trying to gain the advantage to realize why until the paw swings back in front of you.
When you see the syringe...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>...that symbol of death, here in this uploaded world, a way to crash your instance...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>...you panic and fork. As does Dear, and now there are two of you, two fights, two dances.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You scramble frantically to get away from the fennec, but its grip around your neck with its arm and its teeth is too strong.
You raise both hands to block the syringe as it darts inward, hoping to either knock it out of Dear's paws or at least buy yourself some room to squirm away from the fox.
You're too sluggish, too clumsy. After all, it doesn't matter where the syringe lands. It's only a sigil, an item holding a bunch of code.
A bunch of code that will attempt to crash your instance.
The syringe strikes you square in the sternum just as you force Dear's arms away.
The fox immediately quits.
Fading, leaving you to crumple.
The world around you dissolves into voxels, each of which steadily gets larger and larger.
The voxels step down in intensity until they fade to a dull grey.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Throughout, an increasingly jittery distortion.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dying is no quiet affair. It's loud, painful. Surprisingly so.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Your instance, this body, is crashing in spectacular fashion. Every last bit of your sensorium is lit up like a Christmas tree, but the pain goes beyond that. It's a pain of existence, of the need to continue existing.
Those expanding rings of colored black speed up. The black somehow increases in brightness. You cry out into it.
Perhaps this is why you were instructed to send a forked instance.
*Fin.*</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A silent pause.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>*Fin* for now. *Fin* for this you.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>But, but, always another but.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>But there is more than that you.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You forked, after all, yes?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Yes.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Yes, and your heart falls as you see that you crumple.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>There is more than that one Dear, too. You see, this is the danger of love stories. This is the danger these days. Time is funny. Space is funny. Nonlinearity was always the warp and woof of the world, but now your face is rubbed in it, the multitudinous aspects of post-humanity ground up against your nose in some strange punishment.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>To your relief, that second Dear also quits.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Moving faster than you thought you could, as though some latent instinct had kicked in, you swing your arm up across your front and strike Dear's forearm square on with the bony ridge of your own.
The syringe goes clattering. You tear away from Dear and leap after it.
Scrabbling on the ground, you catch sight of the syringe as it dematerializes.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Objects only do that when their owners quit.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You whirl around just in time to see the hazy, ephemeral shadow of Dear fading away.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fox quit.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You let out a yell of triumph.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>And now you're alone</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You stumble back to the wall and sag against it, breathing heavily and assessing the damage. A few minor scratching here and there, and then the two major wounds: the scratch up along your cheek and across your ear and the bite on your neck with its several small puncture wounds.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You set to work patching yourself. Forking and merging, again and again, each fork fixing another cut, another bruise.
This takes only a few seconds.
Once you're finished, another instance of Dear appears. On closer inspection, it appears to be the original version of Dear. A less ferocious instance. Dear-prime, or something.
You've calmed down enough that you don't immediately leap at it, though you do drop into a defensive stance.
It smiles kindly.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You may calm down, now.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Like hell.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>No, seriously. Remember where you are. This is an exhibition. This is an exhibit. You are an audience member, yes? Even audience members have roles to play.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You furrow your brow. So wrong-footed are you, the rolling boil of your anger drops almost immediately to a simmer.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Like a play...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Like a play.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So you knew we'd fight?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I knew a fight *might* happen. I encouraged a fight to *actually* happen.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You raise your fists again, but you feel the changes in the room. Collision algorithms back on conservative, sensoria turned down.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You encouraged a fight?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>Yes. You did not --- will not --- make it to the unwinding room, so I will explain here. Stress is the easiest way to force decisions to be made. I forced you to decide, did I not? I forced you to interact with an instance, and I am forcing you to interact with me, now. Two instances, two interactions.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The sound of a door opening.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>There is more to it, but a good artist never explains. Artistry lies in the perception, and someone's watching.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>At that, it quits.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You drop your arms and sigh, thinking for a moment before heading for the stairs.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A silent pause.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>But now, we're back at the beginning, aren't we? We're back to that first fork, when it all seemed so simple. We're back to the choice of the two doors, and the other instance of yours, that one follows the other Dear through the door to the left.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>INT. A SMALL ROOM</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You, smirking, take the right.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>The room you wind up in is smaller even than the foyer, and the ticket-holders have to press even closer together. The audience that winds up here is the most diverse, containing the entire group of Taskers who wound up at this --- apparently primarily Dispersionista --- event. As such, the press is met with uncomfortable silence: one doesn't normally talk about dissolution strategies with strangers, but Dear has deftly forced it to be an issue.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>There's no sign on the fox's face that it knows what it has done. Just that calm, polite smile. Curious. How can one know that a fox is smiling rather than snarling or something, much less that the smile is polite. Perhaps styled after those old cartoons of anthropomorphic animals, or simply just an impression.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Thank you. Much cozier in here.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Right.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The taskers do not look cozy.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You suppose it makes sense. There are bits of this that appeal to all: forking for a specific purpose, instances accomplishing goals. This was flagrant abuse of that in their eyes, however, given that these instances will likely move on and live their own lives. Independent, individual instances.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I would like to elaborate on my previous point. This exhibition is about the idea of instance creation as art, and in that sense, it is the easiest job I have ever had. Instance creation *is* art.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Some muttering.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(interrupting)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>All instance creation. This show is about utilizing that consciously, but all instance creation is art. It is structured experience. The Taskers, and I believe you are all here? The Taskers are the tightest adherents to structure. The most baroque.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled forks once more, an identical copy of itself appearing standing just next to the original. The instance quickly quits and dissipates. An example, perhaps.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The goal of this exhibition is not to just talk about that, though, it is to explore the creative limits of forking as art.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>Dear forks once more, but this time into two additional instances. One short, stocky human, holding up her hand just as the original instance still holds up its paw. And on the other side of Dear, a small animal --- smaller than you expected, the size of a small cat --- that you suppose is the fennec mentioned in the program, colored in creamy tan fur. It becomes clear that the primary Dear is a synthesis between the two.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The human Dear reaches out to shake one of the audience members hands while the fox dashes toward the crowd, weaving its way between legs in a good simulacrum of an animal attempting to escape.
Something about the fennec catches your eye as it zips through the crowd. It doesn't seem to be following any pattern, but its motions remain purposeful. It seems to be...perhaps, making eye contact with each person in the room?
And then it comes to you.
And it looks up to you.
And winks.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Can fennecs do that?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The strange critter holds your gaze for longer than some wild animal should, or so it feels, but the moment is broken by the soft sound of Dear clearing its throat at the front of the room.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The next room is just through here. If you will follow me, please.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It's difficult to deny the tiny critter before you, to tear your eyes away from it. Easy enough to forget that its an instance of Dear as it leads the tour onwards. Perhaps if you could just dally a little and get a closer look before moving on.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>And then the explosion happens.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A bang. The audience shouts and scrambles.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Cliché as it is, the lights go out. Perfect.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You, daring, intrigued, perhaps a bit upset, fork. You follow. You keep heading left, where the fennec was going, pushing past scrambling attendees to get to the wall. The left wall, you reason, is a shared wall with the other room, the one which the other Dear had led the other half of the group through. There's probably a door between the two, though you hadn't had the chance to get a look, or perhaps you could break through.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The smoke thickens. It has a lemony, sulfurous smell that, although it's never something you've smelled before, makes you think of bullets, grenades, gunpowder.
In the dim light and confusion, you find the wall by abruptly slamming into it. Indeed, there's a door a few hand-spans away, and a tiny critter with big ears scratching frantically at it.
You shuffle quickly over to the door, barely able to see for the smoke and dimness, and grab at the handle, praying that it's unlocked.
The handle turns.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The sound of a door opening</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You fall through.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>EXT. A ROLLING PRAIRIE</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Sudden silence, a bit of wind.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It's a strange sensation to step from a cramped, crowded, loud, dark, and smoky room into such a space as this.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The fall you took couldn't have been more than a few feet, but even now, your senses still feel knocked slightly out of place. To have a space like this, one that's bigger on the inside than on the outside, or outside when it should be indoors, underground, is certainly possible. It's easy. It's just also incredibly rude. In most sims, it's even illegal. In this one, you vaguely remember hearing that it requires a permit.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>But here you are.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You and a tiny fennec.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(overlapping)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You and a lapis sky.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(overlapping)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You and endless green fields.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You and a sunny day.
Outside *and* a sunny day.
The fennec, which had been grooming itself after the flight from the explosion, gives you what can only be a smirk and another wink, and starts heading off away from where the door ought to have been but is no longer.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Nothing for it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You follow along after the tan beast, the fox looking minuscule amid the endless grass, nothing but its ears sticking up above the stalks. It looks out of place amid the green of the grass.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The ground had looked flat at first, but that seems to have just been the grass all growing to about the same height. Beneath the grass, you keep rolling your ankle over tussocks and failures in the earth, stumbling over the fact that the ground the grass is growing on is annoyingly uneven.
The fennec winds its way amid these tufts, having an easier time of things with dainty paws.
Your mind fills with stories, of magical animals, of sleeping for years and waking up to see the world vastly change. You start to think of the fennec as its own entity, something completely separate from Dear, from the exhibition you just left.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You're one tenacious fuck, you know that?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You look around, some part of you unwilling to believe that the voice came from the fennec. You had forgotten, lost in your fantasies, that the fennec was still Dear.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Yeah, me.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fennec continues its dainty walk. </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I say 'tenacious fuck' lovingly, of course. I like you. You have pluck. Gumption. Another you forked in another place, another time. We fought. We kind of fell for each other. It was fun.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Another...?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Not much in the way of brains, though.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You roll your eyes. The fennec grins.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You know you were told to send an instance to the exhibition, right?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(warily)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Yeah.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So why not quit?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Hmm?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Why not quit? Why not merge back with your... (pause) hmm. With your #tracker instance?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You shrug helplessly, realizing the two of you have come to a halt at the base of a hillock, a rough cave dug into its side. The fennec sits primly.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>This is...this is an exhibition about instances as art, isn't it?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>DEAR laughs once or twice, though it sounds more bark than laugh.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It looks perhaps most feral at that moment.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It is, is it not? Just thought you would see it through, hmm? This exhibit?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You nod. You feel ill-prepared for this.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I will not lie to you, then. This exhibit is just a frame. It is just a canvas. You are the exhibit. You are the art.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You catch yourself nodding once again and attempt a more graceful response.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>There's a lot of shows where the audience becomes the cast.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fennec settles down onto its belly, stretching out.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I suppose. That is one way to think of it, yes. I am not fond of the play metaphor. Exhibit works better for me and the way I think, since I know who is watching.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Just as you begin to respond, begin to ask the obvious *who?*, the fennec quits. This sim, as a whole, provides a courtesy feature of a faint outline existing and then fading after a quit, crash, or failure. That just means you get to fume in the direction of a slowly fading outline of a fennec, standing at the mouth of the cave.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(resigned)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fennec's right, though, you could just quit.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(a bit frustrated)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>But *you're* right, too, you think. You want to see how instances become art.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Cave it is, then. </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You say this as though this is some sort of choose-your-own-adventure book or roleplaying game and you have to follow the available exits.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(smirkingly)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Ah well.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The wind sounds die down. Quiet crawling.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>As far as caves go, this one is rather unremarkable.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You laugh at yourself for having such a thought. The life you've chosen for yourself does not include many caves.
You drop to your knees, brushing a hand through the last vestiges of the faint outline of that shitty fox, and crawl past the entrance of the cave.
It is unremarkable in that it is almost cartoonish in construction. A low hillock with a rough hole bored in the side, rocks protruding here and there, worms and roots dangling from the ceiling. Always large enough to crawl through on all fours, but never enough to stand up in.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(thoughtful mumbling)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The construction is actually quite well thought out. At least, as far as cramped spaces go.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>As soon as the cave turns a corner and the light of day behind you is lost to view, it all seems rather less inviting than it did before. The air was still before, but now it's stale; cool and moist has become humid and sticky.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>It's difficult to say whether the walls are closing in or whether that's just claustrophobia setting an assertive hand on your shoulder.
You crawl on.
The ground starts to rise, and at last you think you may be nearing the other side of the hillock. Perhaps, given the non-Euclidean layout of the exhibit, an entry back in, or at least back out.
The tunnel keeps rising.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The tunnel keeps going.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Rocks dig into knees and palms.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>And you keep climbing.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(accelerating)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Up and through</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You climb.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Nearly vertical.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(brightly, faster now)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>And, to your relief, it grows lighter.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You hasten.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(excited)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Up and out!</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>YOU shout</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>And fall.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(overlapping)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>And fall onto the street.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Looking around, you see the building housing the exhibition just behind you. You hunt for the front door. An instance of Dear putters around just past the glass doors, picking up programs and generally tidying up the place.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You go to give the doors a try, but they're locked.
That's why you looped back around, isn't it? To confront that shitty fox once more and ask it what it meant by *who's watching*.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(angrily, as though through gritted teeth)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You just want to shake that--</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You're fuming, you realize.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You sit down on the curb, indulging in a moment to relish the anger, the self-righteous feeling of bolstered confidence. Then you work on calming down.
There won't be a fox to confront, and it's as Dear had said: this space wasn't the exhibit, but the frame. That means you were the exhibit.
Dear ignores you.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Your evaluation of 'shitty fox' is reinforced.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You wait.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You sit after the wait grows long.
You ponder visiting another bar.
You lose track of time.
Eventually, you hear voices from the side of the building. Familiar voices. Your friends. Yourself. Still dirty from the cave, you despair.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(pause)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So you quit.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>INT. BACK IN THE SMALL ROOM</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The same bang.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>But, ah, there was more than one choice made that night, wasn't there? You forked again, didn't you? You, rascal that you are, followed that fennec, but you also did not.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fennec skitters off toward the explosion, toward the shared wall between the split rooms, and you have already sent a version of you after it. You want to follow, but you also don't want to deal with explosions.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Neither does anyone else, apparently, as the tight quarters in the room quickly leads to a crush and stampede toward the door that Dear has opened.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>Into which you are forced.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The crush is far more intense than expected, as you find both halves of the audience rejoined and dumped back into a dark and already crowded room.
Already crowded with several instances.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>DEAR growls, the audience panics</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear has forked itself several times and each of those instances are forking again, until there's easily twice as many Dears as there are audience members.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The noise doubles and then doubles again as the instances start charging at and pinning audience members against each other and the walls, herding and shouting, all with bloodshot eyes, bared fangs, inhuman snarls.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It's loud and dark and panicky.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Some try forking. And the new instances are ganged up upon, charged at with double the intensity as the parent instances. There is another you, another fork, eyes filled with fury as it struggles against the fox.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You realize that these instances of Dear are not actually attacking to harm the audience. There are no syringes, no coercion to quit. Just exercising, violently, the collision detection algorithms in the room, which are still set safe.
The intensity within this room is overwhelming, and you find yourself shrinking toward the walls, if only to escape from the noise and motion on one side.
A few others seem to have the same idea, shifting their ways toward the walls of the room. They're met with little resistance.
In fact, the instances of Dear seem to be encouraging it, growling and barking and yelling as they herd the audience to the outsides of the room.
You make it to the wall with relatively little trouble, only to be jabbed in the back with a doorknob.
Keeping an eye on the action and the aggressive instances of the artist, you slip a hand back behind you to turn the knob.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A door opening.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>INT. A LARGE, QUIET ROOM</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The room you find yourself in could not be more different. It's a room where one might feel quite bad shouting and hollering, and most of the audience gets that at once, quieting down.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>It helps, of course, that the combative instances of Dear remain behind in the previous room, only herding the remaining audience members toward the door. It's a curious dichotomy of violence in one room and in the other, well...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Opulence isn't quite the right word. Softness, perhaps? Gentle, relaxed, soothing.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>The room has muted lights --- brighter than the previous room but still decidedly dim --- and soft, amorphous furniture, none meant to be occupied individually. The light is cool, the color scheme a soothing set of blues without being annoying about it.
Dear --- Dear-prime, perhaps, as it doesn't have any of the frothy bloodlust look about it --- smiles disarmingly and urges the audience into the room.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Another difference: there's plenty of space to spread out here, rather than the previous overcrowded rooms.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(politely)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Pease, please, take a seat. Please sit. The stressful portion of the exhibition is over, and now it is time that we had a talk.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>There's some grumbling, stress indeed. Some still look warily at the artist. But folks do as they're told, splitting off into their little subgroups. Couples and threesomes wind up on couches and love-seats (if the blobby furniture could be called such) while larger groups wind up on melty-looking beanbags. You and your group, all single, find a cluster of such furniture and scatter to the component pieces. You wind up with a love-seat to yourself and make yourself comfortable.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Dear follows along with the groups. All of them. Forking and splitting off towards the clusters of furniture so that each group winds up with its own instance of the fox. You notice that each instance is fluffier, softer, a touch heavier than the original. As a scheme to make the artist seem friendlier, it works pretty well. The new instances nearly exude kindness.
You marvel, for a moment, at how easily folks seem to take being shifted from the context of violence to the context of comfort. That there are a majority of Dispersionistas certainly explains part of it. The rest, you suspect, might be due to the fact that, despite those context shifts, this all took place within the overarching setting of an art exhibit.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(wryly)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Those are meant to be safe.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear had said that instances were art, and perhaps that really is the case: perhaps it's like those plays where the audience plays a role. Perhaps you and your friends, all of the audience, are the art. Perhaps Dear only hung the frames.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>As if summoned by thought alone, an instance of Dear pads up to your group and, by your leave, settles down on the cushions beside you. If it amped up the friendliness of its build, it doubled that with its face. Teeth muted, whiskers full and slicked back, eyes bigger and friendlier, ears gone from large to almost comical.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(softly, smiling, unapologetic)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Once again, I must apologize for that stress.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Silence.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You decide to speak up.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Because of course you do</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>What was the reasoning for that? Were we playing a part, like in a play?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You could say that, I suppose. I prefer the term exhibit, though, as it implies that someone is watching, that you are being looked at.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It makes a graceful setting-aside gesture before you can question it on that.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Stress is a means of forcing individuals to make decisions. If there had not been real stress, real risk, then there would not have been real art to be made. Your calling it a play is accurate in that sense, in that plays are art made in real time. This is also that. Structured experience happening in real time.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It's easy to feel intrigued: the art itself is intriguing.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Beyond that, though, *Dear* is intriguing. Dear, with its choice of form.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(overlapping)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear, with its mastery of this new art.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(overlapping)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear, with its casual refusal to conform.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So what do *you* get out of this, then? This art?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>Dear grins and leans back into the couch, its tail flicking out of the way and arm draping along the back --- an almost familiar gesture toward you. One that you can't help but notice. One that even your friends can't help but notice.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>That, my friend, is a very good question.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>And do you have an answer?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Not a good one. (a pause, then wryly) Not yet, at least.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Well? What do you have so far?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear laughs. Your friends roll their eyes.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Part of it is integral to us. To all of the 'me's here, to all of the Ode clade, to so many Dispersionistas, and, to some extent, to all those except perhaps the most conservative of conservatives. (digging for words) It is evolving. Identity, I mean. It is moving beyond the romantic concept of self.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Is that why you're not hu-- (correcting yourself) Is that why you've taken the shape of a...a fennec, was it?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear turns itself to sit cross-legged on the love-seat facing you. You find yourself doing so as well, almost subconsciously.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Your friends stand up.
Dear-Prime, at the center of the room, calls out in a soft voice.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(from a distance)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The next exhibits are just this way. If you will follow me...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear reaches out a paw and rests it atop one of your hands.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>We can stay and chat a bit more. Do not worry. I am running this show, I make the rules.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Your friends are grumbling, already moving to follow Dear-prime to the next room.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You shrug. Carefully, though, as you're finding yourself loath to displace Dear's paw from atop your hand.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Sure, why not? Came for the exhibition, after all. Might as well get the most of it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You repeat the shrug, this time to your group, make no sign of getting up.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>They hesitate for a moment, then, frowning, give a dismissive gesture and wander off to the next room.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So. Fennecs.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Fennecs, though one must be careful to specify anthropomorphic. Real fennecs are quite small as you remember.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Do you? Do you remember? Perhaps some other you does.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>Dear forks and a fennec --- hardly a double-handful of fuzzy critter --- appears between you, bridging your knees, back paws on Dear's knee and front paws on yours. It's tan, rather than iridescent white, and holds far less humanity about it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You raise a hand, but it quits before you can touch it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>This is intentional. I am not a fennec. I rather like them, of course, but I am not one. I am an amalgam. I am something more. Or rather, we all are, and I am trying to embody it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(thoughtfully)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So you're greater than the sum of the parts? Fennec and human?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It would be better to say that we are all more than human. We may be post-human, as the old saws would have it, but we are certainly now more than the sum of the parts of our identities. (grinning) Fennec mostly just because I like foxes, though. All the deep words in the world will not hide that fact.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You laugh, giving its paw a pat with your free hand.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Well, hey, if it fits, might as well.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(laughing)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Think it does?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Well, sure. Just got me wondering what you get out of it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You feel your hand drop as the fennec turns up the sensitivity of its instance and turns down the rather conservative settings of the collision detection algorithms. You hesitate for the moment, then do the same, feeling the concomitant sensations of temperature and touch jump in intensity.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Well, I get to be soft as hell. Seriously, pet me. I love being a fox sometimes if only for the physical contact.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You laugh despite the heat rising to your cheeks. After a moment's hesitation, you pet the back of Dear's paw lightly with your hand.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It's soft. Very soft.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You keep up those touches. It's hard to remember the last time you felt fur.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>All of my intellectual bullshit aside, I think it is very important to remember the sensuality of senses. </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Its eyes half-close in apparent pleasure. </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>When the system was built, there was a big debate as to whether advanced sensoria should be included at all, whether we should have sims and rooms and things to look at and touch. Too much work, they said. Nerds, the lot of them, living in a world of text. Some of the more romantic uploads argued loud enough that we overrode most of the objections. Pet my ears, those are softer.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It's hard to imagine, a world without sensoria. Why? Too much work how? Too much strain on the system? What life would that be, though? Without touch? Without taste? Without drinks and couches and very soft foxes? Why bother?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You move to comply, then pause, tilting your head. </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>'We'?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You finish the motion and brushing your fingertips over the back of one of the ears once. Then again and again. Dear wasn't kidding about the softness. You suspect it was a selfish request on its part, as the fox ducks its chin to tilt its head toward your hands, leaning in closer.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(muffled)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>'We', yes. The Ode clade is quite old.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(pause)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You describe them as romantic, but talk of moving past romantic ideas of self.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(mumbling)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. Other ear, if you please.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You laugh, earnestly and easily. You slip your other hand from under Dear's paw, and bring it up to stroke the back of the other ear. The touch gets a pleasant shiver out of the fennec.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Fennec fits. Or, at least, soft animal does. You seem to act a little like how cats acted, though.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(lazily)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Meow. Seriously. There is room for romanticism and romance itself within post-modernism.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You move the hand that was stroking the first ear to ruffle the fur between the ears, laughing again.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Romance, eh? You coming on to me, then?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Well, more like...you are the first one to show interest in me, rather than the exhibition. (laughs) And I have run lots of exhibitions.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Moving gracefully, it leans forward, up onto its knees, and then in against your front, pushing you back against the armrest of the loveseat. Its arms slip up around your shoulders. The move startles you into stillness, but after a moment, you settle your arms around the fox in turn.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>But I am not *not* coming on to you.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You're at a loss for words. What could you say?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>What *would* you say?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(distantly)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I'm flattered, but--</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(distantly)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You're sweet, you know--</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You settle for silence and simply relaxing beneath Dear.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Warmth, softness.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Lonely?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear settles with its muzzle resting alongside your neck.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Mmhm.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(sigh)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Same here.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fennec nuzzles in against your neck. Whiskers tickle, raise goosebumps.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A moment of shared silence and touch. Your hands brush along the fox's back, imagining how soft the fur might be beneath the dressy shirt. Dear's blunt muzzle continues those soft rubs against your neck.
It leans up, nose dotting its way against skin, cheek, to your ear.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(murmuring, playful, close)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The only downside to being a fox is that it is really hard to kiss with a muzzle.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Silent pause.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>And then it quits.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Your arms collapse against your front, through the ephemeral outline of the fox that remains.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>With a shout, you scramble off of the love-seat, shock forcing you to stand in a defensive position.
The air is cold after the contact.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(stammering, confused, shocked)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The room is empty.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>It takes a moment for you to remember that you're within a gallery exhibit. That Dear hung the frames in which you're the art.
How cynical of it, though, to build emotional rapport, to tease at the edges of your feelings, questing at loneliness, and to leave, to do this for art. You must admit it hurts.
You laugh, forced and bitter.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Lonely, indeed.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You turn your touch sensoria way down and head to the door.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>INT. A WHITEWASHED GALLERY</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>Numb --- or, that's not quite it, more like confused and in pain but unwilling to feel either --- you shuffle into the final room. Seeing the pointed ears of Dear over the heads of the crowd fills you with strangely shaped emotions, which you set aside and move to rejoin your friends. All of whom, it seems, are set on laughing at your expense.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Not helping.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>A group of audience members next to you gives a shout and jumps away from a spot in the floor as a panel begins a to lift up. A...trap door? From it, a ragged and slightly dirty looking head peeks up.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Your head.
Your dirty, scraggly, frowning head. It looks upset, catches your eye, and quits. A set of memories, new and fresh, awaits you, ready for merge.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>How many of you were there, now? So hard to remember, and in love stories, the number of counterfactual universes we set up for ourselves far outnumbers any heat-of-the-moment forks, so does it even matter?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You try to get a peek of what's down the hole beneath the floor, but, other than dirt and rock, you don't see anything before it slams shut.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(grumbling)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Fuck it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You merge the memories blithely, ignoring any potential conflicts. You're hungry for reasons to hate.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A panel in the side of the room gives way and folds back into a corridor.
No, not a corridor, a staircase. From it steps another audience member, another you, looking pale, shaken. They do not look as though they would like to talk, though. Those around them look sullen at being rebuffed, but that version of you doesn't seem to care.
You send a quick sensorium ping to them, instructing them to quit. They do so.
You feel that hate begin to simmer.
Once all of the audience is brought back together in this whitewashed room, with its exposed ceiling, you hear Dear's kind voice waft above the heads.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The final room of the exhibition is not participatory. Please feel free to wander and explore. I--</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It pauses, forks a few times, each instance smiling, and continues.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>*We* will be available for questions and chit-chat. Finally, I would like to thank you all deeply for attending this exhibition, and The Simien Fang School of Art and Design for hosting it. SF welcomes you back to any future exhibitions.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>There is applause, then, but it's scattered, confused.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear looks proud at this.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You and your friends wander slowly through the room.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>It's a square. Equidistant from the walls and each other are four pedestals, with one more a positioned at the center. Each pedestal is about waist-height and is just as white as the rest of the room. Images float a few inches from the top of the one nearest you, so you and your friends begin the circuit, wandering to inspect each pedestal in turn.
Each is labeled with a simple placard.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The Wanderer</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It's a surreal experience, watching yourself, your actions, through someone else's eyes. Sure, there are videos and such, but there's something a little different about this. The way the 'camera' moves is...well, it's not a camera. There's no way it could be a camera.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>It has to be Dear.
You watch more closely as the recording loops. It starts with a flash, a point of view very close to the ground. Lots of ankles. Shoes.
Then it moves, quickly and jauntily, dashing through that forest of legs, pausing to look up into faces. Most give it only cursory glances, apparently unsure of how to take this tiny animal moving among them. A few refuse to look at it, clearly disconcerted.
Then there's your face. You look more curious than anything, trying to figure out this thing before you. The you here, now, stares back into your eyes through the playback. Those younger eyes, less tainted by memories than your own.
You hold your breath.
There's the explosion.
The viewpoint skitters off to the side (lots of ankles, here) and toward a wall. It seeks out the molding on the floor at the base of the wall, then the corner where that meets the perpendicular molding of a doorjamb. There's its place. There's where it belongs. It scrabbles at the door, waiting for you, knowing you'll come.
And there's your shoes, with less dirt on them than they have now, and then the door swings open. The viewpoint leaps through, into sun and grass, with the shoes (and the rest of you) falling after.
Until now, the playback had been silent, but directed speakers start to project a little bit of audio, muffled.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(through recording)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You're one tenacious fuck, you know that?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Everyone but you laughs.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You hear your discussion with the fennec, heavily obscured by the crunching of grass and the occasional grunts from yourself as the two of you make your way through the field. Your discussion on the meaning of exhibit, of medium, of art versus frame.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The video slides slowly lower to the ground as the fennec stretches out, then goes dark.
Repeats.
There's a touch of resentment, you feel. That Dear had somehow managed to record a portion of its sensorium and was playing it back to these strangers.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Was that even possible?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It bodes ill for the other pedestals.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The Rebel</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>This pedestal contains a fairly short loop, more obviously taken from a conventional security feed.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>It's hard to discern what happens at first. It mostly looks like a bunch of people standing still, and then, as if on cue, freaking out.
A closer look, and you feel your cheeks go red. You know what's going to happen.
There's you.
And there's your forked instance.
And there's Dear's forked instance.
And then chaos as Dear deftly moves the room into strife.
Then the recording loops.
You swallow hard, knowing what's going to come next. You avert your gaze from the pedestal as you watch the chaos begin again. Your friends jeer at you, but you don't feel proud at having done what you did.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The Fighter</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>As you catch a glimpse of the next pedestal on approach you wince, both at remembered pain embarrassment. You had not known this would be the next in line, but you had suspected.
The scene in this pedestal shows fighting, chaos.
Once again, this appears to be a sensorium recording...</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>How had Dear *done* that?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>...showing a fight that's far more well-choreographed than you remember. Seeing it from Dear's point of view, it looks a lot more like purposeful herding. The safety settings on that room had been so high that that's about all it had been.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Then the instance's point of view gets whipped around to face you, your face squarely in its vision.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(through the recording)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>What the fuck do you think you're doing?!</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You wince at the sound of your voice, hoarse from excitement, profane, coming from those directed speakers.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Then the fight begins in earnest.
You're dragged to the center of the room of the fight and then dropped into the ring, those concrete walls and that dirt floor making your remembered wounds ache.
This fight is less well choreographed. More jagged.
Except to you. You know.
The details play out on the pedestal with a cool, almost clinical precision, holding none of the emotion that you had felt. The blows, the circling, the jumps and scratches.
The syringe.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(softly, from nearby)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I had to mean to do it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fight isn't so far off, that anger not so much less than at a boil that you don't still have a strong urge to deck the fox standing in front of you.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(sad, resigned)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>If I did not mean to do it, you would have been confused. Maybe there would be victory, but it would have been empty and hollow. Confusion is not what was called for, in this exhibit. Victory or loss. Stress and decisions.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You take a breath. One of those intentional breaths, the ones where you breathe out longer than you breathe in.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I think I understand why you did it</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You will yourself to tamp that hate down, if only for the sake of propriety.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I don't like it, but I think I understand why.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear nods, offers a hint of a bow, and backs away.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>That is my job.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It retreats into the crowd.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You feel sick.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You think you know what will come next. You will yourself to walk to the next pedestal but, some part of you perhaps hoping to forestall the inevitable, veers to the center of the room, to the fifth pedestal instead. Vain hope, but one does what one must.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2:
The Medium</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The fifth pedestal, the one in the center of the room, is four recordings playing at once.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>They all feature you. They all feature the things that you did during your time here in the exhibition. All of those sly forks and subtle mergers.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(smiling, close by)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Did you think I did not know?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You feel a heat rise to your cheeks. A blush? Deeper anger? </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I...I mean, I didn't--</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear holds up a paw, indicating silence. It seems fond of the gesture.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I knew. I expected it from at least one member in the audience. There is always one.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It smiles. You find it a touch odd that the smile is simple and kind, not sly and knowing, not triumphant, and you're not sure why. Not sure why it smiles in that way? Not sure why you find it odd? Perhaps both.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Is it okay?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(laughing)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Of course it is! This is a show on instance art. That is why it is expected. That is why there are five small exhibits here, not four.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You smile tentatively.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>That was a rather Dispersionista thing to do for a Tracker.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(abashed)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I may have had a few drinks before.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I suspect a good many of those here did.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So why did you allow it?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear spreads its hands in a graceful gesture before clasping them at its front once more. Its tail, you notice, is swaying behind it, steady. </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You and I have talked about this.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(mumbling, distracted)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I suppose we have</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You are still sorting through the merged memories, after all.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>SF calls me an instance artist. Hell, I call myself an instance artist, but that is not totally accurate. I am closer to a director, though. I organize the stage, the crew --- even if they are all me --- and the choreography. You are the art though, or close enough to it. I will not say audience, or actors. I do not like the play metaphor all that much, since the art is not in the acting. There is no acting, but the metaphor will serve.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You nod, watching the multiple feeds play out in their own courses. Watch. Guess at the contents of the next pedestal. Let that hate warm you, then sag away once more.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A silence, the sounds of chatter and the recordings.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>What are we supposed to do with our experiences here?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(laughing)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>This is not a lecture. No classroom, no notes, no papers to write. It is not a tool that you take away to use. (pause, sly) And even if it were, that's your fucking job, not mine.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The Lover</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Seeing the cool blue hues of the scene above the final pedestal brings an immediate and uncomfortable reaction. It feels like you swallowed a ball the size of your fists and it has lodged itself behind your rib cage.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Embarrassment. Frustration. Anger. Loneliness. All in equal measure.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It makes you queasy.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The audience surrounding the pedestal gasps at something</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>FRIEND 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The instances aren't the art. I don't think so at least. I don't actually know what the art is.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>FRIEND 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Maybe instances are the brush?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Laughter.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Instances the brush, emotion the paint.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The voice is familiar by now, and you aren't sure how you feel about that budding familiarity. Dear stands attentively nearby. </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The art is the story behind it all. The art is...experiences?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>FRIEND 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Was that a question?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(bemused)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I do not make art because I know why. If I knew why, I would not need to make art, then, would I?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>FRIEND 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So you're a romantic?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(smugly)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Perhaps you should watch the exhibit again.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You approach the pedestal just as the feed loops back to the beginning.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Once again, you're viewing a scene from Dear's point of view.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(from the recording)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>We can stay and chat a bit more. Do not worry, I am running this show, I make the rules.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You watch yourself shrug.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(from the recording)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Sure, why not? Came for the exhibition, after all. Might as well get the most of it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>When the instance of Dear looks around, you see that the room is almost empty, the last folks, your friends, drifting out the door.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>The conversation that follows is low on intensity and high on subtle, emotional cues. You watch yourself and the fox have a slow and easy conversation about 'why's.
The image of Dear looks down, and you see that it's paw is resting atop yours.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>You --- the you here, the you now --- clench your fists.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You know that that instance was designed specifically to be likable, approachable. The big eyes, the softened gaze, the larger ears. You know that you walked right into that.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>But hey, you were lonely and honest. You thought it was lonely and honest.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>That feeling in your chest becomes a constriction, frustration and anger winning out. Hate winning out.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You watch the whole interaction again, this time from the other point of view. You watch your own face as it slowly opens up, as you discuss being a fox, sensoria, post-modernism and romanticism. And romance.
You watch as the point of view rises, leans in closer to the you pictured there on the pedestal, watch as it leans in close, into a hug far more intimate than one would expect from someone one had just met, two bars worth of drinks aside.
The viewpoint switches to somewhere above the fox and yourself on the couch, though the audio stays close by.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(from the recording)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The only downside to being a fox</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You turn around as casually as possible so that you don't have to watch. You will yourself not to hear. Will your ears to turn off, your sense of hearing to disappear.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You hear all the same.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(from the recording)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Is that it is really hard to kiss with a muzzle</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>There's Dear, in front of you.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Not the softened overly-kind dear from the blue room. Just normal Dear. Well, `normal'. Dear-prime.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It's good because you think that the sight of the kind-Dear in this context would've made you quite upset.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Was that unfair of me?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="General Text">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>It's done something to the room --- unsurprising that it would have admin privileges in its own gallery, come to think of it --- the two of you are in a cone of silence.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I...well, yes.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You try and count the layers of remove from the reality of what you had experienced, try to calculate the cuils in your head. The experience, the exhibit on the pedestal, talking to the artist. Are you talking bout the pedestal? The video? The performance? The experience? You shake your head.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Dear waits.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I'd say you did an admirable job with the exhibition.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(quizzically)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>Admirable? I set up a situation --- several, really --- in which audience members feel emotions toward ephemeral constructs and made it art. I do not know if that is admirable. It is just art.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>But you--</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(interrupting)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I am an artist, that is what I *do*. I am a person, though. Also a fox-person, but a person nonetheless. And I feel like I cut too deep with that one. Was that unfair of me?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Your shoulders sag.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Dear waits.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I don't know. I had a few drinks, the exhibit was stressful. It was supposed to be stressful like you said. Just...it may have been an act, but I fell for it pretty hard.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear waits. You feel discomfited.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(frustrated, but resigned)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Look, it's just silly, is all. I don't even know why it affected me so much. (trailing off) Look. Was it true? What you said? Are you lonely? Were you earnest? Were you coming on to me?</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear nods, simple and straightforward. </text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It is perhaps easy for me to talk about because I rehearsed hard for this show, but yes, I am lonely as hell. I fork to form relationships and keep myself...I mean, I do not lie in my work if I can help it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It is your turn to wait, which discomfits Dear in turn.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I am sorry. I did cut too deep. I was not thinking. It is not my goal with these things to damage anyone's trust in art, in instances. Or in me, for that matter. It is just that I do not make art because I know why. If I knew why, I would not need to make art. (pause, sigh) I feel really bad about this. I am sorry. I would like to do what I can to regain your trust.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>The weight of decision hangs heavy around your neck, heavy enough to bow your head. There's very little you feel you can say without making that decision right then, so you stay silent for a moment.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A long pause</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(cautiously)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I feel like you're trying to ask me out.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(equally cautious)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I am not *not* asking you out.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Dear smiles faintly.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>So do you.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Listen, can you give me a night? Let me put some thought into it.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Fair. And listen, I really am sorry. There are bits of this show that I wrote thinking that they would lead to one thing, some spectacular art, and they led to...well, this.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>YOU</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Parenthetical">
|
|
<text>(more upbeat)</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I get it. Kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure story that got a little out of hand.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>DEAR</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>I suppose.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It hesitates for a moment, then draws a card out of it's left pocket, reaching out with its right paw at the same time, a perfectly formal business card exchange.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>You grin and, on a hunch, turn down your touch sensoria way up to accept the card --- a flash of contact information and locations --- and shake the fox's paw.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>It is *very* soft.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Scene Heading">
|
|
<text>EXT. OUTSIDE THE BUILDING</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>Footsteps, no talking.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>No one seems to have come out of the exhibit unscathed.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>A few bear the rumpled look of the recently roughed-up, but with their safety turned up, that's about as far as the physical effects go. Rather, everyone within the group looks emotionally bruised, bitten, scratched. Some look dazed, some hurt, but no one looks blasé.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>In that, Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled was successful.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>You and your group walk to another bar. Quiet, subdued.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Action">
|
|
<text>You give the low-slung building a wide berth. Only you came away with something. There's a card in your pocket, the dot on the question mark of an unanswered question.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 2</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>Two things, then.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Empty">
|
|
<text/>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Character">
|
|
<text>NARRATOR 1</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
<para bookmark="Dialogue">
|
|
<text>A card in your pocket, and a decision to make.</text>
|
|
</para>
|
|
</paragraphs>
|
|
</document> |