Ash

 

[Cautiously, Will pokes his head up inside the ticket-booth to see whether the blue man is still present. Will doesn't see him, and is relieved. He rattles the locked ticket-booth door and bangs on the glass.]

WILL:

Chris! Chris!

[But neither the audience or Chris can hear him through the glass.]

[Will fumbles around in desperation and discovers the ticket-seller's microphone. A sudden uncertainty about the blue man's absence. He musters courage to whisper into the mike:]

WILL:

Chris.

[The scratchy sound is ghostly and locationless through the cheap amplifier. The sound takes Chris by surprise; she realizes it is Will and turns her back. Will's dialogue is via the ticket-booth microphone until noted otherwise.]

WILL:

Chris.

Where's...Is the organ-player still here?

Chris?

It's good to be back, Chris.

CHRIS:

No, it's not.

[Silence.]

WILL:

I thought of you.

CHRIS:

Why? [Short laugh.]

WILL:

[Beat.] You're my sister.

[Pause.]

I...

I love you.

CHRIS:

Not all that. It doesn't mean a thing.

WILL:

I don't want you to make my mistakes.

CHRIS:

I won't.

WILL:

Where's the organ player? The blue relic-seller?

CHRIS:

I haven't seen anyone.

WILL:

The Javanese soul-stealer. The lounge-singer.

CHRIS:

No one's been here.

WILL:

I saw him.

CHRIS:

He's gone.

WILL:

He looked like Elvis. He lured me in with carnal secrets, magic tricks, exploitable physical singularities, promising to sell me relics, concrete proofs of spiritual postulates. But his icons twisted my soul, crashed my machine, yielded nothing.

CHRIS:

You imagined it.

WILL:

He's a shadow. A protean manifestation of the past. A reconfigurable network adapting to folly; synthesis masquerading as ineffable knowledge.

CHRIS:

I know his name, Will.

WILL:

He claimed he had relics. I thought he had proof.

CHRIS:

You were foolish.

WILL:

It's worth any sacrifice, Chris. Don't you see? It's the key to the occulted order; it's the plug fitting the cosmic bath-drain.

CHRIS:

You're easily misled. He was obvious.

WILL:

I've searched the world, Chris. I've looked everywhere. I understand wisdom. I've tried madness and folly. I bought a red nose and practiced underwater kitten-juggling. I undertook great projects. I made Guiness' book. I waited in line, bought my ticket, and became king for thirty seconds. But the Rat eludes the physical, he warps the material, he leaps away from technical grasp...

CHRIS:

The Rat doesn't exist.

WILL:

The world is not ready for the truth of that story.

CHRIS:

I made up the story. I know its truth.

WILL:

You didn't invent the Rat. He's been there from the beginning. Thrown down from high places like Gerber apple mush.

[Pause.]

He promised me the three true tears of Christ. The flames of Moses' burning bush. The infant and adult skulls of Columbus. He's not what he seems. He steals your past and regurgitates it.

[Pause.]

CHRIS:

Do you know what happened last night, Will?

WILL:

I slept. I dreamed.

CHRIS:

You weren't here.

WILL:

I came back for the holidays.

CHRIS:

You wouldn't know, I guess.

WILL:

Elvis' birthday.

[Silence.]

I thought things would be different.

CHRIS:

They're not.

WILL:

It's been years.

CHRIS:

No, it hasn't.

WILL:

It's the holidays.

CHRIS:

A media invention.

WILL:

Family. ``It's a Wonderful Life?''

CHRIS:

Media ignores us, actually.

WILL:

Jimmy Stewart.

CHRIS:

No marketing potential.

WILL:

NONE OF IT'S TRUE!

CHRIS:

Perhaps.

WILL:

[Banging the glass. Shouting.] I mean it. The holiday season, love, peace, joy. Homecoming. Home. Happiness. It's not true. They're not happy. I'm not welcomed here by my own family. It's all a lie. I looked for answers and found ciphers. My family lives beneath the Rat. I've come to the end of the world, and nothing works. Communication's impossible. The info-tracker's dead. I had a dream last night. Or before. Often. I dreamed of...another home.

You've got to help me, Chris. I'm going to die.

Chris?

The answer's gotta be simple. The mystery will turn out to be in essence solely the solution to the Discrete Fourier Transform of the complex roots of the lesser Antilles. Something trivially obvious, proof left to the reader. You always did better in math, Chris. Help me.

CHRIS:

I don't know what you're talking about.

WILL:

Yes you do, Chris. I know you do.

CHRIS:

I don't.

WILL:

The weasel's under the cocktail cabinet. The eagle flies in Aunt Jack's pantry. You know what I mean. Help me out.

CHRIS:

I can't.

WILL:

You won't.

CHRIS:

There aren't answers, Will.

WILL:

I know there's a solution. The matrix is non-singular. The determinant's eight-hundred and forty-six. It's necessary.

CHRIS:

But not possible.

WILL:

It's necessarily possible. I dreamt it, Chris. I saw it.

CHRIS:

It was just a dream.

WILL:

It was a vision. Help me, Chris. I don't know where I am.

CHRIS:

You're in the station.

WILL:

Let me out of here. Let me out of the booth.

CHRIS:

Why should I?

WILL:

I'm caged. I've spent the last eight years^* escaping the zoo.

CHRIS:

Days. [In response to ``zoo.''] The menagerie.

WILL:

I searched the world for the manager.

CHRIS:

The menagerie manager.

WILL:

I couldn't find him.

CHRIS:

He's imaginary.

WILL:

The menagerie?

CHRIS:

Both. Imaginary.

WILL:

An imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie?

CHRIS:

I imagine.

WILL:

Don't try to confuse me, Chris.

CHRIS:

I don't play with the animals.

WILL:

I'm not an animal. I don't belong in the menagerie. I'm the manager. Let me out!

CHRIS:

You're not convincing.

WILL:

I've ascended, reformed. I've escaped the manager's management, I manage myself. I'm not subject to anyone. I will not be caged. I CANNOT BE CAGED!

CHRIS:

Thinking doesn't make it so.

WILL:

My backpack. The fusion device. It needs fuel.

CHRIS:

Semi-annually.

WILL:

Bimonthly. Coolant twice daily. Today's the day. It needs both.

CHRIS:

I don't believe you.

WILL:

You don't have to. Look at it.

[Will's backpack is pulsing light and humming softly.]

CHRIS:

So?

WILL:

It doesn't shut down gently. Power loss affects active stabilization. It permits development of magnetohydrodynamic instability. The plasma bubbles from its containment field, swells and pops. It disrupts, dumping the toroidal current into the containment vessel. The resultant unit stress, coupled with ohmic heating and inductive effects from current collapse...

CHRIS:

You can't scare me, Will; melt-downs are an artifact of fission power. The LOCA, Loss Of Coolant Accident, just doesn't happen with fusion.

WILL:

I'm not talking about LOCA events. The model LM-2054 User's Guide calls what I'm talking about a LOSI event. A Loss Of Structural Integrity.

CHRIS:

You're ignoring the effects of Landau damping.

WILL:

It's irrelevant given the operant Lagrangian.

CHRIS:

You're linearizing the Lagrangian.

WILL:

I'm looking at low-I limiter operation.

CHRIS:

You're trying to mislead me. I know Lenz's law. The Lorentz Force.

WILL:

Low-T fusion? Muonic hydrogen?

CHRIS:

I can derive the Lagrangian. Lighthill's relation. LSK Dispersion.

WILL:

The fishbones linked to large plasma beta? The m=1 kink modes?

CHRIS:

I know of limiters. Of line-tying to reduce instability.

WILL:

It's irrelevant! The dangers of gamma greater than one escape you. You're gambling your life on the fluid flow of a billion-degree plasma ring.

CHRIS:

[Trying to call his bluff.] So?

WILL:

I stole this thing, Chris. Its maintenance telemetry will betray its location if it runs red. They'll come for it. Let me shut it down.

CHRIS:

They'll find you in the end, Will.

WILL:

I've got a picture in my knapsack. In a pocket by the reactor.

CHRIS:

What picture?

WILL:

A photograph. You know which one.

CHRIS:

No, I don't. You still have it?

WILL:

Not if the reactor blows.

CHRIS:

Don't give me that. Where is it? [She's at the knapsack.]

WILL:

Don't touch it.

[It's too late. When Chris touches the knapsack, it buzzes and vents steam violently, forcing her back.]

CHRIS:

What the...

WILL:

I'll get it for you if you let me out.

CHRIS:

Why would you give it to me?

WILL:

I don't want it anymore.

CHRIS:

Right.

WILL:

I want to get out. I was going to tear it up.

CHRIS:

Don't do that. Let me see it.

WILL:

Open the booth.

CHRIS:

How do I know you'll get it?

WILL:

[Beat.] You can't remember, can you? What it was like?

CHRIS:

[A short pause.] Let me see it. [She opens the booth and releases Will. Will's subsequent lines are off mic.]

Come on.

[Will crosses to the backpack, lays his hand on the reactor's security sensor, then punches in a code. The device goes dark and Will rummages through the bag, looking for his photograph. The photograph is tucked in the flyleaf of a battered yellow leather-bound pocket testament. He pulls the photograph from the testament, looks at the book and deliberately lets it fall. Immediately the device begins to emit a shrill alarm. Will freezes, clutching the photograph in his hand.]

CHRIS:

[Annoyed at the delay.] Will!

WILL:

[This jolts Will from his shock. He hits a button, and the alarm stops. The unit's display confirms his fears.] It's too late.

CHRIS:

Let me see the picture.

WILL:

The device was red-lined already. They're coming.

CHRIS:

You promised, Will.

WILL:

I can't run. The rat...

CHRIS:

You said you had the picture. Our picture. Is that it?

WILL:

You remember it.

CHRIS:

No, I don't. [She snatches it from his hand.] I don't remember.

WILL:

[About the picture. Not looking at it.] Jack's Wonderland Park. The four of us. Younger. Happy. Before Mom...

CHRIS:

It wasn't Mom.

WILL:

No. [Not only.]

CHRIS:

It was Dad. I know. I found out.

WILL:

Yes.

CHRIS:

What do you mean?

WILL:

It doesn't matter. It's too late. It's over.

CHRIS:

It's not over, Will. Not for us. You ran away. We lived with it.

WILL:

I came home. Look what good it did me. Nothing's changed at all.

CHRIS:

What did you think, Will? That's we'd suddenly welcome you with open arms? That we'd forget everything you did?

You always were trying to weasel out, to escape the price. Shop-lifting, stealing, cheating; and at school the principal always looked the other way because he liked your... ties. Well, this time you're not getting out of it, Will. No little recess-time sessions with Headmaster Darby. Your mistakes aren't going away. I lost my job as a toothpaste model for RebelFresh Fluoride--the best job I ever had, my childhood dream, and you knew it!--when you got caught and they found out you were my brother. And then to top it off you had to go yelling about fluoridation and the communists. I don't care if it was true and millions were being poisoned, Will, it was my career you ruined. Ruined.

WILL:

I was looking for Truth.

CHRIS:

[Chris bares her teeth.] See these teeth, Will? All through elementary school I avoided candies, chocolates, popcorn, sugar, small rocks--to protect these teeth. Other girls had Barbies, but I took home plaster mouth casts from the orthodontist. I polished, I preened, I applied shoe polish thrice daily to these chompers, practiced hours perfecting my gleaming smile. I dreamed of the Ms. Oral Hygiene competitions, fantasized about a modeling job with RebelFresh, collected toothpaste in jars and researched competitive advertising strategies. My whole life I had prepared to pitch tooth-whitener, to stand in front of a television audience millions strong, wear J. Crew, and drive away in a BMW to illustrate the success which good Oral Hygiene can deliver to the faithful of Brand X. And you stood on street corners and prattled about the toxic bleaches used in RebelFresh and the mechanism of mind-control through government fluoridation. You claimed that access to toothpaste and soap were being controlled by the industrial aristocracy to suppress the working class. You plotted treasonous schemes to let every unwashed migrant worker shower, bathe, groom: become indistinguishable from us, the true American Yankees, middle-class and clean.

WILL:

You closed your eyes, Chris. You pretended it wasn't true just because you couldn't see.

CHRIS:

So you set fire to your parents' bedroom and ran away to look for something you never found.

WILL:

It's a conspiracy, Chris. They didn't want me to find it. The Bolsheviks wanted me to believe they were responsible. The black tricycles on the front lawn were no coincidence. Neither were the gummi bears nor the snuffleupagus. TV news churches preach the Byzantine Domino Theory; the new tax zombies lose their jobs. IQ-8 and a wheel chair. The parasitical army of glazed donut song-writers are allying with the purple grasshoper-eating scallion-swearing ladle-carrying frogs who call themselves crustaceans to abolish carpet-weaving and devil dog desserts. I can't cut loose. Help me.

CHRIS:

You're not making sense.

WILL:

He had it all, Chris. Elvis. He had the looks, the talent, the moves. He was perfect. He was pretty. He could burp and get a standing ovation! It was easy for him. I tried. I tried, but I didn't find him. The name on his tombstone's wrong, Chris--he's not there. But I couldn't find him.

CHRIS:

He's dead, Will. He's not some sequined savior.

WILL:

He's alive. I can't do it myself. I can't go on.

CHRIS:

We pulled ourselves out of the ocean. Nobody helped us. You've got to pull your bootstraps. You don't have a choice.

WILL:

They're trying to turn me into dog-meat, Chris, into the horse's mouth, they'll torture me until I divulge their brother's cat. But I can't give in. I've got to be like a moose with bad credit, I've got to follow the badger's example with small children. Better death than submission. Eight hundred and ninety-seven is a sacred number, remember it, Chris. Memorize it. And one hundred seventy three. Twenty nine. Forty-six, eighty-six, one thousand thirty two. Help me, Chris.

CHRIS:

You're dreaming, Will. You can't recreate the picture.

[Will makes the secret hand gestures. He performs the secret handshake.]

WILL:

Eighty-seven thousand one hundred twenty-three. C'mon, Chris.

CHRIS:

Stop it, Will. Admit it. You failed.

WILL:

[Frantic.] It doesn't work, Chris. None of it's true. I've been around the world and the Rat's always there. Mysterious men in black suits want me and my device. I've lived in Sumatra, Chris. I know what it's like. They're coming for me now. I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE. I've got to get out. I need to--escape.

[He dashes in the ticket booth. He flips all the switches, runs to the destination board.]

CHRIS:

What are you doing, Will?

WILL:

GOODBYE, MOM. BYE, DAD. I've got it, Chris. THANKS FOR THE OL' GOOSE EGG.

[He bangs on the destination board until it starts spelling out a destination, succeeds in invoking a train, which begins to approach, rumbling and shaking the space as it does so.]

[Manic.] I thought I was stuck for a second, but I've got it now. I'll handle it. I can do it.

CHRIS:

[Worried. Frightened.] What are you doing, Will?

[Feverish. Inspired. He grabs his backpack, straps it to his back. The train grows nearer. Light streams through the walls.]

WILL:

I've got it. Elvis had it easy. I CAN DO IT TOO. I don't need the ticket-master. I CAN DO IT MYSELF.

[Will dashes to the door. Chris blocks the doorway.]

CHRIS:

Stop it. It's not a game.

WILL:

[Insane laughter.] It is. I've won.

[Will opens a window instead and flings himself out, into blinding light. The train passes and is gone.]

[Chris is stunned. She moves to the window, looks out to where Will and the train met. The shade is quickly drawn in fear.]

[The giant rat remains.]