Characters
[A / n(a) T / n(t) G / n(g)]
Austin / Narrator (Austin) Tori / Narrator (Tori) Guard / Narrator (Guard)
Scene
An underground bunker somewhere in the desert: A foreign guard leads a bound woman into the center of the room and then punches her in the face. She collapses, unconscious- onto the floor. The guard exits.
There are three narrators downstage; a heavyset man N (Austin), a young woman N (Tori), and another, taller man N (Guard). They all begin speaking but we can only hear the heavier man. The other two appear to be mouthing conversations to the audience, but for now, when one of them speaks- the voices of the other two cannot be heard.
n (a) My wife’s name is Tori. She’s the blonde that just got club punched in the side of the head. I’m right behind her, I think.
[The guard returns to violently usher a masked man into the very center of the room.]
n (a) There I am. The fat American aid worker with a hundred and three degree fever in the desert. They won’t need to punch me. I’ll fold right up.
[The man collapses onto the ground beside his wife. The guard exits.]
n (a) My name is Austin- and I, along with my wife, have just been captured by terrorists in the middle of a desert in the North-West
region of Iran. I think I may also have the flu- which is unfortunate because I’m pretty sure this organization won’t accept my insurance card. If I even have it on me. Am I covered in radical Islam? Do I pay premiums for that? I’m not really sure. I hope they
have my wallet.
[Long beat. Low moan. The woman inches painfully towards her husband and whispers something incoherent into his ear.]
n (a) I can’t understand a fucking word that’s coming out of her mouth.
She sounds drunk. Her words are slurring together and she’s talking like a three year old. It must be brain damage. Subdural
Hematoma from the IED- some sort of trauma from the-
there’s my wallet!
[The guard walks into the room and sits on a chair away from the bodies- shuffling through the contents of a leather wallet. The taller narrator begins to speak. The heavyset
Narrator is still talking- but we cannot hear what he’s saying.]
n (g) -won’t tell you about how terrible everything was.
But I grew up in the desert…raised in this awful place.
The only book I’ve ever read is the- /
n (t) / -married him in the spring. So young and stupid.
I loved how he loved the world. I loved the adventure.
He was just so- /
n (g) -is he going to do with a diners club card in the middle of the desert? Ridiculous.
[The guard stands up and kicks the man in the stomach. His wife lets out a muffled scream.]
n (a) Thank you for saving the world. Your prize awaits.
I should have been a zealot.
[The guard approaches the camcorder.]
n (g) -how does this abomination turn on?
Is it the red button? No that’s stop. Play, no.
Pause. Okay, I think this is….Fuck, I /
n (a) / -smile when I see that it’s the camcorder from our truck;
that they set it up in the center of the room- it’s almost - /
n (t) / -such a headache. And that’s just from the blunt force trauma.
I still won’t be able to have kids if I ever get home Goddamn Red / Cross makes…
n (g) / -who in the hell are you?
[The guards Narrator is looking at Tori’s Narrator. They can now communicate. Austin’s Narrator is still silently mouthing words at the audience.]
n (t) What? Where did you come from?
n (g) You need to tell me who you are right now. What you’re doing down here.
n (t) Down Where?
n (g) Who Are / You?
n (t) / Down where? Where am I?
n (g) you’re in a…this…You’re not supposed to be here.
n (t) Where? Do you know where we are?
[The two stare at their surroundings confusedly.]
n (g) You’re not supposed to be here.
n (t) What about you? Where are you supposed to be?
Where is here? What the fuck in going- /
[Austin’s Narrator becomes audible again. The conversation between N (Tori) and
N (Guard) continues- but we cannot hear it.]
n (a) / -on and on about humanitarian relief in the Middle East, and
I asked her if she wanted to come- called it a late honeymoon.
I figured I’d take her through a couple of poor villages and let her hand out candy bars to some kids. Of course she wouldn’t know-
she couldn’t. A person couldn’t even guess what this was. Really-
[The guard leaves the room. N (Tori) and N (Guard) continue]
n (t) -and that’s not what you see?
n (g) No. No boat. I don’t see anything that looks like a waterfall, either.
n (t) I’m looking straight at it.
n (g) Is it real? Could it be some sort of illusion?
n (t) No. No, I can feel water. It smells like water. Are you still- /
n (g) / I don’t know. It looks like…yeah, maybe a moon. There are two
more off to my left and- oh wow…
n (t) Do you see the water?
n (g) No. A planet. It was right behind me and…ships…
n (t) -boats?
n (g) -spaceships. Lot’s of them-
n (a) -could never find out who I was, what I did, or who I did it for.
Safer to tell her I was a liberal, a bleeding heart: some important
fixture in the global humanitarian relief effort. Always jetting
Out somewhere. To the Congo or Malaysia- to Laos. ‘No Honey,
You should stay. It’s dangerous there this time of year. I’ll be
Back in a week- in a couple of days- in no time- in a flash.
I’ll be back.’ She never-
n (g) -look western. You’re white. But you speak the language so well.
Yet you wear no veil. You speak to men without / fear of-
n (t) / What language are you talking about?
n (g) What you are speaking. Arabic. Our language.
n (t) No. No, that’s not right. That’s not it. This is English.
That’s what I’m-
n (a) -trained in various sciences to serve as a liaison between the secrets of our hidden kings and irreversible cosmic apocalypse-
n (g) -able to communicate, able to share information.
n (t) -right, here you are. Standing right next to me. I can hear what you’re saying. But…
n (g) You’re speaking English on a boat.
n (t) -while you’re on some moon speaking Arabic.
n (g) It doesn’t make any-
n (a) -sense to do something like that. But if it absolutely had to be listed on a formal resume: my job would read something like this:
[N (Austin}closes his eyes: Immediately N (Guard) and N (Tori) begin shrieking in absolute horror while the husband and wife slowly stand up in the center of the bunker. Somehow, neither of them look entirely human. The guard stumbles into the room with his hands on his ears. Blood is pouring out of his nose. N (Austin) opens his eyes.]
n (g) It hurts! What was it?
n (t) -I don’t know. The boat, it…the falls dragged me in.
n (g) -where are you?
N (t) I don’t know. Can you see?
n (g) Not really, no. The ships. They-
n (a) -and by they, I mean my employers- knew. They knew what it was. By the 1500’s they had mapped the original feed of all four rivers to a specific tract of mountains due east of the Sahand Mountain-
n (t) -behind the falls.
n (g) -and your boat?
n (t) -underwater. Your ships?
n (g) -flew into my eyeballs and disappeared.
n (a) -most favorable scholars of the occult sciences agreed that Eden was not a garden at all. That, while it may have been a physical place, it was hidden within non-physical aspects of our reality; like an-
n (t) -arboretum, maybe. No roads or stores.
n (g) -Yeah. Yeah, I think I-
n (a) -know, is that there is a place on earth where something else existed before us- where another reality bled into our own like a hand, pushing through a sheet- into a fishbowl.
n (t) -more than I can count. Each one is different.
n (g) -not just different. Different species. I see a male and female of each variety, then…I don’t think this is limited to fish
n (t) -birds too
n (a) -Eden was like a womb. In it, the animals of our world were hopelessly entangled with the forces from a separate reality- their bizarre universal constants forcing inevitabilities onto the primitive structure of our world: The bleed inside the bubble. The Garden. The union of cosmic chance. Eden-
n (t) -It’s a paradise. Or someone’s version of it…
n (g) -Like the world took a mulligan.
n (t) -or reset to factory default. This is-
n (a) -when we were birthed back into our world, she sealed herself behind us- closing off her knotted mess to keep the bubble small...
n (t) Squint. You can make out the boundaries.
n (g) -Hazy, yes.
n (a) I may lie to my wife. I may present myself to her as something I am not. But I brought her here through the hell of this desert- to be shot at and bombed, tortured and mutilated…for rebirth.
A -and here you are. Blown to pieces and ripped from the convoy- just as I had planned.
n (t) He’s still with me, command.
[N (Guard) scowls and hisses as N (Tori).]
n (t) Wup. He’s angry. I think he’s breaking back. Do you copy? He is phasing back.
n (a) Then the give-away. An anomalous blip from some fleeting nether worldly plane. Our captor, the flaming sword. The glimmering oasis of the dry, deserts son. And of course he took the camcorder, of course he placed it in the center of the room.
n (g) It is what I am supposed to do.
n (a) But I am a Goddamned scientist.
[The guard freezes and stares, transfixed through the lenses of the camera- while his narrator stares transfixed at the guard. Suddenly, Austin comes alive next to Tori. He lifts up the hood of his mask and gently lays her down to the floor. He walks to the camcorder and speaks directly into the microphone.]
A Adamus, this is Command. Do you copy? Over.
n (t) Loud and clear, Command. Birds in the nest, boots in the womb.
A Copy that, Adamus. Lets sound this a 3-2-5 orbit. Over.
n (t) Roger, Command; 3-2-5 orbit. Automatic relay connected.
[Austin and N (Austin) clap enthusiastically.]
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