Directed by Ignacio Zulueta
With Aeron Macintyre, Carlye Pollack & Jessica Risco
JESSICA AND CARLYE ARE STARING AT AN ANSWERING MACHINE.
JESSICA: “Tapeless, all-digital message storage”…”save up to 30 messages on our enormous 64 kilobyte memory card”… And look!
(JESSICA TURNS IT OVER.)
JESSICA: “This combination telephone and answering machine is 100% guaranteed to be Y2K compliant and secure.”
CARLYE: I don’t know, it seems really expensive.
JESSICA: Chyaah, but missing calls from your sorority sisters? Priceless.
CARLYE: I don’t think that means what you think it means.
LIGHTS PULSE. TARDIS SOUND EFFECT.
CARLYE: What’s that noise?
JESSICA: What a totally fresh ring tone. (picks up) Lambda Gamma Lambda, this is Amber Amber Ambah.
SARAH VOICE-OVERS ON THE OVERHEAD MIKE.
SARAH: (V.O.) Jessica Amber Ferris?
JESSICA: That’s my name, don’t wear it out. (beat) How did you know to find me at Radio Shack?
SARAH: (V.O.) Where’s your sorority sister Carlye?
CARLYE: Do we know you?
SARAH: (V.O.) Carlye! Thank Microsoft I’ve reached you. Listen closely. I’m homing in on your signal and temportaling in from the year Two Thousand Thirty Six A.D.
JESSICA: Cha-waaa? As if.
TARDIS NOISE. TIME TRAVEL LIGHTS. SARAH ENTERS UPSTAGE WEARING POST-APOCALYPTIC GARBAGE BAG DUCT TAPE CHIC.
JESSICA: Whoa! That was totally James Cameron!
SARAH: (Schwarzenegger impression) Carlye Pollack? Come with me if you want to live. (beat) Just kidding! I’ve been wanting to say that for literally decades.
CARLYE: Why do you look like my mother…
SARAH: Carlye. This isn’t going to be easy. But I want you to think about what the similarity between us means.
JESSICA & CARLYE THINK. INSPIRATION!
CARLYE & JESSICA: (same time) Oh. My. God.
CARLYE: (overlap cont) You’re future Me!
JESSICA: (overlap cont) Your mom becomes a homeless lady!
CARLYE & JESSICA: (beat. same time) What?
JESSICA: (to Carlye re: Sarah) Hello, trashbags? Tres homeless.
SARAH: Jessica Amber!
JESSICA: Yes Mrs. Pollack?
SARAH: One, this is a Vera Wang Survival Onesie. Two, I’m not Carlye’s future mother-
CARLYE: She’s My Future Self!
SARAH: In the genetically modified flesh. And behold! I shall tear the space-time continuum a new one, to show you the world to come.
TARDIS NOISE. LIGHT CHANGE: YUCKY WASH OF FUTURE LIGHT.
CARLYE: (horrified) Oh god!
JESSICA: (the same) What are we even seeing?
SARAH: Behold! This is our drought-resistant, pest-resistant, fallout-resistant, razor-wire enclosed, …
CARLYE: Hellscape?
SARAH: Backyard.
CARLYE: Why are you showing us this?
SARAH: Our ecosystem’s shot. But you have a chance to timeline a better future.
CARLYE: Me? why didn’t you contact me before?
JESSICA: Chyaah, I had this final that you totally could have helped me with.
SARAH: You become a travel agent, Amber. Why bother? (to Carlye) Besides, I had to pawn both my kidneys to just to portal through to you!
JESSICA: Oh my barf.
CARLYE: You pawned our kidneys? How could you do that to us!
SARAH: Ebay. Besides, dialysis machines fit in your rectum now. So there’s that.
JESSICA TRIES TO VERIFY THIS VISUALLY.
SARAH: Girls. Carlye. Amber. Take a long, hard look. There’s no future in this future.
CARLYE: And I’m the one who can change it. (beat) How?
JESSICA: Whoa there, homeskillet. I’ve seen Back to the Future. I have one more question before we start twiddling with forces beyond our control.
SARAH : Ask away.
JESSICA: How do you even poo?
CARLYE: Jessica Amber!
JESSICA: If you can tell the truth about that, Mrs. Rectal Dialysis – (to Carlye) then she can tell the truth about anything. (back to sarah) Well?
SARAH: We don’t. Faced with famine, drought, and malnutrition – a desperate humanity decommissions their rectums en masse in favor of a highly efficient two way digestive system.
JESSICA: A what?
CARLYE: How does that even work.
SARAH: (exiting while continuing to talk) Wait here. So food goes down the front. Digests on the way. Sits in your middle. Digests some more. Then, it comes back up the front, digesting all the way. And the final waste product left is…
SARAH RETURNS WITH A NASTY FIVE GALLON BUCKET MARKED (verbatim) “ COMPOST SECOND HELPINGS ”
JESSICA: I don’t know what’s about to happen but you have to stop. Right now. (to Sarah) Tell yourself how to timeline a better future!
SARAH: Do not buy this answering machine. In the next six months you could engineer something that can change the world.
JESSICA: ohhh. Nerd!
JESSICA HIGH-FIVES CARLYE.
CARLYE: So what do I invent? Airships? Nanobots? Cold fusion?
SARAH: The perfect voting machine.
JESSICA: Ch-huuh?
SARAH: The perfect voting machine.
CARLYE: Does it at least run on cold fusion?
SARAH: It will be cheap, it will be fraud proof, and most importantly of all – it will – or rather, it could – be widely distributed throughout the state of Florida by the end of the year 2000.
JESSICA: Big whoop.
CARLYE: What’s so important about Florida in the year 2000?
SARAH: EVERYTHING.
JESSICA: OMG. Take a chill pill, future Carlye.
SARAH: AL WAS ROBBED!
CARLYE: Al who?
SARAH: I’ve said too much. But If you buy that machine, then one day soon, Amber will leave you an invite to a frat party. Haddaway will be playing in the background of her message. Strangely moved, you will gaze sadly out the window of your dorm room and ask: “What Is Love?”
JESSICA: (whispered) “baby don’t hurt me”
SARAH: Determined to find the answer, you will put aside your blueprints, your textbooks, and your jolt cola to go to a rager. And there- You meet your soul mate.
CARLYE: But how can that be bad?
SARAH: His name… is Paul Ryan.
CARLYE: Who? / (what’s he like?)
JESSICA: Wait, our Paul Ryan? Isn’t he Delta Tau Delta?
CARLYE: Oh, cool.
JESSICA: Young Republican, too.
CARLYE: I’m not political. Is he loaded?
SARAH: It won’t matter in the end! He’ll wine you. He’ll dine you. You’ll party like it’s 1999. Because it was.
JESSICA: Is!
SARAH: And you’ll forget all about what you could have achieved! And you live a lifetime of self-deluded bliss – til one day – in a future you could have prevented – the love of your life will be eaten alive by a rabid Alligatorcondabear.
JESSICA: What’s an Alligatorcondabear?
SARAH: Twelve hundred pounds of furry, scaly, slimy, flesh-eating GMO evil. (BEAT)
Oh Paul. Why did you have to be so brave?
CARLYE: (comforts her future self) It’ll be okay, Future Carlye.
SARAH: Widow Ryan.
CARLYE: Widow Ryan, I promise to invent the perfect voting machine.
SARAH: Oh, Carlye honey. You promise? Is that your final answer?
CARLYE DUMPS THE ANSWERING MACHINE IN THE BUCKET. TARDIS SOUND BEGINS TO BUILD. THE CAST HANGS ON AS LIGHTS PULSE.
SARAH: Here comes the timequake… My entire era and me – we’re being timelined – rewritten – set free! Every triumph and every loss – even my life with Paul – all that will be exchanged for a new and unguessable existence!
CARLYE: But will the Earth be inhabitable again? Will Paul never have died?
JESSICA: Will poop go out your butt like its supposed to?
SARAH: Let’s hope so, ladies. Let’s hope so….
TARDIS SFX CLIMAXES WITH FLASH, EXIT JESS & CARLYE, BLACKOUT.
LIGHTS UP. SARAH REMAINS. SHE IS STILL IN HER GARBAGE SUIT.
SARAH: What the fuck? Really? Really?
(SHE INVESTIGATES HER SURROUNDINGS.)
Paul? Paul honey, are you there?
(NO REPLY.)
Didn’t Gore win? Didn’t we change the course of history? Did nothing turn out differently at all? Wait a minute. Are those my kidneys?
(SHE FEELS HER GASTROINTESTINAL TRACT.)
Waitaminute! Is that my…
(TOO HAPPY TO SPEAK, SHE SITS ON THE FIVE GALLON BUCKET TO TAKE A POO.)
I’ve missed you so much. (with satisfaction) Ahhhhhh.
END.
Art and Music in Our Souls 