Unwell Season 5/Episode 5 - Outreach
by Jessica Best
Isn't there anyone on the air?
Big question
WHO AM I
Content Advisories for this episode can be found here.
Support Unwell and HartLife NFP on Patreon at www.patreon.com/hartlifenfp
This episode features: Anuja Vaidya as Norah, Kat Hoil as Abbie, and Amelia Bethel as Marisol. The chorus of Echoes in this episode is played by: James Ferrero, Lauren Grace Thompson, Nicole Knudsen, Jeffrey Nils Gardner, Tina Muñoz Pandya, Eric Eilersen, Adam Raymonda, Daniel Millhouse, Mark Soloff, Newt Schottelkotte, and Rob Kauzlaric.
The War of the Worlds radio broadcast was adapted by Howard Koch from the novel by H.G. Wells, and directed by Orson Welles. You can find complete credits here.
Written by Jessica Best, sound design by Jeffrey Nils Gardner, directed by Lauren Grace Thompson, theme music composed by Stephen Poon, recording engineer Mel Ruder, associate producer Ani Enghdahl, Theme performed by Stephen Poon, Lauren Kelly, Gunnar Jebsen, Travis Elfers, Mel Ruder, and Betsey Palmer, produced by haydée r. souffrant, Unwell lead sound designer Eli Hamada McIlveen, Executive Producers Eleanor Hyde and Jeffrey Nils Gardner, by HartLife NFP.
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ANNOUNCER: Now the first machine reaches the shore. He stands watching, looking
over the city. His steel, cowlish head is even with the skyscrapers. He
waits for the others. They rise like a line of new towers on the city’s west
side . . . Now they’re lifting their metal hands. This is the end now. Smoke
comes out . . . black smoke, drifting over the city. People in the streets
see it now. They’re running towards the East River . . . thousands of them,
dropping in like rats. Now the smoke’s spreading faster. It’s reached
Times Square. People trying to run away from it, but it’s no use. They’re
falling like flies. Now the smoke’s crossing Sixth Avenue . . . Fifth Avenue
. . . one hundred yards away . . . it’s fifty feet . . .
BODY FALLS
OPERATOR FOUR: 2X2L calling CQ . . . 2X2L calling CQ . . . 2X2L calling CQ . . . New York.
Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there
anyone . . . 2X2L —
PAUSE. RAIN HITTING THE
OBSERVATORY ROOF.
NORAH: It’s gone quiet.
ABBIE: It’s supposed to.
NORAH: Surely not for this long.
ABBIE: Sh!
NORAH: You cannot possibly tell me the story ends there, Abbie. You cannot.
ABBIE: We’re just about to enter act two. It’s building tension, creating realism.
Silence is an underutilized tool in the field of— (A BEAT) Okay, this is too
long.
NORAH: The wireless is out. Look at the wifi symbol.
ABBIE: Damn.
NORAH: Quite.
ABBIE: Funny how quickly we get used to our conveniences. For so much of
human history, we didn’t even have indoor toilets, and now the moment
we lose connection with the internet, it feels like the prehistoric era. A
claustrophobia of the imagination.
NORAH: (STILL DYING TO HEAR THE END OF THE STORY) Are you going to, to
bring it up on your telephone?
ABBIE: Of course. Sorry. One second—
THE POWER GOES OUT, ALL THE
LIGHTS TURNING OFF.
ABBIE: Damn, the power.
NORAH: Could be a flicker.
ABBIE: Or not.
THE POWER REMAINS OUT.
ABBIE: Whatever took out the power has also upset the cell towers. We are
internet-less.
PAUSE.
ABBIE: What time does the experiment start?
NORAH: Oh, this is part of it.
ABBIE: War of the Worlds? Or are we talking a social experiment?
NORAH A social — no. We are reviewing the available literature as to the
possibility of space aliens, such as it is.
ABBIE: Is that what you’re looking for? Signs of extraterrestrial life in Omega
Centauri?
NORAH: We are looking for whatever we may find.
ABBIE: Which means we need to find some light source first, so nobody trips over
the telescope.
NORAH: There’s a paradox here. Hunting for illumination without illumination of our
own—
ABBIE: Cellphone flashlight.
ABBIE STANDS AND BEGINS TO
SLOWLY WALK THROUGH THE
OBSERVATORY, NORAH
FOLLOWING.
ABBIE: Still not ideal, obviously. Do you know if Rudy kept anything here?
Lanterns in case of a blackout?
NORAH: Telescopes are designed to operate in the dark.
ABBIE: People are not. Let’s make sure we’re all being safe for your date with the
telescope that killed you.
NORAH: True. And I keep telling you, it can’t kill me again.
ABBIE: Yes. You do keep telling me.
NORAH: Abbie, please do not take this the wrong way, but why are you here? And
not existentially. In the observatory.
ABBIE: For one thing, assuming anything happens tonight, it will be something
that has never happened before. Living history.
NORAH: “For one thing.”
ABBIE: Yes.
NORAH: Implying there are others.
ABBIE: Yes.
NORAH: …you must know I am going to have follow-up questions.
ABBIE: Let’s not underestimate the “Fenwood House doors have stopped taking
you where you want to go” factor.
NORAH: There are still many other places you could be right now.
ABBIE: Sunrise is closed, DeSouza’s is closed, Hunter’s is haunted—
NORAH: The observatory is haunted. By me.
ABBIE: I think I’ll take my chances.
NORAH: I could blink out and check the house for—oh dear, the whole machine
needs recalibrating.
ABBIE You can tell from here?
NORAH It’s off.
ABBIE We were so careful not to touch it during our, hm.
NORAH Our rampage with the sledgehammer?
ABBIE That.
NORAH There are a number of other possibilities. It might have simply drifted out
of alignment. Hold the light up here.
ABBIE I might be of more use searching for a better flashlight.
NORAH: You can when I’m done with my telescope. In the meantime, you still have
yet to explain why you’re here.
ABBIE: You’re right. I do. (A BEAT) I’ll say this much, listening in the observatory
really does add something to the ambiance of War of the Worlds.
NORAH: It is surprisingly convincing.
ABBIE: Right?
NORAH: Despite, I mean, Dr. Peltham told me of the Viking probes of the 1970s.
There haven’t been favorable conditions for life on Mars in four billion
years. It must have made for alarming listening at the time, though. So,
why are you—
ABBIE: There are stories that millions of people believed aliens actually were on
the way, and panicked, if that’s relevant data.
NORAH Really.
ABBIE However, as is often the case, reports vary. Some say the notion of
widespread hysteria was whipped up by a jealous newspaper industry,
quick to discredit radio as a legitimate source of news and entertainment.
How’s the telescope coming along?
NORAH: I still have some minor adjustments, but I’ll need to make those anyway to
focus on the precise
ABBIE: So I can stop holding my phone over my head?
NORAH: You may.
ABBIE BEGINS TO PACE THE
OBSERVATORY AGAIN.
ABBIE: C’mon, Rudy. In all your travels, you must have picked up some kind of
emergency lighting.
NORAH: But back to—
ABBIE: The panic, right. I think it’s pretty unlikely. The program was scheduled
against an extremely popular ventriloquist act, almost nobody was tuned
in to—
NORAH: That isn’t what I was— (A BEAT. WELL NOW SHE’S DISTRACTED) A
ventriloquist.
ABBIE: Yes.
NORAH: On the radio.
ABBIE: I said what I said.
NORAH: So, simply a series of voices?
ABBIE: I’ve never been able to pin that down. Personally, I find it hard to imagine
aliens stooping to bother with us.
NORAH: (SURPRISED) But not hard to imagine aliens? Abbie, do you believe in
extraterrestrial life?
ABBIE For science?
NORAH For science.
ABBIE You know these sorts of anecdotal surveys are the bread and butter of
what you would call the softer disciplines.
NORAH What is that charming modern expression? “Quit while you’re ahead.”
ABBIE: I believe that people claiming first-hand experience with abduction are
always lying, and obviously anyone arguing that aliens built the pyramids
has many problems, not the least of which—
NORAH: Do people say that? About the pyramids?
ABBIE: Everything has been said at some point. It certainly tracks better than the
existence of—
NORAH: Me.
ABBIE: …no offense.
NORAH: None taken. I am tremendously unlikely.
ABBIE: Was the Drake Equation in play when you were alive?
NORAH: Not that I am aware of, and people did not sneak into the town's most
abandoned building to discuss mathematics. Unfortunately. Write it on the
board, let’s see!
ABBIE CIRCLES TO THE
CHALKBOARD.
ABBIE: Can you hold this a sec?
NORAH: Of course.
ABBIE WIPES OFF A PATCH OF
THE CHALKBOARD AND BEGINS
TO WRITE DOWN VARIABLES.
ABBIE: Well, the Drake Equation suggests, basically, that you estimate how many
stars there are in the universe, how many have planets, how many
planets that might support life, the likelihood of life arising on one of those
planets, the likelihood that life could arise and last long enough to
successfully contact us without wiping itself out, some other factors I
could tell you if my phone was connected to the outside world, and you
plug in all these variables and get the probability of us getting to talk to
aliens.
NORAH: How on Earth would you calculate the probability of life arising on a given
planet? How would you reduce to a number range the length of time a
civilization might flourish?
ABBIE: Not my field of study.
ABBIE SETS THE CHALK DOWN.
ABBIE: Phone please.
NORAH HANDS ABBIE THEIR
PHONE.
NORAH: It doesn’t sound like maths. It sounds like hope with the lightest dusting of
maths flavoring.
ABBIE: You’re not wrong. The equation is faulty—
NORAH: The equation is not an equation at all. One might as well say, “Take the
time two people spend together, multiplied by degree of personal
compatibility, plus honesty quotient—let’s say, comfort at sharing
uncomfortable truths divided by the time two people have known each
other—and you can find the Friendship Coefficient, which you can plug
into Relationship Arithmetic” It’s not rational analysis, it’s a short story. A
misleadingly named thought experiment.
ABBIE: All of that said, when it comes to trying to suss out the likelihood of
extraterrestrial life, I don’t know what you’d plug in to get zero. (FEELING
A LITTLE SILLY) Do you believe in—?
NORAH: Oh yes.
ABBIE: (RELIEVED) Really.
NORAH: The notion of looking around something vast as the universe and stating
unequivocally that we are the only possible beings with life, with science
and consciousness and art, it all feels rather—
ABBIE: Arrogant.
NORAH: Colonial.
ABBIE: Of course.
NORAH: And seeing the capacity for strangeness on this planet, I find it likely that
equally strange and wonderful things have happened elsewhere. Aliens
seem more likely to me than ghosts, and I say that as—an echo.
It’s—!
ABBIE: Nope, just lightning.
THUNDER.
ABBIE: The power will likely be out for some time.
NORAH: We truly did stop at the worst possible place to leave off.
PHONE IS RETURNED. ABBIE CONTINUES CIRCLING THE ROOM.
ABBIE: But you… I picked this particular story partly because HG Wells was
writing while you were alive. I thought you might have a sense of the
ending.
NORAH: We used to get the prose version serially in Pearson’s. But we moved
around a great deal. I never actually read the last bits.
ABBIE: Well, contain your surprise, but—
NORAH: Don’t tell me how it ends! We can listen to the rest later, after the
experiment.
ABBIE: Okay.
NORAH: I enjoyed it, you know. It was a very considerate choice.
ABBIE: (UNCOMFORTABLE) Thanks. Hey, uh, I’ve been meaning to ask—
NORAH: Yes?
ABBIE: Not that it’s the only thing on my mind or anything, but.
NORAH: What is it?
ABBIE: And to be clear, you can say no. It’s perfectly fine if you say no. Is that a
flashlight? No, it’s just a water bottle. Who owns a water bottle that looks
like a flashlight?
NORAH: It is not like you to dance around a topic, and you are all but doing the
tango right now. What do you wish to ask me?
ABBIE: As long as flooding becomes an increased potential issue, would you
mind if I kept some boxes up here, on high ground? I own some
documents I’d rather not see rinsed.
NORAH: You know I no longer live here.
ABBIE: I know.
NORAH: Nobody lives here.
ABBIE: I’m aware.
NORAH: This is a place I used to live. It doesn’t belong to me any more than your
previous flat belonged to you.
ABBIE: Three months. That’s how long I lasted in my last living arrangement.
NORAH: You’re saying haunting this place for over a century should give me some
sort of retroactive squatter’s rights?
ABBIE: It isn’t as if anyone else has a claim to it.
NORAH: You’re not…treating me as Dr. Peltham’s next of kin, are you?
ABBIE: Again, nobody else has laid claim.
NORAH: He was my friend. And he was your friend. He would have been more
than happy to lend a spot in this very large building to keep some of your
papers dry. I don’t see how my feelings enter into it.
ABBIE: I thought…you had seen this space empty for so long, it might be
somewhat…distressing for you to watch it fall into disuse, relegated to
storage, et cetera.
NORAH: Again, I was vocally in favor when you smashed up the walls with a
sledgehammer.
ABBIE: I was saying, we could do this again. Even if there’s no data collection
involved.
NORAH: If I allow you to keep some of your things here.
ABBIE: If that, yes.
NORAH: That sounds somewhat transactional.
ABBIE: Is there another way to do friendship?
NORAH: Abbie…
ABBIE: That was a joke. Not a good one, but a joke nonetheless.
NORAH: I think a dictionary would tell you that friendship is a mutual state of
enjoying each other’s company and caring for each other.
ABBIE: (DEFLECTING) Any time you have to cite the dictionary, we are firmly in
the weeds.
NORAH: Do you enjoy my company?
ABBIE: (DEFLECTING) I trekked out into the rain for—
NORAH: You trekked out into the rain for the aesthetics. Do you enjoy my
company?
ABBIE: Yes.
NORAH: Do you care for me?
ABBIE: You know, I’ve always found the Socratic method of teaching to be—
NORAH: Do you care for me?
ABBIE: (SO UNCOMFORTABLE) Yes, Norah, I do.
NORAH: Then we are friends. And as we are friends, and as you were friends with
Dr. Peltham, you may keep your papers here. And as we are friends, we
will continue to partake in more radio together. Perhaps we could—a man
named Arthur Conan Doyle used to write these curious little stories, I
don’t know if they made it through to the collective cultural memory, but—
ABBIE: Sherlock Holmes?
NORAH: You’ve heard of them. Have there been any adaptations, or—?
ABBIE: (A LITTLE LAUGHING)
NORAH: Does your laughter mean yes or no?
ABBIE: We could break it apart by decades, maybe. Or we could watch the one
where he’s a mouse. Or a revivified corpse. Or a complete jerk. Or a
moralistic computer-generated cucumber.
NORAH: A moralistic…? Does “cucumber” still mean the same thing it did when I
was alive? Is this some charming modern slang?
ABBIE: It is not. The harrowing highs and lows of entering public domain.
NORAH: Does the mouse…talk? How do people listen to his deductions?
ABBIE: Because they’re all mice. They all talk. I think some of them sing? It’s also
animated.
NORAH: Hm. It almost sounds as if some liberties have been taken.
ABBIE: We can start with one of the human adaptations. I’m willing to rewatch the
mice one if you are, but—
NORAH: And you say you don’t understand friendship.
ABBIE: …thank you.
NORAH: It’s not a transaction, we’ve established that. But, you’re welcome.
ABBIE: So! Aliens.
NORAH: Aliens, and their possible existence.
ABBIE: Even despite the Fermi Paradox.
NORAH: Dr. Peltham never covered such a thing.
ABBIE: Sorry. Physicists have speculated that if extraterrestrials existed and had
any interest in us, they’ve had enough time to reach out by now.
NORAH: Meaning either they are uninterested in us, which our fragile human egos
can barely take, or we are as alone as that radio operator in the
broadcast, calling out on a doomed transmission to which not a soul is
listening.
ABBIE: Like one lone person trying to connect to wifi.
NORAH: Like an echo of a dead woman trying in vain to find someone who will
help her rebuild her telescope.
ABBIE: (LESS FLIPPANT) Right.
NORAH: I wonder…
ABBIE: What?
NORAH: This Fermi Paradox. If perhaps aliens have developed, and have created
a society that can support long-distance communication…if all the terms
of your so-called Drake Equation have been met and they really do badly
wish to communicate, and we simply failed to recognize their attempts.
Suppose they are creatures who are fundamentally strange to us. Why
would we assume they would transmit using a language, a frequency that
we can comprehend? Perhaps they communicate via colors or music or
smells—
ABBIE: Smells?
NORAH: Why not? They could lay scent trails.
ABBIE: Like ants?
NORAH: Like space aliens. If it’s egotism to assume they wish to contact us, is it
also egotism of a kind to assume they’d contact us in a way that we can
easily understand?
ABBIE: Linguacentrism.
NORAH: Something like that.
ABBIE: “If you’re going to get serious about trying to send a message across
space, you should stay open-minded for the answer.”
You know who would have loved this conversation?
NORAH: Yes. (WRY) And are you saying you don’t?
ABBIE: (SINCERE) No. (UNCOMFORTABLE WITH SINCERITY!) As for sending
messages and receiving something different, prior to lightning rods and
grounding buildings, do you know how often eighteenth century churches
used to get struck by lightning?
NORAH: Often enough to be noteworthy?
ABBIE: Yes.
NORAH: You create a structure to honor a god and then that structure fries due to
a bolt as if from the heavens. Hard luck. But you cannot possibly be
suggesting that it would’ve been more reasonable for those people to
assume the response they were receiving was their God’s displeasure
with their churches? That sounds a great deal like superstition.
ABBIE: I feel like you can translate frequent lightning strikes as a sign to stop
putting giant steeples on your buildings without bringing any deities into it.
Cause, effect. Message received.
NORAH: And yet the zeal to reach out is so great. Despite the tremendous
unlikelihood, despite even the risk of immolation. We can’t stop looking to
the heavens and asking that one simple question.
ABBIE: “Is there anything else out there?”
NORAH: “Who am I?”
That’s what it all boils down to, doesn’t it? We ask our gods our questions,
we tell each other our stories about what those gods did and where we
came from, what we’re made of, what our universe is made of—we invent
creatures from other planets who must want to visit us surely, we send a
golden record out into the farthest reaches of space begging them to
come find us and say hello, we labor away building our tools and our
telescopes, and at the end of the day it is because we want to know our
place in the universe.
THE OBSERVATORY CREAKS, AS
IF FLEXING ITS FINGERS. THE
RAIN FALLS VERY POINTEDLY.
It is because we want to know who we are. (INCREASINGLY
DISTRAUGHT) We want to know, and we still don’t, not even after all this
time. Who are we?
Who are we?
Who are we, Abbie, who are we?
ECHO, 1986: Is anyone there?
ECHO, 1967: What was that?
ECHO, 1934: Who was that?
ECHO, OWL: (HOOT)
ECHO, 1983: —are we?
ABBIE: Norah? Uh, are you alright?
NORAH: (COMING OUT OF IT) What? Did I do something odd?
ABBIE: Don’t take this the wrong way, but I mostly forget you’re not a person.
NORAH: I discuss my status as an echo all the time.
ABBIE: I know, but even as you do. You seem very alive.
NORAH: Thank you. It’s the bluejeans.
ABBIE: You care tremendously about the things you care about.
NORAH: Doesn’t everyone? Isn’t that the very definition of the word care?
ABBIE: Years of adolescent bullying would say otherwise.
OBSERVATORY DOOR OPENS.
MARISOL: (CALLING, WITH ECHOES) Norah?
NORAH: Here!
MARISOL: Oh, hey. I brought a battery-operated lantern, in case. Hi, Abbie.
ABBIE: I also invited myself along for some light data collection.
MARISOL: Uh, am I interrupting something?
ABBIE: What?
MARISOL: Do you still want me to be here?
NORAH: As I said, we need you to help complete the circuit by observing whatever
happens next with Rudy’s sense of story, of poetry.
ABBIE: Fair. I can only deal in worst-case scenarios.
NORAH: Once more, I’m already dead. What’s the worst thing that can happen?
ABBIE: Do you want them alphabetically or thematically?
NORAH: Marisol? Might I have some support?
MARISOL: I—sorry, Norah, but that particular question, in the brain of someone with
an anxiety disorder, is opening a real can of worms.
NORAH: Can of—worms come in cans now? (A BEAT) Nevermind.
MARISOL: So, are we starting?
NORAH: In a manner of speaking; I still have a number of adjustments to make—
TELESCOPE ADJUSTMENTS BEGIN
NORAH: It feels like some young hoodlums snuck in and made a positive hash of
the fine controls.
MARISOL: Was it Mason and Stacy?
NORAH Perhaps. Are you familiar?
MARISOL A little. They like to sneak around the store and dare each other to shoplift
something.
ABBIE Have you — said something to them?
MARISOL Luckily, they never plan ahead and it’s a little hard to hide a square
foot-sized record under a raincoat. I get that I should do something, but I
don’t know, it’s hard being in middle school. Those are rough years.
ABBIE: Even for you?
MARISOL: What do you mean?
ABBIE: You’re cool.
MARISOL: Thank you.
ABBIE: Oh, it was’t a compliment. It wasn’t an insult, either. Just a description.
MARISOL: Well, all through middle school, I was the worst runner in the whole class.
Everyone else would be completely done with the mile and they’d have to
sit there in the grass and wait for what felt like the longest two minutes in
the world as they all just watched me, huffing and puffing and red-faced.
This kid Bobby Engels called me Mari-slow, and somehow, that stuck.
ABBIE: Nobody older than six who willingly goes by Bobby gets to make name
jokes.
MARISOL Where were you when I was in sixth grade?
ABBIE Trying desperately to survive.
NORAH: Perilous years. To the extent that I encountered my peers, even when I
was not outright bullied, I could perceive a distance between us, even
beyond, well. The fact that very few wished to talk about space at all.
ABBIE: Uh, what you said before, your question.
NORAH: About why you—
ABBIE: The other question. Are you going to go off again?
MARISOL: Did she “go off”?
ABBIE: Yes.
NORAH: Well, surely there is only one way to know. We must replicate the
experiment.
ABBIE: “Who are we?”
NORAH: Ah yes. The question.
MARISOL You two were getting metaphysical up here.
ABBIE: My mom’s mom is Irish, and she is very into being Irish, in that way only
white Americans are. When I was younger, she had this poster of Irish
sayings and one of them was “a friend’s eye is a good mirror.”
NORAH: Hmm. I wonder if that explains something of my mental state for the years
I haunted this place. A century with no mirrors at my disposal. Longer,
perhaps; I was solitary in life as well. (A BEAT) That is existentially
terrifying, to be honest.
MARISOL It grants a lot of power to the observer. Not sure I’m a fan.
ABBIE: I used to wonder, especially when my sister and I were failing to get
along, which was often. If there’s nobody to reflect me, am I some sort
of—teenage Nosferatu, skulking around with no concept of myself?
NORAH: Is Nosferatu charming modern slang, or…?
MARISOL: Dracula, right? It’s basically Dracula?
NORAH: Ah. I never read that one. It seemed trashy.
ABBIE: It is.
NORAH: Loath as I am to admit it, I think there might be something to that saying,
to the notion that other people help us see ourselves more clearly.
You know, in life, I was sometimes very angry at my parents, for the
choices they made and where it led us. I grew up feeling so divided, out of
step with my peers, to the extent I had peers. At the same time, I never
made it back to India. I think I was afraid I would feel the same way there,
as well. An old story, I suppose. I would never have given up the life I had,
but it was all so complicated. At the same time, on some level, they saw
me. Especially my father.
(BRISKLY) And then, you know, a century of nothing.
And then Doctor Peltham. And then you, and you, and Wes, and to some
extent, Lily.
ABBIE: Mine are Gail sometimes, my therapist, you, Wes, and Lily. No offense,
Marisol. It’s just—you’re cool.
MARISOL None taken. Mine are Lily, Maureen, my mom but only some of the time,
my sister, my brother, and Spikes some of the time. No offense to either
of you.
NORAH: Do they know?
MARISOL Mine do.
ABBIE It mostly hasn’t come up.
NORAH I greatly regret not telling my parents, while they were alive.
ABBIE: Your family likely knew.
NORAH: It would have been nice to tell them, all the same.
ABBIE: It puts a weight on people, to say you care about them. It makes them feel
like they need to say it back, even if they’re not—your parents, even if
they don’t care—out of social conditioning.
MARISOL Yeah, but you’ve gotta take that risk, right?
ABBIE Do I?
MARISOL I mean, you don’t have to but it’s more than worth it if they do feel the
same.
ABBIE But if the person doesn’t…
NORAH: There is only one way to know what will happen, and that is to try. And try
before it is too late.
(CAREFULLY) Abbie, why are you here with me?
ABBIE: What do you think are the odds that when you look through that telescope
again, the anomly that killed you and almost killed Rudy will set off
another burst of ground-focused electricity, and something bad will
happen?
NORAH The odds…You know I cannot answer that without inventing some
profoundly silly math.
ABBIE: You know what I mean.
NORAH: I do. And I don’t know. I can’t know. But I must know. And the only path
forward—
ABBIE: (RESIGNED) Is to replicate the experiment.
Could we do this tomorrow night instead? You haven’t even heard the end
of War of the Worlds.
MARISOL I could make time tomorrow.
NORAH: War of the Worlds will still be there when this is over and we’ve learned all
there is to learn, at which point we can go back to the house and with
luck, find the living room.
ABBIE: Maybe it will still be there, after.
NORAH: But what a maybe.
TELESCOPE ADJUSTING SOUNDS STOP
NORAH: Hmm. Do you suppose, what if perhaps the operating force which makes
this town unlike any other—The One That Blooms—what if, when the
telescope was aimed at Omega Centauri, that creature, that being—this is
so inexact!
ABBIE: That entity, continue—
NORAH: Perhaps our entity is looking for something that can see it clearly as well.
ABBIE: …how would that create a force that murders people?
NORAH: The mirrors of a telescope intensify the light. Perhaps it also intensifies—
MARISOL: The longing.
ABBIE: Do you think a person can die from longing?
NORAH: From enough of it, maybe.
ABBIE: Just don’t immolate yourself, reaching out.
NORAH: Was that another joke?
ABBIE: Zero for two today.
MARISOL: Is everything adjusted?
NORAH: It is.
MARISOL Well then.
ABBIE Right.
MARISOL: I brought my phone in case you want to record a few words first. Do you?
Want to say something?
NORAH: Alright.
BEEP OF A CELLPHONE VIDEO RECORDING
MARISOL: Rolling.
NORAH: July 12th. Norah Tendulkar, experiment one-seventy-seven A, second
replication. Many thanks to Dr. Peltham for his contributions. Shall we
begin?
ABBIE: (RESIGNED) Let’s begin.
NORAH: Alright, we have our telescope, and we have our sky.
SOUND OF A TELESCOPE BEING ADJUSTED.
NORAH: We are almost there.
SOUND OF A TELESCOPE BEING ADJUSTED.
MARISOL: When I was really little and I heard about constellations, I pictured these
perfectly formed little pictures, floating in the night sky, like a super
detailed connect-the-dots book. The first time my parents let me stay up
late enough and went, “Hey look,” you know, “there’s Orion” and I saw
that it was really just a handful of points, I was so bummed out. But now I
think there’s something so beautifully hopeful about it, you know? Multiple
different cultures throughout time and space could look up at the night sky
and paint themselves a picture.
NORAH: The stars are one of the few resources available to all.
ABBIE: They were, before light pollution.
NORAH: There we are. Centaurus. Now I just need to focus in on Omega Centauri.
Complete the loop. Marisol, thank you for coming. It means a great deal
to me.
Abbie?
ABBIE: Yes?
NORAH: Ah. Just out of—just wondering. How does War of the Worlds end?
ABBIE: (BRAVADO) Find out yourself, when the experiment is done. I’ll make
popcorn.
NORAH: Yes. Of course. Very good.
(DEEP BREATH) Let us see the star cluster Omega Centauri.
SOUND OF A TELESCOPE BEING ADJUSTED JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE.
MARISOL: The ground seems fine so far—
THE TELESCOPE BEGINS TO SHAKE.
MARISOL: Norah?
ABBIE: Norah, what’s happening? What do you see?
NORAH: It’s—I—
A THOUSAND ECHOES SUCK IN THEIR BREATHS. THE TELESCOPE TREMORS ARE REACHING THE OBSERVATORY,
WHICH IS ALSO STARTING TO SHAKE.
NORAH: There’s nothing. The stars are there. But there’s no—it’s empty. (GASP)
MARISOL: Norah, talk to us.
NORAH: I—
A STORM OF ECHOES, BRIEFLY
RESOLVING INTO:
ECHOES: Nothing, nothing, nothing—
NORAH: We hoped and hoped…
ECHOES: Who—are—we?
ABBIE: (URGENTLY) Norah, Norah listen to me! There are other star clusters,
right? There’s an entire night sky full of other star clusters! There’s a
universe of other star clusters! You can find another one—
NORAH: It’s empty.
ECHOES: WHO—ARE—WE?
THE OBSERVATORY IS REALLY
SHAKING NOW.
NORAH: (SPEAKING OVER THE ECHOES) I DON’T KNOW!
NORAH VANISHES. WHEN SHE DOES, THE ECHOES IMMEDIATELY STOP. THE SHAKING, HOWEVER, IS WORSE.
ABBIE: Norah!
MARISOL: Abbie, we need to get out of here. I don’t like what’s—
EVERY WINDOW IN THE OBSERVATORY
SHATTERS, ONE AFTER ANOTHER.
ABBIE: Help me get the lens!
MARISOL What?
THE OBSERVATORY CEILING STARTS TO CRACK. RAIN POURS IN.
ABBIE: (SHOUTING TO BE HEARD ABOVE THE RAIN) Of the telescope, we
need to take it!
MARISOL: (ALSO SHOUTING) This is super fucking dangerous, we need to leave,
now!
ABBIE: They worked so hard!
MARISOL: Abbie!
ABBIE: She and Rudy worked so hard to build this! She’ll want it when she comes
back!
A PIECE OF OBSERVATORY CEILING
FALLS.
MARISOL: It’s a thing, Abbie! Things can be fixed! Things can be rebuilt! Things don’t
die! Come on!
MORE CEILING PIECES FALL. THE CRACK IN THE CEILING IS GROWING. THUNDER OVERHEAD.
The whole ceiling’s caving in!
ABBIE: Shit!
MARISOL: Let’s go!
ABBIE: Yeah, okay—
HEAVY, FRIGHTENING DEBRIS FALLS.
ABBIE: Marisol!
MARISOL: (COUGHING) I’m fine, I’m fine!
ABBIE: This way!
MARISOL AND ABBIE RUN OVER THE FLOOR OF THE OBSERVATORY,
JUMPING OVER DEBRIS AND DODGING FALLING CEILING PIECES. THEY SKID TO THE EDGE OF THE BUILDING. RAIN
IS PELTING THEM FROM ALL SIDES.
MARISOL: We have to jump!
ABBIE: It’s six feet down!
MARISOL: I know. (A BEAT) “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
THE STRUCTURE OF THE
OBSERVATORY CREAKS, MUCH MORE
OMINOUSLY THAN BEFORE.
ABBIE: Yeah. Let’s go.
THUDS AS ABBIE AND MARISOL HIT THE GROUND.
EVEN FROM OUTSIDE, THE OBSERVATORY IS CLEARLY LOUDLY SELF-DESTRUCTING
MARISOL: Ow.
ABBIE: Shit.
MARISOL: Run!
ABBIE AND MARISOL STAGGER TO
THEIR FEET AND RUN.
THE ENTIRE OBSERVATORY
COLLAPSES.
RAIN. THUNDER. ABBIE AND MARISOL
CATCH THEIR BREATHS.
ABBIE: It’s gone. It’s gone, right?
MARISOL: I think…it’s gone.
ABBIE: Fuck. Fucking—rubble. Did you get it recorded?
MARISOL: Assuming my phone holds up in this rain.
ABBIE: What’s the lesson here? What’s the point? She wanted to know. She
wanted to know! What’s wrong with that?
MARISOL: Uh, Abbie, are you—talking to God?
ABBIE: Or aliens. Or echoes, or—something. What the fuck!
MARISOL: She still might come back. They’ve come back before.
ABBIE: She might not.
MARISOL: She understood the risks.
ABBIE: Well?
MARISOL: What?
ABBIE: You want to tell us what the fucking poetry of all that was? You want to
paint me a picture with words? Have you got some way to fold it up
origami-style and turn it into something beautiful?
MARISOL: At the moment? No.
RAIN CONTINUES TO FALL.
MARISOL: We should get inside. Even if she reappears here, she’ll know to go check
the Fenwood.
ABBIE: I know.
MARISOL: She doesn’t even need to monkey around with the doors, she can choose
to appear wherever she—Do you need a ride back to the house?
ABBIE: I drove.
MARISOL: Okay. I’ll leave the front door open a little for you. Have you had dinner
yet?
ABBIE: No.
MARISOL: You me, and Lily can scrounge up something together.
ABBIE: Yeah.
MARISOL: Abbie, I’m really sorry.
ABBIE: Ultimately, she would have performed the experiment again with or
without your help.
MARISOL: You know that’s not what I meant.
ABBIE: Yeah. She would have done it regardless of what I did or said as well.
She was always going to check her work, that’s who she is. (A BEAT) Or
possibly was. Is. (A BEAT) Thank you.
MARISOL: For what?
ABBIE: I’ll head out in a few minutes. Meet you there.
MARISOL: Okay.
MARISOL CRUNCHES DOWN THE WET
PATH.
ABBIE: Is there anything out there? Are you listening?
Fuck you.
RAIN. THUNDER.
END. MUSIC AND CREDITS.