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2001: A Cranky Odyssey CHAPTER ONE
(All is blackness and void. No form. No light. No heat. No sensation.)
DISEMBODIED VOICE : Space. The Great Isolator.
(The Earth appears, an azure disk in the void, a blue marble held at arm’s length. Small but immensely significant against the featureless black.)
DV: Time. The Great Thief.
(The Sun and other planets appear, visibly rotating and revolving. As the voice speaks, the Earth comes closer, slows down; blue ocean and white clouds fill the field of vision).
DV: Can intelligence be contained? Is self-consciousness proof against the deadliness of the Universe, cosmic rays and quasars, vacuum and volume, and distances which span geologic time as well as parsecs of space? Have we reached the end of our path . . . . . or have we just BEGUN?!
(At this point the Carpenter’s song, “We’ve Only Just Begun” rises, the lush harmonies complementing the pearly textures of the clouds below.)
DV: What?!! Who put that CRAP on!! Where – That’s the thirty-second take! Shut it off!
(There is an audible click as the link between the producer’s booth and the studio is activated.)
PP: Just lightening the mood, Hairhead. You’re beginning to sound awfully like Lorne Greene in one of his more ominous –
HH: Shut up! This is serious business!
PP: (dryly) This is a planetarium show for eight-to-eleven- year-olds.
HH: The adults in this culture are already ignorant and will remain so! They’re lost causes; the children are the only ones who will break us out of this turgid cycle of over-civilized decadence and –
PP: (cuts in) I DID read your book.
HH: Inattentively.
PP: I had to make cucumber sandwiches after chapter three. You are a tad dry – you need the lubricant of humour --.
HH: We’re done for today! I’m going to get a more appropriate lubricant. And get rid of the stupid wig! (Hairhead straightened his legs suddenly and flew straight upwards from his stool. He stopped himself at the ceiling with a stiff left arm, grabbed one of the mobility hoops which were scattered every three feet across all of the surfaces in the studio and swung himself feet-first at the doors. The impact of his long body flung the doors open violently, but the safety-hydraulics kicked in and prevented them from hitting the wall and rebounding into him.)
(PP sighed and adjusted her wig, a twenty-inch-high creation based on early 18th-century court wigs, though the originals likely did not contain wireless computers with system-wide netaccess, corneal-LCD connections, throatmikes, and earbuds. She reached out to her left and elegantly snagged a small sandwich lacking crusts or meat which floated eight inches above the mixing board.)
TICK: (disengaging a baby from her nipple and popping her breast back into her Kevlar tunic) Should I follow him?
PP: I think that would be appropriate. We don’t want another incident like one with the Russian Commodore’s wife . . .. (she nibbled her sandwich delicately)
TICK: (Quickly retrieving various weapons from around the booth and hanging them on her person) So, did you get the cucumbers from the hothouse here?
PP: Dear girl, it’s not yet two, and I am drinking Earl Grey; therefore, this is a watercress sandwich.
TICK; Hmm. Rabbit food. (Tick launched herself directly at an unmarked wall which slid to one side with the “Star Trek” door-sound. She somersaulted as she passed through the door jamb, landed in a crouch on the opposite wall, quickly readjusted her toddler and baby in their strappacks, and leapt out of sight.
PP: (blinking twice and activitating her corneal-LCD) Net. Jupiter. Present view. (PP’s hands began moving over a keyboard next to the mixing appartus. A pop-up screen materialized on the glass which separated her from the recording booth, and she began to adjust the colours of Jupiter.) (muttering) If he didn’t make me so much money I’d push him out of an airlock!
END OF CHAPTER ONE.
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