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| Looking up |
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| Looking across the road |
INT. 2010 MERCEDES BENZ HYBRID SUV - DAY
MAIDEN AMERICA drives with passenger SAGE northwestward through the streets and avenues of Manhattan towards Ice Cave Mountains, Ellenville, New York.
SAGE
I don’t want to distract you
and your attention towards
what’s outside the windshield.
MAIDEN AMERICA
I’m paying attention. Don’t fret.
Just explain how you figure
you got to see it when it was
practically perfectly obvious
to those who should’ve seen it.
SAGE
Because … .
MAIDEN AMERICA '
‘Cause why?
SAGE
Because WE LIKE YOU!
M-O-U-S-E
Mickey’s mouse!
MAIDEN AMERICA
Donald’s duck!
SAGE
Donald’s duck!
MAIDEN AMERICA
Mickey’s mouse!
MAIDEN AMERICA and SAGE
Forever we can walk
and hold our heads up
high! High! HIGH!
Come on now and have some fun
and join our company!
M-I-C-…K-E-Y,
M…O…U…S…E… .
SAGE and MAIDEN AMERICA chuckle at their juvenile behavior.
SAGE
We probably regressed back
a full decade of time
those last few moments there.
MAIDEN AMERICA drives off George Washington Bridge and travels north towards Palisades Interstate Parkway.
MAIDEN AMERICA
Don’t turn around.
I think someone is following us.
Get the whirlybirds to check ‘em out.
SAGE opens glove compartment. Flicks switches. Turns dials. Three video monitors portray different aerial views of MAIDEN AMERICAS’ Hybrid SUV traveling north.
SAGE
Drones Betsy, Betty …, have locked on infrared.
(a beat)
Cupcake, listen.
If anything happens, and things…?
you know, if either one of us
doesn’t return to do the dishes tonight,
I want you to know
I really, really dug all those
bowls of puddin’,
acts of pure love, …
and them there heapin’ dollops
of lumpy mashed potatoes —
MAIDEN AMERICA
I made sure there
were always lumps
in the mashed potatoes.
Never totally smooth …,
the size you like, too …,
every time.
Remember all those
pumpkin pie slices,
with the whipped cream,
the chopped walnuts, …
loved it!
SAGE
I do remember.
And Eternally grateful, I am.
SAGE
You know what the definition of the perfect crime is?
MAIDEN AMERICA turns her attention towards SAGE. Raises eyebrows.
SAGE
The perfect crime is the type of crime
where perpetrator plans his deeds towards the victim
so that the victim doesn't realize an act of wrongdoing
has been committed upon them.
The longer the perp can keep the victim from realizing
the wrongdoing has occurred, the more perfect the crime is.
MAIDEN AMERICA
We have to think like criminals?
SAGE
Yeah, sort of.
But not like some two-bit criminal …,
not like the majority of those who have never learned
to care about their actions towards others.
SAGE begins typing on iPhone.
MAIDEN AMERICA
Who ‘ya callin’?
SAGE
No, no one.
I'm hooking up an everyday memo to myself.
We're gonna soon watch two movies.
To emphasize what I'm trying to say.
The movies Bonnie and Clyde and The Great Train Robbery.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were sloppy criminals and,
well, … people like that have no qualities I'd want to emulate. But those guys who planned and executed the train robbery? Miley, whether it's organizing a team to put a man on the moon or to pull off a heist …? You know, those guys put forth the mental effort to plan it to make sure no one would get hurt. They were all wealthy, old senior citizen dudes. None of them needed the money.
They did it simply for the thrill.
Out of sheer boredom or something like that
they team up to rob a train's cargo of gold bars.
Doing it for some thrill …
MAIDEN AMERICA
Yeah, so what's a perfect or not crime stuff
got to do with what we're gonna do by gettin' Murgatroyd?
SAGE
To do with Murgatroyd and our bringing your fans to the quest? Probably nothing to do with this frame of mind.
But we'll have a more difficult time were the Beast to know
what our intentions are
(a beat)
The Catholics and Protestants are tame but they're doing something wrong.The Jews did something wrong. The treatise should have been written by one of theirs. But the Creator said, no. Someone like me made the discovery.
The arrogant goofball atheist and agnostic
can be reasoned with, but not with the Islamists.
Their jugular to the Creator …, their belief that the Creator inspired those words and thoughts in that book as Its own, would be best to sever this link. Sever this jugular.
MAIDEN AMERICA
Whoa, slow down. Back up. You're losing me.
SAGE
Miley, listen. The treatise is going to usher in
a new definition of the Creator to future peoples.
The Qur'an neither defines the will, the intentions
nor the demeanor of the Creator to us, Its human creation.
All the dogma built up through centuries of thought
by the sages of the Qur'an are whacked,
and Islamists by themselves are incapable of change
to accommodate the reality of what the treatise will reveal.
(a beat)
Instead of trying to create a perspective for you of
good and bad intentions and the consequent results
of these good and bad intentions with examples of the criminal mind, perhaps I should use corporations as examples. With examples of the good and the bad corporate leaders of past perhaps you would realize that how we are to go about accomplishing what we want to do involves our best. Our best virtues put into whatever plans we devise in the future.
MAIDEN AMERICA
Oh, I get it. We aren't sloppy, two-bit Christians.
SAGE
Yeah, certainly not.
But most importantly we can't allow
others to realize …?
You know, we have to do
whatever we do in the future
in a way that is perfect.
The Beast never knew what we are about
is causing a lethal act
to be committed against it.
It one day laid down and died never knowing
it was our actions causing the wounds to it ,
and that made it tired and to then slumber and …
MAIDEN AMERICA
(a beat)
… and never to awaken.
SAGE
Yes, never to awaken.
MAIDEN AMERICA wants to change these deep thoughts of SAGE. MAIDEN AMERICA steers Mercedes Benz SUV off the main highway and onto service road. MAIDEN AMERICA finds and parks in parking lot of supermarket.
SAGE
A quart of kefir, or yogurt would do the trick.
MAIDEN AMERICA
I hope they have a sushi bar.
MAIDEN AMERICA and SAGE walk through parking lot. MAIDEN AMERICA bubbles up a low bass-tone chuckle.
MAIDEN AMERICA
I was just thinking.
For us to collaborate with Disney,
or any large, public enterprise
we’d possibly be setting them up as a target of the Beast.
They can’t be identified with us and what we're about, then.
SAGE
Forget Disney, correct.
Totally forget collaborating with any of those types.
The three of us together.
I want to be THE Christian to you. The Christian.
MAIDEN AMERICA takes hold of arm of SAGE.
SAGE
Somehow that one-fifth of your Hannah money will be put back. I don’t want things from you.
All I want…? All I want is your Hannah Montana fans.
I want their respect while they watch me lead you
on the many paths towards Murgatroyd.
We in the West have a head start already
because of the way we’re set up,
and I want to focus your fans
on the many subjects, topics, and ideas that will
bring their thoughts for how to proceed
to understand and then to construct
an actual system mimicking biological cognition.
MAIDEN AMERICA
(another low bass-tone chuckle)
You make me laugh.
SAGE
(chuckle)
You make ME laugh.
MAIDEN AMERICA
You make ME laugh.
SAGE
No, YOU make me laugh.
MAIDEN AMERICA
No, YOU make me laugh.
SAGE
NO! YOU! make me laugh.
MAIDEN AMERICA
No, no, no. YOU make me laugh.
SAGE
Sorry, you don’t understand.
YOU make ME laugh.
MAIDEN AMERICA
Sorry, YOU! don’t understand
ME! YOU make ME laugh.
SAGE
Am I stuttering? Talking funny?
Listen, Cupcake. You make
me laugh. That’s it.
Simple to understand, no?
MAIDEN AMERICA
Am I stuttering? Am I talking funny?
Listen, Sir, you make me laugh. That’s it.
Simple to understand, no? End of discussion.
YOU make me laugh.
SAGE
Aw, shucks, you’re just goofing around.
Pulling my leg or something.
MAIDEN AMERICA
Aw, shucks, you’re just goofing around.
Pulling my leg or something. Aren’t ‘ya?
SAGE
You know, you’re so funny
I forgot to laugh?
MAIDEN AMERICA
You know, YOU’RE! so funny
I forgot to laugh?
††
© 2014, 2017 Kurt L Hanson
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