Room Service Science

Act I - scene 4

SET: dark	SCREEN-C: title caption SOUND: Can-can music?
Faust working at computer. Dark hotel room. Candles lit on table.	SCREEN-C: nothing SCREEN-R: looks like hotel room, with the door. (slide or rough painting) SCREEN-L: hotel room scenery (slide)
Doorbell rings. Chris gets up and looks thru peephole. Faust shakes his head in disbelief at hairfire. He polishes tiny lense, before taking another look, astounded to see more hairfire. FAUST: Who is it? MARGARITE (behind door): Margarite. Chris lets her in. CHRIS: Margarite?! I died for your-- I mean: Who dyed your hair? MARGARITE: It's not. This is the real color. I had it dyed when I came to work for you. It's so dark in here.	SCREEN-C: flashes one Hairfire.gif. SOUND: Hildegard's Canticles of Ecstasy (trak with no harmony) SCREEN-C flashes entire Hairfire.gif series. SOUND: Hildegard's Canticles of Ecstasy (trak with harmony)
Margarite goes over to center screen and pretends to draw curtain. MARGARITE: I got your books. Margarite drops book after book on the floor, naming off their titles. MARGARITE: Descartes: Treatise on the Rainbow. Kepler: Book of Perfect Crystal shapes. Mandelbrot: Fractal Geometry. Durer: Projective Geometry. The Inca poem of Inti and MamaQuilla. Plato: Timeus. Ovid: Metamorphoses. Goethe: Theory of color. Pythagoras: The Divine Proportion... Now Im really confused. I thought this was a biochemistry conference. Aren't you going to talk about some chemical to help people with athsma? Isn't that why you went to Tibet? To study those guys breathing in strange thin air environments? CHRIS: Yes, throw enuff cash the biologists way, We'll make you younger tomorrow than today! Slide more dough for the chemists to take, We'll forge you bottles that don't break! Physicists, of course, your palms need grease Another bomb, bitte, to hold the peace. MARGARITE: This doesn't sound like you. CHRIS: I'm sorry I showed that side of me, the one I show to Cesear so he'll keep my fridge full. You're fridge full. Do you ever wonder why the government gives money to the schools and universities? MARGARITE: I don't know, I didn't study much science, But what I do know , Christopher, what I do know, Is that something as sensuous, as beautiful as a flower just rises up out of cow dung and mud! Now, tell me, Dr. what is the truth in that? That is the science I would have studied. CHRIS (whispering): She mentions Truth and Beauty in the same breath... MARGARITE: Well..are they not the same thing? Or am I just getting the two mixed up? CHRIS: As did men before our time. Plato, Kepler, DaVinci... It's easy to mix things up when they're the same. MARGARITE: So you do see it too! To an artist Truth is Beauty! plain and simple..and in science too..as a matter of fact! After reading that biochem book in your lab, it is impossible to think of Sun and Rain being separate. A flower's cell takes a speck of rainwater, and a tiny spark of sunlight, and those two tiny atoms somehow explode (motions wildly) into a living plant... so ..now tell me my dear Dr. Christopher Faust... (very endearing and almost --almost teasing) how do you separate the two after that? CHRIS: Like dissolves like, as the Alchemists say. MARGARITE: I guess I wouldn't make a good scientist. CHRIS: No, not a good one... great perhaps. MARGARITE: Great! Now you're teasing me. CHRIS: No, your greatness is teasing. MARGARITE (pauses): Why do you do science? CHRIS: I don't MARGARITE: What do you mean? What are you doing at this hotel. What are these hundreds of scientists doing at this the conference tomorrow?	SCREEN-C plays video of various city-scapes, or different festivals, e.g., Mardi-Gras, edited w/ a window-pane mask (Rembrandt's Faust) to make it appear that the videotaped action is happening outside the Hotel Room.
CHRIS: Ah! The conference. A mere re-grouping of the King's footsoldiers and sailors. Determine who the next enemy will be. So the Emperor's new tailor, knows what uniforms to ration. We'd hate to head out to battle, and show up out of fashion. See, after the cold war faded away, Albert and the atom-smashers Saw a drop in pay.	SOUND: Kimba' whistling march offstage (ala Ive's 4th July piccolo)
CHRIS: So I donned a new pair of pumps, walked like a chemist to pay my bills. Off to battle the toxic dragon dumps and dissipate Slick Shiek's oil spills.	?
CHRIS: My latest logo: the double-helix the badge of bio-medicine, for today the war we wage lies beneath our very skin. MARGARITE (almost panicked): So cynical. Why are you still wearing your scientist uniform then? Why not sell everything you've got, your lab, and get out.	??SCREEN-L: Snake Oil bottles, bottles, DNA, double-snake-helix etching
Faust pulls curtains. Sits down w/ Margarite on the bed. Holds her hand. Speaks softly as if this is meant for no one else to hear CHRIS: ...even Michaelangelo had to spend time in back alley vivisections, hanging around grave-robbers, haggling with druids over the best heart's and livers. But it was only because he had to see what lay beneath the surface of things. For him the dissections were only the means to one day {\em creating} such a figure, experiencing the feeling, the rush, of bringing a work of Truth and Beauty into the world. At those moments, though they may only last less than an eye-blink, I have all the hope of all the world's religions. And every leaf on every tree and every ant in every hill, every car corsing down the hight, all the rush of ecstasy that a God must have at genesis!	SCREEN-C: off LIGHTS: all light OFF except for single spotlight on Faust and Margarite
Faust clenches head (migraine pain). Margarite takes his head in hands. Tries to sooth him.	SCREEN-C: god-loves-me clip
MARGARITE: You have to get a good night sleep. Did you get to sleep on the plane at all? If you're gonna get up tommorrow and give a talk--	SCREEN-C: helena-strokes-fausts hair clip SOUND: Hildegard, Canticles of Ecstasy (slow trak)
FAUST: No! Get out! Chris gathers up the books off the floor which Margarite brought. Goes over to the desk. MARGARITE: And you're going to find what your after in a book. FAUST (pointing to computer): And this. MARGARITE: A computer... just a book whose pages are harder to read-- FAUST: Whose pages glow! A book reflects, Needs another source to give its bright, But this machine makes it's own Light! MARGARITE: Still just a computer? Faust leans over computer. Face glowing from computer screen's light. CHRIS: No, much more... You'd lock me up if I told you what power it had. And tomorrow morning I will be staring, the entire dried out audience of the conference, will be staring at the most wonderous sunset ever created.	SCREEN-C: blank

Chris, on his own, tries coding a program/simulation of sunset. CHRIS (reading book mumbling): A blackbody will radiate a spectrum of colors in a modified Poisson distribution... CHRIS (typing in computer): ...loop over all wavelengths from Sun's reaction center, I sub S equals exponential....	SCREEN-C: computer code, equations typed out
CHRIS: Ok. Let's see how this looks. Chris punches key on computer. Chris looks at watch. Disapointing	SCREEN-C: crude-beach-simulation
CHRIS (mumbling and reading book): the atmosphere scattering the higher wavelengths more... CHRIS (mumbling and typing in computer): ...compute cross section for 6 trillion trillion trillion google-dillion air molecules, weighting by omega to the fourth...	SCREEN-C: more computer code.
Chris rubs his eyes, he can't stay awake. Calls up an Internet Search on the computer, typing: "SEARCH INVENTORS+ARTISTS+SLEEP+DEPRAVATION" The computer comes back with a list of replies which Chris clicks thru. THOMAS EDISON: Genius: 1% inspiration 99% persperation Genius: 23 hour days, or more catnaps on the laboratory floor... Sleep: the inventors foe Shuts us down When we're so close To what's found Take a candle. Put it on the floor. Your hand 3feet above In 5 minutes the air will get hot enough to wake you. Chris takes one of the candles from his desk, follow Edison's instructions. Begins to drift off the sleep, as Edison pixpup continues to mumble: EDISON: Yes, the only thing a candle is good for, is to help you invent a lightbulb-- Hah! The lightbulb: 1% public good 99% misunderstood A cheap circus trick. Glass bubble w/ a fake wick. No, my ultimate transformation Must distill flame to pure information To thieve Man's first gift, Fire Make it invisible, hide it in wires! This alone will win over the night Mold a want into a need My last alchemical deed: To forever rent Heat from Light!-- CHRIS: Yowch! Chris wakes up, hand burned.	SCREEN-C: The display output of his internet search. SCREEN-C: Edison pixpup SOUND: electricity crackling.
Chris's hand burnt, he clicks another sleep-search from computer. SALVADOR DALI: To attain the one Dalian moment! Of Dali and me and my true Gala! To fight sleep, fool must fool her! Put a plate on the floor hold a spoon in hand. (Chris goes over to the room-service tray on floor, gets plate and spoon and begins the trick. Dali rants on with his psycho-beat-surrealist babble) DALI: Drift off for 10minutes past Gala's hair down past her swell sweet swelling pear, borrowed bits of Breugel and Bosch beat-poems, dada-speak to Froth'n'Slosh slide down the reeds... wait... drift... wait, like canvas bait for sharp oil paint... Just as sleep bites snake! (Chris lets go of spoon; it crashes on the plate) DALI: Wa-lah! spoon crashes plate-- you wake! Alive at the start of the dream! Free, free as a lion in a bigger cage! Wa-lah! free as a commander whose peace leaves no war to wage!	SOUND: sound-trak from the Dali-pixpup.mov (60's pop-surrealist jazz) SCREEN-C: Dali pixpup
Chris turns off the Dali pixpup. He types a bit more... but still tired. CHRIS: These tricks aren't working I need a pick-me-up Clicks another entry from internet-sleep-search. Reads from screen. CHRIS: Emperor Sunil... Would get 1000 women off at one bout... 5 at a time, 15mins each-- an imperial lover mustn't rush.. takes about 50hours, 2 days.... But beware of the Betelnut. Just a pinch. Too much and it switches over to a narcotic and you'll loose the pep buzz.	SCREEN-C: Kama Sutra pictures, one, two, three
He picks up phone. CHRIS: Margarite. Could you please get me Betelnut: You'll have to go to Indian-Town. Look for any shop with red-stains on sidewalk and then go inside and ask.	?
Hangs up. Channel surfs. CHRIS (mechanically reading from book he picks up at random off floor): The enjoyment of colors, individually or in harmony, is experienced by the eye as an organ, and it communicates its pleasure to the rest of the man. The enjoyment of form rests in man's higher nature, and is communicated by the inner man to the eye...	SCREEN-C: different latenite wasteland TV stuff (phone sex, infomercials... then finally he leaves it on color-bar)
Faust falls asleep on feet... radio antenae between legs, standing in storm of snowy TV and Radio noize.	SCREEN-C: TV-snow (same as in scene-1) SOUND: short-wave radio stations (same samples as scene-1) ... dissolving to radio-white-noize SCREEN-C: Kurosawa's 3rd Dream, woman in blizzard chanting 'sleep'
Doorbell finally wakes Faust up. Margarite comes in with the Betelnut. (Pass out Betelnut to audience... but be careful because too much of it will make you... sleep... Chris takes a pinch... and can type like a storn!... But, Chris tries just a wee-bit more but too much and he collapses asleep on top of the laptop.)	SOUND: Doorbell starts to ring... louder and louder. SCREEN-C: noize all gone while everybody takes Betelnut: SOUND: Ministry, Hizbolah SCREEN-C: Kama Sutra pictures, one, two, three

A figure in dark cloak surfaces from under the table. Tiptoes thru room. Opens window back up MEF (deep SF6-breath): Sleeping! Or weeping like a broken willow! I give you infinite gifts. You use them for a pillow! Bah! Sleep! Baaaaah. (bleating) It's for sheep! Blood still flows, heart beats, Only reason the old man gave you sleep, was so you'd have a place to put dreams. (pointing to laptop) But now you can put them in here. CHRIS: You don't sleep? MEF: There's no letting up, in my line of biz. When the day gets dark, This bee's still on the buzz. CHRIS: But there's too much! A person isn't enough. Our brains are too small to build it, Hearts too small to design it. MEF: You're thinking old thoughts And Frankly it's pityful Forget your old scales fishy And crawl out on the digital! CHRIS: There's too much to sort, too many books and articles Light itself has me confuzed. Schrodinger: a wave. Heisenberg: particle. Newton says it travels from Sun to eye, Plato reverses: saying sight points at the sky. Ovid claims it's a chariot, filled with Fire The Incas swear it's the first Man, in gold attire It's no use! We've gotten nowhere with our knowledge, our religion, our art. Cuz when you get down to it, there's nothing around us which offers substance beyond one of those Mardi-Gras baubles (Chris pointing out window), hollow beads...	??SCREEN-C: slow play of Mef's spirits (Fantasia, Night Bald Mountain?) SOUND: Vaughn Williams, Trak I. (as mef tiptoes) SOUND: Bells in Ives' 'Holiday's Syphomy?' (as mef gently taps Faust on the head) SOUND: awful music crush in Ives' 'Holiday's Syphomy?' (as Mef casts off cloak with flourish.)
MEF: I'm not talking about that world, (pointing to laptop) but this! Not your gooshy world of bones and meat But unbridled silicon, electicity(.gif) and heat!	SOUND: thunder. SCREEN-C: MadSci Electricity gif LIGHTS: flash white lite on and off like lightning.
MEF: (leaning over computer, incanting) Why aim the longshot? Take all your ideas and feelings Toss them into my pot. Let it boil, roil, dervish et fervish I, mef, place myself at yer service. (mef picking up books, juggling them) All you've learned from your sages type, transcribe, encode as rules Spare no book, spare no pages-- Then hit enter and wait for the jewels...	?
CHRIS: And how much are these jewels gonna run me? MEF: If you're not satisfied, nothing. CHRIS: And if I am? MEF: Nothing more CHRIS: Fine, I am game. Let me explore your machine's scope, Within your Naught to find the All, I hope. (mef repeats Chris's line, but in German (switching around so that the bargain is that Mef is gonna try'n get Nichts from Faust's All) it sounds like a Good incantation for Mef to say, ala 'Mystagogen' Mystagogue) MEF: Nur immer zu! Wir wollen es egrunden; in deinem All hoff' ich das Nichts zu finden. Mef hands Chris a huge stack of papers.	SCREEN-C: Paper-signing pictures from 'Fountainhead'
MEF: You look over the paperwork, while Herr Mystagogen does some mixen. (looking at Chris's eyelids) One alchemico-esspresso-pick-me-up-ala-zest! To make sure you never rest. Mef does the colored-sand 110-elements dance..., while Chris looks over the hundreds of pages of documents in their deal.	SCREEN-C: Bugs Bunny potion for Elmer Fudd
CHRIS: These pages are all blank! You ask for nothing in return? MEF: Nothing. Your clean slate, just that unwritten, un-penned, un-parched part of your Being, I ask nothing, nothing that can be seen, nothing that can be put in words, Nothing that can be touched, or scratched nothing that weighs anything. Nothing at all-- nothing et. al. MEF (handing him the cup): Your shake! Mef and Chris shake hands. They sign the paperwork. Chris drinks down the potion.	SOUND: Sign-it sample (while the do paperwork), mefisto-pixpup-seduceblood.mov voice while they prick each others finger to use blood for ink. Faust drinks potion sample (while Faust drinks) SCREEN-C and/or L: handshake.gifs and/or handshake.mov from Last Temptation of Christ SCREEN-C: then all screens off LIGHTS: all go off