12 characters: Announcer, Hardcase, Klurgh, Minnie, Trisha, Misty, Clay, Admiral, Peterson, LeVar, Rosita, Shweshwe
Click on a character's name to get their lines highlighted.
Hardcase (98 lines, 2404 words, 63%) - [John Gaunce] Mack Hardcase. A shell of a man, remembering glory days that weren't real, not knowing how to face his future.
Misty (19 lines, 233 words, 6.11%) - [Steff Knappe] Misty L'Quil, trying to come to terms with being human.
Trisha (3 lines, 42 words, 1.1%) - [Gwenith Knight] Trisha Blackburn has been through more false realities than anyone, and is cautious about accepting this one as real. [complete]
Admiral (12 lines, 109 words, 2.86%) - [Roger Arnold] Voice clone of Admiral Graveman.
Clay (1 line, 23 words, 0.6%) - [David Loftus] Clay Erhardt is ready to reinvent himself.
Minnie (5 lines, 47 words, 1.23%) - [Mel Crochemore] Doctor Minnie Moreau is a researcher at Monolith-Eigen Laboratories.
Klurgh (1 line, 44 words, 1.15%) - [Nick Ben Wong] Evil alien nemesis.
Rosita (9 lines, 65 words, 1.7%) - [Roo Ryder] Widow of Ray Lotus.
Peterson (19 lines, 232 words, 6.08%) - [Alex Foott] Psychologist.
LeVar (15 lines, 258 words, 6.76%) - [Ahmad Joudeh] Literary agent.
Shweshwe (9 lines, 226 words, 5.92%) - [?] Mel Shweshwe, an author who specializes as a ghost writer for celebrity autobiographies. Direct, cynical, has no illusions about anything or anything, and ready to make a profit by churning out the lies people want to read.
Announcer (3 lines, 133 words, 3.49%) - [Paul Knierim] Announcer. [partial]
Script format: Margined | Marginless (for phone viewing)
1 Announcer: Trigger warning -- this episode contains suicidal ideation.
2 SOUND: bridge of the Chimera, alert sounds
3 Hardcase: [strength] You realize who you're dealing with, don't you?
4 Klurgh: [sfx: transmission] You have defeated us many times, Captain Hardcase. You are the luckiest man in the galaxy. But there will come a day when your luck runs dry, a day when we shall taste victory and show you no mercy. Perhaps that day is today.
5
Hardcase:
I think not.
Close channel.
6 Minnie: Channel closed.
7 Hardcase: Ensign, attack pattern delta. Bob and weave.
8 SOUND: ship movement and battle sounds
9 Trisha: Aye sir, attack pattern delta.
10 Hardcase: Misty, stand by with a full barrage of torpedoes.
11 Misty: Standing by, sir.
12 Hardcase: Get us within five thousand meters of their command ship.
13
Trisha:
Aye sir, closing to five thousand meters, on my mark.
Mark.
14 Hardcase: Misty, fire! Full barrage!
15 SOUND: firing sound
16 Misty: Firing, sir.
17 SOUND: explosion in distance
18 Misty: Target has been destroyed, sir.
19 Hardcase: [self-satisfied] The Klurgh will never try to enslave THIS system again, not after THAT lesson.
20 SOUND: alarm clock, shifting sheets, slapping snooze
21 Hardcase: [groans of awakening]
22 Hardcase: [narration] I was Captain Mack Hardcase, the most decorated officer in the Galactic Confederation. Citation for Conspicuous Gallantry on Theta Beta D. Landite Order of Tactics for the battle of Barnard's Star. Confederation Order of Heroism, first ever five time recipient, 2278 through 2282. But on this planet, I'm MISTER Mack Hardcase -- loser, cripple, layabout, charity case, and generally useless maladjusted bag of bones who's at odds with how the world works. This... this is my story, the story of one of the galaxy's greatest heroes brought low.
23 SOUND: theme music
24 Announcer: QuietPlease dot org presents Beyond Awakening. Starring John Gaunce as Mack Hardcase. Episode eleven, Goodbye Blue Tuesday.
25
Hardcase:
[narration] The knowledge implants Monolith-Eigen provided gave me a good idea of how to go about living independently in the city. I wasn't overwhelmed. Unfortunately I still couldn't feel good about my life, particularly with the lack of progress my body was making. I wheeled into my apartment that first day, looked around, and all I could feel was an emptiness, a void. This was supposed to be my home, but there was no soft hum of engines, no oscillation of the bridge sensors. These white walls, these wood floors and little windows onto a single tiny world, it all reminded me that I'd never be home again.
I wheeled myself over to what was now my couch, and laboriously pulled myself onto it -- not that there was any real point to sitting on the couch instead of in my wheelchair, and it'd just make things more difficult moving back later -- my arm strength was coming along almost as poorly as my leg strength. But the struggle to the couch helped build a little illusion. And in a further effort to escape reality, I turned on the television. Imagine my surprise when I saw MYSELF on it -- my true self, my self that was truly at home.
26 SOUND: TV plays a battle scene from ep 2 maybe
27 Hardcase: [narration] For a moment I was nostalgic. But then I felt humiliated. Angry. Above all, helpless.
28 Minnie: [sfx: phone] I'm sorry, Mack. That was always part of our funding plan, and you signed the papers authorizing us and releasing your rights.
29 Hardcase: You had me signing so many papers, you told me it was all just formalities!
30 Minnie: It was.
31 Hardcase: Well I REVOKE your right to air my memories to the world!
32 Minnie: You can't. Anyway, I don't think you really want to lose that new apartment it helps pay for.
33 SOUND: a pause
34 Hardcase: I'll talk to the others, we'll come up with a plan.
35 Minnie: You do that.
36 SOUND: hangup
37 Hardcase: [narration] I still had my crew, we were in this together, they'd rally behind me...
38 SOUND: all three on phone
39 Misty: I don't much care about their television, sir. They can do what they like, does it matter?
40 Trisha: I know about the show. It's paying the interest on my medical debt from the bombing. I don't want to rock the boat and risk retaliation.
41 Clay: I LIKE the show. Clever idea and good publicity for us, we need positive coverage like that to counter Union for Humanity's narrative.
42
Hardcase:
[narration] So that was it. I was alone. I couldn't order them about anymore, in this reality I've got all the authority of a first year cadet. There was nothing to do but accept another humiliation, another indignity. What's one more? Where's the breaking point?
After serving as the bait to catch those two terrorists, I was hoping they'd keep me in the loop. No such luck. The FBI never returned my calls. I asked Vang about it, she said they got some good information out of the interrogation but refused to get into any specifics. And she told me not to press the matter if I value my freedom, since there are people involved who don't take kindly to loose lips. So that was that... almost. I did get one more call from Union for Humanity, about a week later.
43 Admiral: [sfx: phone] Captain Hardcase?
44 Hardcase: Look, what's the point of this pretense? I know Admiral Graveman doesn't exist and you know I know.
45 Admiral: Then what are the command codes for your starship?
46 Hardcase: [scoffing] You want the command codes to an imaginary starship?
47 Admiral: If you're sure the Chimera isn't real, you won't mind giving me your command codes.
48 Hardcase: Sorry, I can't.
49 Admiral: Why not?
50 Hardcase: I can't betray my allegiance, even though it's fictional.
51 Admiral: Why can't you?
52 Hardcase: Because then there'd truly be nothing left of me. My honor is all I have.
53 Admiral: You sound like a man in need of a cause worth fighting for.
54 Hardcase: You could say that.
55 Admiral: You know you're on the wrong side here.
56 Hardcase: [scoffing disbelief] What?
57 Admiral: WE have a cause worth fighting for. You could join us.
58 Hardcase: [scoffing] You're inviting ME, the very thing you're rallying against, to join Union for Humanity? Have you lost your fucking mind?
59 Admiral: If you help us take down Monolith-Eigen and ensure nobody creates any more of your kind... then we'll welcome you. Just having you standing with us would send a really powerful message.
60 Hardcase: I'm not THAT self-hating.
61 Admiral: It's not YOU we hate, it's what you represent.
62 SOUND: pause
63 Hardcase: You know, I actually miss the Klurgh.
64 Admiral: How's that?
65 Hardcase: Nothing ambiguous about them, nothing subtle. Black and white. I always knew where I stood and how to deal with them.
66 Admiral: Goodbye, Mr. Hardcase.
67 SOUND: hangup
68
Hardcase:
[narration] The moment I set down the phone it occurred to me that I should've played along again, should've joined them and become a mole. That's what CAPTAIN Hardcase would've done. It's not the sort of thing MISTER Hardcase feels capable of anymore. Is it that I've become a coward? Or is it that I'm keenly aware I no longer have plot armor allowing me to implausibly win mismatched fights... or that I no longer have the use of my legs or a strong enough punch to knock over a feather?
I kept on seeing Dr. Peterson, but I'm not sure why. He's not a lot of help. But I guess he's someone to talk to, someone interested in what I have to say.
69 SOUND: psychologist's office
70 Peterson: Do things like the murder of your parents still trouble you as much, now that you know none of that was real?
71 Hardcase: More than before. It's an old trauma ripped open with a fresh new wound... instead of just being murdered, my parents have been wiped from history, along with my brother and everyone else.
72 Peterson: But you still have your three friends.
73 Hardcase: Erhardt and I hate each other, Misty can never think of me the way I think of her, and Blackburn is just some kid I just met on Alpha Omega C!
74 Peterson: You don't have to remain static where your backstory left you. You can build bonds with them through your shared circumstances, you can support each other.
75 Hardcase: I can't even support myself, I'm a broken man, a product of a life of trauma. Doc, what kind of damned sadist would give me all this trauma? They could've programmed a HAPPY backstory.
76 Peterson: Perhaps they felt the trauma would make you stronger.
77 Hardcase: That's just something people say to make the best of it. I've said it myself, because I have to try to make it true, but it's NOT true. Trauma only ever makes you weaker. It can make you build thick walls around yourself, and that looks strong to people on the outside, but they're glass walls, and when they shatter...
78 Peterson: They've offered to edit the trauma out of your memory. If you don't want it, get rid of it.
79 Hardcase: But then I wouldn't be ME anymore!
80 Peterson: Do you wish you could be an ordinary person with an ordinary life?
81 Hardcase: Doc, that's my biggest problem, I don't think I can HANDLE an ordinary life.
82 Peterson: Your life is anything but ordinary.
83 Hardcase: But, here, I'm only extraordinary for what's been done to me. Not for anything I've done myself.
84 Peterson: You have decades of life ahead of you to do extraordinary things for yourself.
85 Hardcase: In this world? How can I? Everything I'm good at doesn't exist here.
86 Peterson: Everything?
87
Hardcase:
[narration] Yes, everything.
The day after that session I was talking with LeVar -- LeVar Blake, my agent. That's right, I have an agent. Monolith-Eigen has my television rights, but I can still do a book. I might as well tell my side, present myself to the world the way *I* want to.
88 LeVar: You're the first -- even of your crew, you're the first who died, the first brain they started experimenting on. That's very marketable, people are going to want to read your story.
89 Hardcase: I've never written a book before... I mean, I'm a couple months old so of course I haven't, but you know what I mean.
90 LeVar: Don't worry about that, we wouldn't let you write it anyway. In situations like these, noteworthy people who need an autobiography fast to capitalize on the zeitgeist, we always use a ghostwriter.
91 Hardcase: Huh?
92 LeVar: A professional -- hopefully we can get Mel Shweshwe, she's the best -- a professional who writes your autobiography for you.
93 Hardcase: But doesn't that make it a biography, not an autobiography?
94 LeVar: [chuckles] Easy to tell you're new to this planet.
95 Hardcase: What I really want to do, what I want to use this book money for, is to get back into space. In whatever capacity I can.
96 LeVar: [cautious] I might be able to get you an advance big enough to get you a seat on a New Shepard flight. I'll have to check on their disability accommodations.
97 Hardcase: That's a spaceship?
98 LeVar: Right.
99 Hardcase: Great! Where's it go?
100 LeVar: To the edge of space, hundred kilometers up.
101 Hardcase: What... then it just sits there, hovers or something?
102 LeVar: It falls back down.
103 Hardcase: After how long?
104 LeVar: A few minutes.
105 Hardcase: [scoffs] There's gotta be something better than THAT!
106 LeVar: [after a pause] There's a couple orbital hotels, but you're not gonna make THAT kind of money. I suppose you could plead your case to a billionaire, some of them have taken people with them to orbit, paying their way. But I don't really think you're what any of them are looking for.
107 Hardcase: Why not?
108 LeVar: You don't really have any applicable skills or expertise.
109 Hardcase: BUT I'VE BEEN IN SPACE SINCE--
110 LeVar: [interrupting] Not really. Even the laws of physics didn't work the same in your fantasy space.
111 Hardcase: Well. Suppose I commit myself to learning?
112 LeVar: Assuming you fully overcome your disability, it could take you decades.
113 Hardcase: If I succeed, how far can I go? How far out?
114 LeVar: If we ignore that you'd be a ludicrously old astronaut... well, they're building a base on Mars.
115 Hardcase: MARS?! THE EASIEST GOD DAMN PLANET IN YOUR WHOLE FUCKING SYSTEM AND YOU HAVEN'T EVEN FINISHED A BASE YET?!!!
116 SOUND: LeVar gets up and takes something from table
117 LeVar: Look, you should talk to somebody else about space, I'm just your literary agent. I'd better be going.
118
Hardcase:
[narration] There's no regaining the stars once you've fallen to Earth. I'm stuck on this little dirtball. The only way off-planet is through imagination, science fiction.
Ray Lotus' widow stops by every Tuesday evening. I don't particularly want her to -- actually I definitely DON'T want her too -- but I can't tell her no. I owe Ray this much as rent for living in his body. But I can never give her what she REALLY wants.
119 Rosita: I think I might love you.
120 Hardcase: Lady, I'm not Ray Lotus. I'll never be Ray Lotus.
121 Rosita: You don't know that.
122 Hardcase: I'd love to be him, sounds like he had a real nice life, a purpose.
123 Rosita: He did.
124 Hardcase: And he had a sweet, devoted wife.
125 Rosita: Thank you.
126 Hardcase: But I'm NOT him. If I could give up my life to give him back to you, I would... at least that'd give my life a purpose.
127 Rosita: You don't have to be Ray for me to love you.
128 Hardcase: Because I remind you of him.
129 Rosita: Is that so bad? You're alone in this world, I offer you love, does it matter why? Don't you find me attractive?
130 Hardcase: Rosita, you're a lovely woman. But I can't love you, I could never love you.
131 Rosita: Why not? Is there someone else?
132 Hardcase: Well... yes. I mean, I don't think it's mutual, but there's only room in my heart for her.
133 Rosita: You haven't told her?
134 Hardcase: There'd be no point.
135 Rosita: Tell her. Life is too short not to.
136
Hardcase:
[narration] Yes, in one of the universe's supreme ironic twists, I'm in love with a woman who doesn't believe in the concept of romantic love. A woman whose whole species has no such concept. I wonder if they programmed me to love her just so they could sit back and laugh at the futility that would ensue... or if it's actually my heart breaking the chains of my programming to reach out for hers. Is it the hardships we've been through together in such a short time?
I thought a while about Rosita's advice. This whole existence since my awakening has been a series of humiliations, what's one more if there's even a chance in a million? So the very next day I arranged to meet up with Misty for dinner.
137 SOUND: restaurant
138 Hardcase: It was good of you to meet me on such short notice.
139 Misty: I always enjoy the time we spend together, sir.
140 Hardcase: Say, your accent sounds different...
141 Misty: I'm taking voice lessons, trying to learn the local accent. I need to blend in here, after all.
142 Hardcase: Oh. I liked your Cthunian accent.
143 Misty: I like not being recognized by the people who want me dead, sir.
144 Hardcase: Of course, of course. Misty... now that we're here, now that we have to live out our lives here... there's something I've been wanting to tell you.
145 Misty: What is it, sir?
146 Hardcase: Misty, I love you.
147 Misty: That's fascinating, sir.
148 Hardcase: I mean it, Misty. I want to be with you. I want to grow old with you. Do you, I mean, is there any chance you feel the same?
149 Misty: Sir, you know we don't have romantic love on Cthunia. We mate purely for reproduction and raise our children communally, we don't pair up.
150 Hardcase: But you're not really Cthunian... you're a human being, a woman.
151 Misty: I'm sorry sir, I still don't understand everything about human social structures and partnering.
152 Hardcase: Maybe with time...
153 Misty: I believe the proper thing for me to do here by human custom is to tell you a firm no, not lead you on.
154 Hardcase: [narrating] I'm not used to being rejected. I've had my way with women of eight species. But it's not so much the rejection that stings as the utter hopeless absurdity of the situation -- of my falling in love with someone who isn't even capable of understanding what love IS.
155 SOUND: patio
156 Shweshwe: This torch you're carrying for Misty, that's the sort of thing people want to read. I can work with that. But I'll need to spice it up. Maybe say you had a brief torrid love affair on an alien planet a year ago.
157 Hardcase: We didn't. And why would she have done that?
158 Shweshwe: [growing more animated as she thinks it through out loud] Alien spores making her temporarily feel love. Hot tentacle sex, and a haunting shame about it, a lingering sexual tension between you, yeah, this'll sell.
159 Hardcase: Doesn't it matter to you what's true and what's not?
160 Shweshwe: As an author, my duty is to capture the feeling. I deal in deeper, emotional truths. Not the technical truths. The technical truths make a crappy story, a really convoluted narrative that lacks a deeper meaning.
161 Hardcase: So you add the meaning.
162 Shweshwe: I find the meaning that's buried in there, and I draw it out and I polish it off and I put it on display so it can't be missed.
163 Hardcase: Seems a lot like lying to me.
164 SOUND: pause
165 Shweshwe: Mack, it's easy to see you're not a happy man.
166 Hardcase: That's true.
167 Shweshwe: Nobody who fixates on reality is happy. Reality sucks. Get over it, get over yourself and your pride.
168 Hardcase: And join you in crafting whatever lies will sell best?
169
Shweshwe:
The water's nice, come on in!
You know, I actually really envy you in a way.
170 Hardcase: You do?
171 Shweshwe: You lived every author's dream. You actually EXPERIENCED fantastic imaginary worlds and adventures, you can remember LIVING the stuff I'll only ever be able to write about.
172 Hardcase: And instead of being thankful, I'm angry about it.
173 Shweshwe: Right, man. So you were lied to, big deal, we're all being lied to all the time. You got a helluva ride.
174
Hardcase:
[narration] [wry] I don't think I'm going to want to READ my autobiography when it comes out. It doesn't sound like my kind of book, and I fear I may hate the protagonist.
The sessions with Doctor Peterson have grown increasingly frustrating.
175 Peterson: When you have these dark thoughts, does it worry you? Do you feel your sanity slipping away?
176 Hardcase: It's the other way around, Doc.
177 Peterson: You've lost me.
178 Hardcase: The darkest moments are the clearest, the surest. Seeing the emptiness of life crystallize before me. It's the happy moments where I wonder if I'm going insane.
179 Peterson: Do you have suicidal feelings?
180 Hardcase: I've thought about it.
181 Peterson: Do you have a plan to kill yourself?
182 Hardcase: What would be the point? I've died before, it was no escape. Life and death are the same thing, equally empty.
183 Peterson: That's good, if you had a plan I'd have to put you on a 72 hour hold.
184 Hardcase: [disgusted] That's how you deal with suicidal people here. You capture them, pump them full of drugs, lock them in a room and force them to live against their will.
185 Peterson: We don't want anyone doing something permanent on a temporary impulse.
186 Hardcase: And you wonder why they don't get better.
187 Peterson: What would you propose we do?
188 Hardcase: In the Confederation, we give everyone a chance to fulfill themselves.
189 Peterson: In America, we let you work for that. But you have to be tenacious, you have to scratch and claw.
190 Hardcase: I've noticed how many of your people are failing, how many homeless in this city.
191 Peterson: You don't have to be like them. You need to stand up for yourself and manifest the future you want.
192 Hardcase: I can't even stand up. I may never walk. Misty, Erhardt, Blackburn... they got their strength back, they're doing great, but I may never walk.
193 Peterson: Turn that to your advantage, make yourself an inspiration.
194 Hardcase: [flies off the handle] WHERE THE HELL DO YOU GET OFF TELLING ME TO MAKE MY SUFFERING AN INSPIRATION? AN INSPIRATION?!? IF I WERE TO WRING YOUR NECK, TO CHOKE YOU WITHIN AN INCH OF YOUR WORTHLESS LITTLE LIFE, WOULD YOU BE INSPIRED? IF I PUT YOU IN A POT OVER A FIRE AND BOIL YOU LIKE A LOBSTER, CAN I TELL YOU HOW INSPIRING YOU ARE AS YOU SCREAM AND BEG?
195 Hardcase: [narrating] Doctor Peterson's receptionist informed me that he wouldn't be offering me another appointment until I apologized and agreed to some rules and an anger management workshop. Fine by me, happy to be rid of his mindless platitudes and stupid questions.
196 SOUND: appropriate natural river/bridge sounds behind narration
197
Hardcase:
[narration] Picture this scene, if you can. A bright, sunny, cheerful morning. A lazy brown-tinted river dividing Sacramento from Yolo county. Connecting the two banks, the old I Street bridge -- a rusty metal truss swing bridge, an artifact from before the first world war. Like me, it outlived its usefulness and was replaced... but was left to carry on with little purpose, serving the occasional pedestrian. In the middle of the upper deck of that bridge, a man. A tired old man in a wheelchair, with lines on his forehead and a frown across his face. He's been still for a few minutes, looking south down the Sacramento River toward the busy metallic-gold colored Tower Bridge, and all the little boats and the little people in River Walk Park.
He spots a sea lion, pulling itself awkwardly out of the water to flop down at the end of a little pier across from the Delta King. It doesn't make him smile. Nothing can.
There's a burning question on his mind, an all-consuming question -- to jump, or not to jump?
But before I can decide, I'm interrupted.
198 Misty: Good morning, sir! Can I have a word with you?
199 Hardcase: [outwardly normal] Of course, Misty. Hey, your accent is practically gone now.
200 Misty: Thank you, I've been working hard at it. Sir, I have a little problem.
201 Hardcase: What's that?
202 Misty: Senator Ives wants to come see me. She says she wants to see how I'm adjusting, but I don't want her even knowing where I live.
203 Hardcase: She's probably going to be the next President. We have to work with her, have to convince her to be on our side somehow. If anyone can make our case, I believe it's you. This sounds like a golden opportunity.
204 Misty: But I'm scared, sir.
205 Hardcase: Of what? Ives?
206 Misty: Of what she represents.
207 Hardcase: The hate?
208 Misty: I don't think she hates us, sir. It's the casual brutality, the willingness to destroy us to score points, thinking of us only as pawns in a political game and not as real people.
209 Hardcase: You'll have to show her we can be useful allies. Channel that Cthunian strength and confidence.
210 Misty: I'll try. Thank you, sir.
211 Hardcase: [narration] I suppose that should've been my chance -- my chance to unburden myself, to talk to one of the three people who might actually understand me. But it wasn't. We were out of sync, on different wavelengths. My role then and there was to deal with her problem, not mine. After she left I took a look back over the edge, to the water below. But the moment had passed, and now it felt absurd. I thought of how ridiculous I'd look struggling slowly out of my wheelchair, trying to hoist myself over the side without the arm strength. And it isn't that tall a bridge, the fall probably wouldn't kill me, I'd have to count on drowning. And if twenty minutes without oxygen deep under the Pacific Ocean and three years of being brain dead hadn't stopped me, what chance did this little bridge and sluggish river stand? So I went home, to think more.
212 SOUND: end theme
213 Announcer: Beyond Awakening episode 11, Goodbye Blue Tuesday, was written and produced by Paul Knierim. It starred John Gaunce as Mack Hardcase. Also featured were Ahmad AJ Joudeh as LaVar, Steff Knappe as Misty L'Quil, Alex Foott as Doctor Peterson, ? as Mel Shweshwe, Roger Arnold as Admiral Graveman, Roo Ryder as Rosita Lotus, Mel Crochemore as Doctor Minnie Moreau, Nick Ben Wong as the Klurgh, Gwenith Knight as Trisha Blackburn, and David Loftus as Clay Erhardt. This is Paul Knierim. Music licensed from Joel Steudler and creative commons zero and public domain sources. To learn more about Beyond Awakening or support the show, go to quietplease dot org slash awakening.