12 characters: Dream Voice, Mick, Trisha, Minnie, Announcer, Vang, Vatika, Rosita, Peterson, Hope, Misty, Clay
Click on a character's name to get their lines highlighted.
Trisha (85 lines, 1832 words, 57.72%) - [Gwenith Knight] Trisha Blackburn.
Peterson (17 lines, 190 words, 5.99%) - [Alex Foott] Psychologist.
Hope (27 lines, 571 words, 17.99%) - [Ashley] Trisha's friend, an older homeless woman living on a beach in Marin county. Probably missing a lot of teeth. Has schizoaffective disorder. Former marine biologist. [partial]
Mick (4 lines, 39 words, 1.23%) - [Adam Wade] Sailor character in Trisha's dream. [complete]
Dream Voice (4 lines, 10 words, 0.32%) - [Monaye Jordan] Dream voice, which begins to emerge into Trisha's waking life.
Minnie (18 lines, 241 words, 7.59%) - [Mel Crochemore] Doctor Minnie Moreau is a researcher at Monolith-Eigen Laboratories, and deserves most of the credit for leading the team that built these new AI personalities.
Rosita (1 line, 58 words, 1.83%) - [Roo Ryder] Widow of Ray Lotus.
Vang (1 line, 10 words, 0.32%) - [Kate J White] Monolith-Eigen CEO Martha Vang
Vatika (4 lines, 17 words, 0.54%) - [Sweena Mangal] Doctor Maya Vatika, age 30, works at Monolith-Eigen Laboratories. Recent immigrant from India. Hindu.
Clay (4 lines, 42 words, 1.32%) - [David Loftus] Clay Erhardt is ready to reinvent himself and the world.
Misty (4 lines, 42 words, 1.32%) - [Steff Knappe] Misty L'Quil, trying to come to terms with being human.
Announcer (2 lines, 122 words, 3.84%) - [Paul Knierim] Announcer. [complete]
Script format: Margined | Marginless (for phone viewing)
1 SOUND: rolling ocean waves aboard ship
2 Dream Voice: [whisper] You're back...
3 Mick: I see you're back.
4 Trisha: It's my calling. The ocean is my calling.
5 Mick: That's all well and good, but do you know where you're taking us?
6 Trisha: To the edge of the Earth.
7 Mick: I thought Earth was a sphere.
8 Trisha: Only if you want it to be.
9 Mick: I think I'd rather it be a sphere than have an edge we can sail off.
10 Trisha: Have you no sense of adventure, no sense of wonder?
11 Dream Voice: [whisper] You are falling...
12 SOUND: wind
13 SOUND: phone rings, fumbling for it
14 Trisha: [sleepy] Trisha Blackburn speaking.
15 Minnie: Trisha, something terrible has happened.
16 Trisha: A lot of terrible things have happened to me, but I'm okay with it all now, I've accepted the truth.
17 Minnie: Captain Hardcase is dead.
18 Dream Voice: [whisper] Dead.
19 Trisha: [shock] What? He's what?
20 Minnie: Some nutcase took him hostage to try to get President Kruck to pardon his brother. There was a struggle, Mack was shot, died on the spot.
21 Trisha: This isn't real. None of this is real.
22 Minnie: You're overwhelmed, let me know if there's anything I can do to help.
23 Trisha: I'm okay. We've all died before.
24 Minnie: This is different.
25 Trisha: I know I'm meant to think so.
26 Minnie: Trisha, are you taking your anti-psychotics?
27 Trisha: Usually.
28 Minnie: That needs to be always, or we'll have to bring you back inside. You don't want another incident.
29 Trisha: Okay.
30 Minnie: There's something else you should know. Mack was probably going to die in a month or so anyway, he was sick but didn't want anyone to know.
31 Trisha: I'd wondered why he wasn't progressing like the rest of us.
32 Minnie: We're going to hold a little service in Riverside Cemetery on Saturday at 9:30am.
33 Trisha: Have you told the others yet?
34 Minnie: Clay but not Misty.
35 Trisha: I'll call Misty and tell her, maybe it'll be easier coming from me.
36 Minnie: Thanks, I appreciate that. Again, if there's anything I can do...
37 Trisha: [narration] I could've asked her to end the experiment, but I don't know if she's the one running it. If in doubt, play along. I can see that writing Captain Hardcase out of the story was a desperate attempt to make me feel everything is real and weighty and consequential, but they miscalculated there. Captain Hardcase being secretly terminally ill and battling a gunman who took him hostage? That's not the sort of thing that happens in real life, is it? It's an attempt to inject drama and see how I'll react. And I'll play along, for now.
38 SOUND: music for title sequence
39 Announcer: QuietPlease dot org presents Beyond Awakening. Starring Gwenith Knight as Trisha Blackburn. Episode 17, Adrift.
40 SOUND: funeral background nature sound
41 SOUND: muffled sound of the others making their speeches in the background
42 Trisha: [narration] Saturday the third of July 2038. That's the day we laid Captain Hardcase to rest. They say bad luck comes in threes. It was 33 Celsius when I arrived at nine thirty in the morning. My chair was third from the right in our semi-circle. I learned I was to be the third speaker. If you need proof that this so-called reality is designed, look no further.
43 Vang: Trisha Blackburn, would you like to say a few words?
44 SOUND: standing and walking up
45
Trisha:
Thank you, Ms. Vang.
I'd like to tell you all that Mack Hardcase is in a better place now. That he's in a world where he can be himself, where he can thrive. But how can I tell you that? I don't know where he is, if he's anywhere. I don't know which of the worlds we lived through together was real, if any of them. I don't know if Captain Hardcase was ever real or just a character programmed into a simulation made for me. I don't know if all of you here today are real, some of you, or none of you. I don't know if I'm really here speaking to you. What I'm saying is, I know nothing. And Mack Hardcase, if he was real, was in the same boat -- he didn't know anything either, and was made painfully aware of it. It's a scary boat to be in, especially if you're trying to row it alone in a storm without a paddle. So let's not judge him if he struggled. Let's not judge him if he failed. If he kept things from us. If he maybe sought out his death. He was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.
46 SOUND: walks back to her chair, Clay begins to speak in muffled background
47 Vatika: [softly] Are you okay, Trisha?
48 Trisha: I'm fine, thank you Dr. Vatika. How are you?
49 Vatika: [softly] A little confused by your speech.
50 Trisha: Those who need to understand it will have understood it.
51 Vatika: [softly] Are you still seeing Doctor Peterson?
52 Trisha: Every week.
53 Vatika: [softly] Good.
54 Rosita: You'll notice the headstone says Ray Lotus. Ray's parents paid for that years ago. I'm having it modified to engrave the name Mack Hardcase in the lower half. Ray Lotus, 1995 to 2035... Mack Hardcase, January 18th 2038 to June 30th 2038. A brief life, but one of Earth-shaking significance. I think I can say with confidence that Ray would've been proud.
55 SOUND: applause
56
Trisha:
[narration] 1995 plus 2035 is 4030. 4030 was the year of Captain Hardcase's birth on the Klurgh calendar. 2038 minus 2035 is three... another three for bad luck.
The service was over. We all went home. We split up. We weren't a team anymore, just three individuals. Three.
57 SOUND: psychologist's office
58 Peterson: That bothers you, doesn't it?
59 Trisha: It makes me hearken back to a past that never was, glory days from a machine's imagination.
60 Peterson: Most people do the same thing, yearning for simpler times they've misremembered or never lived.
61 Trisha: I've noticed. There are so many delusions in this society, that's just one of the most popular.
62 Peterson: Delusions aren't all bad. Sometimes they give us the hope we need in terrifying circumstances. What about you Trisha, have you had any more reality distortions this week? Time freezes, edits, loops?
63 Trisha: They don't seem to happen when I take the meds... but...
64 Peterson: Good.
65 Trisha: But... I don't feel myself when I take them. I get restless but I move sluggishly. My emotions feel blunted, the good ones as well as the bad ones.
66 Peterson: These are normal side effects.
67 Trisha: Calling it normal doesn't make it better. It takes three days off the meds to feel myself again.
68 Peterson: You have to keep taking your meds. Do you want to end up like your friend Hope?
69 Trisha: What's so wrong about being like her?
70 Peterson: She's penniless and homeless camping on a public beach in the cold, a miserable life.
71 Trisha: She doesn't seem miserable to me.
72 Peterson: Maybe that's because you have money and take her places and she enjoys getting that from you.
73 Trisha: She's not like that.
74 Peterson: Well, anyway... you want to be successful in life, right?
75 Trisha: I don't define success the way Americans do.
76 Peterson: How do you define it?
77 Trisha: Success is becoming fully me. Self-actualization.
78 Peterson: How will you know when you've achieved that?
79 Trisha: I'll know because I'll still feel myself in any circumstance, any world. I won't have to change myself when things change around me.
80 Peterson: [scoffing] Good luck with that.
81 SOUND: soft musical fade
82 Trisha: [narration] Change works both ways. Nothing we see, nothing we experience in this world is just itself... the object can only exist within the subject, the perceived within the perceiver, and we can never know what it'd be in itself. Everything is an interpretation, everything is shaped by us as much as it shapes us in turn. Most of the time we're not conscious of this. We see patterns in everything because we're pattern-matching machines. I can't stop seeing threes now. It seems like every time I look at a clock it's 3:33. My apartment number is 33. All but one of the 10 digits in my phone number is a multiple of 3. The beach where Hope lives is the third exit north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some people see the Virgin Mary in their toast, I see three pieces of toast and three utensils by the plate. With the meds, I see threes and think about how I'm imposing them into my experience... without the meds, I see threes and think an outside force is using them to communicate something to me.
83 Dream Voice: [whisper] The end is coming.
84 SOUND: muffled fireworks
85 Trisha: [narration] What do you do when you're minding your own business at home and out of nowhere it sounds like Armageddon is raining down on you? I wondered if this was a new form of hallucination, a dramatic new breaking away from reality, if reality it was, or breaking through some invisible wall to the next illusory world. Maybe the battle I could hear was leaking through from the true reality into my consciousness. Maybe the Klurgh were attacking Earth, maybe the Klurgh were attacking wherever I really was, maybe it was Confederation forces come to free me from the Klurgh.
86 SOUND: door opens and closes, fireworks unmuffle
87
Trisha:
[narration] And when I stepped out, I saw explosions in the sky -- but not the horrible explosions I expected. Beautiful explosions. Great bursts of color in wonderful patterns. And for the first time in a while I felt seized by a sudden hope. There's beauty in this world, and the things that sound the most horrible can also be the greatest beauties.
And I don't mean to make it sound like my life had nothing good going on. I'd been learning to play the piano, and even through the meds music could still elevate me to a degree. And Hope would often live up to her name and try to give me hope.
88 SOUND: ocean beach
89 Hope: Trisha, have you ever looked up who you were? I mean, who used to live in your body?
90 Trisha: Nah, I don't think it matters.
91 Hope: Haven't you ever wondered how she died so young?
92 Trisha: No, I haven't.
93 Hope: I'll tell you anyway. She was Olivia Hargrove, Livvy to her friends. Abused by her parents, ran away from home at 16. Lived on the streets. Sold her body. Died of a fentanyl overdose.
94 Trisha: That's nice. What do you think it should mean to me?
95 Hope: It should make you realize your life isn't so bad. Sure, you got demons, we all do. But Olivia would've loved to trade places with you.
96 Trisha: I should stop feeling bad because she had it worse?
97 Hope: You should stop feeling bad because you've been given a wonderful second chance, this life is her second chance. And just by chance -- she wasn't rich, she didn't buy herself a second life like Ray Lotus, she only ended up at Monolith-Eigen because they needed another well-preserved brain-dead body to experiment on.
98 Trisha: So I won a beauty contest for corpses. Hurray.
99 Hope: You're the best-looking undead person on the planet right now.
100 Trisha: I won't tell Misty you said that.
101 Hope: What about Erhardt?
102 Trisha: I think he knows he wasn't in the running.
103 Trisha: [narration] Those days on the beach were special. The weather was miserable, even though it was summer now -- about fifteen degrees Celsius, usually foggy until past noon. The water was too cold for me to ever go all the way in. But the sea was still a comfort. The vast ocean still protected me from whatever was on the far side. The immensity still reassured me that life would go on with or without the human race. For all the ways humanity has attacked the Earth, polluted the land, warmed and acidified the ocean, wiped out species after species... nature will still win in the end, changing herself until we die, like an immune system fighting an infection.
104 SOUND: Minnie on telephone
105 Minnie: Do you ever think you made the wrong decision? By choosing reality over the simulation?
106 Trisha: What decision? There was no decision. We had no idea what this would be like, you fed us just enough to keep us curious, there was never any chance we'd say no. You manipulated us into this.
107 Minnie: Did I?
108 Trisha: You did.
109 Minnie: I didn't realize. This happens so often in science, you think you've set up your experiment perfectly but it turns out you're subconsciously influencing it to your desired outcome.
110 SOUND: a pause
111 Trisha: Have you noticed the protests lately? There was a lull for a few months but seems like they're growing again.
112 Minnie: Trisha, I work in the most protested building in the city. I just tune it out, like people who live next to train tracks.
113 Trisha: They're after your job, but they're after my head.
114 Minnie: Just make sure you don't talk to your neighbors. If anybody gets to know you, you could be compromised.
115 Trisha: That's no way to live.
116 Minnie: It's the only way to live.
117 Trisha: You know what I mean.
118 Minnie: Look Trisha, I've got to get back to work. Why don't you talk to Misty?
119
Trisha:
[narration] It was a good question. Why don't I talk to Misty? We're in the same boat. She seems lonely. She doesn't have anyone like Hope. She tried to arrange weekly lunches and I'd probably made her feel I didn't care when I told her I couldn't do set times because of my sleep disorder. Maybe that'd made things awkward between us. She needed that structure, that certainty of seeing each other every week, but I can't do structure.
Structure is essential to survival in this chaotic universe. We have to interpret our experiences through a paradigm. Is it a duck or is it a goose? Is it the summer sun making me sweat, or is it the heat of a Klurgh interrogation center? Every sensation can mean something different, depending what world view I drop it into. And this is all well and good, when you know which world view to drop things into. But if you begin to flip between them, to alter your paradigms too fast, then you lose your sanity.
120 SOUND: Misty is on phone
121 Misty: Maybe there is no truth. No reality.
122 Trisha: That doesn't make any sense. There has to be something.
123 Misty: What if there's only what we experience and how we choose to interpret it?
124 Trisha: But it has to mean something, everything has to be mean something.
125 Misty: Maybe only the unbroken whole of the experience is meaningful, not any of the parts.
126 Trisha: Do you believe that?
127 Misty: I don't know what I believe.
128 SOUND: ocean fades in for a while
129 Trisha: Hope, have you always been homeless?
130 Hope: [laughs]
131 Trisha: Don't laugh.
132 Hope: Sorry. I grew up middle class, studied hard, became a marine biologist, got married... I was always weird, they called it schizoaffective disorder, but I was functional.
133 Trisha: What happened?
134 Hope: Most science funding got cut off in the 2020s, I got laid off like so many others, including my husband. Then I got sick and didn't have insurance. Lost everything. Went through a divorce. Mental issues got worse. A year of post-viral syndrome kept me from slowing down my slide into oblivion until it was too late. That was eleven years ago. So I've tried to make the best of it, enjoy my freedom.
135 Trisha: Do you wish you could have your old life back, the normal life?
136 Hope: Do you wish you could be back on the ranch with your polycule? It's the same thing.
137 Trisha: Is it?
138 Hope: Do you know the story of Humpty Dumpty, did they put that memory in your backstory?
139 Trisha: He had a great fall.
140 Hope: It's easy to destroy your life. It happens so quick you don't realize it until it's over. But there's no putting it back together again. At least, not in this country -- this land of rugged individualism where all the King's horses and all the King's men will scold Humpty for being a lazy bastard until he pulls himself up by his bootstraps and puts himself together again.
141 Trisha: It's a cruel world.
142 Hope: The world you come from, the imaginary world where you grew up, is it so different?
143 Trisha: Cruel things happened in that world. My brother drowned. Billions were enslaved by the Klurgh. But somehow it didn't feel like a cruel world. I think because it all felt like it was for a purpose, part of a master plan.
144 Hope: And of course it was.
145 Trisha: But waking up and discovering the plan ruined everything.
146 Hope: Better to know there's a plan than to know what the plan is.
147 Trisha: Because once you know what the plan is, there's no more magic. And it's never enough, no plan could satisfy.
148 Hope: And you can't un-know something once you know it, no matter how much you might like to.
149 Trisha: That used to be so.
150 Hope: It's not anymore?
151 Trisha: Monolith-Eigen has changed the rules. They can make me believe or unbelieve whatever they choose.
152 SOUND: transition, psychologist's office
153 Trisha: Doctor Peterson, am I insane?
154 SOUND: pause
155 Peterson: Sometimes the only proper response to what life throws at you is to go insane.
156 Trisha: You think it's okay?
157 Peterson: No, I just think you're not to blame, your circumstances are to blame.
158 Trisha: So instead of changing myself I should change my circumstances?
159 Peterson: If you have the means to do so.
160 Trisha: The only happy part of my life wasn't real.
161 Peterson: It's real for you. Everyone lives in fantasies crafted for them -- books, movies, VR, all that.
162 Trisha: I could ask if they'll let me go back.
163 Peterson: Into the simulation?
164 Trisha: But I need to talk it over with my friend.
165 SOUND: ocean beach
166 Hope: In the simulation, was your life fulfilling?
167 Trisha: Yes. And exciting.
168 Hope: You were happy?
169 Trisha: Yes, I think I was, I didn't realize it at the time but I was.
170 Hope: Then you've gotta do it, you've gotta go back.
171 Trisha: Even though it's fake?
172 Hope: Who knows what's real? I don't think this is real either, but suppose it is. It still sucks. Being sure it's real would just make it suck more, would just destroy all hope. And if they can edit your memory to make you believe an existence you like is the real one, you gotta leap at that.
173 Trisha: But isn't there something, I don't know, just WRONG about choosing to be programmed for delusion?
174 Hope: If it's a delusion that makes you happy, better wrong than right. I really really wish I had the opportunity you've got. Trisha look at me, look at my life... I'd give ANYTHING to be programmed for a happy delusion.
175 SOUND: pause
176 Trisha: I'll miss you.
177 Hope: No you won't, they'll either delete me from your memory entirely or edit it so you think I wasn't real.
178 Trisha: Then I guess I better tell you now how much you've meant to me. You've been my best friend on this planet.
179 Hope: Aw, gimme a hug.
180 SOUND: hug
181 Trisha: I'll try to convince them to let you live in my apartment. I've still got residuals from that TV show.
182 Hope: But it's so far from the ocean, your apartment is so far from the ocean.
183 Trisha: You can have my car and come back here whenever you like.
184 Hope: You don't have to do that for me.
185 Trisha: I won't be needing money where I'm going.
186 SOUND: phone rings
187 Trisha: Trisha Blackburn speaking.
188 Clay: Hi, it's Clay. I'm wondering if... if you've ever given any thought to the possibility of going back into the simulation.
189 Trisha: What a coincidence. Just what I was talking about when you called.
190 Clay: I think all three of us should discuss it in person.
191 Trisha: Yes.
192 Clay: The Sunny Oak Cafe, noon Tuesday?
193 Trisha: I'll be asleep then. Same time Friday works for me though.
194 Clay: Alright, Friday it is.
195 SOUND: end theme
196 Announcer: Beyond Awakening episode 17, Adrift, was written and produced by Paul Knierim. It starred Gwenith Knight as Trisha Blackburn. Also featured were Ashley as Hope, Mel Crochemore as Doctor Minnie Moreau, Alex Foott as Doctor Peterson, Roo Ryder as Rosita Lotus, David Loftus as Clay Erhardt, Steff Knappe as Misty L'Quil, Adam Wade as Mick, Sweena Mangal as Doctor Maya Vatika, Monaye Jordan as Trisha's dream voice, and Kate J White as CEO Martha Vang. 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.