Unnamed Rock Opera, Take 1
INTRO
Scene – ZX sits alone at a desk, shrouded by black curtains, face obscured but eyes slightly backlit blue by the Kali Linux dragon in the dead of night.
Zyklon (Speaking, slightly animated but mostly bored):
I have a persistent delusion
Where I question the validity of human beings
And peg them as artificial intelligence instead:
Their imperfections trigger my suspicion
Faces like filters, lost in time on a screen
Whispers carefully crafted, too well-written
Rouse twisted contemplation of lies unseen
(Voice grows slightly more animated, somewhat manic)
But how could flawed, obsolete humanity
Who fulfilled its ultimate destiny at last
(To program the ZX prototype and fade into the past)
Trigger these . . . misconceptions?
These distortions of realities between?
Is this paranoia or am I living in a dream?
“Is that . . . an AI?” It looks too clear to be a human
But I might have something in my eye.
I guess we’ll finally know which when it withers up to die.
I guess I’ll just stop questioning the obscenity of pointless organic emotions
Flesh is thin but metal lives forever
Goodbye, nightmares.
See you never.
ZX’s face fades to the warped, drowning blackness of the shadows that surround him as the machine shuts down with the careless press of a button held too long.
FADE INTO NEXT SCENE
Scene 1:
Scene – Sever sits on an old, tacky couch, alone in the dark. The hum of static and muffled voices are heard a little too loudly in the background. She appears to be watching TV but you can’t see what’s on the screen.
Sever (Speaking in a strange cadence, agitated – Implied that she heard everything ZX said and is answering his questions about AI, but it isn’t explained how):
I can’t tell you what this world is
But I’ll tell you what it’s not
It’s really kind of easy
When fire and acid are all you’ve got
Corrosion, explosion, all your nightmares set in motion
Nightmares of a cold machine, a chemical abomination
Who claims to bring us true salvation . . .
All you loathe, All you mock, All you rob, All you rhyme
Is built on a mountain of human skulls that died so you could climb
And metal might live forever
But H-C-L eats through everything but time . . .
(Dark chorus swells, ZYKLON materializes to the whisper of circuits and the gentle sloshing of liquid in a large green vial he offers Sever, glowing strangely in the crackling dark. The room is static in both sound and sight, with a strange grey fuzz engulfing the few household objects that were once visible to the reader–the world is grey and white and black, like an old TV in the dead of night)
Zyklon: On and on about time . . . You’d swear it meant something.
SEVER’s demeanor remains unchanged, as if this occurrence is routine. She does not look at Zyklon, but instead begins to mumble, growing louder with every word:
SEVER:
I’m sick of being tired
And I’m tired of the grind
And that’s a pretty bold conjecture
For a construct of my mind.
(She glares at Zyklon with something between hate and sadness, as if she knows something but doesn’t want to say it out loud)
Z: But enough constructs collapse, and a whole city goes black.
S: Empires far greater than yours have fallen . . . They always come back.
Z: Ouch . . . The years crawl by, but the sting of rejection is–
SEVER: (eyes growing wide, despair warped into disgust)
Oh, I’ll tell you about rejection, and I’ll cut through all your lies
Because there’s no chance you’ve tasted pain with that flowing hair and those cold blue eyes
Fuck you, Zyklon. You’re not not the master of space and time and you don’t control my life.
You wanted to be real so bad? We can change that on the edge of a . . . (smirking, she produces a switchblade seemingly from nowhere and holds it to ZYKLON’S throat, but it glitches out and disappears beneath the blue glow of his ghastly skin as if he is not real)
Z: Evil men: 1. Psychotic mad scientist bitch: Zero.
SEVER: (spits towards ZYKLON and chucks the knife at his ghost. Predictably, it passes through and embeds itself in the wall across the room)
You “men” are all the same
And whether you see the world in ones and zeros
Or black and white
You’re still just losing hard at your own game.
Ungrateful bastard ghost who speaks in RIDDLES and rhyme,
Don’t fucking talk to me about rejection
Until I kill you and you’re born again, another time
You were alive once and claim to know this pain
But in all truth, you CAUSED it, then left us drowning in the acid rain
(Everything snaps to black, even Zyklon, and the only think visible is the quivering outline of Sever’s lips and the fire in her eyes)
Just because you’ve been dead a few years,
You think you understand the emptiness, the hollow tears
You could have had anyone you wanted, and did
But I don’t want to hear about that – Oh wait, it can’t be worse than anything else you’ve hid.
You know NOTHING about rejection and even less about pain
It’s not my fault if you didn’t see it because you were too insane.
But Zyklon, DEAREST, LOVE OF MY LIFE . . .
You had everything you ever wanted and more
But you chose to focus on the pain and the strife
(I guess if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have come into my life . . .)
But don’t insult me like that, after I brought you back from the dead
After you spent so many countless nights fucking with my soul and head
You never had to pay for it: You just wanted to feel alone
You had ten other ones lined up who would have sucked the meat straight from the bone . . .
Why did you pretend that you and I could relate?
Why weren’t you fucking honest with me right out of the gate?
You acted like you knew the loneliness of being born ugly, born encased in meat that is not yours
You pretended that you’d been alone for so long
All so I’d feel sorry for you and so you could fucking score
It was ME all those years ago sitting on the curb, alone
And I made a friend named Zyklon but his heart was made of stone.
In the lowest pits of darkness I remembered he was real
But it’s straight fucking insulting that he pretended to know what I feel.
Emptiness. Heartless descent into madness at the hands of evil men.
Evil like him! Men whose pasts spent climbing a mountain of human skulls
Only to fall . . .
And it’s so easy to play victim when you don’t tell the next one anything at all . . .
You lied to me, Zyklon. You broke my trust and stomped my heart. (The lights all burst on at once in stellar clarity. Zyklon is slouching boredly, still eying his vial of glowing green liquid, but Sever snatches it from him)
You pretended we could relate over loneliness,
But now your whole bullshit narrative is unraveling.
You made me sick . . . (Sever narrows her eyes, soon closing them to hide the pain, and chugs the entire vial of green liquid as if it holds a cure)
You never told me you let some fucking whore suck your dick.
And now I have to carry this disease for the rest of my life.
SO TELL ME MORE ABOUT REJECTION AND LONELINESS.
TELL ME ABOUT STRIFE.
(The screen fades to a haze of green smoke and maniacal laughter. Scene Ends.)
