TIMESLIP 2
THE YEAR OF THE TIME BOMB
by
BRUCE STEWART
Outline for six episodes
THE STORY SO FAR:
Back in the late 60s, teenagers LIZ SKINNER and SIMON RANDALL ‘time-slip’ into the wartime 40s. They are made aware of a secret scientific development in which the Nazis are powerfully interested… as also is COMMANDER TRAYNOR – active in their ‘present day’, seeking information about what truly happened at the wartime naval base, and what the scientists may have discovered as a result…
Their strange ‘gift’ takes SIMON and LIZ to the Ice Box – an Antarctic base of the future where science rules mankind, and a longevity drug ensures that only the ‘right’ people will survive into a rigidly planned tomorrow. It also takes them further ahead into the Burn Up – when Europe has been reduced to desert by the Technocrats… those ‘right’ people whose rigid plans have been faithfully implemented…
TRAYNOR, a friend in and out of these time adventures, suddenley becomes an enemy of LIZ and SIMON. Yet it is not TRAYNOR. The Technocrats have produced a TRAYNOR clone, so that now even their chief opponent may appear to be doing their work. The true TRAYNOR suceeds in destroying the clone, but is himself sucked into the ‘time barrier’ : lost to the conscious world. LIZ and SIMON, having met ‘in time’ projections of events, their families, even themselves… determine to keep their feet firmly rooted in their own time and place…
But all that was twenty years ago.
Today all that is different.
Today it is THE YEAR OF THE TIME BOMB…
EPISODE 1
SIMON is nowadays a scientist, working on pollution control. A faceless, mulit-national chemical concern, ECTOM, seems to be emptying toxic waste into the waterways. SIMON tries to find out more about ECTOM, but it seems to be protected and secret : all he can actually discover is that, for some reason, ECTOM is making desperate bids to take over NEW DAY, a small electronics company.
SIMON goes to NEW DAY. To his astonishment, he finds that the receptionist is LIZ. LIZ has a teenage daughter not, but her marriage has fallen apart, and she has returned to work. The director of NEW DAY – a strange puck-ish individual known only by his initials, B.G.B. – thinks that ECTOM is clearly after his ‘memory computer’. This is a development he is working on which can attune to the past (history is never a spent force, it remains the dormant energy of the present), and he will soon, all going well, be able to ‘call up’ things forgotten and persons unremembered on a 3-D screen.
SIMON is a bit troubled by B.G.B. The odd little man seems to be able to multi-locate at will. He is certainly not constrained by time and space in the way that ordinary people are. Yet, he is ordinary enough in other respects… he is a keen but untalented musician who is keen to play in a brass band. Thus he practices on wind instruments to excruciating effect!
B.G.B. Is fascinated by LIZ and SIMON’s childhood time experience. He thinks they are the sort of people who could materially help in the development of his computer. But LIZ and SIMON want no more of that. SIMON has already begun to experience arbitary ‘time slips’, and doesn’t much like them. He will seem to tumble and fall a long way… past an 18th century man in a drawing room who angrily plays a piano… through an extraordinary throne room, where a black queen rules…
LIZ has to pick up her daughter HANNAH from school, so does so and takes SIMON on to the station. SIMON is taken aback to learn that HANNAH too experiences ‘time slips’. She too has had ‘flashes’ of the black queen… and also, mysteriously, of a mariner on the poop of an ancient galleon…
LIZ angrily tries to put a stop to all of this. She wants none of it for HANNAH. But the car runs into a dense fog that only SIMON is aware of. As he blunders out of the car despite the protests of the others, SIMON begins to ‘slip’… a long fall back past the 18th century man playing the piano… past an oriental sage in an ornate chair… interspersed with monochrome images of himself and LIZ years previously…
When SIMON ‘hits bottom’, it is to black out. Then someone is rousing him, slapping him to bring him around. He is on a common outside a large industrial plant where some kind of riot is going on. And he is staring into the face of COMMANDER TRAYNOR…
EPISODE 2
At the car, LIZ realises that SIMON had gone through the time barrier, just as in the past. Terrified, she rushes HANNAH out of it. She calls in to tell B.G.B. – who is busy murdering a tuba solo at the precise juncture – that it is his responsibility if it is anybody’s, as she wants no part of it, and is ‘cutting out’.
B.G.B. Seems overjoyed that SIMON is ‘once more in time’. He pleads with LIZ to stay and help him and his computer ‘track’ SIMON wherever he is. What he needs more than anything is to test theory against practice. B.G.B.’s grand ambition is to bring back from the past ‘great figures’ of history. These, by forming a super-national council, will hopefully restore the human race its lost integrity. For B.G.B. Believes that the world has entered its ‘last days’. It is being systematically destroyed by those who have sold out to ‘evil’, exploiting its resources, polluting its seas and air. Already the time bomb of the final cataclysm is ticking away. If the end is to be averted, it will only be by means of a moral takeover. B.G.B. Is trying to ensure that. But LIZ is only frightened by it all : frightened particularly for HANNAH.
As for SIMON, he discovers he is in 1970 or so. TRAYNOR, extraordinarily, seems to be the leader of a hippie group, at this moment trying to prevent the delivery of suspected toxic waste to a plant for disposal… an ECTOM plant. The ECTOM guards are brutally dispersing the protesters, under the leadership of THEO – a cruel faced man who seems to have a special dislike for TRAYNOR. TRAYNOR only has time to explain that after he was ‘sucked’ into the time barrier, he discovered that their previous ‘projections’ of the future were not entirely valid – that there is a dimension they overlooked – before the heavies are on them.
Trying to get out of the melee, Simon abruptly finds himself walking out of a similar modern dust-up on LIZ’s TV screen into their living room, where she watches with HANNAH. They cry out in shock. Aware that this time, his time experience is less consistent, and somehow mysteriously tied to B.G.B.’s memory computer work, SIMON asks LIZ to come with him, investigate ECTOM and find out what truly is going on. But LIZ refuses point blank. All that is in the past. A past better left dead.
SIMON thus breaks into the modern ECTOM plant alone by night. What he finds is a strange store/manufactory of what seems to be merely – clay. It is curious stuff though – immediately malleable, not always of the same density, or necessarily possessed of the same properties. Then, being disturbed, SIMON runs for a fire escape. In his haste, however, he fails, and…
… ‘time slips’ into ECTOM as it was in the early 70s. Here SIMON has to conceal himself as THEO executes a defector among his guards. This is all a bit like a neo-Nazi court martial : the defector has apparently tried to blab to the authorities about Operation Trash Can – code name for ECTOM’s secret and illegal disposal of the world’s toxic waste for profit – and must pay the price. SIMON somehow gets out of it, making his way to TRAYNOR at the hippie camp in the woods. TRAYNOR now explains that his hippie persona is only a blind… he and his ‘eco force’ are an official group, formed after TRAYNOR’s new time-understanding proved to him that the real threat to the future was what had been done to the planet ever since the industrial revolution by heedless and motivated get-rich-quick merchants – whose depredations continue, and are becoming critical…
SIMON goes with TRAYNOR as he and his force raid ECTOM. But THEO has skilfully removed any evidence that might connect the company with the illegal disposal of waste. There is only the strange clay as evidence of enterprise – at this stage characterised as a new and advanced ‘building material’ – and THEO’s smiling hatred for TRAYNOR…
SIMON is shaken out of unconsciousness in the modern ECTOM plant to be told that the Director wants to see him. SIMON is taken into the presence of of a cosy, motherly woman, happily watering her plants – CLEMENTINA…
EPISODE 3
CLEMENTINA is beaming and agreeable. She offers tea, and a guided tour of the plant. Whoever SIMON is, he has no need to break into the plant. He has only to ask if he wants to know anything. SIMON does not know quite what to make of this… nor of this woman, adored by her staff, manifestly ‘homely’ and nice. He knows even less what to make of the strange clay when it is shown to him. The clay is the result of many years work by ECTOM, CLEMENTINA tells him – an attempt to create ‘basic matter’. It can – by a secret process – be transmuted into any required substance. It makes old fashioned processes like mining and refining redundant…
But CLEMENTINA professes to know nothing of toxic waster disposal, either now or in the past. She simply took over ECTOM when her husband unfortunately died. When SIMON tries to enquire about ‘THEO’, however, he plainly touches a nerve. CLEMENTINA closes up, and at once changes the subject…
When a faintly bemused SIMON has gone, CLEMENTINA continues watering her plants, and expresses to a secretary, VICKI, the hope that ‘that nice young man will not need to be curious any more’. She also tells VICKI that she is looking peaky, and to ‘do something about it’. VICKI obediently goes into a booth and submits herself to ‘glo recharge’. Thus we learn that CLEMENTINA’s staff is not composed of human beings. It is in fact composed of Ectomorphs (‘same shapes’), the principal fruit of the ‘basic matter’ ECTOM has spent so long developing.
SIMON is after all prevailed upon by B.G.B. To help perfect the memory computer. He feels oddly compelled : it is as though it is precisely what B.G.B. Is doing that has re-awakened time experience in him. Though he cannot understand why ECTOM is seeking to take over NEW DAY.
SIMON’s time experience proves to be ‘too tired’ to establish the straight link into time that the computer can track. It would be the same with LIZ, even if she were willing. HANNAH… ? Yes – it turns out that HANNAH is willing to co-operate. Though B.G.B. And SIMON have to be crafty about it. HANNAH makes a surprisingly indefinite link, resulting in an obscure shape on the 3-D screen. Then that develops, utterly unexpectedly, into TRAYNOR. But something appears to go wrong. HANNAH starts to ‘change places’ with what is materialising on the screen. First her voice becomes TRAYNOR’s, then her characteristics… SIMON and B.G.B. Desperately try to prevent what is happening – but HANNAH vanishes into a now black screen, and an astounded TRAYMOR is in their midst.
LIZ meantime has discovered HANNAH is not at school where she should be, and arrives at NEW DAY just in time to witness her daughter’s disappearance. Outraged and overcome by grief – for HANNAH is now plainly lost in time – she attacks B.G.B. physically… but her fists go straight through him. Then he becomes two persons – three – and then vanishes entirely. Terrified, LIZ runs from the place. TRAYNOR is still too bemused to know what is happening.
HANNAH slips through time… past the pianist… the oriental sage… the mariner on the poop deck… It seems a ‘fall’ without end…
SIMON is on LIZ’s heels as she runs from NEW DAY. A car is waiting with VICKI at the wheel. It at once drives for SIMON – but instead runs down LIZ. The car speeds away, leaving LIZ for dead…
EPISODE 4
LIZ has to be rushed to hospital, in a ‘critical’ state. SIMON has recognised VICKI, and realises that the motherly CLEMENTINA must, for some extraordinary reason, be responsible. TRAYNOR, duly recovered, seems astonished to learn that CLEMENTINA is ‘still around’ : he has some connection with her, though it is not clear what.
Back inside NEW YOU, SIMON comes across B.G.B., who has returned, apparently to collect his tuba. SIMON at once grabs the tuba, saying he will destroy it unless B.G.B. finally says who he is and what is going on. B.G.B. relents. He admits he is not so much ‘fully human’ as one charged with ‘caring for’ the human race. He quickly glosses over this mystery adding that ECTOM seeks to take over NEW DAY because ECTOM does not care for the human race. The ultimate purpose of the memory computer is to call up out of the past four renowned figures who will fill the current ‘gaps’ in human history – there is today no great leader, no great thinker, no great artist, no fearless adventurer. B.G.B. already has the basic links to the required persons. HANNAH has probably tumbled into one or the other of them.
HANNAH in fact has finally tumbled into a ‘time desert’. It is a barren but deceptive place : daliesque. HANNAH eventually comes across a pavillion. In it is the black queen. This turns out to be the great leader ZENOBIA, at this moment on the run from the Romans after the fall of Palmyra. HANNAH is seized as a spy. ZENOBIA would have her killed at once, but EVA, her handmaid – who seems to have a great influence with the queen – intercedes out of pity, and HANNAH is saved.
SIMON remembers LIZ’s telepathic communication with her mother, and supposes it is the same between LIZ and HANNAH. Despite big hospital objection, therefore, he and B.G.B. ‘wire up’ LIZ to the memory computer. The 18th century pianist comes clear on the screen. Time-experienced SIMON is able to ‘walk into’ this projection and look for HANNAH. Then he finds he can’t get out again. B.G.B. is alarmed : this is ‘arbitrary interference’ he has not yet mastered in the computer. Then SIMON is seized by KURT, a manservant. “Herr BEETHOVEN is composing. No one must disturb him…”
TRAYNOR meantime has gone after CLEMENTINA. It seems he cannot confront her in her office, so he mentally tracks her – a time trick he has picked up – when she leaves. CLEMENTINA goes to the edge of the sea… where a device transports her to a house under the ocean. TRAYNOR contrives to follow her there too…
On trek with ZENOBIA’s caravan, HANNAH draws closer to EVA, and discovers that the young woman who has befriended and saved her is virtually ‘holding together’ the defeated queen, who is in fact in despair at her fall. SIMON in the same way is intrigued to find that BEETHOVEN is by now stone deaf, and depends on KURT for aid in his resulting creative problems…
TRAYNOR gets into CLEMENTINA’s underwater house. It turns out to be a bewildering extended nursery of almost every kind of plant, kept under the right conditions. Then he is ‘jumped’ by guardian Ectomorphs and locked up. When they report it to her, CLEMENTINA, busy grafting new shoots, thanks them for apprehending the ‘man who jailed her son’.
Then CLEMENTINA places flowers before an honoured faded photograph… of THEO…
EPISODE 5
SIMON is kicked out of BEETHOVEN’s presence by KURT, and finds himself in the time desert. Observing all this on the 3-D screen, B.G.B. strives valiantly to defeat the gremlins in the memory computer – still wired to the unconscious LIZ – but can get nowhere. LIZ meanwhile is having subliminal flashes of her own – disconnected images of foetid landfills, chimneys belching acrid smoke, icebergs melting…
CLEMENTINA has TRAYNOR brought to tea in her private conservatory. It is a meeting of old friends, however : it seems once, long ago, they were sweethearts. Yet – things have changed. CLEMENTINA tells TRAYNOR she does not in the event completely blame him for sending THEO to prison, since THEO was a ‘bad boy who let his mother down’. Like so many bad boys, he didn’t care if what he was doing destroyed the earth as long as it made him rich. Here, in the house under the sea, CLEMENTINA has preserved what is best of the earth – the plants and flowers – and when the ‘bad boys’ have finally had their headstrong way, she will re-make a better earth, with better people in it. The Ectomorphs have been developed to bridge the gap, servants who will do what is required until a new human race appears. CLEMENTINA has even organised a few volcanic explosions, tidal waves, to help the inevitable destruction along once it begins…
SIMON comes across ZENOBIA’s pavillion in the desert. Observing HANNAH attired as a handmaid, assisting EVA, SIMON waits till nightfall, then moves in and snatches HANNAH making a break for the desert. But ZENOBIA’s guards give chase. As they almost catch them, LIZ, still unconscious in hospitalm becomes deeply disturbed. Her flashes are now of great gales, eruptions… B.G.B. seeing the plight of HANNAH and SIMON can think of nothing to do but – sound his tuba!
The tuneless bray rings around SIMON and HANNAH : there is an earthquake, swallowing up the guards : and SIMON and HANNAH ‘slip’ to the ancient galleon, which at the precise moment is plunging about in a fierce storm. The mariner here is no less than COLUMBUS, on his great voyage. He is as terrified as his men, pleading with PEDRO his navigator, to steer them out of danger and thus rescue the ‘great adventure’ from oblivion. B.G.B. again sounds his tuba. The ‘slip’ this time is to –
TRAYNOR and his eco-force in the late 70s. TRAYNOR here is of course quite ignorant of his presence in SIMON’s time, and doesn’t know who HANNAH can be. TRAYNOR is just moving in to arrest THEO, having the evidence he needs at last, and is meeting stiff resistance. The is shooting, endangering everyone… Then all at once, THEO is up for a murder charge for killing two of TRAYNOR’s men… CLEMENTINA weeps in court… As he is led away, given life by the judge, THEO takes a violent lunge at TRAYNOR. But he strikes HANNAH, who falls, bleeding. This causes –
LIZ to cry out, waking from her disturbed visions and coma. Suddenly she points a finger at B.G.B., identifying him as the Angel of Destruction, come to sound the world’s doom. His tuba there in his hands, as it were caught cold, B.G.B. can only give a weak grin…
EPISODE 6
CLEMANTINA has TRAYNOR returned to imprisonment. She certainly wishes no harm to one she has always ‘loved well’, but TRAYNOR cannot be permitted to frustrate her plans, so he will have to be ‘patient for a while’. From this TRAYNOR gathers CLEMENTINA thinks ‘the end is nigh’, and will shortly be activating her contrived volcanic explosions and tidal waves to expedite matters.
B.G.B. meantime explains to the recovered LIZ that it is not actually the business of the Angel of Destruction = which he is not for one moment admitting he is – to bring about ‘the end’. No, no. Such a personage must merely be there to witness it, as and when the human race itself decides it shall happen. Human beings can keep their planet alive, or they can sound its knell. B.G.B., it is true, stands for ‘Blow, Gabriel, Blow’. Yet that is a conditional licence, not an imperative. (Always granted anyway that he can master the wind instrument in time.) B.G.B. says he and LIZ must get on with ‘calling up’ the historical characters to save the race. This in the nature of things will bring back SIMON and HANNAH too.
TRAYNOR, by an adaptation of the mental tracking technique, outwits his Ectomorph guards and escapes from imprisonment. CLEMENTINA is now installed at a huge console. The ‘end’ is programmed, and she and her attendant Ectomorphs are on countdown. TRAYNOR, seized again as he breaks in on her, begins to plead with CLEMENTINA.
B.G.B. cannot reliably pick up SIMON and HANNAH on the 3-D screen, but they now seem abandoned to the time desert again, hopelessly lost. Then they come upon a weird thing : right out there in the open desert, seated on his ornate chair, his scribe at his side… is the oriental sage. This turns out to be CONFUCIUS, with his scribe LI-SAN.
CONFUCIUS is genial, healthily disillusioned, aphoristic but witty with it. He knows of B.G.B., even vaguely of CLEMENTINA and ‘the end’ : but he thinks that B.G.B.’s notions of how to save humanity leave a lot to be desired. You really don’t protect human beings from themselves by simply dragging notable people out of one time and dumping them in another. The people of the specific time must do any saving involved themselves, or it is of no lasting use. And the people must be ordinary people. Who needs geniuses? They can’t even operate without ‘lesser’ folk who make it possible for their charismatic light to shine. So who are more important to the world? ZENOBIA, or the humble handmaid who gives her strength? CONFUSIUS, or his wickedly overworked scribe…?
Witnessing all this on the 3-D screen, ruefully accepting its implications, B.G.B. is bleakly resigned. Wrong again. Supposing he will never really understand humans, B.G.B. mournfully sounds his tuba. The memory computer begins to crumble and resolve itself into dust. SIMON and HANNAH are unceremoniously dumped into LIZ’s hospital room. As a last act before vanishing for good, B.G.B. transports them all to CLEMENTINA’s house beneath the seas. He will return when it really is the end.
With CLEMENTINA still at her console, the time bomb ticks its way perilously close to detonation. But she has already begun to listen to the pleadings of TRAYNOR, her old love. Is there still a way of seizing back the world as it exists from those who would destroy it? Can the ‘bad boys’ still somehow or other be turned into good ones…?
Perhaps in the last analysis it is the simple image of LIZ, recovered and re-united with her daughter HANNAH, that stirs CLEMENTINA’s motherly heart. At the last moment, emotion triumphs over reasons, and the cataclysm is called off. The earth and its naughty children can have one more chance. Who knows, it could be that even THEO will have a change of heart… he is up for parole very soon…
……………………
end.
