MOONBASE THETA, OUT – S4 Bonus 4 – “David”
by D.J. Sylvis
SOUND: Chime – Bookend
SOUND: Moonbase storage room background (ongoing)
SOUND: A deck of cards being shuffled a few times
SOUND: Dealing out a series of cards to a table; after a few moments of silence, sweeping them all aside simultaneous with the first line below
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Dammit!
SOUND: A knock on the wall outside; the door sliding open
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I don’t see the point in knocking. Like I’m gonna forget I’m your prisoner.
SOUND: A few footsteps, a tray of food, plate, silverware being carried
MCVETT
Habit, I suppose. We’ve still got a few social niceties.
SOUND: Setting the tray down on a table
MCVETT
Don’t worry. It’s not En-Soy-Ment.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Take the humour with you when you go.
MCVETT
Your cards are on the floor. I’ll get them.
SOUND: Picking up the cards, a chair moves a little
ENCLAVE OFFICER
So when do I find out what comes next with you people?
MCVETT
Next? You mean after dinner?
SOUND: A fist on the table, dishes rattling
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You know what I mean, you son of a … or are you hoping I rot down here?
MCVETT
We’ve definitely got people of that opinion, or something a bit stronger … there’s a reason I’m bringing you your dinner and not Maria L’Anglois.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
She was such a disappointment.
MCVETT
I don’t know who’s been doing it up to now; I was back at Base Theta for a while.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
That’s right, Moonbase Theta. Death’s country.
MCVETT
I beg your pardon?
ENCLAVE OFFICER
This play, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, there’s a line Big Daddy says … “I have just now returned from the other side of the Moon, death’s country, son, and I’m not easy to shock by anything here.” I have always felt that line.
MCVETT
Wouldn’t have pegged you as a theatrical connoisseur.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Management training. They had a group to encourage us to build up our public speaking skills.
MCVETT
You know that Big Daddy was all kinds of sick, and only fooling himself?
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I understand the metaphor.
MCVETT
(after a moment or two)
I’m almost impressed they included the arts in your corporate education.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
(scoffs)
That was the extent, I promise you. I wasn’t on the track for PR; once they got us to where we could read a written statement, they moved us on to other things. You’ll notice I’m not saying ‘better’ things.
MCVETT
I’m guessing it’s not the most joyous experience.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You don’t know the half of it. It’s not just the shit jobs on the way up – it’s the way they make you feel like that’s all you deserve, like you’re lucky they’re giving you that much.
MCVETT
Oh, yeah. I can imagine where they shoved you into that system.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Double shifts getting shouted at via customer service – where everyone wants to talk to “the manager” and you’re the last place that buck can pass; or handing down ‘disciplinary action’ for a code that makes no goddamn sense and changes every time a CEO wakes up on the wrong side of something. Or someone.
MCVETT
I know how that feels.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Not that I wasn’t well acquainted with that, “Do as I say, not as I do” type of discipline. You think I’m an asshole, you should have met the assholes who raised me. They didn’t have to push me from the nest
– I jumped out, grabbed the first branch which was management training, and made my own way from there.
SOUND: He takes a drink
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You still can’t get decent coffee? I could make a call or two.
MCVETT
You definitely made your own way. You’ve got a habit of striking out on your own.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
And why shouldn’t I? After all the water I carried for upper management, they stuck me in a minor office in the basement of a minor Enclave. I’d still be languishing there if I hadn’t used my skills and my initiative to prove I was a power player.
MCVETT
See, that’s where you start to piss me off.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I beg your pardon?
MCVETT
You grew up in a bad system – we all did. Maybe you had a worse childhood, maybe you jumped into a career that was crap and you felt poorly treated. But you had it in you to break out, and what do you do with that initiative? You fucked people even harder. You hatched all your dirty little plots – messed with the stasis pods and our foodstuffs, left us stranded, threw the Freeholds against the Enclaves for your big “Zero Day” plan. You could have improved the system, or broken things altogether – but you only thought of yourself.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I don’t think you understand how the game is –
MCVETT
Screw your game! Look where it’s got you. You’ve been sitting down here for months because you never made one positive connection, one relationship that mattered. You’ve got no influence of any kind – on our side or theirs – after all your game-playing.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You don’t know how lucky you are that’s the case right now.
MCVETT
Have you ever heard of restorative justice? You should. The idea is that offenses like yours come from a breakdown in human relationships. A lack of connection, or community. Sure sounds like that’s the place you’re in, doesn’t it? And you won’t dig your way out unless you have some interest in fixing that connection.
(after a moment)
Pal, I’m here because I don’t want you to rot. I’m not from Death’s country. I’ve got your only way back to a real life.
SOUND: He grabs the tray
MCVETT
I’ll be back in the morning.
SOUND: Footsteps, the door closes
ENCLAVE OFFICER
(another sip)
I’m not sure I do know who to call right now for better coffee.
SOUND: Bookend chime to indicate the scene break
ENCLAVE OFFICER
What do you think you’re gonna get from me? I don’t accept your version of the rulebook, so I’m not gonna follow your roll of the dice.
MCVETT
You keep coming back to the same tired metaphors. Don’t you see how narcissistic it is? You’re Player One the game, you’re the one moving the pieces. They only matter if they’re following your directions.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You move the pieces or you get moved. You think I was never on that side of things, you think I don’t remember how it feels? I only mattered if I did what I was told – or more often, I was ignored even then.
MCVETT
We’ve talked about this. You made plenty of choices of your own.
SOUND: A long sip of coffee
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I’m glad you brought the better stuff.
(brief pause)
You’re pointing your fingers at me about En-Soy-Ment; that was supposed to be a good thing! That was my big improvement, a line of affordable soy-based foods that could lift your spirits while you ate them! But then it was ruined by committee – what if we could turn up anxieties as easy as soothe them; why not shove it into a population we owned instead of private testing? I did what I could when I saw the cracks in that plan – I made sure Delta had some backups, made the commercials as ridiculous as possible – but what could I do when they were pushing so hard from above?
MCVETT
What could you do? Weren’t you the one spinning your web the whole time behind the scenes?
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Right, and look how well that’s worked out for me.
MCVETT
So what you’re saying is, you blame the people above you because they didn’t listen?
ENCLAVE OFFICER
That’s exactly what I’m saying!
MCVETT
You feel like they deserve the blame for how it all went wrong?
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Goddamn right!
MCVETT
But you’re not responsible in the same way for the things you’ve done?
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I’m not talking about me here, I’m talking about –
MCVETT
You’re talking about personal responsibility. You’re talking about a system of justice where people are directly culpable for their crimes, for the way they hurt you and other victims. You know in your heart that that’s what’s fair; you just don’t want to admit it applies to you.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Goddamn it, that’s not what I –
MCVETT
It is what you mean! It’s what you just came out and said. And you’re right; you deserve justice for what the system’s done to you. But you can’t use that as insulation against the hurt you’ve done to others.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You’re not listening. You can’t put this all on me.
MCVETT
You can’t lay it all off you. People died because of you, Stephens. Because of you, directly, specifically. You knew it was gonna happen, that’s why you sent backup personnel to Base Delta. You knew lives would be ruined on Zero Day, people who lost their homes or lost track of their family or couldn’t get enough food because you were fucking with supply lines. You’ve got to admit you did those things, just as surely as you’ve had other things done to you. Everyone’s got to play by the same rules.
SOUND: A chair being pushed back as McVett stands up
ENCLAVE OFFICER
(weakly)
I told you, I’m not reading the rules your way.
MCVETT
It’s not just my way. We’re not playing PVP here; we’re stuck in the same game, I’m just trying to give you a walkthrough.
(brief pause, joking a little)
There. If that doesn’t get to you, I don’t know what will.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I seriously cannot stand you.
SOUND: Bookend chime to indicate the scene break
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Absolutely not. That is not gonna happen.
MCVETT
I thought you were all about the game.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You think you’re goddamn hilarious.
MCVETT
You won’t talk to me about anything else. Pick up your hand and give me your eights.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You son of a bitch, Go Fish!
SOUND: They both laugh
MCVETT
All right, maybe it wasn’t the best idea. I was gonna let you win, anyway.
SOUND: Shuffling the cards back together
ENCLAVE OFFICER
For once in my career.
MCVETT
Oh, we’ve come back around to self-pity.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
You don’t know me as well as you think you do. I never left self-pity.
MCVETT
You’ve got to get away from this idea that everything’s about you.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Isn’t taking personal responsibility about me?
(brief pause)
You know the worst part of the training they put us through? They’d shove us in the middle of the deepest piles of bullshit – and from your first step into the situation, you could feel that you shouldn’t have been there. Not just the rules were against you, but the whole game was sour … tainted … from the very beginning.
MCVETT
You’re not just talking about the Moon. Or En-Soy-Ment.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
My first major project – the top line on my corporate CV – was as administrator for the Northern Acquisition. I don’t have to tell you what that euphemism represents.
MCVETT
You’re not anywhere near old enough to have been up North at the beginning of things. I’m not old enough.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
Not anywhere near the beginning. By the time I was thrown in, the damn thing had the momentum of three megacorporations over decades of full-on destruction. My mistake, “Resource allocation and relocation.”
(brief pause)
My family was from northern Ontario, Sudbury, not that that’s gonna mean a thing to you. It meant nothing to me – I grew up in the Supercities – not until I saw the countryside for the first time. My grandparents had shown me pictures of forests, lake inlets, a bustling little city – all buried or smoldering before I stepped there. It looked like the end of the world, and I was responsible for marking down each ruined acre. I filed reports on time lost from breathing in the smoke.
(brief pause)
I had to notify Security if we saw the Anishinaabe, or Cree, outside the boundaries we set for them. It didn’t matter that we knew they couldn’t survive on those lands, because we’d already stripped them to bare earth. I was also the point person to coordinate with the Ryders – setting a perimeter to see that no one crossed the Lakes without our say-so. Out or in.
(brief pause)
They sent me up there because I had “personal knowledge,” and you might think that means they wanted my opinion on what was pushing things too far. Or you might know better.
(after a moment)
I certainly did; I never said a word, never made a single complaint to my superiors, never broke a rule to allow anyone some leeway. I knew my place in things.
(breaking a bit)
And yes, god dammit, I knew it was my responsibility. Not mine alone, but … mine personally. That was Death’s country, McVett – not anywhere on Earth or the Moon, but what happened inside me. Once I had seen that, I was hard to shock by anything else.
(There is a long, silent pause)
ENCLAVE OFFICER
So.
MCVETT
Yeah.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I guess the ball’s in your court, Ser.
MCVETT
I guess we’re playing by the same rules.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
What comes next? You said there’s some sort of a process for these things.
MCVETT
Well, the very next step, we need to get other people involved, and see what they think. Other victims, the rest of the community, and so on.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
I’ve got to talk to more of you?
MCVETT
Let me run upstairs and get Trina. And Val, you definitely need Val to start making anything right around here. And after that, I think we’re gonna be heading to that other side of the Moon you like to talk about.
ENCLAVE OFFICER
What if I change my mind again, and decide that all of this isn’t worth doing?
MCVETT
Well … then we’d still have to see what other folks think. We can’t just leave you here to rot. Pull yourself together, Stephens. It’s time we took this show on the road.
SOUND: Storage Room Background ends
SOUND: Chime – Bookend
(The episode ends.)
PRODUCERS
Thank you for listening. This episode featured D.J. Sylvis as the Enclave Officer, and Steven LaFond as Harold McVett. The script was written by D.J. Sylvis; Cass McPhee is our audio engineer. Our theme music is “Star” by the band Ramp; our cover art is by Peter Chiykowski.
Our Exectutive Producers are Sarah Müller and Beka B, and our associate producers are Marty Chodorek, June Madeley , Timothy LaGrone, Marilyn Reid, Marissa Robertcop and Linda Boyer.
Thank you guys so much for your support, and helping and trusting us to bring this story to life. We love what we’ve done with it, and we hope you love it as much as we do.
As we bring this series to a close and thank you yet again for supporting us through it all, this is a great time to talk about how you can join us on our next adventure. Our Patreon backers get weekly email updates and behind the scenes sneak peeks at our next show, so we would love to see you there. Or sign up for our mailing list to get our monthly newsletter and stay up to date on all the things at MonkeymanProductions.com.
We’ll be back one more time a few weeks from now, with a big Q&A special where we’re gonna answer all your questions about the end of the show. But it’s not just about the Q’s and A’s – we’ve got a very special announcement we’ll be making in that episode as well! So until then, keep seeking ways to resist and keep watching the Moon!
