Note: This first scene isn’t intended in the final work but I wrote it to just help me find the characters.
Gabrielle is the first to wake up. She steps out of the train, she looks around, she’s quite intrigued by the landscape, wondering if she’s dreaming. She touches the ground and notices that she can feel it. But also sees that her hand is different,
GAB: Fascinating.
A human-sized mannequin stumbles out of the train, it’s grabbing onto its head, then looks up.
MATT: Who are you!
MATT: What’s going on?
GAB: …
MATT: What are you looking at me like that you freak, what do you want?
Gab reacts quickly as if she’s been disrespected, she has no tolerance for that.
GAB: Not a freak, thank you.
MATT: Why do you look like that?
GAB: I don’t know yet why WE look like this.
Matt looks at his arms, grabbing them, first slowly then starts to rub them fast and hard trying to push the unfamiliar skin off. His breathing quickens, and he steps backwards.
MATT: I haven’t done anything. I didn’t do anything wrong.
His chest is now violently moving up and down as it sounds like he’s gasping for air. Gab takes a few cautious steps towards him.
GAB: Hey, hey, calm down.
As if losing the ability to tell which way is up Matt falls down on his left hip and can barely crutch himself up with his arm.
GAB: Hey! You need to stop pressing the panic button in your head. I’m not a threat, you have ground under your feet.
GAB: Listen to me.
GAB: I am Gabriel, I’m a Professor at the Institute for Astronomy in Sydney. A moment ago I was at home making tea.
GAB: I have a pet sugar glider and I had planned to spend the evening marking assignments from students I don’t care for.
Matt starts to calm down and recover a little
MATT: A sugar glider?
GAB: Mr. Freefall
MATT: How do you remain so calm?
GAB: Old people don’t have the energy to panic anymore.
Ash, Gab and Matt are talking together early in ACT1. Mosse has mysteriously vanished from the group. In this conversation, we get hints that something here is profoundly important to Gabriel, and she might have some theories about this space that she’s not willing to share.
ASH: Why would he run off like that?
ASH: Do you think he had anything to do with why we’re here?
MATT: I doubt it.
GAB: He seems pretty unstable.
MATT: He is a man in his 20s. Stuck in his head, that’s messy, but I don’t think he’s “the threat that woke us” or whatever that means.
MATT: Also, does it matter? We’re in the same position. Froggy said we can go back if we fix this up.
GAB: I’d say it matters a lot, this might be the strangest thing in nature. I want to know who caused it.
(Matt start to say something but bite his tongue)
MATT: What I’m saying is.
MATT: We should do.
MATT: What we need to.
MATT: And get home.
MATT: Right now, we should find Mosse. Not alienate him.
ASH: Gab, are you saying this space can’t exist?
GAB: (not looking at Ash, eyes somewhere else) Only a fool would believe it.
Early in ACT 2 Matt has assigned each passenger a platform to investigate and try to “unlock” according to Guides instructions. One must connect with the dirt (slam hands into the ground) on the platform, relinquish control of the body and take on a virtual avatar.
MATT: How’s it going with this platform, have you had any success?
GAB: I’ve not started.
MATT: Why not?
GAB: There’s a lot on my mind.
MATT: Didn’t imagine a science professor as a slacker (Matt tries to pass it off as a joke, but he’s clearly annoyed)
GAB: There is that rudeness again, (She turns to face Matt)
GAB: Why are you here and not diving down your platform?
MATT: I am trying,
GAB: You are?
GAB: I can’t see any dirt on your hands so you can’t have been trying very hard.
MATT: …
MATT: I’m unable to. I can’t let go of the little control I still have of my mind and body. I need help.
MATT: But I am trying.
MATT: Do you also need help?
MATT: Ash and Mosse seem to have made progress.
GAB: Right now, Matt, I would like to be left alone. If you don’t mind.
MATT: Okay, I will give you space, but I am concerned about us isolating ourselves.
GAB: You sent us off to different platforms Matt.
MATT: I did, with the hope of speeding things up. But I think that might have been a rash choice.
MATT: You are clearly a very intelligent and accomplished lady Gabrielle, don’t let this space mess with what you know about yourself.
GAB: I think it’s showing me something I always knew.
MATT: What do you mean?
GAB: Go look after Mosse if you’re worried about someone being enthralled with this space. He, or maybe it’s she now, walked past with absurd body proportions.
Sometime early in ACT2 Gab is standing by the railing at the platform by the train. Looking out at the train track, Ash can approach her.
GAB: Trains on tracks go somewhere.
ASH: Does that matter?
GAB: …. More than I’d like to admit.
GAB: Why do you think the 4 of us were on that train together?
ASH: The romantic in me says we share a bond.
GAB: The romantics didn’t build railways.
ASH: What’s the scientist’s view then?
GAB: The scientist lives in an indifferent universe without destination and meaning, we observe and we learn and we “love it”.
GAB: I’ve looked, witnessed and observed the stars so much. But this is the first time I’ve felt that the universe has looked back at me.
Later in ACT2 When Gab Opens up
ASH: Did you know anything about this space before we came here Gab?
GAB: Do you have any memories from your childhood that just seem fantastical?
GAB: When I was young, I had these illusions where I woke up on a moving train. I was unable to move from my seat, but I could look out the window and see a night sky unlike anything else.
The illusion continued into my early teens and drove me to become an astronomer. Even at an early age I understood that it didn’t fit into the cosmos I read about in the book. But they also made me feel so special.
I spent my late teens, twenties, and thirties chasing any proof for that space. However, I grew increasingly frustrated. It became more and more obvious that those moments were just the fantastical imagination of a child.
Instead, I started taking empirical evidence to its extreme, and it paid off. When I let the universe be indifferent to me, it revealed itself and I started to define myself in its image.
People say that they want to know the mysteries of the universe. But what they want is something romantic. However, if you truthfully seeker the answer is always to do away with “meaning”, “actor” and ”purpose”.
This space is not our universe. Yet, I’m still here. Conscious and stuck until we solve some bizarre puzzles.